Devil's Bargain

by Judith Tarr

  Richard slapped the woolly neck and grinned at Mustafa. “Good day, my friend! I’ve not seen you about. I was almost starting to fret.”

  “That was kind of you, my lord,” said Mustafa.

  “I’m never kind,” Richard said. “So, out with it. Where have you been?”

  “Ascalon,” Mustafa answered him baldly. He had learned some good while since that Richard had no patience with indirection. When he wanted a report, he wanted it clean: short, sharp, and to the point.

  Richard read most of it in his eyes. “Bad?”

  “Worse,” said Mustafa. “It’s razed to the ground. There’s not one stone standing on another.”

  Richard nodded slowly, without surprise. “Did he take the stones away?”

  “No, my lord. They’re scattered everywhere.”

  “Good,” said Richard. “Good. We’ve got something to work with, then.” He paused. “There’s something else. What is it?”

  Mustafa could not take his eyes off that windburned face. It was raw and red; the cheeks were peeling. Small dags of ice hung from the mustache. There was nothing beautiful about it at all, except the bright blue eyes. And yet Mustafa would not have traded this man for the loveliest boy in Baghdad.

  He blinked and reined himself in, and said, stammering a little, “I—I saw—The ships, my lord. Half the fleet is wrecked. There are ships’ timbers and broken spars clear up the coast.”

  “And the cargoes?”

  “Lost or ruined. The crews that survived are salvaging what they can. But, my lord, it’s an ill sight to come to after a march like this.”

  “We’ll have to come to it,” Richard said, drawing himself up. “And now we have warning. I thank you for that. Are you hungry? Tired? Take a place on one of the wagons—say I sent you. See if one of the cooks can find you something to eat.”

  “I’m well, my lord,” Mustafa said, though his stomach was a tight knot of hunger. He had water enough, melted from snow, and he had eaten yesterday. He would last for a while.

  Richard eyed him narrowly but let him be. There was a council to call now, and decisions to make. He had already forgotten Mustafa.

  That was as it should be. A king should rule. This king ruled well, mostly; even his failures had a certain splendor to them.

  They were all forewarned, but the sight of Ascalon struck them dumb. They came to it near the end of a cold and windy day. Under a scud of clouds and a sinking sun, they looked out across a wasteland. Waste behind and waste before, and the heave and crash of the sea beyond. The very emptiness was a mockery, the sultan’s backhanded gift after his defeat at Arsuf.

  Richard held them together by sheer force of will. They burrowed into the ruins and dug out dens and caves, living like wild dogs in the wreck of the city. Some, when day came again, he sent to gather the flotsam from the shore, the broken bits of ships that could be cut and shaped into newer, smaller, handier craft for these uncertain seas. The rest began the by now familiar labor of rebuilding the fallen fortress, raising walls and building barracks. It was backbreaking labor, sometimes for a literal fact; but once the boats were built and sent to Cyprus for provisions, they had food to eat, and their dens and lairs were the best shelter they had had since Jaffa.

  In the midst of this, Richard summoned Sioned. That was a rare enough occurrence, and she was busy enough with her doctoring, that she almost refused to go. But the squire was one of the adoring puppies who followed her about whenever they could. She would not have liked to expose him to the king’s wrath.

  Richard was at the wall, overseeing the raising of the stones and putting his hand to a few himself. It was warm work. Even in the winter chill, he had stripped to his shirt; the back and armpits were dark with sweat.

  It was a while before he noticed Sioned. She occupied the time in reckoning how far the wall had come since yesterday and calculating how far it would go before tomorrow. It was an impressive calculation, for so few men, and so few of them masons or laborers. There were even knights among them, rank and arrogance laid aside, soiling their hands with common labor.

  At length Richard turned from the setting of a stone as big as a destrier, to find her standing behind him, watching with interest. He started slightly, but then he grinned. “Little sister! What do you think? Are we great builders of cities?”

  “As great as Alexander,” she said. “What will you call this? Ricardia?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Ascalon will do. I’ll leave the great vaunts to the Greeks and Romans.”

  “I’d never have taken you for a humble man,” she said.

  “Did I say I was humble? This is a fine and handsome city, and when it’s done, it will be mine.” He pulled out the tail of his shirt and mopped his brow with it. “I’ve a task for you, sister. Will you do it?”

  “What is it?”

  He grinned. “You’re wary. That’s good. It’s not anything to endanger your immortal soul. I’m sending a deputation to Acre. I’d like you to go with it.”

  “What, are you sending me away after all?”

  “Not in the way you mean,” he said. “I’m making you an envoy. I’ve had a message from the French; I need someone trustworthy to bring back a reply.”

  She was not mollified at all. “Why are you asking me? There are a good half-hundred men in this army who can carry a confidential message.”

  “Because,” he said, “I need you. Come to me after dinner. I’ll explain then.”

  “Why not now?”

  He snorted in exasperation. “After dinner. Be sure you come.”

  “Serve you right if I don’t,” she muttered.

  Of course she went. She was curious, and she would wager that he was desperate. She gave him ample time to finish his dinner, and then a little more to dismiss the usual crowd that hung about until he went to bed.

  His lair was larger than most. It had actual walls, and a roof that had been repaired with ship’s timbers. Part was curtained off for a bedchamber; the rest held a table with a mended leg, an assortment of stools and chairs, and a rack of bronze lamps that must have come from some ancient Roman hoard. They were all lit, and a pair of braziers held back the cold.

  Everyone on the Crusade had learned that winter why the infidels were in the habit of heaping carpets on their floors. Carpets were warm; the more of them there were, the farther one’s feet were from the chill of stone or tile. Richard had amassed a fair treasure of carpets, and most of them had gone down on this floor. They made a handsome lair, brilliant with color, ornate with the intricate patterns of the east.

  Richard was pacing that carpeted floor. He was not alone. A clerk attended him, and a squire waited on his guest.

  She knew the young man who sat by one of the braziers, drinking mulled wine from a steaming cup. He was Richard’s kinsman, his sister’s son: the young lord Henry from Champagne. He was a little older than she was herself; he had acquitted himself well on the Crusade. He was a thoroughly sensible person, and seldom inclined toward the silliness of youth. He was also, and entirely incidentally, as pretty a young man as any in the kingdom of France.

  He smiled at sight of her, then leaped up and bowed, brushing her hand with a kiss. She could not help but smile back. Henry was a charming creature, and very good company, when his duties left him time for it.

  Richard beamed at them both. “Well, children? Do you think you can keep each other out of mischief on the way to Acre?”

  Sioned’s smile died. “You’re sending him? Why do you need me?”

  “Why, lady,” Henry said with a face of tragic grief. “Am I so unbearable?”

  “You know you are not,” said Sioned. She fixed her glare on Richard. “Well?”

  Richard shrugged, a roll of heavy shoulders. “You’re not going to let me say I’m thinking of your pleasure on the road, are you? I didn’t think so. I am, in point of fact, sister. Apart from the fact that I need something.”

  He was having a great deal of trouble coming rou
nd to it, which was not like him at all. She made no effort to come to his rescue, but let him flounder about until he stumbled into silence. With a hiss of frustration, he began again. “You’re going to Acre with messages for my mother and the Duke of Burgundy—but yes, those could go with anyone. When they’re delivered, you’ll go on much more quietly to Tyre.”

  That caught her interest. She glanced at Henry. He knew already: there was no surprise in his face, although he listened closely.

  “Milord of Tyre is up to something,” Richard said. “We think he’s treating secretly with Saladin. We also think he’s going to make a bid for the throne of Jerusalem—which will require him to get rid of the man who currently claims it. There’s a pretty little war brewing.”

  “Very pretty,” she said. “That still doesn’t explain why you need me.”

  “I need you,” said Richard through gritted teeth, “because I’m told on all too good authority that milord Conrad is up to something more than simple treachery. He’s made . . . alliances. The kind that you know how to recognize—and maybe how to break.”

  “Magic?” She spoke the word to see him flinch. “You don’t think your mother has powers enough to flatten anything he can bring to bear?”

  Richard was squirming beautifully. “Mother isn’t here. You are.”

  “Your mother is in Acre, where you’re sending me. Are you asking me to ally myself with her?”

  “No!” Richard said too quickly.

  “You don’t trust her,” said Sioned with slow relish.

  “I trust her with my life,” he snapped.

  “That’s not what I said,” she said. “You think I’ll do as I’m told, whereas she will do nothing of the sort. Have you forgotten everything you ever knew about me?”

  “I remember that you can keep your mouth shut when it suits you, and that you clean up very nicely. Conrad has an eye for the ladies. Mother would put him completely on his guard. But a beautiful young sister, curious to see the sights of Tyre, might lull him into letting something slip.”

  “A beautiful young sister and a beautiful young cousin,” she said. “Isn’t it a little too obvious?”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” Richard said. “It’s so obvious as to be contemptible. While he’s sneering at me, you can see whatever is there to see.”

  She had to nod at that, however reluctantly. “That’s almost clever.”

  “Isn’t it? And I thought of it all by myself.”

  She bared her teeth at him. “Don’t expect me to take you for an idiot. Suppose I do this for you. What do I get out of it?”

  “My favor.”

  “I already have that.”

  “Little minx,” he said mildly. “I’ll give you a manor, then. Do you want one in England or in Anjou?”

  “Give me one here,” she said, “when you take Jerusalem.”

  His eyes widened slightly. Good: she had surprised him. “You’d stay?”

  “If I can.”

  “Done, then,” he said. And to his clerk: “Brother Hubert, write it down.”

  “Also write,” Sioned said as the monk bent to his parchment, “that I will hold said manor in vassalage to my brother, Richard, and no other Christian lord or king; but if this land should be conquered again, I may choose to whom I give my fealty.”

  The monk’s pen scratched busily. She had been holding her breath; she let it out. Richard had voiced no word of objection. Henry was regarding her with an odd expression, as if he had never seen her before.

  She was used to that. She regarded them both with a bland expression. When the king’s decree was written and copied, signed and sealed, she took her copy of it and tucked it tidily away. “I’ll do as you ask,” she said then. “When do we go?”

  “As soon as you can,” Richard said. “When you come to Acre, ask Joanna to fit you out in proper gear. You’ll go as a lady of substance and a king’s favorite; and you’ll look the part. I don’t want you coming in front of Conrad in your usual old rag of a thing, or worse yet, Turkish trousers.”

  Trousers might intrigue the man, Sioned thought, but she held her tongue. In spite of herself, she was pleased with this embassy. She should be racked with guilt to abandon the sick and wounded, but it seemed she was as callow a soul as any other. To be behind real walls, in real warmth, maybe even with the prospect of a bath . . . it would be bliss.

  She resisted the urge to scratch at the inevitable crop of winter vermin. Richard, having got what he wanted from her, had turned back to Henry. She should listen: there were things she needed to know, nuances of politics that would serve her. But she was lost in contemplation of hot water on skin too long deprived of it.

  A name brought her abruptly back to the matter at hand. “. . . Saphadin,” said Richard. “He may be there if Conrad really is plotting treachery with the sultan. He’s a tricky one; don’t try to out-wile him, you won’t succeed. Be simple, be transparent. Be the pretty fool that you seem to be.”

  “I understand, uncle,” Henry said.

  So did Sioned. He would be there. He knew her—too well. He would know what she was doing and how. If he told Conrad—

  She had better hope that he did not, or better yet, that he was not there at all. For she did want to go. She did want to see Tyre.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Sweet saints!” said Henry. “You do clean up well.”

  Sioned laughed. She had done a great deal of that since she left Ascalon: he truly was delightful company. Now that they were in Acre, in the swirl and sparkle of a proper royal court, the war and its miseries seemed impossibly remote.

  No one was hungry here, or wet, or cold. The ladies lived in perfumed comfort. Whatever her pretensions to asceticism, Eleanor had no use for wanton displays of self-sacrifice.

  Joanna had taken on with relish the task of turning Sioned into a lady. The bath had been as wonderful as Sioned had imagined it would be: a proper eastern bath, and properly thorough. When she emerged from it, she was subjected to the basilisk scrutiny of Joanna’s own personal maid. “A disaster,” that worthy woman decreed, “but salvageable. Chin up, child! Don’t slouch.”

  Sioned obeyed before she had time to think. She was pushed and pulled, primped and preened, plucked and curled and painted until she did not recognize herself at all. But Henry was delighted. So, to her dismay, were too many others. He protected her—and that delighted him, too. But she would have preferred to put on trousers again and retreat into Richard’s army.

  “Courage,” Henry said. He had a quick eye and a soft heart. She resisted the urge to cling to his hand, but she was glad to let him stay at her side as she braved the court in her new guise.

  This was war, in its way. She was fighting for her brother’s cause. Her armor was Byzantine silk; her weapons were her eyes and her smile. She tempered them here, in the forge of Eleanor’s court.

  She still would have preferred sword and bow and a battle on a field. As splendid as they all insisted she looked, she was altogether unable to warble and simper like a proper court lady. She only knew how to speak plainly.

  “Conrad won’t care,” Henry said when she had withdrawn from the fray, retreating to a quiet corner in the shadow of a pillar. “All you need do is be quiet and listen, and look beautiful. He’ll never know the difference.”

  “I hadn’t heard that Conrad was a fool,” Sioned said with a touch of sharpness.

  “Oh,” said Henry, “he’s not. But he does have an eye for a fine woman.”

  “He’s a fool,” Sioned said.

  Henry grinned at her. “For you he will be—he and half the men in his court. They’ll be in your brother’s camp before they know it.”

  “That much I can hope for,” she said. She smoothed the crimson silk of her gown and drew as deep a breath as she could in lacings so tight. “Back to the practice field, sir.”

  She held out her hand as she had seen one of the pullani ladies do, with an imperious flourish that made him laugh. He took it
and kissed it and held it for a moment to his heart: light, no meaning in it, but still there was a fraction’s pause. Then the world went on its way again, and the court with it.

  This gilded warfare was exhausting. By evening Sioned was ready to collapse, but when she came to the room that she shared with three of Joanna’s ladies, there was a page waiting for her. He wore the livery of Aquitaine.

  Her heart stuttered in her breast. It was foolish; the queen would hardly do her harm while she was in Richard’s service. Still, a summons from that lady was no trivial thing even for one of her own legitimate children. If one happened to be old Henry’s by-blow, with secrets to keep, then there was good reason to walk softly.

  At least she was dressed for a royal audience. She swallowed a sigh and followed the page to Eleanor’s rooms.

  The queen had left the court somewhat before Sioned had, and was now at ease, wrapped in a soft warm robe and seated by a brazier. One of her maids had been reading to her: Sioned heard a scrap of it. It was not what she would have called edifying, unless the romances of Provence could be said to instruct the listener in the arts of love.

  Whether that remembrance of her own country had softened her mood, or whether she had set out to lay a trap, Eleanor was the soul of courtesy. “Lady Jeannette,” she said, casting Sioned’s name in her own tongue where evidently she found it more comfortable, “be welcome. Here, sit. Will you have wine?”

  The wine was wine of Cyprus, rich and sweet, and mulled with spices. Sioned considered briefly that it might be poisoned, but Eleanor’s weapons were of another sort. She drank with pleasure, if sparingly—she would need her wits about her.

  Eleanor began softly. “My son thinks highly of you,” she said.

  “He trusts me,” said Sioned.

  The queen’s brow arched. “I gather that trust is well placed.”

  Sioned shrugged slightly. “I do what I can. He’s my brother and my king.”

  “In that order?”

  “Would you prefer the opposite?”