Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  “There would be more than enough in Constantinople,” she said.

  “Surely, lady,” said Landolf, “but it would be days, weeks, before they could come. Do you wish to tarry here so long? We cannot feed you, lady. We are even poorer in provisions than in ships.”

  Since that was manifestly true, she subsided, though not without a last, terrible frown in his direction. It shriveled him admirably but conjured no more ships, nor better weather for them to sail in.

  All choices now, it seemed, were ill. Louis could think of nothing better to do than fill the ships as he could. They were enough for his own household and the queen’s, and for a closely-crowded small army of knights and mounted men, with their horses packed together on the transports, too tight to move.

  The rest must stay behind. The Counts of Flanders and of Bourbon commanded them, grim-faced men whom Richildis vaguely remembered singing in sunlight and quaffing wine by night, so long ago that it might have been another lifetime. They were all changed now, darkened and soured by this endless and fruitless march. And now this: a choice made in necessity, the army divided yet again, and half of it compelled to make its way as it could. Landolf offered them a weak consolation: “There may be more ships,” he said, “from farther away. If you will wait a little longer…”

  There was little that they could do but agree. “We’ll send ours back,” Louis promised them, “as soon as we come to land. We’ll meet again, God will make sure of it. Look for me in Jerusalem.”

  With that promise, such as it was, he embarked on the most presentable of the ships, raised his banner and turned his face toward the sea – toward the Holy City that was his dream and his destination. Others, less resolute, looked back as they crawled out of the harbor under oar and sail. No one cheered their departing. The line of those left behind stood mute along the shore. The wind tugged at cloaks and banners, faded both, tattered and worn; and lucky they were to have so much. One sound only floated across the water as the king’s ship came to the harbor’s mouth: the long, mournful bray of a mule.

  It was dreadfully apt, and yet no one laughed. Perhaps no one dared. Louis did not admit to hearing it. He was rapt in the glory of his Crusade, blind and deaf to follies and failings. God would provide, he would say if anyone taxed him with the broken state of his army. God would always provide.

  * * *

  Richildis and her husband sailed with the queen. They had boarded quietly, and deliberately so. The glances shot at Michael Bryennius had been ugly; she had feared that he would be stopped, that he would not be suffered to set foot on the ship. But no one stood in his path. No one spoke to him. No stones flew. No one spat at his feet. All those things she saw in the eyes of men they passed, but in the queen’s presence no one ventured to fulfill them.

  It was an uneasy crossing. None of them, except perhaps the king, could forget the army they had left behind. Nor could any ever forget why it had been left; how little aid they had had from the Byzantine emperor’s governor in Attalia. Michael Bryennius, lone Byzantine in their midst, speaking in no one’s name but his own, reminded them inescapably of all that they had suffered. He gave them a target: a shape for their blame.

  He had the books that had come with him from the City, close-wrapped in oiled leather and kept scrupulously safe. He kept to a corner of the deck when the weather was fair, rather incidentally within the compass of the queen’s guards. At night and in foul weather he shared the reeking closeness of the cabin. Then Richildis was his guard and his defender.

  “Are you afraid?” she asked him one night, whispering in his ear as they rocked on a long swell.

  They could converse if they were discreet about it, protected by the very closeness of bodies heaped on bodies, the creak of the ship, slap of water, song of wind in the rigging. One learned in this world to be alone in multitudes, to pitch one’s voice to carry no farther than the ear that was closest.

  His breath tickled her cheek. “I’m not afraid,” he said. “Why should I be?”

  “Can’t you taste the hate?”

  He shrugged: a shift of shoulders against her. She settled a little more comfortably in the circle of his arms. “There’s always hate.”

  “Someone could drop you over the side.”

  “And what purpose would that serve? Hate is a public thing. They’d hang me from the yards if they could. But they never will.”

  “Can you be sure of that?”

  “Nothing in this life is certain.”

  “Except death.”

  “Not here,” he said, “unless we all go down together.” He kissed her temple, let the kiss wander down to her lips. There it paused a while; but it went no farther. Not with half a dozen bodies pressed up against them, and not all of them asleep, either.

  “I’m safe enough,” he said. “They don’t want me dead. It’s too convenient to despise me.”

  “You bear it so well,” she said.

  He laughed, with a catch of pain. “There’s nothing to bear. It’s aimed at nothing I did. I’m convenient, no more. If the emperor were here – now him they would joyfully rend asunder.”

  “Pray God they don’t decide that you will do instead.” She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder, breathing in the warm familiar scent of him. “You may not be afraid. I am. I don’t even know why. We’ve been in danger more times than I can count. Maybe too many? This is no worse than the Turks’ attack on Attalia.”

  “This is worse,” he said. “Pirates could take us – but it’s not likely. We’re out of the empire; we’re sailing toward Outremer. We’re going back to a war. God knows how that will end.”

  “Ah,” she said, dismissing it. “War. I’ve lived with war every moment of my life.”

  “But not with war that could kill us – all three of us.”

  She went rigid. “You can’t know that!”

  “Crushed together on a ship, living as close as seeds in a pomegranate, I can know. I know you.”

  She had to stop, to breathe. It was hard. She was not even sure herself, or had not been till they took ship and there was no escaping it. Her courses were late. Her stomach, which had never been discommoded by any voyage, was desperately uneasy. Her breasts were tender, her moods inclined to shift as suddenly as wind in the sails.

  “I am,” she said, “upwards of forty years old. I should be too old for this. I thought—”

  “Yes,” he said. “You thought that it was ended; that there would be no more. But as long as a woman’s blood flows with the moon, and yours shows no sign of stopping…”

  “Except that it has.” She laughed, but not for mirth. “This was not supposed to happen.”

  “These brave warriors would tell you that God wills it.”

  “Ah,” she said. “God. Sometimes I wonder if He cares about us at all. If I’m meant to birth a baby on a battlefield.”

  “If He loves you,” said Michael Bryennius, “you’ll bear our child in your own country, safe in our castle at Mount Ghazal.”

  “And if not…” She silenced him before he could speak. “No, I won’t say it. There’s my fear. There’s my silliness. Only promise me. Promise that you’ll be alive to see this baby born.”

  “If you’ll promise the same to me.”

  She nodded against his breast. It was enough. He tightened his grip, holding her as if with his arms alone he could drive off all fear, all dread of death and worse.

  Fifty-Four

  The King of the French left Attalia in the dark of the year, after a grim and embattled winter. Half his army was left behind to find what transport it could. The half that came with him had not even shoes for their feet; they were ragged, filthy, frostbitten and winter-weary.

  Yet as they passed the isle of Cyprus, the winter seemed to melt away. Soft breezes blew toward them from the distant shore, fragrant with flowers. They had sailed out of winter and into spring, the brief and dazzling spring of Outremer. It seemed most apt that they should become aware of it in sight
of Venus’ isle, where the goddess of love had been born of the foam, long before the Lord Christ came into the world.

  They came to land in the harbor of St. Symeon, not far from Antioch. Here at last after the cold welcome of Byzantium, its bare tolerance and grudging charity, they were met with high and singing joy. The Crusade had come to the Holy Land. Edessa’s fall would be avenged, the infidel driven back. All that they had waited for would come to pass.

  It seemed to matter little that the glory of Crusade was a battered remnant of an army crowded onto an insufficient fleet of ships. What splendor they had was sadly faded; but the sun of Syria made it bright again.

  Prince Raymond himself rode down from Antioch, having seen their sails upon the sea. He had brought wonders, gifts that in Attalia they would have killed for: fresh garments, new bread and wine and yellow cheeses for them to dine on before their journey to the city. He had even brought horses to spare their poor rail-thin beasts, fine fiery horses of Arabia, and a snow-white mare for the queen who was his brother’s daughter.

  Uncle he might be, and sufficiently her elder, but he had kept the beauty of form and face that had served him so well a dozen years ago. He had come then to wed the Princess of Antioch – not the mother who had expected it, but the daughter who was the heir of the realm. Constance had been a child then, a maid of nine summers. She was now a woman, a tall slender golden creature with, Richildis could not help thinking, the tongue of an adder. Time had not softened it, nor had age made it sweeter. She was still a dreadful child.

  But Raymond too had changed little. He was as charming as ever, with his ready smile and his open affection for the lady who was, as he professed, his favorite niece. Richildis had not known that Eleanor could simper, yet there was no other word for it. He flattered her shamelessly; she blushed like a girl. One could see then the young countess who had given herself in marriage to a king: lovely in her awkwardness, like a highbred filly.

  Louis, alack, suffered greatly beside the silken luster of the prince. He would wear nothing but the pilgrim’s robe that he had worn since the Crusade began, nor bathe nor rest nor make himself presentable until he had prayed in the basilica of Antioch. He was oblivious to the banners, the carpets of flowers, the music and song that accompanied them from the harbor. Even Raymond seemed barely to impinge upon his consciousness. He was rapt in a vision of holiness.

  And if he was so lost already, how would he be in Jerusalem, which was the heart of the world?

  Eleanor perhaps was the wisest of them. She ignored him. She rode on the white mare beside the prince on his blood-bay stallion, laughing, joining in the song that his minstrels sang. His father, her grandfather, had written it in the spring of a year now long ago, as fair a spring then as they saw now all about them.

  Never was this harsh country so beautiful as it was in this season. They rode up the river Orontes through the green valley starred with flowers, scarlet and purple and gold and white. The river rolled round the towers of Antioch, the proud and ancient city on the mountain’s knees. It was all laid open to them, towers and palaces, markets and bazaars, gardens and paradises, tangled together in a profusion of centuries. Not even Constantinople was so rich in the ages, nor Rome that was half glory and half ruin. The Franks’ hand was light upon it, its people much as they had been since the walls were new-built.

  To Louis it was a pilgrim’s joy, a queen of holy places. To Eleanor it was grandeur and delight, luxury such as she had dreamed of on that long grim march into Asia, and the pleasure of her kinsman’s company only a little diminished by the presence of his wife. Eleanor bloomed in this place like a rose of Damascus, all her winter grimness scoured away. She had never been so gay or so beautiful, so very much the Flower of Aquitaine.

  * * *

  Richildis could have left at any time, taken her baggage – what there was of it – and her husband and gone home at last. Yet like King Louis she seemed possessed of a golden lassitude, a springtide laziness that persuaded her to tarry while the days wore away. They had suffered much, all of them, to come to this sunlit place. Suffering lay ahead of them, the war that had brought them here. Why should they not rest before they rode again to battle?

  She, too. Childbirth was battle such as no man ever knew, down into the jaws of death to bring forth life. It was too early yet for that, but if she was to bear this child alive, she needed what rest she could find.

  Her husband agreed wholeheartedly. He had no such urgency as simmered in her, to be again in Mount Ghazal and preparing it for the rigors of the Crusade. His affairs in Constantinople and in Jerusalem were either well in hand or out of his hands altogether. Some small business he did transact here, with allies such as he seemed to have in every city of the east. It had to do with gold, or with a caravan of spices. It gave them a house of their own, small but very pleasant, with servants and a cook and a lovely garden. One day as she sat under the rose-arbor in the dizzying scent of blooms, he brought her a gift of cinnamon and cloves and pepper, fragrant and pungent, to delight the nose and the tongue.

  As she sat drinking in the mingled scents of roses and spices, her eyes sharpened upon him. He looked faintly frayed, a little more ruffled than wind and sun would account for. “Was there trouble?” she asked him.

  His brows lifted. “Why do you ask that?”

  “You never were a good liar,” she said. “What was it? Footpads?”

  She watched him consider assenting, recognize the lie, sigh and shrug and say, “French. They still haven’t forgiven Byzantium for what they call its treachery.”

  “I call it grudging charity, myself,” she said.

  “More grudge than charity, they would say.” He stretched, winced as if at a bruise.

  “They struck you,” she said, half in anger, half in anxiety.

  “Not hard enough to matter,” he said, “and there was a convenient passage of the prince’s guard. Their captain owes me a debt or two.”

  “Gold?”

  “Life. I found a doctor for his son, when the boy was dying of a fever.”

  “That’s rather like you,” she said after a pause.

  He shrugged again. One shoulder did not rise as high as the other. She reached too quickly for him to evade her, caught him and tripped him and got his coat off, while he laughed and protested and sounded remarkably like a virgin bride. She said as much to him. He fell silent, affronted.

  He was not wounded – not pierced by a blade. But whoever had beaten him had made an excellent beginning before the prince’s guards stopped him. A little higher and his shoulder would have been broken. A little lower and he might not have been much inclined to beget another child.

  “Hereafter,” Richildis said as she tended him, “when you go out, you go guarded.”

  “I should hate that,” he said.

  “You should be dead, too,” she said tartly. “Find yourself a strong young Frenchman to stand in your shadow, or a stray German if any’s to be found: someone who will be sufficiently grateful for the wages you can pay, that he doesn’t care that you’re a filthy Greek.”

  “I am cleaner in my person than any of them has ever been,” he muttered. But he stopped her before she could speak. “Yes, yes, I know. A proper hulking ox of an Angevin would do very well, if one’s to be found. Or a Norman. Could I tame a wild Norman, do you think?”

  “You tamed me,” said Richildis.

  “Ah, but you’re only an Angevin.” He kissed her, and seemed glad that she smiled. “I’m in no great danger, my love. There’s enough hereabouts to engross any dog of a Frank, if he’s not tempted to exercise his anger on a Byzantine’s bones.”

  “If you take care,” she said.

  He shrugged. She held her peace. She could only harm her cause if she pressed further.

  * * *

  Indeed he found himself a Norman, a great blue-eyed tawny-haired ox of a youth whose utterances seemed to consist chiefly of monosyllables. He was no simpleton however – those flaxflower eyes
were as shrewd as Richildis had ever seen – and he was large enough to deter even the most drunken roisterer. His name was Arnulf.

  With Arnulf looming in his shadow, Michael Bryennius went where he pleased and when he pleased, and took no harm that Richildis knew of. She could rest for knowing that he was guarded; and let herself bask in the soft airs of spring.

  * * *

  However gentle the breezes, they could last for but a little while. Then came the furnace-blasts of summer, and the hot tide of war.

  Louis in his threadbare robe with his flock of monks and priests and Templars, traveling from shrine to shrine and praying strenuously at each one, was still a king, still a lord of the Crusade. He troubled himself now and then to remember that, nor would Raymond suffer him to forget it. Louis, when pressed, reminded them all that the rest of his army had only begun to come over the sea, that he could do nothing till they were all gathered together again.

  Raymond was sorely tried for patience. While the Crusade dallied and tarried and frittered itself away in traveling to Outremer, neither Edessa nor Joscelin had ceased to vex the Prince of Antioch. Now, as the army restored itself at Raymond’s expense, Raymond discovered in Louis, as he put it to Eleanor in Richildis’ hearing, a mewling, canting priest.

  He had early taken the measure of Eleanor’s feeling for her husband, and did not even pretend apology for what she could only concede was the truth. “He’s shocked,” Raymond said, pacing the bower that she had arrayed for herself. “Shocked, he professes, that we lords of the Lord’s country should be so relentlessly mercenary, so mired in feuds and petty dissents. Joscelin and I should be the dearest of friends, the most blessed of Christian allies against the terrible infidel – not at odds as we so appallingly are. Who in the world taught him that Joscelin, fat Joscelin, Joscelin the toad, is a shining knight of God?”