The King's Witch

by Cecelia Holland

  They moved on through driving rain. They had abandoned most of the wagons and she rode one of those horses now, first by herself, then with Walter up behind. They rode bareback, the harness reins chopped short. She had never ridden astride before, and it surprised her how different it was. Eleanor, she remembered, had ridden astride.

  Behind her, Walter crept closer on the horse’s back, put his arms around her waist as if to hold on, and began to move his fingers toward her breasts. She looped the reins into one hand and gouged the nails of the other across his wrist.

  “Ow,” he said.

  “Oh, did I hurt you?” she asked, looking to see who noticed. Nobody paid them heed.

  “Slut,” he said, under his breath, but he withdrew his hands, and just held to the back of her belt. In the afternoon, they dodged another spray of arrows. Several of the knights lost their horses, and one took their horse, so they were walking again.

  Rouquin whispered, “Are you sorry you came?”

  “No,” she said, amazed that he asked. “No.”

  But there was no food anymore. All night the hungry horses neighed and her stomach hurt and she dreamed of eating. In the bleak wintry hills nothing grew but thorns and scrub. On the up and down road, she saw Richard riding ahead of them and realized how many had deserted, how small the army was becoming.

  She saw him again when they came to a river, and he pulled off to the side to watch them all cross. She caught only a glimpse of his face, but that was enough. His eyes were hollow, his skin a bad color. She knew, with a knot in her stomach, that he was getting sick again.

  She thought, In Jerusalem, he will get better. She thought of the tincture, back in Jaffa; she should have brought it. Maybe she could find some in Jerusalem. She should have brought it.

  Then he would have known. But she should have brought it.

  The next morning, in the driving rain, she was helping break the camp when the chief men began to move up toward the front of the army. She saw they were having a council. Walter said, “This is what they did when they turned back the last time.” Her stomach rolled. They must be close, she thought. It must be only over the next hill, beyond the next bend in the road. But the men were gathering, up there, and she could hear them shouting.

  “Sire, we cannot go farther. There’s nothing to eat. God knows what lies ahead of us. Saladin and all his troops—”

  “And us so weakened, Sire—”

  Richard stood with the cloak pulled tight around him, shaking. The corruption of his body was more to him than the arguing around him. De Sablé came at him again. “ How can we even mount a charge if we are attacked? We have lost half the horses.”

  He thought, That hardly matters, since we’ve lost half the men. Gerald of Nablus, the Hospitaller, rose up before him, adamant here as he never was against the Saracens.

  “Sire, we must turn back. There’s still the long way to the coast and we have no food.”

  They had food. Not much. It was the horses he pitied. He felt cold all the way to his bones, as if each stroke of rain pierced him like a lance. He wanted to lie down, but they were miles from any bed.

  Rouquin was there, his face streaming in the rain, his eyes hard, accusing. “ In the great Crusade, they never turned back. They took Jerusalem.”

  Guy said, “My lord, I am low minded saying this, but the Grand Masters are right. We must go back.”

  Richard held his jaw fast, to keep his teeth from chattering. Around him were men who owed him their swords, their power, even their lives: Guy whom he maintained as King, Henry of Champagne who was his cousin, Guy’s brother Hugh whom he had made lord of Ascalon, the orders whose coffers he filled regularly, and they were curling their tails up between their legs and getting ready to run.

  But he needed them. Without them, he himself could not go forward.

  He bent his head. “Go tell the rest, then. We will go back.” His muscles hurt, every part of his body throbbing.

  Rouquin surged up in front of him. His gray eyes were wide with fury; Richard thought suddenly of his father, raging like this. Rouquin’s voice spat at him.

  “You can’t do this. You swore to lead us.” He wheeled toward the men already hurrying off to retreat. “ I will go on; who will go to Jerusalem with me?”

  Mercadier stood there, but Rouquin’s voice stretched to reach the others, already gone into the haze of the rain, their backs to him. Nor did they heed him. No one turned to join him, but all rushed away.

  Richard clutched the cloak around him. He had to get somewhere warm and safe. With his doctor, and her gentle hands and her potions against the pain. He looked at Rouquin and said, “I order you to retreat.”

  She was sheltering under a wagon when Rouquin came back, and from his face she saw what had happened. She turned her gaze down. His voice was bitter, the words chopped, broken in her ears. The Crusade was over. They would not see Jerusalem. The old beggar was right: Nobody won.

  She had known this. She had known this, she thought, since the massacre at Acre.

  He said, “Now are you sorry you came?”

  She lifted her face to him. “No.” She put her head forward, her forehead against his mailed chest. At least now she had a measure of the task. “No.” She pressed closer into his warmth, his arms around her.

  All the way back to Jaffa she ate only a piece of bread, an old apple, a bone she gnawed down almost to nothing. The army fell steadily apart, men going off in all directions. Rouquin and his company and the few Poitevins left reached Jaffa with Richard almost falling out of the saddle. Edythe went into the palace and watched over him for the next three days while he thrashed and shivered and burned with the fever.

  She hardly slept. She put aside Jerusalem and set herself entirely to tend the sick King. She ate what she could and put on fresh, dry clothes, which did much to restore her, but Richard had tumbled away into the dark and she could barely keep her hands on him, much less bring him back.

  She gave him the tincture, but he vomited it up. All his muscles cramped. She stayed by him, talked to him, rubbed the knots in his back and arms and washed him, brewed potions by the bed and fed them to him drop by drop, cleaned him up and kept him warm.

  Once, he lay on the bed and laughed. He said, “ I see it, there, there, the peaks—all shining, they shine like gold.”

  She sat beside him, uneasy, remembering the old wives’ whisper that dying people saw heaven. He sang to himself, or maybe he was just breathing loudly. Then he said, again, “This city in the clouds, there—there’s no way to it. I can’t fly.”

  She put her hand on his wrist; the pulse there was stronger than before. He was not dying. He was somewhere else, but he would come back. He started under her touch and turned his face toward her.

  His eyes stared, wide and full, seeing something entirely other. “What is there? What do I have to do?”

  “Ah,” she said, wondering what she was talking to, “ I hope you will be well, my lord King.”

  His eyes stared at her, unblinking, still huge. “They say the Jew knows the answer,” he said. He turned his head again and shut his eyes.

  She gave him the tincture again, this time with a sour water the apothecary said would soothe his stomach. He kept it down, and from then on he seemed to get better.

  She slept a little. But she dared not leave him.

  Day by day he grew stronger. The dark handsome Saracen, Safadin, came with a letter. Richard had them move him out to the hall to meet him. He needed help even sitting down on the throne, but when the crown was on his head, his back straightened, and his shoulders squared, he shook them off and sat alone.

  The place was full of braziers, too hot for comfort. All along the walls stood the people of the court. Edythe stayed in the corner; the Saracen had looked at her once and she had seen hatred in his eyes. She searched among the crowd along the wall, but she did not see Rouquin. He had not forgiven Richard, then. Walter was there, and Henry of Champagne. Humphrey de Toron pa
ssed the words back and forth between Richard and the Saracen.

  He read out loud the letter from the Sultan, and Richard said, “My lord Saladin hears I am sick, and offers me his own physician. Very generous of him.”

  Safadin spoke.

  “The Sultan’s physician is a very famous and learned Jew from Cairo. He has magic herbs and amulets unknown to you in the West.”

  Richard laughed. He said, “ Tell him I have my own physician. As it happens, I have meant to write my lord the Sultan, and if my lord Safadin will wait, I shall have this done.”

  Safadin bowed; Richard bowed. He sent for a scribe, and Edythe went out of the hall.

  She walked down the stairs, to the courtyard. Since they had come back she had not gone to the hospital, for fear of leaving Richard in his extremity. She could not go now, either. He was holding together for Safadin’s sake, but she knew he would not stay upright very long. The discord still raged in his body. Yeshua had said to give him the tincture as soon as she knew he was sick. She had done it too late. For her own selfish purpose she had failed him.

  She went around to the kitchen, meaning to find something to eat, and came upon Rouquin there. Her heart quickened when she saw him.

  He said, “How does the King?”

  “ Well enough,” she said. “ He thinks too much.”

  He got her hand, and she followed him into the shadow between the kitchen wall and the vine-covered back of the palace. The air smelled sweet of flowers. Spring was coming. She felt his arms around her and lifted her face, and they kissed.

  His hand got swiftly into her clothes. “ I want you. Now. This time.”

  She said, “ We can’t—not here—” She coiled her arms around his neck. “Yes. Take me someplace.” She shut her eyes.

  He had her lip between his teeth. He had pulled off her coif and his hand stroked over her cropped hair. Then he stood back.

  “Go make sure he has someone with him, and come back. I know where.”

  She went out, quickly wrapping the cloth around her head again, which was much easier, with her hair only an inch long. She went up the hall, empty except for a guard at the door. A table stood by the throne, an inky goose quill lying on it.

  At the end of the hall was the King’s chamber, where she found Richard back in his bed, asleep. A half-full cup of wine stood on the floor beside him. A page dozed at the foot of the bed. Her heart was pounding. She tried not to think what Rouquin was doing. She listened to the King’s back and felt the pulses of his liver and of his brain; he murmured at her touch but did not waken. She went out and back down the steps to the courtyard.

  He took her to a shed behind the kitchen, where on the dirt floor there were some rugs in a heap, a lamp, and a cup.

  The room was dark and smelled moldy. He said, “Light the lamp.” While she fumbled with a tinderbox, he threw off his shirt and boots and hose. She got the lamp lit in spite of her trembling hands. Before she turned back to face him, he was unlacing her kirtle.

  She took off her coif, her eyes on his nakedness, and her woman’s part clenched. His part was already swollen hard. She lifted her gaze to the heavy muscles of his chest, but her eyes wandered down, over the slab of his belly, to the club thrusting straight out, its tip like a helmet.

  “Your hair’s coming back darker.” He fingered the short curl beside her ear and pulled off the kirtle. “I have wanted this—so long.” He stroked his hands down her sides, up to undo the clasp at the back of her neck.

  She stood before him, her arms out, so that he could pull her gown down around her waist. “Yes,” she said, although her voice shook. Her breasts tingled, only her thin shift covering them, the nipples poking out the fine cloth. Her blood hammered in her ears. She did not know what she wanted, but she knew what was happening.

  “No bells this time. Nothing about honorable.” He slid her clothes down over her hips to the floor.

  “Yes.” She stepped out of the heap of cloth.

  He knelt and drew her down onto him, so she faced him, straddling his great horseman’s thighs. Lifting her thin underdress, he took it off over her head. She shut her eyes, as if then she would not be so naked.

  “Do you want me?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  She put her arms around his neck, and he slid his hand between her legs. The touch made her shiver. His fingers parted the folds of her body and the round head of his club poked up into the opening.

  She was too small. She clutched him, gritting her teeth. He drove himself up into the middle of her, tearing in, tight and burning. She laid her head on his shoulder and sobbed.

  He pulled her around, up and down, whispering to her. Her arms around his neck, she clung to him, trying to move the way he wanted, her chest against his, rocking together with him. The pain became an aching need for more. He moved faster, sucked on her shoulder and with his arms under her knees curled her legs up between them. He gasped and groaned and held her fast, a deep pulse in the middle of her. Breathing hard, he was still.

  She shivered. She straightened herself slowly; she felt as if she had never noticed her body before. As if she had never been naked before. Something else was supposed to happen. Something needed to happen. He was still inside her, and she moved against him. He laid them both down on the rags, his weight against her, kissed her, tipping her head back.

  “My dear one. My dearling.” His tongue flickered into her ear. He pulled her leg up over his hip. She moaned, her arms sliding down his hips, her hands running over his backside. She was climbing, climbing. Then for an instant everything was perfect, warm, and sweet.

  He put his head down next to hers, face-to-face, and they were both silent awhile.

  “ I want to marry you.”

  She wept. She rubbed her face against his. “Don’t say that.”

  “You were a virgin. Look at all this blood. We should marry.”

  “No, we can never marry.”

  He looked at her, puzzled, but did not ask her why. He stroked her belly, the inside of her thigh, streaked with blood and seed. She lay against him, tired. She would think about all this later. For now this was enough, to have him in her arms. But nothing lasted.

  “ I need to go back to Richard.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “ I love you.” That seemed so extraordinary. She had not known what that meant before. She felt as if a door she had never seen before had opened, as if she had been locked all this while in a little room, and the walls had suddenly fallen away, and now the world lay open to her. She never wanted to leave him. She would take whatever she could of this wonderful thing. Maybe that was what Yeshua had meant, about being the woman she was, not wanting more, just that.

  “ I love you.” He played with the curl by her ear; he kissed her. “ I don’t need to marry. I’m a bastard.”

  She held him, her hands on his hair, and he bent and kissed her collarbone and set his teeth against her skin. She had to tell him. He trusted her; that was why he did not ask for reasons. He didn’t want to know, either. She arched her back so that he could reach her nipple with his tongue. His hand slid down between her legs again. This was delicious; her whole body throbbed. When he found out, everything would be over. Better a dog than a Jew. He would never touch her again. So she would never tell him. But it could not go on forever.

  Richard was getting steadily better. He exchanged some more bantering letters with Saladin, who was staying in Jerusalem, and sent the Sultan a gift of Byzantine silk. Promptly there came back some very fine horses. The King showed them off for the rest of his court; one of the squires who trotted them up and down the courtyard was Walter.

  His face was bruised, and he ran with a limp. She wondered what had happened to him. He saw her, and smiled, and then led the gray mare away. Behind her, somebody said, “That’s Walter. As much as he gets beaten up, he won’t hear a word against Richard.”

  A few days later, as she waited by the kitchen door for Richard’s meat, the Templar d
e Sablé came up to her, casual, as if he himself were there for his dinner.

  “ I would have some words with you, Lady.” He said this out of the side of his mouth.

  She shivered. It had come to her now. Almost she said, Then why not send me a reed? Instead, she said, “No.”

  He could not linger; someone would remark on it. But he gave her a foul look and went off. Rouquin was gone again on a raid; she was alone.

  With Richard better she went to the hospital in the afternoons. Coming back one evening she thought someone followed her, and turned into a lane, and went by crooked ways back to the palace. But she knew who it was.

  So she was relieved when Johanna wrote from Acre, demanding she come; the Queen could not sleep, and Berengaria got headaches. Rouquin would come there soon anyway. Richard sent to his sister that he was going up there sometime in the spring, for yet another of his councils, and in the meantime, now that he was well, he would send Edythe.

  Seventeen

  ACRE

  Edythe said, “Oh, but it’s beautiful.” She walked down the path, now paved with white rock. “My lady, what you have done. It’s like needlework.”

  Her small thin face shining, Berengaria stood proudly looking around at the garden. The vine that covered the wall was sprouting red trumpets against the deep green of its leaves, and tall blue cornflowers stood like stars against them. Red and yellow dragonflower filled the space between the pistachio trees and the rosebush, the whole so lushly overgrown that the earth hardly showed. The rosebush was a mass of deep red. Little white daisies bordered the whole like a hem.

  Edythe had never seen such a garden. Berengaria had no rosemary, no pot herbs or onions or garlic, no medicines; she had even rooted up the yarrow. Instead she had grown flowers, in masses and clusters, all for their gaudy color. She thought, Who would spend so much care on mere flowers, except a Queen?