Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  Michael Bryennius was none of that. He was a foreigner, a man of evident property but never in any Frankish country.

  And why was she imagining such things? He had never said a word to encourage it. She could look at a man reckoned handsome by the women of this court, a golden vision or a dark eastern beauty; concede the delight to the eyes, grant the pleasure to the senses, but remain unmoved by any quiver of the heart. She was cold, people said. She was ice and iron, untroubled by the living flesh.

  They did not know how she trembled now, how she fretted over what she would wear, how she would loop her veil, whether her hair should be braided beneath it or free, which jewels she should choose to adorn the whole. In the end she tossed them all aside with a hiss of frustration, flung down the drift of silk that veiled her plaits, called her maids to do it all again. Yasmin and Leila were far from annoyed; they thought it a grand lark. She would have slapped them if she had been a better mistress.

  In a plain gown the color of mist over a northern sea, with a veil a little nearer in color to silver laid over her free hair, and a silver fillet binding it – that and a simple silver brooch that held her mantle at her shoulder, the only ornaments that she wore – and escorted by her two conspicuously unfrivolous maids, Richildis made her way through the city to Helena’s house.

  Helena was away from it, visiting her house in Acre as she liked to do at this time of year, conquering the markets and tending to the more mercantile of her holdings. She had made Richildis free of her house in Jerusalem, and left Kutub and Ayyub there at Richildis’ disposal: generous, and very like her. Richildis slept there some nights, where it was quiet, and she need not contend with a bedmate who snored.

  The servants had been warned to expect more guests than Richildis. They were at their duties as Richildis came in, preparing dinner, tending the garden, standing guard at the gate. Michael Bryennius had not arrived. It was early – of course he was not there.

  She had time to establish herself in the reception room, to see that the wine and the cakes were present and satisfactory, to send her maids to the kitchen to report on the progress toward dinner. To which she had not invited him. To which he very likely would not stay. She had ordered a suitable repast nonetheless, one of the eastern delicacies, a whole lamb roasted and served on a bed of rice with spiced fruits and flat unleavened bread and an array of dainties. Because he had expressed a liking for the Arabs’ bitter yet oddly appealing kaffé, she had ordered that, too, and sugar to sweeten it, and confections of half a dozen kinds.

  The servants would feast tonight, if Michael Bryennius did not.

  She did not torment herself with fears of his failing to come at all. He had asked for this audience. He would hardly wish to forgo it.

  Just at the ringing of the bells for the hour of Nones, when in the palace they would be sitting down to the day’s feast, she heard his voice in the passage, and the sound of his step. The certainty with which she knew them was astonishing – disturbing.

  But of course she had been expecting him. And his accent was distinct. He was exchanging banter with Kutub, the Turk’s voice lighter, harsher, with a different accent altogether.

  Kutub admitted him to Richildis’ presence with becoming gravity – and a wicked glint in his eye. Michael Bryennius was smiling himself, bowing low as one did in the court of the emperor, an extravagance that she found dreadfully appealing.

  He was much as she remembered: black eyes, beautiful black beard, elegant hands. And yet he was different. He had a new coat, she could not help but notice, of gold-embroidered crimson silk. It was the coat of a wealthy man, a nobleman, a courtier. She had never seen him in colors before, only in black or in twilight blue. She did not know if she liked it.

  Of course he was different, she told herself sharply. He was no longer an exile. His rank and station had been returned to him, and all his properties, which evidently were extensive. She had not known how much so – though she should have guessed. Men of limited means did not claim both kinship and familiarity with the emperor of the Byzantines.

  As he straightened from his bow, he took her hands with such ease and such lack of affectation that she could not think clearly enough to pull away. Then she was trapped, held in a grip both light and strong, as a young and skittish mare is held by the horseman’s hand on her rein.

  Michael Bryennius smiled at her. She felt the heat rise from her toes to her crown, a swift fiery ascent. Oh, there was nothing holy in this, nothing chaste or safely spiritual. This was pure white-hot lust of the body.

  And yet… and yet. It was not only that he was a man, and that she yearned for his touch. It was the light in his eyes, too; the way he smiled, a little crookedly, with his teeth shining white in his beard. And his voice, his lovely deep warm voice, saying in that elegant accent, “My lady. You are more beautiful than ever.”

  He hated it when she denied that she was beautiful. She caught herself biting her tongue on the denial; heard herself say, “My lord, I thank you. And you are beautiful as always.”

  His cheeks flushed scarlet, as hers must surely be doing. “Do you like my new coat?” he asked her.

  “It’s very vivid,” she said.

  He raised his brows. “Too vivid? Gaudy? Ridiculous? They told me it was all the rage in the City.”

  “I’m sure it is,” she said. “It’s quite beautiful, really. It just looks a bit odd. You used to be so somber.”

  “I was somber,” he said. “I was an exile.”

  He was still holding her hands. They were still standing near the door – and how had she come so far from the room’s center? She backed slowly, and he followed, letting her lead him to a chair while she took another at a prim and prudent distance.

  It was almost a physical shock, the parting of their hands. She sat quickly, hastily for a fact, and knotted her fingers in a vain attempt to keep them from trembling. He seemed little less disconcerted: he was staring at her, eyes wide, faintly shocked.

  He recovered first, or perhaps his tongue was simply smoother than hers. “Lady, after I’ve done the things that a pilgrim does, I’ll return to the City.”

  And why should her heart thud at that, and her throat tighten as if with tears?

  She mastered her voice and made it say, “I’m glad for you. Exile is never joyous, even among friends.”

  “Yes, I have friends here,” he said. “I’ll not stay away forever. Only long enough to remind the City of my existence, and to make order of my affairs.”

  “That could consume a lifetime,” she said: “affairs in your City being what they are.”

  He laughed, but with a catch in it, as if of pain. “I hope for a decade at most. I’ve been thinking, you know. Of what it would be like to live as I please. To travel, to look on stranger things than I’ve yet seen…” He paused. “Isn’t it odd? Three years I was an exile. Three years I clung to your brother’s castle, nor set foot beyond his lands, even to visit the holy places. Now that my exile is ended, now I’m free to go home, I want only to visit, to set matters in order, to go away again – far away.”

  “That’s it,” Richildis said. “You’re free. While you were not, you rebelled; you refused to move. Now you can go where you choose, and no part of the world is forbidden you.”

  He blinked as he considered that. “Mary Mother,” he said, half amused, half dismayed. “What a contrary creature I am!”

  “I think you are perfectly sensible,” she said. “My brother, now – he’s not only free, he’s lord of a demesne, and he refuses to set foot in it.”

  “That’s why,” Michael Bryennius said. “Lands and lordship bind a man tighter than any shackles.”

  “He has both here,” she said, “and he never flees them.”

  “But they’re here,” said Michael Bryennius. “Not in Anjou. Not in the place from which he was driven.”

  “And who has come to fetch you,” she asked, “and will not go home until you do? Have you a sister? A cousin? A bride-to-
be?”

  “None of those,” he said, “lady. Not one. Simply a messenger from my mother’s household, who waits on my convenience – but that should not be delayed too long. My mother is hungry to see my face.”

  “No bride waits for you?” Richildis inquired. “Ah: but your mother will have seen to that. No good mother could forbear.”

  “Mine has,” he said. “I made a bargain with her long ago. I would choose my own wife. In return she would rule the family as she saw fit, and never fear that a bride of mine would displace her.”

  “She’ll want you to choose soon. Every house needs heirs.”

  “Mine has them in plenty. Two of my brothers married well and profitably, and proceeded to sire armies of offspring. Sons in profusion – I can have my pick of them.”

  “How reassuring,” Richildis said.

  He grinned at her. “Disgusting, isn’t it? I’ll be beset when I go back – there are half a dozen perfectly reasonable candidates for the position, and only room in it for one.”

  “Set a task,” she said. “Offer a contest. The one who composes the best verse in Homeric Greek, or the one whose bow shoots the farthest, or the one who shows the most sense in a matter of consequence – let that one be your heir.”

  “I was thinking,” he said, “to ask for the one least willing to defer to me simply because I can make him head of the family.”

  “But a well-brought-up child must have respect,” Richildis said severely.

  The lift of his brow mocked her primness. “Respect,” he conceded, “but not obsequiousness. I’ll not be lied to by some fool who will trample my body when I’m dead. Better the truth, and honest insolence. That I can reason with.”

  “Is all your family as odd as you?”

  He mimed elaborate startlement. “Odd? Why, no. It’s the rest of the world that’s strange. You’d like my mother, I think. She’s very severe, very virtuous – and wonderfully wicked when she pleases to be.”

  “I am not wicked,” said Richildis. “I have poor control over my sense of propriety.”

  “That’s not wicked?”

  “Thats distressing.” She glared at him. “I hope your mother thrashed you often when you were younger.”

  “She never needed to,” he said. “Her tongue was enough to flay me to the bone.”

  “Mine has never dealt the smallest wound.”

  “No?” He shook his head. “Lady, you have no perception.”

  “My flaws are myriad,” she agreed.

  “Myriad and enchanting,” he said.

  “So much so that you endured them for a single month, abandoned them for a pair of years, and now you go away again.”

  “You could come with me,” he said.

  His voice was light, as if he made nothing of it. She should have responded in kind. But she could not make herself utter a word.

  Go with him? Go to Constantinople? With Michael Bryennius?

  With him she would go to the ends of the world.

  But.

  Her brother. Her purpose, already years unfulfilled. La Forêt, and the lady waiting there, growing no younger, professing no impatience as the lord and his sister tarried in Outremer.

  Her heart yearned to run away, to vanish with this stranger whom she knew, somehow, as well as she knew her own kin. Her heart, that should be perfectly cold, perfectly chaste, was burning to be near him.

  The heart was flesh, raw throbbing blood-swelling thing. The spirit was above it, was air and ice. Or tried to be. She forced it to speak through her. “You know I can’t go,” she said. And the heart crept in while her guard was down, only for a moment, only long enough to add, “Someday, maybe…”

  “Someday,” he said, regretfully – but not as if his heart would break.

  It was only friendship he wanted. After all.

  “Dine with me,” she said abruptly. “Make it a farewell feast, if you like.”

  She held her breath. He would refuse. Of course. Why should he accept?

  He accepted. And was charming, witty, no more or less warm to her than any friend. It was a delightful dinner, well prepared, well served by her two maids and the Turks. He spoke of everything but one, the fact of his departing. He did not try to compel her to change her mind. If he had truly wanted – if he had meant—

  And in too brief a moment it was over. The delicacies were all consumed, the wine was gone. He was rising, casting an eye toward the windows, that had gone dark since he sat to dine.

  She yearned to snatch at his hand, to pull him back. Coldly, sternly, she cast down that yearning. A little of that coldness lingered in her voice. “Kutub and Ayyub will escort you to your lodging.”

  He bowed slightly. “I thank you,” he said.

  There was a silence, stiff and uncomfortable – the first such discomfort since they met again. Richildis could not make herself break it. Not to drive him out. Not to beg him to stay.

  It was he who spoke, and not as she would have wished. “I must go,” he said. “It was a great pleasure. If you should come to the City—”

  “If I should come to the City,” she said, faint and a little cold, “I will remember your name.”

  “Yes,” he said, “lady. Do remember. Unless I come to Jerusalem before then.”

  Her heart should not leap – by all the saints, it should not. “I shall pray that you come back,” she said; unwisely perhaps.

  “Then I shall do my best to answer your prayer,” said Michael Bryennius.

  “You could,” she said, “not go at all.”

  This silence was not merely uncomfortable. It rang like a gong. As before, it was he who broke it. “Lady, you of all people know that I must.”

  Her head bowed. Unwillingly she said, “I do know.”

  “We are both much too dutiful,” he said. He took her hands. Again, as when he first came, she felt the world sway underfoot. Ridiculous; she was a woman of both virtue and strong will. Yet his touch was almost more than she could bear.

  Either he sensed it, or he was shaken himself. He let go – too quickly, and yet never quickly enough. “God keep you,” he said, until we meet again.”

  “If…” she began, but she could not finish. “God keep you,” she said.

  And with that, so swift and yet so slow, he was gone. Almost – almost she called out after him, ran in pursuit, did any number of utterly foolish things. But she was too wise, too deadly practical. She remained where she was. In Jerusalem, from which it seemed she would never depart – never, for Bertrand would not return to La Forêt.

  She had admitted as much to herself, for long and long. But never so clearly. Never with such devastating finality. Michael Bryennius had returned to Constantinople, to the world and the kin and the obligations that had called him. Bertrand would not follow his example. This was Bertrand’s country now, this his world and his heart’s home. This, and not La Forêt.

  And she knew it, and she would not leave. She had her vow; she had her stubbornness. Maybe Bertrand would alter his will. Maybe he would surrender. Someday. Not soon, perhaps not while youth remained to him – but someday he well might.

  Until he did, this was her world, too, and if not her heart’s home, then the resting place of her spirit. Was it not the holiest city in the world? Was it not Jerusalem?

  “God wills it,” she said, aloud in the silence. There was no one to hear, no one to wonder at her. The servants were all gone about their business. She was alone. She said it again, for the truth of it, and to make it true beyond doubting. “God wills it. And I… maybe I, too. Maybe.”

  II

  Queen Regent

  A.D. 1143–1149

  Twenty-Seven

  The autumn after Prince Baldwin passed his thirteenth year, the High Court traveled as it often did in this season, to take the sea air and to populate the markets of Acre. Baldwin had been desperate for a diversion, or so he professed. Jerusalem had grown deadly dull – meaning that there had been no good wars of late, and his father w
as not minded to start any.

  Baldwin had been remarkably bloody-minded this year. Arslan thought it was because after a promising start he was small for his age, and his voice was still unbroken. Baldwin did not believe his mother when she said that he would grow, and soon. Of course his mother would say that. Mothers were supposed to say such things.

  Arslan, who had had the poor taste to shoot up nearly to man-height over the summer, and to break out in a voice like – Baldwin said – a sick frog’s, had to labor mightily to preserve a friendship so old it went beyond memory. Sometimes it made him very tired. But now, for once, Baldwin held up his end of the bargain.

  They had escaped the palace not long after dawn, armed each with a purse full of copper, determined to take the market by storm. The price for their escape was one they bore with some semblance of fortitude: Baldwin’s brother Amaury. Amaury was just old enough to be a page, a tall thin fair child who never had much to say for himself. Baldwin barely tolerated him. Arslan rather liked him. He could keep quiet, and he hero-worshipped his elders, as was only fitting.

  Baldwin had wanted to lose him in the crowds that would be heavy even so early. Arslan had always been less ruthless. “Oh, let him stay with us,” he said as they passed the guards at the citadel’s gate.

  Baldwin rolled his eyes. “He’s a nuisance.”

  “That’s what Lady Richildis said we were,” said Arslan. There were people staring, watching them come out of the citadel. He put on a bit of a swagger for them.

  Baldwin was not paying attention. He was saying to Amaury, “You know why you were born, don’t you? Because I got sick, sick enough that people thought I might die, and Father finally convinced Mother that one of us was not enough. Now they say two of us are two too many.”

  “Father had to woo Mother for years,” Amaury said serenely, “before she would let him make me. For you he only wooed her for a season.”