Melisende laughed, startling her. “Oh, he told me true! He said you had a tongue as blunt as any in France, and no reluctance to wield it. Do you think me frivolous, then?”
“I think,” said Richildis, “that you are not quite what a stranger might expect. How many people, seeing you with your ladies and your luteplayer, have reckoned you no more than an ornament?”
“Fewer than you might think,” said Melisende. Had she been a cat, the tip of her tail would have been twitching. “When I was small I begged to wear armor and carry a sword. I raged when my nurses informed me that such were not for women. Women are weak, they said, and much too light of mind for the rigors of war.”
“I am certainly less strong than my brother,” Richildis said, “and I would be hard put to lift his sword, still less to wield it against an enemy.”
Melisende raised her hand to the window’s light and turned it, flexing the fingers. It was a long hand, large for a woman’s and strong. “I wonder,” she said as if to herself. “Sometimes I wonder… what would have happened if I had had my way. I was indulged in much, but in that my father would not be moved. I was not to learn the arts of war, not even the bow as some of the Turkish women do. Horses only he would let me have, and for a while I was a figure of terror, reckless to insanity.
“But I grew older,” she said, “and I grew wise. Not all or even most of ruling has to do with war – no, not even here, where war is every man’s pursuit. Someone has to feed and equip the armies, and house them when they’re home from the field, and maintain the kingdom at their backs. Men fancy that that too is theirs to do; but women know better. I know better. I may be compelled to accept a man who can wage war in proper fashion, and call him lord and king; but while he rides about defending the kingdom, I remain at home, ruling it as I see fit.”
Richildis regarded her for a long while in silence. She was not greatly alarmed by the words that Melisende had said. Most women thought them, though few spoke them aloud. Those who were firstborn as Melisende was, who had perforce to see their inheritance taken by a brother who might be still a child or less than competent, were hard put to maintain their equanimity. And yet…
“It does appear to be God’s law,” Richildis said, “that man rules and woman serves, in silence if she can.”
“And if she has wit enough and patience, in the end she rules, though it might be in a man’s name.” Melisende shook herself a little. “I’m glad I don’t shock you too unduly. It’s a friend I’m needing here, more than a servant; and your brother is very dear to me. I had hoped that his sister would find it in herself to suffer her exile in my presence, since she has vowed not to return to Anjou without her brother.”
“Am I given a choice?” Richildis asked.
“Do you want one?”
Richildis thought about it. “No,” she said after a while. “No, I see the sense in it. Though I’ll not forgive him soon, for disposing of me so summarily, without thought for what I might wish.”
“Even he is a man,” Melisende said, “after all.”
Richildis met the level dark stare. There was laughter in it, and sympathy, and yes – calculation, too. A princess had need of every friend she could find. As what woman did not?
How strange, thought Richildis. She had so disliked this woman at first meeting; and so misjudged her.
Or, no – not misjudged. She had failed to see all that there was of her. As with Helena, she was much more than she seemed, and much less simple to dismiss.
The same indeed might be said of all this country. Richildis began to think that she might find living in it bearable, for however long she must, until her brother’s resistance was worn away, and he agreed at last to return to La Forêt.
Seven
The wine had traveled neither well nor ill. It was not the satin-smooth vintage that it would have been if they had drunk it in the hall at La Forêt, but neither had it turned to vinegar or worse. Melisende pronounced it very pleasant. Her father the king, to whom she sent a jar, was pleased enough with it that he asked to see the giver of the gift.
Richildis by then had found her belongings in the ladies’ chamber, and a bed which she must share with two of them: a privilege, that; the rest had to spread pallets on the floor. She had spent the rest of that day learning the extent of her new duties, and when the princess went to the daymeal in the great hall, she went as one of the princess’ waiting-women.
It was there that Melisende presented her father with the tribute from La Forêt. He was said to be less skilled in the colder arts of kingship than that Baldwin who had been king before him – no kin, and no likeness save in the name – but his good humor was well known even in France. He received the cup with a smile that reminded Richildis vividly of his daughter’s, drank deep from it, and bowed low not to Melisende but to Richildis herself. “A fine gift,” he said to her, “and sweet, like the memory of your fair country. It’s long years since last I walked in it. Would it please your grace to remember it to us?”
Richildis stared at him. She was no jongleur, to spin sweet words for a royal feast. Nor could she bring any stories to mind. Her wits had all fled.
God be thanked, one man at least saw how she floundered. Count Fulk spoke smoothly in her silence, with a smile that calmed her as it was meant to, and a turn of the head that drew all eyes to him. “Indeed, majesty, shall we remember our fair France? Her forests, dark and deep yet dappled with sunlight; her rivers, the Seine and the Loire, the Rhone, the Rhine that flows away into Germany; her fields and vineyards, her orchards in bloom, her little hills all gold with the harvest. Ah, we remember her, here in this land of iron and of sanctity. And yet, majesty, would you truly wish to go back there? Would you give up your kingship to be a baron in France?”
“Sometimes,” said Baldwin, “I would give my heart’s blood to be there again. But my crown and my kingdom…” He shook his head. “No. No, I would not.”
“Nor, I think, would I,” Fulk said. He raised his hands. “It’s as they say, is it not? This is the land that was made for us. This is the earth that God has blessed above all others. God wills that we dwell here, my lord of Jerusalem. God wills it.”
“Deus lo volt,” someone echoed him, down among the knights of the kingdom. Someone else took it up, and another with him, and yet another, till they had made a chant of it, the cry of the Crusade. “Deus lo volt. Deus lo volt!”
* * *
Fulk of Anjou had no memory for names or faces. His famous affability, it was said, was assumed for safety’s sake: he must of necessity be pleasant to all he met, since he could never remember which of them he had met before.
This could be a difficulty, or it could be a notable advantage. Richildis did not expect to be remembered as one of the handful of ladies who had come on pilgrimage under Fulk’s protection, nor was she. When Melisende began to use her as a messenger between the two of them, bearing word of this matter or that with regard to the wedding, Fulk did not vex her with inquiries as to her comfort here or the success of her journey. He saw her simply as she appeared, as one of the princess’ ladies.
She pondered approaching him and demanding his aid in compelling her brother to return to France, but Bertrand had argued too well. Fulk would hardly wish to offend his bride by depriving her of one of her knights. He was pressed as it was to repair the miscalculation of that first day, when he had ignored Melisende to keep company with the king.
He had a name in certain quarters for charming manners with the ladies; but with this princess he seemed condemned to ineptitude. At the feast in which he had conducted so handsome a rescue of Richildis’ wits, he had presented Melisende with a gift: three rings of gold, one for her finger, one for her arm, and one for her brow. The speech he made was pretty, forgotten as soon as it was uttered. He made it from the far side of the king, so that he could not gracefully present the rings himself. One of his knights perforce did that.
Better, thought Richildis, if Fulk had come down off
the dais and knelt in front of the princess and played the lover, no matter the cost to his dignity. As it was, he seemed unwilling to approach her or touch her, nor would he speak face to face without her father between.
* * *
Melisende accepted the rings with cool grace and murmured thanks. She did not look at the giver, nor offer him any greater intimacy than he had offered her.
She kept the full force of her outrage for her ladies, in her bedchamber after she had left the hall. They struggled to undress her and take down her hair and ready her for bed, while she stalked the room, fists clenched, face white and furious.
When she had with difficulty been undressed down to her camise, and her hair freed to ripple down her back, she halted at last. “He shames me,” she said clearly, though her teeth were gritted shut. “He insults me. If I were a man – oh, God, if only I were a man! I’d have his head for what he does to me. How much clearer could he be, that he wants nothing of me but the crown I can give him?”
None of her women ventured to speak, but Richildis was less wary or less cowed by so magnificent a display of temper. “It may be,” she said, “that he thinks to win you over gently, and not to force himself on you as a man might on a woman of lesser rank. After all, you are a princess. Princesses are notoriously delicate in their sensibilities – and who more so than the Princess of Jerusalem, whose mother was the flower of Melitene?”
“Do I look delicate?” Melisende demanded. “Do I look as if I need to be held at arm’s length? Marriage most certainly is a transaction for the good of the kingdom, but may a woman not ask that her husband treat her as flesh and blood and not as a prop for a crown?”
Richildis set her lips together. The marriage of Baldwin and Morphia had been a favorite of the singers: a love match, they had said, that rarity of rarities, half a sin and all a wonder. They had esteemed one another, the songs said, and cherished each other, body and spirit, and conceived their daughters in evident joy.
If Melisende hoped for another such marvel, then she could not but fail. Richildis, looking at her, did not think that she wanted to hear of Richildis’ marriage to a man whom she neither loved nor liked, with whom she had managed some degree of contentment. Contentment was not what young creatures dreamed of.
After a while, since Melisende seemed to be waiting, Richildis said, “You could do the courting of him.”
Melisende laughed in incredulity. “What? A woman court a man?”
“Why not?” said Richildis. “It doesn’t have to be blatant. You can send him gifts – you have some for him, no? And send him messages. And after a day or two, ask to meet, and be your gentlest and most enchanting self. Let him see that you’re worth wooing.”
She held her breath. Melisende’s brows drew together. She would resist. Even she, rebellious in her womanhood, would not wish to take the man’s place in the delicate art of courtship.
Suddenly she laughed again – pure mirth this time, and no mockery. “Yes! Yes, I’ll do it. But,” she said after a pause, as the laughter shrank and vanished, “I don’t think I’ll ever like him. He’s too old. And I hate redheaded men.”
“Age can be made to matter little,” Richildis said. “As for the rest: a man is only as handsome as his deeds. Fulk’s are very handsome indeed. You needn’t ever like him, if only you admire and respect him, and give him the son you need.”
Melisende tensed as if for another surge of temper, but subsided, sinking slowly and wearily to her bed. “Marriage is a cold thing, isn’t it? There’s nothing in it that the blood can warm to.”
“It serves honor and propriety,” Richildis said, “and assures the prosperity of the kingdom. If through it one gains respect, and perhaps a friend… well then, one is blessed. And if not, then, God willing, there are children. It’s not all grim duty and forced smiles.”
“I do hope not,” Melisende said.
* * *
Therefore Richildis found herself entrusted with the task of bearing messages from Melisende to Fulk, then back again. She made a poor go-between as the songs would reckon it. She offered no embellishments, nor undertook to seduce Fulk with the charms of his bride. Melisende must do that for herself.
Melisende’s gifts to her bridegroom were small things, consciously so: a little casket containing nothing but a pearl, a chaplet of flowers from the garden, her singer with an hour’s worth of songs. Fulk, engrossed in making himself known to the high ones of the kingdom, seemed bemused by the gifts, but accepted them gracefully enough. In between, Richildis bore word of this preparation or that – impressing on him that his bride, for all the delicacy of her gifts, was a practical woman, a princess born, bred to rule a kingdom.
Richildis could not tell whether he understood the things that he was being shown and told. When on the fifth day after he had come to Outremer she took to him the message for which all the rest had been prelude, inviting him to attend the princess in her bower, she waited for him to put off the invitation.
But he did not. That, she thought, was the first sensible thing he had done to Melisende since he left his ship. She came within a breath’s expanse of warning him to conduct himself with greatest care; but it was never her place to do such a thing, even if he had remembered who she was.
She returned to Melisende with his reply. Then for the first time she did indeed embellish it. “I’ll come,” he had said, no more than that. Richildis framed it with greater grace: “I’ll do all indeed as my lady wishes.”
Guilt stabbed her even as the words escaped. Melisende’s sudden smile did little to assuage it, nor the lift in the princess’ spirits as she waited for him to appear. It was a small lift to be sure, and could hardly be likened to eagerness, still less to joy, but it was with serene face and no evidence of sullenness that she received word of his arrival at her door.
“Remember,” Richildis said in her ear, “woo him, even if he seems distant or cold. I doubt he’s honestly either. He’s never wed a princess before; I’ll wager he’s shy, and even a little afraid.”
She could only hope that she spoke the truth; that she had not heaped lie on lie. She shaped a small prayer for forgiveness, and sent it where it best might go.
* * *
Fulk came to his bride as she sat not in the bower in which Richildis had first seen her, but in another that lay outside of the tower. It was a very eastern place, a colonnaded gallery that might be as old as Rome or as young as Islam, with high louvered windows and intricate patternings of tiles, and at the far end a fountain in the shape of a leaping seahorse. The soft fall of its water struck counterpoint to the notes of the lute on which one of her ladies played.
Richildis did not entirely approve of her lady’s choice. Better the tower room, which Fulk would find familiar as any lady’s bower in the west. This in its lines and colors and its elaborate tiling was alien.
Melisende at least had agreed to put on a gown in the western fashion, though made of eastern stuffs, silk over the fine light fabric of Mosul. Her ladies mirrored her, even those whose blood and faces were more of the east than of any western country. They were a pretty picture, plying their needlework and listening to the luteplayer, eyes lowered demurely and hands carefully busy as Fulk made his entrance.
He had come accompanied as one might expect, by a handful of his knights. These must be the most presentable, the least inclined to cling to western habits: they were clean, well shaven, and quiet in their manners. Having seen what some new pilgrims seemed driven to do, and heard of worse, Richildis was glad of Fulk’s tact and pleased with his wisdom.
He approached Melisende without visible hesitation, bowed over her hand, and said, “My lady. How fair you look!”
Melisende inclined her head. “Will my lord sit?” she asked.
There was a chair for him, and a bench or two on which his knights might settle themselves if they wished. He took the chair. The knights sat, some of them; the rest stayed on their feet, sliding glances round at the ladies, the fountain
, the tiles not only on the floor but on pillars and walls and ceiling.
Fulk, wisely, kept his eyes on Melisende. “My lady is well?” he inquired.
“I am well,” she answered, stiffly formal as a court dance. “And my lord? Has our climate been kind to you?”
“It is,” he admitted, “somewhat warmer than it tends to be in Anjou. But I was here before; I grew accustomed to it then, and expect I shall again.”
“I remember,” Melisende said. “You came to court, and my father showed you how to wear the Arabs’ headdress.”
Fulk smiled. Richildis looked for discomfiture, but found none. No doubt he was accustomed to his failures of memory, and resigned to them. Certainly he could remember plans of battle and the disposition of a demesne. It was only people whom he could not remember. “Ah, so you were there then? There was a bit of a scandal among certain of my compatriots, that I should wish to look like an infidel.”
“And you replied that the infidels at least were cool in the heat.” Melisende managed a smile of her own, not overly warm, but not cold, either. “It’s well thought of here, for a westerner to follow the ways of good sense – and such are many of the ways of the infidel.”
“Including their prayers to Allah?”
That was wicked. Melisende bridled a little at it, but then suddenly she laughed. “Oh, but Allah is our God, they’ll tell you, and they are people of His Book, just as are we. But their faith is newer than ours, and therefore, they believe, more current.”
Richildis found that shocking. So, she noted, did several of Fulk’s knights. But he grinned, looking more like a fox than ever. “So what is new is to be preferred to the old and true? How foreign.”
“I did say that many of their ways are sensible,” said Melisende, “but not all of them. They do believe as fiercely in the errors of their religion as do we in the truths of ours. That’s the heart of our war here. Without that passion of theirs, there’d never have been need for Crusade.”
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