Beloved Pilgrim (42 page)

It is with that smugly in mind that I assert
that this novel is fiction, not a historical text, and should be
taken as fiction. In writing Beloved Pilgrim I stuck as much as
possible to what is known of the time and the events but focused,
as is my wont, on creating a jolly good yarn as much as an accurate
representation of people, places, and deeds. What you read here is
truly a fictionalized account with liberties taken as literary
necessity required. You might call it improving on what are already
uncertain facts.

Every author makes decisions about certain
aspects of a novel. I made two that I think deserve
explanation.

Names

When writing about historical figures I chose
to use the Anglicized versions of their names, such as Stephen,
Odo, William, Hugh, and so forth. I did this because they are what
readers are accustomed to, and besides, just translating them to
the modern forms of their native lands’ language would be no more
authentic.

“
Crusade”

According to sources I located, the terms
“crusade” and “crusader” were not used as early as the First
Crusade and the Crusade of 1101. Nevertheless I used these terms
occasionally as much to provide some variety from “pilgrim” and
“pilgrim knight”.

Place names are a mix of the contemporary and
modern names. Ancyra, for instance, is better known now as Ankara,
the capital of Turkey.

Could a woman wield a sword and fight
alongside trained knights on destriers? Of course she could. There
are numerous instances of women warriors throughout time, and
specifically during the Middle Ages and even in the Crusades. We
hear about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who went to the Crusade but never
seriously expected to fight, except perhaps with her woebegone
husband, King Louis of France. That’s not the sort of woman I am
talking about here. There were female combatants in the Crusades.
Though Christian sources fail to mention them, Muslim sources are
not so chary, mentioning both their own and Christian fighters who
were women. As a fellow author quipped, “Joan of Arc didn’t go to
war wielding an embroidery needle!”

Could a woman pass for a man amid all those
other men? Just look at the women who fought in the American Civil
war, such as Albert D. J. Cashier. She managed to fight and live
alongside other Union Soldiers and was simply accounted “shy”.

What happened to the historical figures who
were part of the Crusade of 1101? Raymond de Saint Gilles, Count of
Toulouse, was the first one back to Constantinople. The reception
he got depends on the chronicler, but what happened next is not in
dispute. He set sail for Syria where he was arrested by Bohemond’s
nephew Tancred for his desertion of his followers at Merzifon.
Bohemond himself stayed imprisoned for quite sometime while the
Emir of Nixtar and others haggled over his ransom. Constable
Conrad, Count Stephen of Blois and Count Stephen of Burgundy
returned to fighting on behalf of the King of Jerusalem, Baldwin.
The two Stephens were killed in battle and Conrad, who had
impressed the Muslims, was spared but sent into captivity in
Egypt.

A note about the Margravina Ida: She really
did go to the Crusade of 1101. For years the story about her ran
that she was captured and made part of a harem, becoming the mother
of the Turkish hero, Zengi. This is impossible, since Zengi was
born before she arrived at Constantinople. She most likely fell
from her litter and was crushed by horses’ hooves during the
ambush. Themo, her Archbishop, did not, as Elisabeth feared, desert
Ida but rather was captured and martyred.

You can find out about all the historical
figures in “Whatever Happened To…?” in the Appendices.

The main characters in the novel are purely
imaginary, but let me add one more historical figure. The woman the
Norman mercenary Ranulf tells Elisabeth about, Rachel, is a factual
person, a woman who killed her four children and then herself
during the massacre of the Jews in Mainz in 1196, really lived and
died. The only part of her story that is fictional is her
friendship with Ranulf.

What happened to Sigismund of Winterkirche?
There were many mysteries that came out of the Crusades, such as
the disappearance of the Margravina Ida, so Elisabeth and Albrecht
may never know… or they might. Only a sequel would lay that mystery
to rest.

The Legacy of the Crusade of 1101

Thanks to their inoculation by the threat of
the leaders of the first. Second and third waves of pilgrims during
the Crusade of 1101, Kilij Arslan and the Seljuk Turks had
developed plenty of antibodies to fight off later infections, that
is allies, troops, and experience to fight off any future
Crusaders. As a result the path between the ever-dwindling
Byzantine Empire and Jerusalem was not only no longer clear, it was
impossible to follow, being protected by the awesome Seljuk and
allied armies. As a result no new Crusade would be attempted until
the 1140s. With the exception of possession of Jerusalem and a few
other cities, the result of the Crusade of 1101 was the loss of all
that the First Crusade gained. Alexios I had already begun to lose
power in Constantinople, and the failures by the 1101 leaders meant
he would never regain it.

As Crusades scholar, Sir Stephen Runciman
asserts in a volume of his History of the Crusades*:

The road across the peninsula remained unsafe
for Christian armies, Frankish or Byzantine. When the Byzantines
wished later to intervene in Syria, they had to operate at the end
of communication lines that were long and very vulnerable; while
Frankish immigrants from the west were afraid to travel overland
through Constantinople, except in vast armies. They could only come
by sea; and few of them could afford the fare. And instead of the
thousands of useful colonists that the year should have brought to
Syria and Palestine, only a small number of quarrelsome leaders who
had lost their armies and their reputations on the way penetrated
through to the Frankish states, where there was already a
sufficiency of quarrelsome leaders.

Runciman goes on to point out that the
blockage of land routes resulted in the rise of the Italian
merchant cities, like Milan and Venice, helping to launch the new
economy in Southern Europe.

Find an alphabetical list of characters,
relevant maps, and information on what became of the historical
figures in this novel at www.shieldwallbooks.com. The author would
love to hear from readers. Just drop me a note at
[email protected] .

Nan Hawthorne

Bothell, Washington State

* A History of the Crusades: Volume 1, The
First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
(Cambridge University Press 1951) (Folio Society edition 1994); A
History of the Crusades: Volume 2, The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the
Frankish East (Cambridge University Press 1952) (Folio Society
edition 1994); A History of the Crusades: Volume 3, The Kingdom of
Acre and the Later Crusades (Cambridge University Press 1954)
(Folio Society edition 1994)