Young Humphrey de Toron made frantic gestures to Landry from behind the King as the wrath flamed in his face. Landry paid no heed. He would tolerate insult to himself, less because he who offered them was King than because he was a sick man, but he would challenge the Lord of Darkness himself for a word of wrong to Rodriga. He stared grimly down into the blazing eyes.
“This, fair sire, is my virgin daughter, no strumpet,” he stated harshly. “Being masterless, I am penniless. I raided the Saracens for plunder to feed my men. Would you rather I had turned brigand?”
The King opened his mouth to blast him with the invective which was the envy and the boast of his army, and then checked. With all the Plantagenet temper, he possessed also a sense of justice. He looked over Landry again, glanced more particularly at Rodriga with slight shame in his regard, and then at the two lean wolves of Catalans in their rags. He passed a hand over his throbbing brow. “I erred,” he admitted. “Demoiselle, I regret misnaming you.” He let himself sink back on his elbow as if spent by the dispute, and Humphrey de Toron jerked his head imperatively at a nervously hovering cleric in a rusty robe. The physician started forward, encountered a basilisk glare from the vivid eyes and stood petrified, save for the soundless opening and shutting of his mouth. King Richard scowled up at Landry. “I offered four gold pieces a month to any knight who would enter my service!” he exclaimed.
“Your officers refused me,” answered Landry curtly. “I am old and lame and a hard-tongued bad bargain. So be it.” He bowed and stepped back. Rodriga, on fire for his sake, leaped to his side and caught his hand, lifting her bare black head in fierce pride before all the great men who witnessed her father’s humiliation and scorned him. There was a little murmur among them, and young Humphrey, beloved for his charm and kindness even by the hard men who should have despised him, spoke impetuously.
“I say, my lords, that this was a deed of great valour and deserving of our praise, to venture so small a company against all Saladin’s might!”
“So it was,” agreed the King, smiling reluctantly. “Yes, a deed of enterprise, Sir Landry, and I trust well-rewarded. God’s Head, you have begotten a vixen!” he added, lifting his brows at Rodriga, who did not even lower her hard gaze in maidenly confusion. She was furious for her father’s pride, wounded by the avowal of uselessness he had been forced to make before them all, and she cared nothing for the status of the big red brute chafing at the constraint of illness in his litter. The fierce defiance in her dark young hawk-face required no words to interpret it, and her hand tightened on her javelin. The King’s blue eyes flickered to it. He was not a wencher like his father and younger brother, and the admiration in his gaze had nothing lecherous about it. “The offer stands,” he said to Landry. “I have use for enterprise and valour.”
His supporting elbow gave way, and he dropped back on his cushions with a grunt and shivered violently, though everyone else was sweating with the heat. The physician ventured closer, and they heard his plaintive voice mingling with hoarse curses. Humphrey de Toron, born and bred in this land and no stranger to its diseases, shook his head as he bent over the King, and added his remonstrances to the scared cleric’s. James d’Avennes and a determined-looking man whom she took to be Geoffrey de Lusignan, King Guy’s much abler brother, joined their voices to the chorus.
Richard swore again, croaked to a halt and coughed. “Have your way,” he growled. “Take me back—I can do no more.”
Dejectedly they bore him away, and Rodriga watched the litter out of sight with dismay cold in her belly. It was clear to all that, though Acre must fall soon, the campaign for Jerusalem depended on Richard’s magnificent courage and energy. For a bleak moment she wondered whether, as the prophets of woe so confidently proclaimed, God confounded them with disaster to punish the sins of Christendom and of the Franks of Palestine particularly. Death had not spared Queen Sybilla and her children, nor the great Emperor Frederick, miserably drowned fording a river, nor the holy Archbishop of Canterbury, nor other noble lords, reverend churchmen and valiant knights.
“If he dies,” said Landry soberly, “God aid Jerusalem, for men may not. There will be only that fox Philip, who leads from the rear and runs at the first sight of hand-strokes. As much use as a gutted herring!”
“Herrings,” said Rodriga justly, “are eatable.”
“And Philip is good only for devising plots and siege-engines. As for the rest, this wrangling and intriguing over who is or is not King of Jerusalem, with it yet to be retaken, sickens my stomach! Guy or Conrad—ugh!”
“That divorce of the dead Queen’s sister sickened me,” Rodriga answered as they turned away. The methods employed by Conrad of Montferrat to induce Isabella to divorce Humphrey de Toron and marry him had been denounced by every preacher of God’s wrath in the country.
“Say what you will against his morals,” grunted Landry, who had said his share, “and I grant you they take a stout stomach to contain them without puking, but if I inhabited this pestilent grid-iron, I should choose to be ruled by an unscrupulous brute who knows what to do and does it, rather than a valiant crack-brain who invariably acts on the most misguided advice. But Conrad has made too many enemies, and Guy has proved his incompetence too expensively, so neither will ever hold the Kingdom.” He shrugged impatiently. “Not that there is one to hold.” He dismissed politics for more urgent matters. “Ramiro and I are for the Hospital. Get you back to camp, lass, and see to the safety of our loot.”
Rodriga would rather have gone with them to Juan, but she saw the hard sense in his order and did not dispute it. They had run too many risks for the plunder to run needless risks with it.
Old Urraca was harshly uttering her mind about foolhardy idiots who deserved nothing better than to have left their heads adorning spear-points in Saladin’s camp, while her grinning grandsons, who regarded her ceaseless carping like a plague inescapable as Acre mosquitoes, had tethered and watered the horses and kicked Diego into preparing food. Her only open reaction to the news of her second grandson’s grave wounds was a terse declaration that she had expected nothing better, but the shocked and anxious lads turned soberly to their duties, silent and stricken.
Rodriga checked over the plunder with a kind of bleak appreciation, thought of its bloody cost quelling her pleasure. There were thirteen light and lovely mares whose price alone would keep them from beggary. There were hangings and a bed-spread of Byzantine brocaded silk; strange garments of silk and cotton; a gaming-board inlaid with ivory; three shirts of fine chain-mail; a turban-jewel, an emerald set in an intricately-worked,pale gold brooch, and a bronze casket half-full of coins. Most were of silver, many of unguessable origin, but some gold ones were sprinkled among them. Silver was silver, and the Italian bullion-dealers would give its equivalent in good Christian coinage.
The six best horses were set aside; the rest would be sold. The mail shirts would go to Ramiro, Pablo and Juan by right of seniority —if Juan lived to wear his. The weapons, of peculiar shape and doubtful utility to their eyes, were set aside for sale with most of the outlandish garments, but they would dispose of nothing but the horses until Piers had taken his choice of the plunder. Rodriga fastened up the hangings, which looked incongruously splendid in their dilapidated tent, locked away the jewel with the coins and dug a hole in the earth under her pallet to conceal it, and then to occupy herself picked over the clothing. She had clothed herself by loot of one sort or another since childhood and was long past yielding to qualms about their previous owners, and a young girl owning but three gowns, none of which would have been gratefully received by a beggar-woman, could not disdain their gorgeous materials. Urraca grumbled fearfully over the addition to her washing, but they dried almost instantly in the fierce sunshine.
Saracen attire was voluminous enough to repay pulling to pieces and remaking to her needs, and she sat in the tent doorway and painstakingly picked out stitches with the little lady’s toy of a dagger she carried at her girdle. She carried a
nother, a much more formidable weapon in a much less conspicuous place, but the little knife was useful in itself and served to take the eye and attention of any observer. Her head was full of unhappy thought for hot-headed Juan when the sound of hooves nearby interrupted them, and she jumped up, spilling rose and green and white silks about her. Pablo vanished round the nearest tent, and a moment later led forward a group of guests so unwelcome that she stared in dismay, for a moment incapable of greeting them.
CHAPTER VI
Robert de Veragny came first, awkwardly perched on a sober brown gelding, with his crutch tucked under his arm, and behind him Lothaire de Gallenard, astride a good bay courser. Four arbalesters tramped after them as escort. There was nothing Rodriga could do but go forward and make them courteously welcome, and she gathered her wits to receive them in her father’s stead, ignoring the way the fair knight’s gaze insolently appraised her slender body in the outgrown gown which strained against her slight breasts. The cripple alighted with the aid of a crossbowman, set his crutch under his arm-pit and swung forward, the evil-tempered lines of his face overlaid with a smile.
He barely gave her time to greet him, but burst out, “Demoiselle, what is this mad tale going about, that you raided Saladin’s encampment?”
“It is truth, my lord.” She gestured to the heap of spoil.
“Where is your father, demoiselle?”
“He has gone to the Hospital. My foster-brother was wounded at the trenches.”
“Your foster-brother?” drawled Lothaire de Gallenard. “I fear all your men look alike to me, demoiselle.”
“They are all the sons of the sergeant, whose wife was my nurse,” Rodriga explained concisely. “Will you be seated, my lords, and accept refreshment while we await my father?”
She set cushions in the tent doorway, sent Diego for wine and Pablo to tend their horses and escort, and served them herself with the wine and fruit. She mentioned as a marvel an account she had heard of the wealthy Saracen lords, that they were accustomed to fetch snow from the mountains of Lebanon by fast relays, to cool their drinks in the summer heat. Saracen customs should make a reasonably safe topic until her father should return.
Robert de Veragny, though, was not to be diverted to discussion of snow in summer. “Demoiselle,” he asked bluntly, “is it also true that you had in your company a renegade called Marco?”
The question took the breath from her lungs, and she realised instantly that he was in no doubt, but merely seeking confirmation of what he already knew. Probably half the men in the throng that had welcomed them knew Marco by sight. She dared not deny it. “Marco?” she repeated, hoping that neither her dismay nor her hesitation had been as obvious to them as they seemed to her. “Yes, he was with us.” And the Saints grant that no one of the cripple’s acquaintance had recognised Piers.
“Surely your father has not been so misguided as to employ that half-bred Saracen!” exclaimed Robert de Veragny. “Why, the man is a notorious traitor!”
She stiffened, but answered him with the flat truth. “He did not join us by our wish, my lord. He followed us for his own sport.”
“To betray you to the enemy, demoiselle, had you not discovered him!”
“What attempt did he make against you, fair lady?” drawled Lothaire de Gallenard.
Rodriga understood. They would contrive a charge against Marco which would inevitably, with his reputation, end in a dance on air under the Provost Marshal’s imposing gallows, and a most damaging witness against Lord Robert’s probity would be removed to the gratification of all the Christian host. She revolted against it. “No attempt whatever,” she declared firmly.
“Your innocence and trust do you great credit, fair demoiselle,” murmured the seneschal, “but there is more evil in the human heart than you dream of. Though you foiled him, there can be no doubt of his intent.”
She tried to keep a blank face over her rising anger, thinking grimly that her understanding of some evils might surprise him. “You are mistaken, my lord. He could have betrayed us, and he did not.”
“Wait!” said Sir Lothaire. “It is even more likely he looked for a share of your plunder!”
“So expert a thief could pouch a deal unnoticed,” supplemented his master, quick to take up the new offering. He eyed her benignly. “My child, you have a duty to the whole Christian community, bleeding and suffering before Acre while that mongrel betrays them to the Infidel. He menaces our holy enterprise, and your father would agree with me that his thefts last night merit death.”
She was being asked to fabricate evidence against the renegade, to perjure him to the gallows on that specious justification. She retained just enough self-control to refrain from denouncing his hypocrisy, and to disguise her disgust behind an appearance of blank incomprehension. “He was never near the loot, my lord. I watched him all the time, and he could not have stolen.”
The lame man glanced sharply at her, clearly wondering whether she were simple or subtle, and then nodded heavily in defeat. “In that case I must own to error, my child. Probably your watch thwarted his intent, for such a man never acts without a prospect of profit.”
The chances were that he was right, but Rodriga would not gratify him by agreeing. She introduced a safer topic by having Pablo lead out the captured mares for his inspection, and then showed him the heap of spoil. She could not be at ease in his company, partly for fear of her own tongue, and partly because it outraged her to give hospitality to a man who wished her well and whose undoing she was devising. His own enthusiasm, however, covered her lack. He was particularly interested in the Saracen weapons, and fell in love with an impressive scimitar. He drew it, admired its curved blade and wire-bound hilt, tried its balance, tested its edge with his thumb, and then smiled apologetically at Rodriga.
“I was thinking how it would please my little son,” he explained.
She was surprised, and her face showed it. She had never imagined this knave from a tale of oppression to be a man with life and passions of his own, least of all a father whose love for his child compared with Landry’s love for her. “You have a son, my lord? How old is he?” she asked to cover her surprise.
His face lighted; plainly this topic was dear to his heart. “Almost eight years, and the stoutest, boldest lad in Poitou!” he declared. “I pray God that Jerusalem will soon be ours, for every day apart from him is a grief to me!”
Whatever their affections, few parents were as outspoken as that, and Rodriga’s interest kindled. “He is then your only child, my lord?”
She knew immediately that she had spoken amiss. The pride and pleasure vanished from his face, and a look of brooding harshness restored the bitter villain of her earlier judgment. “For my sins, yes!” he grated, and then closed his mouth with the savage decisiveness of a portcullis. She looked down in dismay at her discarded handiwork, frantically ransacking her wits for some innocuous topic to fill the menacing silence. The malicious amusement in Sir Lothaire’s languid gaze did not help by firing such impotent fury in her that it excluded any other thought. He knew it too, and was enjoying her discomfiture.
A singularly piercing whistle, doing shameful violence to the tune of an improper ditty that had run through castle and camp a couple of years ago, saved her. Her heart lifted at the message it sent; if Landry whistled, all was well with Juan. “My lord, here is my father to greet you himself!” she said thankfully, and signalled Pablo, who was unostentatiously close at hand. He slipped away, and almost at once the whistling stopped. Then Landry limped round the tents, genial in welcome, with a shrewd and speculative eye to offset his cheerful greeting. He smiled at Rodriga and nodded reassuring answer to the question in her anxious gaze, and she relaxed.
Robert de Veragny recovered himself, turned as with relief to another man for rational conversation, and abandoned Rodriga to his seneschal. That alert amorist, seizing the opportunity of courtesy, surrendered his cushion to Landry and moved round to sit by Rodriga, who restrained her im
pulse to draw away in distaste.
“I am glad indeed, fair demoiselle, so soon to meet again my Spanish flower,” he murmured in her ear. Landry’s noisy eloquence afforded plenty of cover for his compliments, but at least in his presence he was restricted to verbal offence. She kept her eyes cast down, and he chuckled softly over what he mistook for embarrassment. “Think no more of your error, demoiselle. It is but that my lord cannot abide such comment.”
“That is his privilege,” she answered stiffly.
“There was no fault in you, demoiselle. You were not to know it is great bitterness to him.”
“For his sins,” Robert de Veragny had said, and suddenly Rodriga guessed at his meaning. But for no consideration would she gratify this animal by asking questions. “I regret the offence,” she said curtly, and reached for her work.
Her total lack of response stung him into saying more than he had perhaps intended. “Indeed, fair flower of Spain, the offence is not yours! It is God’s punishment for a wrong he did, that he was smitten with infirmity and can beget no more sons.”
“Sir knight, you do wrong to tell that of your liege lord,” she said sternly, gazing squarely into his long, heavy-lidded blue eyes. His brows lifted in amused surprise, as if a butterfly had turned to bite him.
“That is harsh hearing, demoiselle, when I strove but to comfort you for his anger! Will you condemn me for thought of you?”
He was as slippery as a fish, and Rodriga tightened her mouth and entrenched herself in dourness. “He is your liege lord.”
“True, true, but when a man is torn asunder by duty to his lord and to the lady of his heart, how would you have him choose?”
“A man of honour should not need to ask,” she answered devastatingly.
He blinked at the hit, and then chuckled. “So, my Spanish flower stings like a nettle!”
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