There was little left in him of the man that Richildis had first seen by the harbor of Acre, the robust knight, the proud king of a warrior kingdom. Only the spirit was left, a white heat of devotion, shining out of him as he lay dying.
He would die, if not tonight, then very soon. Not much of him was left to linger in the world. What there was of him started awake as his daughter and her husband entered, even raised him slightly, stretching out his hand.
Melisende took it in both of her own, kneeling in a billow of skirts, taking no heed for them. She did not weep or wail; that was not her way. When her two youngest sisters were brought in – not Alys, never Alys whose folly had broken him; that one was kept well away in her place of exile – they burst into tears. Melisende hissed at them. Hodierna subsided into audible sniffles. Yveta, less circumspect, required firm hushing from her nurse.
Baldwin sighed, a rattle in his chest. Melisende focused on him, sudden and complete. He beckoned. Fulk drew closer, took his hand that was still free. To Fulk’s shoulder clung his son, young Baldwin staring, perhaps not recognizing this gaunt and hollow-eyed stranger-monk as his kingly grandfather.
“God,” said Baldwin in a shadow of his old voice. “May God bless you all. My love upon you; my blessing. Be king, son-in-law. Be queen, my daughter. Rule well; and when your time comes, grandson, be such a king as the world will pause to marvel at.”
They bowed before him. He slipped his hands free of theirs and rested each upon a lowered head, for a little while, before his strength failed him. “God keep you,” he sighed. “God protect you. And his kingdom – his Jerusalem. Guard it well. Cherish it. For God – for Holy Sepulcher. God wills it.
“Deus,” he said: “Deus lo volt.”
Twenty-One
Baldwin of Le Bourg, knight of the Cross, Count of Edessa, King of Jerusalem, Defender of the Holy Sepulcher, died gently in his sleep before dawn of the day after he had given his heirs his blessing. Fulk woke from what by all accounts was a troubled sleep, to find himself king.
Melisende had not slept. She had remained with her father throughout that long night. He died as she knelt beside him, with the Patriarch and half the priests of the city praying over him, and barons of the High Court standing guard about him. His soul slipped free as softly, as quietly, as the light of dawn that crept into the room.
He who had fought so hard his life long, died as a saint dies, in supernal peace. He was fortunate, Richildis thought. All his battles, his grief, the betrayal that had broken him – none of them mattered in the end, to him whose eyes were turned to a light beyond the simple light of sun or moon. He died in the city of peace, within sight of the Holy Sepulcher, as near to Calvary as he could come.
With news of his death came news of another. Joscelin of Edessa too was dead, wounded in battle against the infidel. There was no great lord left who had come in the first Crusade, no prince or nobleman who could claim that he had seen the taking of Jerusalem. All who remained were younger men – lesser, some muttered, but others begged to differ.
A world had passed, as it were. A new world rose in its place. Fulk’s world; and Melisende’s. As always with the passing of kings, grief and joy were inextricably mingled. It was embodied in the people’s chant.
The king is dead. Long live the king!
* * *
They buried King Baldwin in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, near the empty tomb which he had defended for so long. Then when the time of mourning was over, a score of days and one, three weeks altogether, Fulk and Melisende were crowned at the altar before which Baldwin had lain in state. There in front of the Holy Sepulcher they promised solemnly to defend it, to protect it from the infidel, to guard any and all Christian pilgrims who should come to the holy place.
There was no kingship like it in the world, and no joy greater than Fulk’s as he stood side by side with his tall golden queen, head raised high under the weight of the crown. For this he had come to the far side of the world. For this he had taken to wife a sullen and often difficult child, a princess who had protested far more than once that she must accept a woman’s lot, weakness and servitude and submission to a man.
She seemed submissive enough to his will in the coronation and in the festival that came after. She was stunned, Richildis knew. Grieving for her father, struggling to comprehend a world without him in it. For Fulk it was sorrow enough, for he had been Baldwin’s friend. But for Melisende it was the loss of both father and king. And yes, friend too, perhaps. They had been much alike, they two. Had she been born a man, there would have been no question that she was fit to be king.
* * *
While the kingdom accustomed itself to the ways of a new king, and Melisende kept her counsel, bided her time, said and did nothing to contest her husband’s rule, Bertrand returned at last to Jerusalem. He could not in courtesy have refused to attend the coronation – to do so would have been too much like an objection to the name and presence of the new king.
And, he told himself, he was being a fool. There was more to the city than a single woman who had in her way betrayed him. He knew that she was there: he could hardly avoid it. Of her son he had heard nothing, except that he was alive and undisposed of.
Her son. His son. It had all roiled together in such confusion that he could not think of it without a twisting of sickness in his belly. Fighting did little to ease it. Hunting and killing infidels, laying siege to a city with a renegade princess in it, riding here and there on the track of another battle – in the end it left him impossibly weary.
Times were when he wondered what would happen if he let go. If he surrendered as the elder Baldwin had, gave in to the weariness, let it carry him off.
But he was too young. His body was too strong, too little inclined to succumb to a few hard rides and a wound or two. The wounds would not even oblige him by festering. They healed swift and they healed clean. He was up from the last one well before the coronation, with the summons waiting and no useful way to escape it.
Therefore he came to Jerusalem. He sat through the festivities. So much joy, so many bright banners – and only a month ago the whole city had been draped in black and in sorrow, awaiting the death of its king. One would think that everyone had forgotten.
He could try to forget one woman among so many. A courtesan, yet: a woman who lived by her body, who took her sustenance from the men she preyed upon. He was not lacking for women, even if he persisted in shunning both maidens and married ladies. That left women who could be bought and paid for, both courtesans and their lowlier sisters; and servants; and ladies whose widowhood set them free from the usual constraints. Ladies quite unlike his sister, whose virtue was notorious.
It seemed that they flocked to him, as if they knew that he was hunting. So must birds know when it is time to mate, or bees when the season comes for swarming.
Thus it happened that he lingered in Jerusalem past the festival and the first High Court in which Fulk sat as king, dallying in his house, dangling about the court with others of like persuasion. They made excuse that the king would need such aid he could find, if certain rumblings became open conflict. Princess Alys, it was said, was not displeased that her father was dead; was stirring in Antioch with an eye toward forcing Fulk’s hand as she had failed to force King Baldwin s.
Bertrand lingered, and idled with a lady or two, but never to much purpose. He was dallying so one afternoon in the palace garden among the fading roses. The lady who had lured him there – with him well aware of the ruse but too lazy to resist it – had slipped the veil from her crimped yellow curls and was letting her bodice slip from the swell of milk-white breasts. She hoped, it was clear, for a comparison between white roses and red, and white breasts with their nipples redder than nature alone could have managed.
He was bored enough, and yet aroused enough, to contemplate lifting her skirt and having his way with her; but as he set hand to the rumpled silk, he looked into a face that he barely knew, a little round kitten-
face with sullen mouth and greedy eyes, and such revulsion rose in him that he dropped her unceremoniously in the path. He heard her gasp of startlement and then of outrage, but by the time it mounted to a screech, he was long gone.
He came up short against a wall – God’s teeth; had he come as far as the spice-market, and with no memory of leaving the palace? He was all alone, no squire, no servant, no attendants. He had his sword at least, which he vaguely remembered keeping on because she said that it excited her. Everything excited that one – she was like a cat in heat.
Not like Helena. Not like Helena at all. Helena had come joyfully into his arms, but only when she chose, and never with the panting desperation of a woman who cannot get enough of it. It was a pleasure to her, but not an obsession. Sometimes he had thought that she was happier simply being with him, talking to him, sharing a cup of wine or a bit of gossip, than she had ever been in his embrace.
It came to him with the force of inevitability, that he was only a street or two away from her house. His feet had taken him this far but then faltered. And well they might. He did not want to go crawling back to her, to beg her forgiveness for the thing that she had done to him.
Yet as he gathered himself to turn away, to go back to the palace, he found himself walking onward.
Her house was the same as it had always been. And how long had it been? Two years? That long?
Surely not. Surely it had only been a few months.
And yet when he walked away from her in anger, Baldwin had been king, strong as if he would go on forever. Now Baldwin was dead and Fulk was king. The world had gone on as the world always did, while he seemed to stand still, fixed in his fit of temper.
Richildis would have pointed out that he had done just the same when he left La Forêt: sustained his folly for years out of count. As if she herself had not done precisely the same, staying in Outremer like a living reproach, persisting years past any reasonable expectation. “Lady Agnes is content,” she said when he taxed her with it. “She has no objection to continuing as chatelaine until you deign to return.”
Which he would never do – that was an oath, taken when he took ship across the sea. He had taken no such oath before Helena.
He halted in front of her gate, breathing harder than so brief a walk could warrant, with his heart hammering with something very like terror. Perhaps, he thought half in hope and half in dread – perhaps she did not live here any longer. Perhaps a stranger would greet him when he set hand to the gate, and not her ancient yet endlessly hale porter.
Vain hope; vain terror. Marid had altered not at all, not even so much as to regard Bertrand with surprise. Nor did he shut the gate in Bertrand’s face. He bowed and let him in as always, as if it had not been years since last Bertrand stood in this place.
Marid had not changed, nor the house; but the way of Bertrand’s welcome had. He could not walk in with ease, go questing for the mistress of the house. The servant who met him was a stranger, a woman of years and dignity, who greeted him courteously as she might any noble visitor, and left him in an anteroom until, as she put it, “My lady is disposed to see you.”
Milady, it seemed, was not either quickly or eagerly disposed. He sat for as long as he could bear it; stood to go, paced instead, circling the room, finding nothing in it to engage his mind. It was an eastern room, ornate of carpet and hanging, rather bare of furnishings, with nothing in it but a chair or two, a table empty of either wine or sweets, and a bank of lamps, only a few of which were lit. He could remember when Helena had kept unwanted visitors waiting there with nothing to do until she took pity on them and had them summoned.
Such visitors, too. Tradesmen. Petitioners for alms or charity. Would-be guards or servants. Men young and old who fancied that she might wish to accept them as lovers – some bearing rich gifts, or offering payment well above the ordinary for a courtesan in this city.
He had no gift for her. Nothing but his inadequate self. She had other lovers now, of course she did. A courtesan must; or how was she to live?
Richildis said that Helena was rich and had no need of patrons. What did Richildis know? She was a woman of iron virtue, gently reared. She knew nothing of the ways of courtesans – even though she claimed one, rather preposterously, for a friend.
He stopped pacing, dropped to one of the chairs. It groaned under his weight. He thrust himself to his feet again. Saints and angels; what was he doing? He was not welcome here. This room, this neglect, made that abundantly clear.
“Out,” he said aloud. “Away. Away from here.”
And yet he could not make his feet carry him out. He was still standing so, flatfooted like the idiot he was, when a step sounded in the passage without. He turned toward the door, breath drawn to address whichever servant had come, to bid her conduct him to the gate.
It was no servant who opened the door and stood in it.
She had not changed. That was his first thought, a dull thought, uninspired, but true enough. A year could make a great difference in a woman of her age, no longer in the first bloom of youth though some distance yet from the fading of middle age. She had never told him how old she was, but he could guess at it, from things that she had said. Older than Richildis; younger than he. Five-and-twenty, let it be: perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less.
She did not look like a girlchild – not like the one he had left in the garden, who must have been all of one-and-twenty, but who contrived to look like a child of seventeen. This was a woman, wearing her years lightly but not invisibly. She was no more beautiful than she had ever been, and no less. Her face was carefully and skillfully painted, her gown well chosen to suit her figure. Now as always, she was the image of elegance.
He braced himself to be met as a stranger, to be dismissed with cold words and hard truth: that she had put him behind her.
He was not at all prepared for what she did do. She came to him and took his hands and looked up into his face – how far up, he had forgotten: she loomed rather larger in the spirit than in the flesh. She said simply, and as honestly as a child, “I’m glad you came back.”
A whole spate of words surged up in him: hard words, cruel words. “I didn’t come back. I don’t want you. I only wanted to know –” What? Whether he had been supplanted?
He said none of it, and wisely enough, too. Still he could not keep from asking, “Is there anything to come back to?”
She shrugged slightly, a faint lifting of shoulders in her heavy silken gown. “I am here. There’s no one else. I never wanted anyone who was not you.”
“Even before you first saw me?”
Her eyes crinkled in the corners. “I knew that there was someone whom I wanted. Just not anyone that I knew then.”
He could feel himself slipping into the warmth of her smile, melting as he always had, heart’s slave to her as he had been from that first meeting. He pulled away sharply, suddenly. “No. This isn’t reasonable. After the things I said, did—”
“Certainly not,” she said with composure that he remembered too well. “I never pretended to be reasonable. I’m not going to be reasonable now. I’m going to give you leave to court me again. To win me back.”
“But I’m already—” he began, and stopped.
She nodded as if in approval of his belated restraint. “I said I don’t want anyone else. I may not want you, either. You have my permission to convince me otherwise.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Then you don’t want to.” He could not tell what she felt: regret, amusement, anger – he could not read her at all.
“And – the cause of contention?”
That had been difficult to say. She appeared to have no such difficulty in her reply. “You do not have the right, yet, to ask me that.”
His throat was tight enough to hurt. He could still speak, though his voice was thin and strained. “I hear he’s alive.”
She inclined her head. He waited, but she did not say anything else.
/> That was her revenge, then. To refuse him the son whom he had refused. There was a bitter fairness in it.
And a truth even more bitter. She was not going to force the child on him. She was not even going to admit him to the boy’s presence. If he would court her, he would court her alone, without encumbrance.
Was that not what he had wanted? Then why was he so troubled by it? He had refused to acknowledge a bastard. The bastard’s mother should be exerting her every fraction of strength to force his hand. And she would not even tell him whether the boy thrived.
It was a deception. Of course it was.
Except that Helena did not do such things. Helena had not even told him that she was with child. She wanted nothing of him for the boy, not one thing.
Anger stirred, but it was feeble. It had lost itself somewhere, perhaps in the light of Helena’s eyes. A courtesan who took no lovers but one, a mother who asked nothing of her child’s father – how like her; how unlike any other woman that he knew.
He bowed to her, as deep as to a queen. When he straightened he had his voice in hand. “Lady,” he said with admirable steadiness, “may I have your leave to court you?”
She paused so long that he came near to anger again, anger at late refusal. But then she said, “My lord, you may.”
Any other pair of lovers – past or yet to be – would have fallen into each other’s arms. But Helena did not move, and neither therefore did Bertrand. He ventured to take her hand and kiss it. That she allowed. But no more that day; no more than a few moments’ conversation and a cup of watered wine, and after that he was in the street again, staring at the gate.
Passersby must have thought him mad: for as he stared, he began to smile, and then to grin, and then to laugh. Maybe he was mad. But what else could he do? That was Helena – that was Helena to the bone.
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