The King's Witch

by Cecelia Holland

  “Johanna said also Humphrey de Toron was here,” she said.

  “Humphrey,” he said. He lay back down on the bed, his head turned to watch her. By the way he spoke the name she knew how it was with him. He must have seen it in her face, because he said, “You think I am a monster.”

  “My lord,” she said, surprised. He was hers, now, whatever his sins; she loved him. “Do you want more?”

  “Yes.”

  She went for the rest of the broth. What men did together, making women of each other, that was sinful, cursed, and apparently very common, to judge from jokes and stories. Those who said it was evil agreed also that she was evil. That set their righteousness at nothing. What Richard did was Richard’s humor. She sat down beside him and helped him drink again. His color was better. His head still wobbled.

  He pushed away the cup, then lay down again, and his gaze poked at her. “Who are you?”

  She sat back away from him in a little jerk of warning. She had loved him too soon. She folded her hands in her lap, her back straight. “Edythe. I’m one of—”

  He rolled onto his side toward her, one arm bent under his head; the light from the front of the tent shone on his face. He said, “I mean, who are you really?”

  “My lord, I don’t understand. I will fetch some wine.” She started up.

  He grabbed her skirt. “No, stay. My mother sent you?”

  She sat down. Her hands knotted together in her lap. She had let him start this, and now she had to go where he hunted. “Yes, my lord.”

  “And Mother got you somehow from an English nunnery.”

  “I—yes.” She looked off toward the door, in case someone was listening.

  “You’re lying. You don’t sound English, you don’t even sound Poitevin. You’re from France, somewhere.”

  “I—”

  “Tell me.” He was trying to prop himself up on one elbow, his head unsteady, the blanket down around his waist.

  “I was born in Troyes. But I swear—”

  “Troyes. That’s not a Troyenne accent. No.” Abruptly, as if he had caught a fresher scent, he went off on a new track. “Your father was a physician, wasn’t he? That’s how you know all this, from Papa’s knee.”

  She jumped, cornered. She said nothing; against her will she saw in her mind the gaunt bearded face above the dark clothes, a book in his hand, pointing to places on her doll and explaining humors. A brief pang struck her like a tooth in the heart.

  “My mother is broad-minded,” he said. “She loves clever, accomplished people, no matter who they are. She knew a famous physician in Troyes. He sent her herbs and recipes, gossip and stories, and gave her much wise counsel. She might have saved him from the French King’s purge, what was it, ten, twelve years ago, if she had been free, and still in Poitiers.”

  She watched him like a rabbit seeing a snake coil steadily closer through the bending grass. He said, “But she did save you, didn’t she?”

  “My lord,” she said, her voice thin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Not a Troyenne accent,” he said, “because in Troyes you didn’t speak French. You spoke that other thing—Zephais—Zephardic. You’re a Jew.”

  “No,” she said. She licked her lips. Unwillingly she thought of the evils his coronation had brought upon the Jews of London—when the crowds rioted through the Jewry and killed many. He had stopped it but for money. “No,” she said again. “Not anymore—I’m a Christian.” She remembered to cross herself.

  “Were you ever baptized? You shouldn’t be on the Crusade.”

  “Oh, please—” She flung out her hands to him. Eleanor had decided against the baptism, in itself a dangerous admission. “I want to go to Jerusalem. I have come all this way, and we’re so close, I can’t go back now.”

  He said, “You must serve God. Be a true Christian. When we take Jerusalem, we will bring the Kingdom of Jesus, and when He comes again, He will know you, and you will be saved.”

  “I serve God,” she said. She settled back, her hands on her knees. She understood what this meant: To serve God was to serve Richard. “I promise.”

  He smiled at her. “I believe you.” He hitched himself up on his elbows; he was tired. “I think you’re one of us, anyway, damned thing and outcast. If I take Jerusalem, we’re all saved, you with me.”

  “Yes,” she said. She wondered what he meant.

  “Good. Bring me something to drink.”

  She brought him the jar. At the first swallow he made a face. “This tastes awful.” But he drank it all and had her bring him more.

  When that was gone, he lay back on the pallet, drowsy. “How long have I been sick?”

  “Just three days. You fell late two days before yesterday.”

  “Good. Now send for my brother,” he said.

  “Who?” she said, surprised.

  “My cousin. Rouquin.”

  He was falling asleep. She went to pull the blanket up. He said, his eyes closed, “Get him.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  He settled himself into the bed. He whispered, “It’s all well if I do this well.” At once he was asleep. She thought awhile about forgetting the order and letting him rest, but in the end she sent a page for Rouquin.

  Six

  ACRE

  At dawn the servants brought a basket of bread and cheese. Edythe made sure Richard got the best of the bread and forbade him the cheese. After, with a page and a basket, she went around the camp and begged and bought all the meat bones she could. There were few, and they cost her much; most men were eating only thin bean porridge, and everybody had money.

  As she went from fire ring to fire ring, the men around her sent up a constant shrill lewd pipe and whistle, and some reached out to grab at her skirt. She moved quickly, to keep them off. She should have brought a knight, she thought; the page was only a child. She could have asked Rouquin. The idea warmed her, and she wished she had.

  When they would not sell her their scraps, she said, “This is for the King. Do you deny Richard?” Then they sold her what they had. Hearing Richard’s name, they kept their hands away.

  She was tired and the sun seemed too bright and her throat felt scratchy. With the page behind her hauling the basket along, she went back to the royal tent to find at the doorway a large wooden frame, a bed in the middle, and a gang of half-naked men crouched around it.

  She bade the page put the bones on to cook and went by into the tent. Inside, men in mail and surcoats made a wall of backs between her and Richard. She crept along past them and got close enough to see that he was eating, sitting up with Rouquin’s help. Johanna pulled her away by the arm.

  “You have to sleep.”

  “I need—”

  “Sleep,” Johanna said, and towed her to the Queen’s own bed and made her lie down. She slept at once. When she woke, thirsty, she saw that Richard was gone, the tent empty except for Lilia, dozing, and a few idle pages playing dice. A pot full of bones bubbled on the brazier. She slept again and woke around noon.

  The tent was quiet. Johanna and Lilia had left. She put on a fresh gown and a kirtle and brushed her hair a few strokes, skipping over the knots. She summoned in the page and said, “I need to talk to other doctors. You must find me other doctors.” He went out. She ate the last of the bread; the cheese was gone.

  The page took her across the camp to the west, toward the sea. As she went, her skirts gathered up in her hands, she looked over the siege before her.

  Every day the place seemed less a city and more a vast heap of stones. From here she could see the broad dent of the moat, dry and stuffed with rocks and dirt and what looked horribly like dead bodies. Out on the knob of the promontory the tall, thin tower stood, too far for any catapult to reach, and from the big ruined fortress in the harbor the black flag of the Saracens flew out on the stiff breeze.

  But the ships that crowded the harbor were all Christian, Richard’s ships. They could not get near the Black Tower,
wreathed in half-submerged rocks, but everywhere else the Crusaders held the bay. No supplies could get into Acre, and the Tower itself looked abandoned, in spite of its brave flag. They were winning, she thought, and her heart leaped. There was an end to this.

  She shaded her eyes with her hand. A red galley she had not seen before was rowing toward the shore, and from the beach a flock of little boats hastened toward it.

  The page led her across the camp, weaving a way between the camps, and the men followed her with their eyes but made no sound. Their stares unnerved her. She walked as fast as she could, and the page got her quickly under cover—a strange rambling shelter, half tent and half wooden shed.

  She went forward a few steps, looking around. The only light came through the doors and the tent fabric, and she could not see well for a moment. Lining either side of the long, narrow space were heaps of straw spread with coarse blankets, and on these makeshift beds lay bodies. A stout man in a monk’s cassock came toward her; the page had just announced her, which, since she had no power of her own, had taken all his breath.

  The monk said, in bad French, “Well met, then. The Queen Sicily is known to me. I self Sir Markus Staufen.”

  “Do you speak Latin, my lord?” He was a monk. Of course he spoke Latin. “Have you a doctor?”

  “Alas,” said the German knight, who spoke less Latin than he believed, “our doctor has dead. Many having dead here, Lady.”

  She said, “I have a patient with a recurrent fever.”

  He gestured toward the beds on either side. “All these fevers, Lady.” He was being courteous; she was a guest, somehow connected to Lionheart; still, she was only a woman.

  “How do you care for them?”

  He talked about the Zodiac, retrogrades and necessary causes, fire and earth; his hands milled in the air. It was important when the disease began. Where the planets were. If the patient fell sick at the full moon, he would be driven mad. The old doctor had told him this. As he spoke, she got, in hints and pieces, that he was not a monk at all, but a knight who had come to fight the Saracens. When they saw the bloodshed and the sickness, he and some of his fellows broke up their ship to build this place for the sick and the dying to come. Mostly he carried blankets and chamber pots and fed people. But he believed he had found a vocation and would enter holy orders as soon as he got home.

  “And, my lady,” he said, “where to study you?”

  Having no ready answer for this, she made none, and he said, with infinite condescension, “Ah, so. An empiricus.” Edythe left knowing nothing more than when she went in, except the German knight’s bad Latin.

  On the way back, she came on a market above the beach, a row of vendor stalls under a canopy, that had not been there before. Johanna, in a cloud of pages and squires, was buying everything she could pick up. The vendors crouched in wait for her and launched volleys of words to draw her to them, but she walked through them as if they were not there. Lilia trailed her, and two knights stood at the head of the market, keeping back everybody else who wanted to buy. Once when a vendor got too insistent, Johanna only lifted her gaze toward the knights and the local man backed hastily away.

  Behind them, Edythe went along the makeshift stalls, looking over the nuts and flowers and onions. The vendors jostled for her attention. “Zingiber?” she said. They mumbled together but no one had zingiber. She bought dates and two combs of honey wrapped in a big leaf. A thin man who knew a lot of French sold her a thumbsized pot of a potion to make people sleep.

  “Jews?” she said, quietly. “Are there Jews here?” She should send a letter to Eleanor.

  If she found more Jews, would they know her too?

  The Syrian shrugged. His cheeks sucked hollow. His head shook just a little. He did not ask about among his fellows, as the vendors usually did when they did not have what she wanted. “Jaffa,” he said. “Jaffa, maybe.”

  In front of his stand, two boys, naked under their long, thin shirts, held out their palms and jabbered at her; she did not understand the tongue but she knew the cupped hands. She gave them each some dates.

  The crowd was steadily thicker. The page had gone with the Queen, and Edythe ran a little to catch up. Ahead of her in the swarm she saw Lilia bump into a young man who never looked at her. They moved apart as if it were all an accident, but now Lilia had something in her hand, which she slid quickly into her sleeve. Edythe caught up with them and they returned to the circle of tents, inside the shell of their guards and attendants.

  At the height, where they could see out over Acre again, Johanna cried, “Look!” and pointed toward the city.

  Edythe turned. Quiet all day, now men burst up from the yellow rock pile and charged toward the wall. From the other side the Saracens were scrambling to defend it. Johanna pointed not at this, but at the hill before them, where Richard sprawled on his litter. The bearers had set it down but still stood at the corners. One of each pair carried a shield, but the litter was as open as a bed. Rains of arrows and stones volleyed down toward it. The King paid no heed and everything fell just short. A crossbow lay beside him; he was reloading another. The bearers stooped to pick up his litter again.

  Johanna said, “God shield him. God keep him.” She jerked her gaze away; she would not look. She led the other women back through the dirt and clutter of the camp to their tent. Edythe hung back, her head turned over her shoulder. With a bellow, suddenly the litter jounced down straight toward the wall, into a cascade of arrows and rocks, Richard firing his crossbows as he went. Rocks crashed around him. He waved one arm, fending off a blow. From beyond the wall, on the Saracen side, came a furious banging of drums. Edythe slipped into the tent, and as she did, Lilia passed her, leaving.

  The dark was coming. Another day consumed. Johanna knelt down at the back of the tent and prayed for her brother, for herself, and even for King Philip, who she had heard was scorching with fever, his hair and teeth falling out. The French were saying Richard had poisoned him. And then himself, by mistake. As proof of this they said he had also poisoned Baldwin of Alsace, the lord who had challenged Richard in the council, and who had died.

  Richard might die, even saved from the sickness, die before her eyes, felled by an arrow or a sword or a stray rock, trampled like her brother Geoffrey. She crossed herself, her eyes closing. He could not die.

  She wondered why she let herself care so much again, after everything that had happened. She would do whatever God asked of her henceforth—Masses and prayers, alms for the poor and barefoot pilgrimages—if her brother lived. But she had offered it all before, for her baby, her husband, and they had died anyway.

  If Richard lived, perhaps he had never been so sick. And she owed God nothing.

  Meanwhile, she would send in secret to King Philip Augustus, wishing him well. Reminding him what she had said, that he should leave the east, which was doing him such evil.

  Edythe sank each honeycomb in ajar of wine, put covers over the round mouths, and weighted the covers. Johanna was at her prayers still. A page came in the door, stood to one side, and said, “The King of Jerusalem.”

  Johanna rose, shaking her skirts out. “All right. Send him in.” Her voice was low; Edythe knew she was tired of this.

  Edythe expected Guy de Lusignan, but the man who walked in was taller than Guy, younger, with thick dark hair and a dark drooping mustache. A soft wide bonnet sat tilted over one ear. His Byzantine cloak had a deep hemline of shredded gold and a gold clasp at his shoulder. Other, lesser men swirled around him, but he had a fighting-cock strut that drew all eyes, a look proud and cold. This, then, was the second King. Edythe backed away, watching Johanna in the center of the room.

  “My lord Conrad,” the Queen said, coolly.

  Edythe put her hands together. There was likely some danger in this. He performed a flourish of a bow, wrists turned back, fingers spread. Edythe remembered that he had been at the Byzantine court; he had very Greek manners. He said, “I am delighted to set eyes on the beautiful Qu
een of Sicily, whose fame has preceded her.”

  “Well,” Johanna said, and crooked a finger at a page, who ran up with a stool. “You could have done that much sooner had you let us into Tyre when we first came there.” Edythe could hear the tension in her voice: She had to measure every word, for what she said here could be exactly wrong for Richard’s cause.

  The black King bowed again. “A misunderstanding, certainly, my dear lady.” He lifted a hand and one of his men came forward with a pouch. “I come to you, my beautiful Queen, as a mere messenger.” From the pouch he fingered up two long folded letters, sealed, which he handed to her.

  “Mother,” Johanna said, looking down at the first letter in her hands. She dropped the second without a glance to the floor. “By your leave, my lord.”

  Conrad was already going. Edythe realized he had gotten what he wanted: acceptance by a Plantagenet. Johanna had opened the letter from her mother and was deep in reading it, her face bright, laughing now and then. The tent door swung shut. Edythe craned her neck to see the other letter, lying on the floor by the Queen’s feet.

  “Mother says to tell you, ‘Well done, O good and faithful servant. ’” She glanced at Edythe as she said it, then saw her trying to read the other letter and gave her another, narrower look. “Go ahead, pick it up, see who it’s from, since you’re so curious.”

  Edythe flushed. Johanna laughed. “Oh, do.” She went back to her letter.

  “Is all well in Poitiers?” Edythe said, guardedly. She picked up the letter and turned it over, not recognizing the hand or the seal.

  “She says so. She caught John at a plot to take the treasury and made him apologize until he cried; it’s a very merry tale she makes.” She folded the thick paper into thirds again. “You know everybody between here and Poitiers has read it. Who is that?”

  Edythe broke off the seal. “I don’t know. Oh. Isabella of Jerusalem. Here.”