by Judith Tarr
Nor did Henry ask him. He called for a courier, and when one came, wide awake and dressed to ride, he had prepared a letter by his own hand, brief and to the point:
To my lord Richard, King of the English, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, and all the rest of it: Conrad is dead. We suspect Assassins. I’ve taken command here. Come if you can, or send someone with power to speak for you. But whatever you do, do it quickly.
He signed it with a flourish and sealed it with the ring that he wore, which he had taken from a Saracen emir. It was not a Muslim thing, nor yet a Christian. Mustafa thought it must be of old Rome: a tiny and perfect carving of a running stag.
The courier took the letter, bowed over it, and tucked it securely in his satchel. He did not wait to be dismissed.
Henry had already turned away from him. The marquis’ body had come home at last, borne on a hastily cobbled bier—it proved, beneath the silken coverlet that must have been torn from some wealthy citizen’s bed, to be a wooden door, taken no doubt from that same citizen’s house.
Conrad was most certainly dead. The cake in his hand had finally gone cold, and the dagger was still in his heart, thrust up from beneath the breastbone.
Somewhere, women were wailing, loudly mourning the dead. But not here. Not his lady, who came to stand over him.
She had taken time to dress and to paint her face, so that she was the image of a royal lady, as flawless as if carved in ivory. She looked long at the body of her husband, but did not touch it. Her face wore no expression.
No one ventured to speak while she stood there. They were all eyeing this lady who carried in her the right to the throne of Jerusalem. Already eyes were sharpening, glances darting, as men weighed one another, reckoning their chances.
When she looked up at last, her gaze came to rest on Henry. He was watching her quietly, but Mustafa did not see any such heat in him as radiated from her. He must know that she wanted him: she had been as open about it as she dared in front of so jealous a husband. Did he know how strong that wanting was?
Most likely he did not. He bowed over her hand, courteous as always, but there was no passion in his glance. “Lady,” he said, “please accept my condolences. If there is anything you wish, any command—”
“Find the ones who did this,” she said. “See that they pay.”
“Certainly we shall do that, lady,” Henry said.
She looked hard at him, as if searching for more; he met her gaze with cool politeness. Her shoulders sagged visibly. She raised her hand to her brow; she swayed.
He caught her before she fell, and assisted her to a chair. Servants brought wine and cool cloths and wafts of perfume.
It was artfully done, but it did not touch Henry’s heart. She gave it up soon enough and let the council settle to business. There was a funeral to arrange—quickly in this climate—and policy to decide, beginning with the securing of the city against attack.
Mustafa had come round to a decision of his own. He was not needed here, nor were they saying anything that he needed to hear. He would be more interested to know what people were saying outside of this hall and in the city. Conrad’s death altered the balance in this precarious country—though in which of several directions, he could not be certain.
Just as he began to slip away, a new commotion brought all eyes to the door.
Wherever she had been, it seemed to have agreed with her. She had a bloom on her, and a light in her eyes that made Mustafa blink, dazzled—and he was not a man for women. She was dressed in Frankish fashion in cream-pale linen and violet silk; her veil was a drift of mist over her elegantly coiled and plaited hair. There was just a hint of paint on her face, of kohl about her eyes.
She did not come alone. Her guards wore Frankish mail and white surcoats without device. They were tall and broad as Franks could often be, with pale stern faces within the coifs of mail. But their eyes were not Frankish eyes, nor indeed were they mortal at all. They were the precise and burning blue that lives in the heart of a flame.
Mustafa resisted a powerful urge to fall down on his face. These were great lords of the jinn, or he had no eye for magic. And she . . . she had grown. She had been a fair apprentice of the art when last he saw her. She was considerably more than that now.
None of the Franks could see what Mustafa saw. They believed the illusion: that she came escorted by men of their own kind. It both reassured them and deterred them from seizing her and executing the late marquis’ sentence.
Henry leaped up from his seat with a complete lack of self-consciousness and ran to pull her into his embrace. There was passion; there was the fire of the heart.
She returned the embrace with every evidence of gladness and deep relief, but it was the gladness of kin restored to kin. She was the first to free herself, to hold him at arm’s length and smile. “I’m glad beyond words to see you well,” she said.
“And I,” he said. “Saints and angels! Lady, your loss was sorely felt.”
“Not as sorely as if I’d left my head on the executioner’s block,” she said dryly.
His face darkened. “You’re in no danger here. You have my word on that.”
“So I can see,” she said, looking about at guards and council, who were staring as if they could not help themselves. As her glance passed Mustafa, she granted him the briefest flicker of a smile.
She spared no one else more than a moment’s glance. She approached the bier on which Conrad lay and stood gazing down at him as his wife had, with almost the same lack of expression; but hers had a distinct scent of brimstone beneath. “He learned a hard lesson,” she said.
“The hardest of all,” said Henry. “It will be a long while before another man uses the name of Masyaf to conceal his own transgressions.”
She nodded. Her eyes lifted to Isabella then. “Lady. Insofar as you suffer grief, I offer you condolences.”
Isabella inclined her head with icy graciousness. “Have you come to help us, then?” she inquired.
“If I can,” said Sioned, “yes. And if you will permit.”
“Can I prevent you?”
“You can send me away,” Sioned said. “Now that I know my cousin is safe, I’ll go, and offer no objection.”
That tempted Isabella: her eyes yearned for it. But she was too wise and practical a princess. “Stay,” she said. “Be pardoned for any sins against the realm or its late master. Help us if you can. When Islam gets word of this, it may find us ripe for the taking.”
“Islam knows,” Sioned said. One of the guards set a chair beside Henry; she sat in it, leaning toward the rest of them. “Richard is coming. If I’m to be listened to, I counsel that you guard your walls and wait until he comes. My lord of Burgundy, will you—can you—put aside your differences in this extremity?”
The duke flushed. “We are all Christians,” he said stiffly, “sworn to the Crusade.”
“It’s good of you to remember it,” she said.
“So should we all,” said one of the lords of Tyre. He had been one of Conrad’s traveling companions from the Italies; his name, Mustafa recalled, was Marco. He had the look of a pirate and the mind of a thief, but he was clever, as all of Conrad’s intimates were. The late marquis had not been inclined to surround himself with stupid men.
Marco turned his shoulder to her, subtly cutting her off from his consideration, and faced Isabella. “Lady, however long it takes the English king to fight his way here, he should find a united city when he comes, under strong command. As much as it pains me to suggest it in the first flush of grief, it would be best if there were no gap in the succession. The power resides in you. Will you make use of it?”
Isabella arched a brow. “You offer me a choice? How unusual. Is that wise?”
“We trust that you will choose wisely,” Marco said.
“What if I should elect to return to my first husband?”
Marco smiled. Others blanched slightly, but one or two tittered: the light, false laughter of courtie
rs. “I’m sure that peerless gentleman and scholar would be pleased to take you, although he has been heard to observe that in his worst nightmares he finds himself crowned and set on a throne.”
“We all know Humphrey has no desire to be king,” Henry said, “which makes him unique among the men of this Crusade. I rather admire him for it, myself.”
“And you?” asked Isabella. “Would you take a throne if it were offered?”
“That would depend,” said Henry, “on whether the throne was worth taking.”
“You don’t think Jerusalem is worth the cost?”
“Lady,” he said, “you ask difficult questions. But then Jerusalem is a difficult kingdom. Would I be King of Jerusalem? That does tempt me. Will you give me time to think about it?”
“You may have a little time,” she said. “But not too long. I believe this murder is meant to cast us into disarray. If we draw together instead under even stronger leadership than before, and pursue the war without wavering until the end, we win far more than a city or a tomb. We win the respect of our enemies, and teach them never again to take us lightly.”
Henry bowed to her as deeply as a knight should to a queen. “By tomorrow I shall know my decision. If you choose another man meanwhile, and that man will make a strong king, I will give my service to him in all good heart.”
“I won’t choose another,” she said, too soft almost to be heard.
Maybe he heard her; maybe he did not. He bowed again and turned back to the council, which focused now on the matter of defending the city against the possibility of attack.
Mustafa slipped out soon after that. So, as he discovered, did Sioned.
Her jinn had not accompanied her, which was a greater relief than he could have expressed. He was interested to notice that her silken mantle was lined with plain dark wool, and that with its hood over her head and its drab folds wrapped about her, she made a convincing serving maid.
She caught him in a quiet corridor and pulled him into a tight embrace, then kissed him on both cheeks.
“Lady!” he protested. “What was that for?”
“For fetching the last man I thought I wanted to see,” she said, “and indirectly for saving me from the axe. That was enormously insubordinate of you.”
“I’m not your dog,” Mustafa said. “I was looking out for my skin. Your brother would flay it off me if I let you come to harm.”
“Obviously he didn’t,” she observed, “or you wouldn’t be here. It even seems he trusts you.”
Mustafa shrugged uncomfortably. “I told him what I’d done. Once he’d thrown me across his tent and bellowed at me until I couldn’t hear properly for a week, he granted that I hadn’t done too hopelessly mad a thing.”
“Then he got you out of his sight by sending you here,” she said.
“Not immediately,” said Mustafa. “I ran errands to the sultan for a while, then he had me scouting raiding parties between Jaffa and Ascalon until he called me back for this. I was offering the marquis the crown of Jerusalem.”
“Her ladyship has offered it to my cousin,” Sioned observed. “My friend, will you do a thing for me? You’re free to refuse. Will you go to Acre and tell the Queen of the English everything that has happened here, exactly as you’ve heard and seen it?”
Mustafa felt the blood drain from his face. “You’d send me to her? You are angry with me!”
“Only a very little,” she said. “You don’t have to go. I’ll send one of my guards in any case—he’ll be proof that I have authority to speak to her. But the message will be more convincing if it comes from you. You’re Richard’s man; she knows that. You carry his trust as well as mine.”
“You mean that she won’t eat my soul if she knows her son will object.”
Sioned bit her lip. She was trying not to laugh, he could see. “The queen is a great and formidable power in the world, but she is not an eater of souls.”
“Would you stake your own on that?”
That killed the laughter, though it did not dismay her as much as he had hoped. “She could seduce me to darker powers than I ever want to know, but she’ll let me make the choice. She won’t touch you. You’re far more useful as you are.”
Mustafa was dubious, but he could not refuse her. Nor could he yield to cowardice, however prudent it might be. “I’ll go,” he said, “and pray you tell the truth, or I’ll haunt you ever after.”
She grinned at that. “You would be good company,” she said. “Go with your God, dear friend. Come back as quickly as you can.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Richard and Eleanor arrived together, having met on the road half a day’s journey from the city. Both had made great speed; it was only the third day since Conrad was found dead.
The marquis had been buried the day before, laid in a tomb in the cathedral of the city. The mourning for him had had an air of ritual; he was not a man whom people loved. Still there were many who regretted his passing, because he was a strong lord and he would have been a competent king.
Isabella received Henry the evening before the king and the queen came to Tyre. She awaited him in the solar of the castle, in perfect propriety, attended by a pair of maids and a watchful guard. Henry came alone, still in the somber robes he had worn to the funeral and to the feast that followed it.
She was in white, the color of eastern mourning. It paled her gold-and-ivory beauty, and aged her, so that he could see clearly the shape of the bones beneath the skin. She was even more beautiful for that, and even more queenly.
She was very desirable. And yet he had to say, “Lady, I came to beg your pardon. This is a greater decision than I can make alone. Will you wait a little longer, until I’ve spoken with my cousin the king?”
She was disappointed, that was clear. But he had not refused her. He hoped that comforted her. She inclined her head, granting both pardon and petition. When she spoke, it was of other things: the weather, which was growing hot; the gardens of the castle, which were blooming; the funeral, which had been properly grave and dignified.
It was not easy conversation. She had the art of pleasant speech, but there were stiff moments and awkward pauses. They were strangers, amiable enough but he felt no spark between them. He was rather shamefully relieved when she dismissed him.
“Need that matter?” Sioned asked.
He had not sought her out, not exactly, but one way and another he had found himself in the room where she was. It was a stillroom; she was brewing something pungent, and grinding something even more pungent in a mortar. It was remarkable, he thought, how quickly she had made herself at home here; and how, without the need to pretend to the marquis that she was a lady, she had fallen back into her old self. People had learned quickly to come to her for doctoring, although there were half a dozen noble physicians in the castle. None of them, as one of her patients averred in his hearing, knew half as much plain and useful medicine as she did.
One of the guards who had arrived with her was always nearby, looming and silent. Henry had not heard a word out of either of them in two days. They had something to do with her safety here; exactly what, he was afraid to ask.
Instead he found himself telling her of his conversation with Isabella. He had always been able to talk to her easily, fluently, never at a loss for words. Their silences were companionable.
“Need it matter?” she asked him now. “Marriage is a union of great houses, a binding of wealth to wealth. It makes no difference if you can’t carry on a conversation, if you can share a realm and make heirs together.”
“She didn’t love the marquis,” Henry said. “She loved the lord Humphrey, I think, in her way, but he never wanted to be king, and was never suited to it.”
“Some priests will tell you love is a sin,” she said with a slant of the eyes that made him smile in spite of himself. “Marriage is for getting children, there’s no more to it than that. She’s beautiful; she must be pleasant to the touch. You can do your duty by her, surel
y?”
“I can be a stud bull if that’s what’s required of me.” He did not know why he should be so cross. He was being offered a beautiful lady, and with her a crown and a kingdom. He should be beside himself with joy. Instead he was in this small and odorous stillroom, telling his troubles to the woman who—
The woman who—
She did not know. Nor did she share it. Her heart was given to the knight of the Saracens. When she looked at him, she saw a dear friend, but never what he wanted her to see. Never a lover.
She had no lands or property to bring him. She was no blood relation, but the Church in its convolutions of logic would call her kin because her father had married his grandmother. Consanguinity: so convenient when a man wanted to be rid of an inconvenient wife, and so simple when he needed a reason not to marry a particular woman. But how could he find reason not to love her?
“I told her highness that I’ll talk to Richard,” he said after that slight but significant pause. “It’s a coward’s way, I suppose, but I couldn’t think of anything better to say. I should take what she offers. It’s splendid—royal. Troublesome, too, but when did I ever shrink from a challenge?”
“You would make a good king,” she said. “Better than Conrad. You’re younger; prettier. People love you. You know how to lead them, and how to command them.”
“Are you telling me I should do this?”
She shrugged. “How many men are given a kingdom and a bride all at once? It’s an ungodly short widowhood for her, but this is a war; the wise act quickly or not at all.”
“I don’t think I’m wise,” Henry said. He sat on the bench where the sick or wounded sat to wait for her, head in hands.
“What do you want to do?” she asked him. “If you had free choice, what would you choose?”
“You don’t want to know,” he said.
“Don’t you want to be a king?”
“I would be glad to be a king.”
“But not with that queen?”
