“Aye.” He had no fear of receiving a signal from me to make love.
“Then, my dear, shall we sleep?” He dropped his goblet on the floor and lay across the bed. Gingerly, I hung on the outer edge, my mind as awake as it had ever been.
“Alix—did you say that the Scot learned your secret today?”
“I believe so, Your Highness.” And I told him of Enoch’s discovery his reaction.
For the first time in more than an hour, the king chuckled dryly. “One thing never fails—you are a most droll creature, whatever your sex.”
I waited.
“However, the Scot’s knowledge creates a dilemma. Will he continue to care for you?”
“I believe he’ll go back to Wanthwaite,” I said bleakly. “He may even try the single ordeal—get a legal hold on my land.”
The king raised himself on his elbow. “How would you feel about that?”
“I couldn’t bear it! Do you think …?”
I hadn’t the courage to ask him for a favor.
Then to my astonishment, he leaned in the dark and kissed my lips—a chaste kiss by his standards, but startling nonetheless. And repellent. For me, a shadow thick as Acre’s wall lay between us, real for all I couldn’t define it.
“Ask, Alix. I believe you want to go back to Wanthwaite and are afraid that I will be hurt by your desertion.”
“If I could have my own writ guaranteeing me sovereignty without the Scot.”
He lay back. “Done. See Ambroise tomorrow and have him write it. I’ll sign it and give it my seal as soon as you bring it.”
“Oh, thank you!” I cried, overwhelmed by relief.
“I think we owe each other that much,” he replied. “Good night.”
“Good night, Your Highness.”
We lay quietly a long time more, my mind full of thoughts.
“I wish I could see you,” he said plaintively. “It’s all so …” Sudden, I finished for him.
“Tell me, Alix, is there some part of you that’s disappointed?” he asked.
I was glad there was darkness, for the gloom veiled my despair which must show otherwise. “Yes.”
“In what way?”
I felt I was skirting a quicksand waiting to suck me under. Yet something within demanded honesty.
“I was thinking of our oaths by the lighthouse, on the Far. Do you remember?”
“We swore to love each other—to never betray.”
“Yes. You said your family was cursed by children who turn on you. I promised I’d never turn—but I warned that I had a lack.” Of a small pendulum between my legs, such an insignificant organ but essential for the king’s love, it seemed.
“You should have been more explicit.”
“I grant you. But you see, what I miss—since you did ask—is the sense that you love me. I never knew till now how I depended on …”
Tears streamed down my hot cheeks and I couldn’t go on. But that was the truth. The king was formidable, dazzling and frightening, inscrutable, cruel, brave beyond words—all secondary to the fact that he loved me. I could accept almost anything except this terrible loss.
Rough arms pulled me across the bed and held me close. To my amazement, I thought the king wept as well, though ’twas impossible to say whose tears were whose. He pulled me tight against his body which shook with deep sighs, like repressed sobs. He held my head against his neck, stroked my hair and didn’t speak.
“Alex.” He kissed my hair.
I reached a hand and touched his cheeks.
We were comforting each other.
“I’m going to—miss you,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I meant it—I did love you.”
“I know. I too—”
And we could hardly bear to put it in the past. An elegy. The darkness reduced to two lost people, enfants perdus, timeless, ageless, sexless even, but filled with such yearning.
We didn’t want to part and gradually we fell asleep so, clasped as close as we could get. If we moved in the night, it was always together.
We woke in predawn gray.
Richard rose on his elbow and looked down on me. ’Twas August twelfth and yesterday had been August eleventh; this was Richard and this was Alix; but a millennium had passed during the night and we were strangers. I stared with wonder at eyes I could not fathom, at a mask which concealed another mask, layered back and back to I knew not what. Except that it was an awesome secret.
Richard seemed equally confounded. He twisted a curl on my forehead against his finger, licked his lower lip, studied my face as if it were written on vellum, frowned in concentration.
“Alix?” He smiled with his mouth, his lower lip more thrusting than usual. His eyes remained aloof, smoke-screened.
“Good morning, Your Highness.”
“Richard,” he corrected. “How could anyone think you were a boy?”
’Twas a rhetorical question.
He sat up, heavily, held his head in his hands.
“Stay there,” he ordered. Soon he returned with wine and bread. Deeply inhibited by the unspoken, we broke bread and ate. He finished first and stared openly as I drank my dregs.
“Alix, good morning.” He bent and kissed me. We both measured the kiss: neither hit nor miss, a trial shot. “I, too, was recalling in the night our vows on the Far. Remember?”
“Yes, Your Highness, to be faithful …”
“And to love—whatever surprises might be in store.”
That I was a girl, that he was …?
He laughed uncomfortably. “I suppose all lovers must accommodate to age and sickness, but few have our trial …”
I hung my head, wishing he would leave.
“Love is faith,” he said quietly.
I raised my head.
His eyes glowed somberly. “No matter what revelations or changes, faith is steady.”
“Yes,” I agreed. Except that nothing had been revealed or changed except perception. I’d never been a boy, no matter what he’d thought. And, the silent sentence unwound in my head, he’d never been a man.
He kissed me again, more passionately, lips slightly apart. And I thought I caught the sparkling mote in his eye. “Alix, we don’t march for another day. After you get your writ from Ambroise, you’ll come back and bed with me again tonight.”
I nodded, frightened almost out of my wits.
If he saw, he pretended not to. He lifted me against his chest in the old way—only this time he deliberately crushed my tender breasts against him—and kissed me once more. Then he laughed. “I always knew you were a sweet damsel!” he said, almost as if he believed it.
He put me down, took his sword, and stepped out into the dim morning light. Instantly he was surrounded by clamoring voices.
I LONGED TO FLEE THAT ODIOUS tent, but nevertheless stayed long enough to be sure Enoch was not about. First I watched the king walk away with his bishops for a hurried Mass; then I went from one fenestration to another and gazed through the netting into the camp. I finally spotted Enoch’s leather tent to our rear and a concentrated study showed me the Scot was away from the tent, probably tending to his horses. I slipped out the front.
Fortunately my horse was tied under the king’s canopy with his many steeds, and I soon led Thistle behind the cover of scattered tents to a path parallel to the main road back into Acre. It was a little more dangerous because it was on higher ground and therefore open to the Saracens, but better screened from our own camp. When I thought I was safe, I mounted and rode as fast as I dared toward the city. I wanted to get that writ from Ambroise, signed and sealed by the king, and into my own treasure belt before Enoch could stop me.
The sun still had not risen by the time I passed the pile of dead emirs, now food for circling vultures. I spurred my nervous steed around the corpses as quickly as I could and soon we were clopping through the quiet streets of Acre toward the Castellum where Ambroise lodged. We reached it without incident, but I didn’t ride
directly into the courtyard. Instead I sought a hiding place for Thistle and finally tied him to a carob tree behind a mosque, across the way from the king’s former headquarters.
I waved to the few guards still on duty, entered the main court and walked silently along the arched corridor bordering the garden. No one was about, and I began to organize in my head exactly how I wanted my writ to be worded.
Suddenly I was grabbed from behind!
Instinctively I responded with the holds Roderick had taught me. Wound a foot around the ankle of my assailant. Raised my elbows sharply against his arms. Bent forward. And felt him slip. I twirled and saw a gross shadowy churl, was overwhelmed by his vomitous stench, but most of all saw his dagger. No time for observations. This was my life! Using every strategy I’d ever learned of wrestling and swordplay, I fought with the determination of Richard, the wildness of Enoch, and almost at once had felled my opponent who dropped to the ground like a ripe fig. I jumped on top of him before he could recover.
And looked down on the ravaged face of Sir Gilbert.
“Benedicite!” I gasped. “Are you still alive?”
“No thanks to you,” he snarled, and tried unsuccessfully to spit on me.
I stared in amazement as the saliva coursed down his boiled cheeks, so covered with sores that I could hardly find skin. And his smell! Worse than the stench in the hospital where Roderick had died. No wonder I’d been able to topple him with such ease. With a guilty pang, I started to rise. Instantly he reached for his dagger and we were at it again, only this time I sliced his earlobe before I controlled him.
He sobbed like a woman. “You’ve killed me—I’ll bleed to death. Oh, help me, help me!”
Soothly I thought he would die soon, but not from this measly wound. “If I let you go, will you promise not to harm me?”
“No one can hurt you, you iron-gulleted scorpion, or you would have died a dozen times over!”
“So you were the one who poisoned our food!” I cried.
He stopped sniveling long enough to peer up triumphantly from his mattered eyes. “Yes, either I or the Pisanos.”
“Pisanos?” I thought of Richard’s mercenary army.
“You know, Giorgio and Antonio, the pages we hired in Messina. They are masters at poison.” Then he whined plaintively. “But why didn’t you die?”
Again I let my attention drift at the revelation, almost disastrously, for the varlet was quicker than I recalled. After I’d knocked him back this third time, I took the precaution of tying him with my saddle rope and fastening him securely to a fountain nearby.
“Antonio and Giorgio.” I came back to the point grimly. “I hardly know them. Why do they want me dead?”
Again he tried to spit, and this time he hit my shoes. “Simpering idiot, fox-eyes, filled with sniveling pretense. Master Melon-brain, we don’t want you bedding with the king.”
I stared like an idiot. These pages were jealous, which meant …
“Not that we’re not willing to share,” he went on. “We’d accept even his former love, King Philip, if that was his desire.”
“King Philip! You’re lying! He would never …”
“Wouldn’t he?” he slavered at my shock. “His own father, King Henry, was dismayed when young Richard seduced the boy Philip. And with such indiscretion! Their affair was the talk of Paris.” He laughed at my sickened expression. “Now if you would share…. You want him all to yourself and you’ve done it too. Very clever. Or was it your pimpreneau?”
“Pimpreneau?” I repeated dully.
“Yes, your Scot. He must call your moves. You’re a fortunate fellow—the rest of us work without guidance.”
“What moves? What has Enoch to do with this?”
His yellow-red eyes bulged from their sockets. “Is it possible he doesn’t tell you? Being a Scot, he may want to hold all profits to himself.”
“What profits? What are you talking about?”
He leered in delight to see me so discomfited. “Why, my dear, the Scot arranged your contract and made a nice sum. Did he share it with you?”
I was dumb.
“Then he dangled you before the king, forbidden fruit till the price was forthcoming. Richard had never had to deal with such a bargainer before, hard as any Jew. Finally he made his deal: you for the bed, but only if the rest of us were discarded. As for the amount of gold, only your pimpreneau can tell.”
I turned and ran.
“Don’t try to return to the king!” he called. “Giorgio and Antonio are guarding him well. And they have enlisted a dozen henchmen to help. You haven’t a chance!”
I took his warning seriously, once away from the court, and sidled in deep shadows toward Ambroise’s apartment.
HE WAS HUNCHED OVER HIS WRITING table when I burst in.
Without preamble, I announced myself. “Ambroise, I’m a girl.”
He raised a sweet beatific smile from his work. “I know, dear. How lovely for you both.”
“You—you traitor!” I cried savagely, and swept his vellum pages to the floor. “Aye, now you’ll listen to me!”
I ripped at my laces, lifted my tunic and pushed my breasts into the troubadour’s recoiling face. “Girl! Girl! Female! Woman!” I shouted.
He tried to rise from his stool, weaved this way and that, fell back, missed his stool and crashed atop his scattered pages.
“Oh, oh, oh I don’t believe it. Does the king know?” His protruding watery eyes begged me to say no.
“Yes. He asked if you knew.” Grimly I watched him struggle with his bubble-body which was now heavy as lead, slippery as butter, then reached out my hand to help him rise.
He crossed himself. “I swear I didn’t—you must have said that I didn’t, Alex.”
“Lady Alix, if you please.”
“Lady Alix?” He still couldn’t comprehend. “God be merciful. What shall we do?”
I replied acidly, “I’m leaving this jackal-country this very day and you will arrange it.”
“What did the king say?” he asked, appalled as the truth filtered inward.
“Ask him. Today, Ambroise. I am not going to Ascalon, I will not stay here with Berengaria—is that clear?”
“What does the king prefer?” he begged piteously.
A most interesting query, but no longer relevant.
I crouched close so our noses touched. “Ambroise, forget the king for just one moment. You got me here under false pretenses; you cheated both your king and me. I know not what vengeance the king may take on you—though I promise that I tried to exonerate you—but I don’t plan to pay with the loss of my estate or my life. Is that clear?”
He shook his head, his eyes livening somewhat at my statement about exonerating him, but still confused withal. “I cannot believe the king would kill you, Lady Alix, or take your land. He’s most forgiving …” And then he must have recalled the emirs.
Without further palaver, I enlightened him about Sir Gilbert and the Pisanos, and about Enoch’s nefarious goals.
“I must get back to England at once,” I finished.
“You say the king promised you a writ?” He took up vellum and quill.
“Too late,” I concluded, after much painful twisting in my mind about the Pisanos. “I dare not go back for his signature or seal—mustn’t see him again—mustn’t show myself to anyone. My life is at stake.”
He leaned back, amazed. “You’re much more forceful as a female, Lady Alix.”
“I have more reason,” I said bitterly. And more knowledge, I added to myself. The innocent girl had been replaced by an innocent boy; now both gave way to the woman.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Get me away this very day, secretly and safely, so that I may return to Wanthwaite.”
“How?”
“That I leave to you. But, Ambroise”—and I leaned close again—“if you don’t help me escape today, I will send word to the king tonight with a different tale about you than
I told earlier. I’ll say I was confused and frightened the first time, that you knew I was female and hoped I could change him.”
He wiped his face with his sleeve, muttered a prayer and rose wheezing from his desk. “Here’s the key to the door,” he said. “Lock it after me, and I’ll see what I can do.”
HE BOUGHT ME PASSAGE ON KING Philip’s galley, sailing back to France the following morning.
“You were fortunate,” he said, “that one of Lord Coucy’s men sickened and died this very day so there was space.”
“I will be under Lord Coucy’s protection, then?”
No, Ambroise knew Rigord de St. Denis, King Philip’s historian of the Crusade, and had prevailed upon the writer to take me on ostensibly as a scribe, disguised in French colors of course. I would sleep topside, but my days would be spent below with the horses so I could be less visible.
“And my horse?”
“Naturally.”
I nodded, satisfied. “What was the cost?”
He waved a fat hand. “A gift—from the king.” He smiled, patted my head, almost as relieved as I was. “Oh, Lady Alix, you’ll be interested to know that Enoch tried to buy this same space.”
I pushed aside his hand and jumped up. “He isn’t on the ship!”
“No, dear, but you cannot be too sanguine. I hear that Richard is sending a second galley in the wake of Philip’s with his own spy aboard. After all, there seems little doubt that France will attack England, despite the pope’s injunction.”
What did I care about England and France? I leaped forward and grabbed Ambroise’s silk blouse. “Enoch is going on that ship?”
“It appears that he is.”
“Deus juva me,” I moaned.
“Where’s your horse, Alix? The sun has already set and it will soon be dark enough to leave.” He twisted his few hairs nervously. “Then I must report to the king.”
We stared at each other.
“This is our last chance to talk?” I whispered.
He nodded.
As Richard had said last night—it was all so sudden. After two years—to end like a flash of Greek fire. No, that wasn’t it. To end in a manner which negated the whole time. Sex revelations, contractual revelations, and finally no writ. Empires were coming asunder over my head and my own little world was splitting underneath, a lesser star.
Alix of Wanthwaite 01 - Shield of Three Lions Page 43