Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  Eleanor looked after them and shook her head. “Idiots,” she said with not a scrap of the affection that she had shown to their faces. “The Devil’s country, indeed! Why, this is heaven compared to some of the roads in Hungary.”

  Richildis rather agreed with her. Not that she herself had ever traveled in Hungary, but there was little enough to fault in this day. They rode on a clear road, wide and well kept, such as the Romans had made long ago. The sea shone blue on their right hands. The sky was a paler, clearer blue above them. The sun was bright for so late in the year, the air cool, not quite cold: invigorating. No enemies beset them, though the Byzantines were following, on guard: one could see them in the distance, outlined against a hilltop when the road dipped low toward the sea. It was a sort of paradox that even as they evaded the emperor’s men by land, they looked eagerly for his escort by sea; for those were the ships that supplied them according to their bargain. It was never quite enough, they had still to forage in the land, but it was better by far than nothing.

  * * *

  At Ephesus they paused. The Germans, who had been a day behind, caught up with the French there in the ancient city amid the ruins of the old pagans. Conrad their king, emperor as his people called him, was somewhat of a ruin himself: grey and ill and seeming older than he was. Defeat at Dorylaeum and the march thereafter had broken him, perhaps beyond mending.

  He did not want to go on. None of his men did, either. They had lost heart and spirit, abandoned it somewhere along the road. Their camp when Richildis happened to pass through it was a grim and sullen place, less than indifferently clean, as if no one cared even to dig a proper set of privies. The French looked on them in scorn, mocked them in the streets of the city, called them fools and sluggards and cowardly layabouts.

  Not that the French had much to brag of. They had suffered little on their march, fought no great battle, met no enemy worse than Byzantines outraged by the pillage of their country. In the way of wars and of armies, lack of privation was as ill a thing as an excess thereof. Had they had a stronger king, one less intent on worshipping at every Christian shrine in this city of the Apostles, they might have maintained a better discipline. If their queen had cared to rein them in, they would not have slipped loose as they had begun to do; but she was bored, and Eleanor in boredom was not inclined to be reasonable.

  Worse, she had been quarreling with her husband. Anyone with ears could hear them of a night, his voice low, hers pitched clear and hard. She wanted them to move more swiftly, grovel less deeply to the Byzantines, take what they could and make haste to Jerusalem. He was minded to pause again, to rest troops who were, he insisted, worn down by the exigencies of travel. She laughed in his face, called him idler and idiot and weak-minded excuse for a king. He, who had never been so clever with words as she was, or indeed so clever at all, could only bluster and threaten and remind her that he was king and she, for all her pretenses, was only queen by his grace.

  “And what have you?” she flared back at him. “A few scraps of land round about the Île de France, a castle here and there, and a mountain of debt to the Jews and the usurers, that requires my wealth, my lands, my dower to preserve itself from ruin. King you may be, and I but a duchess, but without me you have nothing but the boots you stand in.”

  “But you love your crown,” he said. “You love to be called queen, to have people bowing at your feet. Without me you would have no such thing.”

  “I could find it,” she said with ominous quiet. “Now get out. I’m tired of you.”

  His voice rose to a startling degree. “You can’t send me away! I’m the king.”

  “Would you care to wager on it?” she asked, softly still, like a lioness’ purr.

  He left the field then. He always did. Strength of will was not a great virtue of his, nor did he stand well against his queen when she was determined to resist him. Her laughter followed him, light and cold, enough to madden most men; but he only buried himself deeper in his devotions, surrounded himself with priests, made himself more determinedly a man of God. She, as if to defy him, grew more worldly than ever, clothed herself more richly, even found a coat of gilded mail that fit her rather excellently well. In that, with a golden helmet and a scarlet plume, she rode about Ephesus like Diana of the pagans.

  Under a weak king therefore, with a queen who did not see fit to trouble herself with matters that should properly concern the king, the French grew more unruly, the longer they went on.

  They were four days in Ephesus – Eleanor’s victory, that. When they left, they left without the Germans, and without the Germans’ ailing king. Conrad was thought by many to be dying. They left him in the chanting of priests and the learned muttering of doctors, tossing in a fever that would not lift for any prayer or potion. They spared him no compassion. Jerusalem was waiting. In the grand selfishness of the saint or the Crusade, they turned their faces toward the Holy City, and left the Germans behind to live or die as God ordained.

  * * *

  Still they traveled as if under a blessing: brilliant sun by day, clear stars and moon by night. They had settled into an order of march, rather free and somewhat slack of discipline but not unduly untidy. The barons took turn and turn about in the van. The queen and her ladies held the center. The king held the rear with his guards and his retinue and the knights and priests of his council.

  Of them all, the ladies had the most ease. Those who tired of riding among the Amazons could resort to the comfort of cushioned litters. At night they slept in their pavilions, warmed by braziers in the chill, or open to the air if they were inclined to be hardy.

  The Germans were gone, with their long faces and their litany of defeat. There were only the French, singing in the sunlight, and their Byzantine guardhounds traveling behind and about them. They rode out of autumn and into winter, to sun that shone still but less strongly, and wind that blew cold, and clouds that gathered above a grey and foam-swept sea.

  The ladies took more often to their litters then, wrapped in furs. Even the queen yielded to the lure of warmth. She held court from her litter; knights and barons wandered past, paused for a moment or an hour, rode on in a kind of easy vigilance. One never knew, after all, where the enemy might be.

  At the feast of Christmas, three years to the day after the fall of Edessa, they came to a place of beauty almost miraculous in that country which was so often desolate. There a little river ran to the sea. A green valley embraced it, unwithered yet by winter’s cold. In that place they made themselves a city, brightening their tents with banners, laying out their armor and weapons and the makings of siege-engines, all the panoply of war, on the sward beside the river. Their horses they put to pasture, themselves to rest. Even the least pious of them gave thanks to the Lord Christ for this place of peace. As if in answer, a cloud ran swiftly past, scattering a spray of rain – a benediction, the priests proclaimed; and no one gainsaid them.

  The night was still, shot with stars. But toward the dawn a few thin banners of cloud streamed across the sky. It was a red sunrise, blood-red: such as might have been taken for omen, if any had been looking for it. But no one was. Of course there was war ahead of them. They marched to meet it. On the morrow they would take up arms and weapons again and set foot on the long road to Jerusalem.

  In the hour of Lauds, while the voices of priests and monks sang sweetly through the camp, all at once, as if from blue heaven, a vast wind roared down upon them. It drowned the chanting of the office. It tore the tents from their moorings and flung them far away. It loosed such a torrent of rain as if the sea itself had risen up and crashed upon them.

  It was like the wrath of God. Richildis had had some little warning: the uneasiness of the horses, and her own mare’s great ill temper, that set her to fighting with the poor fool of a gelding who happened to be pastured beside her. She battered him with her heels, and every man who tried to intercede, until someone thought to fetch Richildis.

  Richildis was awake and, as it hap
pened, dressed; she had slept ill, for what reason she did not know. She bolted after the messenger, swift enough to find the battle still in progress, the gelding defeated but the mare whirling in search of a new and fresher target. Richildis, leaping in, seized her halter and hauled her down. The others got the gelding away, led him to another corner of the meadow. The mare dropped her head to graze, but uneasily, snapping at the grass, glaring about and snorting and turning her back on the bit of wind that had begun to blow.

  Richildis lingered for a bit, but there seemed no likelihood of new battle. Mares being what they were, she reckoned that this one would be calm enough for a while. She said so to the horse-handlers who stood nearby. They shrugged, yawned, agreed. One would stay to be sure of it. “You go back to your warm tent, lady,” they said, “and rest a little more.”

  She was not minded to rest, but her tent had breakfast in it, and her still sleeping husband. She went in search of it.

  The wind struck just as she reached it. It buffeted her with force enough to fling her down. She lay stunned, feeling a fool – thinking for a moment that she had tripped over her feet, or the hem of her skirt. Only slowly did her mind understand the roaring that deafened her. Wind – it was wind. And, hard on its heels, rain.

  She did not try to stand against such a blast. She crawled on hands and knees toward the shadow that was – that must be – her tent. It was leaping and swaying like a dancer in a bazaar. But its pegs were holding; they were driven well and deep, and into solid ground well above the river.

  Michael Bryennius had insisted on it. “I have an objection,” he had said, “to sleeping in riverbeds in this country and at this season.” The French had reckoned him an overcautious fool, but he had been adamant. Richildis had not seen the profit in resisting, though it set them well away from the queen’s pavilion, up on the hill above the rest of the camp. It was not on the summit, but sheltered in a bit of hollow that yesterday had kept the sun’s warmth somewhat after darkness fell.

  Now it gave some protection against the wind – enough to keep the tent from going the way of those below. Michael Bryennius was in it, awake and dressed, scowling as he listened to the roaring without. Richildis fell into his arms.

  He clasped her tightly, set lips to her ear, said as clearly as he could through the wind’s howling, “Thank God. If you had stayed out in that—”

  Richildis struggled. “I have to – I shouldn’t – the queen – the horses—”

  He held her tightly, almost to pain. “No! You’ll be killed.”

  “But what of them?” she cried.

  “God will have to defend them.”

  She hated him – by God, she hated that immovable calm. She could not see his face clearly, so dim was the tent; the lamp had gone out, whether from the wind of her arrival or from a want of oil. He would not let her go to light it again. He would not release her at all. His arms were like shackles.

  Slowly and without her willing it, her anger quieted. Much of it was fear, and shock: that out of the night’s clear quiet, such a storm could have risen. They could do nothing. Only cling to one another, cold and fireless and unfed, while wind and rain raged over them, and only a thin wall of leather between. It held, and that was a marvel; a miracle, one might have said. He had secured the flap behind her when she first came in, laced it tight. A little rain seeped in, but nothing to trouble them.

  When silence fell, it was deafening. The wind had died. The rain had paused, though it began again more softly, pattering on the roof of the tent.

  Richildis unlocked arms that she had not even known were wrapped about her husband. He had loosened his grip, though he held her still. She looked into his face, that was visible at last, though dimly. Perhaps it was only the faintness of light through oiled and painted leather that made him look so grey and ill.

  “Let me go,” she said to him.

  This time he obeyed her. She staggered in getting up; her knees were weak. She stiffened them, made them carry her toward the flap. With hands that felt as heavy as mailed gauntlets, she fumbled open the lacings and eased the flap aside.

  She looked out on desolation. Wasteland. Wilderness. Where had been the green meadow and the bright tent-city was a torrent of restless water bobbing with flotsam. Along the edges of it stumbled men, beasts, things that could have been either or both. The camp was swept away. Only those who had pitched their tents high, as Michael Bryennius had, were still standing on solid ground. Even they, most of them, had lost their tents to the wind; they stood under the naked and tumbled sky, dazed, dripping, spattered with mud.

  Warmth brushed against her. Michael Bryennius too looked out. “God in heaven,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Richildis. “It is God; the God of wrath.”

  He crossed himself backward as the Byzantines did. Without a word then, he went out into the mud and the new, thin drizzle of rain, to do what he could to aid those less fortunate than he. Richildis could do no less than follow.

  Fifty

  The army that had come so joyfully to its Christmas camp marched out of it in grief. They had lost men, swept away in the river; beasts of burden, warhorses, siege-engines, baggage, all that had been set or pastured by the stream before it rose in flood. What had not been lost was often ruined – foodstuffs too, and barrels of ale, and wine. They marched cold and wet and miserable, nor were they granted a respite. The winter rains had come at last and with a vengeance. Every river that they met was swollen with flood, every stream overflowing its banks.

  In disgust and near-despair – and how unlike their former progress, singing in the sunlight – they turned away from the sea and struck inland. But that road was no happier than the gale-wracked paths along the sea. There were Turks on it: enemies at last, infidels for a surety, and no Byzantine armies to stand between.

  A week’s wet miserable journey from the place of the flood, they came to a city called Antioch. It was not that great and ancient city and principate of Outremer, but a lesser city, Antioch-in-Pisidia. Maps and guides proclaimed it a Byzantine holding. Truth and hard experience filled it with Turks.

  Turks ahead of them, Turks behind. At the bridge between, they closed in battle.

  * * *

  Here the wonted order of march proved most useful: barons in the van, king in the rear, queen and baggage and bulk of the army in the midst of them. The Amazons made no pretense of warrior strength. They clung to their litters and their wagons, and wept or prayed as arrows flew overhead. Richildis, trapped among them, could see little of what went on ahead or behind. She thought to force herself to the van, but the queen’s guard had closed into a wall of steel. Michael Bryennius was farther back, with the king. She could not go to him, either. She was closed like a nut in its shell, completely walled about, advancing in fits and starts.

  As they went on, the hooves of horses and oxen slipped in mud and blood, or stumbled over bodies. Some still lived: they struggled and shrieked. But the damnable guards would let no one pause. Like prisoners they pressed on, brief advances, endless halts. Sometimes they could see fighting. They could hear it always: shouts, cries, ring of metal on metal.

  Richildis had taken her bow from its case and strung it, and kept her quiver of arrows close to hand. But there was nothing to shoot at, unless she turned against the knights who guarded the queen. They were admirable in their loyalty, remarkable in their fortitude – maddening, because they would not let her escape, fight, be something more than useless baggage.

  At last, after endless halts and advances, they reached the bridge. It was clear of bodies but not of blood. The river below, swollen with flood, tumbled more than its wonted wrack of fallen trees, drowned sheep, bits of broken wall and shattered roof. The city ahead was shut to them, the gates barred, the walls thick with Turkish faces: black beards, long braids, the white gleam of turbans.

  “Treachery,” someone said near Richildis, a sound like a snarl. “That is a Byzantine city!”

  “Not now,” Elea
nor said with impressive composure. If it frustrated her to be trapped in the army’s heart and helpless to defend either it or herself, she did not show it. But then, thought Richildis, her hands were hidden, wrapped in her mantle. For all anyone knew, they were clenched into fists.

  * * *

  The battle of the bridge of Antioch was reckoned a victory, but its price came high. Not only had they wounded to tend, dead to bury, but as they went on, they found the country empty of people – and all provisions gone away with them. Laodicea, the city in which they had hoped to find a market or, if that failed, a rich store of goods to pillage, was empty, scoured clean. And all the land about it was barren, terrible steep mountain track and relentless slope, lashed with wind and rain.

  From peaceful haven and sunlit autumn they had ascended into hell. No road was level here. It was all up, up, up, and precipitously down, then up again against the vault of the sky. Wagons could not climb those tracks. Mules slipped and staggered and fell endless furlongs to their deaths. Men must walk perforce, or risk oversetting their horses. Even the ladies struggled afoot, their litters empty or abandoned.

  Nor were they granted the least bit of surcease, even from the enemy. Turks haunted the heights, even higher than they: archers taking aim at the wounded or the hapless or, worse by far, the horses. One had to fight not only land and weather but a human enemy – inhuman enough in the mind, like devils amid the torments of hell.

  There at last Richildis had her wish, and got no joy of it, either: she climbed and scrambled and clambered as much as any, but with her bow close to hand; and when she could, she strung it and searched for targets. Once in a great while one presented itself. She could not spend arrows recklessly, but shoot she would and did, if she had even the hope of a clear shot. Once or twice perhaps her arrow found flesh – maybe took a life. She could not know. She could only go on, up yet another grueling slope, into the teeth of yet another merciless wind.