Two on a hilltop. In their hands, silhouetted in the fading light; shovels. Towering above them, the cross. A symbol. The world moves in two directions, towards Jerusalem and back to this cross. Attraction and repulsion. There are the crusaders, there are the Muslims; Salahadin and
his army. Two directions. For a time there was peace. Muslim, Jew and Christian together, under the reign of a Christian Leper King. A hybrid hiding under a mask.

The hilltop, the two with shovels, the cross. A priest gazes into the beautiful white face, nearly covered by a shroud. The sound of slicing earth fades into the distance. The priest focuses. Her neck, a small silver cross. Undeserving, a sinner. A suicide. Her baby, taken by God.
Her own Christian life taken by her own hand. She had no right. There is only the will of God. His hand wraps around the small cross…a forceful tug and the cross is his. “Cut off her head, she’s a suicide.” Punishment, belief etched in flesh and stone.

Her sin is his, her husband's, all those close to her. Sin is not trapped within a bubble, it moves out, out from her skin, it touches those closest. A tender hand, glimmering with a small bead of sin. It is yours. Your new owner. It is yours. You will bear the burden of the sin. Balian’s sin now. Outcast. What is mine, is yours. Yours is mine, and I shoulder the burden. I am the outcast. Scapegoat. The village looks at me with a hundred cold eyes. They feel the burden. They feel the sin. It is double, and my heart cries, is there forgiveness? Can there be?

Over and over. It repeats. Sin, outcast, threats and punishment.
That man in black, a man with one hand on his cock and one on the bible. A sinner. No robe washes away the sin of the mortal. There is punishment. There is Balian’s hand, Balian’s rage. Ungodly, outcast. There is retaliation. Redemption from sin through the punishment of another.

I will see you, I will feel the pain in my own heart, the pain of my suicide, and I will push you, into the flames. For a moment, I will be redeemed. This is why we flock to Jerusalem. With swords, with children crying along the way. Hunger, pain, death. There must be redemption.
At the end, where Jerusalem gleams like a jewel, there must be forgiveness. There we will punish nonbelievers. Heathens, the dark, the others, worshippers of a devil that cannot be named. We will punish and be redeemed.

Out of scandalous passion, from unsanctified consummation, came Balian, an outcast, a product of strangeness, taboo. There are words, rumors…they do not know. There are guesses, squinting eyes, hazy conclusions. After a lifetime, his father returns. Passing the hilltop, the shovels, the cross.
“Forgive me, I did not force your mother.” On his way to Jerusalem. Redemption. Join me. Seek your own redemption. Balian rejects forgiveness. His pain tears at him, as good as a thousand swords.

“God has abandoned you.” A man with the robe implores him. Seek forgiveness for her. She resides in hell with no head. “No man has ever needed Jerusalem more.”
And what is there? What lies beyond a dozen countries and a thousand miles? Promise. Something, the jewel, glimmering as always, opulent with the hope of redemption. There, on the man’s neck, the small silver cross. The wife. The baby. The suicide. Sin. Sin. Sin. Into the flames, a blazing fire consumes a drop of sin. Black robe in flames. Hands, flesh, it's burning, and there is the cross, the small silver cross, gleaming in the light.

Was there ever hope? One last plunge, another bit of sin redeemed, Balian withstands the heat, another forceful tug. Pull the cross. He leaves at a gallop, alone and hated, an outcast, a leper.
There is redemption, the greater sinner is dead. Blackened dust. Now a greater outcast, a greater sinner, a reject of the western world, not Christian, not Muslim, an outcast among outcasts.

At a gallop, into the dark forest, seeking his father. Daybreak. Knights loyal to the father tend his burns. Is there truly forgiveness in Jerusalem? “We will find out together. There, you are not what you were born, but what you have it in yourself to be.”

Sin is not trapped within a bubble, it moves out, out from her skin, it touches those closest. The scent of the burnt priest lingers in the air. Village constables seek Balian. Within him is the jewel, the glimmering light of Jerusalem, the hope of god and forgiveness. Knights defend him from the constables, a godly action. Constables demand the sinner, a godly quest demanding punishment. A clash, and they all see Jerusalem together.

In the port town, the hordes. Crusaders coming and going. Pilgrims, seekers of redemption, sinners. An open field, another dark robe.
“To kill an infidel is not murder, it is the path to heaven.”
No robe washes away the sin of the mortal.

Balian’s father, moments from death. Balian kneels. Defend the weak. Protect the defenseless. He rises a knight. He is of his fathers’ house.
The sword, the loyal knights, the land, the house. All his now. What is mine, is yours. Yours is mine, and I shoulder the burden.

The ship, treacherous ocean journey to Palestine. A storm, a battering of waves and wind on worn wooden planks. Balian awakens. A beach of debris. Wood, tattered sails, the bodies of men and animals. Stumbling, thirsty, disoriented, looking for something, anything. To survive. And then, there it is, the one horse, the black horse that escaped a life at the bottom of the sea.

Two Muslims in a desert. In their hands, glimmering in the bright sun; swords. Between Christian and Muslims, the black horse. “It is my horse, it is on my land.” Black colored flesh, the prize, the jewel. Balian cannot give up the horse, his survival, redemption and arrival in Jerusalem. Swords sing, until one Muslim is dead, and the other a sword tip away from heaven. No further death. To Jerusalem. Christian, Muslim, and black horse. Balian sets the man free. The black horse, yet another outcast, going with the Muslim to places unknown.

Balian and the horse are one.
Black.
Outcasts of the western world.
An extension.
One.

Jerusalem. Where Christ was killed. A hilltop. A cross. A night with a million stars. Balian listens, but he cannot hear God. An outcast.
Isolation leads him away from the west, away from God. Pushes him towards the Muslims, those already rejected by the west and its god. There, in the morning light, on the hill where god has abandoned him, he buries the little silver cross.

The king of Jerusalem, a leper, an outcast. They are the same, Balian and the King, both outcasts of the west, pushed towards the Muslims by their own rejection.
But the leper king is not one, not the other. Neither Muslim nor Christian, the leper king is both at once. And because he is both, he understands both. He offers peace within the city’s walls. Muslims speak of punishment; the king’s leprosy is god’s punishment for the vanity of Christians in Jerusalem.

Princess Sibela, sister of the leper king. On a horse festooned with jewels, her limbs dance with the colorful flowing cloth of Muslim royalty. An outcast from the west, a refugee from the heavy chains of Christianity. An outcast among the crusaders, more Muslim than Christian, more flesh than air.

Balian finds his father’s land. Desert soil, hard, inhospitable. Those living on the land, accustomed to barren hardship. “What kind of man would I be if I did not try to make the world better?” The scrape of the shovels is heard once again. Not to bury but to unearth. Balian brings water and life to the land. Sibela. The desert. Now alive, verdant. Sibela comes, offering herself, a barren desert, and Balian covers her with life once again. It is god that creates blossoms in the desert.

The leper king, each breath growing more and more painful. Soon, Jerusalem will be in harsh hands. Sibela’s husband. Heart of war. Thirst for blood. Hope of rending flesh from bone. Sin. And a sinful offer. Murder for the husband, kingship for Balian. Jerusalem, a kingdom of
conscience, or nothing. Balian refuses.

And it happens as expected. New brutal king. Heart of war. Salahadin’s sister abducted, Muslim armies responding in force.

Jerusalem is under siege. The King has fallen. Balian must defend the defenseless, the weak. Balian must protect the precious jewel. Within him lives that which they all seek. “The object of desire,” manifested as a visible illusion of rock and walls and bodies. He is the kingdom.

And when merciful terms can be negotiated, Balian renounces any claim on Jerusalem, as does
Sibela. They become pilgrims, outcasts, one with their black horse. Journeying back to the west. Back to the beginning. Attraction and repulsion.

The world moves in two directions, towards Jerusalem and back. Two on a hilltop. Towering above them, the cross.

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