The Kingdom of Heaven Page #4

(BALIAN simply looks at

him, snowflakes in his

lashes.)

I think that you conceive yourself

without sin. That is a sin.

BALIAN gets up and walks away through the snow. The PRIEST

stares after him.

INT. THE GREAT HALL OF THE CASTLE. NIGHT

MUSIC. The travellers from the Holy Land, employing their

knives, are dining with GODFREY’S BROTHER (who stayed a poor

provincial lord while his brother became a baron in the Holy

Land). GODFREY is self-absorbed, thinking, eating

reflectively. The HOSPITALER carries the conversation with

the GODFREY’S BROTHER and the brother’s mendacious, cynical,

and worthless SON (Godfrey’s nephew), who is drinking as if

his guts are on fire.

GODFREY’S BROTHER

And what of Jerusalem?

HOSPITALER:

(suavely)

In peril, my lord. As always.

(CONTINUED)

9.

CONTINUED:

GODFREY’S BROTHER

We have stood there against the

Saracens for almost a hundred year.

HOSPITALER:

The Saracens, as you call them,

have now unified in Egypt, Syria

and all Arabia.

(a beat)

The Saracens have someone...

(another suave beat)

new.

GODFREY’S NEPHEW

(follows the Crusades like

sports)

Saladin. Their king.

HOSPITALER:

Yes. Salah Ad-din.

GODFREY’S BROTHER

(belches)

Gibberish.

The Hospitaler smiles mildly, holds up an ornate silver wine

cup, and to change the subject:

HOSPITALER:

Very fine.

GODFREY’S NEPHEW

(picking a fight he

couldn’t win)

Do you mean, Hospitaler, that it is

very fine for such a poor place?

ODO, the German knight, looks up at, with relish, a potential

enemy.

Odo loves an enemy. The HOSPITALER is suave.

HOSPITALER:

I mean that it is very fine.

GODFREY’S BROTHER

And yet you do not drink. A knight

should be a knight, a monk a monk,

not both at once, that is what I

say.

(The Hospitaler mildly

ignores this.)

But I am old-fashioned.

(MORE)

(CONTINUED)

10.

CONTINUED:
(2)

GODFREY’S BROTHER (CONT'D)

As for the cup, I have an

artificer. A blacksmith. Or did

have...

GODFREY:

(distracted, staring away)

Which son of the blacksmith of my

time is the blacksmith now?

GODFREY’S BROTHER

The eldest. Balian.

(as GODFREY after a beat

resumes eating)

His child died. His wife fell into

a melancholy. She would not listen

to reason. She killed herself.

(disinterested, worldly)

It occurs. But what’s that to you?

GODFREY:

A private matter.

GODFREY’S BROTHER is thick and incurious. Eats. GODFREY,

drinking wine, moves to a window and parts the ragged

hangings to look, with thoughtful sadness, down into the

valley.

GODFREY’S BROTHER

(drunk, and disguising

bitterness)

It is six and twenty years since my

brother took the cross, and now he

returns an actual Baron of the

Kingdom of Jerusalem. How is that

for the lot of a younger brother?

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