Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  He blushed even more, and stammered, and never thought to remind her that he had been leading armies since he was a child, with or without the buffet on the shoulder that transformed a squire into a knight. Arslan, who could have spoken for him, was too wise or too cowardly to try.

  * * *

  Eleanor, once possessed of a cause, was unrelenting in her pursuit of it. Time was short: Louis was nearly done with his journey round the holy places. When it was over they would gather their army and march toward Tiberias, where Emperor Conrad was already, and the armies of Outremer had begun to gather.

  But Eleanor would not be silenced until the King of Jerusalem was made a knight. “It can be done,” she said, “after any mass in Holy Sepulcher, if a knight of worth can be found to do it. Perhaps your Constable?”

  She happened to say it in front of Melisende while they all dined together in hall. Melisende, who had as little to do with Eleanor as she sensibly could, lifted a brow. “And what, pray, are you going to do?”

  “Why, madam,” Eleanor said in a tone that even love might have called arch, “your son is not yet a knight, and yet he will lead the Crusade. Don’t you think that should be remedied?”

  Melisende’s brow climbed a notable fraction higher. “What remedy is needed? His majesty is young, younger than most who receive the accolade. When he comes of proper age, he will undergo it as every other young nobleman does.”

  “Majesty,” said Eleanor, “your son is eighteen years old. Surely that’s old enough?”

  “We have our own customs here,” Melisende said coolly. “Madam, your concern for his welfare is laudable, but I assure you, he does exactly as is fitting for a youth of his age and station.”

  “And is it fitting,” Eleanor asked, “for a man of his years, who has led armies, to be no more than a squire?”

  “My son is king,” Melisende said. “Whatever he is or is not in the order of knighthood, he is, after all, above the whole army of his knights.”

  “But if he were one of them,” Eleanor persisted, “would they not follow him all the more gladly, with all the more devotion?”

  Melisende sighed with conspicuous patience. “He will do what is fitting for him to do.” With that, she turned back to the conversation that had engaged her before Eleanor’s clear voice rose above it: a long colloquy with King Louis regarding the foundation of convents.

  Eleanor opened her mouth as if to call Melisende back, but Arslan watched her decide against it. Her face went hard then, her eyes narrow. For that little while, her beauty was gone, the silk stripped away from the steel beneath.

  Melisende seemed oblivious. Maybe she was. Maybe she did not care. King Louis liked her very much: she was a worldly woman, he had been heard to observe, yet she devoted herself to holy works. He would not be dismayed to see her quell one of Eleanor’s enthusiasms.

  Arslan hated to see as clearly as that. Love should be blind. He should be rapt in contemplation of her beautiful face, but he could only see, just now, the two hectic spots of red on her cheeks, and the rousing of a monstrous temper.

  But Eleanor did not burst out with it in front of Melisende. Prudence restrained her, perhaps. Or calculation. Baldwin was not pleased to be discussed and dismissed as if he had been a child in the nursery.

  * * *

  He left the hall soon after Eleanor, but not to pursue her. He went to his chamber instead, where the servants waited to ready him for bed. He sent them away with their tasks undone, all but Arslan who made himself invisible by the door.

  Baldwin paced for a goodly while: door to wall, whip about; wall to bed, whip about again. On the third passage he stopped short, face to face with Arslan. “Tell me why,” he said in a tight, breathless voice, “I should not summon Uncle Manasses to Holy Sepulcher at dawn and demand that he give me the accolade.”

  “You’ll do it if you’re determined,” Arslan said, “no matter what I say now.”

  “I should do it,” Baldwin said. “Did you hear what she said? As if I were a child. As if I had no voice to speak for myself.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Arslan was ready: he dropped beneath the blow, halfhearted as it was. It swung harmless over his head. Baldwin snarled and spun away.

  “Do you want it?” Arslan asked him. “Do you really want to insist on it?”

  “What harm would it do?” Baldwin shot back.

  Arslan held his tongue.

  Baldwin hissed. “Damn you,” he said.

  Arslan crossed himself to avert the curse.

  Baldwin flung himself on the bed, sprawled on his back, arm over his eyes. “Oh, God,” he said. And when Arslan still said nothing: “Yes, yes. No harm, but no good, either. It’s too hasty. The wrong person – the wrong queen – is insisting on it. It’s not at all politic.”

  Arslan applauded him gravely. “All hail the King of the Franks! Lo, he groweth wise.”

  Baldwin lowered his arm to glare at Arslan. “Are you trying to make me lose my temper?”

  “No,” said Arslan, sitting cross-legged at the great bed’s foot. When he was much younger he had been able to sleep lying across it. Now he had his own pallet in a niche, from which he could see and hear anyone who passed from the outer door; but he was still most comfortable sitting here, watching Baldwin decide not to have him hauled off to a life of slavery among the infidels. This time.

  This and every time. Baldwin was wise enough for a young man, and he tried to be just. After a while he said, “I would dearly love to provoke my mother, but this is not the best way to do it. Knighting is more than a child’s pique, or should be. I don’t know that her majesty of France understands this.”

  Oh, it was painful to be in love, and to agree with so uncharitable a judgment.

  “She doesn’t know,” Baldwin went on, “how things are here. None of them does. The world must be so much simpler in France – so much easier to understand. There are, after all, no infidels.”

  “No,” said Arslan. “Only robbers and reivers and enemies of one’s own race and nation.”

  “And Vikings?”

  Arslan frowned. “I’m not sure. Maybe they’re all gone – or turned into Normans.”

  “Same thing,” Baldwin said. He sighed. “It’s not a godly thing to say, but I’ll be glad when the Crusade is over and the foreign kings are gone back where they came from. They are so sure of themselves, you see; and so often wrong.”

  “Even about Damascus?” Arslan asked, rather recklessly.

  Baldwin’s brows knit. “If we can take Aleppo, we can take Damascus. It’s not altogether a counsel of folly.”

  “My father says it is. He says the real danger is the atabeg in Aleppo. Until we face him, we’re never out of danger.”

  “I know he says that,” Baldwin said. “He said it to me. But war is the making of choices. He said that to me, too, and far more than once. We’ve chosen as best we can. Once Damascus is ours, we’ll be strong enough, and secure enough, to face the atabeg.”

  “One hopes so,” Arslan said. “You’ll not do it as a belted knight, then.”

  “No,” said Baldwin with a flicker of wry humor. “Merely as a king.”

  Fifty-Eight

  Queen Eleanor was not pleased to be thwarted. Nor was Arslan, to be the messenger who must tell her in accents as pure as he could manage, “His majesty regrets, but he cannot honor your majesty’s wishes.”

  Eleanor had received him in the bower that she had taken for her own, that had been a reception-hall for lesser embassies. Its grandeur suited her well. As if to honor it, she had dressed in the eastern mode, sleek as a cat in flowing silks.

  She had smiled as he entered, for the servant had announced him as King Baldwin’s messenger. Perhaps the smile was a little warmer for the height and youth and fairness of him – all things that she was said to favor in a man. But when he had delivered his message, the smile died. “What, is he still in leading-strings?” She tossed her head in elegant scorn. “I had thought bett
er of him.”

  Arslan had never been quite so close to her before. It made him dizzy. Nonetheless he had wits to say, “Lady, he reckoned it politic.”

  “Politic!” She made it sound like a thing both vile and ridiculous. “What is politic about a king who clings to boyhood?”

  “A squire is hardly a boy,” Arslan said with dignity. “Lady, I am one, and no one calls me a child.”

  Ah: he had distracted her – and not to his great comfort, either. For the first time she seemed to see him, not as a pretty face and a voice echoing his king’s words, but as a human creature.

  He did not know that he wanted her to see him so. If she knew him, recognized him – what if he betrayed his puppy-passion? He would humiliate himself, and not even be granted the grace to die of it.

  She did it. She did the terrible thing. She said, “Tell me. Do you have a name?”

  He swallowed. His throat was dry. “Lady, I do. My name is Olivier, but they call me Arslan.”

  And why had he told her that?

  Because, he answered himself. He was an idiot.

  Her brows had risen. “Arslan? Is that a paynim name?”

  “Turkish, lady,” he said. “It means ‘lion.’”

  “And how did you come by a Turkish name?”

  He could run away. He could bow and babble that his king had need of him and bolt. But he was was too great a fool for that. “Turks named me, lady: my mother’s guards and servants, who had somewhat of the raising of me.”

  She looked hard at him. “You are never a Turk yourself.”

  He shook his head. “No, lady. I’m mostly a Frank. My mother—”

  “And had your father nothing to do with it?”

  “My father had not yet acknowledged me,” Arslan said – and bit his tongue, but much too late.

  She had understood. “Ah,” she said. That was all. Not saying the word, the one that had never troubled him, but if he heard it from her he would die. From her, it would matter.

  He bowed. “Lady,” he said, “I should go.”

  “Yes,” she said, but she did not dismiss him. “You are the king’s squire, yes?”

  “One of them, lady,” Arslan said.

  “You look like him,” she said.

  “People do say so, lady,” said Arslan. And because he was mad, or because he had stopped caring: “My father was never a king, though he is a knight and baron of this kingdom. I’m kin to the king, perhaps, through Adam, but hardly closer.”

  “What, not through Clovis or Merovech? Or perhaps some Armenian princeling?”

  “My mother is half a Saracen,” Arslan said. “I suppose I’m closer kin to the Caliph in Baghdad.”

  She laughed with startling mirth and clapped her hands. “Oh, sir! You are delightful. Has he been hiding you, that king of yours?”

  “Only with his shadow, lady,” Arslan said.

  She laughed again. “Clever, and beautiful, too. They breed wonderful young men here. Would he give you to me if I asked?”

  “I don’t think so, lady,” Arslan said.

  “Shall we wager on it?”

  Arslan gasped for air; and prayed that she did not see. “I don’t think I would like that, lady,” he said.

  Her brows drew together. He braced for the storm of her wrath, but it forbore to break. “Do you not like me, young lion?”

  “Lady,” he said as steadily as he could, “you are rather beyond likes or dislikes. I find you a marvel of the world. But I belong to my king.”

  “Loyal,” she mused, “and beautiful, and witty and wise – it is you who are the marvel. May I borrow you for an hour an evening, to liven the dullness of the march to Damascus?”

  “That is for my king to say,” Arslan said.

  “Then I shall ask him,” Eleanor said.

  Then at last she dismissed him – but not, as she said, for long.

  He could hope that she would forget, though that was a dim hope; or more likely that she would be too preoccupied with duties and pleasures to remember one distraction among many. Half the young men of the High Court were trailing after her already. He would vanish among them, and gratefully too.

  * * *

  The King and Queen of France left Jerusalem none too soon, in not a few people’s estimation. Melisende, who as always remained behind to rule the kingdom while her son led the armies to war, was unfailingly yet coldly courteous in the final feast, and again in the grand farewell as they all marched out through David’s Gate. She did not linger after the high ones had passed; when Arslan looked back down the road, the glittering golden figure was gone from the gate.

  It was a pity, rather, that all these kings had not taken a greater fancy to one another. Emperor Conrad and the Byzantine emperor, it was said, had found a bond of true spirits, and become friends. But there were no friendships made here.

  One did not need love or even liking in order to wage war. Mutual respect and oaths sworn in common would do very well.

  The French rode out singing: one of the great hymns among the king’s following, and a song of the troubadours among those about the queen. Baldwin, whom courtesy had set beside King Louis in the gate and for some distance thereafter, had let his fine Arabian palfrey run ahead of Louis’ more stolid mount, taking with him a fair fraction of the young and the eager. Their song was a war-song, deep-voiced and exuberant.

  The stream of pilgrims, that never failed, parted to allow the army passage. They rode and marched through scattered columns of travelers from every country in Christendom. A ragged cheer followed them, prayers and blessings and demands for a blessing from one of the kings or the splendid queen come out anew in her Amazon armor.

  Baldwin was in high spirits. He always was when he could escape from his mother to do what he loved best, which was to lead an army to war; but this was greater than any he had led before. It would, once they gathered in Tiberias, be the greatest army that had ever ridden under the cross of Crusade.

  The True Cross rode with them, veiled now among the priests who flocked about King Louis. Everyone knew where it was, even with its jeweled splendors hidden. There was a conspiracy, as it were, to guard it and watch over it, and to protect it from any who might threaten it.

  Arslan, for his part, was content to keep his place in Baldwin’s shadow. He was oddly fearless. The terror that had always shaken him on the march to war seemed to have lost itself somewhere – perhaps in Queen Eleanor’s eyes. He did not particularly care what became of him, if only he could ride as he rode now, with her behind, well warded among her knights and her armored ladies.

  That was love, he thought. To know her for what she was, and to know war for what it was, too, and none of it mattered. She was there. That was the one thing, the only thing, the thing that made the day bright and the night blessed.

  And if he was not careful he would turn into a poet, than which was nothing worse in the world.

  “What are you grinning at?” Baldwin demanded of him.

  He tried to bite it back, but it kept erupting in spite of him. He shrugged. “Everything,” he said. “Just… everything.”

  Baldwin’s sudden grin echoed his own. “Yes. Yes, isn’t it?”

  It did not make sense, and yet it did. They clasped hands across the stretch of singing air, set spurs to horses’ sides, sprang together into an exuberant gallop.

  * * *

  They passed out of sight of Jerusalem, rode over Jordan and so northward to the muster at Tiberias. As they rode they met lords and knights and men-at-arms riding likewise, who joined themselves to the greater army, so that as it went on it swelled like a river in spring. The whole armed might of Outremer was moving toward the city by the Lake of Galilee.

  Already as they came to Tiberias they found a vast camp spread along the shores of the lake. The Germans were there before them, and the levies from the north and west of the kingdom, Hospitallers and Templars, priests and prelates, monks in their robes and pilgrims in theirs, and whole flocks and herds
of camp-followers, peddlers, sellers of every luxury or necessity that a soldier of God was likely to desire.

  In their new tents that the Templars had made for them for God’s charity, the French made camp in the place that had been left for them. It was some distance from the Germans, with Baldwin’s camp between; and some few idlers quibbled as to which held the right and which the left hand – whether one should consider the ordering of armies as seen from the lake or as seen from the land.

  Arslan was mildly glad that people had time to be foolish. It meant that they had strength to spare, to fight for and win Damascus. He, who had a duty to perform, could only walk on without offering commentary.

  Baldwin, well and quickly settled in his camp, had ordered a feast for the kings and princes and the commanders of the army. It would be laid on the hill above the lake, under silken canopies set to catch the breezes that blew off the water. This was not a remarkably hot summer as summers went in this part of the world, but the folk of the West had never known its like. Those who had sense had flung themselves into the lake, disporting themselves with shouts and cries and glorious splashings.

  Arslan would have given much to be among them. He had had to settle for a swift bath in the king’s tent, and a new shirt and tunic – not his best; those he was saving for the feast; but presentable enough, and the tunic was silk. It was fit, he was sure, to show itself before a queen.

  * * *

  Eleanor was not among the tents. Passersby directed Arslan through the camp to the water’s edge. There a pavilion had been set up, and a great screen of silken fabric like a living, billowing wall. Sounds of splashing and laughter beyond it made clear what Arslan had already guessed: that the queen and her ladies were taking advantage of the water’s coolness.

  Arslan’s whole body yearned toward it. There were men in the water wherever he looked, sporting like fishes, leaping and laughing. Of the women he saw nothing: their wall concealed them perfectly. Not even a shadow showed itself through the silk.