“Yes, of course, Mama!” Isabella instinctively put her hand around the cross at her throat.
Maria Zoë kissed her again tenderly, and then in a burst of emotion, pulled her close and held her tight. “Oh, child, these are tumultuous times, and only God knows what the future holds. Indeed, even He cannot see how each of us, with our individual decisions and free will, will shape the future. But with His guidance and His blessings, we will weather every storm—or sleep in His embrace.”
Isabella returned the hug, clinging for a last childish moment to the comforting warmth and softness of her mother. Then she consciously drew back, straightening herself and lifting her chin. “I swear, Mama, I will always try to be guided by Jesus Christ our Lord, and I will do my duty as Queen of Jerusalem for the good of the Kingdom and my subjects, as long as I live.”
“I know you will, sweetheart,” Maria Zoë assured her, tears stinging her eyes as she resisted the desire to hug Isabella again. It was better to leave her so, encased in her newfound dignity and determination. So she sank into a deep curtsy to show her recognition of Isabella’s new status, and then turned and left the chamber.
Isabella tried praying, but her thoughts kept straying to all the things she would have to deal with. It was all very well to be crowned in Bethlehem; as the Bishop had said, that was the old tradition. But the Kings had then proceeded from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and William Marshal said the Templars, who had thrown in their lot with Sibylla, controlled access to the Holy City. It would be unthinkable to try to force entrance to Jerusalem—that would discredit her. She would have to go somewhere else. Acre? Acre was the economic heart of the Kingdom, and it was in the royal domain. From Acre she would control the resources of the Kingdom. But it lacked symbolic power. Maybe it would be better to stay in Bethlehem? But Bethlehem was dangerously close to Oultrejourdain’s territory.
The thought of Oultrejourdain sent a shiver down her spine. She didn’t understand why he had decided to support Sibylla. Humphrey was his stepson. He should have been one of their staunchest supporters!
She was so lost in thought that she jumped half out of her skin when the door crashed open and Humphrey charged in. “Isabella!” he shouted, as if they were in a huge hall rather than a tiny tower chamber. Then his eyes found her and he rushed to fling his arms around her. “You won’t believe what’s happened!” he gasped out, all but crushing the air out of her lungs in his agitation.
“Mama said something about—” she started.
But Humphrey wasn’t listening; he was bursting with the news. “The High Court has decided to crown us King and Queen of Jerusalem. But it’s madness!” He broke his clasp of Isabella and started pacing about the room, gesturing in agitation as he declared, “The Patriarch has already crowned Sibylla. And she’s the elder sister, anyway.”
“But her mother’s marriage was dissolved and—”
“You don’t understand!” He stopped his pacing to stare at his wife in outraged disbelief. “Sibylla’s already been crowned and anointed! She is Queen in the eyes of God, whether we like it or not. We can’t oppose her. It would be a grievous sin!”
“But without the consent of the High Court—”
“I know, I know. I’ve been listening to Tripoli for hours!” Humphrey started pacing again, kicking at the furniture in fractious distress. “I know the High Court is supposed to agree, but they were here, and Sibylla’s been crowned in the Holy Sepulcher! In the sight of Christ! On the very place He rose from the dead! Maybe she shouldn’t have done it—certainly the Patriarch shouldn’t have done it—”
“He only did it because he was Sibylla’s mother’s lover—”
“Isabella! Don’t even talk of such things!” Humphrey scolded, frowning. “He’s still the Patriarch—the most senior prelate of the Church after the Pope himself!”
“And he still has a mistress! A married woman, whom he keeps in his palace like a Muslim concubine—”
“Isabella! How can you say such things?” Humphrey was genuinely shocked that his little bride knew about this scandal.
“Because it’s true!” Isabella shot back. “It’s true, and it’s true he slept with Agnes de Courtenay too! He’s not fit to be a parish priest, let alone Patriarch!”
“But he is Patriarch, and Sibylla is now Queen. There’s nothing we can do about it. Even if the High Court crowns us in Bethlehem, we still won’t be King and Queen. We’ll be nothing but puppets! Tripoli’s puppets.”
“No, we won’t!” Isabella protested angrily. “We can rule in our own right! He won’t be Regent anymore.”
“Not officially, but you can’t think he’s going to have us crowned and then let us do what we please! He’s going to control us!”
“Let him try! I’m certainly not going to let him control me! I was born to this, Humphrey. This is my destiny!” Isabella reached out to her husband, trying to both calm him and capture him for her vision.
Humphrey stared at her as if she had gone mad. When Isabella realized that he did not share her vision, it chilled her. How could he—her best friend and her husband—not want this for her?
“Have you forgotten that Oultrejourdain is supporting Sibylla?” Humphrey asked into the shocked silence, as Isabella’s outstretched hand slowly sank back to her side.
“How could I forget that your stepfather is not standing by you as my stepfather is standing by me?” Isabella shot back, aware that it hurt Humphrey to have his stepfather compared to hers. That was why she said it: because he had rejected her as Queen, she wanted to hurt him.
“Oultrejourdain will tear us apart—eat us alive—if we dare to defy him!”
“How can he do that if we are King and Queen?” Isabella answered, her chin held high.
“Don’t be naive!” Humphrey dismissed her. “Kings and queens can be stabbed to death no less than anyone else!”
“We’ll be protected,” Isabella countered.
“Not every minute, every second. Besides, he doesn’t have to stab us. He can poison us instead, or have us shot by a crossbowman as we ride through the streets.”
“Humphrey, you can’t seriously mean you are afraid to be King?” Isabella demanded. She was on the very brink of losing her respect for her husband. She had defended him for so long. She had insisted he was not a coward, but here he was sounding as if he was indeed afraid to step up to his responsibility—out of craven fear of Oultrejourdain.
“I’m not afraid!” Humphrey retorted angrily. “I’m not afraid! But this is madness! No kingdom can have two kings, two queens. Sibylla shouldn’t have done what she did, but now that it’s done, we have to live with it!”
Isabella could see there was no point in arguing tonight. She took a deep breath and managed to get command of her voice. “You’re tired, Humphrey,” she told him. “It’s been a long day. Let’s get some sleep.” She patted the bed beside her and smiled.
Humphrey dropped his face into his hands in utter despair. Not that, too! he thought in agony. She wanted to seduce him. She wanted him to lie with her and thought that if he did, she would be able to make him do what she wanted of him—like Sibylla and Guy, like Agnes de Courtenay and Heraclius. Why couldn’t she just love him as before?
Isabella, stung, turned her back on him to start undressing herself. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself. She kept swallowing down her sobs, asking God what she had done wrong. Why didn’t her husband want her? She wasn’t ugly. She knew she wasn’t ugly. She’d seen admiration in other men’s eyes—the eyes of sergeants and squires and young knights. Why did her own husband despise her, then?
“Isabella.” Humphrey was so close behind her, she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She froze. “Isabella.” He was stroking the back of her head gently and lovingly. “Don’t be angry. I love you. I love you so much!” Humphrey put his arms around her from behind, and Isabella couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. She dissolved into a flood of self-pitying sobs. Humphrey bent and ki
ssed the top of her head as he swung her gently from side to side, swiveling from the waist. “Sweetheart, sweetheart, there’s no need to cry. I love you more than anything in the world! It’s because I love you so much that I don’t want anything to happen to you. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“But you are hurting me, Humphrey,” Isabella managed to gasp out between sobs. “You’re hurting me by rejecting me—again and again—and now you don’t even want me to be Queen.”
“I do want you to be Queen—if it wouldn’t endanger your soul,” Humphrey assured her, kissing the side of her face and licking at her tears. “But we can’t fight this.”
“Yes, we can!” Isabella insisted. “We have the whole High Court on our side!”
“Not the whole High Court, sweetheart, just some of it. Come.” He turned her around in his arms and wiped away her tears with the flat of his hands, then bent to kiss her on the lips. “Trust me, sweetheart, I only want what’s best for you.”
“Then why won’t you make me your wife?” Isabella gasped out, the tears bubbling up again. She loved him so much! She wanted him.
Humphrey pulled her back into his arms and gripped her to his chest. “Because—because it is horrible and filthy and—defiling!” He finally managed to put it into words, the images from the desert of Sinai crowding in around him. “I won’t do it to you, Isabella! Never. I want to keep you pure—as pure as the Blessed Virgin. I never want to humiliate you like—like a bitch or a whore. You’re too good for it, Isabella. Much too good for—for—” He shook his head. He would not even say the word in her presence. He couldn’t.
Isabella’s tears and sobs subsided as she grasped what he was saying. She was stunned and confused. She had never thought of consummation as something horrible—not between two people who loved each other and were married. But it was comforting to think Humphrey was not rejecting her or repelled by her. She drew a deep breath and nodded. “All right,” she whispered. “All right. If that’s the way you want it,” she conceded, not sure what they should do about having children if he wouldn’t consummate the marriage. And if they were to be King and Queen, then they would need to have heirs. Or was that the real reason he didn’t want them to be King and Queen? There was too much to think about here. For the moment all that mattered was that Humphrey was here with her, holding her in his arms as he so often had before—comforting and protective.
“You understand now?” Humphrey asked tentatively, hopeful but hardly daring to believe she had indeed accepted what he’d said.
“Yes,” Isabella assured him, nodding. “Yes, I understand. Now let’s go to bed. You needn’t fear. I won’t be importunate. Not ever again,” she vowed.
Humphrey stroked her hair, her arms. “I love you so much, Isabella. You do understand that?”
“Yes, I understand,” she told him as she continued undressing and finally lay down on the bed, her back to Humphrey. She kept her eyes closed tightly as she heard him moving about the chamber, undressing himself rather than calling for his squire. At last she felt the bed sink under his weight, and then his arm around her waist again as he lay down behind her on the bed and pulled her into his embrace. It was just like when she had been eight and he had come to comfort her in the crypt in Kerak, she thought, and silent tears trickled down her face into the pillow.
To Humphrey it seemed to take forever, but eventually all the excitement and emotional strain overwhelmed Isabella and she fell into a deep sleep. Testing, he called her name gently, “Isabella?” Her breathing continued, deep and even.
Humphrey cautiously took his arm away from her waist, but still she breathed deeply and steadily. He slowly drew back from her and waited again. Still no reaction. He eased himself off the bed and then stood still beside it, holding his breath, afraid the jostling would have woken her, but still she slept. He tiptoed across the room to his heap of clothes. He had not been wearing armor, and he did not need it for what he intended now. He took his clothes in a bundle and inched to the door.
He had been in such a state when he arrived that he had not even bolted the door, so he did not need to unbolt it now. He slowly turned the big iron ring that controlled the latch and gently pulled the door inward. It creaked, and he caught his breath and held still. Isabella was still breathing regularly on the bed. He slipped out, pulling the door closed behind him. Only then, when he was out in the stairwell, did he dump his clothes and, finding his braies first, start to dress himself.
Dressed, he moved stealthily down the stairs to the ward. Here there were still some people about. The wagon to take out the “night soil” was being loaded with the kitchen refuse and the dirty straw from the stables at the postern. A couple of baker’s apprentices were chopping wood in front of the bread oven, apparently preparing to fire it up. Was it really that late already? But it had to be. The High Court had debated long into the night, and then he’d had the fight with Isabella and it had taken her a long time to get to sleep. Yes, it was probably not much before dawn.
He made his way to the keep and started up the stairs slowly and cautiously. Many of the visitors were housed here, and he did not want to wake them—much less for them to see him. When he got to the top floor, however, he knocked lightly on the door. When no one answered, he knocked again, and was finally answered by a groggy, “Who’s there?”
“Gabriel, it’s me, Humphrey de Toron. I need to speak to Ernoul!”
He heard a clunk and then a startled, “What?” followed by the mocking comment from Gabriel, “The Lord of Toron requests the pleasure of your company.”
“What? In the middle of the night?”
“Yes,” Humphrey himself called, holding his head close to the wooden door and speaking into the crack.
A moment later a tousled Ernoul, dressed in a nightshirt, yanked the door open and squinted at him.
“I need your help, Ernoul, please,” Humphrey begged.
The squire pulled himself together, gesturing for Humphrey to wait just long enough for him to tuck his shirt into a pair of braies, push his bare feet into his low boots, and pull a tunic over his head. His hair still in disarray, he came out of the antechamber, closing the door behind him. “What—”
Humphrey held his finger to his lips and led the way back down to the ground floor. He didn’t stop until they were in the middle of the ward, far away from any possible listeners.
“Ernoul, I need your help.”
“Yes. What?” Ernoul asked, still half asleep.
“I can’t go through with this crowning,” Humphrey said in a low voice.
Ernoul’s eyes widened. “What—”
“Sibylla’s been anointed. To oppose her is treason! Besides, how can we have two queens in one country? It will tear the Kingdom apart, and while we’re fighting each other, Salah ad-Din will overwhelm us. You must see this is madness! No matter how bad Sibylla and Guy might be, fighting among ourselves is worse.”
“But Sibylla didn’t have the consent of the High Court,” Ernoul protested.
“That doesn’t matter anymore!” Humphrey cut him off. “The only thing that matters now is that we unite and fight together.”
“What does Isabella say to this?” Ernoul wanted to know.
“She wants to be Queen, but that’s just a childish notion. She doesn’t know what it will mean. Not really. She thinks it’s about being rich and powerful and independent. She thinks it’s her ‘destiny.’” Humphrey’s voice belittled Isabella’s feelings. “But this is about our very survival!”
Ernoul was frowning. He could understand Humphrey’s logic, but the High Court had decided something else, and Balian supported Isabella. Could they all be wrong and Humphrey right? He didn’t think so. The High Court was composed of the wisest men in the realm. Men with hundreds of years of experience combined, and men who had given their whole lives to the Defense of Jerusalem. Surely they could not all be wrong and the teenage Humphrey de Toron right? Besides, they had might on their side. Oultrejourdain ha
d only sixty knights, after all, and Edessa maybe twenty. The Templars were the problem, of course, but the Hospitallers were with the High Court, and if the Pope ordered the Templars . . . Ernoul shook his head sharply to bring himself back to reality. “What do you want me to do?” he asked Humphrey.
“I’m going to ride for Jerusalem tonight and do homage to Sibylla—”
“Humphrey! You can’t!” Ernoul protested.
“I must! I’m going to stop this civil war before it starts! But you’ve got to keep Isabella from sounding the alarm.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“When she wakes up and finds me gone, she’ll come looking for me, and even if she doesn’t know—doesn’t even dream—where I actually am, her asking about me may make others suspicious. All I want you to do is make up some story—you’re good at that. Tell her waiting woman that you’ve taken me somewhere. Tell her we won’t be back until after dinner, so she doesn’t get alarmed until then.”
“Humphrey, you’re asking me to betray my lord, the High Court, and the Regent!” He added forcefully, “Lord Balian wants to see Isabella crowned—”
“Ernoul!” Humphrey laid his hands on Ernoul’s shoulders and looked him in the eye. “You’ve been my friend all these years. My only friend. Please, as you love me, do this for me.”
Ernoul didn’t know what to say. He did love Humphrey. Who else in the world shared his love of books and poetry—of language itself, and the way it was used to tell a tale? Even if the days when the others made fun of him were gone, they still did not share his love. They were happy to hear his tales and songs once they were finished, but only Humphrey had ever helped him write them. His friendship with Humphrey was like nothing else, and Humphrey still treated him like an equal although he was a lord.
“You can’t stop me from what I intend to do,” Humphrey told Ernoul. “Not unless you are prepared to knock me down and call the watch! And even then, they will have to chain me in a dungeon to stop me. I’m going to do this for the good of Jerusalem. All I’m asking is that you make it easier on everyone. The sooner this is over with, the sooner the threat of civil war is over—because once I’ve done homage to Sibylla, they will have no alternative king anymore.”
Defender of Jerusalem Page 42
