Song of a Peacebringer: Epilogue

Sybilla of Bois-Sur-Seine looked out from the table in her small cottage where she was kneading bread and surveyed the land around the house and adjoining smithy. Uncut, uncleared – pure, wooded wilderness. It was a change from seeing all the desert of her homeland. But this was her home now, France. Where her husband had grown up and where her children, God willing, would also grow up, she thought to herself, stroking her stomach, stretched wide and full like a melon. Another boy, hopefully. They'd name him Raymond, or John, perhaps. Agnes or Hodierna if it were a girl, after her mother or aunt. Or Audemande. Sybilla smiled.

Audemande…the name brought back memories. Where did you fly off to, Little Dove? Are you still singing songs somewhere? Outside, her two sons, Baldwin and Godfrey, tussled with each other in the dirt, blonde and blue-eyed and beautiful. Just like Baldwin – both Baldwins, she reminded herself with a twinge. Neither boy showed signs of going the way of their uncle or half-brother, and for that, Sybilla daily thanked God.

"They say that Chainerault has a new mistress – a woman of the east that the Lord has brought back from the crusades. Perhaps we'll see her on market day," She remarked to Balian, who had taken a break from his forge to come and stand with her.

"Perhaps it would be better not," Balian advised. "There are some who would know your face. And after all, you've been considered dead these many years."

"But it would still be nice to go, and see them. Hear the voices once again," Sybilla said, pleading with her husband. "We must still go to market, Balian. What harm is there in going to see the Lady? They'll be hearing court, of course. Just this once, Balian. I do not ask for much."

"You ask for plenty, wife. We'll go," the blacksmith said, returning to his forge to continue making the tools that they'd sell while at the Chainerault fair.

The Chainerault fair was one of the biggest in the region, full of sights and sounds to amuse the boys. While Balian's back was turned setting up their stall, Sybilla ponderously bent over towards Baldwin and pressed a battered silver penny into his hand. "Find something for you and your brother, and don't lose him. I expect you back by lunch," Sybilla said. "Take care you use that well," she counseled, easing herself back up.

"Thank you, Mama!" Baldwin said, wrapping his arms around her burgeoning midsection. He took his brother Godfrey's hand and trotted off into the crowd, explaining in his wordly six year old voice the wonders and delights to be had for a penny to his not so worldly five year old brother. Sybilla smiled and prodding her aching back with a clenched fist.

"I've sent the boys off with a penny," Sybilla announced to her husband, helping him arrange some of the baskets at their stall. "Don't you give me that look," she warned Balian, who was frowning at her. "It was my money, and they deserved a little present."

"She cleans, she rules countries, she bakes pies and runs her own business off of my hungry customers," Balian said fondly. "What doesn't my wife do?"

"Mmm, work a forge and resist pain," Sybilla said, groaning. Balian stepped behind his wife, digging experienced thumbs into the small of her back. "Thank you," the former princess said, bending backwards a little and sighing. "I'm going for a walk – my menfolk need new shirts and I have no fabric."

"Nonsense, my shirt is fine. We're not so pretentious that people are going to see Balian's boys each have two and three shirts. People will talk," the blacksmith said practically.

"It will be cold this winter," Sybilla said. "Let other people talk through their chattering teeth while my boys are warm. I'll haggle down the price," she added for her husband's benefit – the next argument, she knew, would be that cloth was too expensive. "Those years with Guy taught me something of how to strike a bargain."

Balian sighed – she was a willful woman, whatever else she might have been. "You've left me something to eat for noontide?" he asked.

"In the basket," Sybilla said with a smile. Men – keep them fed, warm, and occupied, and a wife's job is never easier. She set off through the fair with her marketing basket over her arm, one hand wrapped protectively over her belly.

Cloth she could find easily – and besides, she knew that if she really wanted a bargain, she'd go towards the end of the day, when the weaver's guild was more willing to strike a deal so they didn't have to carry home so much. What she wanted was in Chaineraulte castle with the lord and lady.

There wasn't much room for the princess of Jerusalem inside the new Sybilla. She couldn't teach her boys the Greek and Arabic that had been so painstakingly drilled into her mind as a girl because the other women of the village would think she was a witch. Nor could she teach them Latin, for Latin was a learned man's tongue, and she was no man. She got up before the sun did, started her cooking fire and stoked the forge into life for Balian, and set to making breakfast for two growing boys. A far cry from the life of the lady of leisure she used to be.

But to see it all again – the bright colors of the lady's cloak, the lisp of educated Norman French, the stories! She'd be happy with a replenished store of memories to fashion stories from for a long while. Stories, Sybilla shook her head with a smile. They're not even my stories that I tell my boys. They're Aude's. Oh, friend, if only you could see my sons. They'd love to hear you tell them tales like you used to tell Baldwin and me.

The gate of Chaineraulte castle vaulted high over the packed dirt of the street below, giving an air of open space in a place that was filled with people cramming in to see the Lord and his Lady, back from the Crusade. Sybilla pushed through the crowds, using her extra weight and condition to gain some sympathy in getting to the front of the crowd, waiting for the Lord and Lady to appear.

A trumpet sounded somewhere in the bustle, and gradually, people quieted. The lord appeared, leading on his arm a woman perhaps Sybilla's age, or a little younger, with a gown of silver-blue, like fresh fish scales, and a veil of silver over her dark hair, which was bound over her ears in fillets of silver filigree. The women nearest Sybilla whispered amongst themselves that the lady looked like an angel, and Sybilla scoffed a little. What they would have thought of me when I was princess, she mused. This is only a fraction as beautiful as what I once wore.

The lady's eyes had been downcast as she made her way to the seats on the dais where she and her husband would hear court, but as she sat down, Sybilla saw her face, and a chill went through her.

"Who shall we hear first, my love?" the lord asked, and the lady stood, searching the crowd. Sybilla gazed desperately at her, and when the lady's gaze passed her, it stopped, staring, surprised and, in a strange way, happy.

"A moment, please, husband," the lady said, coming down from the dais towards the people. "Lower your weapons," she said to the two men-at-arms in front of Sybilla, and the pikes uncrossed, letting Sybilla come closer to the lady.

"Well, what little bird has become trapped in here today?" the lady asked softly. "Are you lost, woman? What is your name?" the Lady asked, smiling. Sybilla smiled back.

"It was Sybilla, lady," she said bowing her head low, with the practice of a courtier.

"Sybilla," the Lady of Chainerault repeated, amused. "What a ponderous name. Is there something else you're called?"

"Friend," Sybilla said. And Audemande of Vinceaux, Lady-Dove of Jerusalem and Countess of the Three Castles, let her disguise go and laughed. "Sybilla," the woman repeated. "Sybilla…"

"Sybilla!"

The former princess turned away from the window, the beautiful vision gone, replaced only with the landscape that had started it, and looked behind her to the voice calling her name. It had only been a dream. Like many things in my life nowadays, Sybilla mused. It was too beautiful to have been true. If only she knew what had happened to Audemande. She had left Jerusalem with Tiberias, before the siege had begun, and that was the last the former Princess had seen of the Little Dove. It made Sybilla sad – apart from her brother, Aude was the closest thing to a friend Sybilla had ever had.

Somone called her name again, and she turned to answer; The interrupting voice was her husband, calling to her from the doorway, the light from outside throwing him into shadow.

"I'm going up to the castle – the lord's favorite mount has slipped a shoe and he won't ride to collect his new wife on any other. Aluin needs the boys out of the smithy so they're not underfoot while he's working."

"Of course," Sybilla said, extracting her hands from the bread dough and setting it near the window so it could rise before she took it to the bakehouse. Yes, Chaineraulte was getting a new mistress, but it would not be the Little Dove of Jerusalem – the Lord of the manor had never even seen the outside of France, let alone the Holy City. Other men fought his wars. "Come along boys, inside!" she called, watching her sons scamper inside, ducking around her and her rather pregnant belly to continue their game, whatever it was.

"Why, Maman? We were having lots of fun outside!"

"Your father doesn't want you near the forge while he's up at the castle," Sybilla said matter of factly, making sure the breadbowl was far enough onto the table to prevent it from falling off should a wayward child knock it about.

"Why can't I go with Papa up to the castle?" Baldwin, the elder, wanted to know, looking up at his mother with large blue eyes.

"Because you're not old enough to help him yet," Sybilla explained, beginning to chop vegetables for the evening meal's stew.

"I carry his tools sometimes!" Baldwin complained.

"I don't wanna be a blacksmith when I grow'p," Godfrey said in his high little voice, slurring 'grow up' together in the way that was entirely his own. "I wanna be king, like in stories, Maman!"

Sybilla chuckled. Ah, son, if only you had been born sooner, then perhaps you might have been. And what will your father say to that, I wonder? "I do not think they have much call for kings with blacksmiths for fathers, Godfrey. Perhaps you could be a sergeant at arms instead."

"But they never get any stories, and I wanna be inna story!" Godfrey whined.

"I want to be in a story too, Maman!" Baldwin said, changing his mind as mercurially as a only a child can. "Tell us a story, Maman! Pleeeease?" he said, smiling toothily at his mother. Sybilla sighed, drawing up a chair to the table so she could continue chopping sitting down; her back was beginning to bother again.

"A story? Which would you like, then?"

"A new one!" Baldwin declared brightly.

Sybilla smiled, nodding. "Oh, a new one…let me think about that." A new story? There was…no, but she had told that one already. Or perhaps…no, but they had heard that one too. Had she really told all of Audemande's already? She was not the storyteller, the Little Dove was. Every story her sons heard came from Aude's lips first. Friend, what tale do you have left to tell?

A merchant passing through the village with beautiful silks and Levantine cloth for the castle had stopped at the smithy the other day to have his carthorse re-shod. While waiting he'd shared with all the housewives (flocking as they did to a cart full of colors like they had never seen the likes of before in their entire lives) a fantastic tale about the Lady of the city where he had bought his wares. "Skin as white as the breast of a dove, people say! Though with those Muslims, one never knows. They veil all the womenfolk there, with heavy cloth so you can't see naught but their eyes. Devil eyes, they are, too, dark and full of hellfire. Wouldn't surprise me if there were monsters underneath 'stead of women," the merchant had said gravely. "But this lady was different. Used to be French before the Muslims captured her in battle and made her a slave. They say she could tell stories, and that's why the lord didn't kill her, because he liked her stories so much…"

"What was the Lord's name?" Sybilla had asked, before she could even help herself. The merchant looked at her like she had asked for the names of every devil in hell.

"How should I know? Nasty-ridden something or other. One of those foreign sounding things. Nothing a Christian could pronounce."

I could, Sybilla had thought to herself. Nasir Imad Al Din. I knew him once. Would it be so strange to imagine he loved Aude? They were both poets – they would have been good to each other.

"Mama?" little Baldwin asked, waiting for his story more patiently than his mother had ever seen him wait before. Sybilla smiled.

"I've thought of a new story, Baldwin. One you've never heard before. It takes place in a kingdom very, very far away, where there was a young king and his sister, a young princess. Since the king was young and weak, he married his sister to a great lord, who would give them help if they needed it defending their kingdom."

"Mama, we've heard this one 'fore," Baldwin observed. Sybilla shook her head.

"But this story is not about the king, or the princess, Baldwin, but about a young girl who came to serve the princess as her lady."

"Was she beau---beaut --- was she pretty?" Godfrey asked, sliding closer to his mother across the dirt floor.

"Yeah, did she have lots of treasure to help the king?" Baldwin added.

Sybilla looked across the room and tried to remember – a kind face, with dark eyes and dark hair… but the details were escaping her now, as if Aude were dead, a buried relative under a stone tablet waiting to be forgotten. "No, Baldwin, she was very poor. But she had a beautiful soul, and she had something that gold would never buy -- a talent for telling stories. This pleased the princess very much, for her brother the king had trouble sleeping, and when the Lady would come and tell him stories, he would sleep easier." Yes, a simple story was the best, a little lie to hide the beasts of memory.

"Why did the king have trouble sleeping? Were there lots of storms where he lived?" Baldwin asked. He had trouble sleeping during thunderstorms, and he assumed everyone else did, too.

"No, Baldwin, no storms. The king had many, many problems, and one of them was that the kingdom next to his was trying to take his kingdom for its own. This gave him much grief, and night after night he would lie awake trying to think of a way to have peace. Finally one day, after many little battles between the king's knights and the other kingdom, the other kingdom's Emperor brought his armies to the walls of the king's castle, and began to put them under a great siege."

"What's cee-j, Maman?" Godfrey wondered.

"It's where no one goes out of a castle and no one goes in, stupid," Baldwin said, clearly not appreciating his brother's interruption of the story. "Papa told us."

"Baldwin, we don't call our brothers stupid," Sybilla admonished sternly. "Apologize, or I won't go on with the story."

Her elder son frowned, looked at his brother and mumbled "I'm sorry" before turning away, arms folded and shoulders bent up to his ears. Sybilla shook her head and went on – he'd calm down eventually. "Sometimes while the siege was going on, Godfrey, the emperor's men would stop firing their weapons at the castle and rest for a while, and during those times, the storyteller-lady would come out on the battlements and walk. One of those times when she was on the walls of the castle, the emperor's greatest general saw her and immediately he fell in love with her. Every day after that when they were taking their rest the general went to go see her, and soon she began to notice him. Sadly, the city was taken before the General could save her, and she was taken prisoner by the Emperor's soldiers. The general searched very long and very hard to find the woman he had fallen in love with, and finally he did, in the Emperor's harem."

"What's a harem, Maman?" Godfrey asked. For once, Baldwin didn't have an answer.

"It's a special house where all the women in one family live," Sybilla explained, rather simplistically. "This made the General very sad, for he could not take one of the Emperor's servants as his wife. So he went before the Emperor and said, 'Emperor, I have a sad story to tell. It is about a little bird I saw on the battlements of the castle we have taken. It was a beautiful bird, and I meant to take it as my own, but when we took the city I could no longer find it, and I assumed it had flown away.'

"The Emperor was saddened to hear this, for though he had many sons, he loved the General almost as his own, and he wanted to see him happy. "General, let me send out scouts throughout the people, that this bird may be found and brought to you," he decreed. "Emperor, many thanks, but alas, this cannot be done, for I have searched on my own, and I have found the bird, but now I cannot have her."

"'Why can you not?' the Emperor asked, for he was very confused by all of this. 'Emperor, the bird is in your bird gardens, and I cannot take it back to my own, since it has already enriched your collection.'

"At this, the Emperor smiled, and sent for the man in charge of his birds. 'Describe it to this man, and he will see that it is brought to you, for ever do I desire you to be happy, and satisfied with your rewards.' The General nodded, and whispered in the bird-master's ear, sending him not to find a bird, but to find the lady he had loved on the battlements.

When the Lady-Storyteller was brought before them instead of a bird, the Emperor smiled, for often the General had spoken in camp about a lady he loved, and the Emperor could see that this was the woman. He gave her to the General to be his bride, and both of them were very happy after that."

"Did the war stop after that?" Godfrey asked, his five-year old mind not really comprehending the notion of sieges and wars. Sybilla nodded, thinking it simpler to leave those concepts unexplained. What need had little Godfrey the son of the blacksmith have to understand that?

"Did they bring peace when they got married, like in that one story you tell us?" Baldwin asked, his minor tantrum charmed out of him by the story.

Sybilla paused for a moment, considering this as she looked around her house and listened outside to the hustle and bustle of a village that had not seen war in fifty or so years. "Did she bring peace? Yes," she decided, smiling and stroking her son's hair. "Yes, she did. And they lived happily ever after, until the end of their days."

Ah, double meaning in my title. I love it when I do something clever like that.

The Epilogue was written for the original ending and I liked some parts of it too much to change it, so I worked the first version into the second version as a dream of Sybilla's. I know that must have been confusing, and I apologize. But you got a taste of how the story was originally supposed to end. If I'm feeling puckish I'll post the alternate ending on my fictionpress or something.

Oh, and fun story – I was at my local library looking for music from the renaissance and found something very interesting – an album titled "The Saracen and the Dove" by a group called the Orlando Consort. Well, I had to check it out with that title on the front. The title, apparently, comes from the symbols of the rival Italian cities of Padua and Pavia in the 14th century. The music is only so-so, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Well, friends, we've reached the end. It's been a fun trip, and here we are looking back and wondering where all the time went. Who knows where we will meet again next? A very large special thanks to everyone who repeatedly came back and reviewed even when the chapters weren't very long and the story wasn't going anywhere.

Here's the famous Works Consulted list. I wish you joy of it. Know that I enjoyed reading every single one of the books on this list and I'd recommend them to anyone looking for a good book. I cannot, however, vouch for the level of scholarship in any of them.

Works Consulted

"Food in Medieval Times" Melitta Weiss Adamson, Greenwood Press, Westwood, CT

"Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin during the Third Crusade" James Reston, Jr, Anchor Books, NY

Wikipedia pages on Raymond of Tiberias, Baldwin IV, Sybilla of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusiginan, Bertrand De Born, the Battle of Montgisard, Saladin, Imad Al Dinh, Reynald of Chatillion, Stephanie of Milly, Isabella of Jerusalem, William of Tyre, Richard the Lionheart, Berengaria of Navarre, The Metamorphoses (Latin Wikisource page also) .

The Song of Roland, trans. Robert Harrison.

The Rule of Benedict, translated and edited by Timothy Fry, O.S.B, Collegeville.

"Women, Crusading, and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative," Natasha R. Hodgson, Boydell Press, UK

"The Leper King and his Heirs," Bernard Hamilton, Cambridge University Press, UK

Kingdom of Heaven, dir. Ridley Scott, 2005

"Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems" Bernard Lewis, Princeton, 2001

"Women in Islam" Wiebke Walther, Markus Weiner Press, 1993

"Night and Horses and the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature" Ed. Robert Irwin

"Nine Parts of Desire" Geraldine Brooks.

"Arabic Script" Gabriel Mandel Khan. Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia, trans.

"Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World: A concise history with 174 Recipes" Lilia Zaouali

"Arab Historians of the Crusades," Francesco Gabrieli, University of California Press, 1957

"Shah-nameh" by Abolqasem Ferdowsi, trans. Dick Davis

Special thanks to The Dante Troubadours, Les Jongeleurs de Mandragore, Andrew Lawrence-King, and Harry Gregson-Williams for providing the musical backdrop to which this was written.