Sixty-Nine
Zenobia had disappeared again. She was in none of her wonted hiding places in the castle of Mount Ghazal, nor had the messenger come back from the village where she might, even at her tender age, have managed to go. Zenobia was resourceful and exceedingly determined. What she wanted, she found ways to get.
Richildis closed her account-book and sighed, not entirely with exasperation. She was glad of the reprieve. “She’s somewhere perfectly safe, I’m sure,” she said to the tearfully terrified maid.
The servants must have been amusing themselves with the newcomer. Alia was a niece of Richildis’ senior maids, Yasmin and Leila, and came from Beausoleil. She was as shy as her aunts had never been, and conspicuously in awe of her new lady. Clearly she was horrified to have failed in the charge of her lady’s daughter, and on the first day of it, too.
Richildis tried to comfort her. “The imp makes a game of vanishment,” Richildis said, “but she never goes far and she never does anything foolish. She’s very sensible for her age.”
“Sensible!” Alia wailed. “Lady, she’s two summers old. What can she know? How can she—”
“Alia,” Richildis said firmly enough to silence her. “Zenobia is old for her years. Stop drizzling now, please, and fetch Kutub. He of anyone will know where she went.”
Alia looked as if Richildis had just sentenced her to the rack. “Ku – Kutub?” She sucked in a breath, nearly choking on it. “Lady – Lady, I—”
God’s holy Mother, Richildis thought: the girl was even more afraid of Kutub than she was of Richildis. Time to have a word or six with the servants. Beginning with this young idiot’s aunts.
Until then however she had a lost child and a sniveling maid and little prospect of finding the child unless she did it herself. She bound and locked the ledger and set it on its shelf, capped the inkpot, and rose, shaking out her skirts. “Come with me,” she said.
With Alia quaking and sniffling in her wake, Richildis strode out of her workroom. She would ride later, she decided. Her whole body was cramped with bending over her ledgers, and her eyes were aching. She needed clean air and sun and a good horse under her. Maybe Michael Bryennius would be in similar mood, and minded to take his daughter on his saddlebow, once she was found. Zenobia would adore that.
Mount Ghazal was in its wonted order, servants at their tasks, men-at-arms at practice in the courts, horse-trainers plying their trade in and about the stables. The builders were raising the foundation of a new chapel. Richildis meant it to be high and beautiful; and a priest of her choosing would serve in it, one of the sergeants’ sons who had proved himself gifted in letters. He was studying in Rome now while his chapel was being built. Richildis prayed that no prelate lured him away to a loftier benefice.
Even with a daughter who went where she pleased and never regarded her nurses, Richildis was well content with her house and her holding. She knew every corner of it and every creature in it, even to the kitchen cat that came to provide a royal escort. The insouciant curl of its tail guided her out from the keep into the first of the courts, and thence to a flurry about the gate.
There was Zenobia indeed, and riding high: perched on the saddle of a mail-clad knight. God be thanked that his horse was an equable beast, for she stood on the high pommel with her arms about the knight’s neck, and never a worry in the world that either of them would let her fall.
She twisted about at her mother’s approach, no more guilt in her than worry. “Mama!” she cried. “Look! Arslan-Arslan-Arslan!”
So it was, and looking splendid, too. He had been knighted in Jerusalem at Christmas Court, side by side with his foster-brother the king: receiving the accolade from his father’s hand as Baldwin had received it from the Constable of the Kingdom, and good hard blows they both had been. Then Baldwin had gone back to being king and Arslan had gone to be heir of Beausoleil, for a little while; though now it seemed that he was coming back to Jerusalem.
He caught Zenobia to him and swung his leg over the pommel and slid down from the saddle, all in one fluid movement, and presented the daughter to her mother with a bow and a smile. Zenobia accepted the shift with equanimity. “I saw Arslan,” she said. “I went to see him. He picked me up and I rode. When will I have a horse, Mama?”
“When you are old enough to ride it by yourself,” Richildis answered composedly. She lifted a brow at Arslan.
He answered the question that she had seen no need to ask. “She was halfway down to the village,” he said. “But very safe, and careful not to get underneath the horses.”
Richildis heard a faint gasp behind her. Alia was more appalled than ever. Poor thing, she had never expected the likes of Zenobia.
Arslan, stronger of heart and stomach, claimed Zenobia back from her mother and set her crowing on a broad shoulder, and carried her into the keep. Richildis paused only long enough to see his escort set in order before she turned to follow.
* * *
It was odd and yet wonderful to guest her brother’s son as a man and a knight, a great lord’s heir and no longer a child. She could not help but remember him as he had been, steady dark eyes under the fringe of yellow hair, soft cheeks and small hands and a will that had been strong even in infancy. He had been, in fact, much like Zenobia.
Her dark curls lay against his breast, her thumb in her mouth and her eyes demurely shut, but she was perceptibly awake. Arslan held her in comfort, there in Richildis hall, with a cup of wine at his elbow and everyone in the castle, it seemed, finding duties within sight and sound of him.
He had grown up well. The yellow hair had darkened to a fair brown shot with gold like his father’s or like Richildis’ own. The eyes were sea-dark, sea-grey, and as steady as ever. There was a quiet in him, a calm that he had from his mother. His voice was soft and deep, deeper than his father’s. He could sing, Richildis had reason to know, but seldom did. He was not one for displays or poetry. The excesses of youthful ardor had always eluded him.
And yet, however avid ladies might be for troubadours, they seemed to find Arslan irresistible. His silence singled him out, his size and his easy grace. He was not particularly fair of face, and yet he was a beautiful creature, as a lion is. Prettier faces would fade. His would only grow stronger as he grew older. Richildis was suddenly, inordinately glad to see him here, to hear him telling tales from Jerusalem – so; he had not left it after all, but had lingered in his king’s company. “Baldwin is on his way north,” he said. “I’ve gone ahead of him, to visit my father before we all ride for Tripoli.”
Richildis raised a brow. “Tripoli?” she inquired.
“You’ve heard all the gossip, surely,” Arslan said, but without impatience.
“We’ve heard a great deal,” Michael Bryennius said. “All the way back to the failed Crusade. Raymond of Antioch dead in a bloody struggle at Murad, and his skull set in silver and sent to the Caliph in Baghdad. Joscelin of Edessa taken captive by reivers, taken in turn by the terrible Nur al-Din, blinded and locked away in Aleppo, and no hope of rescue ever, for all anyone knows or cares of him. Baldwin and the Templars riding to the aid of Antioch, and winning it back, too, and my own emperor buying with gold the remnants of fallen Edessa. Then of course there is the Princess Constance, Raymond’s grieving widow with her flock of children, refusing to wed any man that can be found for her, least of all the elderly Norman whom my emperor was so misguided as to send. Now if he had sent our cousin Andronikos the beautiful, her highness might well have been content.”
“The Princess Constance,” Arslan said with an air of ill-suppressed distaste, “like her mother, is a great lover of beauty in men.”
“A fact of which my emperor was insufficiently apprised,” said Michael Bryennius, no little blessed with beauty himself, but never minded to notice it. He sighed and shook his head. “Is she still brewing trouble, then?”
“Always,” Arslan said. He had disliked Constance from their childhood: one of the few people in the world for whom h
e seemed to have little use and less affection. She must have been cruel to him, as she could well be: she in her lofty rank and he but a fatherless child, foster-kin to a king.
“Still,” said Richildis. “If it’s Constance, then why is everyone going to Tripoli?”
“It’s Constance,” Arslan said, “but even before that, it’s Hodierna.”
“Ah,” said Richildis in sudden understanding.
Hodierna of Jerusalem, youngest but one of Melisende’s sisters, had been wedded years since to another Raymond, Count of Tripoli. This Raymond, unlike that one of Antioch, was very much alive and notoriously devoted to his wife. So devoted that, rumor had it, he kept her as close as any eastern woman, locked in a tower surrounded by women and eunuchs. No man entire was suffered near her, nor was she permitted to show her face where any stranger could see.
And yet for all her strict confinement, she was said to have found means to escape her husband’s vigilance. Raymond was a fair-haired man and Hodierna a fair-haired woman as all the daughters of the second Baldwin were, and yet her daughter – whom she had called Melisende after her queenly sister – was as dark as Richildis’ own Zenobia. Raven-dark and dark-eyed. Guardsman, halfblood squire, even infidel – who knew who the child’s father might have been? But it was little likely to be Hodierna’s properly wedded husband.
“Indeed,” said Arslan as if he had followed the track of Richildis’ thought. “The Lady Hodierna has begged her eldest sister to set her free from a man whom she calls, not discreetly, her jailer. Melisende and Baldwin are riding to Tripoli to try if they can to repair the marriage. They’ve summoned Constance, too, and such of the court as are inclined to attend them.”
“I never liked Raymond of Tripoli,” Richildis mused. “His father was more than a bit of a fool. Raymond is something perhaps worse. He’s said to have murdered a kinsman who might have laid claim to his domain – descendant of a legitimate heir as Raymond was sprung of bastard seed. We all know how jealous he is of his wife. Such passion is an ill thing in a ruler. It clouds his judgment.”
Arslan shrugged slightly. “He’s not loved in Jerusalem, but he’s not actively hated, either. The king and the queen mother want to avert a scandal if they can. If Hodierna can be persuaded to reconcile with her husband…”
“Ah yes,” Richildis said. “The world has seen enough scandal with the queen of France and her ill-made marriage.”
It was not obvious, but Richildis who knew Arslan saw how he tensed at the mention of Eleanor. He had always done that, and no less now that she was nigh on two years gone, than he had done when she was there in Outremer. He spoke steadily enough, a studied steadiness. “She’s still married to Louis by all accounts. She’s even had another daughter.”
“One does wonder how that could be,” Richildis said. “The priests must have prevailed on Louis and the princes on Eleanor, till they both surrendered. One night only, I’ll wager that, but it would have been enough.”
“And all for naught,” Arslan said, “as the lords of France would reckon it. They need a prince, not another princess.”
“Eleanor would have been glad,” said Richildis. “How she must have cursed her swelling womb, and prayed for a daughter, and thanked Mary Mother when the child was born. If it had been a son, she’d never have been free of her stick of a husband.”
“God must want her to do as she pleases,” Arslan said. “But Melisende – and Baldwin, for once agreeing with his mother – want no such division in their own family.”
“It can’t be done in any event,” Richildis pointed out. “God was kind enough to bless Hodierna with a son. He’s a squire by now, surely – old enough and to spare for that.”
“He’s twelve summers, I think,” Arslan said. “Not a great deal younger than Prince Amaury. They used to get on well, though they’ve not been together since before the Crusade.”
“And how is Amaury?” Richildis inquired. “Still vexing his brother with his adoring presence?”
Arslan laughed. “Yes, still haunting poor Baldwin at the most inopportune times. It’s good, Constable Manasses says, to see a younger brother so evidently fond of the elder. In Baldwin’s opinion, it’s a greater marvel if the elder brother can stand the sight of the younger.”
“And yet Baldwin would strangle anyone who spoke an ill word of Amaury.” Michael Bryennius was as amused as ever by the long battle between the brothers. “They’ll be friends in the end, once Amaury stops being a nuisance and grows into an ally. Who better after all than a brother, to understand one’s heart and mind?”
“A wife might do,” Richildis said a little wryly, “if all else failed.”
Michael Bryennius took her hand and kissed it. “And how many men are blessed to marry at their own will? Whereas a brother who shared the same womb – with him one has at least that common cause.”
Richildis could not contest that, whose own brother was both great joy and great exasperation.
“Sisters too,” Arslan said. “Queen Melisende and her sisters – they’re wondrous amiable with each other, though they’ll happily go to war with husbands, children, friends and infidels, all the world but their own four selves. Melisende does mean to convince Hodierna to suffer her husband, and Raymond to be a little less wildly jealous of any male who so much as casts a glance at her.”
“And Baldwin? Does he have any hopes of accomplishing such a thing?” asked Richildis.
Arslan paused, sighed. “Baldwin will do what he can with Raymond. It’s his duty as Christian and king.”
“Even though he loathes the man?”
“Even so.” Arslan sighed again. “I doubt even his own mother loved Count Raymond.”
“It’s said,” said Michael Bryennius, “that Count Raymond loves himself exceeding well, and that is all in the world that matters to him.”
Richildis shivered a little. She had been married in youth to a man she neither loved nor liked, but it had been tolerable, in the end. To be bound to a man whom she hated, or worse despised…
She had long grown out of the habit that noblewomen must cultivate, to accept one’s duty to one’s kin and one’s lands. All that duty was embodied here in this hall, and all her desire in the man who sat beside her with his fingers twined in hers. She shaped a quick prayer of thanks and protection from harm. All joy in this world was as fragile as a breath, and could be as brief.
She took refuge in that same noble duty which she had been spared in the choosing of a husband: calling the servants to order, seeing the tables laid, regaling her guest with a feast from the fields and the orchards of Mount Ghazal.
Seventy
They all rode to Tripoli through Beausoleil: even Zenobia and her nurses, Arslan and his escort, Baldwin, Helena, the whole of that kin and kind in Outremer. Past Acre they caught the rearguard of the royal train, passed on up through it till they joined with Baldwin and Melisende and their attendants and a goodly portion of the court. It was winter still, chill and lashed with storms, but they traveled in the warmth of good company, furs and woollens and curtained litters for the ladies.
Zenobia much preferred the chill of Arslan’s saddle to the musty comfort of her nurses’ litter, with stones warmed in the night’s fire for hands and feet. Richildis was no more willing to give up the wind in her face. It was wind off the sea, salt wind, lashed with spray. Exhilarating; deadly unless one were wise, scouring flesh from bone. Like this land that they rode through, both beautiful and perilous.
Tripoli was waiting for them, and in it the royal kin: the widowed Princess Constance and her four children, Hodierna and her son and the husband from whom she longed to be free. They exchanged greetings in the lamplit warmth of the hall, for outside it was sleeting; with dark no doubt it would turn to snow. Some of that chill lingered under the vaulted roof, between Hodierna and Raymond, and between Constance and the world.
Arslan remembered Hodierna from long ago, when she was a young princess in Jerusalem and he was a royal page. Sh
e was older now of course, no longer the lissome girl that she had been, but a rather too rich-bodied woman. Life in the harem did that to ladies in Islam, he had heard. The same appeared to be true of this lady of Tripoli. He was somewhat amazed to see her here in hall, sitting as a Frankish lady would sit, at the high table some distance from her lord. But he could hardly lock her away in the presence of her kin.
Raymond watched her always, even when he seemed to be intent on someone else: taut, wary, as the hawk watches its prey. If she stirred toward a man, he stiffened. If she laughed, his own lips tightened. He looked a little mad.
It was rather a pity, Arslan thought, that he had not been matched with Princess Constance. The infinitely jealous man would have been well wedded to the perpetually sullen woman. She carried her air of injury as if it were a chain of fine gold, polished and cherished till it gleamed.
Her children were as ill-tempered as she, though the boy, yet another Bohemond, looked as if he would have known how to laugh if his mother had not hovered so close. Later, maybe, Arslan would discover if the child needed a playmate. Zenobia was old for her years and adept already at coaxing smiles out of scowling faces.
Arslan did not mean to do it himself, but he was there and trying to be inconspicuous, and Princess Constance’s eye caught him somewhere in the middle of the welcoming feast. She did not merely smile. She simpered.
And did she know, he wondered, that he was the bastard child whom she had so despised when she was younger? She must; everybody knew the heir of Beausoleil.
Indeed. He was the heir of Beausoleil. No one called him bastard to his face, or behind his back, either.
It made him faintly ill. Women had courted him before, and not always young ones. They who must marry for the good of their lands and kin were eager to find a man who was both young and presentable. That Arslan had prospects of his own only made him the more appealing. So many of the men in Outremer were younger sons, impoverished knights, even criminals sent to atone for their sins by defending the Holy Sepulcher.
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