The King's Witch

by Cecelia Holland

  “ What?”

  “I want to know. You didn’t escape from a nunnery, and you weren’t named Edythe, were you?”

  “No,” she said. “No.” She had not heard her own name in more than twelve years. She said, “My name is Deborah.” She went hot all over, her skin tingling, as if she woke up.

  She felt him smile, his face against her face. “Deborah,” he said. “My Deborah.” He kissed her again. “My truth.”

  She lay against him as he slept; she wanted him again, right away. There was still so little time. They were still doomed. Richard was talking things over with Saladin; and when he did, even if it took a year, they would go back to the west.

  Let it take a year. In the dark she touched his chest, the broad muscle covered with curly hair, and tried not to think past the time they would go to France. He woke enough to put his arm around her and went back to sleep.

  What would happen, back in Poitiers? Would he love her there? How could they be together? What he said—about the truth—that would not work in France. Truth did not carry well from one place to another. In France it would be impossible for them. Unless she went back to being Edythe. Which would not be the truth anymore.

  It was near the full moon, and Richard had begun nagging her to bleed him. She saw the Saracen horsemen in the courtyard and came up to the hall as Safadin was leaving. She drew back out of the Saracen’s way; he ignored her, although she knew he saw her. Richard called her into his little room.

  She looked Richard over, felt his pulses, and listened to his back. He was strong as ever, his long body lean and white. Maybe bleeding him was a good idea, to keep his humors active. The lance slash under his right arm had healed well, in rows of little dots where the needle had pierced his skin, a narrow white scar between, no puckers or proud flesh. He had a bruise on his shield arm, another argument for bleeding him. He was putting his shirt back on.

  “You saw the Saracen there. We have agreed on a treaty, Saladin and I. I have now officially failed.”

  He paused a moment, as if she might argue, or burst into applause. She knew nothing to say and kept still. He said, “ We are monsters, you and I. God has one idea, and we are not it.” He pulled his shirt straight.

  She said, “ What is the treaty?”

  “Three years with no war. And unarmed Christian pilgrims can go to Jerusalem. That’s what I have won, a handful of days.”

  “ What does your treaty say of Jews?”

  “There is nothing about Jews. The Jews have nothing to do with this.”

  “Then I can go to Jerusalem,” she said.

  He flipped his belt around his middle. “No, dear little fool, it is still too dangerous. You’re a woman. The place is full of bandits. You wouldn’t last a day alone. You’d have to find company, and pay for that somehow, and even then . . . You’d be dead, or in a slave market, too old for anybody to want you. I am leaving, very soon, for the west, and you’re coming with me.”

  “ I am going to Jerusalem,” she said.

  He looked puzzled. “I command you. What about Johanna? And my mother surely wants you back.”

  She paced around before him, so that he had to turn to watch her. “ But I am outside your Christian realm, my lord. Your treaty has nothing to do with me.”

  “ Edythe,” he said. “You’re mad. I’m the only one who can protect you.”

  “That’s not my name anymore. I have to go. Besac has the tincture,” she said. “Find the Jew Yeshua ben Yafo and he will tell you how to take it.” And she went.

  She walked in quietly through the barracks, to the room where Rouquin was asleep; the door was open a hand’s breadth. She stood there awhile and looked through the crack at him. In the morning when she left the whole pallet to him, he had stretched out and his head was cradled in his arms. She could not bear to wake him. If she told him what she was doing, and he wanted her to go with him instead, she would, even to the farthest reaches of the world. She would be Edythe again to keep him.

  She went out again to take the road. She had to go through the gate before Richard decided to stop her. She went by the hospital first, and put her books and the pouch of medicines and some food she had packed in a big bag to carry on her shoulder.

  At the gate no one challenged her. Maybe she had given herself an excess of importance. She walked out through the new gatehouse, to the beginning of the long road east. A wave of uncertainty rose around her. She started out, one foot in front of the other, the bag already heavy.

  Mercadier said, “Your woman, she was here, and then she left.” He filled the narrow doorway.

  Rouquin washed his face in the basin. “Where did she go?”

  “ How would I know? She is like a wild mare, that one; she goes where she will. It’s all over the city that the King has made a deal with the Sultan.”

  “ Really. And what do you think this means?” He reached for his swordbelt, hanging on the wall.

  “ I think we are going home, my lord.” Mercadier shrugged, but one hand rose, palm up. “ Whatever happens, there will be some war. I am your man, whatever comes.”

  Rouquin bopped him with his fist. “ I think from now on you will be Richard’s man.”

  “The King!” The Brabanter’s eyes widened, awed. Then, loyal, he said, “No other, though. No lesser would I ever follow.”

  Rouquin laughed and went out of the house to the yard. A squire brought him the roan horse, and he rode up to the palace and found Richard pacing around the hall, eating a chicken and giving orders. Rouquin had not seen him in days, since Richard hit him. The King chased everybody else out of the hall and turned on him.

  “So you finally show up, do you? Over your sulk? What, do you want me to apologize? After what you said?”

  Rouquin said, “ I don’t want much of anything from you, actually. I hear you sorted it out with the Sultan.”

  Richard flung down the carcass in his hands. His eyes blazed; his voice snapped like ice cracking. “ What has come over you all, some plague of defiance? I should have whacked your damned head off. We are leaving. Philip and that damned German are apparently waiting for me, but they won’t be looking for you. I want you to go straight back to France and start raising an army.”

  Rouquin sat down, folding his arms over his chest, enjoying this. “Actually, I am not going back. There’s nothing for me back there, and I’m done with following you.”

  Richard flung his arms up. He gave Rouquin another furious look and stalked away. Rouquin sat where he was. Someone came in the door, saw the two of them there, and went away. Finally Richard had to walk back toward him.

  “So, you’re deserting me too? You can’t do that. I need you.”

  Rouquin said, “ I can do exactly that. I’m your brother, but it’s not my kingdom. I’ve given you everything due you. You have no power over me.”

  Richard stopped, silent. He put his head to one side, and said, in another voice, “So that’s what this is.”

  “Yes. I’m done lying. I’m done with the whole family. I am not going back to France. Take Mercadier, pay him and my men, and they’ll never leave you. But I’m going to find my woman, and then go to Jerusalem, which I swore to do.”

  Richard walked away again, and came back. “You can’t carry a sword. The treaty says, unarmed pilgrims. What are you without your sword?”

  “Let them find out,” Rouquin said, “who try to stop me.” He stood up.

  The King faced him, and their eyes met. There was a long silence. Richard said, “Well, you’d better start soon, she’s already left. She’s on the road now.” He put his hand out. “This was no choice of mine. I always loved you. You were always my true brother to me.”

  “ I know that.” Rouquin gripped the King’s hand.

  “Better than a brother. God forgive me for the times I failed you.” Richard pulled him into an embrace. “Go find her. With you some of me goes to Jerusalem.” He stood back. “Go. With my blessing.”

  Rouquin said,
“Maybe we will come back.” But if she had already left he had to hurry. He went out the door, down to his horse.

  At first the road was full of people, going in both directions, donkeys and carts and barefoot porters carrying loads in and out of Jaffa. Along the side of the road eight monks were creeping along on their knees, chanting as they went. She thought of Rouquin and put him firmly out of her mind. A few moments later she was putting him out of her mind again. By noon there were fewer people, the land broad and flat still, the hills beginning to rise before her, gullied and seamed. On the slope above her she saw two Saracens on horses. She remembered the road from the winter march, although now it was dry and hot and the brown grass tall. A group of pilgrims, with their hats and staffs, walked along ahead of her singing, and she tried to stay within range of them. The bag on her shoulder felt full of rocks.

  Other people passed her, and she saw a few heads turn, taking notice of her, a woman alone. She ran to get closer to the pilgrims. They might not defend her anyway. She had her knife in her belt. She found a big stone and carried it in her free fist. But night was coming; she wondered how she would do that. She would ask the pilgrims if she could sleep in their camp. She had enough food, she could even barter some for room by a fire.

  She heard the jingle of harness and the jogging hoofbeats and moved off to one side, to let the horse pass. It dropped to a walk up beside her, and she wheeled, warned of the attention.

  “ Deborah.”

  The name rocked her; she looked up, astonished. He smiled down at her from the height of the roan stallion’s back. He wore mail, but no sword, only a long dagger in his belt, and instead of his helmet he had wrapped a white cloth around his head like a Saracen. His eyes were startlingly bright.

  He reached his arm down to her. They needed to say nothing. She dropped the stone and held up the bag of her things, which he hung on his saddlebows. He reached down again and she grasped his arm, and he swung her up behind him. She sat astride, her legs spread wide on the broad back, and put her arms around his waist.

  “ Tighter,” he said.

  She leaned against him, her cheek against his back, and clasped her arms tight as she could around him. They jogged off up the road to Jerusalem.

  Afterword

  The First Crusade in 1096 was not the first Crusade. By the end of the eleventh century, Christians and Muslims had been fighting for more than four hundred years. At first the Arabs had things pretty much their own way, taking Spain and Sicily, Sardinia and the Holy Land and everything south of there from Morocco to India; there was an Arab emirate at Bari, on the heel of Italy, for thirty years, and Arab fleets raided Rome and Marseilles. Only hard-fought Christian victories at Constantinople in the late seventh and early eighth centuries and in central France at the Battle of Tours in 726 kept Arab armies from romping through backward, poor, and feeble Europe. There are those who, viewing the brilliant civilization of Umayyad Spain, still think that would not have been a bad thing.

  By the eleventh century, however, the Arab conquest was over and its fragmented empire was in retreat. Under the duress of having to defend itself not just against Arabs but against Vikings and Magyars and Avars as well, Christian Europe had grown into a powerhouse: strong, organized, numerous, and rich. Especially, they had learned a formidable new way of fighting: mailed knights, mounted on powerful horses, whose massed charge mowed down everything in its path. With such knights in the eleventh century, the Christians recovered Sicily and a lot of Spain.

  Constantinople, however, had suffered a terrible defeat at Manzikert in 1076 at the hands of the Seljuk Turks, recent converts to Islam coming out of central Asia. Subsequently the Seljuks overran Anatolia and the Holy Land. The emperor in Constantinople appealed to the pope for help against them, and the so-called First Crusade was what he got.

  That sudden attack on the disorganized Levant won the Crusaders Jerusalem, as well as a number of other valuable places, which they held for almost a hundred years. But the Turks recovered, and in 1187 at the Battle of Hattin the great sultan Saladin crushed the Crusader army and swiftly rolled up the rest of the Christian domain, except for the cities of Tyre and Antioch, on the northern coast of the Holy Land, and a few other isolated fortresses.

  The Christian west reacted with shock and horror. At once the great monarchs of Europe—the emperor Barbarossa, the king of France, and the king of England—pledged to go to the rescue of the Holy Land, and although practical politics delayed their leaving for years, in which one king of England died and another took up his vow, eventually they all set out for the east. Barbarossa, the legendary emperor, drowned in a mountain stream. The kings of France and England reached the Levant in 1191.

  Theirs was the Third Crusade, the Kings’ Crusade, in which Richard the Lionhearted defeated Saladin but could not take Jerusalem.

  There were nine numbered Crusades and a variety of smaller ones, but by the end of the thirteenth century, the Holy Land was completely lost to Christendom. Nonetheless, the long, bloody struggle continues to this day.

  The public events of this novel are based on the primary sources of the time, including Muslim sources, for the siege of Acre, the massacre of Acre, the battles of Arsuf and Jaffa, the infighting among the Crusader lords, the murder of Conrad of Montferrat, and the eventual settlement between Richard and Saladin. Richard, who was the superstar of the twelfth century, is often quoted directly in these sources; he is one of the most vivid characters in medieval history, a true knight and a great general. He could not take Jerusalem back, but the territory he did conquer, including Cyprus, allowed the Levantine coast to stay in Christian hands for another century.

  The issue of his sexual orientation remains a big argument and may be impossible to resolve, since the ideas of the twelfth century about such things are much different than ours. I’m more convinced by the evidence for rather than against his being what we call homosexual. Humphrey IV de Toron was viewed by his contemporaries as “not a knight” and “a boy who is almost a girl,” which seems less controversial. His contemporaries respected his wit and diplomatic ability, and Richard liked him and spent a lot of time with him. He died sometime after the end of the Third Crusade.

  Henry of Champagne, who married Isabella and became king of Jerusalem, fell out a window in 1197 and broke his neck. Isabella soon married her fourth husband in ten years, Amalric of Lusignan, another of the tenacious upwardly mobile clan from Poitou that included King Guy and Hugh of Ascalon. Amalric became king of Cyprus, which he made into a coherent and stable realm. He and Isabella both died in 1205, and her daughter by Conrad of Montferrat, Maria of Montferrat, inherited their titles.

  On Richard’s way home from the Crusade he fell into the hands of the Duke of Austria, who sold him to the emperor Henry VI, who freed him only on receipt of a ruinous ransom. Richard’s mother, Eleanor, raised it, thus beggaring England, not his brother Prince John, as Sir Walter Scott would have it; John did offer the emperor a sum of money not to let Richard go. Even in captivity Richard managed to make allies, and when he was finally free he quickly drove John off and recovered his property.

  He spent almost none of his reign in England. The core of his power was in western and southern France, where he died in 1199, still fighting. His sister Johanna died only a few days later; they are both buried in Fontevraud Abbey with Eleanor.

  Richard and Berengaria never had children, and the youngest of Eleanor’s children, Prince John, succeeded him. He was half the king his brother and his father had been, lost all his continental possessions to King Philip Augustus, and then was humiliatingly forced into signing the Magna Carta by his infuriated barons. Some generations on, another great Plantagenet king laid claim to those continental possessions again, beginning the Hundred Years’ War.

  The private story is fiction. Edythe, or Deborah, and Rouquin are imagined people; Richard had a number of commanders, of whom Rouquin is a sort of distillation, most obviously of Mercadier, the great captain of m
ercenaries who served the Lionheart for most of his kingship.

  In the twelfth century there were a number of types of medical practitioners, many of them women. The great medical school at Salerno accepted female students from its founding. Lest anybody think I am making a leap here with Edythe, please note that the personal physician to Louis IX of France on his disastrous Crusade was a woman.

  The Crusades benefited the practice of physicians and hospitals, bringing ideas from the Byzantines and the Muslim world into the West; Galen, Maimonides, and Ibn Sina were the primary theorists. Most of the details in the story are drawn from the primary data. The medical practice strives to describe Galen’s humor theory, a lovely intellectual construct, part of the neoplatonic idea-world of the Middle Ages, like Ptolemy’s cosmos.

  The name Plantagenet is parlous. It does not appear in written records before Edward I’s day, although it was Henry II’s father, Geoffrey, who first wore a sprig of broom in his hat—the planta genet—and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The alternative, the House of Anjou, has no magic in it. The greatest family of the Middle Ages deserves its flamboyant name. J’adjust.

  READERS GUIDE

  The King’s

  Witch

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Discuss the relationship between Edythe and Rouquin. They both feel like outcasts in their respective worlds—how does this affect their relationship? Do you think that, had they not been able to move outside of their regular worlds, they would have been able to connect the way they do?

  2. Did you enter into reading The King’s Witch with an understanding of the time period and of the reign of Richard the Lionheart? If not, did the author’s research into this time period help you develop a better understanding of the Crusades?