Johanna was sitting down on the stone bench in the middle. “Yes, it’s very pretty.” She dismissed it with a toss of her hand. She gave Edythe a quizzical look. “ What happened to your hair?”
Edythe put her hand to her coif, which had slipped back on the short curly mass of her hair. “Umm—” She felt herself grow furiously hot.
Johanna laughed. “ Well, then. Such a blush.” She made a knowing face. “ I shall not ask to whom you gave this favor. You know Richard is sending us back to the west.”
Edythe had not heard this before. The garden disappeared from her mind; she put her hand in her lap. She blurted, “ To France, you mean.”
Johanna gave her a keen look. “Yes, to France. To Poitiers, really. Mother will want to see us all at once.” She reached out for Edythe’s skirt and pulled her down beside her on the bench. “Sometime this summer. I would you came with me, but I think he intends you to stay.” She picked the edge of Edythe’s coif over her forehead.
Edythe sat stiff on the bench, hardly hearing this. She could not go. She lost everything if she went back to France.
Johanna went on, not noticing. “You should ask him. He would let you come if you asked. He owes you much. He likes you, as much as he likes any woman. And he’s not sick anymore.”
Yet she could not think how to stay here, either, if Johanna left. Her place in the Queen’s court gave her a home, fed her, protected her. The hospital. She swallowed. At least she would have that. Without Johanna’s purse or Richard’s, how long would that last? Johanna said, “Now they will let me marry again. I promise you—what I promised you, before.”
“My lady,” she said. If they went back to Poitiers, could she still be a Jew? Certainly she could not be with Rouquin anymore. Her heart cracked. She said, her voice feeble, “So much has happened here.”
“ What?” Johanna cried. “ What has happened? Except to ruin my poor brother, sicken him body and soul, and muddy up his name? He did everything they asked of him, but they will not honor him for it, not an ounce. Little men. They are such little men. I cannot abide it here. I hate it here.”
Edythe hardly heard this. She could make a hospital, she thought, in Poitiers. There was no such place in Poitiers. More likely, she would go back to tending Eleanor, who ached and wheezed more as she got older, and like her son loved to have her back rubbed; she would spend her afternoons mixing potions for the other court women. Sewing and spreading gossip. They would marry him to an heiress. She would see him, Count of this or that, only in crowds. They would marry her to some stranger.
“Of course,” Johanna was saying, “then I might have another baby.”
Edythe turned to her, intent. That had occurred to her, although not about Johanna. “ I hope so, my lady. I do hope so.”
Richard came up from Jaffa, and they met him at the wharf. Only four ships had come with him, and he was shouting to his sister from the small boat even before he landed.
“I had to leave the rest of the fleet back there. Saladin tried to sneak in—” He leaped up onto the wharf, still wearing boat shoes but in his mail and with his helmet under his arm. The court dipped and bobbed into its homage of bows and murmurs and bent necks. Standing behind his sister, Edythe recognized his high color, his snapping excitement; he had won some fight.
His voice sang on. “When I was on the boat but still in the harbor. I’d only left a little garrison, everybody wanted to get up here, I guess the stews are cheaper here.” He bent and kissed Johanna’s cheek. Edythe looked past him, at the men coming with him; Rouquin was not one of them. Richard’s exuberant voice continued.
“Saladin never quits. He sent his first ranks into the city before I was even out beyond the surf. He must want Jaffa very badly. But he isn’t going to get it.” He bowed to Berengaria, and started off down the wharf. “ Rouquin pulled all the garrison into the palace and sent a priest to swim to my ship. I had to wade back and clear the bastards out. We chased them halfway to the hills.” He strode away down the wharf, and they all pattered after him. Edythe hung back, looking at the galleys.
Johanna said, “So you left Rouquin back there? You’re still not getting along?”
“ He’s in one of his fits.” He turned his head, looking for her. “ He needs Edythe to give him a potion, to change his humor.” His eyes glittered.
She said, mildly, “My lord.” She could feel her cheeks burning; she lifted her skirts to go after them, disappointed. The grooms came forward with their horses, and they rode away to the citadel.
Halfway there the street filled with shouting men. Richard raised his hand, as if to greet a welcome, and a shower of rotten fruit bounced around him.
“ Traitor! Oath breaker!” The crowd screamed up and down the street. Swiftly the knights formed up around the court in a tight wall, and a charge cleared the way. Richard’s hand was at his side. His face was like a stone. They fought their way through the jeers and volleys of dung and offal to the Citadel of Acre.
“ It’s actually very pleasant out here in the evenings,” Johanna said. “And far from the street.” She led him down through the yard toward the old garden.
Richard hardly heard her, his ears still full of the shouting back there, not the words, but the noise. His nerves jumped. As if he were carried outside himself and looked back he realized what the street mob saw: a man who had failed the Crusade. All those fine, stupid words. Jerusalem the impossible. Here around him his sister, still laying her adoring look upon him, his stranger wife.
“There’s another letter from Mother. Bad news.”
And that. He sat on a bench and tore the letter open. “From Her Grace the Duchess of Aquitaine to her beloved son Richard Duke of Aquitaine and King of England, greeting.” No sweetness of inquiry after his health, the weather, God’s blessings on him. Straight into the gut.
“ I have warned you about John and now it is coming to pass. My spies tell me he has promised Philip the great fortress of Gisors if Philip will recognize him as Duke of Normandy. They are gathering an army. And worse: They are in constant consult with the Duke of Austria, whom somehow in your charm and wisdom you have succeeded in giving a deadly insult, and who says you are cut down now, and will pay like any other man.”
Richard said, aloud, “ If I ever tremble at the Duke of Austria, put me out with a bowl to beg.”
“Therefore, my dear son, come not home in any way to put yourself within his reach, or Philip’s either, for that matter, but come home while there is still a home left to you.”
He tossed the letter down. Everything was falling apart. The women talked around him, but in his mind he still heard the shouting in the street.
He could not even leave now. He had to get some arrangement from Saladin, some formal acceptance of his gains, or everything he had fought for would go up in the flames of these little local feuds. There was Guy, who without him had nothing, and whom, in spite of himself, Richard had come to like. Humphrey. He began to plot the way home—by ship, perforce, maybe to Rome, or southern France. Damn the Duke of Austria, whose face he could not even remember, although he remembered at the fall of Acre telling Rouquin to tear his banner down.
Johanna chattered on beside him. He whipped his gaze around to her. “Do you never shut up? Send for something to drink.”
Her face crumbled. With a sniff she leaped up and went off. Now he would have to deal with that, too. He saw that everything happening to him was of his own making; he was damned, the devil in him well pleased at all his ruin, damned and hopeless.
He lifted his head, and for the first time the color around him burst in on his attention. He looked dazed around him. This garden had not been here before. The living colors, reds and blues and streaks of white, flooded his eyes, magnificent, overwhelming. For a moment, even his mood lightened.
Some idea about this lay in the back of his mind, and he turned to Berengaria, on the next bench.
“Did you do this?”
The girl blinked at him
and smiled. “Yes, my lord. Do you like it?”
“You are very clever,” he said, his greatest compliment to a woman. But he did not look at the garden again; he looked at her, as if he saw her for the first time, and after a moment, he leaned toward her and kissed her.
In the morning, after he had cozened his sister back to sweetness, Edythe came in to give him a potion. She felt the pulse in his throat, one hand on his shoulder, handling him, as she often did, as if she were plumping chickens in a market stall. No King at all, but a skinful of humors. He said, “Johanna says you want to ask me something.”
She stepped back, her eyes wide. “ I—I don’t know what.”
“She says you would ask to go back to France with them, but you are too dutiful. Her word.”
Her eyes widened; she had interesting eyes for a woman: dark, prominent, the heavy upper lids fringed with black lashes. She whispered, “I would stay here, my lord.”
He nodded, pleased; but he knew why, and it was not for his sake. He said, “ I am going to Jaffa again, once they’re seen off. You come with me.”
“Thank you, my lord.” She lowered her eyes. She put her hand on his wrist; he thought she was listening, as if her fingertips had ears. He shut his eyes. Maybe then he would hear what she heard, his body talking, wiser probably than his mind.
The sun was just rising, the air pink and warm already, the ships rocking at their anchors on the bay. Richard led Johanna down the quay, her hand on his arm. The galley captain himself waited for them above the small boat.
Johanna turned to him, resolute. She wore a traveling cloak of green, her best color, her skin warm against it, her eyes like sea jewels. She said, “Richard, you must take care. Come quickly.”
“I will.” He held her hand. In spite of her meddling, he was sorry she would be gone; he would be much alone, with her away and Rouquin in a temper. He said, “ I will come soon after.”
“ I hope so.” She kissed him. Her eyes were damp. But she looked away, over his shoulder, not meeting his gaze. “Richard—I—I—did wrong, I think. I made a mistake. Something awful. Forgive me. I hope it comes to nothing.”
He held her hands.“ Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Tell Mother about it when you see her; she’s got all the advice.”
She hugged him.“ I will. Please come soon.” She turned and went down into the little boat.
He turned to Berengaria. “ Take care, little wife.”
“My lord, I will.”
Then she too was gone, rowing toward the galley standing in the bay. In a few months they would reach Poitiers. The rising sun beat on his back. It would be hot here, in this strange place, where somehow he could not find a way to win. He turned and went back to the citadel.
From the top floor, he watched the galleys stroke out to sea, and he crossed himself. God who hated him, please watch over his sister.
Now he had other problems.
As he had anticipated, nobody wanted Guy to be King. Without Richard there for his champion, Guy would have nothing. He might as well admit that. He called a council, which sat for one day and named Conrad the King, his heirs by Queen Isabella to follow him to the throne.
Throne of a few cities, a kingdom with a false name. Even so, it gave a man like Conrad room to strut.
“ I told you the Crusade was dead. You see, in the end, who comes out best.” The Italian thrust his chest out, pranced and preened around him in his curly-toed shoes, his diamond-crusted ears, his greased hair. “You have to work with the real matter, see, not dreams.” He shot a look at Humphrey, across the room. “Of course, for some people, that’s hard.” He laughed as if he had made a joke and went away. Across the room, Richard caught Humphrey’s glance, and held it; now that the Crusade was over, he had no reason anymore to be chaste. He smiled, and Humphrey, his eyes bright, flushed and smiled back.
He would give Guy Cyprus. A bigger, better kingdom than Conrad’s. Let the greasy schemer strut then.
But only a few days later, before he could deliver this thrust, a courier from Tyre said, “My lord, the King is dead.”
“King Conrad,” Richard said. “What happened?” He had met the courier rushing up the courtyard steps as he was coming down from the hall. Behind him on the staircase, de Sablé and Guy de Lusignan overheard this and began to chatter, and Richard waved a hand at them impatiently to shut up.
“My lord,” the courier said, “it was the Assassins. Two of them came upon him in the street in Tyre; one gave him a letter, and while he was reading it they both stuck knives in him.”
“Assassins,” he said. “ Who sent the letter? Did they take the killers alive?”
“My lord,” the courier said, and sank down on his knees on the step below Richard, his hands together. “One was taken. They put him to the test.”
In the fear of the messenger, Richard saw what news was coming ; he glanced over his shoulder at the other men, on the stair above him: de Sablé, who was as always thinking about something else, and Guy frowning in bewilderment. Richard faced the courier praying to him. “ What did they find out?”
“He said it was you, my lord. He said you paid the knives.” The courier was white as bone.
Richard stood a moment, not surprised, not even, really, angry. He said, at last, “ Pity I didn’t think of it.” He beckoned to a page. “Give this man a bezant.” He went on down the stairs.
In the pulpits of Tyre, of Acre, of the fat little towns that throve because of him, the priests cried shame on him, murderer, oath breaker, the man who turned back from Jerusalem and then killed the King. Whenever he rode out in Acre, people gathered to jeer and curse at him. He remembered what Johanna had said when she left.
His beard itched and he wanted it off. He sat on the balcony, where there was good light, so the ham-handed barber would not slice his face to pieces. The razor scraped against his throat. Down the way, his pages loitered, a few other men, waiting to catch his notice. Through them came the doctor, slender as a palm tree, wearing a dark gown and a plain white coif, bowing before him.
“You sent for me, my lord,” she said.
“Yes, come here.” Richard waved the barber out of earshot. She came to the side of the throne and he studied her, up and down; when he wanted to be bled, she did it, not the barber, and he began to think he would have her shave him, too. He said, “You have heard all this about King Conrad.”
She said, “I have heard only street gossip, my lord.”
“Yes, now that my sister’s gone, the brew here must be thin as whey. Did she do it?”
Edythe twitched all over. Her eyes went elsewhere and her voice grated. At her temple a dark curl escaped the edge of her coif. “Conrad was not her enemy.”
“Could she have done it for his wife’s sake?”
“His wife’s sake,” she said, in a true voice, and looked at him. He saw that the words had quickened some connection. She gathered in a deep breath. When she spoke he had the feeling she was changing the subject, although it was the same wife. “She and Isabella wrote, but he caught them at it. She was trying to help her escape. You know that. That led to what happened last winter here, eventually.”
“The Assassins killed him. How could she have reached them? How likely was she even to know they exist? Do you know who they are?”
“No, my lord. Only—” She shrugged. “They kill people.”
“They kill people for hire. Unlike righteous folk who kill them for God.” His eyes narrowed. “Why Conrad, though? She had enemies—which did she want dead?”
She said, “No one, my lord, no one, she would not have done this.”
“You told Rouquin already. You women, you keep and break faith at the same time. It was de Sablé. Who is still alive.”
“Oh, God, my Lord, she would never have—killed him. My lord, I pray you, you must know her better.” Defending Johanna, she was urgent, swift-spoken.
“No. But de Sablé was devilling her. I know my sister. She cannot keep her fork o
ut of the pot, and so she is ever being burned. She got help to discourage him. Or at least she thought that was what she was doing. But whoever helped her turned her purpose to his own ends. Which was to kill King Conrad.” For his wife’s sake.
“ I don’t know.” She rubbed her hands together. “ It was not my lady Johanna, ever.”
He rubbed his finger over his clean-shaven chin. The barber had left a rasp of stubble under his jawbone. He said, at last, “I know.” He nodded at her. “Go get ready to sail for Jaffa. We should be able to leave tomorrow.”
She dipped him a curtsy. “My lord.”
He sent a page for Humphrey and met him in his small room at the end of the hall. The young man came in smiling. He was beautiful, his face smooth, young, happy; he would be a boy when he was fifty.
Richard sat down and did not tell him to sit. He said no greeting. His voice was stony. “You betrayed me. You used my sister in your plot against Conrad; you made my sister guilty in his murder. Everybody thinks it was me; I don’t care about that, they all hate me anyway. But I love my sister, and you corrupted her. She trusted you because I trusted you. Go; I never want to see you again.”
As he spoke, Humphrey’s face slid down out of its smile, and the creases along his nose grew deeper. He was suddenly not beautiful anymore. He turned and went out the door. Richard sat there awhile, until he knew Humphrey was gone, and no one else saw him, and put his hands over his face.
He remembered how he had set out on this, the glorious words, the high promises, round oaths taken with the fullest confidence. What had been golden once seemed like tin and paper now. Under a fraudulent banner he had led his people into the desert, and the wind had blown them away. He lowered his hands, empty as an old wineskin, wretched.
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