Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  He escaped the crowds that would have held him in the court, the back-thumpings and sudden embraces and effusions of joy from people who, only this morning, would not have condescended to speak to the king’s squire, the fatherless man, the one gifted with neither wealth nor lordship. He was oddly unbitter. Wry, yes, and painfully amused, even through his anger at his father.

  As he had more than half expected, Bertrand found him at last. He had not made himself easy to find. High up on the Tower of David, where even the guards did not go if they could help it, with the white-and-gold banner of Jerusalem snapping above him in the hard cold wind, he leaned on the parapet, wrapped close in a fur-lined cloak, and stared out across the city to the Dome of the Rock. Its golden beauty was muted today, dulled by the greyness of the sky. There would be sleet later, and snow perhaps. The air was raw and bitter. The wind cut to the bone.

  Arslan was shivering, but not enough to matter. The cold did not trouble him, nor ever had. He would live well in France, he supposed, though the French told him that it never grew as cold here as it did in their country.

  Bertrand was strong enough now to brave the climb to the tower, but he leaned against the wall for a while, white and breathing hard, hand pressed to his side. Arslan offered neither help nor sympathy.

  At length Bertrand’s breathing quieted. He sat on the parapet near Arslan, drawing his cloak close about him. Odd that he bore the cold less well than Arslan did, he who had been born in Anjou.

  “You’re angry,” Bertrand said.

  Arslan did not answer.

  “It is a pity,” said Bertrand, “that I did this in my own time and in my own way. But after all it was mine to do.”

  “You could have warned me,” Arslan said.

  “I told you I’d do this. I never said when.”

  Arslan showed his teeth. It was not a smile. “Ah, so this is battle, too, is it? Always be prepared, you taught us. Always expect the unexpected.”

  “So,” said Bertrand. “You’re as angry at yourself as at me.”

  “Not quite,” Arslan said.

  “The Court is delighted,” said Bertrand. “More honestly glad of this than I’ve seen it since we left Damascus. You’re well liked, you know. That’s a feat of sorts: to be so close to the king but to escape the gnawings of envy.”

  “That,” said Arslan with a bitter edge, “is because I never had anything for them to be jealous of. No father, no acknowledged kin. Certainly no rank or fortune.”

  “You think you’ve lost that grace? If you had, dear fool, you’d have seen it when I told them who you are.”

  “I don’t know how to act like a lord’s heir,” Arslan said. “A king’s squire, a fatherless man – yes, I’m splendid at that. But this new thing… I’ll botch it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re blind.”

  “And you are a young idiot, and I should thrash you for insolence.” But there was no anger in Bertrand’s voice. That perhaps was wisdom: to be calm in the face of deliberate provocation.

  “You will,” said Bertrand, “go with me to Beausoleil when Christmas Court is ended.”

  “Are you commanding me?”

  “Yes,” Bertrand said.

  Arslan paused simply to breathe, to will himself as calm as his father was. Those were the chains with which they had all bound him: duty, obligation, obedience of son to father. He had wanted it since he was old enough to know that other people had fathers but he had none. Now he had it, all of it, in measure that he had hardly dared to imagine. And he could not accept it as a sensible young man should. He was as contrary as a girl.

  If he could have had this when he was younger…

  But he had not. He had it now. He had more than most young men ever hoped for, and more by far than a bastard had any right to expect.

  “What,” he said abruptly, “if you finally agree to marry? What if you sire a legitimate son? Will I be supplanted?”

  “I don’t think,” Bertrand said with great gentleness, “that you need to fear that.”

  “I did need to ask,” Arslan said.

  Bertrand raised a brow but forbore to speak. That was as well: they might have quarreled. He did not want that, Arslan did not think. What Arslan wanted…

  He was tired, suddenly. Weary of all of it: anger, contention, the sheer strain of being who and what he was. And now he must change. Must become someone new, someone suitably noble, fit to inherit a barony.

  The beginning of it, it seemed, was here, high up in the wind, with the sting of sleet on his cheeks. Bertrand was shivering uncontrollably, but saying no word, uttering no complaint.

  Arslan sighed. With the breath went a whole great knot of resistance. “Come,” he said. “Come back into the warm, Father. You’ll catch your death of cold.”

  Sixty-Eight

  Richildis in her way was as angry with Bertrand as Arslan was. If she had had any warning, either, she would have arranged to be in court instead of at home with Zenobia and a touch of the rheum. It was nothing deathly, simply unattractive, what with the reddened nose and the coughing and the inclination to lie abed much later than she properly should. Therefore she had been absent when Bertrand chose at long last to acknowledge his son, and had to rely on hearsay for a full account of it.

  Bertrand had done it on purpose, of course: taken them all by surprise. Richildis prayed devoutly that he would find himself a pleasant little war, and soon, to practice his generalship on; then maybe he would spare his poor embattled kin.

  Christmas Court ended with suitable pomp, and Bertrand carried his son away to Beausoleil. Richildis lingered a while in Jerusalem, partly for laziness, partly for the state of the roads. A spate of storms had come in with the new year, and it was hardly fit travelling for a babe in arms. The city was never empty, but it was almost quiet, now that the high ones had gone and the Christmas pilgrims departed. The French had gone back to their pursuit of sanctity: desultory for most, whitely passionate for their king. And Queen Eleanor pretended still to be a woman of piety and discretion.

  Melisende no longer spoke to her except when strict policy demanded it. They had not quarreled that Richildis knew of; had entered no open hostilities. It was the simple consequence of long custom and undiminished dislike, not aided by Baldwin’s insistence on keeping frequent company with the French queen.

  He did it to annoy his mother. Certainly there was nothing between them but a kind of common cause against the queen regent. They were careful to avoid scandal, to meet nowhere alone, to be seen always in the company of respectable attendants.

  Melisende was not to be appeased by the semblance of propriety. She summoned her son to her of an evening, a day or two after the beginning of Lent. He came obediently, even promptly, and offered suitable obeisance; yet Richildis, who that evening was in attendance on the queen regent, sensed in him a slight, perceptibly defiant edge.

  Melisende sensed it, too: her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. She wasted no time in frivolities. “It is not appropriate,” she said, “for you to dance attendance on a woman who has clearly expressed her intention of divorcing her husband and finding herself one younger, livelier, and at least as royal.”

  “She has also stated,” Baldwin said with the stiff dignity that he always assumed these days in front of his mother, “that she has no desire to be Queen of Jerusalem.”

  “Of course she would say such a thing,” said Melisende, “where anyone of note can hear. She cares little which realm she rules, if only its king is young and fair.”

  “Madam,” Baldwin said, “she will not marry me, nor will I succumb to her. That I can promise you.”

  Melisende sat back, drew a breath. She had been braced for a war; had received no satisfaction. Yet there was still good cause for battle. “If that is the way of it, then why do you court scandal by keeping company with her?”

  “Because I enjoy it,” Baldwin said.

  Ah: a war at last. Richi
ldis saw how Melisende’s back straightened, how she girded herself for combat. “You enjoy the harm done to your reputation? People are talking, Baldwin.”

  “Women have reputations,” Baldwin said. “Men have pride. That is a sin, yes, but it’s less easily damaged than a woman’s good name.”

  “Then,” said Melisende with the air of a lioness leaping in for the kill, “have you taken any thought for the lady?”

  “Certainly,” said Baldwin, unruffled. “We are never seen alone together, we are always well escorted, we do nothing to which even a bishop may take exception. I can hardly be faulted, madam, for performing the duties of host, since you so clearly find them onerous.”

  Ah: a hit, and palpable. Melisende sat even straighter, spoke with even more precision than heretofore. “I have done all that is proper for me to do.”

  “Indeed, madam? And how long has it been since you inquired after the health of our guest? Was it you who asked her to dinner two nights ago, or was it I? Have you invited her to your bower or engaged her in conversation at all since Christmas Court?”

  “I have been diligent,” Melisende said, “in looking after the comfort of all my guests. Of whom her majesty is only one.”

  “The only one indeed to be so slighted,” Baldwin said. “Be honest, madam. You detest her. She’s so much like you in spirit, so little like you in her actions. Where you turn to piety to wield your will, she turns to frivolity and a notable extravagance. And yet, madam, at heart you are the same. And that,” he said, “is why I will never even think of marrying her. One of you is enough.”

  He had bowed, made reverence with correctness very close to insolence, and departed before Melisende could muster her wits to answer. When at last she rose, the door was shut and his steps had long since died away.

  She did not give way to rage, or even to laughter. “That child,” she said, “is sore in need of a thrashing.”

  “But,” said Richildis, “he’s not a child. Not any longer.”

  “You call him a man? That puppy?”

  “He is nineteen years old,” Richildis said. “Most would reckon him a grown man.”

  Melisende shook her head. She was blind, and willfully so. “He has always been young for his age. My fault, surely. I should have been more strict in the raising of him.”

  “Stricter then,” Richildis said, “and more lenient now.” But Melisende refused to hear her.

  * * *

  The French king lingered interminably. He stayed through Lent, through Easter, through Ascensiontide. And all the while, Baldwin continued to entertain the Queen of France, to keep her company, to guide her about the shrines, to invite her to dinner. Always in crowds of attendants, never alone. Melisende could not summon him again without raising a scandal herself.

  It was not a new thing for her to be powerless, but she was long out of the habit of it. It galled her terribly. And there was not a thing she could do, nothing that would compel him to do as she willed.

  No one was happier than she when at long last, near the feast of Pentecost, King Louis wavered and sighed and succumbed to the urgings of his counsellors, and consented to return to France. He had long outstayed his welcome, had visited every shrine, walked every road, prayed over every inch of this most holy of countries. He could delay it no longer. He must go home. He must be king again of his own people.

  Now that they were going away, king and queen both, Melisende could bring herself to tolerate Eleanor’s company again, to ride with her to Acre where the ships were waiting. Many of the High Court went with them. Richildis thought of it, but when they all rode out, she was in Mount Ghazal, watching Zenobia clamber about with delightfully alarming agility, and being addressed at length in often intelligible fragments of French, Turkish, and even Latin.

  If Melisende had asked, Richildis would have gone; but no message came. Others would bid farewell to the ashes of Crusade, watch the sails vanish into the horizon, sigh with relief and return to an emptied and blessedly quiet Jerusalem.

  Richildis did not go, nor any of her household. But Bertrand in Beausoleil, and Arslan who was learning to be a lord’s acknowledged son, rode to Acre with a troop of horsemen. Bertrand had business there in any case, and a tryst with Helena that Arslan was not supposed to know of.

  Arslan’s business, as far as anyone knew, was to accompany his father and to return for a while to his king’s service. But he remembered when Eleanor had summoned him in Jerusalem, and what she had said then. He was going to ask her if she had meant it.

  * * *

  Acre was in uproar as one might well expect. Sore depleted though the French army might be, it was still many thousands strong, well past restlessness into active boredom, and growing impatient to leave the east behind. Few had elected to stay, fewer still had found useful employment in Outremer. They were all chafing at the slowness of the departure, drinking themselves senseless in taverns along the quay, getting into brawls with anyone whom they reckoned either foreign or objectionable – which by now was nearly everybody.

  Amid this tumult Arslan sought audience with the Queen of the French. He had no certain expectation of getting it, was determined not to grieve if he failed. He needed to know something, but if she would not see him, he would not force her.

  And indeed his message vanished, nor received a reply. No page came to fetch him. No letter was left at his father’s door. He followed Bertrand about on his various errands, arranged to be absent when Bertrand visited Helena in her own house, dined with them later at her invitation. She did not press as another mother might, to discover if he had done well at Beausoleil. She simply assumed that he had. And that, he thought, was why he not only loved but passionately admired her.

  Eleanor, whom he loved but did not admire, answered him at last the day before she was to sail. He was in the city searching out a frippery, a gift for his mother. As he paused by a silk-merchant’s shop, caught by the brilliance of the colors, he heard a voice that he could not mistake.

  The Queen of the French was abroad in the city with a gaggle of her ladies, bidding farewell to the markets of the east. “And which do you prefer?” she was asking one of her companions, a lady who reminded Arslan of a fat white dove, all coo and flutter. “The green, do you think? Or one of these blues?”

  “Oh,” said Lady Mathilde, “I like this one best, like the shimmer on a peacock’s feather.”

  Mathilde, as Eleanor knew and Arslan had to concede, was an utter idiot – except when it came to clothes. On that subject she was as sage as no philosopher would have known how to be. Eleanor wisely yielded to her judgment, and bought the peacock silk.

  Arslan, suddenly and cripplingly shy, tried to slip away before the queen saw him. But he was standing just beyond the bolt of silk, between one of crimson and one of a wonderful shimmering bronze brocaded with galloping horsemen. It was that which had lured him in, and which trapped him now. “Oh!” said Eleanor. “It’s just the color of your hair. Thibaut! Buy it for his lordship and send it to his house. Your father’s house, yes?”

  He had forgotten how quick she could be, too quick for mere male mind to follow. “Lady,” he tried to say. “Majesty. You can’t—”

  “Never tell a queen what she cannot do,” Eleanor said. “Here, you must have this silk. Make a court robe of it, such as the infidels wear. It’s much too rich for a lesser man.”

  “What would you do,” he asked her, “if I gave it to my mother? Or to… another woman?”

  “Your sweetheart?” Perhaps he imagined the sudden fierce glitter in her eye. She was laughing, after all. “If you do that I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Then I can’t take the gift,” Arslan said.

  “Of course you will. You’re coming to France, yes? You need something to be beautiful in.”

  “I am not coming to France,” Arslan said. He had not known for certain that he would say it, not till it was said.

  “Of course you are coming to France. You have lands there now
. Your father is well and will live, they say, for years. You’ll come back long before he dies.”

  Arslan shook his head. “Lady, I can’t. Not… not now. It’s too soon.”

  He feared that she would press him, but something, maybe his expression, maybe her own degree of sense, kept her silent. Instead she said, “But someday, you mean to say, it will be late enough.”

  He nodded.

  She sighed, shrugged, smiled her sudden smile. “Well. Promise, then. Someday you’ll visit me at my court in Aquitaine.”

  “Or wherever you are,” he said, “where you are lady and queen.”

  “So gallant,” said Eleanor. “Ladies, isn’t he a wonder?”

  They fluttered and cooed and made haste to agree. Arslan longed to flee, but he had not been dismissed.

  And, he could admit to himself, he did not honestly want to go. Promise or no, he might never see her again. He wanted to remember her as she was now, all golden in the light from the door, surrounded by the shimmer of silks, and none of them as bright as her hair. Her face was too thin and long for beauty, and yet she was beautiful, vivid and purely alive – ill match indeed for her pious stick of a husband and his pack of priests and his eunuch familiar.

  Arslan bowed low, as a man of rank should bow to a queen. “If I can,” he said, “someday, I’ll come to Aquitaine.”

  * * *

  She sailed away without him. He did not go to the quay as so many others did, to see the French take ship for the west. He had seen all that he needed to see, said all that could sensibly be said. As the ships took on the last of their cargo and their royal passengers, Arslan was riding back to Beausoleil. He had made a choice, there in front of Eleanor. He would keep to it. Whatever it cost him. However long it lasted.

  III

  Queen Mother

  A.D. 1152–1153