“Why?” John replied. “He’s just looking around, and once he’s figured things out he’ll be calmer and more settled.”
Amalric muttered something under his breath and then said out loud, “At this rate we won’t make Kyrenia before dark!”
“We’ll make it,” John insisted, patting Troubadour on the neck as they continued.
John was right, and they reached Kyrenia well before nightfall, although it was late afternoon. The gates were open, and no one stopped them for papers or tolls. Once in the small city, they passed quickly down a sloping paved street between low stone buildings with flat roofs and plastered walls, heading straight for the harbor. This consisted of a nearly perfectly round inner harbor enclosed by a chain in the north. The chain stretched from a sea wall extending out from the foot of the castle in the east to a large customs house on the western shore. Beyond the chain was a man-made outer harbor created by two breakwaters that reached out like enfolding arms from east and west, almost meeting in the middle but leaving a gap just wide enough for ships to sail through. A lighthouse sat on the tip of the western breakwater, showing sailors the small harbor entrance.
The harbor was nearly empty. Local merchantmen had been laid up for the winter, leaving the harbor to a handful of fishing craft and a single oceangoing vessel that looked decidedly the worse for wear. The mast was broken about two-thirds of the way from the top and the prow was missing its figurehead. John gasped at the sight of her. He thought it was the Storm Bird, but without the figurehead he couldn’t be 100 per cent sure.
There was a lot of activity on deck, however. It looked as if all the rigging had been uncoiled and laid out on the deck, apparently to dry or to find weaknesses. The crew was also busy hanging out their clothes to dry and tossing rotten supplies overboard into the harbor—despite the outraged protests of a local fisherman who was shaking his fist at them.
John rode straight to the quay, looking for a familiar face. When he spotted Christian Arendsen, he started waving and shouting. “Christian! Christian! Welcome back! Is the Storm Bird badly damaged?” John jumped down from Troubadour and had to drag the horse closer to the ship. (Troubadour had not enjoyed the journey to Cyprus and was not the least inclined to repeat the experience. Barry, on the other hand, had been spoiled by the entire crew and now raced past his master, yapping in delight.)
Christian smiled broadly at the sight of John and Barry as he waved back. Grabbing a halyard made fast to the outer rail, he hauled himself onto the gunnel and jumped down onto the quay. “The mast broke a day out of Rhodes, taking the Bird with her, but she’s fine! We could jury-rig it pretty easily and the rest of the mast apparently didn’t split, but we’ll have to replace it here. Great forests, I’m told.” He looked left toward a bank of mountains covered with tall trees, a rarity in most of the Mediterranean.
Haakon himself appeared at the side of his ship, hands on his hips, as he glowered down at John. For all that Christian had made light of their ordeal, John had only seen Haakon look this bedraggled once before: when he’d been part of a relief fleet for the besiegers of Acre in the winter of 1189. On that infamous trip they had been forced to break off the relief attempt and run back to Tyre after losing two ships. Certainly Haakon’s leather aketon was encrusted with salt, his hair stringy, and his beard untrimmed. “Where did you come from?” Haakon demanded. “We only tied up two hours ago!”
“We saw a sail from up there,” John pointed in the direction of St. Hilarion, “and Lord Aimery thought it might be you, so he sent me to find out. With Amalric here,” he added with a gesture toward his companion before asking anxiously, “What news from Lord Geoffrey?”
Haakon’s rugged face formed a twisted smile. “You’d better start calling me ‘sir,’ young man, because you’re looking at an admiral.”
“Lord Geoffrey’s not coming? He turned Cyprus down?” John couldn’t believe it. Not only did it seem too good to be true, it was simply impossible for him to imagine anyone not wanting Cyprus.
“He thinks the Plantagenet is a wounded lion that he can now take down with impunity.”
“But why would he want to? King Richard is a great king!” John protested naively.
“Yeah, well, a great king who dumped the Lusignans in favor of Montferrat, remember? Lord Geoffrey hasn’t forgiven him for that. His official answer was entrusted to a Genoese captain, but we left him wallowing under swamped decks in the Straits of Messenia. God knows when he’ll make it—might not be till next spring.”
“Do you want to bring the word to Lord Aimery yourself?” John asked. “Or should I ride back with the news?”
“We only docked two hours ago, for Christ’s sake!” Haakon answered irritably. “I haven’t been out of these clothes in a month, below deck it stinks enough to make even me want to puke, the rigging needs a complete overhaul, and we are all going to celebrate our successful passage tonight. Then, after I’ve recovered from the hangover, I’ll think about getting on something as terrifying as a horse and taking the message to Nicosia.”
“Lord Aimery isn’t at Nicosia. He’s at St. Hilarion.” John pointed again in the direction of the castle, although it was quite impossible to see it from here.
“Well, wherever. You’re not going to make it back tonight, either. Why don’t you join us for a little well-earned celebration?”
John looked hastily back at Amalric. If it had been the steady and responsible Georgios, he would have received a shake of the head and dutifully said no. But Amalric was all for this idea. Norsemen had a reputation for wild parties. He nodded enthusiastically, and John agreed.
“Go find some lodgings, then,” Haakon waved him off. “We need to get this ship tidied up a bit, but we’ll be ready for some entertainment come sundown.”
John nodded again, waved to Christian, and then turned to lead the way to the castle, where he and Amalric could ask for hospitality from the castellan, Reynald Barlais. With the horses put away, they left their bedrolls against the screens in the great hall and then returned to the harbor, Barry at their heels.
It wasn’t sundown yet, however, so they decided it wouldn’t hurt to get something to eat before joining the Norsemen. They found a small street stand selling freshly grilled octopus soaked in olive oil, and bought themselves a portion each. Then they returned to the Storm Bird and found the crew collecting on deck in their “best.”
It was, John thought, an excitingly frightening collection of muscular men in an eclectic collection of armor and weapons, all jabbering in their peculiar language. John was both fascinated and uncomfortable. He found Christian and attached himself to the former cleric. Amalric, in contrast, despite having no common language, seemed surprisingly at ease with these men. He was very muscular, too, of course, and three years older than John.
At last Haakon emerged from somewhere aft and they set off. As they moved along the quay, John noticed that some of the establishments quickly closed their doors and bolted them. But as they got closer to where the fishermen were tied up, a couple of taverns remained open.
With the sun down, the air was chilly, and they moved as a horde into the vaulted ground floor of the tavern. Here they occupied the bulk of the tables, and Haakon ordered ale for everyone. The proprietor answered in Greek that he couldn’t understand a word they were saying. Haakon turned and stared at John. John ordered ale for everyone.
“Let’s hope it tastes better than horse piss,” Haakon muttered generally, “or my crew might get out of hand. Better find out about the food,” he added to John (who now understood why Haakon had wanted him to join them for the evening).
The ale, fortunately, met the approval of the Norsemen, as did the food—and the mood, rather than turning ugly, was becoming decidedly jolly. One of the Norsemen stood up on a bench and started singing-speaking, to the apparent approval of his shipmates, who occasionally cheered or pounded the tables with their mugs in a kind of chorus. Now and then they even joined in, apparently as familiar with
the saga he was reciting as the performer himself. When the latter sat down, they all started singing, beating the time with their mugs or their feet.
At first John loved the singing because it was melodic and forceful, but not understanding the words, he gradually became bored. It was now nearly compline anyway, and he was used to going to bed at this time. He always started the day at prime. He was trying to think of a way to excuse himself when Christian leaned over and said in his ear, “It’s time for the wenches. Ask the landlord.”
“Wenches?” John asked back, feeling completely out of his depth.
“Yeah. Just ask. He’ll know what we want.”
John took a deep breath and called the landlord over. “Ah. My friends here were wondering—ah—about—um—women.” Wenches was just not a word he used. . . .
The landlord didn’t seem surprised. He nodded and went away. Within a quarter of an hour, a score of women sauntered into the tavern and spread out among the tables. They were all shapes and sizes, some older, some younger, and yet they were also all the same in the way they smiled at the men, helped themselves to their ale, winked and gestured with their heads. One after another, the men started disappearing out the back with the women. John knew perfectly well what was going on, of course, but he’d never been a witness to it before. He felt acutely uncomfortable—aroused despite himself, yet also embarrassed.
Amalric didn’t suffer from the same inhibitions. He had his arm around one of the girls and was kissing her hotly. When his hand started kneading her breast, however, John stopped watching them out of sheer shame.
A moment later, Amalric was beside him. “John, can you lend me ten dinars?”
“What?”
“I’ll pay you back next month,” Amalric promised, his breath laden with ale, and his hose poking through the slit in his surcoat. Seeing John’s glance to his crotch, he flashed a smile. “Yeah, you can see the state I’m in! But if I can’t pay she’ll go with one of the others. Please! You must have it!” Amalric insisted, starting to get genuinely antsy.
John reached for his purse to pull out the coins, and Haakon’s hand closed over his wrist in an iron fist. “Don’t pull out your purse in a place like this!”
John looked at him blankly. “But Amalric—”
“I heard him. Where’s the madam?” He looked around and signaled to a woman who was standing with the landlord watching. She was not fat or old, as John had always assumed madams would be. Rather, she was tall and lithe with black hair and black eyes, and she moved toward them with a fluid grace that was almost like the sea itself.
She reached their table and greeted them with a smile on her lips and narrowed eyes. “Monsieur le Capitaine, I presume?” She, at least, spoke French, albeit with a strange accent.
“I’m good for every man in the room. Understood? Ten denier a turn, right?”
She nodded with that mirthless smile, her eyes shifting to John and Amalric.
Amalric muttered, “Thank you!” to Haakon and darted back to the girl, who was flirting with someone else. He grabbed her under her arm and dragged her up off the bench. She laughed, waved to the others, and put her arm around Amalric as he led her away.
The woman seated herself opposite them, her eyes fixed on Haakon. “What about you, Captain? It was a long, difficult crossing, or so I heard. So late in the year, and the ship nearly dismasted.” Her voice was like olive oil, soft, fluid, slippery.
“Join me for a drink,” Haakon answered instead.
“I don’t drink that horse piss,” she answered with a gesture of contempt toward the ale, making Haakon laugh. Then he asked, “Wine?”
“Red.”
“Of course.” Haakon looked to John, who with a sigh signaled the landlord. “The—” he’d been about to say lady, but that was clearly not the correct term in this case— “ah—we’d like a carafe of red wine, please.”
The landlord nodded and withdrew warily, leaving the three of them at the table. John felt very much like a fifth wheel. He looked frantically for Christian, but the younger Norseman had already disappeared. He turned to pet Barry instead, as he reckoned in his head: ten deniers a turn, times sixty men plus Amalric, and some of the men seemed to be taking two turns, or had they just passed out drunk? Any way you looked at it, it was a lot of money. How much money had Haakon made with his cargo of opium seed, root of camphor, and arsenic?
“Your girls. Are they clean?” Haakon asked.
“A lot cleaner than your men,” the madam answered back, with that same smile that never reached her eyes.
“You don’t know my men.”
“And you don’t know my girls.”
Haakon raised his eyebrows, looked pointedly at the room around them, and then back at the madam with an amused expression. “Pardon me, Madame, I didn’t realize we were talking about blushing virgins. Somehow that escaped my notice.”
“You, captain, think we are the scum of the earth because we give you what you want. But you’re wrong.” She paused, then shook her head slowly and deliberately. “The scum of the earth is you!”
John caught his breath, expecting an explosion from Magnussen—and he was right, but it was an explosion of laughter, not rage. “Almost,” Haakon declared as his laughter died. A smile still on his face, he declared, “We’re the scum of the sea, not the earth. Here’s your wine. Let me pour.”
The landlord set the wine jug down and added three glazed pottery mugs, then withdrew again.
Haakon reached for the pitcher, poured wine into all three cups, and they each took one. “What’s your name?” Haakon asked the madam.
“You don’t care,” she answered. “You don’t want us to have names and stories. They just get in the way of business.”
Haakon shrugged. “We haven’t gotten to business yet—unless you want to consider a flat-rate price for the whole night. It would save us both the trouble of keeping tallies.”
“A thousand dinars,” she answered.
Haakon laughed. “You may have the only goods on offer, Madame, but they aren’t that good.”
“If you think we’re less than perfect, then take a look in a mirror!” the madam shot back. “We are what you have made us. All my girls were abused and discarded by the likes of you, or worse,” the madam spoke into the stillness. “Now they work for themselves.”
“Not you?” Haakon asked skeptically.
“I provide a home for them, protection, and medical treatment, if necessary. They pay me a percentage of their earnings in return.”
“Not a small percentage, I presume,” Haakon ventured with a cynical smile.
“Less than half.”
“So if I choose you, I get it for less than ten dinars?” Haakon asked, making John squirm in discomfort. He wished he weren’t here.
“No. I don’t take customers,” she answered with her cold smile. “And one of the rules of my house is that any of my girls can say no to any customer without explanation—just as long as they earn enough each month to pay their keep. We’re not anybody’s property anymore.”
Haakon’s eyebrows shot up, but he said nothing and took a deep drink of ale. John was confused. He blurted out, “What do you mean?”
Her eyes shifted to John, and something in them softened. She cocked her head. “You look a little displaced among these hardened seamen, young man. Like a fish out of water, or should I say, a puppy at sea? That’s a silk shirt, isn’t it? With—” she stopped herself, frowning, “—aren’t those the arms of Ibelin?”
Damn it! John thought. Why hadn’t he thought to change into something less obvious?
Haakon laughed.
The madam glanced at him and then back at John. “You serve the Lord of Ibelin? I’d heard he came to Cyprus not long ago.”
“He doesn’t serve the Lord of Ibelin,” Haakon announced, clapping his arm over John’s shoulders as he bragged, “he is an Ibelin. His eldest son and heir, to be precise.”
The madam gave Haakon a look as i
f she didn’t believe him, and John felt he had to say something. “Right now I’m just a squire to Lord Aimery de Lusignan.”
The madam looked back at him and her eyebrows twitched. “I see,” she said, but John wasn’t sure if she believed them. He rather hoped she didn’t believe them, because he didn’t want his father hearing about this evening!
“John has never been in an establishment like this before,” Haakon admitted. “I brought him along as an interpreter, but I shouldn’t have . . . ” He looked over, considered John, and repeated, “I shouldn’t have.”
She nodded. “And yourself? Aspasia’s available.” As she spoke she gestured a girl over to their table.
Haakon looked at the girl, but shook his head. “She’s too young for me. I prefer older women. Women as cynical as me.”
“Too bad,” the madam retorted, standing and drawing Aspasia away with her. The girl glanced over her shoulder and flashed a smile at John.
“I like him!” she whispered to the madam with a giggle.
“Well, forget about him. He’s the heir to the Lord of Ibelin. The captain was wrong to bring him here, and he’s not likely to come back.”
Chapter Twelve
Unhealed Wounds
Nicosia
October 1194
TWO WOMEN WERE ON THEIR KNEES with scrub brushes and a bucket of soapy water, while another two followed with mops to wipe up the dirt the first two scrubbed from the corners and cracks. Although she had been sent by Maria Zoë to see that they were doing a proper job, Beatrice was not without sympathy for the cleaning women. She knew exactly how hard it was to kneel on marble floors, and how your hands became cracked and raw from the soapy water. She knew, too, how the skirts of your dress became soaked and worn. It was only a little over two years since she had been doing the very same task. Just over two years ago, she had been a slave.
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