Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

“You are king,” she said. “We were crowned side by side in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”

  “I was crowned in my minority, with you as regent over me. I ask now that I be king indeed. No regency. No power higher than my own.”

  “God is higher than any of us,” said Melisende.

  Arslan watched Baldwin refuse to give way to her mockery. For it was that, however gently she uttered it. “I will be crowned again,” he said to her. “This time I will be granted the full extent of my right and privilege. I will no longer be subject to the approval of a regent.”

  Melisende drew a breath. The court listened avidly, as Baldwin had intended. She could not but know that he had trapped her; that she could hardly refuse him on any grounds that he or the court would accept.

  She took it in good part, as a woman of long experience in the acceptance of defeat. “Very well,” she said. “Is Easter soon enough? Lent is an ill time for crowning kings. On the high feast we will take crown and throne, you and I – you as king in fact as well as name, and I as before, who were born the heir of the King of Jerusalem.”

  “Lady,” Baldwin said very quietly, “I am the heir of Jerusalem’s king.”

  “Fulk gained his title through me,” she said. “As have you.”

  Baldwin opened his mouth as if to protest, but chose the virtue of silence. He shut his mouth, bowed, retreated.

  * * *

  Richildis had not been present in court, but she was in the city, and in attendance on the queen after morning court. She had heard enough to know what had been said and not said, and to form an opinion of it.

  Michael Bryennius would have told her that silence was more than wise; it was blessed. But she was seldom minded to be as discreet as that. As she helped Melisende out of her court robes and into a gown more suitable for an afternoon in the solar, she said, “You should let go.”

  Melisende glanced at her. “What? I’ve nothing in my hand.”

  She was being deliberately obtuse. Richildis resolved not to snap, not to be any more foolish than she had been already. “Lady, you know what I’m speaking of. From the time you took this regency, you’ve known that it would end when your son was old enough to rule alone. He’s been old enough, as he says, for a fair number of years now.”

  “I am still,” said Melisende, too soft almost to hear, “and always have been the heir to this kingdom. Any right that he has, he has through me.”

  “A king supersedes a queen,” Richildis said, “even when that queen is his elder.”

  Dangerous, that; not deadly perhaps, but perilous enough. Richildis held Mount Ghazal by grant and by grace of the queen’s goodwill. If she lost that, she well could lose her barony.

  Yet she had to say what was in her to say. She could not keep silent.

  Melisende did not at once cast her out. “Do you contend that a queen of years and experience, a spirit honed in the battles of courts, should yield to the fecklessness of a callow boy?”

  “Certainly not,” Richildis said. “Yet he is neither feckless nor callow, and he ceased to be a boy some while since. He’s proved himself well in the wars. When you’ve allowed him, he’s given wise counsel in court and in judgment. He’s a son to be proud of, and he promises to be a good king – maybe even a great one.”

  “Of course he does,” said Melisende. “He’s my son. He’ll be king in fact as in name, come Easter day. Is there anything more that he could ask for?”

  “You’ll be crowned with him,” Richildis said.

  “As queen beside him, not as regent above him.”

  Richildis shook her head. “Lady, it’s not done. You know it. When a regency ends, the regent—”

  “The regent,” Melisende said with bitter clarity, “puts away her crown and her robes and her pretensions, creeps off quietly to some convenient cloister, and forgets that she was ever a ruler of men. Yes, I know how it is commonly done. Even I might do it, if I were not who I am. I am Baldwin’s daughter of Jerusalem. My father was a king. I was his eldest child. I was born to rule this kingdom.”

  “And so you have,” Richildis said, “since your husband died.”

  “And you would ask me to give it up? To walk away? To forget?”

  “Not I,” said Richildis. “The world – the law—”

  “Damn the world! Damn the law!” Melisende looked just then as she had when she was young, years of care and queenship stripped away. “I’ll die when I die. He can have it all then, like any king’s heir. Isn’t it enough that I’ll let him rule beside me? I could blind him and lock him in a tower, or dispose of him altogether. But I’m too soft for that. Too foolishly fond.”

  Richildis looked at her in silence. Queens, and most great ladies for the matter of that, did not cherish their children as simpler women did. Nurses raised them, tutors had the teaching of them. They belonged to the kingdom, not to any earthly kin.

  Melisende had never had any great use for her sons, even after they grew old enough to be conversable. Richildis tried to understand it. But she who loved her children with a fierce white heat, and mourned even yet those who had died, could find nothing in her to answer to Melisende’s coldness.

  Melisende went on, blissfully unaware of Richildis’ maundering. “We’ll be crowned together. He’ll have what he’s yearning for, and I’ll keep what is mine. He can’t quarrel with that.”

  “He might try,” Richildis said, but under her breath, where Melisende could hear or not as she chose.

  Seventy-Three

  Preparations for Baldwin’s coronation proceeded apace. He suffered through the fitting of the robes. He committed to memory the words that he would say, the things that he would do in the rite. He walked through the steps with his mother, saw where she would stand, watched as she pretended to take the crown upon her head. He said no word but what the ceremony required, nor offered more than barest courtesy.

  She ignored him. He was a child, her manner said. He sulked. Children did. He would come round once he had what he wanted.

  He saw that perfectly clearly. It whitened his lips and made him breathe a fraction harder when he stood in her presence. When he was out of it, he said nothing. Not one word.

  On the night before he was to be crowned, Baldwin was permitted an hour alone between the daymeal and his night’s vigil in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. His mother had shared the one but would forgo the other. She would keep her own vigil in her own chapel, and in greater comfort, too.

  Arslan meant to leave the king to himself, but as he retreated from the chamber in which Baldwin was resting, Baldwin said, “No. Stay.”

  Arslan hesitated. “I really shouldn’t—”

  “I don’t want to be alone,” said Baldwin.

  Arslan raised his brows. “Afraid?”

  Baldwin shook his head. “No. Not of that. Of…” He hesitated.

  Arslan leaned on the door that he had not quite gone so far as to open, and folded his arms, and settled to wait.

  Baldwin saw: his eyes glinted briefly before he lost himself in his troubles again. It was some time before he said, “I want to do a thing, and I’m not sure I dare.”

  “What, tell your mother she can’t be queen?”

  Baldwin looked startled. “How did you – that’s not—” He stopped, began again. “How do I do such a thing? She has allies everywhere. She’s older, stronger, more deeply settled in the people’s hearts.”

  “But you,” said Arslan, “are the rightful king.”

  “Will that matter if she calls out her forces?”

  Arslan had to pause, to think about that. “I think,” he said slowly, “that you should count the number of your friends. It’s much higher than you may believe.”

  “How? Shall I go out with a lamp like the old philosopher, and search for an honest man?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Arslan said. “Count the ones you know. The northern barons have always been more yours than hers. Now reckon who’s been seeking you out of late, who’s been st
anding by you in court, and who’s been asking to ride or hunt or play at draughts with you. I’ve been noticing. She has her loyal few, her women and priests, and of course Manasses and his familiars. But who else? Only a few aging barons. Everyone else is either keeping to himself or finding excuses to bear you company.”

  “It’s not—” Baldwin stopped. “How can it be? I’ve done nothing.”

  “Nothing,” said Arslan, “but grown into a man who can lead men. People saw how you conducted yourself on that botch of a Crusade. They saw your mother, too, safe in Jerusalem. They reflected even then that a woman can hold a regency, but in a warrior kingdom, among men of war, it is a man who must rule.”

  “She will never let go,” Baldwin muttered.

  “Then you must shake her loose.”

  “That’s what I want to do,” said Baldwin. “But I don’t know if I can. If enough lords will follow me once I begin.”

  “What will you do?” Arslan asked, patiently he thought, but Baldwin shot him a look.

  “What I would like,” Baldwin said, “is to trick her. She’ll never give way for anything I do. But if I become suddenly ill, ill enough that I can’t be crowned tomorrow…”

  “And then,” said Arslan, “you gather a company of men whom you can trust, snatch the Patriarch out of his bed, and have yourself crowned before she knows what you’ve done.”

  “Why do I bother to say anything to you?” Baldwin asked, half of the air. “You always know what I’m thinking.”

  “You’re as transparent as glass,” Arslan said calmly. “It doesn’t take a witch or a seer to know what you’re up to.”

  “Then,” said Baldwin, “she or her advisors – they can see it, too.”

  “I don’t think so,” Arslan said. “Remember, I shared a cradle with you. I know what you’ll do, most times, before you know it yourself. None of them has any knowledge of you, not like that.”

  “Lord Bertrand does,” Baldwin said, very low.

  Arslan’s heart began to pound. His hands had clenched into fists. Yet he said, “How do you know he won’t choose to follow you?”

  “He was my mother’s knight,” Baldwin said, “long before he was mine. He’s never sworn himself to me, you know. Always to the queen, or to both of us together.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Do you?”

  They both were silent, in a sort of impasse. Arslan did not want to say that he mistrusted his father, the man whose heir he was, who had taught him much of what he knew. And yet…

  Arslan said slowly, “If we leave him out of this he’ll never forgive us. Yet if he’s the queen’s man in the end – he’ll never forgive us for telling him.”

  Baldwin nodded. He frowned, troubled. “If he is mine, then I have the strength of his reputation behind me, his power and his respect in the kingdom; and he’ll say no word of what I’ll do until it’s done. If he’s my mother’s, there’s nothing he can do but betray me to her. Honor demands no less.”

  “Honor is a horned and taloned thing,” Arslan said.

  “I think,” Baldwin said, dragging out the words, “that we must tell him. Right before I do it.”

  A bark of laughter escaped from Arslan. “Too late for him to run to the queen? He’ll be livid!”

  “I can pray he’ll understand,” Baldwin said.

  Arslan could only nod. There was no simple way to do what Baldwin purposed to do; not with such a mother as he had. Unnatural, some would call her. Arslan reckoned her simply unwilling to accept the way of the world. None of the daughters of Baldwin of Le Bourg had any talent for submission.

  Arslan wondered sometimes what their mother had been like, the legendary and long-dead Morphia of Melitene. Armenian women were not known for their strength of will, nor was Morphia ever spoken of except with reverence, as everything that a queen should be. Yet her children had grown up like a pride of lionesses.

  * * *

  On the eve of his coronation, Baldwin became suddenly and rather drastically indisposed. The physician who saw him was well paid to acknowledge the indisposition but not the cause of it: a dose of emetic strong enough to be thoroughly convincing.

  It was also strong enough to lay him flat for a fact, all of Easter Sunday and much of the night thereafter. He had meant the coronation for the morning of Easter Monday, but though much improved, he was in no condition to seize the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Patriarch in it, and force that worthy prelate to set the crown on his head. He cursed roundly the impulse that had led him to take too generous a dose, but even in midcurse he fled snarling for the garderobe.

  Arslan was careful not to laugh at him. He would be well on the morrow, Yusuf the physician said – not the one who had been paid to keep silent; Yusuf had been encouraged to take a holiday, and had come back too late to help or hinder the taking of the dose. It was clear what he thought of that, but physicians from Baghdad were nothing if not discreet. He fed the king a potion that, he said so nastily that even Baldwin believed him, would counter the emetic; imposed on him a diet of bread sopped in goat’s milk; and departed in clearly evident disgust.

  Sick as he was, Baldwin had sent out messages to those barons whom he trusted, bidding them attend him in Holy Sepulcher in the morning. His most loyal guards were ready, waiting to seize the Patriarch, and standing watch over the Patriarch’s palace lest he take it into his head to depart from Jerusalem in the night. Some few watched the queen as well, but in secret lest she catch wind of it, keeping away any who might have whispered a betrayal.

  Among those summoned was the Lord Bertrand of Beausoleil. Arslan had hoped in rather cowardly fashion that Bertrand would depart for his demesne at the close of Easter Court. But Bertrand lingered as many did, taking his ease in his house in Jerusalem, keeping company with the Lady Helena, visiting with his sister and her husband and their daughter. All things that he would do whenever it pleased him, but now served less well than ill. If he had been on the road home, there might have been ways to see that he heard nothing of Baldwin’s intent until it was well over.

  As it was, Arslan was invited to dinner in the evening. He did not want to go, nor did Baldwin command him; but the king asked, courteously, that he do it. “And when it’s over,” Baldwin said, “tell him.”

  “I should make you do it,” Arslan muttered. Baldwin, still slightly green about the edges, looked ready to agree – it would have been a reprieve from confinement. Arslan escaped before either of them could do something foolish. It was foolish enough that they should be contemplating this thing, this defiance of the queen’s will.

  * * *

  Arslan got through dinner somehow. They were all there, even Zenobia, though she went fretfully to bed before the wine went round. Arslan would have been glad to carry her off and hide in her chamber, but he had a duty to perform. Best to get it over.

  The wine was good, a new cask from La Forêt. Its quality had much improved over the years. Richildis said as much, sipping slowly and with pleasure. “Lady Agnes has worked wonders with the vineyard,” she said. “See how well the wine travels now. Do you think, my love, that there might be a prospect of trade in it?”

  Michael Bryennius shrugged a little. “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not a large vineyard; much of what it sells, it sells in France.”

  “But,” said Helena, “as a luxury – a cask here, a jar there, presented only to princes and prelates: the price could go as high as any of us might wish, and well repay the trouble of transporting it from Anjou.”

  “Such tradesmen you all are,” Bertrand said, but smiling as he said it. “You aren’t thinking as a nobleman should think. It’s fine wine and no mistake. Given as gifts to kings and their familiars, it would make a name for itself without any taint of trade.”

  “Nor any taint of money, either,” Helena said. “Where’s the profit in that?”

  “Why, a great deal,” said Bertrand, “if those who received the gift grew fond of the flavor of it, and went looking for
more, and bought a jar or a cask direct from La Forêt – and themselves paid to transport it.”

  “That,” Helena said, “is perfectly splendid.”

  Bertrand grinned at her, cocky as a boy, and toasted them all with a fresh-filled cup.

  None of them appeared to notice that Arslan was being quiet. He usually was when they gathered so, watching and listening and being vastly entertained.

  Tonight he was in no mood to enjoy their badinage. The wine was fine indeed, but it sat sour in his stomach. Baldwin might expect him to take Bertrand aside and address him in confidence, but there had never been great secrets among the five of them.

  This one…

  Richildis was Melisende’s lady. Of that Arslan had no doubt at all. She had had little to do with Baldwin, had shown him such goodwill as a lady might who attended his mother, but there was no more between them than that. If Arslan told her now what Baldwin meant to do in the morning, Richildis would go with it to Melisende.

  Yet Baldwin had all but commanded him to pass word to Bertrand, of whose loyalty neither of them was certain. The longer he waited, the more difficult it became.

  Salvation came in the shape of a fractious and very noisy Zenobia. Both women went to contend with her, Richildis out of duty, Helena because, she professed, the wine was going to her head; she felt a need to rise and move about.

  Michael Bryennius accompanied the women. Perhaps he sensed something of Arslan’s need. Perhaps he simply trusted in his own ability to soothe his daughter’s temper.

  Bertrand forbore to follow the rest. He looked gloriously comfortable, sprawled amid cushions in the eastern fashion, long legs stretched out, winecup in hand. Of the wound that he had taken in the Crusade, nothing remained save an occasional catch in his side: a pause, a slight paling about the lips, a moment to recover before he went on with what he was doing. He was no greyer, if no less; undiminished by the years, still a tall broad man with the bearing of one who had known the arts of knighthood from his youth. Baldwin would look like him, Arslan reflected, when he advanced into middle years. So would Arslan, for the matter of that. People were always remarking on how closely he resembled his father.