The Kingdom of Heaven Page #2

BISHOP:

The burial was...

PRIEST:

Yes.

BISHOP:

Yet you did not mutilate the

person.

PRIEST:

(lying piously)

No.

(CONTINUED)

6.

CONTINUED:

BISHOP:

A law can go too far.

(chewing a thumbnail)

It can go too far. I ask myself

“Would Jesus do it thusly?” There

is so much done in Christendom of

which Christ would not be capable.

One day we must look into it.

(walking)

You must release your brother. I

cannot do without him.

PRIEST:

My brother, my lord Bishop, is

possessed by the Devil, and must

be...

(with relish)

examined.

BISHOP:

Talk of the Devil much more and I

shall begin to wonder how well you

know him.

(moving on)

Your brother is as mad as I am. He

grieves.

(a beat)

Without your brother I cannot

finish the church. Let him out.

(as the PRIEST, thwarted,

submits to this, the

BISHOP digs in his robes)

Give him this

(a chinking fat, PURSE)

and tell him...that he is at the

very center of my praters.

PRIEST is unhappy, but takes the PURSE, and complies. He goes

off down the muddy street. Turning a corner, he quickly

shakes out half the money into his own purse. Then more than

half.

EXT. THE YARD OF THE FORGE. DISCONTINUOUS (SUNLIT, A DREAM)

A splendid rooster, Chanticleer, taking a dust-bath. A

woman’s BARE FEET move through the farmyard. The face of the

woman we have seen dead. She is alive, smiling. She is

kneeling at the edge of a kitchen garden, planting small

saplings, a LOMBARDY POPLAR, smiling back at her observer...

BALIAN, in sunlight, on the best day of his life. Face

dripping. He is at the trough, washing.

(CONTINUED)

7.

CONTINUED:

EGGS are laid in a bed of grasses. The WIFE looks back at her

observer.

(Balian), walks through a door, and disappears.

INT. A TOWN LOCKUP. DAY

BALIAN awakes in reality and in dirty straw. He sits up. He

is no more than thirty as it was in those days. Nothing in

his face except the fact that he has again remembered his

wife is dead. Balian is no peasant. He is a master craftsman,

a blacksmith and inventor. He is watched by two sympathetic

GUARDS.

The PRIEST, entering, has no fear of Balian: he has been

tormenting him for years, and knows him as an easy target: a

man who will never strike back.

PRIEST:

(resentfully)

The Bishop needs you.

(as Balian says nothing)

Release him.

He goes, a man off on his business. BALIAN remains sitting in

the straw. He stares at the open DOOR as if not knowing what

to do with such a thing as a door.

OLD GUARD:

(to Balian, kindly)

On your feet. This is not heaven.

It is the world, and there are

troubles in it. Do yourself no

injury. Other men are always good

for that.

BALIAN nods, and does stand.

EXT. CROSSROADS. NIGHT. SNOWING

A whimpering DOG scratches at the forzen ground, already

covered with snow. The burial crossroads. BALIAN, drunk, is

looking at the stars. Then he falls to his knees, staring at

the earth. He touches the ground. It is frozen and his wife

is beneath it. As he sobers up,

SOUNDS OS:
AND

THE PRIEST comes along, with BOYS and GRAVEDIGGER carrying

bundles of fuel and torches.

(CONTINUED)

8.

CONTINUED:

BALIAN continues to kneel. The burden-carriers walk on,

crossing themselves, in semi-respectful silence (though one

of the BOYS laughs, and is swatted by the GRAVEDIGGER). The

PRIEST remains behind, and crouches by his brother.

PRIEST:

You must take the corss. Crusade.

BALIAN, in an extremity of grief, has nothing to say to this.

PRIEST (CONT’D)

Her grave was here. Or was it

there. I am afraid I cannot tell

you the exact location. I wasn’t

present at the burial.

(BALIAN stares at the

ground)

Call me a liar. You have reason.

(a beat)

You never fight back.

(slaps Balian’s face

aside)

You turn the other cheek. Do you

think you are Jesus Christ?

(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?

In his rude hall in his rude castle (as KNIGHTS drink to

GODFREY), he laughs and toasts, and murmurs to his SON

(Godfrey’s nephew, who leans towards him):

GODFREY’S BROTHER (CONT’D)

(sotto voce)

With no heir it comes to me and

thus to you.

GODFREY’S NEPHEW

(a sadistic fop, a raper

of goose-girls)

Then I thank my stars for my uncle.

(CONTINUED)

11.

CONTINUED:
(3)

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