Acerra’s messenger did not downplay the butchery that followed. Looting soldiers desecrated Greek churches, scraping mosaics from the walls and urinating on the altars. The Greeks at Messina’s court listened quietly, if dourly, but William was incensed.
“How did the count allow it? They behaved as barbarians, not men of Sicily!”
Joan said snidely, “How do you expect men to follow your example if you are not there?”
A messenger arriving a few weeks later told of a plague that struck the city. Three thousand of the foot soldiers died.
“God’s retribution,” William sighed.
Joan snorted. Her husband knew nothing of war.
In possession of both Durazzo and Thessalonica, the reduced army began its march on Constantinople. For several weeks, there was no word. During this time of quiet, Barbarrossa sent for Constance. Protocol required that William escort his aunt to Taranto to meet Prince Henry’s representatives, but Joan returned to Palermo. If her absence gave them opportunity to compound their sin, she didn’t care.
William came back and still it was silent, until November when Tancred returned. His fleet had been in sight of Constantinople, but the count of Acerra’s army never appeared. It had progressed overland as far as Mosynopolis, a mere two hundred miles from Constantinople, when the Greeks rose up against Andronicus and murdered him themselves.
A man named Isaac Angelus was elected emperor; he immediately appointed a general to stop the Sicilian advance. The Greek army caught the Sicilians unawares and routed them. When the count of Acerra learned of Andronicus’s death, he offered to negotiate. After all, their goal had been to depose the tyrant. But the Greeks had attacked while pretending to consider a truce. They slaughtered Sicilians by the thousands, and thousands more drowned in the Strymon River trying to escape. William’s ally Alexius would never have a chance to be emperor—he was captured and blinded.
Stragglers managed to crawl back to join the garrison at Thessalonica, but now that the foreigners were the weaker party, the Thessalonicans took vicious revenge. Tancred’s ships were able to rescue fewer than a thousand men.
William was stricken. Joan couldn’t help but feel cheated. Her husband was pathetic. Her father had never lost a war.
WILLIAM HANDLED DEFEAT AS HE DID ANY OTHER UNPLEASANT ness—by ignoring it.
Throughout the winter months, Sicily’s fleet lay idle, divided between Messina and Palermo. Tancred had resigned command in favor of one of his captains. An energetic man, Margaritus of Brindisi had close-cropped hair, a scar beneath his left eye, and a barrel chest that provided the bellows for the loudest voice Joan had ever heard. She supposed he learned to talk on board a ship, for his father had also been a sea captain. Margaritus wanted nothing more than to return to the fight and avenge Sicily’s honor. He had his chance soon enough.
As Eugenius explained, another of the Comneni had wormed from Constantinople’s dust and proclaimed himself emperor. The pseudo-emperor, also named Isaac, had seized the island of Cyprus, claiming it as the new seat of the Eastern Empire. However, several of its ports relied on close ties to Constantinople for their livelihood, so it was doubtful that he could hold Cyprus without a navy.
The fact that Isaac Comnenus was every bit as much a despot as his cousin Andronicus had been was not at issue. Isaac Angelus had used dishonorable means to humiliate Sicily; therefore, his rival deserved Sicily’s support. William sent Margaritus to Cyprus to put Sicily’s fleet at Isaac Comnenus’s disposal. Joan expected lackluster results.
The treacherous Greeks were not the only men busily stirring up wars. Joan heard news from England. Her father had previously unleashed her brothers upon one another in an effort to convince Richard to yield Aquitaine to John. According to Archbishop Walter, they had been devastating each other’s inheritances. When her father finally realized his error, he made a new plan.
He ordered her brothers to stop fighting, then summoned Queen Eleanor from prison and asked Richard to yield Aquitaine to her. Perhaps he expected Richard to refuse and weaken his position in the eyes of his vassals. If so, Richard outfoxed him by yielding willingly. Eleanor might have bestowed Aquitaine on John, but she did not. Nevertheless, King Henry left things as they were, imposing a fragile peace among his sons. Geoffrey had been made seneschal of France, an honor that should have gone to Richard. If Richard had not yet complained, it was because he was currently occupied raising troops to threaten Count Raymond of Toulouse. Count Raymond had sided with the young king during the rebellion. With Richard fighting too many enemies at once, the count’s son had found opportunity to seize Quercy. Joan thought it a courageous and ambitious move, one she might approve if it weren’t so foolishly provocative. Richard would not stop at retaking Quercy if Mama wanted Toulouse.
After talking with the archbishop, Joan sat a long while in the garden court, her eyes fixed on the spiky yellow-green flowers of a carob tree. Mama had taught her to examine the significance of events from every angle, but every approach led to the same conclusion, as every needlelike petal led to the stalk. Her brothers would fight again, with or against one another, with or against Papa. Only now Lord Raymond would also sink in her family’s mire.
JUST BEFORE HER TWENTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY, JOAN LEARNED of Geoffrey’s death in a tournament in France, trampled by his own horse after a fall. They said King Philip cradled the broken body in his arms and wept. Guiltily, she recognized her own first reaction as relief. Geoffrey was dead, not Richard, and Richard had not killed him. Also, with unseemly thankfulness, she noted Lord Raymond had been nowhere near.
She hoped to find some blessing in the end to her elder brothers’ rivalry, but Geoffrey’s death settled nothing. Now Richard would simply fight with John, and that competition promised to be even more bitter. Geoffrey had been count of Brittany, a French fief. Although the French king aggressively asserted his rights, no one disputed that those lands would go to Geoffrey’s son, Arthur. But as eldest surviving son, Richard claimed the rights to all of his brother Henry’s lands—Normandy, Anjou, Maine, England—without relinquishing either of his own, Poitou and Aquitaine. It was as if he believed John should ever be John Lackland.
For a while, impending war between England and France became the favorite topic at court. Joan was forced to listen to stories of the French king outmaneuvering Papa and Richard by claiming custody of Geoffrey’s two young daughters. As overlord of Brittany, it was King Philip’s right. In the resulting tempest, instead of sensibly trying to appease the King of England, he added another demand—that Alice be married immediately or returned, along with the Norman Vexin and the county of Berry. He threatened to invade Normandy if King Henry did not comply.
Joan could imagine her father’s fury. Especially since Philip flatly refused to negotiate while Richard was harassing one of his vassals. She suspected Richard was equally furious when Papa ordered him to leave Toulouse alone.
Philip agreed to a truce until the following summer, but no one expected it to hold. It was rumored that a vassal of Richard’s had killed two of Count Raymond’s messengers and Richard refused to surrender the man for judgment.
If only King Philip would invade Normandy quickly, it might bring Papa and Richard together. An unwieldy peace would only drive them apart. Yet winter gave way slowly to spring, and then to summer. Sicily lost interest in rumors of wars in faraway England, France, and Cyprus. These wars were always imminent and yet would not start.
It seemed to Joan it must always be summer in Sicily. Many of the courtiers left Palermo for the cool breezes of the countryside, and Bishop Palmer took a party to the Favara for the month of July. William spent half his days at the Cuba. She wished he would spend the whole summer there. One evening, she felt him watching her too intently during supper. When she excused herself before the entertainments, he did as well.
“It has been a month, Joanna,” he murmured, drawing close behind.
She sighed. “Has it? Well, come then.”
&
nbsp; Ignoring his grimace, she mounted the stairs. She would just as soon get it over with. He hesitated a moment, then she heard his feet on the steps.
The maids in the day chamber jumped out of their chairs, blushing and bowing. High in color himself, William ducked into the bedroom. Joan followed wearily, shutting the door as she went in. She stood beside the bed while he methodically untied her laces, then she stripped off her gown and lay down. To avoid seeing him undress, she shut her eyes, and kept them closed as she felt the weight of him beside her.
Sometimes it helped to think of other things. It had been a while since they’d had any reports of Admiral Margaritus. She’d misjudged him. So far, he’d kept Angelus away from Cyprus’s shores.
William grunted, shifting his weight. Joan turned her head.
Cyprus’s shores—she guessed Margaritus would rather be Isaac Comnenus’s opponent than ally. Maybe the disaffected Cypriots would be willing to rise up against him, the way the Greeks had risen against Andronicus. But then, they might not be any more willing to accept Sicily’s rule.
“Do you think he would be able to take Cyprus?” Joan said aloud.
“What?” William stared at her. “Who?”
“Margaritus.”
William grumbled something she could barely make out.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” he answered, frowning, his lips tight.
“I heard you,” she insisted, nearly taunting.
“Then I don’t have to repeat myself.”
It didn’t matter. She’d heard enough. “I wasn’t thinking about Margaritus, but about Cyprus. Don’t you think—”
“Joanna! Are you even in this bed when I am here?”
She gazed at him coldly. “I try not to be.”
His head jerked back. He looked beaten, like Papa when he told her Richard had been knighted by King Louis. Fighting pity, she climbed from the bed.
“I’m going to bathe now, William.” She drew a robe around her shoulders and left the chamber, knowing he would be gone by the time she returned.
THAT SUMMER, ALL TALK OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE WAS disregarded in favor of a new rumor, one too frightening to believe, too terrible to ignore. Saladin had broken his truce with the Franks in Outremer—the Holy Land. Saracens defeated the combined Frankish forces and the Templars at a place called the Horns of Hattin. Even the name conjured the devil’s image.
Ship after ship put into harbor carrying the same tale, magnified in horror. Saladin was now in possession of the True Cross. The Christians had been massacred. At the end of the battle, Saladin had all the captive Templars put to the sword. The king of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, had survived but was in Saladin’s custody, leaving no one to defend Jerusalem but Queen Sybilla and a handful of knights.
In October, Archbishop Josias of Tyre brought irrefutable word. The last bastion of defense was now in Tyre, fewer than two hundred soldiers under the command of Count Conrad of Montferrat. The unthinkable had happened. Jerusalem itself had fallen into the hands of infidels.
Yet it happened peacefully. In contrast to the slaughter at Hattin, Saladin accepted the Holy City’s capitulation magnanimously, allowing the Christians within to buy their freedom with gold. He pardoned Queen Sybilla and her court without ransom. As a reward for his loyal service, Saladin’s brother, el-Adil, asked for one thousand slaves from among the captives too poor to ransom themselves. Then he set them free.
But Saladin and his brother could afford to be generous after Hattin. They feared no one. There was no one left in Outremer to fear.
Listening to the archbishop, William fell into a fit of weeping. He left the throne room to seclude himself in his apartments. For a week, Joan presided over a court in an uproar. The archbishop of Tyre urged a new crusade. Bishop Palmer and Archbishop Walter found themselves, for once, in agreement: The Holy Land must be reclaimed.
But the king had yet to show his face. Finally, Joan went to his apartments and rattled the door until a page opened it. Seeing William wearing sackcloth, she felt a surge of exasperation. When he rose to greet her, his legs bowed and he put a hand to the wall.
Startled, she asked, “What is wrong?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head slowly. “I have been fasting.”
“Humph. Monks fast. Kings eat. Have you given thought to how to answer Josias?”
“I’ve prayed—”
“He must go to Rome as quickly as possible. Give him a fast ship and a strong escort.”
“Yes,” he answered sluggishly, as if waking from a dream. “Yes, of course.”
“There will be a crusade. After Hattin, and now this, Jerusalem—”
William winced. His anguish surprised her.
“Will you take the cross?” When he did not answer, she cleared her throat. “It will be months before the pope can launch a crusade. Help is needed now. Saladin has been to Tyre once already, but abandoned the siege for easier victories. Josias fears he will return.”
He squinted at her, finally listening.
Joan spoke more forcefully. “Christendom cannot afford to lose Tyre. When the crusaders are ready, they will need a toehold on the coast. Sicily already has a fleet halfway to the Holy Land.”
“Margaritus?” The wrinkles on his forehead smoothed away. “Yes, of course. The fleet.”
Appalled by his relief, Joan added cowardice to the long list of her husband’s faults. He would answer God’s call by sending others to martyrdom. That was how the king of Sicily prepared for war.
F I F T E E N
RICHARD WAS THE FIRST TO TAKE THE CROSS—RICHARD, who was everything her husband was not.
The duke was in Tours when word of the disaster reached him. He didn’t wait to beg leave of his overlord or of his father but knelt before the bishop of Tours and swore the crusader’s oath. Richard was his own man before God.
Joan sat in the library, an opened codex before her: a commentary on the Gospel of Mark. Ashamed of her previous complacency, she’d abandoned study of anything but God’s word. But thoughts of the Holy War, or lack of one, distracted her. Where was the righteous fury of Christian kings?
King Philip had insisted Richard honor his long-delayed betrothal and marry Princess Alice or he would break the truce and attack Normandy. To avert war, the two kings held another conference at the beginning of the new year, a conference Richard refused to attend. According to Archbishop Walter, negotiations were failing until Tyre’s archbishop arrived. The eloquent Josias turned the focus to Jerusalem, and at the conclusion, though nothing else had been settled, the English and French kings took the cross.
That was in January, however. It was now December, and the promised crusade was not yet under way.
In the spring, one after another, Richard’s vassals in Aquitaine had rebelled, and one after another, he defeated them. Then had come more trouble with Count Raymond. Richard invaded Quercy, regaining castles in Cahors and Moissac among others, before advancing on the very city of Toulouse. But his attack on Toulouse provided King Philip an excuse to move against Berry again. With his northern border threatened, Richard could not continue besieging Count Raymond. He hurried to Normandy to join Papa. Together, they battled Philip’s men throughout the summer and into the fall.
All of which meant Saladin had been in Jerusalem a year, and the only king who had done anything for the Holy Land was one who had not taken the cross. William sent several more galleys to Margaritus; while France and England fought each other, Sicily’s fleet saved Tripoli, Tyre, and Antioch.
But Margaritus’s success held a mixed blessing, for as soon as he left Cyprus the tyrant Isaac Comnenus made a truce with Saladin and banned crusaders from the island’s ports. In response, William sent word to all the principals who had taken the crusading oath, urging them to use Sicily as their Mediterranean base instead of Cyprus. Joan convinced herself William intended to join the crusaders coming through Sicily. He could not, with honor, do anything else.
Of
course, all speculation assumed the crusaders managed to put aside their differences to fight the common enemy. Master Eugenius said on that day Allah himself would tremble, but until then, Saladin had no cause to fear.
The library door creaked open, but Joan didn’t bother to look up until she heard the soft voice of one of her eunuchs.
“My lady, it is time. The king is on his way to the council chamber.”
Joan shut the codex and rose. William had asked the familiares and Archbishop Walter to meet him before supper. Usually, she had at least an inkling beforehand what they would discuss, but not this time.
The eunuch walked a few steps behind her down the wide hallways leading to the council chamber. Unlike the throne room, this chamber had unadorned walls and dull tiled floors, but it possessed a magnificent gilded oak table large enough to seat twenty. The three familiares and the archbishop sat far apart from each other. When she took a chair close to Bishop Palmer, they eyed her as if trying to guess what she knew.
The king entered the room. Everyone stood until he waved for them to sit. William was looking tired these days, older, though at thirty-five he was hardly an old man. His voice had lost some of its gruffness, sounding more nasal, and his nosebleeds must have increased in frequency, because he often seemed to have crusted blood about his nostrils.
“The lord pope has asked Sicily’s commitment,” he announced, “and I have promised sixty galleys and thirty thousand men.”
A smile bloomed on Joan’s face. He would go.
“The count of Molise says he will go to the Holy Land if I give him command.”
“The count of Molise!” Matthew of Ajello was first to object, but the others appeared equally appalled. “He would as soon dethrone you as Saladin.”
William frowned. “I’ll not have slander—”
“It is prudence, not slander, to question the motives of Molise.” Bishop Palmer, ever diplomatic, leaned forward in his earnestness. “Sire, I think you should reconsider.”
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