A eunuch?
No, that Roman lion didn’t change directions, spare the head and spoil the man, commit fellatio in toto. On the contrary, his leonine gullet was frustrated altogether because a split second before his molars meshed, one of Papa Baapuh’s time jolts propelled me into a change of scenery. Not much of a change, however. Instead of surveying lion tonsils, I found myself peering down a camel’s craw.
Breathwise it was no improvement. The Quasimodo of the desert matched Leo’s halitosis in sour-smelling spades. The only advantage was one of egress. Removing my pate from the humpy beast’s maw was lots easier than extricating it from the lion’s larynx would have been.
Even with my head removed the camel’s jaw still hung open. It was as if he couldn’t quite get over his surprise at my sudden materialization in among his back biters. The face of the camel is not ordinarily the most expressive visage in the world, but this humpster was managing to register a mixture of alarm, outrage and morning-after mouth worthy of a star Stanislavski18 pupil. He looked like an overbred guest at a fancy dinner party who’d just taken in a mouthful of live frog with his soup and doesn’t know what to do with it.
“You should cover your mouth when you yawn,” I chided him as I peeked around his jawline to survey my surroundings.
Architecturally they were phallic. Towers, turrets, minarets—all with an Eastern flavor bespeaking a non-European culture and era. Closer at hand, the street scene made me aware that my Roman toga was definitely out of style. The street was crowded -- fifty-fifty with garbage and people— and the men all wore Arabian cloaks. The women were veiled. My borrowed garb stuck out like a gangrenous thumb.
To conceal it, I hid behind my hunch-backed friend. The beast was tethered to a post. Now, glancing behind me, I saw that it had been parked in front of an entrance to some sort of walled enclosure. I felt too conspicuous in the street, so I decided to chance going through the gateway behind me.
I passed into a grassy area with a large pool in the center of it. There were several men there, but no women. Some were stripping off their robes as they approached the pool. Others were already in the pool, their clothes arranged around the edges in neat little piles. I realized there was anonymity in nudity. I quickly stripped off my toga and waded into the water.
I kept my eyes peeled. After awhile I saw a man doff his garb and swim across the pool. Here he got into conversation with another man. The first man had his back to the pile of clothing he’d left. I pulled myself out of the water near his clothes, speedily pulled them on and started for the gate while I was still winding the turban around my head. I reached the street without the theft being noticed.
I strolled into an open marketplace and kept my ears open, trying to discover just where and when I was. The gabble of the rabble congregating there was in dialect Arabic, a lingo I can speak and understand. There was much gossip and rumor buzzing around, and by putting together bits and pieces I was able to come to certain conclusions. These added up to the fact that I’d been dropped in the middle of a powderkeg slated to blow sky high.
The city was Damascus. I’d arrived at a crucial moment during the Second Crusade in the year 1148 A.D. The big rumor concerned an army of Christian dogs only a few hours march from the walled city. The Emir of Damascus was rallying his subjects to withstand their assault.
On the Emir’s orders the water had been diverted from irrigation streams beyond the city so that the Crusaders wouldn’t have access to it. The produce from the numerous vegetable gardens tilled by the populace was being confiscated so that provisions could be rationed during the anticipated siege. All Damascenes were asked to pray to Allah to burn the souls from the unbelieving bodies of the enemy with the desert sun.
The “enemy” Crusaders were led by Louis Capet, King of France. With him was his wife, the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine. Even in Damascus, citadel of Allah, Eleanor’s reputation was preceding her. From what I knew of the early life of this fabulous queen who would shape the manners and morals of the western world for hundreds of years to come, it wasn’t surprising that she should have caused gossip even here.
Eleanor of Aquitaine shinnied down the umbilical cord in 1122. Her father signed out fifteen years later and Eleanor became Countess of Poitou and Duchess of Aquitaine. The titles labeled her top mucky-muck of Provencal nobility. So, in order to cinch France’s claim to the district, King Louis the Fat spliced Ellie to his son, the seventeen-year-old Louis Capet. A trice or so later, Fat Louis gorged his way into the cemetery and sonny-boy became King with ’teenster Eleanor his Queen.
Eight years of whoopee followed for Eleanor, and she pinned more horns on Louis than a porcupine has quills. Every royal court in Europe buzzed with tales of Eleanor’s kanoodling, but politics being what it is, the King ignored the Jacks ruffing his Queen. But he was no fool. When he went off to command the Second Crusade he insisted she come along lest her bed-hopping antics topple the throne in his absence.
The Queen trumped the King. Doubtless tittering behind her fan, she took the holy vows of a crusader herself, enlisted other ladies of the court to do the same, and ended up leading a bevy of curvy warriors known as “Eleanor’s Amazons.”
The Amazons’ chief contribution to the Second Crusade was their talent as recruiters. The Second Crusade was scrambled by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux at Vezelay, a whistlestop in North Central France. A series of foulups delayed its start and many knights lost heart and copped out. It was here, at this early point, that Eleanor and her “Amazons” proved their worth by reviving the flagging manhood of the disgusted cavaliers.
She glad-ragged herself and the other ladies in revealing Greek costumes with gilded buskins, plumes and banners, mounted the troop on white horses, and set out to backwash the tide of desertion. They galloped forth over the hillsides, exhorting laggard knights and disillusioned warriors to rejoin the Holy Crusade. It was one of the campiest feminist movements in history and even if the wise money is right in laying odds that the “Amazons” pitch for reenlistment was more erotic than religious, so what? It worked, and surely such ungallant hair-splitting has no place in the annals of such a Holy Cause!
That, however, was the extent of Amazonian crusading. Somewhere between Vezelay and Damascus the ladies stopped digging the glories of holy battle. Eleanor herself tuned out and then turned on in Byzantium.
Byzantium, also pegged Constantinople and later Istanbul, was the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, stronghold of Eastern Christianity. The country was LBJ ’d by Manuel I. Although Manny was an ally of the Crusaders, that didn’t stop them from pillaging the Byzantine lands through which they passed. A politico worthy of South Vietnam, Manny welcomed the invaders to the palace of Blaquernae, his own royal habitat. King Louis and Eleanor moved in and Manuel I moved out. Somehow his Kyness had backfired.
So the headmen of the Second Crusade settled down in Manny’s lush pad to plan the action. But they kept postponing the plans as they fell more and more under the hype of their lush, sensual oriental surroundings. Eleanor in particular was hooked by the indulgences of the eastern Christians. She embarked on a love kick worthy of a hopped-up hippie. Two of her romantic romps are of more than passing interest.
The first was with Raymond, Prince of Antioch, who also happened to be Eleanor’s uncle. Raymond had lent his legions’ muscle to the Crusade, but he and Louis were out of joint on the strategy. Eleanor sided with Raymond. Then she escalated and told Louis she wanted to split for love of Uncle Ray. Louies make lousy lovers, she implied, while an unc in the bunk really turned her on. Succinctly, she told the king that bedwise, “You are not worth a rotten pear.”