Richard himself appeared at that moment at the top of a scaling ladder set up from the fosse below. “To hear you talk, my dear fellow, anybody would think I took the place single-handed!” he protested, swinging a leg over the battlements. “What about the French, the Austrians, the Venetians, the Genoese, and all the rest of our noble allies?”
“Well, what about them?” jeered Raymond. “I didn’t see old Leopold do much except hoist his standard from the watch tower after you had mopped up this ward of the town.”
Richard glanced up with tolerant amusement at the Austrian standard drooping listlessly above them. There was so little breeze that it might just as well have been embroidered with leopards or fleurs-de-lis or unicorns for all anybody could tell, so it didn’t matter much. And in any case his attention was immediately distracted by a pull at his elbow. He had no sooner straddled the battlements than Ida had joined the friendly little group. She had brought him a basket of nectarines and oranges temptingly arranged on cool green fig leaves.
“A good thought, Ida! If I’d have known you had anything so delectable I’d have come and sat over there!” exclaimed Raymond.
“The Count of Toulouse would have to be very thirsty before he preferred my company to yours,” she said to Johanna with teasing shrewdness. Richard, who was learning matrimonial wisdom, picked over her basket for the choicest fruit and carried it across to his wife.
“She hasn’t eaten anything this morning,” Johanna had to say, drawing attention to her pallor.
“It’s this pestilential heat,” said Raymond.
But it wasn’t only the heat. Berengaria felt sick—swooningly sick. She did not want other people to know—to whisper and to guess her secret. She wanted to tell Richard some lovely time when they were alone. When the Syrian night was warm about them like a cloak, shutting out war, and the stars were shining the way they did over Cyprus. “I shall have a better appetite when all this starving garrison is set free,” she said evasively.
“It won’t be long now, my dear,” Richard assured her. “Almost the best part of this victory will be getting back our own prisoners in return.” He made the page pour her wine first and, steadied by it, she followed him to the battlements. With Johanna and Raymond and Blondel they leaned against the parapet watching the new portcullis being lifted into its grooves by powerful pulleys. Its cruel iron teeth grinned defiance to the surrounding plain. “I shall feel happier about pushing on to Haifa when that’s fixed,” said Richard. From their vantage point they could see most of the battered roofs and minarets of the city, and it was obvious how much the Norman trebuchets and other war machines must have contributed to the final capitulation. They began assessing the damage and fighting their battles over again. “I suppose your precious new catapult was responsible for that, Richard?” said Raymond, pointing out a nasty crater in the bastion immediately below them.
“Why did we bring the stones for it specially from Sicily, Sir?” asked Blondel.
The proud inventor explained how the volcanic nature of the rocks there made them splinter more easily and so become a much deadlier weapon. Fragments from one stone might kill as many as a dozen men, he told them.
And all the time Ida hovered on the edge of the group. She hated the way these fair-skinned crusaders discussed things with their women. They seemed to share so many interests with them besides sex. Yet it seemed to her that a virile red-head like Richard could not possibly be cold. She stole a glance at the firm, full contour of his lips and was consumed by a desire to find out. Her gaze passed contemptuously to the pale bride by his side. Unaware that she was being observed, Berengaria drooped from her usual dignity, a hand pressed to her side. To anyone bred to the gossip of a harem it was easy enough to guess the cause. A savage triumph tingled in Ida’s undisciplined blood. Soon this exquisite wife of Richard’s would be plain and clumsy. She pulled the gaudy sash more tightly across her own svelte hips, prepared to do anything—however spectacular—to attract his attention. Driven by the same devil that had made her dance desire into the chaste Templars, she swung herself over a machicolation of the battlements and with sure, bare feet clambered out across the bastion at which they were all looking.
“Come back, you little fool!” called Raymond, and Blondel—who was standing nearest—made a grab at her. But she eluded him and stood defiantly at the downward slope of the bastion with the first breath of wind from the far-off Lebanons moulding her barbaric draperies about her lovely, slender limbs. She had regained their attention surely enough when suddenly she began pointing excitedly into the bowl of the crater, which was invisible to them. “It is true what King Richard said about the stone,” she cried. “The hole is full of dead. A dozen at least. All blasted with splinters. An arm here…A leg there…” She clambered round the rough edge of the crater like a mountain goat, swooping suddenly to scoop up something. “And here’s a head!” Turning with a flashing smile to Berengaria, she held the horrible thing aloft by its matted hair. The half-decayed face of a Saracen stared up at them with bird-pecked eyes and agonised grin.
Berengaria stifled a scream. Too late she flung both hands across her eyes. Not for worlds would she have looked upon that hideous thing. She made a blind fending motion, as if to drive the sight of it from some frightened child. “Please, please, Richard,” she moaned, “have it covered up quickly.”
Richard had his back to her. He did not see her sway, nor Johanna’s arm go round her. He and Raymond were already over the battlements examining the crater with experienced eyes. They saw only the obvious cause for her distress. “Quickly is the word in this climate,” agreed Raymond, holding his discarded apron to his nose.
Berengaria begged Johanna not to make a fuss and went to sit in the shade. The whole world seemed to have gone black and the sunlight to have turned cold. “I must forget it,” she told herself, staring resolutely in the opposite direction at the sea. “Even Ida couldn’t have been wicked enough to hold the dreadful thing up purposely…” Everything going on around her seemed unreal and negligible. She saw Richard lift the girl back on to the wall—saw him standing with a carelessly, approving arm still about her shoulder telling her her quick eyes had probably saved the garrison from fever. Then he was arranging with Blondel about a burial party and a squad to fill in the masonry.
“Most of the men are packing up for the march or trying to get the land gate finished before nightfall,” Blondel reminded him.
Richard scanned the hive of industry he had recently left. “Well, what are those Austrians doing over there dicing away the coolest part of the day?” he demanded irritably. “Send some of them for picks and shovels.”
Blondel went reluctantly. It wasn’t the first time he had been sent with high-handed messages to foreign contingents, and he knew their trick of pretending not to understand one’s smattering of their various languages. Moreover, he had hoped to clean himself up and spend the noon rest hours with Yvette.
Chapter Twenty-Two
While Blondel was gone to round up some of the Austrians the others stretched themselves in the shade, talking in a desultory sort of way. It was almost time for dinner and the midday siesta, and they were all rather sleepy. Nobody but Johanna seemed to notice Berengaria’s silence.
“What do you wager old Saladin won’t send our men back after all, Richard?” said Raymond, shying a stone at a sun-bathing lizard.
“I gave him till sunset,” yawned Richard.
“But last time he let you down.”
“We hadn’t a whole town full of his people as hostages then.”
Berengaria had managed to get a grip on herself, but her thoughts kept wandering off on inconsequent excursions, one thing suggesting another. She was trying to picture Richard as a boy. Eleanor had told her how furious his father had been because he would draw castles instead of doing his Latin. And when they were in Cyprus he himself had said, “When Thomas à Becket gave me my first pony, Robin and I took turns charging the Oxford boys with a
tent pole.” Odious little savages! But after all, one wanted a boy to have spirit. Berengaria drowsed a little, leaning against Richard’s shoulder, dreaming of their son.
She was roused by her improvised pillow being jerked away and her husband’s voice demanding sharply, “Well, where are they? Didn’t you give them my orders?”
Blondel had, and was still sore at the memory. “They say they do not speak Norman and they take orders only from the Duke of Austria,” he reported.
Richard sprang up with an ugly oath. In two strides he was verifying the unbelievable. The Austrians were still grouped picturesquely under the trees. It was a jolt to his self-esteem. “The insolent swine!” he muttered.
“They are in the right, Richard. Don’t take any notice of my squeamishness,” begged Berengaria, feeling that it was all her fault. “If you can’t spare the men I’m sure it would be better to leave the bastion than to provoke bad feeling with our allies.”
“I think I’m beginning to hate them rather more than our enemies,” he admitted, with a rueful laugh.
Hearing approaching footsteps Johanna looked round the angle of the north wall and came strutting back to them with blown-out cheeks in ludicrous imitation of a fat and pompous figure only too familiar to them all. “Here comes the Duke himself—breathing fire about it!” she warned, hastily reseating herself between Raymond and Blondel to watch the promising encounter.
“Humour him, Richard!” whispered Berengaria. “It saves so much trouble in the end.”
Ida took up a good position on the steps of the little watch tower, and as the footsteps came round the corner they all settled into hushed expectancy, leaving Richard the centre of the stage.
Leopold of Austria was a consequential little man, utterly devoid of humour. He was naturally kind and conscientious, but an unprepossessing exterior had given him a sense of inferiority which made him bumptious, and coming breathlessly into the midst of these good-looking, casual foreigners he was at his worst. When he had panted indignantly up the land gate stairs to give the King of England a piece of his mind, he had hardly bargained for the whole family. Their levity and habit of understatement confused his precise mind, and because he was really a very lonely man he sometimes found himself glancing enviously over the edge of his own dignity at their easy comradeship. “What is this I hear?” he demanded, strutting straight up to Richard and puffing out his cheeks just as Johanna had done. “You order my soldiers to make walls?” Actually, he had a sneaking admiration for this tall, energetic leader of the Normans and English but, being vaguely aware of the amusement of their audience, he spoke more truculently than he had intended.
Richard was positively ingratiating. “Good honest work!” he enthused, ostentatiously rubbing the dust from his own fine, swordsman’s hands.
“Almost as fascinating as planting bulbs, don’t you think?” chipped in that vivid, irrepressible sister of his, in revenge for many an hour’s boredom hearing about the Duke’s hobby.
Leopold acknowledged her presence with a stiff little bow.
“Flowers,” he said sententiously, “are a fit occupation for any peoples. But mending walls—”
“I admit I might have asked you first,” apologised Richard handsomely.
Anyone who understood him knew that apologies did not come easily from the Angevin; but instead of accepting it and so ending the matter, Leopold must needs labour the point with Teutonic thoroughness. “If I want a castle built, I do not lay the stones myself,” he explained complacently.
“Then you miss a good deal of fun,” said Richard shortly.
Johanna tittered and immediately sought to cover her lapse by making violent signs to Ida to hand the Duke some fruit. He was hot and thirsty, but it seemed incompatible with dignity that two important people should discuss the affair while sucking oranges and, before the ladies, he wasn’t quite sure what to do about the pips. Moreover, he was embarrassed by the fact that this disinherited hostage of theirs, waiting on him in her Eastern finery, was in fact his own sister’s child. “I do not see how one can mix fun with war,” he said gravely.
Richard, who was never preoccupied about dignity, helped himself without embarrassment to another nectarine. “No, no, I could hardly expect that of you,” he agreed blandly, spitting the stone expertly over the battlements. Leopold glanced round the little group with puzzled, short-sighted eyes. He was never quite sure whether these pleasant, easy-mannered Normans were making fun of him or not. Recognising the slow sincerity of the man, Richard met it with plain speaking. “But at least you must see how important it is to leave behind us a chain of strong fortresses in good repair all along the coast?” he appealed.
“Without them we shan’t be able to get supplies of that succulent veal you like so much,” added Raymond.
The Duke loved his stomach, but he loved his dignity still more, and this relative of the charming new English queen was always ragging someone. So he decided to ignore him. He looked down at the sweating workers at the gate and felt hotter than ever. A mad, mongrel race working with cheerful profanity in such a climate! “Then let your men finish the repairs since they do not seem to mind,” he compromised. “What need is there to disturb mine?” The words were euphemistic. Everybody knew that once those stolid Junkers of his had settled down to their drinks he would have the devil’s job to make them obey. And the comparison did not improve his temper.
Richard still tried persuasion. After all, the cause was always more to him than the means. He winked at Berengaria and set his elbows companionably on the wall alongside his sulky ally. “Do them good, Leopold!” he laughed. “Just look at them lolling down there in the shade stuffing olives. They’re getting too fat for their armour.”
“And all bemused by the lovely veiled ladies!” drawled Raymond lazily.
They were all so used to chaffing each other, but unfortunately the pompous little Austrian couldn’t take it. He was one of those tiring people for whom one must weigh every word. He killed light-hearted conversation by taking it literally. “What have their morals to do with you?” he demanded, glaring at the laughing Frenchman.
Poor Raymond was nonplussed. It was Richard who answered. He suddenly stopped being either funny or persuasive. “Nothing, thank God!” he admitted sharply. “But the discipline of my army has everything to do with me. And I consider it of the utmost military importance that Acre should be left in sound and sanitary condition and that the troops should have regular employment while we are stuck here waiting for Saladin to carry out the terms of surrender.”
But Leopold was considering nothing but his own importance. His short, fleshy neck was almost purple. “Your army!” he fumed. “Mein lieber Gott!”
“Yes, mine,” snapped Richard, all his virtuous patience exhausted. “Mine every time we are in a tight corner. Mine whenever hundreds of lives depend on one man’s decision—which none of you ever seems to have the guts to make. French, Germans, Austrians, Venetians—all the hang-dog pack of you are glad enough to obey me then. And I say that when you cannot be fighting you shall build.”
“It is an indignity—” spluttered the Duke, almost speechless.
But Richard cut him short as if he were a junior squire. “I see no indignity in keeping oneself physically fit and using one’s muscles on any job that comes along.” That was his philosophy of life—his and Robin’s—and he knew that Berengaria found it good. Hadn’t they all a full size task pushing on to Haifa without this exasperating idiot holding things up? Why should his own men have to start out tired because some other contingent had let the climate turn them rotten? It was perhaps unfortunate that at that very moment a breath of hot, sand-laden air should stir the standard above them, filling out Leopold’s emblems for all the world to see. The sight of them at such a moment inflamed Richard’s annoyance. “And another thing,” he went on, “since we’re discussing those lily-handed henchmen of yours down there, I’d like to know what part they took in subduing this ward of the tow
n that you should have the effrontery to set up your personal bit of heraldry here?”
Perhaps Leopold had hoped the breeze wouldn’t lift just then to draw attention to it. But it had given him such pathetic pleasure to have it put there. Every time he looked at it from his lodgings in the opposite tower it made him feel he wasn’t such a bad general after all. Of course, he had had no idea that the family of the partner who had played him to victory would choose that very spot for their sun lounge. “It was agreed that we should share—” he muttered, momentarily shamefaced.
“Yes—share,” agreed Richard grimly. “As I will make your men share the drudgery and dirt.” He made a motion as if to hail them and his audience sat enthralled, backing him with silent fervour. Goggle-eyed pages had already spread the news that the King of England and the Duke of Austria were quarrelling and the armies themselves were taking sides. The English stopped hammering to listen to the sound of angry voices on the walls. They were spoiling for a fight—and not with the Saracens this time. And now their King wasn’t going to stand any nonsense either. Only Berengaria, while loving Richard for his indignation, saw the folly of it.
“You wouldn’t dare!” blustered Leopold, into the tense silence.
He couldn’t have said anything more unfortunate. It sounded like a challenge before the two watching armies. Richard’s eyes narrowed savagely as a cat’s, and Johanna and Blondel—who had had their entertainment and enjoyed it—realised that this was the moment when Robin should have intervened. In the old days at Oxford he would have sauntered on to such a scene with a friendly grin and a well-timed joke calculated to keep his foster-brother’s dramatics within the bounds of common sense. His unostentatious control had been so unfailing that they almost looked round for his comforting presence, but there was no one now to avert a tragic finale. Berengaria half rose, sensing the moment; but, being a woman, lacked both the casual manner and the right remark.
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