Chapter 185: Chapter 185 - After the Council
September 30th, 1181 - Jerusalem
The great doors of the audience hall groaned shut behind the departing lords, their echoes lingering like the tail of thunder after a storm. The council of Jerusalem and Syria had adjourned, yet its arguments still clung to the chamber’s vaulted stones, and the air was heavy with both uncertainty and anticipation.
Sir Humphrey of Toron was among the first to depart. He spoke low to his cousin as they moved down the passage:
"A bold design—Cyprus as the price of men for Byzantium’s war. The king has set his sights like a hawk."
His cousin frowned. "But hawks sometimes seize prey too large. Isaac Comnenus has ships, and his men know the seas better than ours. Will Jerusalem bleed for an island while Rum sharpens swords beyond the Taurus?"
Behind them trailed Balian of Ibelin, grave as always, speaking in confidence to Thomas of Acre, the Chancellor.
"You saw how the king turned the tide. One moment the lords wavered, the next they clung to his reasoning as though it were the mast of a stormed galley. He knows how to bind Syria, Egypt, and Sicily into a cord—and Cyprus may be the knot."
Thomas adjusted the scrolls under his arm, his keen eyes flicking toward the retreating nobles. "Some still doubt. I heard it in their sighs. They will test the king’s resolve in the coming weeks."
A few paces further, Martin of Palermo, the Treasurer, muttered to a knight from Acre:
"Weapons to Constantinople, men to Anatolia—gold will bleed from the treasury faster than Saracen arrows from a bowstring. Yet if Cyprus comes to us, trade itself may restore the coffers. By God, I pray the sea yields as much silver as the king imagines."
Even the clergy were hushed in debate. Patriarch Heraclius walked slowly with two bishops, his jeweled crozier tapping like a metronome.
"If the hand of God healed our king," one bishop said, "perhaps this venture is His will. A Christian Cyprus may become a lantern in the eastern sea."
Heraclius answered in his oily voice: "Yes, though I wonder—was this healing given to make Baldwin a restorer of empires or a shepherd of Jerusalem? I shall weigh it in prayer."
"Cyprus—aye, a jewel in the sea, but do we not already hold too much?" muttered Hugh of Caesarea to his companion.
"And what is too much, when the Lord Himself has raised Baldwin from the grave of his illness?" another replied. "Would you spurn the blessing of a King healed by God to enlarge His dominion?"
Yet others frowned, their tones guarded. "To meddle in Anatolia is to tempt fortune. The Greeks may betray us yet. And who knows what the boy-emperor Alexios intends—he is but a lad, still overshadowed by his regents."
The name of Alexios II Komnenos, Emperor of the Romans, was on many lips, spoken with curiosity, doubt, or scorn. Some lords still remembered his late father, Manuel Komnenos, whose restless vigor had filled the Levant with Byzantine gold, intrigue, and soldiers. Manuel was gone now—dead these past months—and his teenage heir was a shadow compared to him. But it was to Alexios II that Baldwin and his council would now write, proposing an alliance to reorder the balance of power across the eastern seas.
Within their private apartments, Baldwin and Constance had dismissed all attendants save a single guard at the door. A brazier glowed low, casting warm light across the stone walls. They had spoken little since the council’s end, each dwelling upon the torrent of voices that had filled the hall.
At last Constance, Queen of Jerusalem, Syria, and Duchess of Palestine, turned to her husband with the composure she had carried since her arrival in Outremer.
"You gave them vision, Baldwin," she said quietly, smoothing the folds of her silk gown. "But I saw in their eyes the same question that gnaws at my own: will Constantinople honor its bargains? The regents around Alexios are wolves. Yet wolves may be bound with meat and chains if one knows how."
Baldwin IV leaned back, his healed frame a contrast to the sickly shadow he had once been. His fingers tapped against the carved armrest of the chair.
"They must honor it," he replied. "They have no strength to reclaim Anatolia alone. Their fleets rot in their harbors, their armies bleed away to the Balkans. They need us. And we—aye, we need Cyprus. The island cannot remain a nest for Isaac’s ambitions. If we leave it to fester, it will become the Saracens’ bridgehead or the Sicilians’ plaything. No, it must be ours."
Constance tilted her head, studying him with searching eyes. "Then we must put the matter into words sharper than any sword. Letters to Constantinople, letters to Rome. The Emperor must see the profit, and the Pope must bless the act, else some will call it theft."
Baldwin gave a short, grim smile. "A theft sanctified is no theft at all. And who doubts now that the Lord’s hand is upon me? They will see Cyprus fall into our keeping as ordained."
That evening, the royal chancery was summoned. Thomas of Acre, Chancellor, arrived with his writing clerks; Martin of Palermo, Treasurer, trailed behind with records and tallies; Sir Godfrey of Ibelin, Justiciar, entered last, his stern face betraying neither doubt nor agreement.
The parchment was unrolled, the inks and seals laid out, and the drafting began. Baldwin dictated slowly, Constance seated at his side, her keen ear catching phrases that rang with too much concession or not enough courtesy.
"To His Imperial Majesty, Alexios Komnenos, Basileus of the Romans," Thomas read aloud as the quill scratched.
"Write instead: Alexios Komnenos, Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans," Baldwin corrected. "Do not slight him, even in form. Let no whisper say we mocked his youth."
The letter unfolded into a careful balance: respect without servility, partnership without presumption. Baldwin laid out the bargain plain—knights, pikemen, crossbowmen, weapons and engines of war—all in aid of the Empire’s campaign to recover Anatolia. And in return, the transfer of sovereignty over Cyprus into the hands of Jerusalem and Syria.
Another letter was prepared for Rome. "To His Holiness, the Supreme Pontiff seated in Peter’s chair..." Here Baldwin’s tone shifted. To the Pope they spoke not of bargains but of miracles. They reminded him of Baldwin’s healing, a living testimony to divine favor. They framed Cyprus not as conquest but as deliverance—rescuing the Christians of the island from a tyrant who had broken with lawful authority.
The wax was melted, the seals impressed: the lion of Jerusalem, the cross of the Sepulchre, the arms of the kingdom glinting in red and gold.
When at last the letters were finished, the scribes dismissed, Baldwin and Constance lingered by the table, the documents cooling in the night air.
"Once sent, there is no turning back," Constance whispered. "This path will bind us to Constantinople—and perhaps to their intrigues forever."
Baldwin rested his hand upon hers, his voice firm. "Better to bind ourselves than to leave our flanks open. Better to hold Cyprus in our grip than watch it slip into another’s. We are not stewards of a fragile kingdom any longer, Constance. We are builders of an empire."
She looked at him—no longer the sickly youth whispered of as doomed, but a man renewed, crowned with titles that now seemed more than parchment’s boast: King of Jerusalem and Syria, Duke of Palestine, Defender of the Holy Sepulchre, and Defender of the Holy City.
The letters would ride at dawn, across sea and land—to Alexios in Constantinople, to the Pope in Rome. The fate of Cyprus, the shape of alliances, and the very destiny of Outremer would turn upon their words.
And beyond the council’s echoes, beyond the lords’ whispers in corridors, a greater murmur was rising—the steady, insistent voice of history, waiting to be written in their hands.