Bertrand moved by inches. He was too weak for aught else. He was sitting upright already, bolstered in cushions; he breathed easier so. Little by little he slid his legs over the side of the bed. They felt as heavy as the beams overhead, and as lifeless.
He bade the fear be still. He was not a paralytic. He was weak, that was all, and wounded in the side, like the maimed king of the stories that the folk of Provence and Aquitaine had been wont to sing in camp of an evening. That one had suffered for his pride, too, and his myriad sins.
Bertrand’s feet touched the floor. It was cool – he had forgotten how cool tiles could be on bare feet. He had to pause, to breathe as best he could, to still the spinning world. When he could almost breathe and the world was almost steady, he ventured to stand.
His knees buckled, but he clung to the bedpost. Patience, he admonished himself. He had been guarded like a prisoner, bound to his bed as to a rack. And for all the wisdom and the irascible excellence of the king’s physician, Bertrand had begun to hate this confinement. Better to burst the wound and die, than to lie like a cripple.
He thanked God for the bedpost, and for his deathgrip on it. But he was on his feet. Reeling, staggering, half blind with dizziness, but he was standing. He might even, if all the saints assisted, venture a step. One feeble shuffle of the foot. Knees wobbling appallingly, breath a gasp, wound stabbing till he nearly fainted with it. But he was erect, more or less. He was walking, or thinking of it. He – would – take up his pallet and walk. Was this not Jerusalem? Had not God wrought miracles here?
For today, for this moment, it was miracle enough that he had stood. Nor, as he fell back to the bed and lay half lifeless, had he opened the wound. Much. The pain had an almost salubrious edge. It kept him awake when he would happily have fallen into the dark.
Every day, if they would ever leave him alone, he would do this. He would get up. He would walk. He would make himself strong. He would spite Yusuf. He would gratify Arslan. He would heal, or die trying.
* * *
A month, Arslan had promised himself. A month at his father’s side. And then, if nothing had altered, he would withdraw to Mount Ghazal.
He had not reckoned that Bertrand would have the same thought. Beausoleil was too far, and would demand too much of him. But Mount Ghazal that was his sister’s holding, where he had always been welcome – yes, he announced, he would go there. And Arslan, if he would, would ride escort.
In the end they all went, father, mother, and son, Helena’s Turks and their wives and such of their children as could not fend for themselves: a whole caravan descending on Lady Richildis at the end of her confinement. Helena did not think of it so; she pointed out with some acerbity that a woman should bear her child within the arms of her family.
And, it seemed, all of her family’s servants and dependents; but Arslan did not venture to say so. He was disgruntled. He had hoped to escape alone, to find a little peace if he could. Instead all his troubles went with him.
* * *
They came to Mount Ghazal on a fine day in autumn, warm still but no longer with the fierce edge of summer. It had rained not long ago, unusual for this season; the dust was not as chokingly thick as it might have been, and the leaves of the trees, such as were left, were washed almost clean.
Mount Ghazal had grown beautiful since first its lady came to it. It was a green and pleasant place, watered by deep wells, rich and prosperous in these days. Kutub had kept its young men alive even through the terrible winnowing of Damascus, and brought them back, every one, to their wives and sisters and daughters. They were there to greet the arrivals, the women with garlands of flowers, the men with shouts and cheers for the Lord of Beausoleil and – yes – for his son, too. Bertrand, riding unhappily in a litter, managed to sit up for them, to smile and acknowledge them with a bow and a lift of the hand.
Michael Bryennius awaited them in the castle’s gate. His lady was within, too great with child to stand for long in the sun, but eager as he said to see them. He was always gracious, was Michael Bryennius. He led them through a great court and a lesser one and one no greater than a cloister, brilliant with flowers, and thence to a hall that must be the new bower of which Arslan had heard: the people’s gift to their lady, built while she was away.
It was lovely, splendid with tiles in the manner of the infidels, blue and gold and white. A fountain played in the court in front of it. Its doors were open to let in the sun and the warmth, its high windows likewise. It looked, with its slender pillars, as if it were made of light.
Lady Richildis reclined in the midst of it, stretched on a divan like an eastern lady. But she was hardly idle. There were women about her, stitching and weaving and writing in books. She herself had a basket of needlework, though she seemed to have put it aside some time since.
She was vast indeed with the child, but it seemed not to have drained her as babies sometimes did. Her cheeks were full, her color excellent. Her eyes seemed a little tired, but the light in them was as bright as one could ask for. She smiled and held out her hands to them all. “How wonderful,” she said. “How splendid to see you!”
Lady Richildis never said such things unless she meant them. Arslan, walking somewhat ahead of his mother and of his father carried in a chair, knelt to kiss her hand as if she had been a queen. She laughed at him for it, breathlessly, drew him to her and kissed him on the forehead as she had done when he was small. As he had done then, he blushed and ducked his head and felt like an idiot. But not such an idiot as would have been glad to sink beneath the earth. No; a happy fool, ridiculously glad to be in her presence again.
He had always been a little in love with his aunt. She was beautiful even now, with her slender body all gone to shapelessness, and her hair hidden under a veil, and those shadows of weariness under her fine grey eyes. She welcomed Helena with a brief, close embrace, and her brother with no evident shock, though this thin and weakened man with his hair gone all suddenly grey could be nothing like the Bertrand she remembered. “We’ll talk the days away,” she promised them. “But first, rest, and wash away the dust of the road. There’s sherbet for you, wine, whatever delicacies you can think of – only ask and they’ll be brought to you.”
“Peacocks’ tongues?” Arslan asked, facetious.
“I’m sure cook can find them,” Richildis said, “if you can’t live without them.”
Arslan bowed again, glad after all that he had come here. Here was heart’s ease. Here was comfort and kin, and relief, a little, from his sorrows. All in a pair of grey eyes and a well-remembered smile.
Sixty-Four
Richildis was brought to bed somewhat before her time – not unexpected, as great with the child as she had grown. She admitted to no fear. The midwife, who had been birthing babies in the village since long before Richildis herself was born, professed no anxiety. She did make haste to the castle once the summons reached her, but that was only prudent; Richildis was her liege lady.
A woman forgot from child to child the precise length and intensity of birthing. It was one of God’s more pointed mercies. In the midst of it she had little choice but to endure. She could not stop it. She could slow it, but what profit was there in that? If she could make it go swifter, she would. She could certainly curse the man who had caused her to be in this condition, though Richildis was not as far gone as that.
He sat beside her, gripping her hands. The pain of it was a blessed thing. It kept her mind off the pain in her belly. She could not voice what she feared: that these were twins again, and that one or both might not be born alive. The midwife said not, that it was only one child, but midwives had been in error before.
The hours stretched, counted in intervals of pain and painlessness. Michael Bryennius remained with her, and Helena quiet in a corner with a book and a bit of embroidery. The maids did turn and turn about.
The pains had begun after morning mass. They went on long after compline and into the quiet of the night. Richildis drowsed as s
he could, in between battles. When she was awake she walked, leaning on Michael Bryennius or on Helena or on the midwife. Sometimes, late, when even Helena was asleep, it was Arslan offering his arm, not speaking, simply being there.
She wondered then in her fog of pain and tiredness: when had he grown so tall? He was a man, as tall as his father. The cheek she brushed with her hand to thank him was rough with the bristle of beard, though fair hair on fair skin was difficult to see. She could remember when he was hardly older than this child who struggled so fiercely to be born.
He was there with her, holding her arm, when the strong pain struck, the one she had been waiting for: the battering down of the gate. Her water was long since broken. There was nothing left for the child but to be born.
She caught at Arslan, half-falling against him. He made to sweep her up, but she resisted with what little strength she had. “No,” she gasped. “No, the stool, quickly!” Thinking as she said it that the midwife was gone, to the garderobe, to bed, who knew? And Helena was asleep, and Michael Bryennius had disappeared, and her maids were none of them to be seen. There was only this boy growing big-eyed as the truth struck him, but too brave to run away. He blanched but held his ground.
And then there was no thought in her at all except to expel this insistent burden in her belly, this core of blood-black pain. She was aware through a fog of hands gripping hers, and of bearing down, and of the hands vanishing and a young voice gasping, “It’s coming! God’s feet, what do I do?”
“Catch it,” she tried to say. She did not know if she succeeded.
“God,” he said, pure heartfelt prayer. “God in – Oh!”
She would have laughed if she had had breath for it. Such an expression; such astonishment. Such a small red struggling screaming thing in those big hands, and the cord glistening between.
And the midwife was there, snipping the cord, tying it, doing what must be done, all while he held the baby. It – her. A girl. A daughter. Only one after all; a robust child but no giant, and no twin, either. Richildis’ womb was safely, securely emptied.
* * *
Arslan held the baby for a long time. People kept coming. The midwife, the maids, Michael Bryennius cursing the chance that had sent him out just then and failed to fetch him back before his daughter was born. He did not take the baby, no more than anyone else had. He came to stare and marvel and be amazed, but turned quickly to his wife.
She insisted and the midwife agreed that all was well. But there was a great deal of blood. More blood than on a battlefield, and more terrible, because they so loved the one who shed it.
And all the while they dealt with the blood, Arslan held the baby. She had been bathed, at least, and wrapped in a swaddling. The cradle was waiting for her. He was in no particular haste to set her in it.
He had birthed foals before. Lambs, kids, a calf or two. Puppies, kittens. But never a baby. Never before this.
She was such a little wizened thing to have cost so much. And yet, so great a marvel. So beautiful, after all. Was she not her mother’s child?
He knew what it was to be in love. This was different. It was fiercer, less content just to be. He could stand apart and adore his beloved, but for this one he would be in the thick of any fight, would defend her though he died for it. For her he wanted to do something.
He could do little tonight but lay her in her cradle, and later, when the midwife beckoned, bring her to her mother to nurse. That was much later, after Richildis had slept, and her husband beside her as if he could atone for his failure to be with her when the child was born. Arslan had had no sleep in him. The long custom of keeping vigil over his father had served him in good stead. He sat by the cradle, quietly content. When the midwife called to him, he started. He had half dreamed that he was here all alone again, he and the newborn child.
* * *
They named her Zenobia, because, her mother said, she was born in a foreign land. It was a great deal of name for a small person, but she bore it with fortitude. She was a quiet baby, yet strong. She seldom cried, and never fussed or fretted. Mostly, those first days of her life, she lay gravely regarding the world, testing the limbs that were so new to her, nursing and sleeping in what seemed equal measure.
She had a nurse, of course. All noble babies did. Her mother’s milk was scant in any event, and dried too quickly; but Yasmin, who had delivered a round brown dumpling of a baby only the day before Zenobia was born, had milk enough for multitudes. She was glad to share it with her lady’s daughter.
They were all strangely careful of her, as if they remembered the two who had died. But children died; that was the way of the world, and God’s will in it, for who knew what purpose. One could harden one’s heart toward the child till it had grown out of childhood, or love it regardless, and mourn when it died.
Richildis could not be cold to the child of her body, more than her husband could, or any of her kin. It was not in them. Every morning they prayed for the little one, and every night before they slept, that she would live and grow strong; that she would come to womanhood.
Maybe the prayers helped her, and the love that went with them. Maybe God would be merciful this time, and not take her to Himself. No one could know, nor be sure of aught but that she lived now and seemed to thrive, nursed well and slept well and grew with the swiftness of the very young. In only a little while she was no longer a red and wizened monkey of a creature but a pink-and-white infant with wide eyes that would be dark when she was older, and dark curls, but her mother’s lovely pale skin. She would be a beauty, they all thought; such a face as could break a man’s heart.
* * *
They brought her to Bertrand since he could not come to her. He who had been denied his son was given the gift of a sister’s daughter, not as burden or duty but as simple joy. She was not afraid of him as the servants’ children were, frightened by his size and his gauntness and his pale face. She would lie in his arms, sleeping or regarding him gravely, with a hand wrapped round one of his fingers.
He was not as weak as they all thought. Not strong enough yet to walk far, nor steady enough to confess to the hours he spent in the nights, dragging himself up, shutting down the pain in his side, walking from bed to wall and back again, over and over. But to Zenobia he could speak of it, cradling her while her nurse and her kin were elsewhere. She listened; no matter if she understood. She who could not walk at all yet must wonder why he was so determined on it.
“And somehow,” he said to her, “I have to find a way to ride; to get a horse saddled, to get out. I could ride, I think, better than I can walk. If I can sit a horse, I’ll be a man again. I’ll be strong. I’ll finally – after all this time, I’ll be alive.”
She gurgled and sucked on her fist. She was too young to smile yet, the women said, but he could have sworn that her lips had curved at the sight of him.
When her nurse came to retrieve her, he feigned weariness so that they would all leave him alone again. To walk he needed nothing but solitude. To ride – that needed more. A groom at least, and servants to carry him down to the stableyard, and more difficult than either, to persuade the hovering flock of his kin that they should both allow it and forbear from interfering in it.
They would keep him bound to his bed until he died of pure frustration. And surely it was winter, and there were days of chill rain, raw winds, even snow; but many a morning he would wake to clear cold sunlight and remember the feel of wind in his face, and all but weep because he must breathe nothing but the warm rank air of this castle.
There was one whom he could ask, whom he could trust to understand – but that one of them all demanded the most of his pride. They were not quarrelling, if they ever had been, but neither were they at ease with one another. Arslan still had not forgiven his father, perhaps never would.
But he would understand. The longer Bertrand endured his confinement, the more difficult it became to cling to his stubbornness. And after a full week of sun, when it was almost u
nnaturally warm, so much so that flowers were blooming in the garden outside his window, he drew a breath and called the servant and bade him fetch Arslan.
It was a long while before Arslan came. Long enough that Bertrand knew he had been slighted, or that the boy had gone away and was in no haste to return. Yet at last he came, bringing with him a gust of wind and a scent of the open air and a strong suggestion of horses. “You were out riding,” Bertrand said by way of greeting. He had not meant it to sound like an accusation, but from the tightening of Arslan’s face, it was no less.
Bertrand cursed himself for a fool. Already they were at odds, and they had not been together for more than a moment.
But the sun was shining, and Bertrand was like to go mad with yearning for it. He forced himself to be humble, though it cost him high. “Your pardon, please, I beg you. I’m shut in here, and my temper is not all that it could be.”
“No,” Arslan said helpfully. “It’s not. And here you were talking of taking the cowl. Could you live in a cloister, then, if you can’t bear even this light confinement?”
Insolent. Bertrand bit his tongue and steeled himself not to answer that; not to take the bait so temptingly offered. “I need you to help me,” he said – and that was as difficult a thing as he had ever said. “I don’t think I can live if I have to live bedridden. If I can get out – if I can find my way into a saddle—”
“You’ll fall right out of it,” Arslan said. Oh, no: he was giving not one hair’s breadth. Could he truly be as angry as that?
It seemed that he could be. Bertrand set his teeth and persevered. Not in words this time. In rising. In standing without falling. In walking toward him.
It was gratifying to see that hard young face wake suddenly into expression: into pure astonishment. And joy? Not likely. And yet perhaps, after all…
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