That the Second Crusade had so far failed dismally in its objective of reclaiming territory lost to the Saracens in no way detracted from the bishop’s renown. Nor, judging by Simon’s presence in the Holy Land, from Clairvaux’s ability to convince sinners that this was a path to redemption.
“What of your mother?” Jocelyn asked after a moment. “Does she, too, expect you to hold to your father’s vow?”
“She died when I was a babe.” His voice went hard and cold. “After my sire beat her senseless, I’m told, for ordering stewed rabbit to be served at the high table when he’d specifically desired it roasted.”
“My God! And this is the man who forces you to give the remaining years of your life to the Church?”
When her outburst was met with a stony silence, Jocelyn bit back another sharp comment. Who was she to harangue him for holding to his concepts of duty and honor? Firmly suppressing the urge to dissuade him from a course she now considered most misguided, she sought less controversial topics.
She soon discovered he was a wealth of information on diverse topics ranging from political maneuverings to the latest ladies’ fashions to the controversy swirling around Eleanor of Aquitaine.
“It’s true?” Jocelyn gasped. “The Pope will give her an annulment from Louis of France?”
“So it’s rumored, although it was Louis who petitioned for the dissolution of their marriage. Even kings don’t like to wear horns apparently.”
The reasons behind the annulment went well beyond Eleanor’s supposed affair with her uncle, of course. In their fifteen years of marriage, the queen had born Louis two daughters but no son and heir. Moreover, from all accounts the French king was as meek and pious as his wife was strong-willed and worldly.
“It’s said she’s already planning marriage to Henry of Anjou,” Simon commented. “Soon, if she and Henry have their way, to be king of England.”
Envy and an almost choking wish that she could emulate the redoubtable Eleanor imbued Jocelyn’s response. “Now there,” she said fiercely, “is a woman who rules her own fate.”
“She does, indeed.”
They rode in silence for a few moments before Jocelyn broke it.
“Eleanor’s cousin and supposed lover, Raymond, fell in the battle for Inab, and the infidels sent his head in a silver box as a gift to the caliph of Baghdad.”
“The same battle in which we lost Edessa and much of Antioch,” Simon commented grimly.
“The very same.” She slanted him a quick glance. “Baldwin has sworn to recover all the lost territories. As have the patriarch of Jerusalem and the grand masters of both the Templars and the Hospitallers. You will see much fighting in the months to come.”
It was his turn to shrug. “Fighting is what I know.”
And all he was likely to know, she acknowledged with a tightness in her chest. Except, of course, the honor and glory of serving God. He would have no wife. No sons to carry on his name. No daughters to comfort him when he grew too old to swing a sword.
Longing swift and sharp pierced Jocelyn’s breast. How she ached to wed a knight like Simon de Rhys! One who would give her sons and daughters strong and steady of purpose. A knight honorable to a fault, she added on a smothered sigh.
She could not but wonder at the twists of fate that had bound him to a dissolute father’s vow and her to a king who would deliver her like a sack of gold besants to a would-be ally.
The irony of their respective positions dogged her thoughts for the rest of that day and into the night. It was still with her when her cavalcade topped a rise and the walls of Jerusalem appeared in the distance.
The sight of those golden-hued walls both humbled Simon and filled him with awe. This city was the goal of every pilgrim, every Crusader. It was why they left all that was familiar, why they traveled so many thousands of leagues and endured such hardships. And why he would spend the rest of his life with sword in hand, defending the holy sites within its encircling walls.
He could see the massive round dome of the mosque that the Crusaders had rechristened the Temple of Moriah when they retook the city during the First Crusade. Within a stone’s throw of that, he knew, was the Western Wall. It was all that remained of Solomon’s second temple, destroyed by the Romans along with the rest of Jerusalem some seventy years after the death of Christ.
And adjacent to the wall, he thought with a quickening of his pulse, was the building that housed the headquarters of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. He knew well the rumors that swirled about the order’s chosen site. Some said the first Grand Master had petitioned for just that location. Others suggested the Templars had tunneled through the wall in search of the Ark of the Covenant reputedly hidden from the Romans so many centuries ago. Still others whispered that they’d found the sacred relic and secreted it away in one of their great fortresses so it might be kept safe.
Simon had no idea as to the truth of any of these rumors, but the fact that he, too, would soon join this world-renowned order of warrior monks flooded him with both awe and a secret dismay.
He speared a glance at the woman beside him. Until she’d burst into his life, he’d resigned himself to becoming a Knight Templar. With some regrets, to be sure, but none that he could not live with. Now he would have to work doubly hard to empty his mind of the raw, carnal desire just the memory of her would rouse in him. His jaw tight, he turned his attention back to the great dome.
Using it as a beacon, he jostled for space so their entourage might take the road that led to the fabled Lion’s Gate. The way was so crowded with pilgrims and merchants and knights and mendicant monks begging alms for the poor that when the gates burst open and a heavily armed troop emerged, the throngs of wayfarers had to leap out of the way.
Simon had no difficulty recognizing the royal standard fluttering at the head of the column. It displayed the same large cross and four smaller crosses as the seal on the missive Jocelyn had received.
“That’s the king’s standard,” he said with a sudden tightening in his chest.
“I see it,” she replied tersely.
Two standards flanked the king’s pennant. The one on the left showed a gilded swan on a field of blue. Jocelyn identified it for him with a low exclamation.
“That’s Queen Melisande’s standard. She rides with her son.”
The banner fluttering on the other side of the king’s was the Beauseant of the Knights Templar. Beau for “noble” or “grand.” Seant translated “to be.” Both a symbol and a cry to battle, the banner’s simple design of a plain white field above an equally plain field of black was recognized by friends and feared by foes throughout the known world. As long as the Beauseant flew, no Templar would quit the battlefield. And as long as a single Templar stood bloody but unconquered, the Beauseant would fly.
That flag represented Simon’s destiny. Everything he would relinquish in the secular world. Everything he would gain in the spiritual. Never before had he felt so torn between those two realms.
When the thundering cavalcade approached their small entourage, he spotted a heavily armored knight in the lead. A gold coronet decorated his helm. It sparkled in the afternoon light when the man drew rein mere yards away. With a jangle of arms and shields, the rest of the troop followed his lead.
“Lady Jocelyn!”
She bowed her head. “My liege.”
So this was Baldwin, the son and grandson of kings. Simon formed a swift impression of a bold, handsome face and shoulder-length gold-red hair showing beneath the helm. He should have hacked it off, Simon thought dispassionately. That hair would mark him as a target as surely as the gold coronet.
The woman beside the king possessed older but no less striking features. Despite the lines at the corners of her eyes, Queen Melisande exuded the vitality of a woman half her years. But it was the man on Baldwin’s right who riveted Simon’s attention.
Bernard de Tremelay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Thin to the point o
f desiccation, de Tremelay wore a square helm, a coat and hood of finely polished mail and the Templar’s white surcoat emblazoned with a red cross. His eyes seemed to burn everything they touched. Simon felt their searing heat before the king’s terse question reclaimed his attention.
“Why are you here, lady? Did I not send word that you were to ready yourself for a journey to Damascus?”
“You did, sir, but I’ve come to speak with you about that.”
“You’ve made your feelings about marriage to the emir clear enough,” the king snapped. “I have neither the time nor the desire to discuss it with you yet again.”
The whip in his voice drew Jocelyn’s brows together, but she forebore to press the issue. Instead, her gaze swept the heavily armed troop.
“May I ask why you’re so pressed, sir? What has occurred?”
“The Fatamids have taken Blanche Garde.”
“By all the—!” she gasped. “Blanche Garde is one of the strongest keeps in the kingdom. How could it fall?”
“We’re told it was by treachery within,” the king answered grimly. “We go now to retake it.”
Jocelyn didn’t so much as hesitate. “I’ll go as well.”
“No, lady. We must needs ride hard and fast. You will remain here in Jerusalem.”
The tempered steel Simon had glimpsed when she’d urged her mount onto a rickety wooden bridge surfaced once again. She glanced from the king to his mother and back again. She didn’t state outright that she could ride as hard and fast as Queen Melisande, but the implication was clear to all. Then the Lady of Fortemur showed her colors.
“One scribbled line from me will put twenty mounted knights, a company of archers and a full complement of foot soldiers to arms. If my men know I ride with you, my liege, they will not eat or sleep until they reach my side.”
The truth of her words weren’t lost on either the king or his mother. Vassals owed their overlord only a specified number of men-at-arms, and then only for an agreed-upon number of days each year. Such arrangements made fielding an army on short notice difficult at best. Baldwin was not such a fool as to dismiss this chance to augment his hurriedly assembled forces.
“Then you will ride with me, lady.” His glance shifted to Simon. “Is this one of your knights? I recognize him not.”
“Allow me to present Simon de Rhys, Your Majesty. He’s newly come to Outremer.”
“De Rhys?”
Simon stiffened as the king’s shrewd eyes measured him up and down. To his relief, it appeared the rumors concerning Gervase de Rhys had not yet reached his ear.
“Have you sworn allegiance to Lady Jocelyn, de Rhys? Or do you hope to serve the Crown?”
“I would serve her or you gladly, sir.”
None but Jocelyn knew what it cost him to continue. He couldn’t look at her as he did.
“But I am pledged to the Knights of the Temple.”
The Grand Master leaned around the king to give Simon a sharp glance. “You are an aspirant to our order?”
“I am, Your Grace.”
“Why did you not join before you took ship for Outremer?”
“There was not time to undergo the initiation.”
“Nor is there time now,” the king said, impatient to be on his way. “You may attend to the matter once we retake Blanche Garde, de Rhys. Betimes, Lady Jocelyn has seen fit to make you captain of her guard. You will continue in that capacity until relieved of your charge.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, Lady Jocelyn, will attach yourself to my lady mother’s train. Now, for the sake of my kingdom and the God we all serve, let us away!”
Jocelyn took only enough time to pen a hurried note to Sir Hugh and pluck the few things from her traveling trunk that she deemed necessary. She sent Lady Beatrix back to Fortemur with the note, the two pages and sufficient guard to see them safe. The queen’s entourage included more than enough women and pages to see to her needs.
Then she and Simon and the remainder of her troop fell into place for what they knew would be a grueling ride.
Chapter Nine
Blanche Garde. The White Guard.
The name suited it, Simon decided when he drew rein on a distant rise and surveyed the fortress crowning a high, chalky outcropping. He was drenched in sweat and caked with grime from a journey that had covered more than twenty leagues in just over twenty-four hours. Yet he needed little more than a glance to appreciate the truth of King Baldwin’s assessment. The castle could only have been taken by treachery. Its walls were too strong, its hilltop position too commanding.
“By the bones of St. John!”
The smothered exclamation came from young Will Farrier. For all his lack of experience ahorse, the lad had managed to keep up during the ride. He would ache clear to his soul when at last they made camp, though.
“Are those…?” He swiped his tongue over dust-caked lips and gaped at the plumes of black smoke rising from within Blanche Garde’s massive curtain wall. “Are those funeral pyres?”
Simon dipped his chin in a curt nod. He’d seen his share and more of such pyres. They were lit to burn the corpses of those who’d fallen in battle or been put to the sword afterward. The dead must needs be disposed of quickly in heat such as this to prevent pestilence or disease. From the number of black plumes, it appeared that few of Blanche Garde’s defenders had survived the surprise attack.
He dragged his gaze from the curling smoke to the army he’d ridden with. It was separating into two columns to take up positions surrounding the chalky prominence Blanche Garde occupied. The king’s forces were as yet too few to launch a full-scale assault. Until more of his barons arrived to augment the ranks and his engineers had constructed the necessary siege engines and scaling towers, all Baldwin could do was contain the enemy within Blanche Garde’s walls and attempt to negotiate a surrender.
There was little chance of that, Simon guessed. The very fact that the Fatamids had resorted to trickery to take the castle suggested it must have been well supplied to withstand a long siege. Those same supplies would now fortify Blanche Garde’s occupiers for months, if not years.
His thoughts filling with strategies and tactics employed during a siege, Simon signaled to Fortemur’s contingent to follow him. Moments later he staked claim to a campsite close to a copse of almond trees. The thick-trunked trees would provide shade as well as defense. More to the point, they were fed by a tickling, rock-strewn spring that would slake the raging thirst of both man and beast.
Once he’d set them to constructing temporary shelters and had put Will to work currying the tired horses, he shed his helmet, pushed back his mailed hood and went to see how Jocelyn fared.
He found her without much difficulty. The king’s men had pitched Baldwin’s red-and-yellow-striped tent on a rise that gave a clear view of the hilltop fortress. His mother’s blue tent was lavishly embroidered with gilded swans and sat farther back behind the lines. The Templars, Simon saw, had taken up a position opposite the castle’s main sally port so they might be the first line of defense against any attack launched by those who now held Blanche Garde.
Although the king had set such a pace that it would be at least another day, maybe two, before the supply wagons caught up, his keen-eyed archers had brought down doe, wild boar, quail and rabbits en route. The king’s marshal had also requisitioned olives, fruits, ale and grain from the farms and villages they’d passed through. As a consequence, meat already sizzled on spits and a small army of pages and squires hurried about the camp seeing to their masters’ needs. Simon stopped one wearing the queen’s colors outside the blue-flocked tent.
“You, lad. Inquire within of the Lady Jocelyn of Fortemur. Tell her Simon de Rhys would speak with her.”
The page ducked inside the tent. He ducked out again some moments later and held the flap up for Jocelyn to emerge.
Simon could not believe the hunger that reared up and clawed at him like a sharp-taloned beast. He had but to look at her
to feel his heart jerk and his breath slide back down his throat.
She’d washed off her travel grime and tamed her hair by parting it in the center and catching the sides back. She still wore her traveling gown but had shed her cloak. In the early-evening light her lips had the hue of a ripe peach. The need to taste them put a brusque edge to his words.
“Are you well disposed, lady?”
“Well enough.” She gave the tent behind her a rueful glance. “Melisande has ridden the length and breadth of this kingdom a dozen times or more during her years as both queen and regent. She’s a seasoned campaigner. You need not fear for my comfort or safety.”
Simon had to admit the times bred remarkable women. Like Eleanor of Aquitaine, Melisande of Jerusalem had more than proved herself. Daughter to one king, mother to another, she’d governed a kingdom beset by enemies on all sides for more than two decades.
Jocelyn of Fortemur was bred of the same stock. So Simon wasn’t surprised that she was more concerned about her people’s comfort than her own.
“What of my men? Where are they positioned?”
He gestured toward the stand of almond trees fed by the rocky creek. “They’re there, just beyond that copse.”
“Show me.”
They wove their way past hastily erected tents and shelters to the trees. Their leaves were a rubbery green, their trunks were as thick around as a baker’s midsection. Simon took Jocelyn’s arm to help her navigate the uneven ground, then stood quietly while she conferred with the sergeant of her guard.
“Sir Simon made sure we are well provisioned,” the burly lancer assured her. “We have ale and meats and feed for the horses and mules.”
She turned to the youth hauling a bucket of water from the stream. “And you, Will? How do you fare in your new duties as squire?”
The farrier’s son made a gallant attempt at a smile. “I ache from my head to my toes, lady. Just as Sir Simon promised I would.”
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