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Despite having only a finite amount of it, and less than most at that, Baldwin has never much felt the urgency of time.
Perhaps it is an unexpected benefit of his condition: faced with the reality of his body’s irreversible decay at such a young age, he harbors no concerns for the mental and physical decline of old age, knowing as he does that he will never see it. Or it might simply be a privilege of his position: after all, a king is never in a hurry. He is not threatened by an end of term in office; the only thing that can end Baldwin’s reign is himself or his death, and there are plenty who would happily die for him first, before he would ever be called upon to make that final and most ultimate sacrifice.
Baldwin knows his death will be premature, but not as a sacrifice— merely a certainty. Perhaps a certainty to be feared, approached with no small trepidation because Jerusalem’s future is fragile and unsure in the mirage beyond his funeral pyre, but a certainty nonetheless.
Baldwin knows he is to die, and soon, and yet he walks slowly through the halls of his palace, speaks only when he has collected his thoughts, and rules and worships with a steady, considering hand. He does not know what it is to feel the bitter, frightening winds of the rush of time on his skin, even if he could feel.
That is, until he meets Balian.
He meets Balian, and suddenly each grain of sand swallowed by the funnel of the hourglass is an agony. Or worse, a taunt: time is laughing at him, it feels. Time has never been his enemy until now, now that it has given Baldwin this love, with yet another certainty that it will be taken away.
It is not a new resentment, for in late hours spent laughing with Sibylla and watching her playing with his nephew, Baldwin has often quietly mourned that he will not be able to see them grow up. The whole kingdom— as well as its neighbors— know how dearly Baldwin loves his sister, but in truth— not that he would ever confess as much to his priests— Baldwin’s love for his sister is as strong as his love for his God. At many times, particularly in his youth, when he felt small and helpless within the swarm of his father’s physicians, armed with their sharp instruments and cold eyes, Baldwin’s faith in his sister almost rivaled his devotion to Christianity. For it was Sibylla, not God, who could hold his gloved hand and whisper him stories to distract him. It was Sibylla who could sneak him sweets in the night, when every bone in his body ached and he could not rise from his bed. God was a promise on a distant, beautiful horizon. Sibylla was a dogma.
Sibylla will be a wonderful queen regent, and his nephew, eventually, a brilliant king. But Baldwin dreads Guy and his Templars in a place of power, unchecked.
Since meeting Balian, in their shared, sacred evenings bent over a chess board, Baldwin can’t help but think how, had Balian been a woman, Baldwin would have married him by now. He would have made Balian his queen to succeed him and usher in a new, glorious era for Jerusalem, and Sibylla’s son could have a proper childhood rather than a regency. Perhaps, in this magical alternate universe, Baldwin would not even be a leper, and he and Balian could have an heir of their own.
Balian as his successor isn’t even an impossible feasibility, though, truly— it simply waits down a dark and winding path. If they could somehow remove Guy from the picture, then upon Baldwin’s death Balian could marry Sibylla and reign officially, and what more, have each other to keep company. Perhaps then Baldwin could rest more soundly.
But he cannot ask that of his lover yet. Especially as he knows, in his heart, Balian would refuse, because he is a good man. He is Baldwin’s good man. Whom he will only have for so long. For so brief.
Baldwin has never paid much attention to the river-rapid passage of time, but even he cannot believe it when it is suddenly a month’s time from the first anniversary of Balian’s arrival in Jerusalem. Sibylla reminds him of it one morning, when Balian has returned to Ibelin— this time for a month, to both their dismays, but business as a baron had demanded Balian’s undivided attention— and they are having tea on Baldwin’s balcony, looking out over the city.
Has he truly only— already— known Balian a year? It seems like a week and a lifetime all at once. He wonders if it is appropriate to commemorate the occasion. After all, Balian’s arrival to Jerusalem did not come without its trials and tribulations.
“You should get him a gift, to celebrate,” Sibylla says, reading his mind, as ever. “He would appreciate that it is a significant day to you as well.”
Baldwin hums. “What does one give a knight who comes from nothing, who now has everything?” Including my heart, he does not say, but he knows Sibylla hears it anyway.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” she tells him. She brings her cup to her lips, and the blazing rising sun glints off the jewels on her fingers and snags his attention. When Baldwin meets her gaze again, she wears a smirk, sly, and he has to laugh.
He cannot offer matrimony, no matter how he might wish he could. But perhaps a facsimile.
He has given Sibylla three rings in their life. Once upon the death of their father, and Baldwin’s coinciding coronation. Once at the birth of his nephew. And once just because he could, when a traveling merchant had brought a yellow stone that reminded him of the sun, and thus his sister.
He has gifted his nephew an emerald dagger. He has given Tiberias a leather cuff embedded with a cross made of the finest silver. He has even gifted Guy a bracelet, a simple gold hoop, hammered to catch the light at a million angles— though the man never wears it.
But what for Balian? A ruby, in honor of his father? Amber, for his eyes? Perhaps a pearl, or a sapphire, for the sea he crossed to reach Jerusalem, reach Baldwin. Baldwin knows his knight would cherish anything Baldwin offered, and understand its worth— for Balian is well accustomed to the finer things in life, even if, in his past one as a smith, he was never able to keep the glittering wares he made.
Baldwin asks Sibylla and her maids for suggestions, and even Tiberias gets in on the game, offering the name of a jeweler in a nearby town who is said to have recently come across some rather remarkable diamonds. But a diamond would be too much for a man as pragmatic as Balian.
Finally, the answer comes within a week of Balian’s impending return to Jerusalem.
If Balian’s absence is a burning, incessant day, making the bandages on Baldwin’s skin chafe and the air in his lungs thick and unbreathable, then his return is the cool desert night breeze sweeping into the city. He is the moon, and every one of Baldwin’s stars, come home at last.
That moon is high in the sky above Jerusalem when Baldwin at last brings Balian to sit beside the fireplace in his rooms. He feels peculiarly nervous. It is yet another emotion he was unfamiliar with until Balian’s arrival in his life.
“I do not know if you are aware of the date,” Baldwin begins, but he is interrupted by a breathy laugh.
“Of course I am. Today marks one year since we met. But I did not think you were one for sentimentality, my lord,” Balian says, with a wry smile.
“You’re one to speak, oh knight,” Baldwin teases in return, though a flutter of pleasure coils in his belly. Before he can speak, though, Balian continues.
“I have a gift for you. From one secretly sentimental man to another.” Surprised, Baldwin can only watch as Balian reaches into his satchel and extracts a sizable bundle of dark fabric. There is an unexpected weight to it when he hands it to Baldwin. “Go ahead,” he nods. It is with shaking fingers that Baldwin unwraps the dressing. When they fall away, Baldwin swears he feels his heart stop in his chest.
There, nestled in the cloth, is a mask.
“Sibylla told me once that a ruler wears two faces,” Balian says, when Baldwin remains silent, any— painfully inadequate— words he could ever think to say frozen on his tongue. “I confess to being a selfish man: I like that I am the only one to know you, this way.” The mask is exquisitely made: shining silver, and carved with an ornate pattern, curlicues and tiny flowers and latticework, and Baldwin has no doubt Balian made it with his own hands, and that it will fit Baldwin perfectly. But still he cannot quite bring himself to meet his lover’s eyes, almost afraid of what he will find there, and what might be revealed in his own.
“But if the world cannot know the face I know, then perhaps they can have one I have made,” Balian is saying, though his voice sounds distant, reaching Baldwin through an ocean. Balian’s hands— work-worn and scarred, a blacksmith’s hands, hands Baldwin will never touch but will dream of, in this life and the after— enter his vision, to point to a small inscription that follows along the edge of the mask, at the crown Vivamus, moriendum est. “A part of me, to carry with you.”
Let us live, since we must die. Baldwin tightens his grip on the mask to keep from spinning off the face of the earth. “I thought your smithing days were behind you,” he finally manages.
“I myself was forged in those fires— those days are no more behind me than the ones ahead.”
“Then I thank those eternal flames. It is beautiful, my love.” He won’t try it on now— he still won’t let Balian see the rot beneath his shining shell— but he keeps it in his lap as he reaches into the depths of his robes. “And now, I have something for you.”
He watches Balian open the small wooden box, and lift the ring inside to the light.
It is only a plain silver band, but it comes from the same mine that yielded the silver for Baldwin’s masks since he was a boy. It dangles from a chain, because Baldwin knows Balian works far too often with his hands to be mindful of wearing a ring. He sees the corner of Balian’s mouth tug into a fond smile in understanding.
And set in the center is a dark grey stone.
It is not a jewel, or a precious metal, and it is not even a polished stone, with its dozen tiny cracks and imperfections marring its surface; if not for its provenance, being a gift from a king, it wouldn’t fetch much of a price in any market. No— it is, truly, just a rock.
Baldwin lets Balian hold it for only a moment before extending a palm for Balian to set it in. “I found this stone on the battlefield, when I fought Saladin for the first time and won Jerusalem its peace,” Baldwin explains. He does not know how such a rock ended up on the battlefield, but he has long since learned not to question fate. “It was in my shoe.”
This earns him a laugh, and Baldwin smiles. “I kept it as a reminder: of the journey taken, the pain suffered, and the reward at the end being something so primitive a thing, so elemental, as land. And not even very good land at that. Dry, hot, unforgiving land. A terrible place for a city. And yet there we were, squabbling over it like children. I still was a child, really.”
“But,” he continues, “That land is what brought me you. And this rock reminds me of you, now, too, and not only in what it represents. But how it is unassuming, at first glance,” he tilts the ring just slightly to the side, to where it can catch the light from the flames in the hearth, “Yet if given the right light, and if one is paying attention—” and suddenly the rock reveals its true colors. In the flickering glow it glitters like the night sky itself, as if embedded with a million diamonds, and he can hear Balian gasp.
“I cannot offer you much,” Baldwin murmurs, extending his other hand for Balian to lay his in, which the man does without a moment’s hesitation— an act that will never fail to make Baldwin’s chest ache. “But I can offer you me.” He slides the ring onto Balian’s fourth finger, where it gleams as if it has never been anywhere else.
His knight’s hand curls around Baldwin’s glove. “That is all I could ever want.”
In the morning, as Balian mounts his horse to return to Ibelin, he looks up at Baldwin’s balcony, where the king always stands to watch him go. The courtyard is far from empty, and there are eyes aplenty on them, as there always are, for Jerusalem is nothing if not her gospel and her gossip— and yet, in front of all their audience, and in front of God, Balian lifts the ring around his neck and presses the stone to his lips in a kiss, and Baldwin thanks God for the time they have, however stolen.