Envoy of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

  The English King was quick to abandon a lost argument and declared instead, “Montferrat is a bigamist! He has a wife living in Constantinople!”

  “Who has renounced him.” Ibelin countered, sticking to this story even if there was justifiable cause to doubt it, but he added, “Had we known the King of France was widowed—or that your betrothal to Alys of France was not set in stone—we might have waited for either of you,” Ibelin suggested provocatively. “We did the best with what we had. Whomever Isabella wed was to be our king, and we need a king capable of fighting for her kingdom. Montferrat can; Toron cannot.”

  “You already have a crowned and anointed king!” Richard countered, starting to get genuinely annoyed with this impudent upstart.

  “If you’re referring to Guy de Lusignan, who lost the Kingdom at Hattin, his claim to the throne was extinguished with his wife’s death.” It angered Ibelin that the English King was being so partisan and pigheaded. So much depended upon him, and yet here he was rejecting everything the High Court had done to eliminate the rot that had led to the fall of Jerusalem four years ago. If the English King insisted on supporting Lusignan, whether out of bigoted support for a vassal or merely to spite Philip of France, it would divide them when they needed unity. Everything depended on this crusade being a success. They had at last pulled together a force large enough to challenge Salah ad-Din’s dominance, but that force had to be used effectively in support of the common cause if it was to have chance of defeating him. That meant they could no longer tolerate Lusignan’s stubborn refusal to accept his fate. Ibelin tried to underline how untenable Lusignan’s position was by noting, “You’ll find not one single baron of Jerusalem—except poor Toron—who supports Lusignan.”

  “The barons of Jerusalem?” the English King scoffed in response. “The pack of you together don’t control so much as an acre of land!”

  “We control no less than your once and would-be king!” Ibelin reminded him indignantly.

  “In your shoes, my lord,” Richard advised ominously, narrowing his eyes as the muscles around his jaw tensed, “I would be more respectful toward those who have come to recover the lands you lost through your sins!”

  Now Ibelin was truly angry. He’d had enough of this logic, and he was not afraid to say so to the King of England. Looking the Lionheart straight in the eye as he spoke, he asked: “Why, my lord King, do you truly think our Lord is so petty or so cruel as to punish all of Christendom for the sins of so few?”

  Richard avoided the question and dismissed Ibelin with an imperious, “You’ve been warned once, Ibelin. Don’t make me warn you again.”

  Acre, June 22, 1191

  Eschiva had delayed as long as she could, pleading first that little Hugh needed to be better outfitted for his new life as a page to the King of England, and then that their daughter Helvis had a fever. She could not delay indefinitely, however. Aimery was relentlessly demanding her “immediate” appearance. They had been getting along so well since his release from captivity that she wanted to please him. Yet she hated the thought of serving two strange queens in the cramped quarters of a ship.

  She had served as lady-in-waiting to queens before, of course. She had served both Sibylla and Isabella. But they were kin. She had hated the first and loved the latter—but either way, she had been related to them, and that had given her a measure of protection, at least in her own mind. The women she was being sent to serve now were utter strangers and had no reason to be kind to her. But Aimery was right, too. Ever since the High Court of Jerusalem had thrown their weight behind Conrad de Montferrat, the prospects for all the Lusignan brothers had dimmed. Only Richard of England stood between them and complete ignominy—after all these years.

  The galley in which she traveled down from Tyre lay alongside a rickety wooden pier that had apparently been built in haste to help offload the English fleet. There was no one to meet them, of course, because they’d had no way to get word to Aimery of the exact date, time, or even the name of the vessel on which they would travel. So they paid a boy to run into the camp and find him.

  Hugh, meanwhile, was agog at the sight of the siege camp, and he couldn’t stand still long enough for her to give him last instructions. How was he ever going to take to the discipline of being a royal page? She’d asked herself that a hundred times already, however, and for the hundredth time she heard Aimery’s answer in her head: He’d better learn fast.

  He would, she told herself. Hugh was as quick of mind as he was fair of hair. He’d inherited the Lusignans’ bright blond locks and their intense blue eyes, and was a very pretty boy. He was still two months shy of his ninth birthday, but he was starting to grow, and he was already as agile as a monkey. He’d talked the sailors into letting him climb aloft, and she’d nearly had a heart attack when he called down to her from high overhead. He was quick to laughter, too, and he had a lovely voice. Maybe that would please the English King, who had a reputation as a troubadour.

  “Madame?” It was the voice of Maria Zoë’s faithful servant Rahel. After the surrender of Cyprus, Richard of England had taken Isaac Comnenus’ only child, a daughter, into his “care” (or as a hostage, some would say). Maria Zoë suspected that Isaac’s daughter wouldn’t be able to speak a word of French, much less Latin, and would be totally bewildered and isolated in Richard’s household. She had therefore suggested that Eschiva take Rahel with her, since Rahel would be able to translate for the Cypriot princess turned prisoner. Maria Zoë had also guessed that Eschiva herself would want a familiar face and friend in this difficult and unsought-for situation.

  “Yes, Rahel?”

  “I think the King is coming. There.” Rahel was pointing at the shore.

  Eschiva caught her breath and turned to follow her finger, expecting the already legendary Lionheart to be striding toward them. She unconsciously started fussing with her veils and wondering if she was presentable as she searched the crowds clogging the landing stage. Surely people should have been giving way before the King of England? Then she caught sight of her brother-in-law Guy, and realized that was who Rahel was referring to. Poor Guy—he was mounted and wearing a flashy surcoat over his expensive armor, but no one was taking any note of him. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Henri, he might have made no progress at all. Henri d’Ibelin, however, was not above using his sheathed sword to knock people out of the way, and the insults and threats he liberally distributed made some men move aside resentfully.

  At last the way was clear, and Guy jogged the last few yards to jump down on the quay, tossing his reins to Henri. He had evidently seen Eschiva, because he waved to her before bounding onto the gangway. They met in the waist of the ship, where he bent and kissed her rather exuberantly on both cheeks. “Dearest sister! What a pleasure to see you!” Eschiva could not remember such a warm reception from her haughty brother-in-law. “Where is that fine boy of yours?” Guy asked next, already looking about for a nephew he usually ignored.

  Eschiva turned toward the bows where she had last seen her son and called out, “Hugh!”

  “Sir Henri will take him back to the King of England’s tent on my horse,” Guy explained, “while I accompany you to the buss housing the Queens of England and Sicily.”

  Hugh caught sight of his uncle and dropped out of the standing rigging to greet him with an exaggerated bow he’d been practicing ever since he’d learned he was to serve the English King. He ruined the effect, however, by giggling as he straightened. Guy, evidently in a good mood, laughed with him before remarking, “You’d better learn your manners, Hugh. They say the Plantagenet roasts rude pages for breakfast! He has a terrible temper, you know.”

  Hugh laughed, obviously unconvinced.

  Sir Henri, having tethered the horses, joined them on the deck, and Eschiva went on tiptoe to return his perfunctory kiss on the cheek. His eyes had already found Hugh. “Come along, young man!” he urged, gesturing toward the quay and the horses. “Life is about to become a great adventure.”
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br />   As if to punctuate his words, a large boom followed the end of the sentence, making Eschiva and Rahel both gasp.

  “That’s just ‘Bad Neighbor’—the King of France’s largest siege engine. It throws stones the size of Hugh here! The Accursed Tower is starting to crumble a bit under its attention.”

  “How is the siege going?” Eschiva asked.

  Sir Henri shrugged. “Well, at least we’ve got the siege engines. And with all these ships, there’s no chance of the Saracens slipping supplies into the garrison by sea. They’re truly cut off from all aid now.”

  While this was not bad news, it did not sound like victory was just over the horizon. “What about the Kings of France and England?” Eschiva inquired; everyone in Outremer had put so much hope on their arrival.

  “Sick,” Sir Henri replied simply.

  “Sick? Both of them? What is it?” Eschiva was instantly alarmed for Hugh’s health, and was on the brink of declaring she would not let him go ashore to serve a man with some illness.

  “Arnoldia. Nothing to worry about. Ibelins don’t get it. The French King has lost all his hair, and the Plantagenet is starting to lose his as well. He could probably deal with that, as he does not appear particularly vain, but the forced inactivity is making him very irritable. He snarls at everyone just like a wounded cat. If you’re clever, Hugh,” Henri addressed his nephew, “you’ll slip lime sherbet to the King. It will sting the sores in his mouth and he’s likely to throw the bowl at you, but the Samaritan doctors swear it helps cure Arnoldia.”

  “Be off, Sir Henri; the ladies and I have to continue.” Guy dismissed his knight without rancor but in an obvious hurry.

  Eschiva had no choice but to bid her eldest child a hasty farewell. It was better that way. He was clearly more excited about the siege and all the adventures he was about to have than about his mother’s admonishments to be “good” and “careful.” What more could she possibly say to him now? His father, two of his uncles, and his great-uncle Henri were all there to look after him. It was time to let go.

  Meanwhile Guy was giving orders for the galley to back away from the quay again, and directing it toward a large buss that flew the royal standard of England from the masthead. Only after they had cast off did he give his attention to his sister-in-law again. “Where is Aimery?” Eschiva asked.

  “Ah.” Guy evaded her eyes. “He and Geoffrey felt it was important that the Lusignans support the French King.”

  “Yes, of course, but why couldn’t he meet me? I would have liked to at least see my husband—”

  “Yes, yes, of course. If we’d known you were arriving this afternoon . . . but we honestly didn’t hear you’d docked until they were already committed. The French King ordered an assault, you see, but was too ill to lead it himself—”

  “Christ in heaven!” Eschiva exclaimed, turning back to look at the siege camp in horror. “You mean—”

  “Oh, you can see nothing from here,” Guy explained cheerfully. “They’re focusing on the part of the wall that has already been weakened by our siege engines. More to the east.”

  Eschiva could only stare at Guy. Both his brothers were apparently risking their lives at this very moment, and he found nothing odd in the fact that he, the “King,” was not with them while they fought for his kingdom. She would never learn to love this man, she thought resentfully, and yet she and her family were harnessed to him by bonds of blood.

  “Eschiva, I wanted to use this time together to be sure you understand your role,” Guy declared, blithely ignorant of his sister-in-law’s resentment. It was bad enough that the man was a selfish fool, Eschiva thought, without him presuming to tell her what to do! But Eschiva, as usual, kept her opinion to herself, and Guy continued: “The Queen of Sicily is a widow in need of a new husband, and kings don’t grow on trees. I’m sure she fancies me, actually, but the more I know about her interests and tastes, the easier it will be to win her. You know, does she like hawking or hunting? Or does she prefer books? Does she play an instrument? Or is she very pious? Find out if she craves relics; I’m sure I could find something to impress her, if she does. Or is she more interested in silks or jewels? Anything you can find out that will make my suit easier.”

  Eschiva nodded. Aimery had warned her that Guy had hopes of seducing the English King’s sister. He’d slept his way to the crown of Jerusalem, after all—why shouldn’t he hope to secure his fortunes with another bedroom conquest? If the King of England gave his sister to Guy in marriage, he would be locked into the alliance with the Lusignans by ties of kinship, and that made it much less likely that he would withdraw his financial and military support at a later date.

  The galley rapidly covered the short distance to the large buss that rode lazily at anchor. The ship was manned by a skeleton crew capable of handing a sudden storm or another emergency, but otherwise it had been converted from a transport vessel into a floating palace for the Queens of England and Sicily. By living here, they were spared the squalor and dangers of the siege camp.

  King Guy was announced, and the ship’s captain duly lowered a ladder for them, because the freeboard of the buss was substantially higher than that of the galley. While sailors held the ladder steady, Eschiva hitched her skirts up into her belt and took hold of the sides of the ladder. Guy followed behind her to catch her if she made a misstep. Rahel and the servants followed with the baggage.

  By the time Eschiva reached the deck of the buss, the queens had come on deck to greet the newcomers. There was a bevy of seven women, to be precise, but two women led the way arm in arm, and Eschiva rapidly guessed they were the principals. One of the women was tall but very slim, with fair skin that had burned bright red in the sun and pale eyebrows that suggested fair hair hidden under her silken wimple. The other was very petite and dark, with smoldering black eyes that reminded Eschiva of some of the Saracen women she had seen.

  Eschiva dipped her knee in a deep curtsy before the two women, bowing her head. “My ladies: my lord husband, Aimery de Lusignan, suggested you might appreciate the company of a lady born and raised here in Outremer, and” she gestured for Rahel to come forward, “the services of a lady who speaks Greek as fluently—”

  “Deo Gracia! Gracia, ma dame!” the little dark lady exclaimed with exuberance, and then turned and gave a rush of orders to one of her ladies.

  Beside her, her taller companion laughed, then extended her hand to Eschiva with a smile. “As you can see, we are sorely in need of someone who speaks Greek! And I, for one, am desperate to learn more about Outremer! I am woefully ignorant, and my beloved brother is annoyingly sparing with both his presence and his intelligence!”

  “Your brother begs your understanding, my lady. He personally asked me to assure you he thinks of you constantly—” Guy’s pretty speech was silenced by a withering look from the Queen of Sicily.

  “We were told my brother was seriously ill—too ill to receive us. Were we misinformed, my lord . . . king?” Eschiva winced at the tiny pause Joanna Plantagenet inserted between “lord” and “king,” making it clear she did not view this man as an equal to her brother or her late husband.

  Guy was flustered by her directness, and Eschiva watched him without sympathy. He’d had it so easy with Sibylla. She’d been a silly teenager, so susceptible to flattery. Guy was babbling something about King Richard being on the mend, but not wanting to endanger his lady wife or his beloved sister. The Queen of Sicily nodded as if she accepted his explanation but without, Eschiva thought, any indication that she liked the messenger. Eschiva wondered if Guy recognized her indifference and that was why he wanted her help—or if he was deluding himself about his charms, just as he had deluded himself about his skills as a leader of men, a diplomat, and everything else?

  Meanwhile, the Queen of England had finished giving her instructions to her lady, and turned back to address the new arrivals. “My lord king,” she addressed Guy de Lusignan, “please give me the latest word from my lord husband and the
siege. We can hear the crack of the siege engines even from here—by night as well as by day—and sometimes shouting reaches us faintly over the water, too. But what of my lord husband? Has the fever broken yet? You know I protest most vigorously against being kept here, away from his side, when he is so ill!”

  Eschiva liked the sound of that. The Queen of the English might be small and delicate of build, but she had spirit.

  “You remind me of my own dear, late Queen, Madame,” Guy answered with a bow; “she too could hardly bear to be separated, coming to me even in captivity.” Eschiva winced, thinking it was not wise to remind the present company that he had been a captive—or of the debacle that had led a king into captivity. She noted, however, that while the Plantagenet raised her eyebrows in evident disapproval, the Queen of England nodded vigorously. “Quite so, my lord, as would I, if—God forbid—my lord husband were to fall upon such misfortune. So it is all the more unjust that with only a mile separating us, I am kept a virtual prisoner here.”

  “Madame, I will convey your indignation, but I assure you that your husband’s knights are only obeying his orders.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a moment,” the Queen of Sicily intervened, and Eschiva had the feeling that this was an argument the women had had among themselves more than once. “My brother hates being coddled. All Plantagenets do. I’d like to have seen the man brave enough to tell my father he should let a woman near him when he was sick! Fortunately, my mother didn’t have a coddling bone in her body. Richard is exactly like my father. When he’s sick, he wants to crawl into a cave until he’s feeling better. Now, my lord king, we have kept you long enough from the business of regaining your kingdom.” She held out her hand for him to kiss in a gesture of such definitive dismissal that Guy de Lusignan had no choice but to dutifully kiss her hand and then Queen Berengaria’s. Both queens stood graciously at the rail, waving goodbye until he was well out of hearing.