Isabella giggled and glanced sidelong at Eschiva. These last months married to Conrad had been so exciting and enlightening. She had always thought she understood what “consummation” and “fornication” meant, but Conrad had taught her otherwise. There was so much more to it that she had ever imagined. She had often been tempted to talk to Eschiva about it. Had she experienced these things with Aimery, or was Conrad special? He was so well traveled, and he admitted to learning many things in the Greek empire. Which made Isabella wonder if her mother knew these things—but she would have died before she asked her mother, Queen Maria Zoë Comnena, about her sex life!
“Come!” Eschiva drew her thoughts back to the present. “You need to prepare to meet the King of France.”
“Oh, holy Jehoshaphat!” That was one of Isabella’s favorite sayings from when she was a little girl. She’d found the word very strange the first time she was taken to the Ibelin palace at the corner of the Street of Spain and Jehoshaphat Street, and she had insisted on saying it over and over. Eschiva was glad to hear it on her lips again. “You’re right! What time is it?”
“I have no idea, but it must be almost Sext.”
“Oh, dear. He’s due at Nones.”
“Yes, so let’s go back inside.”
Protocol demanded that the Queen of Jerusalem and her consort meet the King of France at the quay as he disembarked. This was because neither Isabella nor Conrad had been crowned or anointed. A small but brilliantly painted and gilded barge with eight banks of oars and sixteen oarsmen brought the King of France into the harbor from his large, comfortable buss that lay offshore. Trumpets on the forecastle of the barge blared out a fanfare as the barge passed over the lowered chain. This was answered by a trio of trumpeters on the tower controlling the chain. As the barge then maneuvered closer to the quay, a second fanfare intoned, answered this time by the heralds on the quay beside Isabella and Conrad.
Isabella glanced at her husband nervously. He had never looked more magnificent to her than he did now. He was outfitted in his robes as a Greek “Caesar.” Maria Zoë had given Isabella one of the gowns she’d brought from Constantinople; it was stiff with seed pearls sewn in patterns across her breast, and heavy with turquoise stones along the hemline. Isabella glanced toward her mother and stepfather, who headed the barons of Jerusalem, lined up behind Conrad and herself to receive the King of France. Her mother nodded encouragement and Uncle Balian smiled at her.
Conrad, sensing her nervousness, laid his left hand over hers, which held onto his right elbow. “You look absolutely stunning, my love,” he assured her in a low voice, even as he watched the approaching barge alertly, trying to identify the men Philip had selected to accompany him. “My fear is that Philip will be enchanted,” he continued rather absently to his wife, “indeed, smitten—which would be quite dangerous, since he is a widower at the moment and might take it into his head to steal you away.”
“He would have no chance, my lord,” Isabella assured her husband with a smile, warmed and flattered by his compliments.
“Wait until you meet him, my dear,” Conrad teased, confident that Philip II was no threat to his position in Isabella’s heart.
Isabella turned her attention back to the approaching barge, straining to distinguish the King of France from the other men crowding the sterncastle of the barge. At least three of the men were bishops in ecclesiastical regalia, and the tallest man was quite plainly dressed in an open-faced conical helmet, apparently more bodyguard than noble. That left only two other men, one dark and one fair. The dark-haired man was slighter and less impressive than the fair-haired one, but he appeared to be wearing a crown. The longer Isabella looked, the more certain she became that this rather nondescript young man was (disappointingly) the King of France.
Moments later the barge glided alongside the quay. The oarsmen raised their oars to the vertical in a flashy display of seamanship as a new fanfare of trumpets sounded. The man Isabella had been watching descended from the sterncastle, made his way to the waist of the ship, and crossed the gangplank that had been run out to the shore. As he stepped ashore, Conrad disengaged from Isabella and strode forward. These movements were carefully choreographed, and Isabella knew exactly what her husband planned to do next. “Cousin!” he called out in a booming voice. “Welcome to the Kingdom of Jerusalem!”
Isabella stood tensely where he had left her, awaiting the outcome of Conrad’s gamble, for they had no way of knowing if Philip of France was prepared to endorse Conrad as king—or if he would incline to the interpretation that Guy was still king because he had been anointed. To Isabella’s immense relief, Philip of France opened his arms and offered first one and then the other cheek to Conrad. Finally, pulling apart, he said loud enough for all to hear, “Cousin, it pleases me to find you here. Your lady?” Philip had already turned to look at Isabella.
Both Conrad and her mother had instructed her not to dip her knee. As Queen of Jerusalem, she was King Philip’s equal. “Smile,” had been her mother’s advice. “No man can resist a beautiful woman’s smile, and it will break any tension.”
Isabella did her best, but Philip of France’s gaze was unsettling. He seemed to be taking her measure in a very calculating way, as if he were ticking off points: age, height, weight, hair color, eye color, bloodlines, income. . . . He did smile, but there was nothing spontaneous about it. It was calculated, just as his approach was calculated. He took her hand and held it almost—but not quite—to his lips, as he inclined his head slightly. “Madame la Reine de Jerusalem. Enchanté. You are indeed as charming and attractive as my dear friend Philip of Dreux told me.” The words did nothing to settle Isabella’s instinctive discomfort; Dreux was the Archbishop of Beauvais, and she would never forget the way that churchman, dressed in full armor, had torn her from Humphrey’s bed and tent. She did not regret setting Humphrey aside for Conrad, but that didn’t mean she could forgive Beauvais for the way it was instigated.
Isabella fell back on the lines she had drafted under her mother’s tutelage. “Jerusalem welcomes you, my lord! We have prayed for this day ever since God withdrew His grace from the usurper Guy de Lusignan at the Battle of Hattin. With your help, my lord, we trust we will regain God’s favor and triumph over the enemies of Christ.”
“Indeed, Madame, that is why I am here,” the King of France announced dispassionately as he raised her hand to his lips a second time. Then, laying her hand over his own, he nodded and indicated she should lead him down the line of her barons, introducing one after the other, with Conrad in their wake.
When the principals were out of hearing, Balian turned to his wife, speechless. Their eyes met. He had been their last hope, this young King of France, and he had managed to disappoint them in just moments. There was no fire in this king, no passion, no determination. Just cold calculation. He was here, Balian sensed, for his own purposes—and he would leave the moment his purpose was fulfilled. He was not here for the love of Jerusalem, and he would abandon Jerusalem without so much as a backward glance. Ibelin shuddered in the warm sunshine.
May 11, Limassol, Cyprus
Aimery’s brothers were quarreling again. Guy was convinced that leaving the siege camp at Acre amounted to “desertion” and that while they were away, Conrad de Montferrat was likely to come down and take command. Geoffrey caustically reminded Guy that three years ago he had been prepared to run away to France and had to be talked into the siege in the first place. Before Guy could recover from spluttering, Geoffrey added that with the arrival of Philip of France, everyone else was outranked. “The only man capable of confronting Philip of France is Richard of England. We need his support, and we need it now! Nothing else matters.”
“I don’t know why you think the Plantagenet whelp is going to be any help to us!” Guy countered. “He’s not yet thirty—and every time he had trouble in Aquitaine, he had to beg his father, the old King, to come help him out. He’d have lost it ten times over if King Henry hadn’t come to his a
id, and then he betrayed the old man and pledged allegiance to the same damned Philip of France who is our worst enemy. By God!” Guy was working himself into a proper rage. “He’s a dupe of the damned King of France and will do whatever he says!”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Geoffrey countered.
“I’m only repeating what you told me yourself—”
Aimery could stand the bickering no longer. Closing his ears to their squabbling, he left the sterncastle by the stairs to the main deck and strode across it to haul himself up onto the forecastle instead. Here the air seemed fresher and cleaner and the motion of the sailing ship more pronounced. The bows rose and fell regularly on the moderate swell, making a low hissing and snarling sound. As they pushed down into the water of the trough, the water frothed and danced around the bows, only to fall away as they rose on the next wave. Beyond the rail, emerging ever more distinctly from the haze, was the looming presence of their destination: Cyprus.
Aimery supposed he must have sailed past Cyprus on his way to Outremer almost twenty years ago, but he had no memories of it. He’d forgotten how high the mountains were, and how big the island was, too. At the moment it seemed to stretch to the horizon in both directions, and because the wind was blowing from the southwest, they were still hours from their destination. Limassol was another ten or fifteen miles west of here, so they had to tack, and while each port tack brought them close to the island, the starboard tack took them out to sea again as they clawed their way westward.
Aimery strained to remember everything he knew about Cyprus. A part of the Eastern Roman Empire, it had been overrun by the Muslims in the mid-seventh century, but it had been liberated by Constantinople more than a hundred years before Jerusalem. It was so rich that it had attracted the greed of Reynald de Châtillon, who had made an attempt to capture the island. He was driven off by a fleet sent by Emperor Manuel I, and the incident had done much to disgrace him in the eyes of his peers—but he’d brought home a great deal of loot. After the death of Manuel I and the usurpation of Andronicus, Cyprus had broken away from the control of Constantinople. For the last five years it had been ruled by a man from a cadet branch of the Comnenus family, Isaac, who styled himself “Emperor.” The Lady of Ibelin, herself a Comnena, had exploited his vanity and craving for legitimacy to sell him the crown and gown she’d worn at her coronation as Queen of Jerusalem, but his attitude toward the Latins was on the whole hostile. There had been numerous reports of pilgrim and merchant ships being seized and their cargoes confiscated while their crews and passengers were killed, enslaved, or held for ransom. Most recently, Isaac Comnenus had taken bribes from Salah ad-Din to stop supplies from reaching the siege camp at Acre.
“Look at that!” Henri d’Ibelin broke into Aimery’s reverie. He had joined Aimery on the forecastle and was now pointing to the west, squinting into the early afternoon sun. Aimery followed his finger and realized the shimmering sea was dotted with black objects that could only be ships anchored offshore.
“It must be the English fleet.” There was no mistaking the awe in Henri’s voice, for they could see no end to the fleet. “It looks even larger than the French fleet!”
Aimery nodded. Henri was right, and like his wife when she had seen the French fleet, Aimery began to hope Christendom had gathered sufficient force to defeat Salah ad-Din.
“Have you ever met the English King?” Henri asked casually, turning away from the vista before them to stand with his elbows on the rail as he concentrated on Aimery.
“I think I did. I mean, I must have. We both attended the second coronation of Henry the Young King, shortly before I left for Outremer,” Aimery admitted. “Richard was still a youth, fourteen or fifteen at the time.”
“And?”
“He was tall for his age, and very good in the tiltyard. There was a tourney the day before the coronation because his elder brother loved them so much. Henry the Young King, was a lion on the tourney circuit, but only because he surrounded himself, literally, with a clique of knights who were the best veteran tourney fighters in France. Richard, I remember, was unhorsed by his brother’s knights and treated a little contemptuously, but, by God, he was fighting his own fight, not letting others do it.” Aimery, as a younger son himself, had identified strongly with Richard at the time and had admired his spirit. To Henri he continued, “But all eyes were really on the Young King, and although he was very precocious, he was also hotheaded and self-important. His father did him the honor of serving him at table, and he claimed it was ‘only right’ since his father was the son of a count, while he was the son of a king. I don’t think that went down very well.”
“No, not terribly tactful,” Henri agreed, but then he laughed and admitted, “but it’s probably the kind of thing I would have said if I were in his shoes. I’ve never been accused of too much respect.”
Aimery laughed dryly at the remark. He had never liked this Ibelin overmuch. He was uncomfortable with the knowledge of how ruthless he’d been as Oultrejourdain’s man, and Eschiva said his wife was little short of terrified of him. Yet he had to admire his tenacity ever since he’d attached himself (like a barnacle) to the cause of Guy de Lusignan. Aimery was certain his only motive was self-interest. For one things, his servility had gained him accommodations with Guy while the rest of them rotted in the dungeon. Still, he had proved useful at Acre. He’d taken on the role of ensuring that nothing happened to Guy in the many engagements in which Geoffrey and Aimery too often led and got ahead of their more cautious brother. Aimery didn’t know of any specific incident in which Henri had saved Guy’s life, but he’d seen the way his brother relied on the younger Ibelin with increasing gratitude. There was an almost alarming dependency in Guy’s relationship with Henri d’Ibelin, Aimery thought. But Sir Henri’s loyalty had been cast in doubt by his testimony before the Church tribunal investigating Isabella’s marriage to Toron.
Seeing they were alone (except for a sailor with a weight to check the depth now and again), Aimery could not resist asking, “What the hell were you doing helping Montferrat dissolve Isabella’s marriage?” As he spoke, Aimery automatically looked over his shoulder to be sure Toron, who was traveling with them, was out of hearing. Reassured that Toron was nowhere in sight, he added angrily, “If you’d kept out of it, maybe she’d still be married to Humphrey, and Montferrat wouldn’t have a ghost of a claim to the throne! What you did was little short of treason—indeed, it was treason.”
Sir Henri shrugged and put on his insolent smile. “What you all seem to forget is that Isabella is my stepniece—just as I am your uncle-in-law,” he reminded Aimery with amusement. (Sir Henri was, as Aimery preferred to forget, his wife Eschiva’s uncle, no less than Lord Balian was.) “I was at Kerak all the years she was imprisoned there, and I happen to know her and Humphrey very well. She deserves better.”
“You know as well as I do that this isn’t about what husband Isabella deserves. It’s about the crown of Jerusalem!”
“Ah. Yes. The kingdom your brother lost. And then agreed to renounce. And is now tearing apart.”
“Christ on the cross, man! My brother trusts you more than any man alive—including me—and you can stand there saying he is to blame for where we are? If I tell him what you just said—”
Sir Henri cut him off with a laugh. “Save your indignation, Aimery! You’ve said the same things to his face—and so has Geoffrey. I’m not deaf, you know! So don’t get on your high horse and pretend otherwise. I serve your brother just as you do, because he’s our best chance of recovering some shred of land and income. That’s why I pushed for him to focus on Acre: it’s so rich and there are many money fiefs to be had, if we could just expel the Saracens and take control of the harbor. We don’t need to hold a lot of land if we control Acre.”
“And by helping Montferrat lay hold of Isabella, you diminish our chances of ever seeing any spoils! What do you think Montferrat will throw us if he’s crowned king?”
“You’re not making sense! Whose side are you on?”
“My own, of course. To your brother, I am one of the few men who never makes recriminations and always openly supports him. But if he loses, my brother will be the first baron of Jerusalem, and—in case you haven’t noticed—Balian’s got this old-fashioned notion of honor and family ties. But just to be sure, I helped free Isabella from the boy puppet, and I wager she’s so grateful for a real man in her bed that she’ll reward me without any urging from Balian.”
Aimery snapped for words, and in the silence they heard a faint voice calling: “Ahoy! Ahoy there!”
Both men followed the sound, and looking over the railing. Dancing on the waves they saw what looked like a fishing smack. A moment later, Sir Henri realized it was an oared skiff much farther from shore than was either normal or prudent.
The men in the open boat were drenched and one man was bailing, but a tall, broad-shouldered man was standing in the bows with his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting at them.
Henri and Aimery both stepped up to the rail, and Henri waved in answer.
“Where do you hail from?” a voice asked in French. It was faint at this distance but carried on the wind.
“We’re out of Acre, bound for Limassol,” Henri answered, and Aimery thought cynically that Henri’s months on the Red Sea had made a partial sailor out of him.
“Limassol? Why?” the man in the skiff wanted to know.
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