Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  If Richildis had been as reckless as Eleanor, she would have inquired, “What, to find a foreigner to wed and bed her?”

  But she was too circumspect. She bowed low as was fitting, took her leave, went to wait on the queen.

  * * *

  Eleanor was surprisingly unruffled by her captivity. She did not rage at it, nor did she waste her substance in dreaming of escape.

  No; Eleanor was not distraught. Eleanor was coldly, whitely, unrelentingly furious. So furious that she indulged in no fits of temper. She smiled, she laughed, she jested with her guards. She greeted Richildis with every evidence of honest pleasure. She demanded nothing, insisted on nothing. But her eyes were glittering, and she carried herself very erect, very still. There was a shimmer on her like the quiver of heat above a field of white sand.

  Richildis waited on her in silence, assisting her with her toilet, clothing her in a warm robe against the night chill, combing out her beautiful hair. It had been washed in the morning and scented with sandalwood. It poured like silk through Richildis’ fingers.

  “Go on,” Eleanor said abruptly. “Ask.”

  Richildis raised her brows in honest surprise. “Lady?”

  Eleanor shot her a glance over a silk-clad shoulder. “Don’t feign innocence with me. You want to know what everyone wants to know. Did I or did I not commit adultery with Raymond of Antioch?”

  “No,” said Richildis, though it might not have been strictly politic. “I don’t want to know any such thing. Or care to, either.”

  “Of course you do,” Eleanor snapped. “Everybody does.”

  “I don’t,” Richildis said mildly. “It’s not any concern of mine.”

  Eleanor scowled. The expression did not become her: it made her face seem thin and severe. “Did he tell you to say that?”

  “Lady,” Richildis said after a pause to draw breath, to consider her words, “whether you committed incest and adultery or whether you are a pure and shining innocent, it makes no difference to me. What I would rather ask is why. Why do you want to give up the queenship of France?”

  Eleanor eased visibly. So, less obviously as she hoped, did Richildis. Eleanor was craving someone to talk to, someone to ask her questions that she could answer or not, as she chose – a freedom that she might cherish in this her captivity. Richildis would not ask about Raymond; truly did not want to know. But the rest…

  “Do you understand,” Eleanor asked her, “what it is to be the Queen of France?”

  “Dimly,” Richildis said. “But you never seemed ill suited to it. I’d have said that you were born to be a queen.”

  “That well may be,” said Eleanor, “but to be a queen in this age of the world, one must be mated with a king. I do not wish to be mated to the King of France.”

  “Not even to be queen?”

  “There are other kings in the world,” Eleanor said. “One of them surely will be pleasanter to the eye and nose than Louis the Monk.”

  “And yet,” said Richildis, “when you accepted him as your husband, you accepted vows and honor and duties. You swore to uphold them till your death or his.”

  “I was a child,” Eleanor said. “I never understood what I was promising. And he was cleaner then.”

  “Is it so simple for you?” Richildis asked. “Does nothing matter but your own pleasure?”

  “He has often asked me the same question,” Eleanor said without evident offense. “I am not a great saint and to be sure I am a terrible sinner, but a fool I am not. I have given him no son. Daughters are never enough, and he’s not likely to get more of me. If I don’t take my leave, his barons will urge him to put me aside, to use the pretext I gave him, that the so-saintly Bernard raised against us these long years past. France needs a prince, after all.” She stretched like a cat, long and luxurious. “I want to be the one to walk away. Not to be discarded like a useless thing because it was my duty to produce an heir, and I failed in it.”

  “Louis would not allow that,” Richildis said. “The Lord Christ said—”

  “Louis is pious to the point of idiocy,” Eleanor said with a spark of impatience, “but he is also a king of a line of kings. He would never propose such a thing himself. But if the barons of France urged it on him – after they had been persuaded to see the necessity of it – then he would have to give in, yes? A king must do what a king must do.”

  Richildis shook her head. “The minds of kings are beyond my understanding,” she said.

  “Are they?” Eleanor asked. “Tell me, my lady. What is it like to marry for love and not for duty or honor or power?”

  “I don’t think that’s anything a queen can do,” Richildis said.

  “And may she not dream?” Eleanor demanded. “Such a dream I have, though it may never come to pass. Someone young, strong, beautiful – someone who will love me, but not dote on me; who will match me wit for wit and mind for mind; who will – yes, who will give me strong sons to mold into kings. Isn’t that a pretty dream, lady? Won’t it keep me warm of nights, when my so little beloved husband is late at his prayers, and I lie in my cold and lonely bed?”

  Richildis felt herself blushing. Her bed was never cold and certainly never lonely. She had married as a queen could not do, to please herself.

  For that matter, who knew? Eleanor was a remarkably strong-willed woman, and remarkably self-willed, too. She might even do what she dreamed of doing.

  It was odd and uncomfortable. Must Louis feel so when he dealt with his wife? Or was he too saintly vague to notice, till she had thrust it in his face?

  Eleanor sighed and yawned and leaned into Richildis’ strokes that brushed her hair to silk and plaited it for the night. If she was aware of the quality of the silence, the chill that had crept into it, she betrayed no sign. She would not care, perhaps. A queen needed to be obeyed, to be admired, to be worshipped. She did not also require that she be loved.

  Except, of course, by a prince in a dream.

  Fifty-Six

  The King and Queen of the French rode into Acre in grand estate, with banners flying. That the queen had come as a prisoner, that the king had constrained her lest she escape him and her queenship, was not spoken of, not in that assembly of the Crusade. It was all light, all splendor: kings and princes, lords, barons, knights and squires, priests and bishops and archbishops and the Patriarch of Jerusalem who had ridden into the city with the King of France at his side.

  For a while they forgot sorrow, and forbore to count the dead and maimed and the great numbers who had never come so far at all. The conjoined armies of the West were still a great force, and the levies of Jerusalem were enough, perhaps, to give the Saracen pause.

  So much splendor made Arslan dizzy. He was full in the middle of it, standing as always in Baldwin’s shadow. The young king had in turn to bow to his mother’s precedence, but she could hardly prevent him from taking his throne or speaking in council. Nor, to be fair to her, did she try. She was secure in her primacy, was Melisende in this eighteenth year of her queenship, the sixth of her regency.

  But Arslan was not taking overmuch notice of her. Lady Richildis had come back, and Michael Bryennius with her – and a grand gathering they had had in Helena’s house, all of them, even to Helena’s Turks and Kutub the arms-master of Mount Ghazal. The memory of it kept him warm for days after.

  Warmer still was another thing, a new thing, new and wonderful.

  Arslan was in love.

  Lust he knew, as any young man knew it; and liking, and friendship such as he had with Nahar. And of course he loved his mother and his aunt, his father, his milkbrother who had grown into a king. But this was love. Love that he had heard in songs, that pursued him waking and sleeping, that made him forget to eat, that turned him from a man into a stumblefooted boy whenever he stopped to think of her – and that was nearly every moment.

  He knew he should not be such a fool. She was older than he and infinitely wiser in the ways of the world. She had no use for a callow boy, still
less a boy who was not yet made knight. Was she not a queen?

  Even her name was beautiful. Alienor – Eleanor. He caught himself singing it when he was alone.

  He was making a complete fool of himself, and he did not even care.

  Of course he knew what Lady Richildis thought of her. Lady Richildis had traveled with her, waited on her, come to know her well, and did not like her at all. She was worldly, frivolous, headstrong and sometimes cruel. She cared for little that was not herself. She was not even particularly beautiful, except for her marvelous hair.

  It did not matter. He saw her riding into Acre, gleaming in the fierce sun of summer, with her husband a pallid shadow at her side; and he was lost.

  She did not know he existed. To her he could be only one of a hundred nameless faces in attendance on the King of Jerusalem. He did not try to gain her notice, nor do more than be near her as much as he might. That was simple enough, since Arslan attended Baldwin, and Baldwin played host to the King and Queen of France. His mother ostensibly concerned herself with the rest of the French and with the German king and his following; but Arslan could well guess the truth.

  Melisende did not like Eleanor of France. Not in the least. Not even within the bounds of royal courtesy. They were too much alike, Lady Richildis said. Yet Richildis herself had been Melisende’s friend from their youth, and had as little use for Eleanor as Melisende seemed to. There must be something more to it.

  Maybe they were jealous of one another. Eleanor was so much younger, so much fresher in her beauty. But Melisende had the sort of face that aged like fine marble, smooth and barely lined, and was more beautiful now by all accounts than she had been as a girl. Or perhaps it was Eleanor’s gaiety, her reckless delight in the lighter things of this world, whereas Melisende in these latter years had grown more markedly devout.

  Arslan did not know precisely what it was. He only knew that when the queens met under a golden canopy outside the walls of Acre, the air between them grew still and cold. Instant, instinctive, and purely mutual dislike, as if God had ordained that these two ladies, so like in everything that they were, should never know the warmth of amity.

  It was difficult. Arslan had been in awe of Melisende since he was a child – had been more than a little in love with her, if he would admit it. She was his king’s mother, his benefactor, perhaps even his friend. And he looked on this rival of hers and could not help himself. He was lost to all good sense.

  There was no one to whom he could speak of this. No one who would understand. He was not one to sing his passion in any case, nor to make a story of it to tell in the bazaar. He cherished it in himself, secret even from Baldwin his friend.

  * * *

  Acre was not Mount Ghazal, or even Jerusalem that had been Richildis’ home for so many years. But it was Outremer, more than Antioch had been. She was home, among faces she knew, voices she remembered, land and climate that rang familiar even after so long away. This heat of summer was much like that to which she had first come from Anjou, this gathering like the one that had greeted Fulk and seen the wedding of Fulk to Melisende.

  But these great lords and princes had come not to wed a princess to a man who would be king, but to raise war against the infidel. Crusade: the way of cross and sword.

  They held council in the great hall of the palace of Acre, the only place that was large enough to enclose them all. She sat there among the barons in a gown that had come from Byzantium, with her arms-master from Mount Ghazal, and with her husband.

  Michael Bryennius watched the proceedings with interest and a share of amusement. Frankish councils had always fascinated him. “They speak so bluntly,” he had said once. “They so seldom consider consequences – even the prelates, who should be more circumspect. They say things that one would never say in front of our emperor.”

  Certainly a lord of the Franks could speak freely if he chose, and to a king or a queen, too. Richildis could not imagine the constraint required of a Byzantine in royal council, the subtlety, the delicate skirting round the issue at hand.

  No one was skirting anything here. They had been in council now for three days, debating what they should do with the Crusade now that it was here in Outremer. All the royalty was gathered on the dais, each under a canopy of gold, with Melisende and Baldwin in the middle: French on their left hands, Germans on the right, and prelates scattered through them like pomegranate-seeds in a sherbet. Queen Eleanor took lively part in the debate: she was in her element. King Louis said little: he would have been happier, it was clear, in the chapter-house of a monastery. Emperor Conrad, well recovered from his illness, listened more than he spoke, but seemed interested enough in the proceedings.

  None of the lords from the west, it was apparent, had given any great thought to what they would do when they came to Outremer. The few who had pondered it at all had some expectation of marching to Edessa and taking it back from the infidel. They had been shocked to discover that there was more than one kind of Saracen, and that some were actually allied with the Frankish kingdom – Damascus, for example, which was in great fear of the Turk Nur al-Din; he was lord of Aleppo and would like to be lord of much more than that, and Damascus was a great prize.

  Eleanor spoke for Raymond of Antioch through her husband’s scowls, little dismayed by those who wished to know where Raymond was, to speak for himself. “He is in Antioch,” she said in her forthright way: “in his own city, arming it against the fool and coward in Turbessel, and securing it against the infidel.”

  “But there’s a war we cannot win, do you see?” Melisende said with every appearance of kindness, as an older queen who would enlighten a younger one. It was nicely calculated to raise Eleanor’s hackles. “We’ve already lost it twice. Better we choose a different target. Aleppo, for example. Aleppo supports the most dangerous of the Saracens, the one whom Damascus rightly fears. He’ll be king of them all in time, if he’s not stopped now.”

  “We came,” Eleanor said coldly, “to avenge the fall of Edessa.”

  “And so we shall,” Baldwin said quickly before his mother could respond. “But Edessa itself is desert and waste. Rather we choose a place that will make us rich, that will wound the enemy deeply in the taking of it, that has great wealth in gold and trade, gardens and orchards; that, if taken, will sunder the two halves of Islam, that of Egypt and that of the east. Let us take Damascus, I say; let us take vengeance for its laughter when we marched with Altuntash against the city, and win atonement for our defeat. Then we can take back Edessa, and half the east as well.”

  “We cannot take Damascus,” Melisende said sharply. “Damascus is our ally.”

  “My lady mother,” Baldwin said with sweetness that he must have cultivated for a long, long while, “alliance mattered little to you when we marched to war with Altuntash. Should it matter any more now?”

  “I learned a lesson then,” she said. “I’ll not unlearn it now. Will you, my lord king?”

  He stiffened, but he smiled. “My lady mother, that was simple treachery: aiding a rebel against his rightful lord. This is Crusade. Isn’t Damascus the greatest prize of all? Isn’t it rich in lands and wealth, well watered, well situated, all such things as a wise king would wish to secure?”

  “And,” said one of the barons, “it’s a war we can all safely fight. If we retake Edessa, after all, who benefits but Joscelin? And if we do as Prince Raymond asks, take Aleppo and secure Antioch, what can we gain from that? We shed blood and tears, he takes all the benefit. Whereas if we take Damascus, none of us gains more than any other. We all take the prize; we divide it fairly.”

  The gathering stirred at that: murmuring, nodding, quivering a little with greed.

  King Louis sat up a little straighter, as if he had roused from a nap. But he spoke clearly enough, and as one who had heard sufficient of what had been said. “Aleppo we know little if at all. What is it to us but a name? But Damascus—” He sighed as if in rapture. “Damascus is a holy city, a city of the Bible
, well fit to receive our Crusade. Has it not stood since Noah came down from Ararat? Did not Paul fall blinded on the road to that of all cities, and see the face of the Christ? Shall we not see that light for ourselves, as we march to wrest it from the hands of the infidel?”

  His eloquence startled the council. They had not heard him in a holy transport before; had known him only as a man of few words and little wit, dull amid the glitter of his fellow princes.

  While they stared, too taken aback to speak, Eleanor said with poisonous sweetness, “Such lovely words, my lord. Such entrancing sentiments. But Damascus is an ally, do you see? Aleppo is the enemy.”

  “All infidels are the enemy,” Louis said.

  “It’s hardly so simple, cousin,” Baldwin said in a tone meant perhaps to soothe them both, “but it is true: this war is God’s own. Any who worships Allah is our rightful adversary.”

  “Then does it matter whom we fight?” Eleanor demanded. “Let’s take Aleppo – then if we’re still inclined, come back and sweep up Damascus.”

  “It won’t be as simple as that,” Melisende said, “but it’s not ill thought of withal. Aleppo is the more dangerous, yes, and secures the best advantage.”

  “But Damascus is richer,” Baldwin said, “and its taking more likely to wound the whole of Islam, not simply the atabeg in Aleppo.”

  “The atabeg in Aleppo is the strongest prince the Saracens have,” said Melisende. “Cut off the head, the body dies. Let him live and he will come to us in Damascus, sweep over us and destroy us.”

  “And is this not the greatest army that Christendom has ever seen?” Emperor Conrad rose to say it, sweeping his arm over the gathering. “Here is but the head and neck of it, the gathering of its princes – and we strain this hall to bursting. Can Islam muster as many great knights and men-at-arms as we have brought together here?”