The Source by James A. Michener
Among the first of the Muslim merchants to drive his camels across the overland route from Damascus was the old Arab Muzaffar, who in the fall of 1289 made one of his accustomed stops at Ma Coeur to peddle his pepper and nutmegs, his China silks and Persian brocades and, most importantly, to hand Count Volkmar a document from the Mameluke officials in Damascus. As always, the residents of the castle extended old Muzaffar a brotherly welcome, for through the years he had handled much business for them and was considered a member of the family, especially since years ago at the wedding of Volkmar VII, the present count’s father, the old Arab had advanced the castle a goodly sum toward the festival expenses.
He was short for an Arab and inclined toward fatness, so that when he stood against Count Volkmar, who like his ancestors was red-headed and rugged, he seemed flabby; but when properly dressed in fawn-colored robes, with a black and gold cord about his headdress, and with his white beard standing out from his tanned face, he was handsome; and when he delivered the official document he smiled warmly. “The Mamelukes grant you permission to go on pilgrimage,” he said in French, making himself comfortable in the castle hall.
“You’ve read it?” Volkmar asked in Arabic.
“Of course.” Abruptly he abandoned the count and hurried forward to greet the countess, who kissed him warmly on both cheeks. She was a slight, winsome creature whose plaited locks hung in two strands forward over her shoulders and reached to her waist. After studying her with approval Muzaffar observed in French, “Almost every garment you wear has reached Ma Coeur on my camels, and today I have a worthy successor.” He called for one of his men, who brought a leather box containing a long-trained dress made of samite, adorned with wide sleeves and decorations of pearl. “For a lady who is going on a pilgrimage,” he said graciously, and she realized that this beautiful garment was being offered as a gift.
“The Mamelukes have given permission?” she asked.
“After a little help, here and there,” he laughed, twisting his right hand this way and that to indicate bribery.
“You’re our dearest friend,” the countess cried, kissing him again, “but I’m not going.” The old Arab made as if he were taking back the dress, and she caught his hands. “But in my new dress I’ll make a little pilgrimage right here,” and from a window she pointed down to the basilica, the Maronite church and the Roman. The latter stood across from the mosque.
“But our son’s going,” the count explained.
“How excellent!” the old trader cried in French. “Volkmar! Take your pilgrimage next spring. We can meet in Saphet and ride across the hills together.”
The count, a tall rugged man in his forties, clean-shaven and sharp of feature but dark of face like his Holy Land ancestors, studied the proposal for some moments, then countered cautiously, “It would be appropriate to see Saphet with you, Muzaffar, but there are two drawbacks. In spring the Galilee grows warm, which would not of itself stop me, but from Saphet I’d planned returning over the hills to Starkenberg to show my son the German castle there, and that would take you far out of your way.”
“Not at all!” the old man protested. “I’ll send the camels along the trail with a driver. I’ll ride across the hills with you and catch up with the camels here.”
“Will you bring your own horse?” Volkmar asked.
“It might be better if you brought one for me … No! I’ll buy the best horse I can find in Damascus, then sell it when I reach Acre.”
“Agreed?” Volkmar asked.
“Saphet in April.” As the two friends shook hands, the Arab added, “And if I’m to do that I must be moving.”
“Not till you’ve eaten,” the count protested, and he called for an early lunch.
The great hall in which the two men sat had been finished in 1105 by Gunter of Cologne, and it was a masterpiece of Crusader art, its thin rock ribbing rising in a series of high arches into which narrow windows had been let. The stone floor was of excellent workmanship, each stone abutting tightly against its neighbor, so that in nearly two hundred years it had required resetting only once. When the paving was freshly oiled—as it was this day—it looked more like soft carpeting than hard stone.
About the room were placed statues of some of the famous owners of the castle, silver candlesticks from Damascus and Aleppo, items of gold from Baghdad and enameled boxes from Persia. Because wood was beginning to be scarce in the Holy Land the huge chests that lined the walls and the long table had come to Acre on Genoese ships from the forests of Serbia, but the spectacular tapestries that hung on the eastern wall had been woven in Byzantium.
It was a beautiful room, and much life had passed through it, for in the preceding hundred and eighty years the Volkmars had contracted family alliances with most of the great Crusader families, except only the Bohemonds of Antioch and the Baldwins of Jerusalem, who had always refused to marry with the line of Ma Coeur. Marriages had been performed in this room and coronations, and in August of 1191 month-long celebrations were launched when the castle was recaptured from Saladin by Richard the Lion Heart of England and restored by him to Volkmar IV. Richard had stayed in the castle for two weeks, recuperating from his siege of Acre. The princes of Galilee had graced this room, the Embriacos from Genoa and John of Brienne. Here the emissaries of the Comnenus emperors of Constantinople had come, and the Ibelins, a local nobility, and the queens of Armenia. How great they were, the lords of Tyr and Cesaire, the counts of Tripoli; but in the history of the distinguished room one name stood out above the rest.
“Let us drink to Saladin, cursed be his memory,” Volkmar proposed, and the old trader raised his glass, even though as a Muslim he should not have taken wine.
“I love wine,” the old man said, adding, “Saladin was so noble he should have been an Arab.”
“He killed two of my ancestors,” Volkmar observed.
“If both sides had listened to him,” the old man reflected, “we should have long ago devised a way of living on this land.”
“That much I grant you,” Volkmar agreed.
At this point the count’s son, a boy of eleven, came in from his studies and greeted the Arab, who had often brought him unexpected gifts from Damascus. The two spoke in Arabic, and Muzaffar asked the count, “Have you ever shown your boy the Horns of Hattin?”
“No,” the count laughed. “Our family prefers to stay away from there.”
“You should do it next spring,” Muzaffar suggested. “The more we know about history, the better.”
Countess Volkmar interrupted to summon the men to a smaller room where a generous meal was spread across a heavy wooden table. The principal dish was roebuck, taken from the hills opposite Acre, but there was also grouse brought to the castle by Muslim traders from Jerusalem. About the table were placed bronze bowls of damson plums and apricots from Syria, oranges and late melons from fields near Ma Coeur. Volkmar judged that Muzaffar’s men must have already sold the castle new supplies, for he was offered a small silver dish from Athens containing Persian violets crystallized in transparent sugar. These were flavored with cinnamon and were intended for dessert.
“I have always loved to eat from your plates,” Muzaffar joked. “They almost make me feel a Christian.” He lifted the proud old plate, designed in Jerusalem years ago but baked in the potteries of Egypt, and studied it again. It was handsomely crazed and bore only one design, in red: a large, stupid-looking, gape-mouthed fish, and for nearly two centuries each Crusader fortress in the Holy Land had owned a set of such dishes, for they had become the most popular emblem of Christianity: centuries before, someone had discovered that the Greek letters for the word fish, ichthys, formed an acrostic which could be translated “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.”
As they ate, Muzaffar looked at the folios that stood in cases along one wall of the room. Ma Coeur owned seventy volumes, a notable library for that day, and most had been brought there by Muzaffar. In Aleppo, Smyrna or Baghdad, wherever he had happened to be, he
When the leisurely meal ended he took one final gulp of wine, kissed the countess farewell, gave young Volkmar some coins from beyond Persia, and took the count’s arm, walking him out to the camels. When they were alone he asked quietly, “And at the end of the truce?”
Count Volkmar considered for some moments, then said, “The men at Acre are hopeful, but I’m cautious. The Mamelukes may drive us from the land.”
“I think so. What will you do?”
“I shall not leave this castle.” The count suspected that Muzaffar might have come as a spy; if he did, the Mamelukes had driven him to it. On the other hand, if they had sent him they had better know the facts. “I’ll resist,” he repeated stubbornly.
“And the boy?”
“There’s the question,” Volkmar replied in undisguised perplexity.
“Why don’t you send him back to Germany?” Muzaffar suggested.
“My father made a visit to Germany and I can remember his telling us that compared to the way we lived at Ma Coeur, the Germans lived like animals. And for their part, the Germans felt that he had become an Arab and they wondered if his religious attitudes could be trusted. He told us that between him and his cousins there had been little understanding: he loved learning and they couldn’t read; he liked philosophical discussion, but all they knew about was hunting. In short, he had been civilized by the Arabs while they had been allowed to remain suspicious barbarians. At the end of his uncomfortable visit everyone was relieved to see him go—he most of all. I don’t think my son would like Germany.”
“But I warn you, Volkmar. He should leave.”
“I know. But where?” The two old friends embraced and the Arab returned to his camels.
On a sunny morning in late April, 1290, Count Volkmar rousted his eleven-year-old son from bed and took him to a room where waiting men had spread upon the floor the boy’s first full suit of armor. “We shall be riding over dangerous countryside,” the count explained. “A safe-conduct is no protection against stragglers and robbers.” After the men had dressed the boy in his usual underclothes, they fitted him with a padded tunic made of thick folds of linen stuffed with cotton wadding that had been soaked in vinegar. This would withstand arrows. Over it they put a light, flexible coat of mail whose joints worked easily and whose edges fell to the boy’s knees. It was slit in the back, so that he could sit astride his horse. His feet were slipped into iron shoes from which a long tongue extended upward to protect the shinbone. And because the pilgrims would be riding in hot sun, over all was thrown a thin gauze cloak upon which had been stitched in blue silk the seal of the castle: a round tower flanked by another.
Proudly young Volkmar clanked in to greet his mother and to kiss her farewell. He carried no lance, but he was allowed a token sword and a stout wooden shield covered with hard leather and studded with iron. In the courtyard he saw with satisfaction that each of the knights was dressed like him, except that they were heavily armed, and all wore iron helmets which looked like buckets but which allowed them to see and breathe through small slits.
The drawbridge of the castle was lowered, the iron gates were swung open, creaking in sunlight, and the entourage spurred their horses across the moat and down into the mud-walled town, past the Catholic church of Rome, past the Maronite church of Syria, and up to the old Byzantine basilica called Sancta Magdalena, at which pilgrims had been halting for nine hundred years, seeking blessing before they headed east to the Sea of Galilee on a visit to the scenes of Christ’s ministry. Resting their horses by the entrance the knights dismounted and made their way into the darkened chapels, where they knelt and asked blessing on their venture. A faltering priest in ragged vestments mumbled Greek words over their bared heads, and they crossed themselves, returning to their horses and the lovely green countryside of the principality of the counts of Gretz.
How beautiful it was, how achingly beautiful to the senses was Galilee that spring morning. The forests of cedar and pine had not yet been completely chopped away; olive orchards and the far vineyards still flourished; fields produced rich harvests of wheat and oats and barley, while small plots were kept aside for sesame, from which sweet candy was made for children. And at every fifth or sixth mile some new village of Volkmar’s fief would appear, each with its ninety-six Muslims and four Christians working together. It was a land, Volkmar thought as he surveyed it for what he sensed might be the last time, which truly flowed with milk and honey, and he was depressed to think that no way could be devised for holding on to it. As a descendant of the Family of Ur, Volkmar loved the land not only because it was his principality, but also because it was a good and beautiful thing of itself. It was worth preserving in its richness, and he knew that when the Mamelukes captured such land they took no pains to keep it productive. They killed the farmers, chopped down trees, destroyed the irrigation and abandoned the valleys to the Bedouins and goats. It would be cruel to see these fields laid waste, Volkmar reflected.
As the pilgrims headed toward Nazareth the count explained to his son, “The secret of wealth is to have many people working, but in the old days we did not understand this, so we slaughtered all who lived on the land because they were of a different religion. But we quickly learned that in doing so we were killing ourselves, and the land lay idle until we could find hands to till it. Our first count was among the earliest to discover this truth, and that was why through the years our family prospered whilst others did not.”
“Is that why we were able to build the castle?” the boy asked.
“Well,” his father hedged. He thought: In his own time the boy can read what Wenzel of Trier wrote and it would be difficult to explain now, but to his own memory the words of the old chronicler came back with all the muted force that had accompanied them when he had first read them:
And after the death of my Lord Volkmar, rest his Christian soul, unforeseen events took place in the castle of Makor. Sir Gunter of Cologne quickly took my Lady Taleb to wife but placed her son, Volkmar, in a prison, where the boy had little food and no sunlight and where none instructed him, and there the boy languished for seven years. For Gunter announced that he would have his own son who would inherit the principality, but when the lady became not pregnant, the knight swore at her in my presence and shouted, “Damn thee, thy womb swelled for him.” And one night at a banquet he roared to all that he would lie on his wife every night for a year until she bore him a son, and from her end of the table she said quietly that since she had already proved that she could have a child, and had done so, the matter must rest with him, and at his discomfiture we all roared. So Gunter found many women and lay with them, one after another, but none bore him a son and he was past forty years of age, and he saw that he was not to have a child and that when he died the only person to inherit his fields and his castle would be the boy who lay in prison, so the prisoner was brought forth, eleven years of age of which seven had been lived in darkness, and now my Lord Gunter turned to this child as if he were his own precious son and taught him all he knew of warfare and of defending castles and of governing peasants so that their yield would be improved. He required me to teach the boy Latin and Greek and the boy’s grandfather, Luke the Bailiff, perfected him in Arabic and Turkish, so that when the boy was sixteen Gunter contracted a marriage for him with the noble family of Edessa and the old knight was impatient, walking up and down the battlements, until the princess bore a son, for then my Lord Gunter cried, “Now, by God, you are worthy to own this land,” and it was this Volkmar who extended the boundaries.
They camped that first night on the edge of the swamp that filled the middle areas between Ma Coeur and Nazareth, and in the morning one of the guards wakened the sleepers with the cry, “The storks are rising!” The pilgrims rushed to view one of the memorable sights of Galilee: five storks from a large flock that had been
Those storks remaining on the ground understood from the manner in which their fellows soared into the air that an upward current had been found, and with awkward, lumbering jumps they loped across the meadows and projected themselves, wings outspread, into the column of rising air, allowing it to loft them far into the sky toward those highest currents along which they would migrate to Europe. When Volkmar and his son hurried into the morning sunlight they could see a mysterious pillar of more than a hundred storks, apparently motionless yet rising upward, one above the other, until the topmost ones were lost in the sky, and Volkmar quoted from Jeremiah, who had once watched these birds rising over the Galilee: “ ‘Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times.’ ”
“It’s an omen for us,” one of the knights avowed, for as the birds soared aloft, wings and necks and legs extended, they formed a series of supernatural crosses reaching from earth to heaven.
“An omen of good!” other warriors echoed, and all bared their heads and crossed themselves, but Volkmar, watching the topmost storks start flapping their giant wings as they left the rising current, said to himself: No omen, but a warning. They are flying to Germany and soon they will nest in the chimneys of Gretz. The storks had been sent to warn Volkmar and his family to leave the Galilee and go back to Germany. For many days his thoughts would be tormented by that column of majestic crosses, motionless in the sky.