by Traci E Hall
The queen changed from the emerald gown she’d worn earlier to one that was purple, royal, and stunning. The sleeves of ribbons and lace dropped in points, and a matching girdle snugged Eleanor’s hips. Mamie and Fay each wore a thin circlet of gold to hold their sheer veils in place.
Constance had brought a gift for Eleanor. “Here you are, my queen.”
Eleanor demurred. “You’ve done so much.”
“This is a personal gift from me to you.”
“Well,” she said, pleased. Eleanor opened the cedar box and drew out an elegant gold crown, inlaid with purple and green stones, mosaic in style.
“To remind you of Antioch and this journey. You have moved through this all with such grace. It is a small token.”
“Stunning. I will wear it now.”
“Good.” Constance smiled. “My husband requested an interview with you before the banquet. Are you up to a visit?”
Mamie was impressed with the way Eleanor kept from shouting out a victory call. Instead, her liege merely dipped her head. “Of course. I can rest later.”
“Come with me, then,” she said before looking to Mamie and Fay. “You know how to get back to your rooms?”
Dismissed. Mamie looked at Eleanor, who gave the slightest bob of her head.
“Yes. We will be fine.”
“Thank you, once more,” Fay said.
“It was nothing,” Constance insisted. “Hospitality gladly given.”
She led Eleanor out of the bathhouse and to a different trail beneath a canopy of trees.
“Should we follow her?”
“Fay,” Mamie said with a scoff. “Of course we should.”
Dominus finished his prayers and the last meat pie at the same time and decided he needed a better wash than the dunking in the trough near the stable. Bishop of Clairvaux wanted an accounting of the Templar order, and he would get it. Aimery of Limoges, esteemed Patriarch of Antioch—father, priest, religious director all wrapped in one.
Not wanting to offend the local commander in charge, Dominus took great care to avoid getting caught disregarding his directive. Dominus had his own agenda.
He left the Templar House, sneaking past the sleeping chaplain in charge, and found his way into the palace, looking for the men’s wing and specifically the king. A long and beautiful hallway dappled with sunshine showed murals—non, mosaic art—that decorated the lower walls.
A woman, trailed by a giggling child, went from one room at the end of the hall to the other. Wrong wing. He must have confused the map.
A servant left a chamber fifty paces away.
“Probably shouldn’t be here,” he muttered, scooting behind a glazed clay urn overflowing with ivy.
The young woman passed by so close he could have touched her.
Dressed in unadorned beige, she carried an empty tray of wine goblets, fruit rinds, and a cheese knife. He wasn’t certain whom she served, but he had a good idea she’d be headed to the kitchen. From there he’d be able to find the correct wing . . .
A sound like a closing door echoed, then a scuffing of shoes, heels, came from the farthest end of the hall. Alert, he listened closely, his body pressed to the urn.
“Scolded like children,” a female voice said in disgusted tones.
“She knew we would try and follow,” another added. “We were set up to fail.”
He recognized the latter voice, giving him the clue to the first. Mamie and Fay, the queen’s ladies.
Mamie. His temptation. His nemesis.
The last person he wanted to see. He prayed they would enter one of the doors before his hiding spot, but their clickety-clack grew closer. Then stopped altogether.
As if sensing his presence, Mamie hesitated before the door the servant had just exited and turned around. He peered through the ivy leaves, where a point tickled his nose. She put her hand on Fay’s arm.
“What is it?” Fay asked.
Mamie narrowed her eyes, letting her gaze pass over the urn. He ducked down, not daring to breathe. The woman spotted a Turkish arrow before anyone else—there was no way she would miss his presence.
A moment passed.
“Nothing.” Mamie laughed with a shaky voice. “We’ve all got the spooks today.”
He heard the door opening, and she and Fay greeted someone named Larissa. The queen’s handmaiden, if he remembered correctly.
The door closed, and he exhaled. Mamie set him on edge. She’d bathed and wore fresh clothes. Sumptuous clothes, unlike his borrowed brown robe. He did not mind wearing what Commander Bartholomew surely thought of as a humbling garment. It allowed him to be invisible, whereas the white cloak and red cross of the Templars were very memorable.
It eased something in him, knowing where Mamie would be sleeping. He’d gotten used to looking out for her, whether she could know it or not. The pilgrimage would not last forever, but even then, once it was over?
He had nothing to offer a lady such as Mamie. She was obviously happy, smiling and laughing all the time. Why would she give up her life in the queen’s court, where she held a place of honor?
Coming around the side of the urn, he bumped into Mamie of Rou, nose-to-freckled-nose. The woman was very stealthy indeed. “You are good,” he said, sincere.
“What are you doing?” she asked, holding her short sword toward his chest.
“You knew I was here?”
“I smelled you halfway down the hall. Salt water and fish.”
He pulled back a few inches, carrying on a whispered conversation. “Sorry. I was not given permission to bathe.”
“Permission?” Mamie’s expression told him what she thought of that.
They had something in common—breaking the rules—but she did not know just how. Yet. “The commander, surprisingly, does not like me. He thinks I need to eat some humble pie.” He gave a little sniff. “You smell nice. Like roses.”
Her emerald eyes danced. “Do you like it?” She leaned in, baring her white neck. “I dabbed some of the oil behind my ears.”
Dominus noticed the pale shell of her ear and how her fiery red curls swirled over the edge and down her shoulder. How could he not? He kept his hands to himself with sheer will. “Is this your new gown?”
“One of several that Princess Constance had made especially for us. Is that robe yours?”
“It is all part of the commander’s lesson to teach me humility. Templar rules are such that he was forced to gift me two new horses and some chain mail, despite his dislike of me personally.”
Mamie grinned. “Will you be coming to the feast?”
“Non. I must spend the evening praying for my soul.”
She burst into laughter, her curls bouncing over her arm. “And that will take all night? What have you been thinking about, Sir Dominus?”
She captured him with her gaze, challenging him to admit he was flirting. Thinking of her. Damn his oath.
“I should be going.” He wanted to kiss her.
“You never should have been here,” Mamie said, her sword back at his chest.
He stepped back, hitting the wall. Somehow he knew she would be able to find King Louis in less time than it would take him. “I was looking for the kitchen.”
“In the ladies’ section of the castle?”
“I got lost,” he said with a shrug.
“And instead of asking for help, you hid behind some ivy.” She nodded, tapping the flat of the blade against her hip. “You are not a very good liar, Dominus.”
He bowed his head. “I keep trying.”
She waited for him to explain, but he decided enough had been said already. Silence was a Templar rule, as the commander had reminded him.
Mamie brought the sword tip below his chin in a clever move he hadn’t anticipated. If she’d wanted to cut his throat, he’d be dead.
Gone was the laughing temptress, the teasing seductress. In her place was the goddess Athena, hell-bent on putting him in his place. His body reacted appropriately for a man
. A warrior. He’d throw her to the tile and tear off that new dress. The lobe of her ear was perfect for biting, and he couldn’t wait to lick the slope of her white throat before nuzzling his face in her breasts.
“Are you here to harm the queen?”
“Non.”
She let the sword drop, the energy in the air shifting between them. Heating. “I believe you. What were you doing?”
“I was curious to see the palace.” Scout it out. Discover what King Louis had in mind for Edessa.
“I do not trust you,” she said.
“Why on earth not?” He was a very honorable man. Most of the time.
“You are a fraud.”
Had she found him out?
“A man as good-looking as you should never have sworn himself to God. Do you have a dozen brats at home?”
“I do not have children.” Of my loins. “My brothers are dead.”
An expression of sorrow flitted briefly across her face. “I, too, am alone. Normally in this situation—where we each suffer a deep sadness, I would offer a woman’s comfort.” She traced her fingers over the fullness of her chest, her voice dropping to a purr. “My breast to pillow your head as I soothed your grief. And you, mine.”
He gulped at the vision and closed his eyes, grateful as hell for the loose brown robe.
“But you are sworn off women, and God and I already have enough issues without me getting you in my bed. Go back to haunting the halls, Dominus, but take care. This is the women’s wing. There is nothing for you here.”
She turned on her heel, the swift movement revealing the embroidered beads on her shoes. What kind of woman was she, to gift a slow child with a favorite shoe? And then refuse to seduce him, for his own good? His fondness for Mamille grew.
“A damn waste is what you are,” she muttered, looking over her shoulder as she paused. “I am amazing at offering solace.” She went inside with a slam of the door.
Dominus shoved his knuckles to his mouth, biting down hard. He prayed to God that all of his sacrifice would be worth it in the end. He had sworn an oath, and he had no choice but to fulfill his obligation.
They were almost to Jerusalem, and he would have a decision to make. But for now Mamie was right on many counts, to his misfortune. There was nothing for him on this side of the castle.
And her breasts would make the finest pillow.
Chapter Seven
“What just happened?” Fay asked, her cheek red from where she’d pressed her ear to the door. “Was that Dominus I heard in the hall? What did he want?”
“He is up to no good,” Mamie said, sadly patting her chest. “But I don’t know what. Templar business, I think. He gave me a song and dance about being lost.”
“You are right to doubt him,” Fay said. “I would not believe that story either.”
“He’s a good-looking man,” Larissa said. “I’ve never seen a knight with thighs as thick as tree trunks.”
“Larissa!”
“What? I am not dead, thank you. I have eyes in my head, and while my heart belongs to my Albert, I doubt there is fault in my admiring such a man.”
“I do not disagree,” Mamie said, laughing at the prim expression on the handmaiden’s face. “I am sorry for it, myself.”
“If you cannot sway him from God’s service,” Larissa said, “I don’t know who can.”
“I think that may have been a compliment,” Fay said, giggling at them both.
“I cannot, in good conscience, sway him from God’s work.” She paced toward the window. “He said I smelled nice.”
Larissa chuckled. “Perhaps the game is not over. God has not got him yet.”
Mamie hugged her stomach, knowing she’d seen a spark of desire in his eyes before he banked it. “No games.”
Eleanor stepped inside the room, beaming, non, glowing, as she shut the door behind her, thanking the servant who had brought her back.
“Raymond is wonderful. Simply lovely. We spent the last hour laughing like I haven’t since I was in Poitier as a child. He tells the funniest stories and mimics people perfectly. Constance and I were in tears.”
Mamie guided Eleanor to a chair by the window overlooking the busy river. “He missed you?”
“He worried for me after our mistreatment at Manuel’s hands.”
Mamie said nothing, but shared a look with Fay. That mistreatment had been prodded by Raymond trying to get his niece to commit treason. Lady Isabella, a fellow guard for the queen, went in Eleanor’s stead. King Louis had pulled strings, and Isabella had been banished to England with her lover rather than killed in Constantinople.
The first of them to go.
“I assured him that this place, his golden palace, is exactly the rest I need. He’s given me jewels and bangles. Trunks of clothes and perfumes.” Eleanor released a delighted sigh. “I feel like a girl again.”
“You are not exactly long in the tooth,” Fay said. “You are also the Queen of France. A mother. A leader. A wife.”
“Do not be a bucket of water just yet,” Eleanor said with a wave. “I would relish this feeling a while longer before returning to my dull life.”
“Dull?” Mamie asked. “Did I miss something? This last year has been nothing but one harrowing adventure after another.”
Fay nodded. “We are lucky to be alive.”
“And once I go back to France? I will catch a chill from the drafts in that damned castle and die. An old crone.”
“Cheery,” Larissa observed.
“Tell us the good parts,” Mamie said, “of your visit.”
“You noticed the bustle on the river earlier? Well, Raymond said he trades with places all over the world. He’s met a Chinaman. Yellow skin and short of stature, black hair, and very polite.”
“So you’d like to go to China?” Mamie tried to understand the queen’s mood. Capricious, teetering on sadness.
“Non. Perhaps. One thing I do know: I will never meet a yellow-skinned man in Paris.”
Mamie feared she was beginning to see the light. Eleanor found Antioch much to her liking . . .
The Queen of France could not be Queen of France from Antioch.
Mamie had been looking forward to the banquet, but now she wondered how to protect the queen from having too good of time.
Dominus slipped out of the palace after discovering Louis’s suite of rooms, though he could not get past the royal guard. After their bungling today on the boat, he was glad to see they were at attention, protecting the king. He walked along the courtyard to the back gate of the Templar House, thinking about his greatest temptation. If she only knew what personal hell her perfume sent him to, she might be kinder.
Waiting until the Templar guard’s back was turned, Dominus snuck inside the kitchen yard and into the single-story square building. It stretched across the yard as if the Templars were not quite finished adding on rooms.
He crept past the snoring chaplain and found his chamber, where Everard lay stretched out on a cot.
“Not much wider cots than what was on the galley,” Everard said, his eyes still closed as he dozed.
The plain beeswax candle spluttered, and a glazed lamp flickered from the desk by the window. The furniture was bare but serviceable. Quality, sturdy. Simple. As God wished for each man who served him to be.
“Sorry to wake you,” Dominus said.
“You did not,” the knight said in a drowsy voice, his eyes still closed. “I was resting before the banquet.”
“I thought the Templars were not allowed to go.” His heart sped as he thought of the chance to see Mamie. Not Mamie—the banquet would give him the opportunity to eavesdrop on Louis. Maybe Odo and Thierry. He would be able to observe the primary players in Prince Raymond’s court. Surely that would interest the bishop.
“The prince and princess wanted us all there—you and I especially because of our assistance with the queen this morning.” He sat up.
Dominus rubbed the bump on his nose, broken by his fathe
r as they’d fought before he left home for good. “Commander Bartholomew does not care for me as it is. If I get special dispensation, I doubt he will like me anytime soon.”
Everard chuckled. “The commander told me he’d asked you to fast and pray instead of going to the banquet, but I explained how we had fasted already, thanks to the ship tossing about and little food. He agreed that perhaps there was a misunderstanding.”
Dominus lifted his head in surprise. “I did not mind missing the festivities.”
“There will not be any merrymaking, brother.” Everard counted off on his hands. “We are not to dance, flirt, or touch a woman in any way. I was reminded, for my own soul, of the oath. To not gorge or indulge in idle conversation.”
Weary, Dominus sat on the edge of his bed, facing Everard. “Anything else?”
“Commander Bartholomew said that the strict order of conduct is imperative to following God’s will.” He shrugged. “I was never married, like some of the other men, so I do not miss that joining of lives. Were you wed before you took the oath?”
Dominus thought back to his life before the Crusade. His father, a duke of a very small duchy on the coast, ruler of a rotted keep that smelled of fish. His half-brothers as wild as their father. Sometimes he’d felt like the only sane person in the village.
“No. I never married.” His father had not believed in marriage. His philosophy had been to get as many women pregnant and have their bastards run his fishing empire. Delusional. Most of the time, they’d all gotten along. His father’s plan had almost worked.
He enjoyed women, but he’d avoided love and commitment, certain he had plenty of time to discover his mate.
“So you do not crave women’s company, as some of the others do?”
“I try not to think about them that way.” Dominus had thought to end his days on the battlefield, a sword in his hand and a war cry on his lips. Not an ocean in sight. Only the wheel of Fortuna, Tyche, spun—and here he was in the Mediterranean, still risking his life by sword and losing his heart to a woman who thought he was a monk. God help him.
“Do you regret joining the brotherhood?”
