Her sisters, even the holy abbess who could well have admonished her in the name of humility, kept as silent as the rest of them. Melisende would do as she would do, which was no more than she had always done.
At last he came, he and his knights and his men-at-arms and half the city of Jerusalem. He found the ladies standing in the court, no canopy over them, no protection against the sun. Some of them would be bathing hands and faces for months in asses’ milk to repair the damage of that day; but none ventured to complain. It was a show of defiance, a company of women clad as starkly as nuns, facing all these men in their panoply of war.
Baldwin dismounted from his horse just within the court, walked forward without ceremony, and stood in front of his mother. He did not bow, although he inclined his head. “Lady,” he said.
“Majesty,” said Melisende. She did not choke on the word. No one who knew her would have expected her to.
He was at a loss, perhaps. But he who had been blooded in war while he was still a child, was never one to fall short in a battle of wills. He said, “It’s ended, then.”
“Yes,” said Melisende.
“And do you surrender?”
Melisende drew a breath: Richildis saw how her breast rose and fell. “I surrender,” she said.
“Unconditionally,” Baldwin said.
“Unconditionally,” said Melisende without a tremor.
There was a pause. She knew what she must do; they all did. But she did not at once move to do it. Richildis was sure for a long moment that she would not; that after all she would defy him.
Even Melisende was not so great a fool. At length, with calm that must be the walls and bars of a great rage, she sank down, bowing low and low, as a vassal bows before her king.
He looked down at her, bowed before him at last. No light of glee shone in his eyes. No grief either, to be sure; but he was keeping his gladness well in hand.
She raised her hands, palms together as if in prayer. He clasped them between his own. Her face, lifted to his, was stark white. “You are my liege lord,” she said clearly, as a brave man takes cautery of a wound: because to flinch from it would but worsen the pain. “I am your vassal. I pledge to you my faith, my heart and hand, my life and limb and earthly worship against all who may stand against you. So do I swear, by this relic of the True Cross that never leaves my body.”
He touched the reliquary that hung about her neck, softly and with reverence, raised her then and kissed her on both cheeks as a lord kisses his new-sworn liegeman. “I am your liege lord,” he said. “You are my vassal. I pledge to you my faith and my protection, my heart and hand, life and limb and earthly worship, against all who may stand against you. So do I swear, by this relic of the True Cross and by the Holy Sepulcher.”
She bowed again, sinking down to her knees. Yet it was not, for all of that, defeat. Her back was straight. Her eyes were level. She had been forced to this. But when at last she did it, she did it of her own will, because she chose to do it.
She had raised defiance to a high art, art so subtle that it clothed itself in humility. Richildis wondered if Baldwin had wits to see it. Perhaps. He was, after all, Melisende’s son.
Seventy-Eight
“And that was all of it?”
Helena was rarely disappointed, rarely missed anything that she did not care to miss. Yet this she clearly did regret. She had not seen Baldwin take full and free the kingship of Jerusalem.
“It was all anyone saw,” Richildis said. “The rest one could imagine.”
“She’ll retire to Nablus,” Bertrand said, “which is her dower city, and accept the life considered proper to a queen mother.”
“I would wager,” said Helena, “that she keeps the Church firm in her hand, and that within the year her name appears again beside her son’s as Queen of Jerusalem.”
“That won’t happen,” Arslan said. “He won’t let it.”
“What would you lay on it?” Helena asked him with an arch of the brow.
His own brow arched to match it. “A fine Damascus dagger.”
“Done,” she said. “And I lay against it a bolt of Tyrian purple.”
“Done!” he said, slapping the table to seal it. But then he said, “What makes you think—”
“You know Melisende better than I. Tell me why I think she’s withdrawn from the field only to come back in greater, if altered, strength.”
Arslan opened his mouth, closed it. “That’s how Baldwin fights battles,” he said. “When he can. When he must.”
“Yes,” said Helena.
“She learned it from him?”
“I think,” Helena said, much amused, “that a son may learn a little from his mother.”
Arslan sat back. No young man could be a match for a woman of wit and subtlety. That was the lesson. He tried to take it in good part, as a well-raised young nobleman should.
“Do be comforted,” Richildis said to him. “She’s conceded at least to the way of the world: to rule from the shadows and to leave him the full light of the sun.”
“Does any man in the world rule without a woman’s interference?” Arslan demanded.
Richildis paused to think about it. “Louis of France, perhaps, now that his queen has won her freedom at last.”
“Ah yes,” Bertrand said dryly. “She’s ruling the heart and certain other salient aspects of the Duke of Normandy.”
So Arslan had heard. It was a mighty scandal, a shock to Christendom. At Easter the King and Queen of France had sundered their union before the eyes of God and man. Hardly had the feast of Pentecost come and gone before she had found, met, and married a new and far more lusty husband, a dozen years younger than she – younger by a handful of years than Arslan himself: Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy, heir to the throne of England. Who happened, by chance or otherwise, to be own nephew to Baldwin of Jerusalem: son of Baldwin’s brother Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, whose wedding to the heiress of England their father Fulk had left to marry Melisende of Jerusalem. This Henry was a most noble, and nobly connected, young man; a fine match for a woman with ambitions toward a crown.
Eleanor had always been swift in decision, swifter than Louis of France had ever had will to be.
“Ah,” said Arslan with a shake of the head. “A eunuch rules King Louis. I wonder: does Henry know yet what he’s bound himself to?”
“I rather suspect so,” Helena said. “He may be a boy in years, but by all accounts he’s a strong and clever man. Even the common rumor reckons that it’s more than the body’s lust that moved him to accept such a marriage. She comes, after all, with a duchy for a dower.”
“And he will be a king,” Bertrand said. “They call his line the Devil’s get. A devil and a she-wolf: now there’s a match to set a kingdom on its ear.”
Arslan could imagine it. Could, for a startled moment, wish desperately to see it himself – to take ship and sail away.
Of course he could not do that. Baldwin as king at last, sole and uncontested, needed all the friends and servants that he had. His foster-brother could hardly go running off to gape at prodigies, or to play sweet friend to a duchess who had been and would be again a queen.
He sighed a little. He lacked the proper degree of youthful passion, he had been told more than once; and no matter that what others called passion, he called rampant foolishness.
Well, and so be it. His duty was here, in Jerusalem. He would be faithful to it as he had ever been.
* * *
Their gathering that night was a farewell feast. Richildis would accompany Melisende on the morrow to her half-exile in Nablus, but she would not linger there. With an escort of mounted archers from Mount Ghazal, with her maids and her daughter and her daughter’s nurse, she would set herself on the road to Constantinople where her husband was. If she was fortunate she would find a caravan to be a part of, a company well armed against attack; for the infidel was greatly restless.
As soon as his mother was settled, Baldwin would ride
to war. But Richildis would be out of it. The tides of time had shifted. She yearned for her husband; she was weary of the round of her days in Jerusalem.
The others seemed content. Arslan would rise high now that his lord was king unchallenged. Bertrand, who had remained loyal to Melisende, had received the king’s amnesty as had the rest of those knights and barons who would swear fealty to Baldwin. What pain it had cost him to do that, Richildis could not be wholly certain. Not a great deal, perhaps. Melisende had set him free. He could have gone into exile as Manasses had, but he had chosen to stay, to remain lord of Beausoleil under Baldwin the king.
Arslan was in good case; Bertrand would do well. Helena was Helena, as always; neither more nor less herself for that the queen had fallen. Richildis could leave them with a clear conscience.
As she reflected on endings and partings, the servants cleared the remains of dinner and brought in the wine. One came in behind them, one of Helena’s Turks. That was unwonted, and worth the lift of a brow. It was never their custom to sit at meat with Christians, nor to disturb Christians who were so engaged.
Mehmet bowed to Helena, but it was Richildis whom he approached. “Lady,” he said as they all listened, as curious as she, “one has come seeking you. He says that he comes from France.”
“Is he urgent?” Richildis asked.
“He says, lady, that you would wish to speak with him as soon as may be.”
She glanced at the others. No one objected. “Let him come in,” she said.
* * *
He was no man she knew: a pilgrim like many another, ragged and worn with travel. His accent was so familiar that it seemed strange, the accent of a man from Anjou, from near or about La Forêt.
She offered him courtesy: wine, bread, a chair at the table’s foot. He took the chair, declined the bread and the wine. “Lady, I lodge in a hostel; they’ve fed me well.”
She inclined her head. Still as he sat so close to her, there was nothing about him that she remembered. If he came indeed from La Forêt, he must have been a child when she left.
“Lady,” he said, “my name is Gaultier. I was born in Miraval, but I was a clerk in La Forêt, until God and the Lady Agnes sent me on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.”
“You are welcome here,” Richildis said. “My house is elsewhere, but if you would lodge there—”
“Oh, no,” he said. “No, lady, I’m well lodged with the good brothers of Saint Symeon. I’ll not burden your hospitality.”
“No burden,” Richildis said, “and a pleasure, though I depart for Byzantium on the morrow. My brother, perhaps—”
Bertrand caught her glance. “Indeed,” he said quickly. “You’ll guest among us, sir.”
Gaultier bowed to their will. “I thank you,” he said, “though I’ll not stay long. You are departing, lady?”
“Tomorrow,” Richildis said. “I cry your pardon; but my husband is in Constantine’s City. I go to join him.”
Gaultier blinked, a little baffled perhaps, as pilgrims could be. The east was all so strange to them. “Lady,” he said, “I bear you a message from Lady Agnes.”
Richildis leaned forward. Always when she heard that name, she knew a stab of joy, and something like guilt. “Do you indeed? How does she fare? Is she well? Did the new vineyard bear fruit? Has—”
“Lady,” Gaultier said, breaking in with great discourtesy, but his expression won him pardon: distress, and no little grief. “Lady,” he said, “she fares ill. She bade me tell you that before I came to you she would be dead.”
Dead. The word fell like a stone.
Richildis looked about. Shock, grief: but how could any of them grieve? None but Bertrand had ever known Lady Agnes, ever seen her face, ever spoken to her while she lived. Only in letters had they known her, and in messages borne by pilgrims such as this one.
She could not let herself hate them, or be angry with them because her father’s widow was dying or dead.
Lady Agnes had not been young when Richildis left her – how long ago? By now she would have had threescore years and more; long enough indeed to see an end of them. Yet… it was too soon. She should have lived on and on, till Richildis, Bertrand, someone, came to relieve her of her charge. Until, at least, Richildis could bid her farewell.
Richildis’ eyes were blurred. Her cheeks were wet. She scrubbed at them. She was weeping – she who never wept.
The others were silent, taking care not to stare at her. Gaultier had fixed his eyes on his hands, as if to look up would be to betray his faith.
“You are certain?” she said to him. “That she was dying?”
“Lady,” he said to his tightly laced fingers, “a physician came from Poitiers, a turbaned Moor if you’ll believe it, and he said that only God knew how she had lived so long. It was a wasting fever. She was a white shadow when I left her, hardly more than a voice; but she held you close in her memory. ‘Tell her,’ she said to me, ‘that I lay on her no command, ask of her no duty. I only bid her remember that once she was a lady in La Forêt; and that there is no lady now, nor can be until she or her brother may name an heir.’”
“She never—” Richildis broke off. Of course she had not. Lady Agnes had had no authority but that given her by Richildis in Bertrand’s name. None of them had made provision for this.
“All the while,” said Richildis, “we were establishing the inheritance of Mount Ghazal and Beausoleil, we never thought – we never remembered—” Her throat closed. She forced it open. Her voice was a faint and strangled thing, but it was the best she had. “I have to go back.”
“Can you?”
She stared at Bertrand. He stared back. “Can you?” she asked him.
He shook his head. Not even a moment’s hesitation. Not an instant’s doubt. “You know what I told you long ago. I gave it up. I forsook my claim to it, and its claim on me. I belong to Outremer.”
“And I…” Richildis was cold, cold in the heart. “I have to go back. Who else is there?”
“What of Mount Ghazal?” he said. “What of your husband? Your daughter? Your journey to Byzantium?”
There was a throbbing behind her eyes, a dull ache in her skull. “Agnes is dead, Bertrand. There’s no one to take the rule of La Forêt. If no one comes, if it lies lordless—”
“The count will name a new lord,” Bertrand said.
She rounded on him. “Don’t you care? Doesn’t it matter to you? That holding has been in our family since Charlemagne was a cub. Would you see it go to a stranger? A man who might never see it, who might let it go to ruin among his greater holdings?”
“I will not,” he said with all his old stiff obstinacy, “give up land and lordship here to bury myself in the wilds of Anjou.”
“Do you hate it so much? Have you held the grudge so long?”
“No,” said Bertrand, surprisingly without anger. “I left it behind me. I died to it if you will. It’s no part of me now, nor has been for years out of count.”
“So then,” she said. “It’s I who must go.” No gladness touched her, no light of joy that she would see her home and holding again. She could only think of Zenobia asleep in the nursery above, and Michael Bryennius in the City waiting for her to come to him, and Mount Ghazal to which she had expected to return when her husband’s errand was done. If she went to La Forêt, she must leave them all behind.
She could go, find someone, some kindly lord or widowed lady, to rule in her name. Yet if she did that, how would she know that she had chosen well? Wolves ran wild in the world. La Forêt was prosperous, well kept and amply defended: a fine prize for a reiver with pretensions.
She would be fortunate if she found it unscathed, even if she took ship on the morrow; if that were possible, which it incontestably was not. God knew what had become of it once the vultures began to circle, when it was known that the lady who had held it so well for so long was dead.
She raised her eyes, brought her mind back to this room in Helena’s house. They were all watching
her, all waiting for her to be done with her maundering. “I have to go back. I don’t know – there’s no one else. I have to go back.”
Bertrand made no move to lighten her pain. She would hate him for that, if she stopped to think about it. He would not give way for her.
And would she give way, either?
She gathered herself to rise. “I have to go,” she said, “arrange passage, send messages, tell my – husband—
“No.”
That was a voice they had not heard in a while, sounding as if it too had its share of pain, but had laid it all aside. Arslan faced them with his head up, looking oddly defiant – as if he had done anything to earn their censure.
“You’ll not go,” he said. “I will.”
“You are the heir of Beausoleil,” Bertrand said.
“And, by blood, of La Forêt.” Arslan lifted his chin a fraction higher. “Think, Father. Lady. Which of us has the least to hold him here?”
“You have Beausoleil,” said Bertrand. “You have Baldwin, to whom you’ve sworn fealty.”
“Beausoleil is yours yet,” Arslan said, “and will be for years to come. Baldwin has lords and knights in plenty.”
“But only one foster-brother,” Richildis said.
“La Forêt has nothing,” said Arslan. “Why shouldn’t I go? I’ve no wife, no child. I rule no demesne. I’m as free as man can be.”
“You have not thought carefully on this,” Richildis said. “Think! You were born in Outremer. What on earth would you do in France?”
“Shiver a great deal,” he said. “Be lord in my ancestral holding. Find me a wife, someone both capable and congenial, and get me as many sons as she will gladly bear, and raise the eldest of them to be lord when I return to Beausoleil.”
“So simple,” Richildis said. “So certain.”
“So inevitable,” he said. He smiled at her, his sweet smile that was all his own. He could melt her with it when he was small. Now that he was a man, it made her quiver in her bones. “Lady my dear,” he said, “it’s you who aren’t thinking. How can you leave your Michael Bryennius to run off to Anjou? He’d go running after you, you know that very well. And he’d be flatly miserable there.”
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