Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  “Oh,” said Michael Bryennius, “it wasn’t the emperor I offended. It was someone worse. It was one of the chamberlains. One placed very high. In a position from which only death will dislodge him – and he is neither old nor feeble. He’ll not be poisoned; he’s too clever. It’s likely he’ll outlive me.”

  “That is terrible,” Richildis said.

  “Isn’t it?” Michael Bryennius said, lightly, as if it did not matter. “I can’t even curse him to the thousandth generation. He’s a eunuch: he’ll have none.”

  “Then I should think him sufficiently cursed,” Richildis said. “And maybe he’ll die soon, or forget what you said to him.”

  “I don’t think so,” Michael Bryennius said. “That’s what I said to him, you know. About his offspring. After I had called him a king of fools and upbraided him right royally for some bit of nonsense. I wish it had been something noble, something with grandeur in it: a battle lost, an embassy destroyed. It was nothing more earth-shaking than the order of seating for a court banquet. He would have set the ambassador from the courts of Baghdad beside a certain very eminent scholar of the Jews, as if everyone at court had not heard how cordially they detested one another. And then – and then, my lady, he proceeded to order that they be served a course of wild boar roasted in thyme and Hymettus honey.”

  Richildis could see that she was expected to be appalled. She could not precisely see why.

  He saw. He was perceptive, that one. “Muslims,” he said, “do not eat the flesh of the pig. No more do Jews. It was a perfect insult, calculated to offend them both, and to anger them both alike.”

  “It could have been intentional,” Richildis said.

  “I’m sure it was,” said Michael Bryennius. “It was also monumentally stupid.”

  That, she could see. “And you were exiled for it? For having sense?”

  “Sense is not greatly prized in an imperial court.”

  “Evidently not,” Richildis said. “It can be in short supply even in the High Court of Jerusalem.”

  “Truly?” He seemed slightly taken aback; or perhaps that was mockery, again. “And here I had been thinking that I might be safe there.”

  “You’re probably safer here,” said Richildis. “My brother is only an idiot at occasional, if regular, intervals. He’s not usually inclined to exile people for speaking the truth.”

  “Rather the opposite, in fact,” Michael Bryennius observed, “from what I can tell.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  He barely blinked at the shift. “I arrived in the winter. I’d been traveling through in a caravan; it paused here, and I found it congenial. Your brother invited me to linger.”

  “You’ve been here so long? And you never went to Jerusalem?”

  Michael Bryennius shrugged. “It’s a very old city. It can wait to see my face.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re afraid of it.”

  “I am not,” he said. “I am… wary. I hear things of it. How it conquers the heart. How he who has seen Jerusalem is never the same thereafter.”

  “That’s fear,” Richildis said. “And it’s Byzantine, isn’t it? To avoid it. To stay away, not to face it and conquer it.”

  “Franks are great folk for headlong charges,” he said. “We prefer to wait; to consider the field. To act in our own time and for our own purposes.”

  “To skulk and hide and slip away, and never fight unless you have no other choice.”

  “And isn’t that plain good sense?”

  “It’s cowardly,” she said.

  “It’s practical.”

  The word startled laughter out of her. Helena’s word, condemning her to eternal dullness. And here was one who was duller yet; who was practical beyond the worst that Richildis could have conceived of.

  She tried to explain, but it would not come out as it was meant to. It was as alien to him as the cause of his exile was to her. So small a thing, so insignificant to have begotten so much grief.

  He stopped her before she could tangle herself beyond redemption. “We are different,” he said, “and yet very much alike. Imagine. A lady of the Franks and a Byzantine courtier. Marvelous is the mind of God.”

  “I think,” said Richildis, “that this may not be remarkably proper.”

  “It’s amusing, certainly,” he said. “I can’t remember when I’ve been so entertained.”

  “What, not even in the imperial court?”

  “The imperial court is dreadfully dull. Imagine,” he said, “the longest, most stupefying rite you ever stood through in a basilica, forms so rigid in a language so old that even the priests barely understand it. Then imagine that it goes on from first dawn till long after the sun has set, relentlessly, round and round, without change or shift or easing of its severity. That is the order and the protocol of the emperor’s court. He himself is powerless to change it. He’s caught like a spider in a vast and ancient web, closed in, forbidden to move except as rite and custom decree.”

  “That is horrible,” Richildis said. “Our kings complain of the rigors of courts, but none is as merciless as that.”

  “That is why it’s Byzantium,” said Michael Bryennius. “It’s Rome, new Rome, Constantine’s empire and his city in the east of the world. It’s old and strong and knows no way but its own.”

  “I do not think,” said Richildis, “that I want to understand it.”

  “I understood it too well,” he said. “Once. Till I grew sick to death of it. I wanted to be out, free, away.”

  “And now you are.”

  “Now I am,” he said, “if exile is freedom. Though, to be sure, it’s not called exile. It’s called a pilgrimage of indefinite duration. I may go back without penalty – but not yet. Not for a long while yet. Not, if my adversary has his way, ever.”

  He did not sound terribly cast down. Gloom, Richildis thought, was not his natural condition. A cheerful Byzantine – that was as unexpected as one who told the truth, and who practiced no deception.

  He might of course be deceiving her so perfectly that she could detect no sign of it. But she did not think she was quite as innocent as that. She would know.

  “Someday you’ll go home again,” she said.

  “I do hope so,” said Michael Bryennius.

  Eighteen

  Bertrand came down late and surly and escorted by the scapegrace dog. For all his scowl and his tardiness, he was moving like the man she knew, not half creeping, half staggering as if he did not care where his feet fell.

  This morning he walked like a man and a knight, and he carried himself erect. It might be outrage rather than pride, but it was to be preferred to the stoop of a broken man.

  He strode direct to Richildis where she sat with Michael Bryennius, stood over her and demanded without greeting, “What brings you here?”

  “You,” she said.

  He tossed his head slightly, as if at a stab of pain. “Oh, do tell! You wanted to know if I knew about Helena. I do. Now you can go.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “You have duties,” he said, “and service. Or have you been dismissed?”

  She drew herself up. “I asked to be let go for a while. Until,” she said, “I hammered some sense into your head. Will you come to Jerusalem with me?”

  “What? Not La Forêt?”

  “Jerusalem first,” she said. “Then La Forêt.”

  “No,” said Bertrand.

  She had expected nothing else. Nor was she minded to argue. Not just yet. She sighed and shook her head. “You were always obstinate,” she said. “I’m not going to stay here until you give in and follow me. I’m not even going to insist that you go back to Helena.”

  “Then what will you do? There’s no caravan passing through. I can’t spare my knights just now; there are raiders on the roads.”

  “I know,” she said. “I fought them. The Hospitallers have a message for you. If you’re minded to join forces, they say, they’ll be well pleased.�
�

  He rubbed his jaw where the razor had nicked it, frowning, but not, for once, with temper. “Yes, that would do. That would do very well.”

  “You are not,” she said sternly, “to get yourself killed.”

  His eye flashed on her. His lip curled. “Why, do you think I’m as poor a fighter as that?”

  “I think you’re at least as great a fool as that.”

  “I am not,” he said with a nasty edge. “And you are not coming with me. Bow or no bow.”

  “Did I ask?”

  “I anticipated you.”

  “Good, then,” said Richildis. “I’ll stay here in comfort, unless I hear you’ve been an idiot. Then I’ll ride after you with fire and sword.”

  “You do that,” Bertrand said.

  * * *

  Once Bertrand had made up his mind to do a thing, he did it. Within the hour he was gone, taking with him the younger of the knights and his squire and a company of men-at-arms mounted on the swift light horses of this country. He looked, as he rode out, properly alive again.

  When he was gone, the castle seemed a darker and smaller place. Until Richildis turned in the gate and saw Michael Bryennius standing in the sun of the courtyard.

  Odd how a dark man could so brighten a place. And he looking a little rueful, too. “I suppose I should have gone with them,” he said.

  “Did you want to?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I can fight. It’s not something I choose to do as often as some. By which I suppose you reckon me a coward.”

  “Were you asked to go?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well then,” said Richildis.

  She doubted if he understood, but he did not speak of it. He stepped back gracefully to let her pass, and followed her into the castle.

  * * *

  For a few days that stretched into weeks and then into a month, Richildis lived in Beausoleil, as free as she had not been even when she was a child. The castle was run to its own satisfaction; she had no need and no desire to take command of it. There was no one who expected her service, nowhere to go that was not of her choosing. Bertrand stayed away, pursuing Bedouin raiders far from his lands and easing his troubles thereby.

  She could do as she pleased. The village was Muslim as she had suspected, and had its own mosque and its own rites, but there was a chapel in the castle and a priest to serve it. Father Garamond was elderly and rather deaf but learned and pious. He had a library of books that should have been a wonder in this part of the world, books that he had copied himself or that he had traded for in a lifetime of traveling.

  He was delighted to find in her a person who could read Latin and a few words of Greek, and who was minded to learn more of the latter. “Not that I can teach it as well as Messire Michael can,” he said.

  “But he has no books, Father,” Richildis said, “and you, he says, have many.”

  “I do have a few,” he conceded. Then with transparent eagerness he said, “Would you learn, then? So few have the will or the heart for it.”

  “I would learn, Father,” Richildis said.

  Therefore every morning after mass she came to Father Garamond’s workroom and read Greek. More often than not Michael Bryennius was there, reading from books too lengthy or difficult for her fledgling knowledge. He would not intrude on Father Garamond’s teaching, but he seemed more than pleased to answer when asked; and he was asked often.

  When the lesson was done, when the priest had gone to other duties, Richildis could go where she pleased. She could take a book away to an eyrie in one of the towers, or have her mare saddled and ride in the fields about the castle with a man-at-arms for guard and escort, or sit at the chessboard with Messire Amaury. Or she could go down to the village, where she was greeted at first with suspicion but thereafter with welcome.

  She did there as she had done at home: visited the women in their houses, brought salve for a child’s sore eyes, nursed an old man who was ill of an ague. These people would not take bread from infidels, but oranges from the trees in the castle garden they were glad of; and she made a sacrifice of her gluttony for them.

  It seemed that, whatever she did, Michael Bryennius was somewhere in evidence. It was not so small a castle as to fling together the people in it – for whole days at a time she never saw Messire Amaury who was steward in her brother’s absence. But Michael Bryennius never seemed to be far from her.

  She could not say that he haunted her. He always had a reason to be there, as when he read Greek in Father Garamond’s workroom. Nor did she begrudge his presence. He was excellent company.

  “He’s courting you,” Yasmin said. She and her sister had a little Frankish, and they were teaching Richildis a little Arabic. Their conversation would have sounded odd to unaccustomed ears, composed as it was of a mingling of both languages, but it made sense enough to Richildis.

  “He likes you,” said Leila as she combed Richildis’ hair out of its nightly plaits and bound it up for the day. “You can see it in his eyes when he watches you, when he thinks that you can’t see. He’s in love with you.”

  Richildis flushed hotly, and why she should do that, God knew. “That is nonsense,” she said. “He’s bored here, and he doesn’t know it. He finds me less tedious than the others. There’s no more to it than that.”

  “Bored?” Yasmin could barely speak for giggling. “Why, lady! He’s never known the meaning of the word.”

  “Certainly not,” Leila said. “He dreams of you, I’m sure. He can’t stop yearning after you.”

  “Foolishness,” said Richildis, sharp with temper. “Here, stop chattering. I’m late for mass.”

  * * *

  In fact she was early. Michael Bryennius did not come to mass in the mornings. The rite was Latin and he was Greek. He could not, as he had professed, accept the Credo as it was sung in the manner of Rome.

  But when mass was over and she had gone to her lesson, he was there with his book, reading by the window. He was in fine looks this morning, hair and beard new-washed and still a little damp, falling in glossy curls. He was wearing the coat of his that she liked best, the one that was the precise color of the sky at evening. It was an exile’s coat, starkly plain, and yet it suited him.

  She had become much aware of how he looked; how he moved; how his hands turned the pages of his book, long fingers, finely made and yet strong. For all that he professed to shun battle, he had calluses that she recognized from a lifetime among men of war. Sword-calluses, calluses from the bow, set indelibly in the flesh as they could only be if he had been archer and swordsman from his childhood.

  He could hunt, she knew. They had hunted gazelle in the hills more than once in company with men of the castle. He rode well, and he was a skillful archer. On one such hunt he brought down a fine big buck; and they had dined on it that night. She could still remember the flavor of the meat, pungent with herbs and garlic.

  And yet here he sat as if he had never been more than a soft-bodied scholar, working his way through a volume of Aristotle. The sun found blue lights in his hair. He frowned a little as he read, reading in silence as people could do who learned in monasteries.

  She shook herself hard. Her maids were idiots, full of foolish fancies. He was a handsome man; Richildis was the only woman of rank in the region. Of course they imagined a grand passion. Infidels were given to that. Bodily love was not for them the sin that it was for a Christian. A Muslim woman, she had heard, was required by her faith to marry and to give her husband children. There was no place in that world for the virgin martyr, no blessing in their religion for the man or woman who shunned the allure of the flesh.

  She had been shocked when she first heard that. A faith that made no virtue of virginity, except as a gift that a bride brought to her husband – how dreadfully strange.

  Michael Bryennius was a Christian, though he would not admit that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son. He would not indulge a craving of the body, no more th
an Richildis herself would.

  Not, she admitted to herself, that that was easy, if he saw her as she saw him now, bathed in sunlight, so engrossed in his book that he did not know how she stared. She dragged her eyes away, found her own book on the chest where she had left it, sat to wait for Father Garamond to finish in the sacristy. He was unwontedly slow this morning: his joints were paining him, she had seen it while he said the mass. Later, when she was done here, she would brew him a cup of willowbark tea.

  The silence should have been comfortable, and for the most part it was. But her eyes kept sliding away from her simple exercises, the bit of Homer that had been an aid to the learning of Greek since long before the Lord Christ was born, and finding their way back to his face. Sullen Achilles had been a redheaded man – like Count Fulk, not like this dark Byzantine. So: who was he then? Wily Odysseus? Clever Diomedes? The beautiful and unfortunate Paris who loved another man’s wife, stole her and ran away with her and destroyed his whole nation in war?

  Richildis’ husband was well and safely dead. Richildis had come to this country of her own will, abducted by no man, and with every intention of departing as soon as she had carried out her errand.

  A widow, if she had no father or brothers to compel her, was free to make her own choices. Bertrand had presumed to make none for her. Though if she asked him to give her to this Byzantine – how outraged would he be?

  Preposterous. She was alone in this place with no other woman of rank. Her mind was sliding toward the sins of the flesh – inevitably, as any good mother abbess could have told her.

  She should leave, now, take her belongings and her mare and such escort as was willing, and go back to Jerusalem. She had service there, a princess to wait on, noblewomen to surround her and protect her from her own follies.

  And yet she could not muster the will to rise, still less to do as she properly should.

  Just so did one fall into sin, through this idleness of the spirit, this inability to move when one should move. Still, such a sweet sin. So harmless. Watching a man read beside a narrow sunlit window. He would never be closer to her than this, never threaten her bodily virtue. How could he? There was no way that a Byzantine exile could unite himself with a Frankish lady.