Bianca stared at him. “Your Grace, is it you?” she stammered. She began to cry.
Frederick put his arms around her. He could feel the sobs racking her. “Bianca, Bianchina, don’t cry,” he whispered into her hair, holding her, stroking her back.
Gradually, as she felt the warmth of his body, her sobs stopped. She raised her face, eyes brimming with tears. Then she smiled. Their lips met halfway, in a kiss that made them forget all else.
Thus entwined, they stood in the darkness on the ramparts above the sea, outlined against the orange glare of the flames devouring the castle. Above them, the dark canopy of heaven was strewn with stars.
THE ACRID SMELL of smoke hung in the night air. The fire that had gutted the whole upper floor of the castle’s eastern wing had finally been put out. An eerie stillness filled the castle. Everyone, courtiers and grooms alike, lay asleep, exhausted. Soon the stars would begin to pale.
Frederick stretched out his hand. He stroked her cheek. Her unbound hair spilled over her shoulders and onto the sheet. He had brought her here after the fire was under control. The cushions from the divan still lay where they had fallen upon the floor. Swept away by a torrent of longing, they had tumbled to the floor and sated their need there before seeking refuge in the great bed. The night had passed like a dream, a dream preordained by fate.
Bianca turned her head and looked at him. In the soft light of the guttering candles there was a feverish brilliance in her eyes that made his heart beat faster.
“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you with all my heart. I don’t care if I’ve committed a mortal sin. I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you, as a child. You rode into our courtyard on a mud-covered horse.”
Looking at the way she upheld her chin, like a warrior throwing down a gauntlet, he was torn between laughter and bliss. She means it, he thought, she means every word of it. He put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. Her hair, too, smelled of smoke. The smell of calamity, he thought, of calamity and of happiness.
“You’ re right. I’d forgotten it, but my horse too, was splattered in mud that day. You told me I was dirty.”
He took her hand. One by one, he kissed the tip of each finger. He turned her hand over and began to kiss the inside of her palm. Slowly he removed the upper part of the sheet. Bending his head, he whispered between her breasts, “I want to see you, every beautiful part of you. I want to taste you, feel you, pleasure you.”
He sank into her with the utmost gentleness, afraid to hurt her again. He was filled with a profound sense of happiness, and patience, endless patience. He buried his face in the softness of her hair. He could hear the surf beating against the rocks. She’s like the sea, he thought, soft and yielding and all-engulfing, like the sea.
IN THE FIRST gray light of dawn Frederick gently shook the sleeping form in his arms. “Bianchina, it’s late. You must go back quickly with Peppa.” The old nurse had spent the night in the anteroom where Frederick had ordered her to wait.
Bianca sat up, tousled hair tumbling about her, eyes dim with sleep. “Must I?” she asked dreamily.
“Yes, my love, for your sake and that of your family.” He brushed a strand of hair from her face. Softly, in wonder almost, he said, “Bianca, you know that I think I love you?”
She raised her eyes. “I know,” she said.
BARI, JUNE 1227
Frederick was a different man. He walked the passages of Bari’s castle whistling snatches of Sicilian songs, showing an affability not often seen any more since Constance’s death. Although out of concern for Bianca, he behaved with uncharacteristic discretion, it was not long before the court discovered the cause of his newfound cheerfulness.
Gossip about the lovers began to circulate. When the empress discovered this new insult to her dignity, she made a fearful scene during a hunt, after which Frederick sent her under guard to the castle of Terracina, which, he announced, would henceforth be reserved for her and her court.
When Manfred, too, at last discovered the truth, he threatened to confine his sister in a nunnery. After much persuasion, Manfred bowed to the inevitable. His only consolation, he said, was that at least this had been spared their mother, who had died after a short illness on All Saints’ Day the previous year.
Rumor of the empress’s sequestration soon reached the papal curia in Rome. The new pope lost no time in putting it to good use.
FREDERICK AND BERARD walked along the ramparts in the fading light of late afternoon. Behind them, the setting sun cast a last glow onto the darkening waters.
Berard said, “You must stem these slanders, Frederick, the more so because there is truth in them.”
Frederick frowned. His relations with the papacy were at an all-time low. Honorius had died unexpectedly in March. His successor, Gregory IX, was a man of Innocent’s mold, a fanatical proponent of papal supremacy. Frederick’s hopes of seeing his son Henry had been dashed. The Diet of Cremona never took place. The Lombard cities, banded into a new defensive league, refused Henry and the German princes passage over the Brenner Pass, unless Frederick agreed to their demands for more autonomy. The new pope, in an attempt to strengthen the papacy, supported the Lombards. In a series of letters to the bishops of Europe, to be read from the pulpits of every cathedral, Gregory attacked Frederick’s morals, citing his treatment of the empress, as well as his Muslim sympathies. Gregory must be out of his mind to heap such invective on him just before his departure on crusade …
Berard’s mission to the East last winter had proven fruitless. Al-Kamil had by then lost Jerusalem to his brother. Although Berard had been graciously received by Al-Kamil in Cairo, his brother in Damascus had sneered that he, unlike his brother, was not a woman who groveled at the feet of Christians. Frederick’s crusaders were due to assemble in Brindisi next month. The date for the departure was set for August 15, the feast of the Assumption.
The news from Germany was also worrying. There were rumblings of discontent over Henry, who had come of age last year. Conrad of Scharfenburg, the chancellor, had been assassinated the previous year. The murderer had never been found. The new chancellor complained that Henry counter-manded his orders, even if they came from Frederick himself. He sighed. Perhaps it was just the way young men, like young falcons, tested their courage. … He, too, had resented being told what to do at that age, even by Berard. In fact, he still did, at times.
He glanced fondly at the archbishop. Berard was still in excellent health, his appetite for life undiminished. His superb teeth and his cheer remained intact. Only his thinning hair and grizzled beard showed signs of his age.
“You’re right, Berard.” Frederick said finally. “My lady wife will have to be dusted off and paraded, with a prominent belly if possible. We shall present an enchanting tableau of domestic felicity, an example to the rest of Christendom.”
Berard came to a halt. He glared at Frederick. “You married her of your own volition. Marriage, whether you like it or not, is a sacrament. And Yolanda, whatever her shortcomings, is a girl of ancient lineage whom you have used ignobly.”
Frederick glared at him. “She, too, married me for the sake of a title. We’ve both got our share of the bargain, so why can’t she just leave me alone? Why must that nuisance of her father stir up the pope against me? His daughter is empress, she lacks for nothing, and I’m about to reconquer her realm for her while she amuses herself with her birdbrained ladies who are as silly as she is!”
“Because, Frederick, in your foolishness, you have provided them with a perfect weapon in the person of Bianca Lancia! Everyone knows about her. The whole of Christendom has heard about the intimate dinners where only a blind Saracen harpist attends you.”
Frederick’s face clouded. “I won’t hide her more than I already do! If I could, I’d make her my empress!”
THE AUGUST SUN burned down into the marble courtyard of Melfi Castle. Although the court had moved to Melfi at the beginning of June, when the heat of the A
pulian plain began to rise, this summer the old Norman hill town seemed as scorched and airless as the lowlands.
Men shifted from one foot to the other. Some had been standing for hours, waiting to present their cases. The shady arcades that surrounded the courtyard were crowded with noblemen, accompanied by their bailiffs or stewards carrying armfuls of scrolls in support of their claims.
Frederick, under a fringed cloth of estate, seemed oblivious to the heat. He had been here since early morning. His justice was open to all, the last resort of those who felt themselves wronged in a feudal court or by the royal justiciaries who administered the law in Sicily.
Bianca leaned her cheek against the cool marble pillar beside her. She watched him listen to an old serf in a ragged tunic. Frederick was leaning forward in an effort to understand the toothless old man. He asked a few short questions. Then he called for the old man’s witnesses, after which he heard the steward of the serf’s lord. The steward was accused of raping the old man’s daughter and perjuring himself in the manor court. The serf was demanding three cows in compensation for his daughter’s maidenhead.
Frederick had explained to her that dispensing justice equally to all his subjects was a king’s foremost duty. “Where there is peace and justice, prosperity will follow by itself,” he had said. She’d never given it a thought before, but now, watching him listen to this poor old peasant as patiently as he had dealt with the bejeweled lord before him, she began to understand what he meant. Her heart overflowed with pride.
Like a treasure, Bianca hugged to herself the knowledge of their love. It was not often that she was able to watch him as now, drinking in his appearance unobserved, to be stored in her mind for those endless days and weeks when he was gone or too occupied with affairs of state to see her. Sometimes a trusted messenger would bring her a short letter, penned in a distant castle in his tall, nervous writing. In rare moments of leisure he wrote poems for her, not in the customary Latin but in Italian, a new idea of his that his courtiers already imitated.
In between there were hasty embraces, furtive hours of love snatched from his relentless schedule. A kiss at dawn, a heavy veil, and she would be back in her own cold bed, filled with the essence of his body. And already the longing to be with him would be gnawing at her like a bittersweet ache. Alone in the curtained darkness of her bed, she’d go over every moment of the night before, every word and every gesture, each instance to be savored separately, like the countless seeds of a pomegranate …
Peppa pulled her sleeve. All heads turned toward the open gate. A tall, bearded stranger stood in its shadow. Behind him clustered others, their helmets in the crooks of their arms. The travel-stained stranger made his way through the crowd. Frederick leaped to his feet. He embraced the man, who towered above him and everyone else in the courtyard. He must be a German, Bianca thought, narrowing her eyes against the glare. His hair glowed like copper in the sun, just like Frederick’s. He must be Frederick’s cousin, Lewis of Thuringia, who was to be joint leader of the crusade. Frederick had told her that Hermann von Salza, the landgrave and nearly a thousand German knights, his contribution to the crusade, were about to arrive in Melfi.
They were here! Anguish constricted her throat. Thousands of others would be arriving soon from all over Europe to gather in Brindisi, the port of embarkation. The crusade had begun.
CRUSADERS SWARMED OVER the mountains, down the pilgrim roads and along the coastal plains of Apulia toward Brindisi. In vast encampments outside the city they waited in the merciless heat of August for embarkation to the Holy Land, which Frederick was providing free of charge.
The port was filled with vessels of every size and description, hired from Venice and Genoa for the crossing, as well as the ships of the new Sicilian navy. Yolanda had been escorted from Melfi to Otranto, on the tip of Italy, there to await his return. Not only had she been provided with a garrison of handpicked men, but a squadron of galleys was anchored beneath the great seawalls of Otranto.
Frederick’s concern was not so much for his wife as for the child she carried. Finally, after seventeen years, he was going to have another heir! He had been unable to contain his excitement when a shyly smiling Yolanda confided that she was in the early stages of pregnancy. Michael Scot, Frederick’s physician, examined her urine, the lines of her palms, and her eyeballs and pronounced that she was indeed with child. After consulting the stars, the famed astrologer and physician from Scotland confirmed that she carried a son. In his gratitude, Frederick clasped the bewildered Yolanda to him. She wasn’t much to look at, and their lovemaking was a grim business, but, as he had remarked to Master Scot, like a fallow field she had proved very fertile, conceiving on their first night together.
Piero della Vigna, in the chancery, composed a triumphant letter advising Pope Gregory in Rome of this happy circumstance. Similar letters were dispatched to the imperial vicars general, to Germany, and to the Holy Land, informing the barons there, who had all been subjected to Jean de Brienne’s invective against the emperor, that their queen was with child.
That, alas, had been the only good news of this unbearably hot summer, Frederick thought as he passed a hand over his aching forehead. The writing of the dispatch he was trying to read was blurring before his eyes. He felt tired, immensely tired. No wonder his head felt as if it were about to spring apart. The numbers of crusaders had far exceeded everyone’s expectations. This tatterdemalion crowd was hard to discipline. Each day, provided the wind held, different contingents embarked under their leaders, but embarkation was slow and cumbersome. There were constant arguments among crusaders of different rank. Lords and knights expected to be given preference. There weren’t enough vessels to transport the great number of horses. Fights erupted between the different nationalities. Food was running short. Worst of all, a fever had broken out in the fly-infested encampments. Hundreds had died already. Many had fled, carrying the contagion to the surrounding villages.
Frederick and his immediate entourage had taken refuge on the little island of Sant’Andrea, at the other end of the port, to escape the disease. The thick walls of the old Byzantine watchtower where they had taken up makeshift quarters should have preserved the coolness, but instead seemed to be giving off the accumulated rays of the sun. Even now, at dusk, the heavy air didn’t stir. The vessels that should have been loaded today lay becalmed in the port, their sails hanging limp and listless. When the wind finally rose again, at this time of year it would be the hot sirocco from Africa, which made men short-tempered and beasts of burden intractable.
The creaking door of what had been the tower’s armory opened. Frederick’s cousin entered. Lewis of Thuringia sat down heavily on a chest bench. He stretched his pillarlike legs on the rough gray flagstones and wiped his face. “The grain has arrived. It’s been stored under guard.”
Frederick nodded. “Good.” He sat back and scrutinized his cousin. “Lewis, you’re as red as a boiled crab. You must treat our Sicilian sun with more respect.”
“The sun wouldn’t be too bad on its own, but together with the throbbing in my head, I do feel like a boiled crab!” Lewis fanned himself with a parchment from the table. His reddish hair was wet and dark, plastered to his scalp.
“Your head’s aching, too?” Frederick rose and walked around the table. He laid a hand on the landgrave’s forehead. Lewis was burning with fever.
AFTER MASTER SCOT had examined them both and left Frederick’s bedchamber to prepare the tincture and cordials he had prescribed, ordering Frederick to remain in bed and the landgrave to take to his straightaway, Lewis asked: “What are you going to do?” He was sitting slumped against Frederick’s bedpost, holding a wet cloth to his head.
“Wait for a day or two. If I don’t get worse, I’ll leave as planned. When you’ve recovered, you’ll follow with your men.”
“But Frederick, you heard Master Scot. It takes several weeks for this fever to run its course. That is, if it doesn’t kill you.”
“Lewi
s, I have no option. I’ve deposited fifty thousand gold bezants as surety for Gregory. And I have taken an oath agreeing to my own excommunication if I don’t leave on the appointed date.”
The landgrave shook his head. “You’re being absurd, Frederick. I know the pope is no friend of yours, but not even Gregory could find fault with you for postponing your departure under such circumstances.”
“You don’t understand, Lewis,” Frederick sat up so abruptly that the wet cloth on his head fell off. “Gregory’s aim is to discredit me.” The effort of talking was making Frederick’s head throb even more, yet he needed to speak. “He’ll clutch at any pretext. He fears that I’ll deprive the Church of her temporal power. You only need to read his fulminations against my university in Naples and the lay administrators it is producing. This is all about power, Lewis, not faith. Like Innocent, Gregory believes that the papacy should rule Christendom—”
“Frederick! What in Blessed Mary’s name …” At the sound of Berard’s voice, Frederick turned his head. “The good doctor is treating us like women in childbed!”
Berard, Hermann, and Manfred crowded around the bed. Their faces were so gloomy that Frederick laughed: “Don’t look like that. I’m not dead yet. The thought of the pleasure my death would give old Gregory is enough to keep me alive!”
“You’re not still thinking of leaving at the end of the week, are you?” Hermann asked, alarmed.
“Unless I can’t stand on my feet, I’ll sail as planned!”
BY THE END of the week Frederick felt somewhat better. With a still aching head he prepared to board the imperial galley. The landgrave, who despite his fever had insisted on sailing, too, refused to be carried in a litter and was walking up the gangplank, leaning on Michael Scot and one of his knights. The ship had been blessed and sprinkled with holy water. It was ready to sail. Those who had accompanied them to the port took their leave.
The last one to do so was Manfred. Frederick had appointed him regent during his absence. There were tears in Manfred’s eyes. “May God grant you success,” he said, “and bring you back safely.”
The Falcon of Palermo Page 31