An hour later, Richildis and Eschiva waited inside the barbican with a welcome cup for the Queen of Jerusalem as she rode in at the head of her entourage. She was wearing a deep purple velvet cloak, evidently lined with wolf. That was to be expected, of course, but Richildis was intimidated by the way she cantered into the ward, riding a gray mare so hot-blooded that she arched her neck and lifted her tail as the Queen reined her in. Richildis was afraid of horses like that.
Richildis had not seen Maria Zoë since King Baldwin’s coronation. She remembered the Queen as an arrogant, bejeweled creature at the high table, stiff and impassive. She was startled when Maria Zoë threw back the fur-trimmed hood of her cloak and sent her a dazzling smile. Only now did Richildis register that she had big, wide-set amber eyes in a perfectly symmetrical face, an elegant, thin nose, and soft, rose-colored lips. She was beautiful, Richildis registered—and Richildis distrusted beautiful women.
Dutifully but resentfully, Richildis sank into a deep curtsy, tugging Eschiva down with her, and rose to find that the Queen had already dismounted, turned her horse over to a squire, and was offering her hand.
“My lady of Ramla.” She stopped the flustered Richildis from curtsying again. “Thank you so much for extending your hospitality in these difficult times. I know how much Ibelin has suffered, and I am here not to be a burden, but to see if there is some way I can help.”
Before Richildis could recover from her astonishment at this announcement, the Queen turned and smiled at Eschiva, who was staring up at her as if she were the Queen of Heaven rather than the Queen of Jerusalem. “You must be Eschiva.”
“I’m the wife of Aimery de Lusignan,” Eschiva introduced herself boldly.
“Ah, Madame de Lusignan,” the Queen answered, instantly recognizing Eschiva’s pride in her married status, “your lord husband charged me with bringing you a kiss.” The Queen at once bent forward and kissed a blushing Eschiva on the forehead.
With this little lie (for Richildis did not believe for a moment that Aimery de Lusignan had sent his wife a kiss), the Queen overwhelmed Richildis’ prejudice against pretty women. The kiss made Eschiva beam with happiness, and Richildis could no longer hold back a smile of her own. As she gestured to the exterior stone steps leading up to the hall, it was with sincere warmth. “Your grace, please! Come in.”
The Queen insisted on a tour of the town to see the damage for herself. The townspeople flocked to catch a glimpse of her, and she had smiles for them as well—although Richildis noted, with a resurgence of inner disapproval, that she carefully kept her distance and let her almoner distribute alms, rather than actually touch the poor.
The Queen also spent a good deal of time talking to Father Vitus, listening with bated breath to his account of what had happened during the siege. It struck Richildis as odd that the Queen showed so much interest in the role played by her brother-in-law.
Later, after a light evening meal, the ladies withdrew to the solar, leaving the rest of the household in the hall, and Eschiva performed on her harp for the Queen until she was sent to bed. At last the women were alone, Richildis with Gudrun and Maria Zoë with Rahel. “Do you wish to retire now, your grace?” Richildis asked cautiously. “Or should I put another log on the fire?”
“Oh, I’m not sleepy yet. My head is too full of imagines and thoughts. Father Vitus described the events most vividly.”
“Yes, he has a way with words.” Richildis sounded disapproving.
“Do you mean he exaggerated?”
“Not at all. The situation in the keep was similar. We were crowded together, conscious that we could hardly defend ourselves, and we, too, heard the screaming coming up from the city—especially the high-pitched screaming of women and girls who had fallen into the Saracens’ hands.” She paused then continued. “Father Vitus referred to a girl called Beth. I will tell you about her. She is a thirteen-year-old Muslim maiden, raised very strictly by her father, who owned a fruit shop near the southern gate. She claims she had never left the inside of her father’s house except to go to Friday prayers and visit her uncles’ houses—all within a couple of blocks. She started her monthly flux this past summer and was betrothed to marry one of her father’s business associates at the start of the New Year. When the Saracens came, she and her mother were inside the women’s quarters, but suddenly there were strange men there—something that should not be. The intruders were Nubians and they were clearly Muslims, but these men took one look at her and smiled in a way she knew was not decent—as she put it to me. She and her mother tried to cover themselves—because they were unveiled inside their own house—but they were roughly grabbed, and the men started to rip off their clothes. They pleaded with the men to let them alone, reciting from the Koran to prove that they were Believers, but these men were not deterred. They forced themselves on them—one after another.
“By the time we found them, the older woman was dead—she had bled to death from the wounds inflicted on her. But the thirteen-year-old was still breathing. I had her brought here to the castle, where Gudrun nursed her back from the brink of death.
“Meanwhile, of course, I made inquiries into what had become of her relatives. Her father had died defending their house, but her two uncles and her betrothed had survived. I asked them to take her home. They looked at me as if I had asked them to renounce their faith. How could I ask such a thing? Their niece/fiancée was now ‘unclean,’ and they wouldn’t dream of taking her back into their homes to live with their still “good” wives and daughters—as if she were a whore!” Indignation rang in Richildis’ voice. “The worst of it, however, was that this was exactly what the poor child expected. When I went to tell her she would be staying with us, she begged me to kill her. She said she was ‘worthless’ and ‘filthy’ and wanted only to die.
“That made me very angry,” Richildis admitted, her lips drawn into a thin line. “In fact, I lost my temper. I grabbed the poor girl by her arm and dragged her from her bed. She started screaming in terror, and I think she feared I intended to kill her right there. Her cries suggested she was not as ready to die as she thought she was. In any case, I dragged her to my little chapel and forced her to kneel before the image of the Virgin Mary, and I started to tell her about Christ. I told her how he stopped people from stoning a woman caught in adultery, and I asked, ‘Do you think He would be less forgiving of a girl who had been taken against her will? Never. He wept with you, and He still loves you,’ I told her. ‘Even if your uncles and your betrothed and Mohammed and Allah are too bigoted and cruel to forgive the innocent—Christ,’ I told her, ‘loves you. He will never turn his back on you,’ I told her, ‘as long as you love Him.’” Richildis fell silent, remembering the scene.
“What a beautiful thing to say! But . . . Do you speak Arabic?”
“Enough. Most of us born here do, you know. Gudrun, for example, is half Syrian and learned Arabic from her mother.”
The Queen opened her mouth to say something, but her hostess didn’t notice and continued her story. “Christ or his Mother or both must have been with me in that chapel, because the girl’s eyes became as big as saucers and she asked breathlessly, ‘Truly?’ I insisted it was the case, and she asked me to tell her more. After that, Gudrun and I took turns telling her everything we knew from the life of Christ or the lives of the saints that underscored the high status of women in Christianity—not just the Virgin Mary, but the fact that Christ first appeared to women after his resurrection, the story of the woman caught in adultery, the fact that women as well as men followed Him, and that He has graced many women with sainthood since. After just over a week, she asked to be baptized in the name of Christ, taking the name of Elizabeth.” Richildis crossed herself.
“That’s wonderful!” the Queen exclaimed enthusiastically. “I’m sure I would have been speechless and found no better answer than to hug her and promise my protection,” she admitted humbly.
“Oh, I had the words well prepared,” Richildis answered
coldly, with a hard look at the Queen. “You see, throughout the raid—which seemed to drag on for a lifetime—I feared that Eschiva would suffer this girl’s fate—that they would break in and ravish her despite her tender age. And I kept wondering what Aimery de Lusignan would do if he found out his bride had been raped—maybe more than once—by Nubian soldiers.” She paused and looked sharply at the Queen. “You know him better than I. What do you think? Would he still have honored her as his wife?”
The Queen shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
“You don’t have to answer. We both know he would have found a way to set her aside—”
“But her uncles would never have rejected her! Not Balian!” the Queen protested.
Richildis looked piercingly at the Dowager Queen. “Balian. You always call him Balian—not Sir Balian, not the Constable of Ascalon, not ‘Ramla’s younger brother.’ Just Balian.”
The Queen blushed, and that said it all, Richildis thought, although she couldn’t really fathom it. A queen in love with a landless younger son?
“But I am right,” Maria Zoë insisted, trying to distract attention from her relationship to Balian. “Sir Balian would never reject Eschiva. If she had been ravished and her father had been killed and her husband had rejected her, he would be the first to comfort and protect her. I’m sure he would.”
Richildis nodded slowly and conceded, “Perhaps—and he may yet have to.”
“What do you mean?” Maria Zoë asked, astonished. “I thought they did not breach the castle walls?”
“The Saracens did not, but my lord husband is trying to divorce me—and if he succeeds, Eschiva will become a bastard and will no longer be heiress to Ramla. In which case, you can be sure, Lusignan will find a way to put her aside.”
Maria Zoë could not deny that. Aimery was a landless adventurer who had come to the Holy Land to find and marry an heiress, just like Reynald de Châtillon and many before him. He would not marry a landless girl, no matter what her titles had once been and no matter how much the little girl loved him.
Before she could think of a neutral answer, Richildis continued. “It’s only because of Eschiva that I refuse Barry’s pressure to dissolve our marriage. You cannot think I wish to return to a man who has never been faithful and loves neither me nor my daughter,” she declared bitterly—a little too bitterly, Maria Zoë thought. If she were truly indifferent to Barry, there would be less passion in her voice.
“But you were married as children—”
“It is a vile practice!” Richildis burst out angrily. “The whole concept of consent that the Church pretends to uphold is made a mockery when little girls are ‘asked’ to consent to that which their all-powerful parents have already decided!”
That was true enough, Maria Zoë conceded, recalling just how little choice she had had—and how frightened she had been of the ‘barbarians’ she was being sent to. Fortunately the man who became her confessor, Brother Anselm, had been the first Frank she had ever met, and he had been a gentle priest with smiling eyes, well suited to soothing a child’s fears.
“Did you never love the Lord of Ramla, then?” Maria Zoë asked softly.
Richildis started, registering too late that her bitterness had run away with her tongue. But it was done now. “Love him?” she asked. “I don’t know. I joined the Ibelin household at the age of eight, and Hugh d’Ibelin was a fine man.” She smiled at the memory. “He was big and blond like Barry, but he was less taken with himself. He had a gentleness about him that only Balian shares. Barry and Henri are made of sterner stuff, more egotistical, more ambitious and grasping—more like their father, or so I’ve been told; I never met Barisan the Elder.” She stopped and turned her penetrating eyes on Maria Zoë. “And what is Balian to you?”
Maria Zoë started, and her hand fell instinctively on her belly.
Richildis caught her breath; Maria Zoë’s belly was budding. “You’re not carrying his child?” she asked, incredulous.
Maria Zoë didn’t answer. She took her hand away from her belly and rested it on the arm of her chair with great dignity. She retreated within her façade and sat regal and immobile before the fire, refusing to answer.
Richildis drew a deep breath to steady herself. Even if the Queen refused to acknowledge it, Richildis felt certain it was true. That’s why she’s here, she concluded. It wasn’t the King who had sent her to see what she could do to help Ibelin; it was Balian.
Richildis felt tears starting in her eyes. It hurt that it was her brother-in-law, rather than her husband of twenty years, who cared what became of her. She so wished that it was Barry, and in her heart she knew she loved him still, despite all he had done to her.
“Perhaps I will go to bed after all,” Maria Zoë announced coolly, getting to her feet and gliding out of the room with her waiting woman silently following her, leaving Richildis alone with her misery.
The next morning Maria Zoë was sick. Richildis learned about it from her waiting woman, who came to beg for toast to help settle her lady’s stomach. Richildis stared at the Egyptian woman with reproachful eyes. “It’s morning sickness,” she declared flatly—and the older woman smiled faintly and knowingly, but said nothing.
“Doesn’t she know?” Richildis asked.
“My lady knows, but she has not yet decided what to do,” Rahel conceded.
“What do you mean, ‘do?’” Richildis demanded.
“There are ways of—getting rid of unwanted children,” Rahel pointed out, in a calm voice that made Richildis’ blood run cold. This woman might be Christian, she thought, but she had lived too long among the Muslims! “You wouldn’t really think of killing an innocent unborn child?” she demanded—recalling that the Greeks, too, were rumored to kill unwanted children.
“There are convents where children can be born out of sight of the court and given directly to the Church,” Rahel countered, without actually denying the other possibility. “You will not betray her, will you?”
“Betray her?” Richildis demanded. “To whom? Does the father know?”
“Lord Balian?” The Egyptian innocently confirmed Richildis’ suspicions. “Of course not. They have not seen each other since September.”
“They are both literate,” Richildis pointed out sharply, annoyed by such a facile excuse.
But the Egyptian woman shook her head firmly. “My lady says he will be angry.”
“Angry!” Richildis scoffed. “What right has he to be angry, if it was his doing?”
“Men are often angry about the things they do,” Rahel countered calmly. “We cannot change that—only try not to arouse it.”
“Dear God!” Richildis answered, remembering the Queen’s fine compliments on how she had handled Beth. That had been child’s play compared to this! The Dowager Queen of Jerusalem was carrying the bastard of a landless younger son who had no chance whatever of gaining the permission to marry her! What had they been thinking! Nothing, obviously. Thinking had nothing to do with lust. But who would have dreamed that this chilly, self-possessed, haughty icon could be fired with sufficient passion to take the risks she had?
Maria Zoë hated any kind of sickness. Normally robust, she resented it when her body ‘betrayed’ her—but this was particularly humiliating because it reminded her of her condition and, she suspected, would confirm the Lady of Ramla’s suspicions. She was surprised, therefore, to find the Lady of Ramla extremely solicitous of her and urging her to stay another night.
“You don’t know what it might have been, your grace,” Richildis insisted as if she could not imagine the truth. “Perhaps it was something you ate—or worse, the water. With so many homeless here, I fear sanitation is not what it should be. I’ve ordered water boiled and will serve you nothing but that for the rest of the day—mixed with wine, of course.”
“I need to be back in Jerusalem for the Christmas court,” Maria Zoë protested weakly—in no particular hurry to return to a court dominated by Agnes de Courtney.
/> “It’s just a two-day ride,” Richildis insisted. “If you leave tomorrow or even the day after, you’ll still be there more than a week before Christmas. Stay here at least tonight. I thought you might like to meet Beth, the girl I was telling you about, and I know Eschiva wants to hear more about her husband. She’s been badgering me with questions. She’d be so pleased if you could tell her a little more about him, and indeed about the whole court.”
Maria Zoë allowed herself to be persuaded, especially when a drenching rain set in just before noon. She had no desire to get cold and wet, and so she settled into the solar for the afternoon and found herself enjoying the simplicity of her surroundings. Eschiva was as eager as her mother had predicted to learn anything about Aimery de Lusignan, and Beth was as shy and gentle as a stray kitten. She curled up at Maria Zoë’s feet, her big black eyes filled with wonder as she listened in fascination to Maria Zoë’s stories, translated by Gudrun, of the Court of Jerusalem. Later, Eschiva played for them on her harp. After dinner they roasted chestnuts over the fire and washed them down with hot mulled wine sweetened with sugar and spiced with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom.
Richildis, Rahel, and Gudrun were stitching, and the girls resisting the heaviness of their eyelids to beg for another story from Maria Zoë, when the door slammed open and the cold and damp blew into the room. Startled, they all looked up, and Maria Zoë gasped. Balian stood in the doorway, dripping water from the nasal guard of his helmet to the hem of his cloak.
“Uncle Balian!” Eschiva exclaimed with a cry of joy, jumping up to her feet and running to him, while Beth scuttled for safety behind the tapestries, terrified of all strange men—let alone one in armor and helmet. The reaction of the girls gave Maria Zoë a chance to glance at her hostess; Richildis was not surprised, and that explained everything.
Knight of Jerusalem Page 27