An arrow clanged off his shield. He drew rein, holding one hand up, and his men stopped. With a last patter of arrows the turbaned warriors ahead of them disappeared over a low rise.
“My lord—my lord—”
He turned, looking them over. Two of the knights had taken arrows and one man was on the ground, his dead horse pinning him. Rouquin sent four men to keep watch, in case the Saracens circled back, and the rest helped him drag the carcass off the downed man.
He was alive, panting, blood running down his face. “I’m—I’m—” He got to his feet and walked in a wobbly circle and fell. “All right,” he said, looking up at Rouquin standing over him.
“Let’s go home,” Rouquin said. “I’ve seen enough.”
Roger Besac said, “This man has a fracture of the skull bone.”
Rouquin snorted. “Put it in Latin.” He had known that already. He looked around the long dim room; when they told him at the gate he should take his wounded to the hospital, he had expected to find something run by the Order of Saint John. This doctor, round and pudgy, was no knight. The space around him was no monastery. Maybe he had made a mistake.
Besac had the injured knight lie on his back on a table, although the knight kept saying, “I’m all right.” Two lamps hung above the table, and the knight blinked at them but did not move. A servant brought straps and bound him to the table across the chest and the thighs.
The doctor said, “I have sent for my assistant.” He turned to the other man, who had an arrow in his thigh. “That will have to come out.”
He was a fountain of the obvious. Rouquin began to think he should have taken the men to Edythe. But then, to his surprise, Edythe came in the door, her pouch under her arm.
She and Besac greeted each other familiarly; she was the assistant. She turned to Rouquin at once and smiled.
“See our hospital?” She sounded proud.
“Yes,” he said. He saw nothing much, just a long room with heaps of straw for beds. Mercadier was watching from the door. Rouquin folded his arms over his chest. “Where did you get this idea?”
Besac said, “The Hospitallers have nothing better, my lord.” He said to her, “This man has a crack in the skull, do you agree?”
She went to the man on the table, who said to her, “I’m all right.” The bleeding had mostly stopped. She felt gently of his head.
“Yes, I agree. What will you do?”
Besac went up beside her. “He is awake, so there is no deep damage. But we must examine the crack.”
“I’m ready,” she said.
“He must keep his head still.”
Edythe opened her pouch and got out one of her collection of jars. When Rouquin moved to watch her, she said, “You must not get between his head and the light, my lord.”
He grunted at her, almost apologizing, and went around the table to the other side. She took a little black ball from one of the jars and held it to the injured man’s lips.
“Eat this.”
“I’m all right.”
“Yes, but eat it anyway.”
“What is it?” Rouquin asked. The injured man opened his mouth and she put the little black ball inside.
“Gum of the poppy,” she said. “With some henbane. It will quiet him and keep him from moving. He won’t feel the pain as much.” She glanced quickly at Besac, who had brought out his kit and was choosing a knife. “What should I do?”
“Have your pincers ready.” He was already standing at the end of the table, bending over the knight’s head. His fingers padded gently at the knight’s scalp, and then with his knife he cut a six-inch slice across it.
Rouquin said, startled, “Hunh.” The knight stiffened, his eyes widening. The doctor ignored all of this and, turning the knife, brought it sideways in another long slash across the middle of the first. A thin sheet of blood ran through the knight’s hair.
The knight blinked. “I’m all right,” he said, in a thick voice.
Edythe stood there with her pincers in her hand; the little doctor peeled back the four flaps of the knight’s scalp, hair and skin and all, exposing a patch of bone as big as Rouquin’s palm. Another trickle of blood ran down the knight’s face. The doctor said something under his breath and made the sign of the cross over the wound.
Edythe used a cloth to wipe off the blood. She bent quickly over the knight’s head; her hand with the pincers darted in and out and dropped something on the floor, in and out again. Rouquin said, “What’s that?”
“Bits of bone,” she said. She was looking at Besac. “It’s depressed, there. See the cracks.”
“I have to raise the bone,” he said. “Make sure there are no more fragments. If they fall beneath—”
“Yes,” she said. She put her face close to the skull of the knight, and with the pincers she took out more splinters. “Let me wash it.”
“Do that,” the doctor said. He had taken something that looked like a drill out of his kit.
She opened another of her endless jars and dripped liquid onto the knight’s head; he frowned slightly, but did not move. She daubed gently at the exposed skull. “It’s clean.”
She stood back. The doctor moved toward the knight, the tool in his hand.
It was a drill. Shocked, Rouquin saw him set the sharp tip against the skull just behind the crack and turn the handle, and the tip screwed into the bone. There was a little collar behind the tip, he guessed so it would not pierce too deep. He realized he was holding his breath. His gaze went to Edythe, watching calmly, her hand with the pincers raised. When the drill was well into the knight’s skull, the doctor backed it slowly out again, and peered into the hole.
“Did you hear anything break?” he said.
“No.” Edythe put her fingertip to the exposed bone; to Rouquin the crack seemed thinner. There were tiny concentric cracks around the drill hole. “The fracture meets exactly now.”
Besac sighed, relieved. “Good.” He stepped away, and she went forward, looked into the hole, and with her pincers drew out a narrow white curlicue of bone.
“I have to smooth the edge,” Besac said. He had another tool, this one much like a farrier’s rasp, but smaller. Edythe backed off, and the little doctor bent to work on the edges of the hole.
“All right,” said the knight, and yawned.
Besac stood back. “That went well.” His voice was lighter; obviously it could have been bad. “Sew that,” he said to Edythe, and put his tools back in the kit. “I will deal with this arrow.”
Rouquin drew a step nearer, his gaze on the bared skull; the white dome of bone with its bumps and tiny seams looked like a map, with the fracture for a river. He put his hand up to the top of his own head. She had a needle and thread, and she flopped the four quarters of the knight’s scalp back into place, like a woman wrapping a baby, and stitched them together. With the edge of her hand she pushed the knight’s hair down out of the way for the needle. Being one of Rouquin’s men, he was close-cropped. The ends of the stitches poked up stiff through his hair.
The other knight howled. Besac had pushed the arrow out through the far side of his thigh. Edythe paid no heed, bent over her patient.
She said, “We must keep him here. Until he heals.”
Rouquin made a sound in his chest. “I wasn’t about to take him drinking.”
She laughed, to his surprise. She called to the servants, who carried the whole table away, man and all, into the back of the hospital. Rouquin followed them and stood watching them lift the hurt man onto a heap of straw covered with canvas. The knight was smiling dimly at the ceiling. He was well enough, for now, anyway. Rouquin went back under the lights.
Besac had the other knight on a chair and was fussing over the arrow wound. That knight moaned and yowled; his eyes followed Edythe, full of hope. Rouquin thought he wanted some of the poppy. She was putting her jars away, ignoring his cries.
“My lord, the King will be glad you’re back,” she said.
“Isn’t J
ohanna here yet?”
“No.” She took the pouch under her arm and followed him out the door into the courtyard. “Has he sent for her? The palace is really very rude yet.”
“He sent de Sablé to bring her.”
She stopped, her mouth open, and then licked her lips and looked away. Rouquin’s horse was still hitched to the brass circle by the street, but his men had gone. He said, “I will ride you back.”
She said, “I would walk, if it please you, my lord.”
So they walked, his horse led alongside them. He liked measuring his strides to hers. He liked her beside him, their shadows in front of them on the uneven dirt of the street. He said, “What’s wrong with de Sablé?”
“He—” Her eyes shone. She was about to lie to him. Instead she said, in a thin, angry voice, “He is not supposed to expose himself to us sinful daughters of Eve. Pure and uplifted soul that he is.”
A clever diversion, but not an actual lie. He had taken off his gloves, and he reached down for her hand. “Whose idea was this hospital?”
“Besac’s and mine,” she said. “The Hospitaller place here had been torn down.” Her hand lay warm in his. In the shadow now there was this link between them. “Is it not excellent?”
It was not the hospital that interested him. He remembered the deft fingers taking up arrows of bone he could barely see. Her hand tightened around his.
“My lord Rouquin,” she said, in a brave voice. “I have to tell you something—”
Then a page was running up to them. “My lord! My lord! The King is most wrathful you have not come.”
“Well, damn the King, anyway,” Rouquin said, “two of my men were hurt.” But he turned to her. “I have to go.”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“Yes, my lord,” she said, in that brave voice. He got on his horse and went to exchange some wrath with Richard.
She did not see him again, not alone, for a long while; Richard had work for him, and Besac was always calling her, and she was supposed to be making the huge old palace along the water into a place fit for Queens to live in. She doubted she could tell him anyway who she really was. She had read the admiration in his face. She did not want to see it turn to contempt, or worse. The dirty Jewess. When she thought of that, she pressed her face to the stone wall and hated God for being so unfair. But the knight with the skull fracture was up soon, eating and talking perfectly well and walking around, and bedeviling her for more poppy, and a few days later she delivered a backwards baby, live and yelling, and his mother hale and walking almost at once.
“My lord the King gave me the honor of bringing you this news,” the Grand Master said. “My lady, let there be special Masses sung in thanks. We have won a great victory, near a place called Arsuf, by Jaffa. Saladin’s army has fled. King Richard holds Jaffa.”
The Queen sat still as a post. None of this was news anyway; the rumors had been everywhere for days. She said, “God be thanked.” Humphrey de Toron, standing behind her, slid his hands behind his back; she looked on de Sablé as if on a viper.
Humphrey had been with her when the Grand Master was announced, and she had begged him to stay there. Now he saw why.
The Grand Master strode up and down before her, his arms swinging. “The King was magnificent. He led charge after charge against the Saracens. All fled before him. Of course, my brother Templars and I rode every step with him. It was a day of true glory. We were invincible.”
“Non nobis,” Humphrey said, unable to resist. “O Domine, sed tuo.” De Sablé’s glance stabbed at him.
“My brother is a great knight,” Johanna said. “I trust my cousins did as well, and the other soldiers of the cross.”
“We all fought in God’s name,” de Sablé said, his lips thin, and his eyes still turned on Humphrey.
“God be thanked,” Humphrey said.
De Sablé turned brisk again. “And my lord the King has given me the honor as well of escorting you and the Queen Berengaria south to join him, which I stand ready to do, whenever my lady shall wish.”
At that, Johanna slid back on the divan, as if she would get as far from him as she could. De Sablé held her gaze, half-smiling, and Humphrey saw that he knew she loathed him, and relished it.
He held some power over her. Humphrey cleared his throat.
“I see you came overland, my lord Grand Master, and will want to refresh yourself before journeying back. My ship is in the harbor, and I can leave at once. The Queen may travel with me, if she wishes, and so reach her beloved brother sooner.”
De Sablé lost his smile; his cheeks quivered. He kept the beard required of his order down to a thin neat line around his jaws. His black and white habit as always was spotless. He said, “The King requested this of me. I can find a ship.”
Johanna said, “I will happily travel with my lord de Toron. My lady Berengaria may have a different choice.”
“My lady,” de Sablé said, in a voice with a warning edge.
Humphrey said, “Thus you will not compromise your vow, my lord, associating too closely with women.”
The Templar’s face was rigid; he gave Humphrey a savage look. But whatever he held over her, he was not spending it now, on a trifle like this. Johanna said, “You have my leave, sir. You should bear your news at once to the lady Berengaria, who is likely in the garden.” She rose. “I shall go give prayers of thanks. Good day, my lords.” The three maids in the far corner had risen when she did and followed her out.
De Sablé swung toward Humphrey. “Ah, you interfere.”
“Alas,” Humphrey said. “I merely try to serve.” He smiled at de Sablé as de Sablé had smiled at her.
“Oh, God, Jaffa at last!”
Johanna came down the ramp from the galley, first of all the women; Edythe went to meet her on the quay. In spite of the heat the Queen wore a dark gown of many layers, trimmed in fur, and a long cloak with a jeweled clasp. Her arms engulfed Edythe. “I am so glad to see you.”
“My lady.” Edythe hugged her back, glad for the welcome. “Welcome to Jaffa, and happy we will all be to have you here. But I am afraid you will find it a little rough.”
“Oh, nonsense. After Acre camp?”
The Queen swept on down onto the quay. The other women spilled around them, murmuring a welcome to Edythe as they passed. Berengaria in a veil gave her a curtsy, which Edythe hastily remembered to do, and then hugged her. To her surprise the Navarrese women hugged her also, but the several others Johanna had found in Acre only bent the knee and bowed their heads and said her name in a little chorus. On the quay they gathered in an excited chatter, talking about the journey and Richard’s great victory and now Jerusalem, surely, Jerusalem was next. A seagull shrieked past. The harbor smelled of rotten seaweed.
Henry of Champagne was waiting on the street with some pages and knights, and the horses for Johanna and Berengaria. Humphrey de Toron had come quietly off the galley behind them and already gone. Johanna hooked her arm through Edythe’s.
“I have so much to tell you.” She flitted her gaze here and there. “We can walk,” she said to Henry. “I have no interest in sitting anymore.”
He bowed. Edythe led her toward the street, the Queen’s warm bulk friendly against her side. A page and two knights ran to get ahead of them. The air smelled of dust, and from several places came the bang of hammers. They went from the broad harbor street into a lane, the honey-colored walls close on either side, a staggered row of darker bricks running along the top.
“My lady, I must warn you, the palace is hardly—”
“Well, then I’ll have much to do.” She whispered into Edythe’s ear, “Do you know de Sablé got Richard to send him for me? But Humphrey saved me.” She looked around again. “I have so much to tell you I don’t know where to begin.”
They went up some steps and across a broad marketplace, where heavy colored awnings hung out over the street and shrill voices hawked nuts and
bread and tincraft and deliciously aromatic roasted lamb wrapped in soft bread. Down a narrow seam in the hard beaten earth ran a foul trickle of waste. A white goat ran by them. They turned a corner and went in through the new gate to the palace courtyard, which was only half-bricked.
“This is not so bad,” Johanna said, looking around. The long flat palace loomed up over them, featureless. “Does it have any windows?” she said uncertainly, and went up the steps. Edythe followed, beckoning to the porters to bring the Queen’s trunks and chests.
“Oh!”
Johanna had gone out into the hall. Edythe went after her, smiling. She had felt the same, seeing the frowning back of the building, and then coming up the steps to this hall, to the huge expanse of the terrace above the sea. Johanna, like everybody else, was at once drawn to the sunlit edge. Edythe went up beside her, and Johanna turned and ran her arm through Edythe’s again.
“This is very fine. Jaffa!”
“Yes, my lady.”
She felt Johanna’s touch like an embrace all around her. She had been long among the men, with their spiders and wounds and killing each other and dying. She took Johanna down the balcony to the end, where the women’s chamber was. “The King’s is at the far end,” she said. “It makes for quieter nights.”
Johanna laughed. The room was bare, except for a well-built pallet with a thick mattress on it and a big clothes chest. Edythe said, “I’ve been trying to find carpets for the floor, but—”
“I will bring everything from Acre,” Johanna said. “This is good, for now. Let me show you this.” She sent off the men bringing in her baggage, tossed off her splendid cloak, and opened her wallet.
“This came just before I left Acre.”
It was a thin sheet of paper, obviously one of Isabella’s double letters. Edythe turned it quickly over, on one side the formal letter, on the other the hidden one: They were both on the same piece of paper, unlike before. The back, which had been glued on along the edge, was gone.
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