The King's Witch

by Cecelia Holland

  They sailed back to Jaffa, and that night Edythe went into the hall, where the court was gathered around to hear music. Rouquin was not there. She slipped back out onto the windy terrace, looking toward the sea. A storm was blowing in, and out as far as her gaze could reach the waves jumped in dashes of foam, vivid in the dark. She went down the stairs into the courtyard. It was empty; she could hear the men talking in the hall above her. Then, by the wall, someone hissed at her.

  “Stand where you are, witch.”

  She wheeled. It was de Sablé, his back to the blank wall.

  He said,“ I have found your secret.” He held up a book before her.

  It was her father’s book. She let out a cry, and reached for it, and he threw it down at her feet.

  “A Jew book. You are a Jew.”

  She stooped and picked the book up. He must have snooped through the hospital. She straightened, clutching the book, cold all over.

  “Do you dare deny it?” he said. “Do as I wish, and no one ever need know.”

  She looked him in the face. She said, “ I am a Jew. Let all know it, I will hide no longer. You are a lecher, a murderer, you killed Lilia, you threatened the Queen, you spied on the King, you dirtied your vows and the cross you swore them on. I will never do your bidding, ever.”

  He straightened as she spoke, moved away from the wall; he seemed to swell, to give off some foul vapor like an adder. He reached to his belt. “Ah, you know too much. You need a bleeding.” He drew a knife.

  She gathered herself, to run, to scream, and then, behind her, Rouquin’s voice growled out.

  “She is not alone, Grand Master.”

  The Templar tipped his head back. “You defend a Jew against one who wears the cross.”

  “I’ll cut a slice out of that cross, if you don’t get beyond my reach.” He came up beside her. In his hand, low, his sword was a streak of wavering light in the darkness. She could not move. He knew. Surely he had heard what the Templar said, and he knew. De Sablé was backing away; he turned and strode off across the courtyard.

  Beside her, Rouquin ran the sword back into its sheath on his belt. He did not look at her. He said nothing. She said, “You heard.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll take you where you’re safe.” He let her go ahead of him up the stair and across the balcony to Johanna’s empty chamber, and there he left her without a word. It was over. She stood for a long time, in the dark, not thinking or moving. It was over.

  Eighteen

  JAFFA

  A Jew was almost worse than a Saracen.

  He thought to himself: Everything is a lie. He was going to get drunk and find a whore. But he did not; he walked around the town until he was exhausted enough to sleep.

  In the afternoon, the court gathered, to watch Richard eat, and then to eat themselves. Waiting, they all milled around, chattering. Everybody went to Henry of Champagne, who was now to marry Queen Isabella, and shook his hand and kissed it. The new King of Jerusalem. He was laughing, delighted, drinking to his wife-to-be with every cup. It was rumored she was pregnant, that he was getting more, or less, than he might have.

  When Edythe came in, she saw Rouquin standing behind Richard, and he turned his face away.

  She lingered by the wall, her head so flooded with memories, with pleas and excuses, that she saw nothing. No one spoke to her, although she saw the sideways glances. She should leave, and make them serve her in her room, which had been Johanna’s room. Then suddenly, behind her, a bellow of rage went up.

  It was Rouquin. He shouted, “Do you tell me you’re giving him Cyprus?”

  She jolted back to the moment. Up there in front of the throne, Richard and Rouquin stood face-to-face. Richard said, “Guy was a king. I will not let him be disparaged—”

  Rouquin shouted, “He’s a fool. He’s incapable.” They were so close they almost touched. The whole hall had fallen still, breathless, watching.

  Richard’s voice cut, almost a sneer. “ Did you want it? What’s the matter with you?”

  Rouquin was still shouting. “ What about the Crusade? Everything we did—the marches, the wounds, the men who died—so you could give it all to a pretty face?”

  A general gasp went up. Richard’s lips pulled back in a snarl, and he lifted his right hand and struck Rouquin across the mouth. No one in the watching crowd moved. Rouquin was flushed dark as raw meat and his hair bristled. Edythe gripped her hands together. He clenched his fist, and she held her breath; she could not move, it seemed even her heart was stopped.

  He said, “You hit like a woman. You’re still half-sick. I don’t fight invalids.” Then he wheeled and strode away, headed for the door.

  “ Rouquin!” Richard took a step after him. “ Turn and draw your sword!” Rouquin burst out through the door and was gone.

  The crowd murmured, people bending together, their hands moving, and their voices rose to a general racket. She drew a deep breath, and another, dizzy. Richard had gone back up to his throne. In a moment he would send them all away. She turned toward the door.

  De Sablé stood there, watching her. She made herself walk by him without a word.

  Later, in the evening, when she heard he was in the hall, she went to Richard and said, “My lord, I need to talk to you.”

  He was sitting on a bench at a table, two men beside him with a handful of papers, and a paper on the table between his hands. An inkwell and a quill lay on the table before him, and he picked up the quill and signed the bottom of the paper, handed it to the man on his left, and sent them both away. He gave her a surly look.

  “What is it? I’m busy.”

  “The Grand Master of the Templars came to me; he wanted me for a spy, and when I refused, he threatened me.”

  His face altered, the temper smoothing away. Leaning back, his hands behind his head, he studied her up and down. “You are loyal enough. How could he get you to spy?”

  “ He knows about me. What you know.”

  “And you refused, even so. You have more honor than a Templar.”

  She said, “ I would not have come to you, except he threatened to kill me. I will not ask a Christian king to defend me against a Christian knight, but if he kills me, I want you to know that he did it.”

  Richard said, “You know, in this, for once, I can do as I please. I don’t want you to die, and he’s done me in, time on time, as you know. I’ll send him to Cyprus. The Templars managed it very ill while they had it, and they have accounts to put in order so Guy can pay me for it.”

  She said, “Thank you, my lord.”

  “No, you’re my good little monster, I’ll protect you.” He looked down at her from a great height of understanding. “ I cannot help you, though, with Rouq’, who won’t talk to me either.”

  The days passed, the heat of the summer on them, the nights so hot the whole court often slept out on the balcony. She went down to work in the hospital, but it was as if her mind had jammed; she did everything wrong. She forgot what she was doing in the middle of a treatment, sorted medicines into the wrong jars and spilled bedpans, and when Besac squeaked at her in front of everybody she raged back like a fishwife. She was alone. There was no one to talk to. She felt thinned out, faint, and useless. Some plague had struck the town and many children were sick and she went from house to house, dosing them with lemon and oxymel, but a lot of them died anyway.

  Rouquin had kept the long plume of her hair, tied with a thong, under the cushion of his bed; he burned it. He gathered whatever else he had of hers—a coif, a letter, a bit of linen—and burned them also. He went to church. Usually he could not endure even half a Mass, but he knelt and prayed and stood and knelt again with everybody else, all Sunday, until the final Missa Est.

  None of this worked. He could not stop thinking of her. How she moved, how her mouth tasted, how she laughed. A Jewess, forever damned, Christ-denier. Creature of magic and devilish powers. No wonder she was a good doctor. She had enspelled him, polluted him. That was why
he couldn’t stop thinking about her. She had made him soft. He struggled himself back into the hard, cold man he had been, who cared only about overcoming other men.

  He could not remember how to be like that. Maybe he had never been that way, just an empty coat of mail with a bad temper. He needed his temper. When he was riding, when he was fighting, then he moved fast and sure, without thinking, without maddening himself with thinking. He rode out every day, to get away from Richard.

  Richard had known, all along, damn him, the devil’s trueborn son.

  He could not get away from Edythe, clinging there always in the back of his mind. She had sunk her claws into him like the monster Richard called her. He needed a woman, any woman, any other woman, to drive her out. But when he found a whore, the thought of touching what so many other men had touched made him sick.

  She was his, he had broached her, virgin sweet, she belonged to him alone. He would kill her before anyone else had her.

  He rode at the head of his column up the flank of a ridge, and across the way he saw the flash of a white robe.

  He reined the roan horse back and cut along quick below the spine of the ridge, but he thought they had probably seen him. The roan bolted over the low brush, sure-footed on the slope. Where the dry wash cut the ridge, he slid down and bunched his men together and led them fast around the foot of the hill toward where he had seen the Saracens.

  They were gone. The obvious trail led off down a seam through the lumpy sandy hills, where they would have to ride single file. He divided his men, sent Mercadier with half down the gully, and took the other half in the same direction, but up and over the ridge.

  He was in the middle of the Saracen ambush almost before he saw them. Their backs to him, squatting in the brush, they were strung out along the lip of the gully looking down, their bows ready. He charged along the top of the bank, his men pouring after him; they pounded through the brush and across the sandy slope, the horses scrabbling for footing on the dry ground.

  The Saracens fired a wild flock of arrows, bounded to their horses, and raced on ahead of them. He saw the sock-footed bay mare ahead of him and yelled, hot.

  To the left the slope pitched off suddenly. The narrowing crest of the ridge was funneling the Saracens toward the plain with Rouquin on their heels and Mercadier coming out of the gully to their right. He spurred the roan to a flat run. For a moment, as the big horses bounded and slid down the slope and bolted out onto the open ground, his front ranks and the last of the Saracens galloped side by side.

  He slashed out with his sword at a rider; the Saracen flung up a bow to fend off the strike and the sword cut it in two. Then the bay mare galloped up on his other side.

  He saw Safadin’s dark face over the round target of his shield and lashed out with all his strength, blow on blow. The Saracen’s blade smashed his shield until his arm was numb. The swords rang together with a shower of sparks. Then the mare was pulling away. The roan horse, his neck lathered, faltered, and Rouquin reined him up.

  All the knights slowed with him; they had learned that much anyway. The gap between them and the Saracens widened. The white-robed riders disappeared into a crack in the hills. The last to go whirled his bay mare and looked back.

  Rouquin was still panting, soaked with sweat, his blood racing. He raised his sword over his head. He thought, This is our one true faith, the House of War. Across the plain, Safadin lifted his scimitar in answer, spun his mare on her hocks, and rode away.

  Rouquin gathered up his men. They were scratched and banged up, a few wounded, and he turned back toward Jaffa. The fighting rage left him, and he rode along remembering what had happened, making a story of it. He liked Safadin a lot better than he liked some of the Crusader lords. That was heresy, but he believed it. She had said that to him. He remembered how lightly he had answered her. Bragged of being born half out of the church. To one wholly outcast. She must have thought him a fool.

  He had lied to her, from the beginning, the devil’s bastard brat. She had not understood that, or how lost he was himself. And he wanted her, with a longing like hunger, to love, to be one with. To tell his truth to. Yet she had lied to him; how could he trust her?

  He had to see her one more time. If there was nothing to her but a lie, then he would kill her, and put an end to this. He would know when he saw her again. He spurred his horse back toward the city.

  Late in the day a Syrian woman brought a child to the hospital. Drawn by the child’s screams, Edythe met her at the door; when she saw the blood all over the side of the little boy’s face she gasped, and took them in to the nearest bed.

  The mother babbled at her in the local tongue, which she understood very little, but she heard “ear” over and over. She made her sit with the child on her lap and brought vinegar and a cloth, but the howling baby would not let her touch him.

  She went into the back and found a piece of honeycomb and brought that to him, and his mother sang to him and Edythe made faces and he settled and let her touch the bloody mess around his ear. She was afraid to use the vinegar, for fear of hurting him again. Drawing his hair aside, she uncovered his ear.

  She snorted, relieved. The blood was all from shallow cuts around the outside of his ear; something pale and bulbous filled the canal. She looked at the mother.

  “Earache?” She pulled her own ear. “His ear hurt, so you put garlic into it?”

  The mother smiled and spread her hands. Edythe stroked the boy’s head with one hand, and groped for her pincers with the other, and in a single stroke she drew out the garlic. The gashes on his ear were knife cuts. The mother, failing other ways, had tried to dig out the garlic with a knife. Edythe pressed her lips together to keep from saying anything. She cleaned up the dried blood, tended the cuts on his ear, kissed him, and sent them away. She heard them singing off down the street.

  Everything, she supposed, seemed reasonable at the time. She wiped her hands on her apron, looking around.

  Besac had already left. She went to the people in the beds, making sure they would rest. There weren’t many: an old woman dying, a man with no other place to go who was pretending he had a headache. Night came while she was doing this. She stood in the doorway looking into the dark and thought of staying the night in the hospital, rather than going alone through the rough streets of Jaffa.

  Whatever Richard did, she could not trust in it; there were Templars all over Jaffa.

  She went out, and just as she stepped out the gate someone seized her from behind. She jabbed back with her elbows and kicked, but he held her effortlessly fast. She thrashed, afraid, feeling the knife coming, but then suddenly she knew who it was, by that touch, that strength.

  “ Rouquin.”

  He lifted her quickly up and set her sideways on his saddle. She grabbed the cantle to stay on. The light from the lantern above the hospital door shone on his upturned face. She said, again, joyful, “ Rouquin.” He leaned forward, his arms around her, and buried his face in her skirts.

  Later, they lay side by side, in the little room in the middle house where his men were quartered. He said, “I have something to tell you.”

  She stretched herself against the warmth of his body. “ Tell me, then.”

  “ I’ve never said this before,” he said. “Not to anybody. That—you know they say my mother was the queen’s sister.”

  “Yes,” she said. She had heard this for years. “The lady Petronilla—”

  “No. Eleanor was my mother. My father was the king. But I was born before they married, when they were not queen nor king.”

  That jolted her; she said, “ How do you know?” She touched the star-shaped scar on his shoulder, where he had taken the arrow. In her mind bits and pieces joined together and now made more sense.

  “I just figured it out. Little by little, it seems, I understood it, growing up.”

  “Are you sure?” she said. She was sure. She laid her palm flat against him, her head on his arm.

  “Even my na
me is a lie. My aunt christened me Philip, but nobody calls me that. De Rançun was not my father. My—my aunt—Eleanor called me Rouquin. She said when I was angry I looked like a little redheaded hedgehog.” His voice stopped.

  She waited, thinking he would say more. His mother had given him away. She had taken him back—in act, at least, if not in name—but she had sacrificed him, the eldest son, on the rock of her ambition, and he could not forget it.

  He said, “ I’ve never told anybody before. It feels different now, saying it.”

  The pallet was too narrow for both of them; she had to lie half on top of him, her leg between his. It was too hot to be so close, but she loved to lie so, touching him all the way. Her clothes were strewn everywhere. The men out in the main hall must be watching the door for any sign they were coming out. They would get a jeering then, whistles and whoops; there would be no chance to lie. Richard had said, once, “My brother.”

  “Then you should be King,” she said.

  “No, I am baseborn. I could not be such a king as Richard, anyway. But I am their true brother, his and Jo’s, and Mattie’s and Nora’s and John’s. They all know it. No one says anything. We all lie.” He burst out, “You can’t trust any of us.”

  “They love you.”

  “Oh, we love each other. We hate each other, too.”

  Her cheek against his shoulder, she nodded, having noticed this.

  “It’s like everything else in this family,” he said; “it’s doubletongued. It was twisted from the start, when the first one murdered his way into the first title. So not even Richard could make the Kingdom come.” He put his hands over his face. “ I am sick of lies. I will live the truth or nothing.”

  She thought of Yeshua ben Yafo and what he had said to her. “People think in one world and live in another.” But it is the dream that saves us, she thought. Isn’t it? Which is the lie, and which the truth?

  He said, “ What’s your real name?”