The King's Witch

by Cecelia Holland

  Almost at once a market appeared in the main square, where also the fountain began to flow again, although the broken angel disappeared. Edythe went there, to get away from Johanna’s viperous tongue and constant whining, and in among the jostling of the other market wives she found some very fine mushrooms, and more zingiber, and short hollow sticks full of a sweet juice. Honey cost more, and she bought several of the sweet canes to make Johanna’s oxymel. Sending the page back to the citadel with the full basket, she went on alone, ignoring the screams and pleas of the vendors, looking at the lace, the pots, the plucked chickens, and the strings of dried peppers. Few of the voices around her spoke French. The vendors rushed out at her from their stalls, shouting as if they were old friends. Among the crowds of women swathed in their shawls she felt out of place. Then suddenly, someone was plucking at her skirt.

  “Lady! Lady!”

  It was the old beggar. She turned, startled. The crone’s hand went out. “Alms. Alms.”

  “I have nothing.” She backed up.

  The beggar lunged at her. “Alms.” Her hands like talons plucked at Edythe’s skirt, at her belt, felt along her hands for rings. Edythe wheeled and ducked away into the crowd.

  She went quickly down a lane, turning corners every few yards, and then across another square; when she looked back, the beggar was gone. She stood, panting, at the corner. She had no idea where she was. The beggar still made her scalp tingle. The old woman was horrible, a walking corpse, who should be dead but wasn’t. She crossed the square and walked down the opposite street. Nothing seemed familiar. On either side blank stone walls rose from the edge of the street, higher than her head, topped with tiles or cutwork; behind them, she knew, were houses, yards, orchards. But she was lost. She passed a gate. The little niche set into the wall had been stripped to one last row of glazed brown tiles. Someone would put an icon there again. She turned right, and then at the end of the next lane, through a broken archway, she came into another market.

  On either side baskets and hemp sacks offered nuts, spices, heaps of bright green powder; cages packed with live chickens hung from the roof poles. A vendor rushed at her fluttering a length of cloth. “Lady! Lady!” In a stall a man was hacking up a hanging headless carcass, its body a hunk of red muscle and white muscle sheath and bone.

  “No,” she said, “No,” and shook her head, dodging people waving bowls and boxes at her, screaming, “Lady!” She passed a huge tawny beast squatting on the ground; on its long, narrow moth-eaten neck, its head was eye level with hers. As she went by, it let out a horrible aggrieved moan. She stepped around a heap of dung. “Lady!” Someone dangled a silver chain in her face. A hammer clanged. A small boy was beating a donkey with a stick. Then, at the end of the square, she saw a fountain, where several horses were drinking, and she recognized the big gray horse in the middle.

  “No.” She pushed her hands at the chains, the lengths of cloth, a woman with a double handful of eggs, and went gladly to the gray horse, looking for Rouquin.

  He stood by the horse’s head. He wore his mail, but not his helmet, his long surcoat filthy. When he saw her, he said, “Alone again,” as if he had caught her stealing sweets, and came up between the horses to her.

  “I was lost,” she said. She had not seen him much since they came into Acre. She remembered the times he had helped her with Richard, when the King was sick, his tenderness then, but now, disappointed, she saw only the angry sullen brute he had been at first. He snorted at her.

  “What you deserve,” he said. “I guess I ought to take you back.” With no more courtesy than that, he set his hands on her waist and hoisted her up sideways on his great saddle, led the horse away from the others, and vaulted up behind her.

  She held to the saddle, her feet high above the stirrup. His arm with the reins came lightly along her waist, and his other hand rested on the pommel of the saddle, encircling her. She was trapped; perhaps he didn’t mean this. Perhaps he did. She had to keep him talking.

  She said, “Thank you.”

  “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself. You should realize that by now.”

  She was silent a moment, in no position to argue. She searched for a safer line of talk. “Where will the Crusade go next?”

  “First Richard has to get this money. The ransom for the prisoners. Philip is threatening to leave. A lot of people want to go straight to Jerusalem.”

  He was riding down a narrow way, past a donkey and two shoemakers, a wall seamed with the dry crusty roots of vines, not the usual way to the citadel.

  “How close are we to Jerusalem?” she said.

  They came up to a gate, and now, beyond the wall, she saw the tower of the citadel: This was a back way in. “Not really close enough,” he said. “For my liking.” He slid from the horse and lifted her down, and, stepping back, opened the gate.

  She went through the wall into the ruins of a garden. The little trees were brown, and many had broken branches like dead dangling arms. The plants in the herb beds looked like thorny black claws. “I didn’t know this way was here,” she said.

  He had left the horse and come after her down the measured little path. There was nobody else around; they were far behind the citadel’s kitchen, the closest building, with a line of spindling trees between. She could hear the sea dashing up against the far wall. The garden was laid out in quarters, each framed in a waist-high course of stone. Even the stones were chipped and broken and fallen out of place. She said, a little breathless, “What a hell war is.”

  Rouquin said, “Yes. But then life is hell, isn’t it?” They had come to the end of the path, where she had to turn, and he sat on the wall there so when she turned she faced him.

  “But why make it worse?” she said.

  “I’m not sure it is worse,” he said. “I know what I’m doing when I’m fighting.” He took hold of her hand.

  “Fighting for God?” She drew her hand away, and he let her go easily enough, his fingers rough with calluses.

  “This isn’t about God, whatever Richard says. This is about power.” He took her hand again.

  “Please,” she said.

  He lifted her hand to his mouth, kissed the inside of her wrist, his tongue against her pulse, his eyes on her to see how she took this. She trembled. Some wild urge woke in her. She remembered again that night when he helped her with Richard, his gentleness, the hidden sweetness under his harsh temper. He said, “What, are you afraid of me? You’re not afraid of anything.” He drew her closer. She put her hands on his chest, meaning to push him away, and felt the hard body under the mail, and suddenly she leaned forward and kissed him.

  He murmured. Their mouths pressed together, tentative, tremulous, soft. She felt suddenly that they were surrounded; where before they had been too much alone, now anybody might come on them at any moment. She shut her eyes, all her body quickening. His lips parted. He slid his tongue into her mouth, his hands on her hips. He pulled her against him, one hand stroking her hip, the other smoothing down over her backside.

  She broke the kiss; she stepped away, her mouth dry, and her heart thundering. “This is not honorable,” she said, and ran toward the back of the citadel.

  Rouquin went to the end of the garden, where it overlooked the sea; a slop of white foam showed momentarily above the top of the wall. He thought: honorable.

  She had kissed him first. She had given him her mouth, she should give him the rest. He had heard the story about her. Some man had abducted her from a nunnery, or she had gone willingly, and Eleanor had rescued her. Either way, she had surely lost her honor then.

  He thought, uneasily, she must have been very young then.

  It had nothing to do with honor, anyway. It had to do with her. Her touch had saved Richard. Johanna depended on her. And her kiss . . . She had kissed him first. He wanted more than just to have her. He needed something of her.

  He did not know exactly what. He stood looking out at the sea, his mind clogged, stuck on some though
t he could not pick apart into words.

  At least his bone had wilted. He wondered, briefly, if the Templars’ lambskin drawers ever let them stand tall. He raised his hands to his face and smelled her body on them; his chest felt the pressure of her leaning against him. His mouth remembered the shape of her mouth. The touch of her tongue against his tongue. The bone was coming back. He walked swiftly to the gate, where he had left his horse.

  Edythe watched him go from behind the pistachio trees. She had almost yielded to him. Even now part of her longed to go after him. She thought of his lips on her wrist, and her knees weakened.

  She could not love him. She had no rank, and he was high-born, far above her. She remembered what Johanna had said: He could be King of Jerusalem. If he married Isabella. He would marry an heiress.

  He would never marry Edythe. Even if she were a Christian. He wanted only one thing. All she could do was refuse him.

  She shut her eyes; she imagined the house in Troyes, the people in the house, burning. She carried them along, somehow, a burning only she could feel, at the center of everything. She went into the citadel, toward somewhere dark and alone.

  Nine

  ACRE

  “He won’t let me go to his council.” Johanna was pacing up and down the room. “He won’t even let me sit there.”

  Berengaria was there, her hands idle. She turned to Edythe. “What is this? She is mad today.” Her French had much improved, being around them more.

  Edythe watched Johanna swoop around the room, sending the maids scurrying out of her way. The Queen could not be still, and her fingers picked at each other, as if she would tear herself to tatters. Edythe turned to Berengaria, whose eyes followed fascinated after Johanna, and said, “Please, my lady, would you take everyone out to the garden?”

  Berengaria murmured. “It is not pretty out there,” she said.

  “Well, then,” Edythe said, remembering the broken sticks of the garden, remembering also what had happened there between her and Rouquin, “you can make it pretty, my lady. You can enjoy yourself in doing it. Get the servants out. They’ll know how to do the work. Go.”

  Berengaria’s head sank down between her shoulders, but her gaze went toward Johanna, still shouting at the far end of the room. Her eyebrows twitched. Turning, the little Queen clapped her hands, calling her other women after her. She spoke in her own tongue and led a little procession out the side door.

  When they were alone, Johanna wheeled at the far end of the room, and Edythe faced her. “What is it, my lady?”

  Johanna strode toward her, her face stormy and her hands clutching at each other. “I cannot tell you.” She sat down on the divan there and put her head in her hands and wept.

  Edythe sat beside her and curled one arm around the Queen’s shoulder, to steady her, to give her a place to rest. “What has happened?”

  The Queen straightened, turning out of her embrace, her shoulders hunched. This new habit of worry had worn creases into her face. She took Edythe’s hands tight in her own. Her eyes shone too bright. “You must swear to tell no one.”

  “My lady, you know this.”

  Johanna’s gaze searched her face. As if what she saw there convinced her, she said, “The Templar. De Sablé. He knows. About me and Philip Augustus. He holds it over me like a ransom.” She wrenched her hands from Edythe’s and turned away. “And they will not let me go to this council, where I could at least seem to obey him—”

  “Obey him.” Edythe leaned toward her. “You mean he has given you commands?”

  “He will that I support Conrad for King, and keep Philip here,” Johanna said. “Or he might—He will tell Richard. He will make it seem much worse than it was. If he tells Richard—” Her hands were jerking and tugging at each other again.

  Edythe said, “Draw the thorn. Tell Richard first.”

  “What?” Johanna swiveled toward her.

  “Tell him,” Edythe said. “He should know all, anyway—about de Sablé.”

  The Queen’s wide eyes regarded her a moment. Her face smoothed out, her lips softer. “If I tell him, then he will find out—everything. And he will hate me.” A tear shone on her lashes.

  “He will not hate you,” Edythe said. “He loves you, more than anyone, I think. Tell him.”

  “I cannot. I cannot. He would look at me so—” She turned, and clutched Edythe’s hands. “You must not tell him. Swear you will not.”

  “My lady, I swear it,” Edythe said. “But at least do not stoop to heed the Templar. He won’t do anything. If he tells Richard, then his hold on you is gone. He must have other hens to pluck here; he is just boiling the water.”

  Johanna’s mouth dropped open. “You think he is only feigning.”

  “All know Philip wants to leave—how could you make a difference? De Sablé wants to get you in the way of obeying him—like teaching a dog.”

  “Ah, God,” Johanna said, “what a way to say it.” But she looked much easier, and her voice had lost its whine.

  “And,” Edythe said, “You know very well there is a way we can go to the council, and hear all, if not speak.”

  Now Johanna actually smiled at her. “Oh, you are sideways wise, as my mother said.”

  “Then, come,” Edythe said. “And see what happens.”

  Philip said, “We have won a great victory here. We have repaid Saladin for the disaster of Hattin, I think.” He spoke a little mushily. He had lost many teeth in the fever. A dark velvet cap covered his head, which was allegedly bald as an onion. He coughed.

  Edythe and Johanna crept into the front of the empty musicians’ balcony on the wall above the high table. Through the latticework of the balcony’s front wall they could see down on the heads of the chief men of the council, stretched along the back of the table, their pages and vassals moving constantly around them. Philip was directly below Edythe, Richard to his right; she could see some of Richard’s face but only the top of Philip’s head. Swiftly Edythe looked around the crowded hall and near the far corner of the side table found a pack of black and white knights, Robert de Sablé among them, the red cross vivid on his chest.

  She thought suddenly of Lilia, who had known about Johanna and the King of France, dumped as a warning on Johanna’s doorstep. Now she wondered less that Johanna was afraid. She glanced at the Queen beside her; Johanna was looking intently down through the lattice, her brows fretted.

  Edythe pressed her lips together. She regretted promising to tell no one, but she would regret more breaking the promise. Below them Richard lifted his cup. “God be praised, and all our brave and valiant men, that Acre is ours again!”

  The hundred-odd men in the hall all shouted, exuberant, pleased with themselves. All around they lifted cups and saluted one another, and the boys with the ewers ran back and forth filling the cups again. The men below the gallery were talking again, and Edythe cocked her head to hear them.

  The King of France was saying, “In fact, this victory is so great I believe I have fulfilled my vow.”

  Johanna made a small noise in her throat. Her right hand pressed flat on the latticework. Below them, Richard’s yellow head, circled by his crown, wheeled around toward Philip. “What are you saying? All week now the whole city has buzzed that you are planning to go back to France, with the work undone.”

  Guy de Lusignan sat on his left hand, and Conrad of Montferrat on Philip’s left; both of these would-be kings tilted forward to attend this, and the rest of the crowd hushed.

  “Well, yes,” Philip said. He twisted on the cushioned bench. Edythe wondered why he wore no crown. Perhaps his scalp was still tender; excess of yellow bile made the skin sensitive. He looked very yellow. Likely his humors were still unbalanced after the sickness, his body as crooked inside as it was outside, and he had a bilious temper, bitter and cold. He said, in a smooth voice, “I have taken Acre. I have come to God’s help in His own land. I have served my King the length of my fee, and I will go back to France. Ah, dear France—”
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  “The Crusade—the service of God is greater than dear France! You swore to take back Jerusalem.”

  Edythe flicked a glance at Robert de Sablé, who was watching, as ever, smiling, as ever.

  Beyond Philip, Conrad yawned, like a cat, tipping his head back, his teeth showing; his earlobes glittered in the torchlight. “In truth, you know, the Crusade is finished, my lords. The Saracens are alerted. They will not let us do too much more. We have got Acre back, at great cost. Why put that at risk? They have ruined Jaffa and they are destroying Ascalon now, which is as far south as we’ve ever gotten. Without those seaports we have no chance of holding the hinterland. What remains is to choose the rightful King for what we do have, so we can get the most out of it.”

  Richard’s head swiveled; he leveled a brief, savage look at Conrad. Edythe remembered what he had told her that night in the tent. He needed the Crusade.

  In a bright, clear voice, Guy said, “I will not leave off the Crusade until we hold Jerusalem and the True Cross is in our hands again.”

  There was a little cheer from those who heard. Richard straightened. His hands appeared on the table before him. “That’s why you are the King,” he said, loudly. He picked up the knife on the table and began jabbing it at the cup before him.

  Conrad banged his fist down. “By what right? By what right? I am married to the heiress of Baldwin the Leper—”

  “The Leper at least held the kingdom,” Richard snarled. He slammed the knife down so hard it rebounded with a twang into a long arched flight down the room. “We shall take Jerusalem! Go, if you will, then, King Philip—I swear, I shall not leave here until Jerusalem is Christian again!”

  Johanna sat back, her hands on her knees. “The devil.” Another cheer rose, not much stronger than the one before. They were growing used to his pledges, Edythe thought, to these vaulting catapult flights of words. She put her eye to the latticework, holding her breath to listen.