Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  He was a fool. Melisende kept to her chambers, to be sure; but her allies came and went in notable numbers. Soon enough – before the week was out – Baldwin had summoned a council of the kingdom, to defend what he had done and to plead his cause.

  “Let him plead,” said Melisende in something like satisfaction. “Let him see how ill he has wrought.”

  * * *

  Baldwin did not look like a fool or a child as he stood up in front of the assembly of Jerusalem. He was a tall man and proud, holding his head high under the crown that Fulk had worn before him, and Baldwin, and Baldwin again, and Godfrey of Lorraine who led the first Crusade. He spoke clearly and levelly, speaking of the law that made a son his father’s heir, and citing precedents for the handing over of regencies.

  Melisende sat her throne as she had throughout her regency, crowned, clad in cloth of gold. She did not move, nor did she interrupt while he spoke. She maintained a royal dignity. She was not displaced or deposed, nor could she be without the consent of this council.

  Baldwin labored to win it. “The law is clear,” he said. “I am of age. I am my father’s son, the heir of his body. I have proved my fitness in this council and in the field of war. Will you accept me as your rightful king?”

  “It seems,” said Manasses the Constable, “that you have taken matters into your own hands.”

  “I had no choice,” Baldwin said. “The crowning that was to be – it would have continued the regency in all but name, and made her my equal in the ruling of this kingdom. Neither law nor nature would favor such a course. Yet you would have allowed it. Would you not?”

  Manasses glanced at Melisende. Her face was still. “She rules well,” he said, “and has ruled long.”

  “And now,” said Baldwin, “it is time that she gave up the rule. It was never hers except in trust for me.”

  Then at last Melisende spoke. “I was the eldest child of a king,” she said, “his heir who was born to rule after him.”

  “But a woman does not rule,” Baldwin said, “save in a man’s name.”

  “And why is that?” she asked. “Do you know? Does anyone?”

  “God’s law—” Baldwin began.

  “God’s law,” said Melisende, “is less than precise. There is nothing that ordains that a queen and heir must give way before a child whose only right resides in the fact of his sex.”

  “I am no longer a child,” Baldwin said.

  “That is a matter of debate,” she said.

  “Only to you,” he said, “madam.” He drew a breath as if to master his temper; said with studied quiet, “Lady, it is time. You must let go.”

  “I will not,” she said.

  “Will you divide the kingdom? Will you give the infidel cause to laugh, and to hurl his armies against us?”

  Her eyes narrowed. Her face was white. Then at last she let them all see her anger. “It was not I who took refuge in a lie, and had myself crowned by force. If there is to be division, there it began. Not with me.”

  There would be no peace between them. Not while she persisted in her obstinacy. And yet, Arslan thought, the council seemed not to see it. The older lords and barons, the knights who had fought for the Holy Sepulcher since before Baldwin was born, could not but remember how long she had ruled and how well she had done it. Arslan could hardly deny that. But the kingship was Baldwin’s, and it was well past time for him to take it.

  Power was a heady thing, as strong as wine. And like wine, in some it roused such a craving that they could only drink and drink, nor ever have their fill of it.

  Melisende had drunk deep of ruling the kingdom. She could not give it up. And the council could not refuse her. Those who were hers, who had been hers for years out of count, could no more let her go than she could give up her queenship. They loved her. She had a gift for that; she cultivated it, as any wise ruler should do. She had only to smile at this one, exchange glances with that, invoke memories of councils long past, choices made, wars won and the kingdom preserved through her wisdom.

  Against that, Baldwin could set the debacle of Crusade, his presence there at the head of the army, the suffering that he had shared. But he was young. To some, as to his mother, he was still a child.

  “And what is wrong,” a doddering fool of a baron asked, “with a queen ruling at home while the king rides to war? Hasn’t it served us well? Can’t it continue?”

  “A king does not always ride to war,” said a voice from close by Baldwin: Humphrey of Toron who had ridden in those wars, too, and seen both the victories and the defeat. “Indeed he should undertake to avoid war, to preserve the peace and prosperity of the kingdom. His majesty would like to be free to do that; to rule unimpeded by the interference of a regent.”

  “That regent is his mother,” the old baron said. “Has he no respect for her? Does he forget the duty of a son?”

  “She forgets the duty of a regent,” Humphrey said. “Come, my lord, open your eyes and see. We have a king. It’s time we let him rule.”

  But the old baron did not wish to see. Melisende he knew; Melisende he remembered from long ago. Baldwin was young, tried in war but not in the arts of peace. So he argued. So did a distressing number of the rest – lords of Jerusalem and Nablus; and lords of Jaffa, though Amaury the prince, who held the title Count of Jaffa, stood beside his brother and spoke for him. Melisende ignored him as she would a fractious child, spoke calmly past him, called his own vassals to stand beside her.

  Amaury regarded her in anger and misery, but if she noticed, she made no mention of it. If Baldwin at two and twenty was too young to be reckoned fit to rule, Amaury at fifteen was a helpless infant.

  Arslan watched the kingdom split in two. All the southern lords spoke for Melisende. Those of the north held firm for Baldwin. They were shouting before they were done, and coming close to blows.

  None of them was Bertrand. Arslan had not seen or heard from him since the night before Baldwin had himself crowned. He had not gone to Beausoleil: Arslan would have known. He was in Jerusalem, then, but not at this council. Not accepting compulsion. Not making the choice that for everyone else seemed so easy.

  They broke the kingdom apart. The south they gave to Melisende, the north to Baldwin, each to hold as sole and uncontested ruler. They reckoned it a fair division. Yet Melisende held Jerusalem, and therefore the Holy Sepulcher for which the Crusade had first been fought. She held Nablus; she held Jaffa in despite of its Count. Nothing that Baldwin held was of such consequence – or of such strength and wealth. She had the royal part, he the embattled fortresses, the brunt of the war against the infidel.

  He laughed after, not too bitter in the circumstances. “And isn’t it the same as ever?” he said to the gathering of his friends. “I do the fighting, she sits in comfort with the scepter oh so heavy in her hand.”

  “You could,” someone said, “consider a reconciliation. If you addressed her face to face—”

  “Should I?” Baldwin put on wide-eyed innocence, but with a twist at the bottom of it. “Should I wrangle with her in private as I have in council? What would be the profit in that?”

  “A mother,” the knight said. “A son—”

  “A queen,” said Baldwin, “who resents that she must give way before a king.” He shook his head. “No. I’ve said all I’ll say to her. I’m for the north, my lords. Who’ll follow me?”

  * * *

  Before Arslan took the northward road with the king, he went looking for his father.

  Bertrand had made no attempt to hide himself. Nor had he appeared in court. Of all the barons in Jerusalem, few had made so bold as to remain in the city yet to refuse the choice of king or queen. Melisende was said to be unhappy with him, but she had done nothing to punish him. No more had Baldwin.

  Bertrand was in his own house going over accounts with the house-steward when Arslan came in search of him. He finished what he was doing, nor offered apology for keeping a guest waiting. The guest, after all, was only his so
n.

  At length however he was done, and Guibert had gone away with his rolls and his ledgers. Bertrand ordered in wine, offered Arslan a cup. Arslan took it to be courteous; and indeed his mouth was dry.

  “You leave tomorrow, then,” Bertrand said after a while.

  Arslan nodded.

  Bertrand turned his cup in his hands. “Is he asking me to go with him?”

  “No,” said Arslan.

  Bertrand raised his brows. “Did he ask you to come here?”

  “No,” Arslan said again.

  “Then why?”

  “Because,” said Arslan. “I needed to know – will you forgive me? Because I go with him?”

  “Do you believe that calls for forgiveness?”

  “I am your son,” Arslan said, “and your heir. If Beausoleil owes fealty to the queen, and I follow the king…”

  “Did you ask my leave to be his messenger before he had himself crowned alone? Why ask it now?”

  Arslan could not meet his father’s eyes. They were too level; too burning strong. “I didn’t want to leave,” he said, “without your blessing. If you are willing to give it.”

  “And why should I not be?”

  Arslan looked up. Did Bertrand flinch a little? They had the same eyes, people said. Maybe his own were as potent as his father’s. “This could turn to civil war. I’m the king’s man; I can’t be otherwise. If you stay here, you’ll be with the queen. This that I do, you could call treason.”

  Bertrand shook his head. He looked and sounded ineffably weary. “No,” he said. “No. I know, none better, whom you must follow. I would be a fool to expect that you would do otherwise, and mad to demand it.”

  “Some fathers would,” Arslan said.

  Bertrand smiled faintly. “I was never the best of fathers, was I?”

  “Better than some,” said Arslan.

  “You have my blessing,” Bertrand said after a pause, “and with it my goodwill. We’ll meet again in court at Pentecost.”

  That was farewell. And what else had Arslan expected? Not, certainly, to feel so strangely sad, as if they parted forever and not simply for the season between one court and the next.

  They embraced as was proper, as father and son should do. If they held a little longer than usual, gripped a little tighter, neither remarked on it. Arslan had left his father before to serve the king, but never with such a wrench as this.

  Nonetheless he did it, let go and walked away, nor looked back once he had passed the door.

  Seventy-Six

  “This is untenable.”

  Baldwin was in a rare temper. He had come to Banias in the course of the summer’s campaign, riding the borders from north to south and fending off an unwonted number of incursions from the infidel. Islam knew that the Frankish kingdom was divided, and was taking full advantage of it.

  Fighting Baldwin knew, and did; and he had men enough for the purpose. But here in Banias where the cares of the kingdom had caught up with him, he found himself bound hand and foot by the want of Jerusalem.

  He glared at his chancellor’s account-books as if he yearned to smite them with a sword. “The chancery is in Jerusalem,” he said, mocking the mincing accent of a Court dandy from that city. “The records are in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem are the treasuries. Whatever we have need of, wherever we are when we need it, its source is in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem belongs to her. I can’t use it but by her leave. And to ask that…” He spat. “Damn her. Damn the Court that gave as much to her as she ever had, and flung me the bones.”

  “And left you all the defense of the kingdom, too,” Arslan observed, draping himself over a chair. The solar here at Banias was beautifully appointed in the eastern style, but there were chairs to sit on rather than divans or heaps of carpets: a Frankish contribution, and rather more comfortable than not.

  Baldwin snarled, perhaps at Arslan, perhaps at the ledgers that told him all the same tale. “I need Jerusalem,” he said. “It’s the heart’s core of the kingdom. I can’t rule without it.”

  “So take it back,” Arslan said.

  Baldwin erupted to his feet. Arslan thought he might strike, but his mind was on something else. “You! You think it’s that simple?”

  “I don’t think it’s simple at all,” said Arslan. “But it appears to be necessary. You’ve done what you can to keep the north together, to keep your armies paid and in the field. It’s not enough.”

  “No,” said Baldwin, “it’s not. But she won’t grant me anything I ask, you know that. If I ask for Jerusalem, she’ll only laugh. She knows as well as I that there’s no power in this title without the city to support it.”

  “So insist.”

  “That means war,” Baldwin said.

  Arslan bent his head a fraction.

  “Your father has been seen in court,” Baldwin said, “beside her. Do you know that?”

  “I know. I heard.” Arslan said it with no great pain. It had been inevitable when Bertrand lingered in Jerusalem, that in the end he would go where his heart led him. Fond as he might ever have been of Baldwin, he had been the queen’s man from his youth. One did not forget such a thing, or set it aside with either ease or comfort.

  “Will you fight him, then? If it comes to that?”

  Arslan shrugged: shifted his shoulders, that ached with sudden tension. “I will do whatever is necessary. It may not come to a battle.”

  “Pray God it doesn’t. The infidel will be on us as fast as he can ride, and do what he can to destroy us.”

  “And he’s doing just that now, while we’re divided.”

  “Such a dilemma,” Baldwin said a little bitterly. “I had a letter from my brother this morning. He’d rebel if he could – if I would let him. But he’s too young.”

  Arslan said nothing. What he was thinking did not bear repeating. That this war between mother and son was neither seemly nor sensible. That one of them must give way before the kingdom fell. And that they were too truly of the same kin: headstrong, haughty, unwilling and unable to yield.

  * * *

  Baldwin could not defend the kingdom, either half of it, without the strength of Jerusalem. Melisende would not cede the city to him. “Ask,” her messenger said, “and you shall receive whatever you need in order to drive back the infidel. But she rules in her own city. She will not give it up.”

  “Then I will take it,” Baldwin said; and called his armies together and advanced southward from Banias toward the heart of the realm. He did not come in war unless one wished to perceive it so. He was the King of Jerusalem, was he not? Might he not return to that city with his men? They were weary with the long season’s campaign. They would be happy to rest amid the holy places.

  * * *

  “Lies,” said Melisende, and strengthened the fortifications of both Jerusalem and Nablus, arming them against their own king.

  Richildis would have hidden herself in Mount Ghazal till it was over, but she had never been able to muster so much sense. Better in the heart of things, she told herself, than shut away where she could not know what would become of the kingdom: whether it bowed to king or queen, both or neither, and the infidel waiting like a vulture for its prey to finish dying.

  Michael Bryennius had gone away to Constantinople to see to some affair of his family’s that needed the eldest son present and speaking for himself. Richildis would go there with Zenobia before the winter’s storms stirred the sea; but she had insisted that she remain at least through the summer, till matters were settled between Melisende and her son. She did not know why she was so stubborn. She had not been parted from her husband since they were wedded. She had no good reason to let him go now.

  Except that she was a baroness of this kingdom, and it was divided against itself. She could not run away from that.

  In the mornings she woke to a lonely bed. In the evenings after Zenobia had gone to sleep in her own chamber with her nurse to keep her company, Richildis sat alone, sometimes with a book, more often with her thoug
hts and her memory of her husband. It was sinful to miss him so; to yearn for the touch of his hand, the warmth of his body beside hers.

  The days between the lonely hours, she spent in attendance on the queen. Melisende had taken a personal interest in the fortification of Jerusalem: unwonted for her, to walk the walls and converse with soldiers. She had always, like a proper queen, left such things to her Constable.

  But this was her own city, and she would protect it even against its king.

  Richildis did not know her any longer. When the news came to her of Baldwin’s coronation without her knowledge or assistance, something in her had broken or turned sour. The warmth that had always been part of her, that made her seem sunlit even in grey winter, had faded and grown cold. She was sharp with everyone, short-tempered even in court, where she had been noted for her equanimity.

  She should be content. She had the best part of the kingdom, the greater quantity of its wealth and the heart of its power. Yet it gnawed at her: that her son had betrayed her, that the kingdom was divided and the north turned against her.

  Out of that bitterness she drew the determination to fight and not to yield. “He is my enemy,” she said. “How can he be anything else? He turned against me. He defied my will. He made himself king in despite of me.”

  “And what did you expect?” Richildis dared to ask her. “He’s young, high-hearted, seasoned in war – he wants to be king as he was born to be.”

  “I was born to rule before him,” Melisende said.

  “The world will contest you,” said Richildis, “in the end.”

  “Not if I stand fast,” said Melisende. “Men are cowards, don’t you see? And so are women, most of them. A woman who is bold, who takes that is hers, who refuses to let it be taken from her – she wins the victory. Who can oppose her? No one has the strength to try.”

  “Baldwin might,” Richildis said, but Melisende was not listening. She listened to very little these days, except her own will and the messengers who brought word of Baldwin’s advance.