The Rightful Heir

by Diana Dickinson

  “God must have led me to your door,” he said and Mohammed agreed.

  Later, as the light faded from the clear sky, the old woman brought a lamp and crouched over Bertrand.

  “There is no sign of fever yet, God be praised, and I think his heart-beat is a little stronger. The longer he sleeps the better. Do you want me to sit by him tonight while you rest? I see you are injured yourself.”

  “It’s nothing. The wound isn’t deep and my head only hurts a little now. I will watch him.”

  “Very well.”

  Raoul hadn’t meant to sleep but after the old woman had left, drowsiness and the dull ache in his head overcame him. He lay down, intending merely to close his eyes for a few moments. When he opened them it was daylight and a cock was crowing somewhere nearby.

  Raoul sat up hastily and peered over at the man lying beside him. Bertrand lay perfectly still, his face pale, his eyes shut.

  “Bertrand,” Raoul groaned hoarsely, cursing himself for his negligence.

  De Courcy’s eyes opened.

  “Thirsty,” he murmured.

  “How is he?” The old woman bustled in through the open doorway carrying a jug and a large bowl.

  “He’s alive,” Raoul said delightedly. “And he says he’s thirsty.”

  During the next two days Bertrand suffered recurring bouts of fever and delirium. The woman’s herbal drafts and bathing him with cool water seemed to soothe him and reduce his body temperature but although awake, he was never lucid. They changed the dressings on his leg twice a day and to Raoul’s relief and the woman’s astonishment it appeared to be healing without any sign of infection.

  On the third night Bertrand slept more peacefully. The old woman had insisted on watching him so that Raoul could sleep, but he made her promise to rouse him should Bertrand wake up and start speaking. Early the next morning, just after the old woman had gone to prepare food, Raoul glanced across at Bertrand and found that he was looking at him with a frown.

  “Raoul de Metz.”

  Raoul grinned. “That’s right. Once seen, never forgotten.”

  Bertrand gave a faint smile.

  “Disguised as an Arab this time.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where am I? How did I get here?”

  Raoul explained.

  “The people here believe I am called Abdul and that I’m intending to offer you for ransom,” he told him, “so for God’s sake don’t call me Raoul.”

  Bertrand gave a little chuckle.

  “There’s no end to your resourcefulness...Abdul. Or should I call you Eileen?”

  Raoul laughed.

  “That’s the least of it! When you’re stronger I’ll tell you about my misadventures in Damascus.” He frowned as the memory of Aysha stabbed through him. “Or some of them anyway.”

  “You saved my life – again. I’m grateful.” With a visible effort he held out his hand to Raoul. “This time I hope that the enmity between us can be forgotten.”

  “Of course it can.” Raoul clasped his outstretched hand warmly then knelt beside him. “Now don’t talk so much. You’ll tire yourself.”

  He laid his hand on Bertrand’s forehead. It felt cool; the fever had gone.

  “Look, Bertrand. I don’t quite know how to say this. When I took you from the battle-field I didn’t look for anyone else. If the Count was there I’m afraid he’s probably dead.”

  “He wasn’t. He went back to Brittany when we returned from Aleppo. We’d had news from home. Louise is dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Something went wrong when she gave birth. Neither she nor the child survived. I couldn’t face going back, so Tréguier went alone. I took over the Breton command – much good though it did us.”

  “Rest now, Bertrand. We’ll talk again later.”

  Once he had fully regained consciousness, Bertrand grew stronger every day. Raoul had paid for nourishing food to be provided and the old woman was a good cook. Somehow, despite the Crusader army having passed nearby, she had managed to keep all her hens and several goats so that milk, eggs and chicken broth were plentiful. She also made flat savoury cakes which were cooked on a griddle over the fire. A stream ran near the trees beyond the hut and although the water level was low in the summer heat, there was plenty for both washing and drinking. Raoul bought an abayeh from the old man for Bertrand to wear. It was much too short and strained at the seams, but it was better than nothing.

  “You seem very friendly with your prisoner,” the old woman said suspiciously one day.

  “Why not? He’s an investment, isn’t he? I’ll be a rich man, thanks to him.”

  She gave a cackle of laughter.

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that. But how’d you come to speak his lingo?”

  “Antioch was ruled by the Franks only a few years ago. My family owed them service until Nur Ed-Din took control. You had to speak their tongue – they can’t speak ours. They can’t get their tongues round it.”

  “Ignorant savages!”

  The two young men, thrown into each other’s company now as friends instead of enemies, found that they had a surprisingly large amount in common. Unusually, Bertrand had not been sent to a neighbouring castle to act as page and squire. His mother had believed him to be sickly so he had been kept at home, spoiled and indulged. He, like Raoul at Valsemé, had resented his confinement, resorting to wenching and drunkenness to fill his empty days. Once he had married Louise de Bourbriac he had thrown himself into the harsher life at Tréguier Castle, eager to improve his horsemanship and skill with weapons. His parents had been angry and disappointed by his continued absence but there was nothing they could do and, in any case, they had other sons. Going off on Crusade had been Bertrand’s ultimate escape. They reminisced, swapped stories and laughed about their own and each other’s youthful escapades. Raoul said nothing about his connection with Radenoc and, by tacit agreement, they avoided the subject of the siege of Damascus.

  Within a week, de Courcy was able to hobble round with the aid of a crutch which Mohammed had constructed for him. Bertrand had been amazed when he saw what Raoul had done to his leg. There was no doubt at all that the stitches had saved him. The wound was knitting together well although of course there would be a scar.

  “We should leave soon,” Raoul said one evening as they sat in the cool watching the light fade from the sky above the hills. “I might ask Mohammed if he knows of anyone with a horse or a mule they’d be prepared to sell.”

  “In a day or two I should be fit enough,” Bertrand said.

  As it turned out, it was an ass rather a mule which the old man procured for them.

  “I think I might have got the word wrong,” Raoul confessed to Bertrand when he saw it. “I thought he looked at me oddly when I asked for it.”

  “Never mind! I’m sure it’ll be strong enough to carry you,” Bertrand laughed.

  “Carry you, you mean. You’re the miserable foreigner, remember. In any case I’ve got Kabir and he’s looking very much improved after being well fed and rested. He’s not exactly a destrier but at least he no longer looks as if he’s about to drop dead at any minute.”

  They left the following morning at first light. Raoul rode the huge raw-boned horse for which he had fashioned a make-shift saddle with the old woman’s help. He had bought blankets for each of them, some of the flat cakes of bread, some little cheeses and a good quantity of dried goat-meat. As both of them wore abayehs and head-cloths they were quite well protected from the sun and could pass for Arabs, despite their light-coloured eyes.

  “If we meet anyone, let me do the talking. Make out that you’re deaf and dumb. That way they won’t be suspicious. I’ll say you’re my idiot brother and we’re going to Jerusalem to seek a cure.”

  “Thanks!” Bertrand said with a grin.

  Raoul gave the old couple most of the coins he had left and promised to bring them a share of his fortune when he received it. He thanked them warmly for thei
r help. He knew, without them, Bertrand would not have survived. It was even possible that Raoul himself might have died.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  “What will you do when we get back to Jerusalem?” Bertrand asked Raoul when they were resting one night.

  “Deliver my letters to the Queen and hope that she thinks I still merit some reward.”

  “Queen Melisende, do you mean?” Bertrand sounded puzzled.

  “No, Queen Eleanor. She offered me a title and land somewhere in the Holy Land if I undertook their mission. I told you about Princess Razia.” Avoiding all mention of Aysha, he explained to de Courcy about Eleanor and Prince Raymond’s proposed treaty with Unur and gave him a humorous account of his time in Damascus. “I know their plan failed and I don’t know what the Emir has said to them, in his letters but perhaps I’ll still get something.”

  “Not from Eleanor you won’t. Not unless things are very different now to when I left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s in disgrace. We came back from the north because Louis had been told that Raymond was her lover. It’s even possible that he decided to attack Damascus because he found out about their plan.”

  “But what about the other commanders? Didn’t they have a say?”

  “Oh, yes. We met at Acre near the end of June. Everyone agreed that Aleppo was far too strong. They were terrified of Nur Ed-Din. Damascus seemed to be a much more attractive prospect and it was believed that Unur would put up little in the way of defence. I think they hoped he’d give up without a fight. It didn’t occur to anyone that he’d send for help from his arch-enemy.”

  “If he hadn’t come so swiftly how do you think you would have fared?”

  “It was hopeless. There’s no water on that side of the city. Men were weak from thirst long before Nur Ed-Din arrived. We’d mounted a couple of assaults on the walls but they resisted easily: their archers just picked us off one by one. We’d no siege engines and you can’t make battering rams out of apple trees. Louis and the other leaders argued constantly over who would rule the city when they had captured it. It was ludicrous: sheer incompetence and folly from first to last. I can’t imagine how many thousands must have died. It makes me ashamed to have been part of it.”

  “What will you do? Will you go back to Brittany?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps. Being with that old couple and hearing your stories has made me realise that there’s a lot I don’t know about this country. I don’t think I want to go home until I’ve learned a bit more. The first Crusaders charged in here and tried to create – I don’t know how to put this – a replica of what they’d left behind: a kingdom just like France despite it being in a foreign land. They don’t seem to have looked at or tried to understand the way the people here live. I’m starting to think that that was wrong.”

  “I agree with you. If I can, one day I’ll take you to my friend’s house in Antioch. It will astound you.”

  “I’d like that. And perhaps you could teach me some words in their language. Then I wouldn’t have to be your idiot brother any more. I could just be your friend.”

  Raoul grinned.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  They travelled on slowly for several days, meeting the occasional camel train coming in the opposite direction. Apart from a few laughs and shouted comments about the oddness of their appearance, the riders ignored them. Raoul and Bertrand took the abuse in good part, knowing that they must indeed look strange: the taller man in clothes that were too small for him riding on the donkey, his feet almost trailing on the ground; the shorter man mounted high up on the huge ugly horse.

  Soon, Raoul estimated, they would reach Jerusalem. It couldn’t be more than another day’s journey. That night they rested in a tumble-down shelter which had probably once been a farmer’s cottage.

  All night Raoul was plagued with nightmares. He was back in Radenoc again, pleading with his great uncle, trying to persuade him to deny what he had said before. But Armand merely laughed. Then a girl in a blood-drenched shift appeared, a gaping wound in her throat.

  “My blood will make the crops grow,” she said, her voice coming from the bloody gash instead of from her mouth. “But it’s your fault that I am dead.”

  As he gazed at her in horror, Raoul realised that instead of Berthe, the dead girl was Damona. Then suddenly his grandmother was there too, heavy with child, like Armand’s wife had been.

  “It’s a bastard! Armand’s bastard,” she cackled, embracing the old man passionately. “He’s not the heir at all!” She pointed a long bony finger at Raoul.

  He awoke with a start. He was drenched in sweat and his heart was racing.

  “Raoul, are you all right?” Bertrand’s voice was full of concern.

  Raoul sat up, breathing deeply, trying to get himself under control.

  “I was dreaming that’s all,” he said tersely. “Why? Did I cry out or something?”

  “You seemed to be having an argument. I thought at first that someone was there. “

  “No. Don’t worry.”

  “Raoul,” Bertrand said after a while, “I expect you’ll tell me that it’s none of my business but you seem to be in some doubt about this man Armand de Metz. The Count thought he was your father but I remember that you said otherwise. I wish you’d explain.”

  “According to my grandmother, my father Robert was the legitimate heir to the barony of Radenoc. Henri de Metz, Armand’s older brother, was her husband – he was the previous baron – and she says that the child was his. That would make Armand de Metz my great uncle. My grandmother escaped from Radenoc with her baby after Armand had murdered his brother. Then, later, Armand sent assassins who killed my father and his wife when I was just a few weeks old. They didn’t kill me because they didn’t know I existed.”

  “Where’s the confusion, then?”

  “Armand’s version is different.” Raoul paused. Should he tell Bertrand?

  “Go on, Raoul. You can trust me to keep quiet. I sense that it troubles you. Perhaps speaking about it will help.”

  “He claims that my father was his son, not Henri’s. I’d therefore have no claim whatsoever to the barony and Armand would be my grandfather. And it is possible: I look just like him.”

  “That could just be a family resemblance. It means nothing. I look very like my father’s cousin, I believe.”

  “Armand also said that it was my grandmother who murdered her husband.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because she was in love with Armand – besotted by him, he said.”

  “But if that was so, why would she leave Radenoc? She ran away, you said. It makes no sense. What would she gain by that?”

  “Armand says she was unbalanced – and angry because he was going to marry someone else.”

  “What does your grandmother say?”

  “I’ve never asked her. I haven’t seen her for years. She may even be dead.”

  “If your father was Armand’s bastard why would he bother to have him killed? He’d be no threat to him at all.”

  “I don’t know that he did. My parents could just as easily have been killed by outlaws.” A sudden thought struck Raoul. It was something that Ahmed had said but which he’d barely registered at the time. Now it flashed into his mind. “Armand’s servant said that the baron was in Normandy the year that I was born.”

  “There you are then. Perhaps Armand killed them himself rather than simply sending others. You’d want to be absolutely sure about something like that.”

  “Normandy’s a big place. It might mean nothing.”

  But hadn’t Radenoc’s steward been a man called René Gilbert? Wasn’t that the name of his father’s squire? The one who had disappeared?

  “It seems to me, Raoul, that you need to talk to your grandmother.”

  “What’s the point? There’s no way I’ll ever be able to take Radenoc back. I must just get what I can, out here, and make the best o
f it.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. It seems a pity, though – clearly it troubles you.”

  The next day they reached Jerusalem. A mood of funereal gloom hung over the city. Of the Crusaders who had ridden out to besiege Damascus, only a handful had survived. Many of those who had left the battlefield alive had been picked off by Turcoman light horsemen as they tried to get away. It had been little short of a massacre. The Frankish knights’ reputation for invincibility was destroyed for ever.

  Anxiously, Raoul and Bertrand asked after their closest comrades. None had returned. It was at least some consolation to Raoul to find that Guillaume, his squire, had been forbidden from riding out with the army. His duty, he had been told, was to wait for his master. At the time the boy had bitterly resented being deprived of a chance of glory. Now he was appalled at the fate that had overtaken so many and he greeted Raoul with tears of relief.

  As soon as he had bathed and changed into more appropriate clothes, Raoul made his way to King Louis’s quarters. The letters he carried were addressed to the Queen. If what Bertrand had told him was true, however, he might not be allowed to see her. Then he would need to seek out Raymond of Antioch. It was no surprise to him at all that the commanders appeared to have escaped unscathed even though their knights had been slaughtered in their thousands.

  The door of the royal apartments was opened by the Countess of Beaumaris, one of the older and less attractive of Eleanor’s ladies-in-waiting. She looked drawn and ill.

  “If you want to see the King he’s in the chapel and he’s not to be disturbed,” she said. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow – though he’s just as unlikely to be here then.”

  “It was actually the Queen that I wanted to see.”

  The woman hesitated, looking at him dubiously.

  “His Majesty said...But where’s the harm? You’ll cheer her up, poor lady. It’s young de Metz, is it not?”

  “That’s right, my lady.”

  “Come this way.”

  She led him through into the chamber where Raoul had been received on his return from Antioch. This time, instead of sprawling half-naked on the divan, the Queen was seated by the window, soberly dressed in black, working on a piece of elaborate-looking embroidery. When she saw Raoul, she threw aside the tambour frame and leapt to her feet with a cry of delight.