Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  What lay ahead – her heart thudded. Jerusalem. The Holy City. Heart and soul of Christendom. The Lord Christ had not walked in Acre that anyone reliably knew, but in Jerusalem he had walked and taught and – she bowed her head and crossed herself – died.

  In France, May was a gentle month, clear sun and soft rains, and seldom the cruelty of biting cold or bitter heat. Here in Outremer, the sun grew stronger with each day that passed. Richildis had heard that it rained, even snowed sometimes in the winter, but not now; not in this sunstruck season. The roads were thick with dust; in short order therefore so was she.

  And she was fortunate. She rode near the front, without need to breathe the dust of a whole shambling army. It moved slowly, the pace of the foot-travelers and the oxen that drew the wagons, crawling across a land that seemed, to her eyes, unbearably barren.

  And yet two men near her were marveling at the lushness of the greenery this year, the gift of strong winter rains. It was all dust and sere leaves, stones and sharp edges.

  One must learn to see richness in a few straggling bushes, and the promise of water in a clump of thorns. Richildis’ eyes felt dried by the dust, dazzled and burning. She drew her veil up over them, checked her mare before she skittered into the rump of the stallion directly ahead, and hoped that, when at last they paused to rest the horses, there would be shade.

  There was not, in the event, a surfeit of shade, nor did it grow more common as they crawled southward. They were five days on the road from Acre, pausing it seemed at every village and town, so that the people could come crowding out to gape at the king and his daughter and the man who, if God willed it, would be king when Baldwin was dead. Richildis grew excessively familiar with her saddle and with the mare who wore it, cross-grained fretful creature who nonetheless possessed a certain fascination, if only for that she never seemed to tire.

  Richildis would happily have ridden decorously behind her lady, but the mare’s crotchets compelled her to ride up and down the column at frequent intervals. She was not such a fool as to slip past the line of armed men who guarded it, but unless the road narrowed greatly to slip through a cleft in a hill or descended with breathtaking suddenness to a scent of water and greenery where a little river burst out of the rock, she had ample room to wander.

  Even as slowly as they rode, they were not vexed by bandits. They were too large a company, and too well-armed; and the Saracen was raiding far from the road to Jerusalem. They rode with an air of warlike holiday, a strange mingling that to Richildis seemed the essence of Outremer. Those who could sing sang often, and those who could not were often minded to try. As she rode up and down the line, she heard jests both coarse and witty, snatches of conversation, commentary on this or that, all let loose as it were to wander on the wind.

  She was, she realized on the fifth day, surprisingly happy. They had risen before dawn and left the castle in which they had paused for the night, ridden out with its lord and half the countryside, into a morning like the first morning of the world. The sun rose in a shower of gold, and all the hills were gold, even the dust that rose to veil their passing.

  On this day she would see Jerusalem. She could hardly take it in, the nearness of it, the sheer overwhelming imminence of the Holy City. Her mare was fresh but, oddly, less fractious than usual. The road wound away under her feet.

  And there at last in the burning noon she saw it. Jerusalem on its high hill among the barren hills of Judea. Tall dun walls and loom of towers, and in the east of it, like a second sun, the golden flame that was the Dome of the Rock.

  Many of those who had come in new from France flung themselves from their horses or mules and dropped to their knees in the road. Some even cried out, opening their arms to the sight that lay before them.

  Richildis neither left the saddle nor made a sound. Fools. The rest of the line had to halt, knotting and tangling, lest they trample these idiots who could not keep their piety to themselves.

  She supposed that Helena was right. She was hopelessly practical. She looked at that city, so like and yet so unlike every other city in the world, and her heart was full. But not so full that it would slow her progress toward the gate, still less put herself at risk of being ridden down.

  The king and his barons, she took note, and those who had lived in Outremer all or most of their lives, were calm enough, nor had anyone lost his temper with the newcomers’ extravagances. It must be common, then.

  She saw how one nodded, another lifted a brow, a third moved off to lift a prostrate pilgrim onto his horse. Others farther back did the same. The column sorted itself out. The newcomers got themselves in hand, or were got in hand by those nearest them. In remarkably short order, they had resumed their march to the city.

  * * *

  Richildis found herself accompanied. She glanced once at her brother, and then away. She had not spoken to him since the dinner in Helena’s house, nor had he approached her. She had rather hoped that he would continue to avoid her.

  “I see you aren’t unduly moved,” he said.

  His voice held neither mockery nor curiosity. She determined to be as calm. “I am as moved as I have any need to be. Would it profit me at all to throw myself down and get in the way?”

  “That depends,” he said, “on whether you see advantage in advertising your piety.”

  She shot him another glance. He was giving her nothing, no expression, though his mail-coif was down and his great helm entrusted to a squire’s care. “Do you believe,” she asked them, “that yon display was false?”

  “Much of it, no,” he said.

  She did not reply to that. She hoped that her silence would drive him away, but he seemed content in it. He rode like a wall between herself and the eastward hills, as if to guard her from the threat of the infidel. She could not quite despise herself for feeling safe. He was a big man, armored from chin to toe, his mail covered in the fashion of this country with the loose white garment, sleeveless and cut for ease on horseback, that people here called the surcoat. A cross was sewn on its shoulder, blood-red on white.

  She wore no cross on her shoulder. She came as a pilgrim but not as a warrior for God.

  “I could be more ostentatious,” she said after a while. “If I knew what good it would do.”

  “Why, none,” said Bertrand. “You look as if you were born here. You dress sensibly, you ride a horse bred for the country, you preserve a remarkable calm at sight of the holiest city in the world. You’re much admired, you know. People are impressed. It’s not often that someone new from the west manages to settle in so quickly.”

  “Did you?”

  His teeth flashed white in his sunburned face. “God and His Mother, no! I was as raw as they come. Did you know that if you insist on wearing wool in summer here, and don’t clean or change it often enough, you get boils? I could have given a holy hermit advice on mortification of the flesh.”

  “I’m sure he would have thanked you for it.”

  He laughed long and free. “Oh, sister! I’ve missed you.”

  “I’m glad I can amuse you,” she said tightly.

  She thought he was refusing to see the sparking of her temper, till he reached down from his tall warhorse and patted her shoulder. “There, there,” he said. “Chin up. You’re doing splendidly; I’m proud of you. You’ll be the delight of the High Court, just wait and see.”

  “I would rather be the delight of La Forêt.”

  “Would you?” He turned away still grinning, devils take him, and spurred his big bay horse, sending it into a lumbering canter.

  Her mare fretted and thought seriously on bucking in protest that she could not follow. Richildis set her mind to getting the beast in hand. And when that was done, to thinking not about her infuriating brother, but about the city that drew ever and ever closer.

  A little while – though long enough to be exasperating – and she was all caught up in it.

  * * *

  They rode in through David’s Gate under the
frown of its tower. The city had come out to greet them, streaming along the road, shouting, singing, waving palms and scraps of banners. Almost Richildis fancied that she heard the ancient holy song, Hosanna! Hosanna to the son of David!

  But that was fancy, and dangerous. They were calling the king’s name, the name of his daughter, and that of the Count of Anjou; calling down blessings on them, health and joy and long life. A choir stood by the gate, their voices sweet and remarkably strong over the shouting of the crowd, chanting one of the Psalms of David that he wrote in this very tower that rose so high above them.

  The king shall joy in thy strength, O Lord; and in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice!

  And indeed the king was rejoicing, and at his side the Count of Anjou.

  The princess…

  Richildis blinked a little, dazzled as so often by the light in this country. Melisende was not happy, she did not have that look. But resigned, yes. Accepting, because she must. And even, as they passed under the arch of that great gate, in no small measure exalted.

  Ten

  Fulk, Count of Anjou, took Melisende of Jerusalem to wife on a blazingly hot day in May, in the city of Jerusalem, in the kingdom across the sea. He wore mail as befit a lord of a warrior kingdom, and over it the wedding surcoat that she and her ladies had made for him of cloth of gold. She was resplendent likewise in cloth of gold, and the silk of her gown was the green of young leaves. It reminded Richildis rather poignantly of spring in France.

  Melisende had risen before dawn like a young knight preparing for battle: head high and back stiff, with a hint of unsteadiness that clearly she fought to hide. She had to endure the wedding bath with its ancient humiliations: long-wedded ladies waiting on her with ribald pleasure, and one who must investigate and swear to her husband that she was as God had made her, with no man’s hand laid upon her or, as the old harridan said, any other part of his body, either.

  If she had had illusions as to what a man did with a woman on the wedding night, by the time she was glistening clean from head to foot, she could have had none left. Richildis hoped that she was wiser than Richildis had been, and less gullible. The old jests about stallions had alarmed her terribly, left her in stark and shuddering fear, imagining like an idiot that a man put on something more than his natural member in order to deflower his virgin bride. As little as her body had yearned toward aging, scrofulous Thierry, she had been greatly relieved to discover that he took her with nothing more than nature had given him; and that was by no means as mighty a weapon as the one that Wat the stableboy had wielded against the goosegirl behind the stables, one day when Richildis happened to be visiting her pony.

  She had concluded later that there was a saint in command of nervous brides, because she had not burst out with that observation while Thierry sweated manfully to perform his duty. She had thought too of trying the goosegirl’s tricks, the wriggling and moaning and the concluding shriek, but she had been too embarrassed. Thierry had dropped like a stone when he was done, snoring before he struck the bed; and in the morning he had slapped her meager rump and declared that she would do, she would definitely do. He liked his casual women lusty, she learned, but he preferred his lady wife to be quiet. She had never had great difficulty in giving him what he wanted.

  Odd sad thoughts to be thinking as she prepared a princess for her wedding. She would have liked to silence the nattering women; but she had no such authority.

  Perhaps Melisende was too preoccupied to listen. Her face had a white, set look. She allowed them to dress her as if she had been a lifeless thing, an image carved in wood and painted in gold and white and red.

  Stiff she might be, betraying none of the quick intelligence that was so much a part of her, but there was no contesting that she was beautiful. The woman who with clever fingers applied the paint to her face and lips and eyes, had the sense to do so lightly; to let the living flesh shine through. Her hair had been bathed in herbs and eastern unguents till its gold shone as clear as the living metal. It was a pity to conceal it beneath a veil; but the veil was the merest drift of a thing, no less golden than the hair beneath.

  She was all gold and fragile green, a May princess in this fiery country, where the leaves turned grey or white with dust before they were well unfurled, or blackened with the sun. “Ah,” said one of the most ribald of the women as she stood in front of them, and there was nothing of ribaldry in her voice or her face. “Ah, lady, you are as beautiful as any bride I’ve ever seen.”

  “Beautiful as the morning,” came the chorus, inevitably.

  Melisende with her wits about her might have snapped them all into silence. But wherever her mind had gone, it was nowhere near this gaggle of women.

  They half led, half herded her out of the ladies’ solar in the palace of the kings of Jerusalem, mindful of drifting veil and sweep of train, gathering maids and attendants as they went. No men this morning. This was a women’s procession. All the men were waiting on Count Fulk, away in the city, where he had been housed near the Temple of Solomon. Even Melisende’s knights were not hers today; they were dismissed to serve the man who would be her husband.

  The rest of the procession waited in the court of the great gate. The choir had begun its chanting already, sweet voices of nuns and white-robed children. Melisende’s sisters were here, Alys leading them in her capacity as second eldest and only married woman. So too were the ladies of the High Court and the women of the king’s household and a great crowd of hangers-on, not all of them either savory or female.

  A litter waited for the princess, but she ignored it. There was a scramble, a check in the choir’s chanting; then all was in order again, and Melisende on the back of a milk-white mare. A mailed guardsman led it, which could not have been to Melisende’s liking, but she seemed content to have won as much as she had. Servants in white and gold raised a golden canopy above her. So arrayed and in royal splendor, she rode out of the palace and into the city.

  The streets were lined with people, the way kept open by men with spears and swords. Down the Street of David that led from the gate, past the Pool of the Patriarchs, then up the Patriarchs’ Way to the Street of Palms and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It was not the Way of the Cross – that way led from the far side of the city and yet it was holy, and every stone was blessed.

  Richildis, walking behind the princess, guided in the press by the dip and sway of the canopy, felt all about her the deep throb of sanctity. Some who came to Jerusalem, she had heard, went mad. So much holiness overwhelmed them. They began to hear voices and see visions. Some dreamed that they were great saints and martyrs, even the Lord Christ himself, riding through the Holy City on the colt of an ass, bowing his head to the hosannas of his people.

  She was too much of earth. She noticed that the stones were worn and old and not remarkably clean. The people were as people everywhere: noisy, flatulent, reeking of dung and garlic. The brightness of banners celebrated the royal wedding just as they might have done in Paris or in Poitiers. There were no beggars to be seen, but people in plenty scrambling for the coins that the youngest maids flung from baskets into the throng: copper mostly, and silver worn to nothing by time and judicious paring. The lepers were all kept away, driven to the middens beyond the walls, lest the sight of them bring ill fortune to the count and his bride.

  The road was strewn with palm-branches and with the petals of flowers. Their sweet bruised scent struggled against the stronger redolence of humanity.

  Richildis stumbled. A miracle of sorts rested by her foot: a whole and nigh unblemished rose, a bud just opened, red as new blood. Without thinking she took it up, careful of the thorns, and slipped the stem beneath the roundel of her shoulder-brooch.

  The procession turned into the broader street before the great church, and thence into the arched colonnade. In the court beyond waited the procession of men, king and lords and Count of Anjou. They were clad in mail as defenders of the Holy Sepulcher, but in the splendor of silk ab
ove it, and no weapon to stain the peace of God’s holy place.

  They were a fine and warlike sight, even disarmed. So many tall sun-burnished men; so bright a sheen of mail.

  The king and the count, Richildis took note, wore plain grey steel. Baldwin’s surcoat was of scarlet silk, Fulk’s of cloth of gold. The king was crowned, the count bareheaded as if in humility. They stood side by side in front of the colonnade, the tall fair man and the slight fox-red one, an image of amity to warm a troubled heart.

  Baldwin came forward as his daughter approached, and with his own hands lifted her from the saddle. Perhaps they spoke. If so, Richildis was too far away to hear. Melisende stood straight and tall beside her father. He took her hand in his and led her toward the door of the church.

  There waited the Patriarch of Jerusalem in the full splendor of his rank. There were tales of him, rumors of ill feeling and contention with the king. But on this day such things were put aside. At the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Baldwin laid his daughter’s hand in that of Count Fulk, and the Patriarch laid his own over it and spoke the words that bound them in the eyes of God and man.

  When truly they were bound – Melisende without visible tremor, erect as ever, standing a good half-head taller than her husband – they were led within to the singing of the Mass before the tomb of Christ. It was a white Mass, a Mass of great joy, casting light and splendor in that dim and holy place.

  * * *

  The words washed over Richildis, familiar almost beyond understanding, though she was learned in Latin and could comprehend them if she tried. The church, half Byzantine, half half-built Frankish, breathed holiness about her. She had made no effort to come closer to the Sepulcher than she was already, caught in the knot of women just below the high altar. Later she would be a pilgrim. Now she was simply here, as they were who had lived here their lives long: standing in that space, hearing a mass, not oblivious to the Tomb behind them, but not openly aware of it, either.