Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  “Your sister has done just that,” Hugh said – dangerously, Richildis thought.

  Nor was she far off the mark. Melisende sat up. Her back was rigid. “My sister is an idiot. She needed simply to come to Jerusalem, speak sweetly to my father, convince him to give her the regency. And when he died, she should have done the same with my husband. She should also,” said Melisende, “have taught her people to love her. She never thought of that, either.”

  “The people love you,” Hugh said, as if pondering it.

  Melisende smiled. “They do,” she said. “Indeed they do.”

  * * *

  Richildis remembered herself with a start. She backed farther into the shelter of the stair. What she had seen and heard cast little shame on her lady; but it would not serve her well to be found here. She retreated as softly as she could, gathered her servants, withdrew to the palace. And prayed God and His Mother that the rumormongers would tire of this sport before Fulk came back – for there was nothing that she could do, not with either of them, or God would have seen fit to bring her to Hugh’s house while its master was safely alone.

  Which was cowardice, and she knew it. But she could not work herself up again to the proper pitch of righteousness. Not after what she had seen and heard.

  Twenty-Three

  Fulk returned to Jerusalem in no wondrous good mood. He had won a victory, or so it was proclaimed, but it was a feeble thing. He had done no better than King Baldwin had, and perhaps worse. It had gained him little, and lost him a summer’s campaigning against the infidel.

  And as he came back to the Holy City, he found it and every town and city near it simmering with rumors of his queen and the Count of Jaffa. The mildest of them had them cuckolding him in the queen’s own chambers. The more outrageous were enough to drive a husband mad, if only with laughter.

  From one rebellious sister he had come home to another. She greeted him with her own defiance: a sweet face and a queenly graciousness, riding out to him on the road beyond the city’s walls, and bowing before him, and welcoming him to Jerusalem. As if, he was heard to mutter, it were her city and not his; as if she were queen and he a pilgrim stranger.

  She did not abate her insolence when they had come to the palace. At the feast of welcome she conducted herself as host, as if he were guest and not lord returned to his domain. He was given the place of honor, accorded every reverence – but again, as if he were a newcomer.

  Kings learned to master their expressions. Fulk, but lately come to kingship, was not yet entirely master of his face. The anger mounted on it, the more sweetly his wife spoke to him, the more elaborately she made him welcome. She would have done better to have neglected him and bidden him make his own way home.

  His temper did not escape him that night – or if it did, it did so where no one saw or heard. He was not made welcome in his wife’s chamber, nor did he seek it. He went to his own rather earlier than usual, locked himself within, shut out all but his squire and a loyal bodyservant, neither of whom was given to gossip.

  The storm broke on the third day after he came back to Jerusalem. Nothing in particular had happened. Hugh was not much in evidence, but neither was he shunning the court.

  The festival of the king’s return was not yet entirely past. That day the court had indulged in another feast, and thereafter in dancing. The hall was vivid with silks and brocades and fine fabrics of Mosul, gleaming in the light of lamps and candles, hundreds of them as it seemed, and pale shafts of sun through high windows. Musicians strove mightily against a tide of voices and laughter.

  The court had its feuds and factions. No court was ever without one – even, it sometimes seemed to Bertrand, the court of heaven. Else why had Lucifer fallen, and there been war among the angels?

  Dangerous thoughts. He kept them scrupulously to himself, though he might venture a hint of them to Helena later, when he went to call on her.

  That too was dangerous to think of. It made him impatient. Dancing had always struck him as a waste of good muscle; why trouble with it when one could be out on a horse, wielding a lance or a sword? The games of courts bored him silly.

  They bored Melisende, too, he thought. When she was given a share in ruling the kingdom, she was in her element. Those factions, those feuds and alliances, were life and breath to her. Many of them were born and fed here, but she was given no part in them, nor asked to do anything but sit on a gilded throne and wear a crown that was a lesser image of the king’s.

  Melisende had occupied that throne and worn that smaller crown for nigh on a year. Bertrand could see how thin her patience had grown, how sullenly she sat, drumming her fingers on the arms of her throne. He was not surprised when she rose, twitched her skirts into order, stepped down into the swirl and sway of the court.

  The latest round of factions had centered itself around Hugh of Jaffa. His allies bore him close company or else gathered in knots here and there, eyeing with distinct disfavor both those who were his enemies and those who were simply not his friends. It was a difficult thing to walk the edges of all the camps, particularly since Melisende’s friends had of necessity aligned themselves with Hugh’s. And that, Bertrand could not help but notice, set them against the king’s party.

  Melisende joining in the dance, swirling from circle to circle, laughing and tossing her head till the crown nigh flew from its binding of plaits, spun tension close to open warfare. Inevitably she made her way to the place where Hugh stood with the closest of his friends. That was as far from the king as the hall would allow, lit by a circle of lamps. Hugh’s hair gleamed hardly less gold than the circlet that bound it.

  He was a handsome man, even pretty, but people seldom called him beautiful. Hand in hand with Melisende, pacing the measures of a stately dance, he seemed more beautiful than real. They were splendid together, tall and fair, she in white and gold, he in deep and luminous blue.

  Bertrand, caught in an eddy that fetched him up at the far end of the hall, came nearly face to face with Fulk. The king had been conversing, affably it seemed, with a number of the older barons and a Templar or two. But his eyes were not on them. They watched the queen. As her head bent toward Hugh’s, the king’s expression turned stony.

  One of the Templars said something – Bertrand heard a snatch of it, something about affairs in Damascus. Fulk nodded. He had been nodding for some time, evidently without hearing a word that anyone said. Certainly he could not be agreeing that the infidels should be amassing an army in Damascus to march against Jerusalem.

  Melisende must know that her husband was watching: her gaiety grew ever more pronounced. She began again what had first given rise to rumor: she clung close. She twined her fingers in Hugh’s. She whispered in his ear, and laughed as he laughed, and in all ways conducted herself with unqueenly shamelessness.

  Fulk at last could bear it no longer. He left his barons discoursing gravely of high matters, simply and abruptly strode away from them.

  Fulk at his best was no more than a small man, but in anger he bulked as large as any great bull of a Norman. He clove the press as if it had not been there, leaving the startled and the indignant in his wake. He swept down on Hugh of Jaffa, sundered him from the woman who pressed so close, flung him aside as if he had been a man of straw and seized the queen in a grip that won a gasp from her. In silence that by now was absolute, he said in a still cold voice, “Madam, you will come with me.”

  Any other woman, or man either, would have been taken aback. But Melisende was extraordinarily strong of will. She set her heels and made herself a stone. He could shift her, but not with either ease or grace. Equally softly, equally coldly, she said, “Surely, my lord, there is nothing to say that cannot be said here.”

  “Do you think so?” he asked her. “Do you truly think so?”

  Her eyes glittered. She was exhilarated, Bertrand realized. What was it with these women, that they were most alive when they were most contrary?

  She smiled a smile that was meant to
drive Fulk mad: white, wild, and no shame in it at all. “I do think,” she said, “that you may be jealous. Are you, my lord? Are you jealous of simple friendship?”

  “Simple!” And there Fulk lost the battle: his temper escaped its bounds. “Friendship! Aye, madam: in Provence, so they call it. But in Anjou we have another name for it. We call it rutting. Like the bull and the cow, madam. Like the stallion and his mare.”

  “And unlike the king and his queen?” Melisende lifted her chin. “Yes, you are jealous. And with no reason. If you are not admitted to my bed, who could beget legitimate heirs, then I assure you, neither is any other man.”

  “That thing need not only be done in a bed.”

  “Why? Can you enlighten me? Is it true what I’ve heard, that you did it with a camp-follower once on the back of a destrier, and won a wager by it? What was it you won? A fine Damascus dagger, wasn’t it?”

  Fulk’s face was crimson. It clashed remarkably with his hair. “My deeds or misdeeds are not at issue here.”

  “Oh, are they not? And why may a man tup a whore on horseback, but a woman may not even kiss her friend on the cheek?”

  “It was not his cheek I saw you kiss.”

  “No: it was his hand. Men kiss my hand with tedious regularity. May not I, just once, return the favor?”

  The court by now had gathered round as if at a duel. The weapons were keen-edged words, the combatants fierce, giving no quarter. Fulk clearly no longer cared who heard this quarrel. Melisende clearly had never cared at all.

  Their factions had divided as they had, gathering to one side or to the other. No one spoke or laughed. Even the musicians had given up their playing and drifted toward the edges. There would be tales told of this, songs sung. Bertrand could only hope that they would not be dirges.

  “Remember,” Melisende said, “what right you have to rule in this place. Without me there is none. I have given you the heir that we both require. If I may not enjoy my friendships, if I must keep myself like a nun in a cloister – if I must have nothing to do with myself but stare at these walls – I swear to you, my lord; I swear to you by the Virgin’s white breasts: I shall go mad.”

  “So that is it,” Fulk said. “You are angry with me. You defy me with this puppy, because you think that you should be king.”

  “I think that I should be queen!”

  “As your sister is princess in Antioch?”

  Melisende drew herself to her full height. She was sufficiently taller than he that, when she made the effort, she towered over him. “Perhaps,” she said, “she has the right of it. Maybe it is wisest to take and not to ask – particularly if one is a woman.”

  “Not,” he said, “while I am king.”

  “So,” said Melisende with curl of the lip. “I take my amusements where I can find them.”

  “You will find them amply supplied in your own chambers,” he said, “guarded by women of my choosing. Or would you prefer a convent?”

  “I would prefer,” she said, “to be what I was born to be.”

  “You were born a woman. You will be whatever your lord ordains that you shall be.”

  “I was crowned queen,” she said. “I shall not forget it. Nor will my people. Be wise, my lord, and be warned. If I am not given somewhat useful to do, then I will do whatever I please.”

  Fulk stood as stiff as she, but he could never stand as tall. He seemed to have become aware, all at once, of where he was and what he did there. “Madam,” he said, “you will make yourself useful. Apart from yonder puppy.”

  “I will choose my friends as it suits me.”

  “Your friends,” he said. “Not your sweet friends.”

  “Of the latter I have none,” she said, soft and tight.

  “We shall see,” he said, “madam.”

  * * *

  Fulk had capitulated. That was not perhaps what he had meant; it was clear to eyes that could see, that he meant to withdraw and rejoin the battle later on less public ground. But the court judged him by what it knew of itself. Fulk had retreated before his wife. She was the victor of the field.

  He left it. She remained, defiant in her gaiety, calling the musicians to play an estampie, whirling off into it with a peal of sudden laughter.

  If that had been all that that gathering came to, it would have been talked of for days after. But as it came about, it was talked of for years, might indeed not be forgotten.

  The king’s quarrel with his queen had unleashed tempers in more quarters than one. Enemy confronted enemy, and not a few wives, emboldened by Melisende’s example, declared war against their husbands.

  In the midst of them, loud and raw, a voice lifted itself out of the hum and babble. “Hugh! Hugh de Le Puiset!”

  Hugh of Jaffa was just about to succumb to Melisende’s persuasion and join in a dance with her. He turned at the sound of his birthname, no little irritated.

  It was not the king who challenged him. Walter Garnier, his own stepson, thrust through the press to plant a solid body in front of him.

  Walter was little younger than his stepfather, and notoriously displeased with that fact. He also, the gossips opined, was jealous of Hugh’s beauty. He was a thickset, dark-faced young man, so heavily bearded that his chin was never smooth of stubble. Women found him attractive; he was strong and he was famously virile, and his dark looks were not by any means unpleasant.

  But tall fair Hugh with his open face and his ready humor was calculated by his existence to eat at the liver of a man like Walter Garnier. They had been at odds since Hugh married Walter’s mother. Now it seemed Walter had seen in Hugh a fair target.

  “Hugh!” he bellowed as if across a battlefield, although they were face to face. “Tell the truth here before the king and all his nobles. Tell them what you were really doing when you were thought to be kissing in corners with her majesty the queen. Tell them! It was the king’s life you coveted – not his wife. You were plotting to kill the king.”

  Hugh laughed, a light and incongruous sound. “Oh, come! Walter, don’t be a fool. Why in the world would I want to do that?”

  “Because,” said Walter Garnier, “if he were dead, you would have his wife. And with his wife comes the kingdom.”

  “That is nonsense,” Hugh said. His lightness had shrunk and faded. No one was smiling at the absurdity. Too many faces were scowling, and not at Walter Garnier.

  Hugh looked about. He must have seen no friendship anywhere near. Melisende had gone when the estampie was ended, departed with her victory and with the flock of her ladies. His own allies had drawn away from him. Whether they did it in revulsion or to avoid being suspected of the same collusion, it was difficult to tell. Perhaps both.

  Walter’s wild words had not roused Hugh’s anger, but this silence, these stares, the desertion of those he had thought his friends – those struck fire in him. Then he did not seem so pretty, or so much the ornament of courts. “You, sir, are an arrant liar.”

  Walter Garnier ripped the glove from his hand and flung it at Hugh’s feet. “Prove it. Prove it to me, king-killer. Meet me in the lists, the two of us alone, and show the world the truth.”

  Hugh snatched up the glove, slapped it against his palm, seemed inclined to fling it in Walter’s face; but he flung it down at the other man’s feet. “Let the world know that I am no traitor. Let us meet in the field of battle.”

  “So be it,” said Walter Garnier in evident satisfaction.

  Twenty-Four

  News of the duel between Walter Garnier and Hugh of Jaffa ran from end to end of the kingdom. Stepson did not often challenge stepfather to combat, still less in the king’s name.

  Melisende was remarkably quiet, remarkably subdued – if one did not know her. Hugh had left Jerusalem for Jaffa the morning after the challenge, to prepare himself for the fight. Walter had done the same, withdrawing to his domain of Caesarea.

  One or two people wondered why there could not be a less bloody trial than mortal combat, with proper inquirie
s and searches into the truth of the accusation. But they were reckoned eccentric if not actually craven. Men were fallible, but God was the one and only just judge. He would prove guilt or innocence where knights were best served, in the lists before the assembled nobility of Outremer.

  Any that had not come for Fulk’s return, came now for this. Duels were not uncommon, but a duel over a plot to slay the king – that was a novelty.

  The king himself could not fail to be pleased by what had happened. He was no friend of Hugh, nor were his friends Hugh’s friends. Their factions, that had been clear enough before he returned from Antioch, were now drawn full and distinct.

  And best of all perhaps, his quarrel with Melisende had been eclipsed altogether by the quarrel of the two lords. Any shame that he had had was faded or forgotten. No one ventured to suggest that the queen had joined with Hugh in the supposed conspiracy.

  * * *

  “There is no conspiracy!”

  Melisende should have been content, like a cat in cream. She had appeared that morning in the court of justice, and had not been either dismissed or ignored. She had taken the seat that was her own from when her father was alive, and spoken as she had then, as one with a right to speak; and no one had silenced her. It was a test, a venture of the rights and powers that Fulk would allow her, and it had proved her victory. She was to be allowed a place in the ruling of the kingdom.

  She had tested again thereafter in receiving a company of noble pilgrims from Germany and Hungary. Again she was not forbidden to sit beside the king, nor advised to hold her tongue when she spoke with authority.

  Yes: she should have been content. Yet here she was, having eaten and drunk little of the daymeal, pacing restlessly in her bower. She had sent her ladies away, all but Richildis and Lady Agatha. “There is no conspiracy to kill the king,” Melisende said. “If there had been, don’t you think I would have known? Hugh couldn’t tell a convincing lie if it would save his soul, or keep a secret for God’s own mercy. He’s charming, intelligent, and completely without guile. Walter Garnier, however…” She paused, scowling; reached the wall; spun on her heel in a swirl of skirts and stalked back down the room. “You know, I do wonder. If he had conspired himself, and cast the blame on Hugh…”