The Rain Maiden

by Jill M Philips

  “For the cathedral of Paris,” she said pitifully, “do you think Bishop Sully will take it from me?”

  Before he could make an answer she had closed her eyes.

  The sun was fully up. He held her lifeless body in his arms.

  At Philippe’s orders she was wrapped in linen and put into the trench with others who had died in the shadow of the Acre walls. He watched as it was done, lingering to say a prayer, then turned away.

  WITH THE FAILURE of the French to capture Acre after an entire week of siege, a doleful silence settled on the camp. Philippe remained closeted in his pavilion for many days, admitting no one into his presence. He passed the time brooding over disappointments, his diminished health, and the unlikelihood that he could mount another attack upon the city and take it before Richard was recovered from his illness.

  It was imperative Philippe take Acre; time was running out.

  Richard had already covered himself in enough glory at Sicily and Cyprus, and managed to make himself rich as the Sultan with all his conquests! Since coming to Acre he had been most of the time in sickbed, yet by his secret acts of treachery Richard had undermined all Philippe’s hard-won respect and popularity.

  But while Philippe sat alone with dark thoughts, Richard was planning his own attack against the walls of Acre. He was yet too weak to sit a horse or wear his armor, and he had himself carried about the camp in a litter, so that he might direct the operations of his men.

  He sat beneath the shade of a leopardskin canopy, making notes on a roll of paper and reviewing what mistakes had already been made in attempts to capture Acre. He scoffed at the failed heroics of Philippe’s men. No wonder the efforts of the French had come to nothing! The walls were far too stout to crumble from bombardment by the mangonels alone. Even tunnelling and sapping hadn’t helped.

  Richard’s shrewd eye quickly solved the puzzle.

  In order to allow a breach wide enough to accommodate his soldiers, individual stones from the wall would have to be loosened and removed. Once the crusaders were inside the city, it would be an easy task to gather up the starving garrison.

  Richard needed men brave enough to mount the walls. It was a dangerous business because the defenders kept watch there night and day. But when he offered four gold bezants to anyone who would remove a single stone and bring it to the king as proof of the deed, hundreds of men volunteered. Within an hour of Richard’s announcement, they were already at work.

  Conrad of Montferrat lost no time in telling Philippe.

  The news brought the French king from his tent, shouting for an audience with Richard. Philippe found him near the eastern edge of the camp, reclining on a litter and surrounded by cohorts. It enraged Philippe all the more to see that his cousin and vassal, Henri of Champagne, was among them. Only yesterday he’d come to the king, begging a loan. When Philippe had required he pledge the county of Champagne as security, Henri had struck an angry pose and gone off muttering oaths beneath his breath. Now he was here laughing with Richard, who had doubtless favored him with a gift of money just to spite Philippe.

  It was intolerable.

  Richard looked up to see Philippe approaching, and waved his arm. “Come drink with me,” he shouted, “we shall toast our impending triumph!”

  Philippe pushed past the others and stopped just in front of Richard. “Triumph?” he asked coldly.

  “Of course,” Richard laughed, holding out a cup of wine toward Philippe. “Acre shall be ours within a fortnight.”

  Philippe took the cup but did not drink from it.

  The two men who had been lovers and now were not even friends stared at one another silently and with a measure of regret. Neither was at his most attractive: nearly hairless, skin peeling from their faces, eyes rheumy and dulled. It was not pleasant for either man to see the other so. After a moment, self-conscious, they looked away.

  Philippe glowered down into his wine. “Our triumph … ?” Then he jerked his head up and faced Richard with accusing eyes. “When you have done everything possible to exclude me from it? When you have bribed every man within scent of your money purse to leave my service for yours? Triumph it well may be—but not mine!”

  Richard was instantly angry. “Don’t play these women’s games of jealousy with me!” he shouted. “If you were truly a leader every man at Acre would know you for their lord. But instead you only wish to stay inside your tent and think up calumnies against me.”

  The French king stared back, unbelieving. “Until ten days ago I was too sick to leave my bed! If I kept to my tent, it was only for that reason.”

  “I too have been ill,” Richard said, sounding self-righteous and patronizing, “and so I sympathize with you. But as kings and leaders we must put aside our problems and concern ourselves with a single goal: we must capture Acre!”

  Capture Acre? What a liar Richard was! He lusted after his own successes; cared nothing if Philippe had a part in them. Treachery was everywhere! As he thought the words, he studied the expression on the face of his cousin Henri. Smugness. Satisfaction. Deceit.

  Faithless friends, all of them.

  Philippe turned the henap over and let the wine run into the sand. “I will not drink with you,” he said to Richard, flinging the empty cup aside. “You speak easily of taking Acre, but where were you last week when it was within my grasp? Out of spite for me you withheld your army from the fighting, because you couldn’t bear to see someone besides yourself covered in glory. Yet you presume to call me jealous? It is you, YOU are the one …”

  Richard staggered to his feet, pushing aside the hands which reached to steady him. His blotched face was florid, and his lips were twisted in a sneer. “Jealous of someone as treacherous and niggardly as you? When that day comes I will throw myself off the topmost tower of that wall!”

  Some of the men laughed. Others turned away, uneasy.

  White-faced, Philippe stared back, seeing the death of their friendship. He felt such hate for Richard now, more than he’d ever known. It was as if there had never been anything but hate between them. Somewhere Henry Plantagenet must be laughing!

  Philippe gazed off into the distance and made his decision. “Very well,” he said, take your victory if you can get it: but as you withheld your men, so shall I withhold mine. Lead a charge on Acre and you’ll not find one French soldier at your side.”

  Richard’s lips were set in a contemptuous pout. They were enemies after all, and Philippe was no more than the sly, cold-hearted bastard Richard had first conceived him to be, so many years ago. Mutual hatred for Henry Plantagenet had made them friends: that and sex. But the feelings of love and brotherhood had turned to stone, and now Richard realized that their aims had been very different all along.

  His voice was sober, almost grim. “You will not fight beside me? That is your final word?”

  Philippe looked at him and saw the death of Isabel, the humiliations at Messina, the betrayal here at Acre. “For the time being you may be sure of it,” he said.

  They stared at one another. Suddenly there was nothing left to say. Philippe turned his back and started walking slowly toward the camp.

  After a night of brooding, Philippe changed his mind.

  He made immediate plans for yet another assault upon the wall, hoping to beat out Richard’s proposed attack by at least two days. Indeed, throughout the whole of July 2nd and 3rd, Philippe’s men besieged the Accursed Tower with such demonic fury that it seemed the citadel must surely crumble.

  It did not.

  Once more the scaling ladders were hoisted on the walls, and once more the defenders burned them to ashes. Stones flew and men screamed; the stink of blood and burned flesh filled the air. Hot to take the victory out from under Richard’s grasp, Philippe forgot his own safety and several times during the siege had to be dragged out of the way of an enemy firebolt.

  But although they fought like madmen and mauled Acre badly in that siege, the Franks did not take the city. Once more they had
to pull back without success. Philippe was deeply grieved by this lost opportunity. It was as if God Himself were playing favorites with the two kings; aiding Richard, while frustrating every attempt that Philippe made. Depressed, and feeling the onset of another illness, he hid himself away in his tent and wept.

  He had made a terrible mistake in coming here. The entire endeavor had been a failure and a waste. It had cost him Isabel, his health, and Richard’s friendship. There was nothing left. Nothing.

  If only he had stayed in France.

  How he missed Paris! It seemed so long ago that he had lain in his own bed, listening to the sounds of night traffic on the river. Philippe missed his children, his mother, Sully and the rest. But more than anything or anyone on earth, he yearned for Isabel.

  Ironically it was only now that Philippe realized just how much her love had meant to him apart from sex. She had sweetened his life with her grace and beauty, made him happy in more ways than he could count. She had been his queen, his wife, his lover—perhaps she’d even been his friend. And yet Philippe had traded off her life and love for a part in this bitter episode.

  Fool. Fool.

  What the French crusaders had not been able to accomplish with their swords. King Richard’s men achieved by removing stones. On July 8th a group of Richard’s Poitevans crawled through the breach and were driven back by fierce blows struck by the defenders. But now it was only a matter of days before the breach could be widened to allow a full-scale attack.

  The time for victory had come.

  Seeing defeat for the garrison and unable to help, Saladin now sought to negotiate a hasty truce. For days he’d tried to distract the crusaders by ravaging the fields and vineyards around Acre and by circulating word that he was awaiting reinforcements from Egypt. But it did no good. The Christians were within an eyelash of capturing the city that they had besieged for so long. They would not negotiate, and they would not be stopped.

  The Accursed Tower fell to the Knights of Christ on July 11th.

  Neither of the kings were in the field when it happened. Philippe was sleeping and Richard was at his evening meal when a group of Pisans scaled the rubble and rushed into the city waving banners of the cross. Acre surrendered on the following day.

  Philippe was willing to allow the six thousand Saracens left in the city to go free if they would abandon all they owned to the crusaders. But it was Richard who insisted on dictating the terms and they were harsh. After two years of siege and some hundred thousand Christians sacrificed in the attempt, the Lionheart was not about to sanction any mercies.

  In the great hall of the Templars the articles of surrender were set down: Release of the 1,500 prisoners held captive by Saladin; payment of 100,000 bezants each to Philippe and Richard; return of the True Cross. Till these conditions were fulfilled (and the emirs of the city were given one month in which to accomplish them), the garrison of Acre and their families would stand as hostages to the word of their commanders.

  Throughout the parley Philippe watched his fellow monarch with jaded interest. It was obvious that surrender and the spoils of it had not been enough for him. Richard wanted bloodshed. Philippe thought: he could run every prisoner through with his own sword and not feel a moment of regret.

  He’d never known a man who was so in love with killing.

  The flags of conquest flew above the city.

  But in the days following the surrender of Acre it seemed that every man among the leaders of the crusade had a list of grievances. Conrad of Montferrat and Guy de Lusignan argued incessantly over who had what right to which throne. The Knights Templars and the Hospitallers pressed their claims to confiscated property. Duke Leopold, feeling cheated and ignored, revenged himself by ordering Richard’s banner torn down and thrown into the dung pots. Not surprisingly, Richard retaliated by having Leopold’s banner torn down and thrown into the dung pots. The duke never forgot that injury and later he gave Richard plenty of reason to regret the action.

  Amid the peace there was no end of fighting.

  Richard occupied the royal residence with his wife and sister, while Philippe established himself in the fortress belonging to the Templars. The kings sent letters back and forth by messenger, arguing over bits of conquest, trying to maneuver each other into a position of subservience. Philippe invoked the Treaty of Messina in order to claim half of Richard’s haul on Cyprus. Richard countered with equal entitlements to half the territories in Flanders, which the king of France had inherited through the death of Philip d’Alsace.

  Philippe immediately withdrew his demands.

  He was tired of squabbling—and he was ill again, this time with an attack of dysentery. Philippe knew that to remain for much longer in the East could mean his death, and because of this made a sudden decision to leave. He’d fought before the walls of Acre, he had sacrificed himself, fulfilled his obligations. He felt no shame in returning home to France.

  There were problems, however.

  Richard had vowed to spend another three years fighting in the Holy Land, and he expected all the other leaders of the crusade to make a similar commitment. His principal objective was to recapture Jerusalem. From what Philippe understood of the political and military complications inherent in such a plan, it could not be done. The Christians held Acre now. They should be satisfied with that.

  Richard would not be satisfied.

  How to tell him? Philippe was too ill to go to him in person and anyway, he preferred not to look the impetuous Richard in the face with that announcement. Instead he delegated his cousin, the Bishop of Beauvais, and his vassal Hugh of Burgundy (a poor choice) to state his intentions to the King of England.

  The news hardly surprised Richard, for he had expected it. The Capet had been flagging ever since they had left Tours a year ago! But he pretended great sorrow and chagrin to hear of Philippe’s anticipated departure from Acre. He bowed his head, seeming to think on it a while before replying.

  He used his most impressive voice. “I am sorry to learn that our cousin and friend Philippe of France has been indisposed once again by illness,” he told the suppliants, “but I cannot lend my approval to his going, for by doing so he leaves undone the Great Work which he should have come prepared to accomplish.”

  His keen eyes traveled the distance between the two men. They were uncomfortable in their duty, ashamed they should have been the ones chosen to mouth their overlord’s disgrace. Richard played silently with their embarrassment for a moment before he pronounced his own judgment on the matter.

  “I grieve for Philippe’s decision, for by yielding to his weakness, he has brought everlasting shame upon himself and his race.” Richard managed a pained, pretended smile and hurried on. “However, if he fears for his health in staying here, I shall not be the one to stand in his way.”

  The bishop lowered his head in sad appreciation. “My king and cousin shall be glad to hear of your generous dispensation.”

  “Indeed it is generous.” Richard answered with a tone of gravity, “for I could surely profit by having his counsel in the time ahead.” He paused wickedly, one eyebrow arched. “I assume he has other reasons. For instance, if he has heard news, as I have, from the late-arriving galleys, it is no wonder he wishes to return to France.”

  “News?” Hugh’s ruddy face went quizzical. “What news is that?”

  Richard clasped his hands together in his lap and stared off toward the far wall, feigning an expression of pity. “The news of prince Louis’s illness, of course. I have heard that for many weeks he has lain near death, convulsed by a strange and sudden illness.”

  The bishop’s face grew pale and he began to tremble. “My lord knows nothing of this!” he exclaimed.

  Richard’s smile was cold, his voice without a trace of charity. “Then you had best to tell him, in order that he make his departure all the sooner.”

  The two men bowed and left. Richard smiled as he watched them go. Let Philippe Capet see what it was to have a lie turned
back on him; let him discover what hate could be got from disappointed love!

  Henri of Champagne was standing nearby, occupied with admiring Richard’s exquisite collection of hunting birds. “Is it true?” he asked when they were alone. “Is Philippe’s son really dying?”

  Richard looked ponderously at the plate of fruits before him, fingering a honeyed apricot as he spoke. “I don’t know; how could I? Do I have eyes to look across the sea?”

  Revenge. Henri shrugged. He understood it well enough. He relinquished the falcon to its perch and strolled over to where the king sat. engrossed now in his eating. Henri barely suppressed a smile. With his colorful attire and head covered by fine bits of newly-grown hair, Richard looked rather like a huge, exotic bird himself!

  Just as quickly Henri chased the unkind thought away. In the past few weeks spent in Richard’s service, he had prospered more than in all the time he’d worked for his penurious cousin Philippe. And Richard was such lively good company; always entertaining, always gay. He had lifted the code of chivalry to an art, and a man of Henri’s tastes admired that.

  He poured himself some wine, then sniffed at it to guess its flavor. Cherry. Isabel’s favorite. He looked across at Richard. “You hate Philippe very much, don’t you?”

  He finished eating and pushed the plate aside. “There was a time when I loved him. But I let love blind me to his true character. He is cold. Friendship and love mean nothing to him.”

  Henri tasted the wine. Deep and sweet. It was like drinking Isabel. He reached across and patted Richard’s shoulder. “Then you should be glad that he is leaving. Now you are the undisputed master here, and shall have all you wish.”

  “Yes,” Richard said and pushed himself up from the table. “I have great things to do here in the East. I must put all of my old grievances behind me.” He made the smallest attempt to smile. “It is not good to dwell upon the past.”