The Last Crusader Kingdom

by Helena P. Schrader

  “Of course, if you’d been here, we would have respected your wishes, Aimery. He was your brother, after all. We couldn’t imagine where you were off to all of a sudden—unless it was flying off to France to offer your sword and services to your beloved brother Geoffrey.” Henri sounded very cynical as his eyes bored into Aimery.

  “I have no intention of serving my brother Geoffrey,” Aimery answered bluntly.

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t think Geoffrey has earned an inch of Cyprus—much less all of it. Do you?” He sounded more defiant and self-assured than he really was.

  “No, not particularly,” Henri answered so reasonably that Aimery wondered if he had already guessed what they were about.

  “And the others?” Aimery asked next.

  “Barlais backs Geoffrey, of course. Bethsan and Toron think we should respect Guy’s wishes. The English think Cyprus has reverted to the English Crown and want to consult with King Richard.”

  Aimery snorted in disgust, and Henri agreed: “My sentiments exactly.”

  “And Cheneché? Yourself?”

  “Let’s just put it this way: We didn’t come here to enrich someone else.”

  “I’ll make you a baron, Henri. I’ll make you all barons. If you back me.” Aimery hadn’t intended to blurt it out like that, and the look of alarm on Eschiva’s face made him think he’d blundered. He wished, in that moment, that he had Ibelin’s skills of persuasion—or better yet, that Ibelin were with him now. But he wasn’t, and now that he’d said it out loud there was no taking it back. He waited.

  Henri was staring at him with narrowed eyes. After a tense moment he remarked in a cautious tone, “You and I haven’t always seen eye to eye.”

  “Is there anyone you see eye to eye with all the time?” Aimery asked back.

  “The devil, maybe—or that’s likely what the semi-sainted Balian d’Ibelin would probably say.” Henri turned to throw this remark pointedly at John.

  John bit his tongue to stop himself from blurting out what his father had said: that Henri would follow even a dog for the sake of a barony. Fortunately, his cousin had turned back to Aimery to complain: “You have spent almost every day you’ve been out here trying to rein me in, to stop me from doing what I do best—spreading terror.”

  “Has it gotten you what you wanted?” Aimery countered.

  Henri didn’t answer. The tension grew. Aimery kept trying to think of something to say, but his thoughts were racing in circles. Balian had been so certain Henri would back him over Geoffrey—and yet here he was, just staring at him. Aimery opened his mouth, and then thought better of it. He needed some fresh air to clear his brain out. “I need to go to the latrines,” he announced abruptly. “Wait for me.” He stood and exited.

  Eschiva had been racking her brain trying to figure out how she could contrive a moment alone with her cousin. Now it was abruptly here, and she pounced. “Now that we are among ourselves, let me speak plainly,” she burst out.

  Henri looked over at her, surprised. He was not used to this cousin speaking her mind, at least not on matters of policy, nor did he entirely know what she meant by “among ourselves.” Except for the girl, they were only family, anyway. And then it hit him: with Aimery temporarily out of the room, they were all Ibelins.

  Eschiva knew she had only a few short minutes and could not afford an indirect approach. “Back my husband now, Henri, and no one will benefit more than you. Not because I or even my husband will reward you, but simply because if you do you will be the kin of the next Lord of Cyprus. If you back Geoffrey, on the other hand, you’ll see the island flooded with his Poitevin friends and his wife’s relatives. Support Aimery—and my son, who is even now growing up with yours, will one day rule.”

  The sound of Aimery returning put an end to her short speech. Eschiva ended with a faint smile under eyes that were deadly serious. Then she looked down at her hands as Aimery entered and pretended she had said nothing at all.

  Aimery hardly noticed as he launched into his own new argument. “Henri, you’ve known me for decades. You know I’m a reasonable man. We may disagree on tactics from time to time, but on the whole we have agreed on more than we have fought over—including our assessment of my recently deceased brother. May God have mercy on his soul.”

  “Indeed,” Henri answered, getting to his feet with a significant glance at Eschiva as he announced, “I’ll think about it. Now your lady needs some rest.” He bowed to Eschiva gallantly, then nodded curtly to Aimery and John before striding out.

  They sat in silence, listening to his retreating footsteps. It had not been an auspicious start. Aimery was seized with a sense of helpless rage that he dared not voice, while Eschiva didn’t know if she should offer comfort or pretend she didn’t recognize the gravity of the situation. If they couldn’t win over even her cousin . . . But he had said he would think about it, she told herself. It would be wrong to despair already. With a sigh she stood, took an oil lamp, and beckoned to Anne. Together they passed into the darkened room and slowly mounted the stairs to the room on the floor above.

  There was not a single stick of furniture here except the bed and the chamber pot. The windows were neither glazed nor shuttered and let in the brilliant darkness of the star-studded sky. It was as beautiful here as it had been at sea, Eschiva thought, but a chill seemed to cling to the walls, and she hurried to remove her surcoat, shoes, and stockings so she could slip into bed in her shift. The rough woolen blankets smelled vaguely rank, and she wondered who had used them last and where she might find a bath. Then, exhausted beyond even worrying, she fell asleep.

  She awoke disoriented in the same chamber, utterly alone. She remembered Aimery being with her in the night, but he was not here now. Sitting up and looking around, she noted that here, too, the walls had traces of murals on what plaster remained. The plaster was cracked and chipped and much had fallen away, revealing the naked stones underneath. The sun pouring in the end window was brilliant, however, and warmth came in with it, chasing away the chill of the night before.

  Eschiva threw back the blankets and pushed her stiff and heavy body upright. She needed that chamber pot, and she needed to wash: if not a proper bath, at least some warm water to sponge off the worst dirt. Furthermore, her hair hadn’t felt a comb since leaving the Templar commandery. Where on earth was Anne?

  “Anne?” she called out in the direction of the stairs, and was answered by the sound of scurrying feet. Apparently the girl had only been waiting to be summoned. She appeared at the top of the stairs, head down, hair a ragged, unkempt mess, skirts and hands dirty with soot from the fire downstairs. She bobbed a curtsy but said nothing.

  “Anne, where’s my lord husband?”

  “Dunno, m’lady,” Anne answered, face down.

  “Can you find us some wash water? There must be a well somewhere.”

  Anne turned and fled down the stairs again. With a sigh, Eschiva used the chamber pot, and then noticed there was another stairway in the corner of this chamber.

  She went to it and peered upwards. It climbed inside the thickness of the walls to the roof above, and sunlight was pouring down it. She couldn’t resist. Taking a fistful of skirts in her left hand and putting her other hand on the outer wall, she started up the stairs to the top. As she stepped out onto the roof, the splendor spread out before her took her breath away. She had a view down a steep, forested cliff to a stripe of brilliant green coastline outlined by the white of breaking waves. Beyond, a brilliant and glittering blue sea spread out to infinity. To her left, layers of purple mountains tumbled in echelon down to the sea. To her right, a patchwork of green, yellow, and brownish fields stretched outwards like a broad finger flanked on both sides by water. It was, she thought, the most beautiful sight she had ever seen in her life. No wonder Aimery was in love with the place!

  Eschiva walked slowly around the roof of the tower, feasting on the changing panorama as her point of view shifted and the imperfect overcast blow
ing across the sun changed the patterns of sunlight on the sea. To the north the sea was so close she could make out the lines of breakers as they approached the shore and the whitecaps farther out. To the south, on the other hand, the sea only shimmered silver in the distance. The fertile peninsula to the east was pinched by the water until it became smaller and smaller, but it was richly cultivated. Along the near shore to the north, Eschiva could discern villages dotted along the coast, often with orchards around them. There were small, gentle bays, dotted with bobbing fishing boats and a larger roundship off the coast, heeling over in the wind.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” a male voice said behind her, and it wasn’t Aimery. It was her cousin Henri.

  Eschiva started and spun around, flushing violently. She was wearing nothing but her shift, and the wind up here was blowing it about her wildly. Her hair, too, was uncovered and fluttering in the wind. She felt practically naked, and the look in Henri’s eye and his crooked smile suggested he was seeing more than he should.

  Strangely, he looked as if he liked what he saw. This was confirmed by his next remark. “Not more beautiful than you, perhaps, but you already belong to someone else. Karpas, on the other hand, might be mine.” He strode to the edge of the parapet and stood looking due east with hungry eyes. “That,” he continued, pointing to the peninsula that gradually narrowed as it disappeared into the distance, “is Karpas.”

  He turned, his eyes narrowed on either side of a nose that hung down from his forehead like the nose guard of a helmet. “Karpas is my price, Eschiva. Tell your husband he can have my backing—up to the hilt—if he gives me Karpas. And Kantara.” As he said the latter word, his gaze shifted from the distance to the immediate surroundings, the buildings scattered apparently haphazardly between the rocks and gullies that formed the crest of the sharp, narrow mountain.

  Eschiva followed his gaze and then looked back at him. Their eyes met. She sensed that this was a very steep price—rather like Haakon Magnussen expected to be named Admiral. She was certain that Aimery would resist. He would protest. Just as he had about Magnussen. Aimery had never had enough money (or titles) to throw around. He had learned frugality the hard way, and he would find it hard to be generous. But Eschiva also knew that her Uncle Balian was right: they had to give the island away if they were ever going to hold it. She nodded, adding cautiously, “I will tell my lord husband.”

  Her cousin nodded without breaking eye contact. “Tell him. And tell him it is non-negotiable. Karpas and Kantara, or I will throw my lot in with Geoffrey.”

  Then Brie ducked down into the stairwell again and left her alone with the splendor that had enchanted not only Aimery de Lusignan, but the hardhearted Red Sea Raider as well.

  Nicosia, Cyprus, July 1194

  Aimery had not exaggerated in describing the “imperial” palace. It was as beautiful and well-appointed as he had claimed. It had taken days for Eschiva to explore it all, and a week or more before she no longer got lost in its maze of courtyards and corridors. The gold mosaics, the blue, turquoise, and aqua-colored tiles, the marble fountains, and the potted hibiscus all reminded Eschiva of the stories Maria Zoë told of her childhood in Constantinople. Yet, despite—or was it because of?—its unquestioned luxury and beauty, the “imperial” palace of Nicosia was a frightening place to Eschiva. For one thing, her brother-in-law Guy had died in the very bed she shared with Aimery, and for another, she felt trapped in a strange dream. Around her was magnificent luxury, yet when she reached out for it, it seemed to recede.

  It was just the language barrier, she told herself. All the servants in this beautiful palace were Greek-speaking, and they did not understand even simple requests. Or was it that they did understand but pretended not to?

  Eschiva’s attempts to get a meal ordered, a bed made up, or furniture moved, much less a message to her traveling husband, ended in blank stares and shaking heads. She hadn’t been so conscious of the lack of understanding around her as long as Aimery had been with her, because John was their constant interpreter. But Aimery had been gone for ten days now, trying to win over others for his cause. The longer he was away, the more the palace around her seemed hostile. The servants seemed to grow scarcer, their looks more antagonistic, their whispering more conspiratorial.

  Or was it all in her imagination? Eschiva put her hand to her belly. The child was very heavy now, but like the palace, he seemed unnaturally still. Her instincts said that wasn’t good, but when she’d tried to ask for a midwife, the women gave her blank, uncomprehending stares and shook their heads. She’d tried to get Anne to go out into the city to locate a woman from one of the Italian merchant communes, hoping to ask about a midwife, but Anne had looked at her in sheer terror and then run away for half a day.

  If she’d been feeling better herself, Eschiva would have ventured out into the streets on her own, but she wasn’t feeling well. She was having repeated dizzy spells that left her queasy at best. Once or twice she almost blacked out. This wasn’t normal. She knew it wasn’t normal.

  Guy had sickened and died in this palace. His insides had rotted. Or had he been poisoned?

  John was starving (nothing unusual for him), and in his eagerness for some “real food” he turned Centurion over to the palace grooms. He took the steps to the second floor two at a time, thinking he was surely in time for dinner, and confident that his cousin would have organized the kitchens by now. Women were good at that.

  “Eschiva?” he called out as he reached the royal tract, bewildered by the stillness around him. Things had never been this quiet before. When Guy lived here, the corridors had always been filled with petitioners and servants, hangers-on, and salesmen. “Eschiva?”

  Something crashed loudly in the room to his right and he started, drew up, and looked toward the sound. “Eschiva?”

  Anne darted out of the room from which the noise had come, saw him, and turned around to run back in. Alarmed, John followed her. Eschiva was standing upright behind a chair, pale as a ghost. A toppled table spilling broken crockery lay between her and the door. Her giant eyes met his. “John? Is Aimery back?”

  “No, not yet. He—he sent me ahead. He should be here by evening,” John stammered as his heart beat in his chest. His cousin didn’t look at all well.

  “John,” she started. “You must help me.”

  “Of course. How?” He skirted the broken things while Barry happily started lapping up something, confident that anything on the floor was his.

  As John reached Eschiva, she was swaying on her feet. “I need a midwife—or a doctor,” Eschiva told him, grasping his arm to hold herself upright.

  “I know a doctor!” John announced, relieved that this was a task he could fulfill.

  “Thank God for that, John,” she smiled at him wanly. “You must fetch him before Aimery gets back. Go for him now!”

  Andreas Katzouroubis did not consider pregnancy his specialty. Indeed, he had had very little to do with it, preferring to leave it to those better trained and inherently more knowledgeable: the midwives. On the other hand, he could not refuse a summons from the palace, and he could not suppress his curiosity about the new despot’s wife, either. He was also considerably less worried about unpleasant consequences, having survived this long already. So he dutifully donned his robes and followed the Greek-speaking squire to the familiar apartments of the despot.

  Here he was surprised to find himself confronted by a middle-aged woman with pleasant features who was not in the least haughty or proud, but for all her dignity and restrained demeanor, desperately frightened. Andreas did his best to dispel her fears, assuring her that dizzy spells could be caused simply by the child in the womb sucking up more blood. “Perfectly normal,” he repeated blithely, without having a clue of whether it was true or not. He next advised her to rest as much as possible. “There’s no harm in spending the last couple of weeks in a sedentary state,” he told her in his best doctor’s voice before asking, “Do you have no relatives with you?”
As he spoke he looked around, surprised at the empty room. Women nearing childbed were usually surrounded by a bevy of clucking female relatives.

  Eschiva shook her head solemnly.

  “And no handmaidens?”

  “Only Anne.” Eschiva looked around for the girl, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hmm,” Katzouroubis remarked, displeased. “I will send a midwife to you,” he concluded. “Are you having any pain?”

  Eschiva shook her head, adding anxiously, “But the baby’s so still.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Katzouroubis assured her again with a dismissive gesture. “Just take it easy, and get plenty of sleep. Do you want a sleeping potion?”

  Eschiva shook her head.

  “Good; then there’s nothing more I can do for you. You can send for me if you feel the need, but it would be better to send for the midwife,” he admitted professionally. Then he packed his bag and departed without even requesting a urine sample.

  When he was gone, John knocked hesitantly on the door, and poked his head around. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “The doctor thinks so,” Eschiva answered hesitantly. She was, however, biting her lower lip, something John had seen his sister Isabella do when she was uncertain.

  “Don’t you believe him?” John asked, coming into the room.

  “I don’t know what to think, John,” Eschiva admitted, and she looked at him with huge eyes in her pale face. “I think something’s wrong. I’ve never been this dizzy before, almost blacking out. And the baby isn’t kicking anymore. But I can’t admit that to Aimery! He told me not to come. He said it was too dangerous. I was the one who insisted on coming—and now, if something goes wrong, it will be my fault. Aimery will never forgive me if I miscarry this child, or if it’s born deformed. It would be such a terrible omen, a curse upon the entire dynasty he is determined to establish.” It was all spilling out of her, because for over a week she’d had no one to speak to at all. Normally it would not have occurred to her to confide in a fifteen-year-old boy.