“Indeed,” said Fulk. He studied Melisende as Richildis had seen him study a young squire whom he had in mind to raise to knighthood. He had roused, Richildis thought, to the same awareness that she had. This was not a spoiled child or a pretty toy. There was substance in her, and strength of will and mind that would grow as she grew, till perhaps she was too strong for any man’s mastery.
Small wonder then that Baldwin’s embassy had asked the King of France to choose them a man of years and seasoning. A raw boy, however pleasant to look at, could not have kept this princess in hand.
Richildis watched as Fulk’s eyes narrowed, as he seemed to come to the same conclusion. If indeed he had done that, he betrayed none of it in speech. He said, “Some I’ve heard here – and more than any in the west would credit – are contending that we should understand the infidel in order to defeat him. But surely that way is perilous. One might slip, you see, from wearing his clothes and eating his bread to believing in his god.”
“True faith is never so easily shaken,” Melisende said. “And for a fact, if donning a turban and drinking sherbet makes a man a Muslim, then he was never much of a Frank to begin with.”
Servants chose that moment to appear with platters of sweets and dainties, and pitchers of sherbet. It could not but be coincidence; but Melisende was Melisende. She might have bidden the servants enter precisely now, as she said precisely this.
Fulk’s grin flashed again. It did not flatter his face or his teeth, which were not of the best. But he was remarkably free of the sin of vanity. He accepted a cup of sherbet with a good will, and when she also had been given one, raised his own and saluted her. “To true faith,” he said, “and to the Crusade.”
Eight
There was not going to be love between Fulk and Melisende, nor great passion of the body, but Richildis had reason to hope that they might come to something less sinful and more lasting. Respect for one another’s intelligence. Concern for the kingdom. Willingness to meet as husband and wife should meet, to breed the sons that this country so badly needed.
“How cold,” said Helena. “How practical.”
Richildis had not thought, once she left Helena’s house to enter the princess’ service, to return there. Yet here she was, and here she sat, at dinner with Helena and Bertrand as she had when first she came to Outremer. The court would move to Jerusalem on the morrow, and on the day after they had arrived in the Holy City, Count Fulk would wed the Princess Melisende. The court feasted with even more than its usual exuberance, but Melisende as the virgin bride was permitted an attack of the vapors. She had been put to bed with a posset.
Vapors, Richildis would not call what beset her headstrong lady. Melisende was thoroughly out of patience with the court’s fussing, as she put it. The fussing of her ladies annoyed her even further. She had sent them all away, all but the one quiet older lady who would stand guard over this, their last night in Acre and one of the last of her maidenhood.
Richildis would have taken the opportunity to rest and to read from the book that she had brought with her all the way from France, but a messenger had found her in the ladies’ sleeping-chamber. He was a most exotic creature, as black as an infidel’s heart, dressed in a scarlet coat and a spotless white turban. He had bowed to the floor as infidels did, and said in lisping but clear and barely accented Frankish, “My lady Helena wishes you to know that, if your princess is indisposed and your time is your own, you would be most welcome to dine with her in her house in the city.”
Richildis opened her mouth to refuse out of hand. But the messenger was so very young and his eyes so very hopeful that she found herself asking instead, “Will my lord Bertrand be attending as well?”
“Lady,” said the messenger, “since he also serves the princess, and the princess is indisposed, his time is also his own.”
Which meant, Richildis supposed, that Bertrand would be permitting his lover to entertain him. And did he know that Helena had summoned his sister as well?
“Very well,” she said in something close to wickedness, “I’ll come.”
* * *
Bertrand, as it happened, had incited the invitation. “You haven’t set foot outside the women’s tower since you went in there,” he said when Richildis appeared, escorted by the messenger and by that one of Helena’s Turks whom she had begun to think of as her own, the scarred and discreet Kutub. “Aren’t you going wild with boredom?”
“Ladies, like nuns, learn to find interest in very small space,” Richildis said.
“Or they die of creeping accidia.” Helena beckoned Richildis to the seat that she had had before. As she settled there, servants began to bring in the first course of what was to be a surprisingly elaborate dinner.
“And what is this in honor of?” Richildis inquired. “Not, surely, the princess’ wedding?”
“That,” said Helena, “and your presence as my guest.” She caught Richildis’ glance as it lowered. “Yes, I know what you’ve been thinking of me. I’m flattered that you came here, even as little reason as you have to either love or admire what I am.”
“Love is a long thing, and must be earned,” said Richildis. “Admiration has little to do with simple courtesy. Might I not have been glad to escape, as you put it, accidia?”
“The sin of ennui,” Helena said. “Yes. Not that I believe you’ve suffered it in the princess’ service. Not with her wedding to prepare for. Still, one may wish to vary the walls that close one in.”
“That’s a gift seldom given to women who’ve taken the veil,” said Richildis.
“Is that why you didn’t do it?”
Richildis stiffened a little. But she was ready for Helena now; she had had days of Melisende’s moods and sudden brilliance, to teach her that outspokenness was surprisingly common among these eastern women. They did, it was true, restrain their tongues in public, but in the privacy of their bowers they were often shockingly blunt.
Richildis responded with aplomb therefore, and rather more calm than she felt. “I was summoned home before I was to take vows, to marry as my father dictated.”
“And if he had not summoned you home, would you have taken those vows?”
“I thought so,” Richildis said. “Now… I wonder. I had no vocation, not as some of the others did: passions, ecstasies, clear calls to God. Mine was a duller thing. I was there; the veil was waiting. I would take it, since it was a great and honorable calling.”
“But your heart was never in it.”
Richildis shook her head. Imagine, she thought: examination of a vocation that she had long since laid aside, if she had ever had one, by a courtesan in Outremer. Grim old Mother Adele would have been horrified.
Somehow, from that unlikely beginning, the conversation had wound through the courses to the wedding of count and princess, Anjou and Jerusalem. “Cold practicality,” Richildis told Helena, “is the best state in which to enter a marriage. The heat of passion blinds good sense. When it dies, naught’s left but ashes.”
“Have you ever loved a man?” Helena asked her.
Truly, Richildis thought, this was a most indecorous woman, for all her appearance of elegance. And there was Bertrand, who had been remarkably silent, watching and listening, apparently enthralled. And that indeed was as remarkable as Helena’s lack of proper discretion.
“If I had sinned so badly,” said Richildis, “do you think I would confess it?”
“To your confessor, I should hope so,” Helena said. “What have you loved, then? Not God, it seems. Your demesne in France? Your mother? A favorite lapdog?”
“Are you mocking me?” Richildis demanded.
Helena seemed surprised that she was angry. “Of course I’m not. I had wondered, that was all, how people think of such things in France. It seems that Count Fulk has no need or desire to play the charming lover. Are you all as practical as he?”
“I now see,” said Richildis, “why my lady is so full of fancies. That must be an eastern thing, to transf
orm holy wedlock into a sin of the flesh.”
“But do you love nothing? Nothing at all?”
Vexed out of all patience, Richildis burst out with the first thing that came into her head. “I love La Forêt! I loved my father, though he could be a stern and unlovable man. I loved my brother once, too, until he left us. I am not the chill stick of a woman that you must be thinking me. I am… practical, that’s all. And virtuous, as a godly person should be.”
“I think that you could be much more,” Helena said in her low sweet voice, as if she had mused long on it, and not simply come out with it to provoke Richildis into a fury.
Richildis refused to be baited further. She rose with scrupulous care. “I thank you for your hospitality,” she said.
Helena raised a brow, but made no effort to stop her. She departed in great dignity, without, she hoped, betraying how close she was to tears – or how little she understood why she wanted to weep.
* * *
“That wasn’t kind,” Bertrand said to Helena.
She sighed, shrugged. One might think her callous, but Bertrand knew her better than that. “And haven’t you ever told a young page the truth, the hard and unpolished facts of his existence? Such truth is pain, but pain that heals. Yon’s a wounded creature, my love, and scarred to the heart.”
Bertrand shook his head. “No, it’s not – she’s not. She grew up with nuns, that’s all. And then, married off to Thierry of all people – no wonder she turned into a stick. He was never one for the lighter moments, was Thierry.”
“You may have known your sister once,” Helena said, “but I think I know her better now. I’ve seen her like before – too often. Such women become nuns not for love of God but for escape from the world that gave them so little pleasure.”
“Richildis won’t take the veil,” said Bertrand. “Not if she hasn’t already.”
“Her like,” Helena said, “may deny that it has a vocation, and may flee the cloister for long and long – but in the end, there it finds itself, locked in walls that grow ever narrower, going slowly mad with the boredom that destroys the soul.”
God’s feet, Bertrand thought. It was not only Richildis who was hearing hard truths tonight. He still refused to believe that she was so badly wounded as Helena had said. Not Richildis. Women were never as soft or as weak as the priests liked to think them, but his sister was stronger than most, strong as a steelblade.
He said so to Helena. “That’s what you’re seeing,” he said. “Not the stiffness of the green stick but the strength of tempered steel.”
“Even steel may crack,” Helena said immovably, “and the best blade will break if struck too hard. I’m glad she came to Outremer, though she may not be thinking so, just now. She’ll find her heart here, and – who knows? Perhaps even her heart’s love. If he’s anywhere in the world, here he’ll come, seeking till he finds her.”
“By Saint Venus,” Bertrand said, half in anger, half in admiration, “what a dreamer you are! And here I’d been thinking you as practical a creature as any Frenchwoman.”
“My practicality is tempered with sense,” Helena said. She filled her cup that was empty – with sherbet, he noticed, and not with wine – and sipped reflectively, watching him over the rim of the cup. Her eyes were as dark as a doe’s, but never as gentle. “She’ll keep coming back. She won’t be able to help herself. Her higher faculties are convinced that I’m the Evil One’s own sister, but her heart knows better. Wait; you’ll see. Next she’ll try to convert me to the ways of righteousness.”
“She may surprise you,” Bertrand said.
“I hope she does,” said Helena. She set down her cup and held out her arms. “Now, sir. Come here.”
Bertrand was not as obedient as she might have been hoping. He held back, frowning at her. “Maybe she does see clear. Maybe you are a devil.”
“Surely I would know,” Helena said calmly. She lowered her arms, and rose as Richildis had. “Goodnight, my lord. Rahman will see you out.”
Ah: Bertrand had done it at last. He had succeeded in vexing Helena. He should have been triumphant. Alack for his victory; it rang all hollow.
He refused to beg for her pardon. No more would he let himself be dismissed as if he had been a stranger, and one who paid ill besides. “I think I’ll stay,” he said.
She barely paused. “Very well,” she said, as calm as ever. She raised her voice slightly. “Rahman! Prepare the blue guestroom. Lord Bertrand has need of it.”
Bertrand’s teeth clicked together. So that was how the land lay? Well and well, he thought. His temper was up. God help him if he let a woman get the better of him, even such a woman as Helena.
* * *
He suffered himself to be conducted to a room at the end of a long corridor, as far as possible from Helena’s chamber. He let himself be offered a bath, a light robe, a last cup of watered wine. But when the house was all quiet, when Rahman had departed to his guardroom and the only light that Bertrand could see was in the lamp hanging over the bed, he lit a smaller lamp from that, and went where he well knew to go.
Helena’s door was guarded, but it was only the boy Karim. He did not try to stop Bertrand, though he wavered visibly in thinking of it. Bertrand slipped the latch and walked in.
As far as he could tell in the dim glow of the nightlamp, Helena was honestly and deeply asleep. He stood a moment nonplussed. He had fully expected her to be waiting, knowing that he would not be dismissed as easily as that.
She lay on her side with her cheek resting on her hand. Her hair was plaited for the night, but some of it had worked loose already and framed her face in curls. She looked hardly more than a child.
He bent over her, braced to wake her; then sighed. He who had no mercy on an enemy in battle, could not bring himself to wake a single sleeping woman.
It was not, he reflected, that she had not warned him. Long ago, when first he sought out the famously beautiful Helena, the courtesan who chose her own lovers, she had told him outright: “You came to me because I’m a novelty; because I don’t take every man who can pay. Remember that I choose who shares my bed and who does not. I choose you now, because I find you interesting; but if you ever grow dull – and dullest of all is the man who wants me for himself alone – then I shall revoke the choice. That is the freedom I keep for myself.”
He liked to think that she loved him. She never quite said she did; but since she chose him, she had taken few others, and of late, that he knew, there was none. Had she not come to Acre to be near him?
Much though it stung his pride, he admitted what might be the truth. She had come to Acre as everyone else had, to see the princess marry the Count of Anjou.
“She does love me,” he said fiercely, but softly, lest he wake her. “I know she does. I annoyed her tonight, that was all. She’ll want me back when her temper’s cooled; she always has before.”
But this time, said a small niggling voice in the back of his eyes, might be the time when she did not. He could not know until she woke; and if he woke her now, he would betray himself.
He left as quietly as he knew how, returned to the guest chamber only to gather his belongings, and slipped out into the black dark of night in Acre. No servant followed him. He took a torch from the wall by the gate, lit it at the lamp that burned there, and when it had flared to life, let it light his way to the palace.
God, or God’s Adversary, defended him. No robber or footpad came upon him. The city was deep in sleep, even to the young bloods of the court, who gathered strength for the journey to Jerusalem and the wedding thereafter.
A wedding without love; love with altogether too much contention. What a world this was. He would have laughed, if the silence had allowed it. But it was deep silence, silence weighed down with stars. He slipped voiceless through it, clutching his little bit of light.
Nine
The transfer of the High Court to the city of Jerusalem was an undertaking as great as any war. It gathered like an army,
and like an army surrounded itself with armed and armored men. The lumbering wagons of the baggage train and the ladies’ brightly curtained carts and horse-litters traveled in the center, well guarded – for in Outremer, even under a strong king, the roads could be perilous.
Melisende however did not conceal herself among the great mass of ladies but rode a-horseback in the van with the king and the great lords and her husband to be. Most of her ladies preferred the wagons, but a handful accompanied her for propriety’s sake – and, thought Richildis, because they could not endure the stifling confines of a horse-litter.
Richildis had not had to ask to be counted among the princess’ guard of women. Melisende had asked her rather, a day or two ago, “Do you ride?”
Richildis had nodded.
“Do you ride well?”
Richildis raised a brow. “I could shoot a bow from horseback once, though that was long ago.”
Melisende nodded as if satisfied. “Good. Then you’ll ride with me. This is to be a royal progress, and I’m not intending to shut myself up in a wagon. You’ll need clothes to ride in. Ask Dame Agatha to see to it.”
* * *
Therefore Richildis rode in the van of what could well be a Crusading army, clad in something very like Saracen riding-dress, with loose trousers under a flow of robe, and a headdress that could be raised to shield her face against sun and staring eyes. The horse under her was one of the king’s, bred from Saracen stock. It was lighter and smaller than horses in France, but very strong as she had been assured, and fiery enough to keep her occupied for a good distance outside of Acre.
She managed still to look back at least once, to bid farewell to the city. She had not come to love it greatly, but it had become familiar. She raised a hand to its walls and towers, and to the blue glitter of the sea.
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