Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  He neither slowed nor turned aside. He came straight on. If it was a feint, it was both strong and unflinching.

  No more would Melisende flag in her determination to resist him. Her cities were strong, prepared for siege. Her people…

  It was slow at first: a knight or two, a baron of a minor holding, a lord who by age and inclination was more easily disposed to follow a man than a woman. The priests were hers – not for nothing had she spent her widowhood in piety and in fostering of convents. But the lords and the knights saw a young king riding toward them in the panoply of war; looked to the queen and saw a woman, still beautiful but no longer young, who had never led an army, never fought with lance and sword in defense of the Holy Sepulcher. They were men; they thought as men think. They turned from her to the king who rode against her.

  * * *

  Baldwin had begun the march in some secret trepidation, bound by will and necessity, but as it went on with no sign of opposition, his doubts faded to vanishing. The more antic of his knights wanted to make it a grand triumphal progress, but he would not go so far. Not quite yet. They were still in the north, after all; still on lands that were by treaty his.

  But with each day they marched, the southern realm drew closer. Came at last a day when they passed indubitably into lands held by Melisende and her vassals, that paid no fealty to Baldwin as king.

  And no one stopped him. No army waited to bar his way. The roads were clear. Travelers on them walked wide round the king’s troops, kept heads down and eyes on the road, nor offered him either aid or hindrance.

  “She’s pulled in her horns,” said Humphrey of Toron in camp, their first evening in the queen’s lands. “She’ll protect the cities but she’ll leave the rest to fend for themselves.”

  “She was always a creature of cities,” Baldwin said. “Still, one would think the Constable would have something to say. I’d thought to find him with a flaming sword, guarding the gates of the south.”

  “We’ll send scouts,” Humphrey said. “If he’s out there, we’ll know it.”

  Baldwin nodded. “Do that,” he said. “Do it quickly.”

  * * *

  Manasses was, after all, on the march with an army – but slowly, as if he too had been unable to believe that Baldwin would do as he threatened. Manasses was hardly a day’s march out of Jerusalem, aiming toward his own fief of Mirabel. Perhaps he meant only to pause there before he went on into the north.

  “Oh, he grows old,” Baldwin said when he heard that, “and he grows careless, who of all people should know what I can do when I put my mind to it.”

  Baldwin had become a king. He had always been one, Arslan knew that, but somehow on this too-little-impeded march, he had grown into his title. He was surer, firmer, more arrogant indeed, but as a king needs to be if he is to rule with either strength or grace. If he had doubts, he did not express them, even to Arslan.

  “We march,” he said, “in haste, to Mirabel. Let us be there soon after him.”

  “Not before?” one of his knights asked.

  “No,” said Baldwin. “Let him settle in comfort in his own castle, and think us far away. We’ll surprise him.”

  Grins flashed round the circle of his council. Young men most of them, a little reckless, and no love in them for the queen or her creatures: they would be glad to make a mockery of the queen’s most loyal man.

  Arslan was not greatly fond of Manasses. The man had always been Melisende’s, nor had time or loyalty to spare for her son and heir. Still Arslan could not fault a man for keeping faith. Arslan’s father had done no less.

  What Baldwin thought, Arslan did not know. He sat in the midst of them, smiling slightly, while messengers ran to prepare the army for the march. They had only paused on the road from the sea, stopped to eat and rest and take counsel while scouts brought in word from the south. There were hours yet to alter their direction, firm their purpose, advance swiftly and as secretly as possible toward Mirabel.

  For Manasses’ sake and for that of his spies, Baldwin sent a portion of his army toward Nablus, instructing it to turn back before it reached the city and come to Mirabel. Such might not be necessary, might not even be wise, but Baldwin commanded it in kingly certainty. This was war, and in war Baldwin had always been quicker of wit than the common run of men.

  Then with the greater part of his army Baldwin made haste toward the Constable’s demesne. It was a march like any other in war, swift but circumspect. As they drew nearer Mirabel, scouts were instructed to capture and hold any who might bring word to Manasses. Too few of them regretted the necessity; but necessity it was. The sooner this was ended, the better for all of them; the less likelihood of the infidel’s attacking them from behind.

  * * *

  Mirabel was a small demesne, but strong. It warded the pass between the mountains of Samaria and the dense thickets and fens of the River Yarqon. The road that ran through it, ran from Jerusalem to the sea. Battles had been fought here, kings and rebels risen and fallen on the strength of its strongholds.

  Manasses of Hierges was lord of a castle set on the eastern hill, and of a small fortress on the west that was called the Tower of the Deaf Springs. No one knew why it was called that, nor at the moment overmuch cared. Baldwin took it by surprise and with hardly a blow struck, its little garrison caught with its breeches down: half the men fuddled with their morning ale, and their sergeant actually in the garderobe. He ran out in his tunic with his braies unlaced and slipping down, to find himself face to face with the king’s vanguard. He had to surrender in that condition, with the king’s men offering ribald commentary.

  Manasses himself had time for greater dignity, and to shut and bar his castle against the army. He stood on the walls, a still and faceless figure in his great helm, as Baldwin came up below. “Surrender!” Baldwin called up to him. “Surrender and be free.”

  “No,” he said. Nor would he yield, as the king’s army made camp about his walls.

  Baldwin was grimly satisfied. By all accounts, the queen’s whole army was locked up within. In her cities were only garrisons, strong to be sure, but never as strong as the force that he could bring to bear. She, or Manasses, had reckoned ill in pausing here, or in thinking to hold this place against the king.

  Baldwin set his men to building siege-engines, making a great noise about it, and building them high and strong. All ways to the castle were shut, the road cut off, the queen’s army enclosed upon itself.

  Then when the rams were ready, the scaling-ladders, the two tall siege-towers, Baldwin flung them all against the walls of Mirabel.

  Perhaps Manasses had not expected such ruthlessness. Perhaps he had thought that Baldwin would weaken; would shrink from the naked face of war. But the face that Manasses saw, for all its youth, was as implacable as any he could have seen among the infidels. Baldwin would have his kingdom. He would not stop until he had won it.

  In midafternoon of the day the rams began their pounding, as the great gates began to splinter and crack, Manasses came out above them. His helm was off, his mail-coif lowered: great boldness, and purest simplicity to bring him down with an arrow in the throat. But no arrow flew. Perhaps he sighed a little with relief as he leaned on the parapet, calling to the men below, “Where is Baldwin? Bring him out! I would speak to him.”

  Baldwin had been resting in his tent, that too a show of bravery. He took his time coming out, dressed carefully, put on his better armor and his clean surcoat and the plain circlet that he wore on campaign instead of his crown. He was in extraordinary looks, and he could not but know it.

  Manasses looked from the walls on that golden image of a king. The long grim mouth set grimmer, but a corner lifted infinitesimally, as if he had learned to laugh at his own ill fortune. “Well then,” he said, “majesty. If I cede you the game, what will you give in return?”

  “Your life,” Baldwin said. Nothing lightened his grimness. He was angry, more angry now than he had been before he began the siege.


  Manasses was perhaps touched with fear. Perhaps not; not yet. “What, majesty? Nothing else in return for a kingship?”

  “Passage,” Baldwin said, “to any country you choose, provided that it not be this one.”

  “Exile?” Manasses sounded as if the word were new to him, or too strange to understand. “Exile, sire? How have I deserved that?”

  “For treason,” said Baldwin, “the wonted penalty is death.”

  “I have but been loyal to my liege lady.”

  “She too commits treason,” Baldwin said. “That is the bargain I offer you. Life, and exile. Or death in this place, with as many of your army who choose to resist me. They will not be so great a number, I think. See, already they draw away. They know. Queen Melisende’s day is past. This now is mine.”

  Manasses stood for a long moment. He looked neither right nor left. Yet he must have known what those below could see: that the walls had emptied of men.

  So swiftly the fortunes of war could change. The men who led the armies might persist in obstinacy, but without men to fight for them, to wield swords and spears, to bend bows in their lords’ defense, there could be no war, and no hope of victory.

  Manasses knew that, none better. As below him the gates ground slowly open to admit the king’s men, he said harshly, “I yield. I take your bargain.”

  Seventy-Seven

  “Idiots. Cowards.”

  Melisende was beside herself. Manasses had surrendered, set himself on the road to Acre and thence across the sea. Nablus turned craven in the wake of it, opening wide to the king’s advance. And she remained in Jerusalem, walled in the Tower of David, and when she took count of those who waited on her, the numbers were pitifully few.

  Richildis was one of them. Loyalty was in no way simple, but Richildis had always been stubborn. If she paused to think, she knew that Baldwin had won, could not but win. He was young, male, king. But she had served Melisende too long. She could not change masters now.

  There was no great pleasure in being one of the last to stand beside the queen. Manasses was gone and Nablus fallen. Jerusalem would yield when Baldwin came to it: that, they all knew. The world went on as it must, from aging queen to young and conspicuously strong king.

  Melisende still would not see it, would not accept it. She paced her chambers like a lioness in a cage, fierce and beautiful. But there was grey in the hair beneath the silken veil, and a tautness to lips and cheeks that spoke not of youth but of desiccating age.

  The Patriarch had come and gone. Amid the pious platitudes he had uttered a word or two of wisdom. “All things pass,” he had said: “strength, queenship, worldly power. Only the light of heaven never changes. Will you not look to it, and set aside this vanity of earthly greatness?”

  “No,” Melisende had said, and dismissed him, and burst out in rage against them all.

  “Where is their faith?” she cried. “Where is their plain good sense? That is a child. Callow, foolish, headstrong—”

  “Neither as foolish nor as headstrong as you,” Richildis said, too tired to be circumspect, but not too much so to tremble slightly, deep within, for the magnitude of her daring.

  Melisende whirled on Richildis. “You, too? Even you would turn against me?”

  “I think,” said Richildis, “that you are a better and wiser woman than this, or would be if your temper would allow it. In logic surely, your right, your age, your skill in the arts of ruling, all would set you above him. But no man can forget the plain fact of your sex. No man ever will.”

  For a moment Richildis thought that Melisende would erupt in a passion of fury. But she was, as Richildis had judged, too wise. She stopped short, stiff-backed, white about the lips. She was thinking at last; perhaps for the first time since this war began.

  She spoke slowly, as if in deliberation; though perhaps she only needed to master her temper. “There is no equity in this world.”

  “Did you ever think there was?”

  “I think,” said Melisende, “that your presumption comes close – close indeed – to lèse-majesté.”

  Richildis inclined her head, and not in submission.

  Melisende’s eyes glittered. “So. No one else dared stay, nor dared to say what you have all been thinking. You’ve always been braver than the rest – brave to the point of folly.”

  “I come by it honestly,” Richildis said. “My brother is in this city, too, nor has he forsaken you.”

  “I do not see him,” Melisende said tightly.

  “Because,” said Richildis, “he’s at the gate, holding together such of the guards as remain. He’ll fight for you if you insist, or surrender if that’s your will.”

  “Would you surrender?”

  Richildis doubted that Melisende asked it in order to seek Richildis’ counsel. It was curiosity and little more. Nonetheless she answered as honestly as she could. “I would very probably resist him to the death, if I stood in your place. Though if I were wise and far less stubborn then I am… yes, I would surrender. I would throw myself on his mercy. He’s a good lad, and ruthless though he seems – have you noticed that he’s shed as little blood as he possibly may, and shown clemency to every man of yours that he has met?”

  “He exiled Manasses,” Melisende said coldly.

  “He could have put him to death,” said Richildis, “for treason against the crown.”

  “Then so he could do to me,” Melisende said in a soft still voice.

  “I think not,” Richildis said. “He’s a scrupulous soul. He’d never commit matricide, even for all that you’ve done to him.”

  “And what have I done? How have I sinned against him?”

  “I think you do not need to ask,” Richildis said quietly.

  Melisende had the grace to lower her eyes. It was a great yielding of pride, for her. “The right is mine,” she said. “If I had been a man, not one living thing would have uttered a word against me.”

  “You are not a man,” Richildis said.

  “Damn you,” said Melisende: the strongest word she had ever said, soul-shaking for one as pious as she; but she was past caring. “Damn your clear eyes. Damn this world that for a little thing, a thing that would not matter at all were I pure spirit, condemns me to the life and lot of a woman.”

  Yet even she would not damn the God Who had made her so. She drew herself up, straightened her back, lifted her chin that still, though the years had traced their paths on her cheeks, was firm and strong. “I will not be broken,” she said. “I will not go down in defeat.”

  “Have you any choice?”

  Melisende shook her head, sharp and short. “I forgot,” she said, “if I ever knew. I forgot… I fought too long with men’s weapons. Now let me be a woman. Since no other way is left for me – let me wage war as my sex demands.”

  Richildis looked on her in great misgiving. But she smiled, a swift smile, without subterfuge that Richildis could discern; yet without great warmth, either. Just so in France did the sun shine in winter, in the lull between storm and storm.

  Strange to think of France, to see it as clear as if it spread before her, and to feel nothing but a kind of poet’s tenderness. So beautiful, the fields and the vineyards white with snow; so blinding bright the sun, but never as bright as the sun of Outremer.

  “I must learn,” said Melisende, “to fight and to rule as a woman does. You are like to be an ill teacher, my lady baroness, but since no one else has chosen to linger – teach me. Show me how a woman should properly be.”

  She did not need to be shown. She had learned the lesson thoroughly if not happily while her husband was alive. This was mockery, and a kind of punishment. Yet it was a gift, too. A promise. That Richildis would be rewarded for her loyalty. That, perhaps, the king would not demand that she pay too high for remaining with his mother to the end.

  Richildis gathered her wits together, and such knowledge and memory as she had, and armed them all. With Melisende in such a mood as this, she would need them
.

  She almost pitied Baldwin. Poor thing, he would come here in the pride of his victorious kingship, in his armor and his elation, and look to be magnanimous in his triumph. And Melisende would let him have it all, but in her own way. He would win the war. She would keep as much of the prize as she could, and that would be more than he had ever thought to grant her.

  * * *

  For all the differences between them, the war, the contention, the love that had never been more than royal duty, as they stood face to face in the shadow of the Tower of David, Melisende and Baldwin were as like as man and woman can be. Two tall fair people with the same haughty carriage, the same fierce eyes, the same lift of the head. She had chosen widow’s garb, or nun’s: plain black gown over plain white linen shift, and a veil of white muslin over the tight bindings of her hair. She wore no crown, only a circlet of silver. Her face seemed hardly paler than her veil, her eyes as dark as her gown.

  Baldwin beside her seemed almost gaudy. He was as he had ridden into the city, in plain battleworn mail and clean white surcoat, but bareheaded and crowned with the crown of Jerusalem. He had, on his journey, begun to grow a thick fair beard. It was short still, but it aged him nonetheless, made him seem more suitably kingly.

  * * *

  He had found the gates of the city open before him, the guards armed but unhostile, offering no resistance. If they had done so, perhaps they would have died. For the people had come out to welcome him, great yelling throngs brandishing palm-branches and crying his name.

  The roar of the crowd had echoed in the court within the Tower, where Melisende waited with such of her ladies as remained with her, and her sisters Hodierna and Yveta, and a company of guards who might as easily have been her jailers as her defenders. It was not a long wait as such things went, nor would she be prevailed upon to ride out to meet her son. “I shall receive him here,” she had said. “I give him everything that was mine. Let him come to me to take it.”