Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  The pope in Rome might believe it, but Arslan found it difficult. Easier to credit that she might agree to remain bound to Louis – and that, she would not do. She kept a cool distance, was seen with him only in public and only as often as she absolutely must. Her household kept well apart from his. They had no more in common than a lord and lady of separate demesnes.

  She would behave as discreetly as woman could, bridle her enthusiasms, mute her taste for strong wine and bright colors and rich things, if it would win her freedom. It said much for her strength of will that she could conduct herself so far against her nature.

  She even forbore to surround herself with flocks of beautiful young men. They came, begged, were turned away. Rome must be given no cause to accuse her. She would be as pure of fleshly sin as was possible for a woman to be.

  And yet she did not cut herself off completely from the world or from the beauties that dwelt in it. So Arslan discovered one day near the end of Advent, as he was coming back to the Tower of David with a company of the king’s squires. They had been determining which of several taverns served the best beer, and were well gone in it, too.

  Arslan was not greatly fond of beer. Ale was none too ill, but he much preferred wine. He was the most sober of them therefore, and the steadiest on his feet, as a page in French livery accosted him under the arch of the gate. The others tipped the brat on his head and left him in the water-butt, but Arslan plucked him out wet and spluttering and shivering noisily, for the wind blew cold through the great gate.

  “Here,” Arslan said, flinging his own cloak over the narrow shoulders. “What are you doing here? Did you get lost? Your king’s praying in a church somewhere, I’m sure.”

  The boy shot him a look under wet curls. “I’m not the king’s man,” he said through chattering teeth – clearly, too, as if he had done it often before. In France maybe it was common sport for squires to dip pages in icy water-barrels. “I belong to her majesty, and her majesty wants you to come and see her.”

  “Does she now?” said Arslan. “And why is that?”

  “She just says come,” the boy said.

  Arslan had to stop to discover what he felt. Joy? Annoyance? Amusement, even? He had been in Jerusalem a week and more, and never a word from the Queen of France, never a glance on the two occasions when she had dined with the King and the Queen of Jerusalem. She had forgotten him, he had thought. He did not blame her for it. She was a queen. Queens knew so many people, saw so many faces. Why should she remember his of all those she had seen?

  Now it seemed she had remembered. He had duties in court, but not for a while. He was presentable enough. He nodded to the page. “Take me to her, then.”

  * * *

  Eleanor must have been traveling about the shrines again. She was dressed in grey, with a white veil like a nun. Yet as Arslan was led in to her, she let fall the veil. One of her maids loosed her hair from its plait and began to comb it with an ivory comb. She must know how well dove-grey became her, with her white skin and her golden hair.

  She did not look demure at all, though Arslan had seen her cultivating it where the world could see. Here, attended by a handful of maids and a page or two, she eased into her old manner: bold, bright, a little reckless.

  “How it must gall you,” Arslan said, “to rein yourself in so tightly.”

  “It’s rather refreshing, actually,” she said. “One wearies of being always outrageous – stretching one’s ingenuity to find a new fashion, a new game, a new extravagance. It’s almost restful to play the pious lady.”

  “But it is play,” Arslan said. “Isn’t it? No more.”

  She crossed herself. “I do believe in God,” she said, “and in His Holy Mother, and in His Church, and all His saints. I am a middling fair Christian, though I’ll never be the conspicuous saint that my husband is.”

  “Conspicuous,” said Arslan, “yes.”

  She laughed. “I think you see why I summoned you. Everyone else is being frightfully dull. Even the young men – if they can’t pant at my feet like a pack of eager hounds, they can’t imagine what to do.”

  “They could pray,” Arslan said, “or visit the holy places.”

  “That does pall,” she said, “after a while.” She sat back in her chair. “I didn’t bring you here simply to provoke a scandal. I have a favor to ask.”

  Arslan held his tongue. For all his insouciance, his quick words, his seeming ease in standing before her, he was quaking within, trembling with emotions too numerous to name. One, that he was sure of, was astonishment.

  “I do like it,” said Eleanor, “that you never say foolish things. You’re always to the point.”

  It was lack of imagination, Arslan forbore to say. He never thought to babble until the moment was past.

  “I should like,” she said, “to make a pilgrimage to Bethlehem for the holy day.”

  “You need me for that?” Arslan said. “Surely your royal husband—”

  “I don’t want to go with him,” Eleanor said. “I had rather hoped in fact that your king would be of a mind to do the same. And, perhaps, his lady mother.”

  “It’s not usually done,” Arslan said.

  “Can’t it be done at all?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose. Her majesty has done it once or twice. It’s a frightful crush, even for a queen.”

  “I should like a frightful crush,” Eleanor said.

  “I’ll ask,” Arslan said. “I promise nothing.”

  “That will do,” said Eleanor. She paused. “Don’t you find Jerusalem rather a drab place? Even with all the holiness?”

  “It’s not as beautiful as Damascus,” Arslan said, “or as lively as Acre. But drab? I hardly know. I grew up here. To me it’s home.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Oh, it’s drab. Except for the golden dome, which you can only see if you stand in the right place and look up, it’s all sand and dust and barrenness. Most of the churches are ugly, and Holy Sepulcher the ugliest of all. Mary Mother! You should see Rome, even as broken as it is. Or Paris, which for all its squalor is vividly alive. And Poitiers or Toulouse, Bordeaux or Carcassonne… oh, I miss them! I’ll be heart-glad to visit them again.”

  “Soon,” Arslan said.

  She reached before he could move, and seized his hand. “You should come,” she said. “You should see. Isn’t your father an Angevin? He has lands, yes, that he hasn’t seen in half a lifetime? Haven’t you ever longed to look on them, to know what they are like?”

  “Often,” he said. He could not stop staring at his hand, that she held so tightly, almost tight enough to bruise. Her fingers were strong and warm, fire-warm, though the air in the room was chill. She was never cold, was Eleanor. The heat of her humours warmed her to the heart.

  “Come to France when we go,” Eleanor said. “I’ll make you my knight. You’ll have lands, your father’s if you like – I’ll arrange it. I can do anything in France while I’m still its queen. And when that’s ended, I’ll still be a great duchess. You’ll not suffer in my service.”

  Arslan drew a careful breath. “That… is a generous offer.”

  “Do consider it,” she said. “You’d be most welcome. The ladies would love you. So handsome. So exotic, with your paynim name.”

  “Turkish,” Arslan said mildly.

  “Paynim,” she said. “No one in France knows or cares for the sects and factions of the infidel. Aren’t they all the same?”

  “No,” said Arslan.

  “You see?” said Eleanor. “Exotic. Different. Intriguing.”

  “I don’t think,” he said, “that I want to be a dancing bear.”

  “Then be a mysterious stranger,” she said, undismayed. “But come to France.”

  All the possible objections marshalled themselves in clamoring ranks. His king, his kingdom, his kin – so many things to hold him here. So much that he had still to do.

  And yet—

  “I’ll consider it,” he said, and bowed, and let hims
elf be dismissed.

  Sixty-Seven

  Queen Eleanor’s whim took hold of them all, once Arslan had conveyed it to Baldwin. Baldwin did not ask why Arslan was playing messenger – which was perhaps a blessing; or perhaps not. The king was in a mood to be distracted, and a royal progress to David’s city, on short enough notice that the stewards and chancellors wailed in unison like a chorus of the damned, well suited his fancy.

  His mother did not choose to involve herself in the expedition. “Someone should keep the holy day in Jerusalem,” she said. She spoke without expression, and yet Baldwin flushed as if at a rebuke.

  It did not deter him. Quite the opposite. He had been chafing at the bit since he returned from Damascus. His royal duties were plentiful, but always there was the queen regent in her chair beside him, permitting him to perform them. If she would remain in Jerusalem, he would happily travel to Bethlehem for the feast of the Nativity.

  They were too much like Eleanor and Louis for Arslan’s comfort. But how could a son divorce his mother?

  Arslan went to Bethlehem with his king. The French queen kindly did not vex him with attention. Her knights had all turned pilgrim, some even barefoot and walking on a road worn smooth by long years of similarly minded travellers. They whose chiefest delight had been in love-songs that would make a guardsman blush, devoted themselves to the singing of hymns.

  They were a pretty company, marching slowly toward David’s city in fine blue weather. There were litters for the ladies, led horses for those knights and princes who wearied of walking. More than one pair of feet blistered and bled, tender as they must be from a life of good boots and level floors and no pressing need to leave the comfort of a saddle.

  A Turk might call them fools, neither true ascetics – not with the fine white bread they ate in camp of an evening, or the silken pavilions with their braziers and their crowds of servants – nor honest martyrs to their faith. This was a game they played, no more.

  It pleased their fancy. It freed Baldwin from his mother’s choking presence, and let him command his own people without recourse to his queen regent. He would hunt out another war, Arslan thought, though the kingdom was hardly in condition for any such thing after the debacle of Damascus.

  Meanwhile he would journey to Bethlehem to see the Lord Christ born again. No star guided them, but the old and deep-trodden road and the great slow-surging river of pilgrims.

  Even Eleanor was moved by it, perhaps. She was unwontedly quiet. She who found Jerusalem dull must find Bethlehem a squalid little village grown bloated with humanity. Little of its holiness was left amid the sellers of relics and indulgences, the clashing clamor of prayers, the clotted masses of people. For her there was room in the inn, a house too small for all her following, so that they must crowd together or find lodging elsewhere, even camp in the fields if no house or inn would open to them.

  Baldwin chose his tent and a field with a well beside it, a low hill and an olive grove within a bowshot of the city’s walls. The stream of pilgrims flowed wide of it, nor did many wander there to trouble the guards or the horses. It was almost quiet, and remarkably pleasant.

  For the French it was another of the wonders of Outremer: to be here in this place in this season, living the words that they had heard spoken and sung since they were children. Even Eleanor felt it: Arslan saw how her eyes went wide and lost their expression of worldly wisdom. She was as wonderstruck as any of them, and letting herself indulge in it.

  Arslan wondered if he would be as greatly moved in Rome, or whether his having been born and raised in the Holy Land had rendered him impervious to the lure of a lesser sanctity. Here in Bethlehem in the clear cold midnight, hearing once more the old, old words, the story so familiar he could recite it with the priests, he was not transported as so many of the westerners seemed to be; but neither was he untouched by the mystery of it. The flicker of candles, the scent of old stone, the sweet voices chanting, all mingled into a kind of joy; a brightness of the spirit that lingered even on the dark cold return to the camp, and touched him with warmth as he woke on the dawn of Christmas morning.

  * * *

  They did not linger long in Bethlehem. Three days only; then they returned to Jerusalem for the rest of Christmas Court.

  Amid the feasts and the fêtes and the dancing, the barons of the High Court met in hall to consider the affairs of the kingdom. Baldwin sat again beside his mother, again in tightly contained amity, yielding to her precedence as queen regent, saying nothing out of turn. Arslan reflected then what he had not noticed in Bethlehem: that there, Baldwin had been at ease. Here, there was a stillness in him, a tension buried deep yet still perceptible. Someday it would break.

  But not quite yet. The escape from Jerusalem, however brief, had loosened the bowstring. It was no longer quite taut enough to snap.

  Arslan, watching his king and therefore the king’s mother, paid little attention to the proceedings of the Court. There were petitioners as always, lords and commons both. One of the barons wished to marry, and asked the blessing of king and queen regent. His lady-to-be had come with him, a blushing bride a good decade older than he, but comely enough and splendidly endowed with lands and possessions. Arslan hoped that he could marry as well, if he ever did – if any woman would have him.

  While he maundered as a man could do whose duty was simply to stand at the king’s back and look formidable, a new petitioner had risen from among the barons. He was a tall man, fair brown hair gone mostly silver, face more honest than handsome, with an old scar on its cheek, and thinned still, a little, with old suffering. For a moment Arslan saw him as a stranger, a baron whose name he knew and no more.

  Then he was Lord Bertrand in his proper person, royal arms-master, knight of the Cross, sometime father. He did not often rise to speak in this part of the Court; his place was more often amid the making of war and the ordering of the kingdom. Personal petitions were rare; Arslan could not remember even one, not in all the years that he had stood guard over Baldwin in the High Court.

  Bertrand spoke well when he did choose to speak, a clear voice meant to carry. Arslan did not listen with particular attention. It was something for Beausoleil – some matter of title to the barony, that set the clerks to scribbling.

  His own name brought him full alert, tensed as if for battle. “That squire named Olivier,” Bertrand was saying, “whom men call Arslan, who stands at the king’s right hand, whom no man has yet claimed as son or heir – I claim him. I name him my son. He is my heir, and will inherit when I am dead.”

  Arslan had waited years for those words. Now they were said, without warning, without a word of preparation, in front of the whole High Court and the French king and queen and such of the French nobility as had troubled to attend the court. He stood flatfooted, gaping like an idiot, with every eye upon him, and never a word in his head.

  Only anger. He remembered, rather wryly, how King Fulk had never been able to say the right words or do the right thing in front of Melisende. Bertrand seemed to have the same art, or lack of it, with Arslan.

  He was not even looking at his son. His eyes were on the queen, who had heard him with apparent approval. Indeed she said, “That is well done, my lord, and not before time.”

  It was difficult to tell, but perhaps Bertrand flushed. “Majesty, I confess, I left it far too long. But not, I hope, too late.”

  Then at last he did turn his eyes on Arslan. Arslan did not know what expression he wore. None, he could hope. No sign of the rage that mounted till he was like to burst with it – the more for that people were smiling, applauding, cheering him and his fool of a father. It could not be that they liked Arslan as well as that; that they even, in a fashion, loved him. Lord Bertrand was well known, well liked, much admired. Of course they would approve whomever he chose for an heir, were it a bastard fostered in the king’s nursery or a howling infidel.

  Some idiot had got a cheer going, and a mob of them sweeping toward him, plucking him from behind
the king, lifting him up on their shoulders. When he fought, they only laughed and held on tighter. When he cursed them, they drowned him out with a greater excess of delight.

  They thought him modest. They called him shy. Not one of them believed that he would more happily have buried himself under the Holy Sepulcher than be given this grand laud and welcome.

  He would not kill his father. No, he would not be so kind. He won free at last, struggled to stand on his own feet in front of the king and the queen regent. Melisende smiled down at him. Baldwin was graver: he knew enough perhaps to recognize the thunder in Arslan’s eyes.

  “We welcome you,” said Melisende, “to the High Court – and gladly too, and with all goodwill.”

  He did not doubt her sincerity. She had been good to him always, fond of him in her distant way. She would be well content that this most recalcitrant of her barons, the one who would never take a wife even at her bidding, had named an heir at last.

  “Majesty,” Arslan said after a pause. “My lord king, my lady regent. I… thank you for your generosity. But I do not wish to leave the service in which I have been since I was small.”

  “No more will you,” Baldwin said. “Though you should go to Beausoleil for a while. Its people should learn to know you. You’ll be ruling them, after all, when the time comes.”

  “Not for long and long,” Arslan said grimly.

  “Indeed,” said Melisende, crossing herself. “We pray so. We are very glad to see you given your due, and more than pleased to set our seal on it.”

  Arslan bit his tongue. He could – should – have refused it all, turned his back on his father, cast away this gift that was indeed given too late. But they smiled so, and were so happy; so content with the rightness of it.

  He said nothing therefore, only bowed low to each of them and begged their leave to go. They must have thought that he needed time to master his joy: they granted what he asked, smiling still, heaping blessings on his head.