All words that came to my lips were quickly swallowed as fatuous in the face of this monstrous confession. I thought of my own father, how I had loved him. Had the king once felt so for King Henry? When and why had he changed?
The sunset cast a pink glow over the king’s figure, which seemed carved into the wall; his hair blew straight back. Despite his words, his thoughts were far away in time, whether past or future I couldn’t tell. After a long period, he noticed me again and pulled me against him, so that we both gazed out to sea, and he ran his hand through my hair.
“What do you say, Alex? If I permit myself to love you, will you turn on me one day?”
“Never, My Lord, never!”
“So you say now,” he commented bitterly.
I turned around, staying close to his body so I wouldn’t fall into the sea below. “I mean it.”
He slid down and crouched at my level, fastened his strong arms around my back.
“Suppose I refuse to give you Wanthwaite.” He smiled at my reaction. “You see?”
But how could he withhold Wanthwaite? Why would he want to? Then I realized he was simply testing me.
“I don’t love you because you can restore my home, Your Highness.”
He continued to stroke my hair, tried to keep it from blowing in my eyes. “No? Perhaps not, but a king can never be sure.”
Suddenly I felt a flood of sympathy, for wasn’t this just what I hated about being an heiress? Would no one ever love me for myself and only myself? Enoch—who befriended me with ulterior motive.
“I’m sure, Your Highness,” I said with real conviction this time. “You—you are … I mean I would never love King Philip if he could give me a thousand Wanthwaites.”
He laughed and put his forehead against mine. “Irresistible argument. You are now the only person whom I love—you and my mother.”
But I was filled with apprehension again. He might worry about my fealty, but I worried about whether he would love me if he knew I were a girl. It seemed he might be giving his affection to a child who’d already betrayed him.
“What troubles you?” he asked, his hand sliding to my chin.
“I’ll never turn on you,” I repeated, “but …”
“Go on. Don’t be afraid. But what?”
“Well, you don’t know me … I mean, you learned only today that I have no soul. I may have other lacks—just as serious.”
He stood again and pulled me up with him, so he held me tightly in his arms.
“I’m glad you mentioned character … deficiencies. I, too, have major sins.”
“Not like mine!”
“Hush, you don’t know.” He was depressed. And sad. “You learned that I killed my father. There are other things …”
I looked deeply into his gray-blue eyes, layered in depth after depth like the sea, the deepest I’d looked into anyone’s eyes since my mother’s.
“I don’t care,” I said.
“Neither do I.” He smiled. “In any case, love is always an act of faith. Give me your oath of fealty, Alex.”
We swore to each other to be faithful, to love each other forever. We were not brothers—I know not what we were—and we didn’t exchange blood. But we sealed our vows with a kiss, sweet and lingering. When we parted, both of us had glistening eyes.
“I thought you’d fallen into the sea,” Enoch grucched as he came around the corner.
Richard put me down, but kept his arm around me as we walked back to the fire.
“AS WE ARE SEEN, SO ARE WE ESTEEMED.”
Richard’s words rippled through the fleet down to the meanest ranks. Therefore were we the most splendid armada assembled since the world began as we sailed the boiling waves across the Straits of the Far into Messina. Painted sails, poops bursting with music, glittering shields, festooned pikes and glory everywhere! Leading this splendor was Richard in royal red, riding his crimson castle with spangled cape flying, Apollo dropped from the sky I stood on the deck of his galley the Trenchemer, gazing up proudly for this was my doing, my reward for selling my soul, and I hardly knew whether to thank Satan or God.
“Do you see King Tancred? Or Philip?” the king called from his perch down to the Earl of Leicester.
The earl peered at the approaching shore and shouted back, “No, My Liege, not on the beach. Could they be inside the city gate?”
We all lined the rail to search along the strand for royal insignia. In spite of my pleasure in the king’s health, I chilled at this close view of Messina. A snowy-white city spilling down a steep scarp, backed by tiers of purple-blue mountains in the shadow of the forbidding Mount Etna. A high wall enclosed the city, and the space between the wall and the sea was crowded with men shouting and waving.
“Are those our own Crusaders?” Richard called to Lord Robert again. I noticed that the king’s cheek now twitched with his telltale muscle.
“I believe so, My Liege. They wear our crosses.”
The king was openly exasperated. “But why are there no Messhinites? No royal welcome?”
There was no answer.
“I see a welcoming party,” I whispered to Enoch. “Look you, bishops with gold crosses, a red carpet, horses.”
“Landed by Richard this marnin’ so he’d mak a good show when he rode in the streets. There be our own Bishop of Evreux—see?”
The oarsmen turned us alongside the pier, the plank was lowered, fanfare blared forth. King Richard strode down, waving and smiling to hysterical cheers and the Te Deum as tapers were lit, the whole thing staged by Ambroise; we were performing for ourselves. Only the Crusaders on the beach were spontaneous and they were woodly with joy, for they were also part of Richard’s army, common men who’d marched from Marseilles to await us here.
“King Richard, save us!”
“Food, for God’s sake, give us food!”
Enoch frowned at their cries as we took our places at the back of the king’s household, and he pointed out that the king’s captains were protecting us from the rabble much as they had in Tours. We began to move forward.
“In Jesus’ name, mercy! Give me bread!”
A scarecrow grabbed Thistle’s bridle and Enoch whipped him off
“Get to the other side of me, bairn.” And he raised his gaveloc.
Perplexed and frightened, I peered around the Scot to watch this frenzied mob. English and Norman they might be, but they were desperate enough to kill. Then I saw two other wights, truly scarecrows in long black tunics and strange square hats, curly black beards falling almost to their knees. They, too, shouted, made obscene gestures with their fingers, pulled down their lower eyelids.
“Dirty dogs! Put that in your mother’s swinehole!”
“We want no filthy rats here! Go back to your sewer!”
“Be those Messhinites?” I asked Enoch. I knew this was the name applied to inhabitants of Messina.
“Aye, that they be,” he said grimly, “but they’re also Greek Christians, that is, Griffons from the Byzantine Church. Think what the other Messhinites mun be like, the Arabs and Jews.”
As we progressed, more and more of these hideous Griffons joined with the mob till ’twas difficult to go forward. Then we came to a dead stop.
Mercadier and Algais thundered back, shouting orders. “Make a phalanx! Wall your horses! Two lines, and keep the center clear! Move!”
Enoch pulled Thistle’s muzzle against Firth’s haunch; everyone else did the same with their horses till we formed two living walls protecting an aisle in the center. To my astonishment, King Richard soon high-paced down the opening, his face a crimson profile of fury, then the clergy and great lords.
“Follow the king!” Louvart shouted.
And our lines doubled to the center as we trotted rapidly back to our ships.
King Richard was already in his mail, long shield with its three lions in hand, sword, mace and flail beside him. The Bishop of Evreux rang a bell for silence; the king spoke from his forecastle.
“We’ve been refused entry into Messina by order of the Sicilian king, a usurper called Tancred, and King Philip of France. Our Crusaders who arrived before us have lived outside the walls without food or drink while the French grow fat inside. My sister”—for the first time, his voice shook with rage—“Dowager Queen Joanna of Sicily, is held like a common prisoner in Palermo, her dowry stolen by these traitorous kings. I’ve spoken with six lords who will accompany me with their knights. The rest of you will stay here on board ship until I return. In the name of St. George!”
He raised his fist to a great cheer! Everyone scrambled to make ready.
“Are they going to fight?” I asked, my voice trembling with fear.
“Nay,” Enoch replied, “they’re gang to kick the Morris dance.”
I’d never seen a battle, but I’d seen the results and felt sick. The king was almost ready, his great white horse saddled and draped in mail. I watched him ride away from Messina, prayed he’d turn and wave, but he didn’t. Then I sat on the silent deck: my father, turning thrice, speaking to his steward, riding through Wanthwaite’s gates.
Two interminable days later the triumphant Richard returned, and this time he waved as he rode past the Trenchemer on his way into Messina, for he’d gotten entry for all of us. Beside him, riding cross-saddle, her gown trailing the ground, was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, Queen Joanna. She, too, waved imperiously, smiled Richard’s own radiant smile, then followed her brother. Quickly we all prepared once again to ride into Messina, but this time there was no effort at pomp. If we were esteemed, ’twas because of Richard’s sharp sword.
KING RICHARD’s WRATH WAS DIRECTED at King Philip. He sent the French monarch a command to attend him the following afternoon. Sir Gilbert was forced to use me as page for the occasion, as Sir Eduard was ill from the water.
When I arrived in the chamber where Richard lived, Gilbert greeted me with eyes cold as river ice.
“I hope you have no lice in your hair,” he sneered with his customary courtesy. “Bedding with beasts has made you filthy.”
I had just laundered my clothing. “I have no lice,” I replied, “having washed my hair with lemon not one hour ago. However, I can understand your concern. After all, my hair is very thick. ’Tis a pity that yours grows thin on top.”
“A sign of my powers in other ways, I assure you.” But I’d hit my mark—his face grew red. “You will pull these oak trestles to the center of the room while I go downstairs for cakes.”
And he won the gambit, for the oak trestles were too heavy for two strong men. I had to go seek porters to help, but by the time Sir Gilbert returned, I was draping the linens and arranging goblets.
“Get me a tray—no, idiot, the silver one.” He put his hands on his hips. “Now I’m going to give you just one instruction, only one. And I hope you can muster sufficient wit to follow it.”
From his portentous tone, I thought I would be ordered to serve while hanging from the ceiling.
“You will serve the French, and only the French, which means King Philip, for I believe he comes alone. Do you understand?”
“King Philip, yes. I suppose if there are twenty English in attendance, I’m to let them expire of thirst.”
“The English are my concern. I assure you, none will expire, but if they do ’twill be from some malady caught before they came here. Quiet, now—the king.” He turned a flushed deferential face to the door.
“… a Judas to our cause,” came Richard’s voice from below, and my heart speeded. This was the closest I’d been to the king since our hunt.
His footsteps shook the walls as he climbed upward; then he swept in with his sister Joanna.
“Benedicite, Richard, no one told me you were so like our father,” she said in a deep throaty voice.
Her sandalwood mixed with his sweet woodruff in a powerful royal scent, and her train made a swath as she turned to help herself to one of our cakes. She was an uncanny double of her brother—tall, golden-haired, confident and faintly mocking.
“What mean you?” he shouted. “I’m nothing like Henry!”
“No?” Her brows shot up. “Not in appearance, perhaps, where you bear Eleanor’s stamp, but the Angevin temper?”
“Blast the Angevin temper! Are you telling me I should permit insults from a reptilian hunchback and a French ferret? Damned if I will, and if that’s like Henry I put my foot in the boot.”
The queen smiled and stroked his angry face. “No offense, dear brother. The Angevin temper is a useful flare when all is darkness, but I miss the beguiling pretty boy I left in Poitiers. Soft luminous eyes, sweetly arched lips, an angelic disposition, the same but not the same. None of Henry’s crude choler then, but perhaps the seed lay dormant.”
“We must flower or wither,” the king agreed dryly.
“Unfortunately.” She nodded. “Who would have dreamed then that the next time we met I would be the disinherited widow of a whoremonger king. I was only a bride of twelve, and you were nineteen.”
Nineteen! And I was now twelve….
“You have changed more than I have, Joanna,” the king said, smiling back at her. “You are a beautiful woman and a queen. Yet methinks you still behave like a child.”
Instantly her face twisted in Angevin wrath, again exactly like his, and her voice rasped. “You dare to speak to me so? When I’ve suffered disinheritance, imprisonment and worse?”
The king continued to smile. “Suffered? Or permitted? How could you allow that freakish Tancred to steal your gold? Are you so naive that you do not make proper arrangements for a treasure?”
She whirled and struck our trestle with her palm. “Give me wine.”
I was closest and dared not disobey. I poured wine into a silver goblet and offered it to her trembling hand.
“I believe,” she said with controlled sarcasm to her brother, “that you must look to yourself if you would fix blame for the loss of my old. If you had not tarried on your journey had not permitted the King of France to arrive before you, I might have been a free woman and kept my gold as well.”
Richards face was now grim. “You confirm what I suspected. That French traitor! Conspiring with Tancred to thwart the Crusade. And stealing! By God, I’ll pound his balls to powder! My word, Joan. This is Richard speaking.”
He put his arms around her and she returned his embrace.
“I believe I like you, brother.”
He gazed into her eyes like a lover. “If the times didn’t dictate otherwise …”
Bitter bile shriveled my tongue as I watched this tender scene between brother and sister, and I hated Joanna despite her charms. She had no right to stroke and kiss the king in that manner when he was her brother. No wonder the Church is so strict toward consanguinity when such women be abroad. And why hadn’t Richard looked at me? Was he so dazzled by his enticing sister that he’d forgot what he’d said on the Far? He was going to defy his family’s curse about pleasure in children, a mysterious curse, but I understood that he loved me, aye, more than he cared for this sister.
Voices below signaled the arrival of the French company and Richard stepped back, then came to our trestle for a quick swallow of wine. Sir Gilbert handed him his goblet, and when the king smiled briefly at me, I forgave all. He took his place beside Queen Joanna.
King Philip entered the salle alone and without ceremony, tossing a comment to an unseen functionary in the hall. As I had noted in Vézelay, he was wiry in build, about ten years younger than Richard. I now recognized in his light splenetic voice and royal bearing the same arrogance that Richard carried: both men were kings to the tips of their long pointed boots. I also realized that whatever Philip lacked in grace or size, he made up with an incisive intelligence. There was an assurance in the set of his lips, a penetrating grasp in his steady eyes—albeit one was milky—a positive cadence in his speech.
King Richard knelt to make obeisance.
“Rise, brother, and tell me your …”
&nbs
p; His voice faltered and Richard looked up, puzzled. King Philip was gazing at Joanna. There was a long silence and the English king slowly rose again. What had happened? Did the French king suffer from some strange malady such as Richard had?
No, the cause of his paralysis was the beauteous queen. I too studied her, much alarmed. She must be a witch, though she looked nothing like Fat Giselle, and I had good reason to be terrified of witches. I peered at her hands to see if she held an amulet, at her lips to see if she breathed out a spell, but there was nothing.
“I would like … who are you … I want …” Philip gasped unintelligibly, his face waxy pale.
Richards brows shot up and he lifted his sisters delicate hand for presentation. “I would like to present our Liege Lord, Philip, King of France. Philip, this is my sister, the dowager Queen of Sicily.”
Philip leaned to the hand rapturously as brother and sister exchanged meaningful looks over his head, and I realized I had just witnessed a man falling in love. ’Twas exactly as the verses and songs described: Cupid had shot a bolt through his eye and enchanted him forthwith. Yet Joanna must be credited with the miracle as well. Again I wondered what she had done and studied her. Was it something I might learn?
The French king stood, stammered out a few ecstatic syllables.
“We are delighted,” Richard answered when he paused. “This is the sort of greeting we had expected when we arrived.”
King Philip reluctantly turned from Joanna to her brother, and both his expression and words changed to their original coldness.
“We could hardly welcome an invasion, Richard. You have entered Messina like an occupying force. Your men raid, rob and worse. Just before I came, I was told of a poor woman called Emma who was raped by your knights this morning in full view of a dozen witnesses.”
Richard pursed grim lips. “Not knights, but hungry foot soldiers. Nor did they rape. They demanded the bread which they had just bought. Emma and her brothers refused to give it to them. My men are hungry, Philip.”
Alix of Wanthwaite 01 - Shield of Three Lions Page 28
