He shook her in the crook of his arm as one shakes an unmanageable child and told her not to be such a blood-thirsty little wretch.
“But you said—just now—to those English pigs—”
“Only to teach them not to frighten pretty little girls. I can’t afford to kill my best archers. But if you think you can describe the undisciplined swine who looted your home and turned you out on to the street—”
Ida turned in his arm, examining him impudently with smiling, sloe-black eyes. “He’s tall and strong enough to take whatever he wants,” she enumerated in her quaint, broken French. “His hair is reddish—his nose a soupçon too long perhaps—and his mouth? Oh, yes, that is very well. It is firm and hard and, like all the accursed Normans, he keeps his lips shaven—”
“That’s enough!” laughed Richard, jerking his cheek from the liberties of her exploring fingers. “I’m glad I picked you up if you’re Isaac Comnenos’ daughter. And sorry,” he added, more soberly, “about your home.”
“I don’t mind much,” she shrugged, staring disdainfully from her high perch at the pink-faced foreigners guarding its gates. “He ran away when you offered to fight him for it—and, anyway, I always hated him.”
“I didn’t exactly dote on my father,” admitted Richard, wondering what sort of woman had helped the old Levantine to produce anything so refreshing.
Casting about in his mind as to what he should do with her, his eyes lighted thankfully upon Johanna returning from an evening gallop with Raymond, whom he had left in charge of the garrison at Limassol. “The sands-are marvellous!” she called to him, her fair skin aglow with exercise. “We’ve been exploring a place farther round the coast called Famagusta.”
“There’s a really useful harbour there,” Raymond told him, as they rode into the Citadel courtyard. “Deep enough water for our biggest ships and facing Beirut.”
“Good. I must take a look at it,” said Richard. “Where is Berengaria?”
“In Isaac’s garden. Of course, if she’d known you were bringing home a native beauty—” Johanna was all curiosity about the refugee on her brother’s saddle, but the Count of Toulouse cut short her laughing indiscretion by lifting her down from her horse. Even if he wasn’t tall and good-looking like Robin, he made a pretty good job of it.
Richard put Ida down and rode closer to them. “It’s the old Greek’s daughter,” he explained. “I caught two of our fellows chasing her like a common troll. I wish you’d take care of her for me, Joan.”
“She seems to make a habit of taking care of people for you,” grumbled Raymond. But Johanna looked compassionately at the lonely little figure surrounded by Plantagenet possessions in her own courtyard. “Oh, well, I suppose it must be rather grim for her the way we’ve spread ourselves in all the Comnenos’ best rooms,” she conceded reluctantly.
“Being a princess of sorts, she ought to make a useful hostage,” Raymond reminded them.
Richard had already thought of that. “Give her everything she wants but don’t let her stray again,” he said, dismounting and beckoning to the girl to join them.
She came with the docility of a captive and a grace achieved only by those who go barefoot. She knew they were discussing her, these two powerful men and the straight-limbed Northern woman who rode astride. “Here is a lady who will look after you, Ida,” said Richard, unaware that—having just escaped from life in the women’s quarters—this was the last thing she wanted.
She hung back, staring at Johanna with hostility. “Who is she?” she asked suspiciously.
“My sister, Queen Johanna of Sicily,” he answered curtly. “And you will obey her.”
The girl’s manner changed instantly. She touched one of Johanna’s burnished plaits with a conciliatory gesture. “Her hair is the same colour as yours. I shall like her,” she said.
“There’s a second-hand compliment to give anyone!” laughed Johanna. “Let us go in, Ida. I need a bath after my ride, and we will see if we can find some of your women and clothes and things.”
Before going in Ida turned to thank Richard for bringing her home. “But your heavy Flemish horses are too clumsy for this kind of country,” she told him. “When you cross to Syria you will find their hooves sink in the sand. I will give you Fauvel—the Arab gelding my father ran away on.”
Surprised at her perspicacity, Richard bent down and kissed her lightly. “Thank you, my dear,” he said gravely, winking across her head at Johanna, who knew he had already taken the horse.
With a casual “good night” to them, she drew the little hostage indoors. Raymond swore softly. Just as he was beginning to make some headway with his suit, Richard must needs turn up with this new toy. What with weddings and dower chests, Johanna had had little enough time for him these last three days and now, he supposed, she would always have the wretched little Cypriot in tow. He turned to tell Richard what he thought of him. “Didn’t you see how the little cat sheathed her claws the moment you said Johanna was your sister?”
But Richard had disappeared. He had probably forgotten their existence. With long, eager strides he had made his way to the deserted garden behind the women’s quarters. Although officially of the Orthodox church, Isaac had planned it harem fashion with a fountain splashing in the middle and shady colonnades where he could walk with his favourites. The semi-Eastern twilight was short and the cypress shadows long, and Berengaria sat in her filmiest samite gown on the low coping of the fountain. “Wherever two stunted flowers manage to raise their heads above the sand, there I shall always be sure of finding you!” laughed Richard triumphantly.
She turned before she could hide her passionate joy.
“Enchantress!” he muttered, pulling her close against his hungry body. Because he had taken her off her guard Berengaria returned his kisses without pride or prudence. All her senses answered his. For days she had been mad with anxiety and longing and now, suddenly, he had lifted her into this ecstasy of happiness. She did not foresee that if she married him most of her life would be brief Heavens between one battle and the next. She only knew that it is given to few women to have so fierce a lover.
“If people tell you there have been other women, forgive me,” he said after a while. “I don’t even remember what they looked like…It didn’t seem to matter…No one has ever made me feel my body was theirs before!”
Considering his rank and vigour, Berengaria was intelligent enough to see that it could hardly have been otherwise. “I shall mind only those who come after,” she said, exulting in a comradeship that drove him to complete candour.
“Little fool!” he whispered. “How could they?” And then, with lips urgent against hers, “Need we wait for Syria? Can’t we be married here—to-morrow?”
Berengaria pressed both palms against his racing heart, trying to free herself enough for thought. “You know how I love this island—and fierce, impatient red-heads!”
Richard released her to capture both her small marauding hands. He—who feared no man—was almost afraid to let her know the devastating power she had over him. “And you won’t mind not waiting for a cathedral—and Philip of France—and all the conventional trappings?”
Berengaria shook her small, dark head. “There was a time when I should have—but now those things don’t count.” Her brown eyes looked deep into his tawny ones, giving him truth for truth. Her body was soft with surrender, her lips a lure he dared no longer dally with. Because of Ann’s perfidy he wanted to keep her sacred. So he turned away abruptly and started shouting for the servants.
“Bring lights into the hall—and fetch me the Bishop of Beauvais,” he ordered. His voice rang to the vaulted roof, full and round with happiness.
Berengaria could have followed, but she wanted to keep the bloom of her happiness unbrushed by other contacts. Richard’s cloak lay where it had fallen when he took her in his arms. She picked it up and wrapped herself in it, fancying it still warm from his body, and sat there by the fountain until the stars pierced the black velve
t of the Cyprian night. She could hear them planning her wedding. Richard’s crisp voice and the Bishop’s suave one. Other people were sent for—Raymond, Blondel and Mercadier. The marshal and steward were wakened and given orders. Through the branches of an acacia shrub Berengaria could see them all moving about in the lighted hall—the Bishop’s fine gesticulating hands—a sleepy cook with straw still in his hair passing the open doorway—someone’s shifting sleeve or the flash of a ring and, from time to time, the warm glow from a torch illuminating her lover’s head. “Heavens!” she thought, with a little tender smile, “doesn’t the man ever sleep?” Irrelevantly, she fell to wondering how many men he had killed that morning—and now to be discussing colour schemes!
Once, when they started talking about clothes, she nearly went in and joined them. But, partly out of curiosity, she wanted even the setting of their wedding to be Richard’s. Their voices droned on. She forgot even to listen. She was spent with emotion, living again through each of Richard’s kisses. She might have sat there half the night if Yvette had not found her. “Suppose you caught a chill before the wedding?” she scolded.
“Don’t be a motherly little hen!” laughed Berengaria, snuggling closer into the King’s cloak. Yvette was all pleasant curves and young importance these days, finding herself the only lady-in-waiting to a future queen.
“It’s only because I love you, Madam. And because I promised King Sancho—”
“I know, you funny child! But you won’t have to feel responsible much longer. Richard Plantagenet and I are going to be married to-morrow.”
“Oh, Madam!” Yvette lifted her frivolous skirts and executed a jolly little pas seul between the long, slim shadows of the colonnade. But her excitement was mostly for the wedding itself and for the new blue gown she was to wear and because she was to dress the bride. When she thought, in her innocence, about the irrevocable intimacy of their married life she stopped dancing and shivered with foreboding. “Blondel only just saved your rose from being trampled on—that day in the lists—and really your heart lay there too,” she said, with apparent irrelevance.
But Berengaria had no misgivings and—whatever happened—she would have no regrets. To be loved by Richard was worth everything. “Ever since he came laughing up the pavilion steps, thrilled with himself and his blazoned leopards and his ridiculous sprig of broom, I haven’t been able to see any other man. I tried—for years—after he went, because I thought they would never let me marry him…”
They sat talking of love for a while, forgetful of all difference in age and rank, until Berengaria suffered herself to be put to bed and went to sleep for the last time a maid, hugging her happiness.
Then Yvette picked up the King’s cloak and, very properly, returned it to the King’s squire. Guided by the spasmodic notes of a lute, she found him on the battlements composing a wedding song. He was just as anxious about it as she was about the bride’s veil, so he insisted on trying it out on her. She hadn’t a note of music in her honey-coloured head, but she said quite kindly that she was sure the song would be a success, and in return for her encouragement he told her how plucky he thought her to come so far from home.
“Me plucky!” protested Yvette. “Why, I’d die this very minute if I saw a snake. I dreamed about them for nights when I heard we were coming to the East. But you bustle about quite cheerfully, don’t you, even when you feel like sobbing because nothing’s unpacked and everything feels so strange?” Her blue eyes opened wide the way he meant them to. “However did you guess?” she asked. So he told her the story of a homesick page who was laughed at because he couldn’t lay a table properly, and then comforted by a kind princess.
“You adore the Queen of Sicily, don’t you?” said Yvette, making nasty little discords on the strings of his lute.
But instead of committing himself, Blondel drew her- to the west side of the battlements, and showed her how the same stars must be shining over Navarre. “Look up and count them!” he teased. And when she looked up like an obedient little goose, he kissed her round, astonished mouth.
Chapter Eighteen
The wedding, as Richard planned it, was unique. Not in the least the kind of affair either of them had expected, but much more original than the marriages of any of their friends. Instead of walking in stately procession up the aisle of some cathedral with music and incense soaring to the dim vastness of the roof, they were married quite simply in the small, dark chapel at Limassol. Instead of rows of staring subjects there was room for only their relatives and intimate followers and friends. And if Berengaria did cry secretly on Raymond’s shoulder before the ceremony because her beloved parents could not be there, her heart must have been warmed by the shouts of welcome that went up afterwards when her husband led her out into the sunshine.
Berengaria never forgot that scene. Companies of armed knights, each with his squire and richly caparisoned horse, out-blazoned the stained glass of any cathedral with the colours of their heraldry. Austere, white-robed Templars stood waiting before the sombre chapel, leaning on the tall swords they had dedicated to the protection of Christ’s pilgrims; and behind them, rank upon rank, were massed the archers and sappers and men-at-arms. Their upturned faces seemed to stretch away to an azure sea where the dragon of England flew from a score of mastheads. Like a proud jewel in the midst of them rode the Trenchemer, with her blood-red sails, and closer to the palm-girt shore a new ship had anchored, glittering with the five golden crosses of the Holy City itself. For by a lucky chance Guy de Lusignon, King of Jerusalem, had landed that very morning to welcome the Anglo-Norman contingent.
“Trust a Plantagenet to produce some sort of pageantry!” whispered Berengaria, squeezing the arm she held so formally. And, seeing that the stage was so well set, Richard insisted upon having his bride crowned there and then before them all.
“But where are the crowns?” whispered the agitated bishop.
“At Westminster and Rouen, I suppose,” remembered Richard.
So the Count of Chains, who collected antiques, very obligingly produced a circlet of Roman gold and Berengaria was crowned with that. All through the ceremony she kept thinking how different Richard looked. She was so unfamiliar with his public manner as a king that by the time she came to take her oath of allegiance she felt as if the urgent Richard she loved had gone away and left her with some dignified and rather terrifying stranger. But when she knelt before him he held her trembling hands firmly between his own and—proud daughter of Navarre as she was—she saw in him attributes to which she could give wholehearted homage. And once the solemn moment was over she discovered joyfully that both he and Johanna discharged most of their public duties to a sotto voce accompaniment of racy private remarks which promised to dissipate the dullness of all formal occasions.
After the coronation Richard had barrels of wine rolled out to the troops, and a great wedding feast was served in Isaac’s hall, with the doors set wide to the splashing fountain and the colonnade. “The poor cooks must have worked all night!” exclaimed Berengaria, delighted with the fairy-like effect of the iced cakes and fantastic sugar castles they had produced. And the steward had certainly commandeered the resources of the Comnenos’ cellars.
Blondel’s song was a vast success, and Yvette was sure no bride had ever looked lovelier than her mistress in her stiff white samite gown and the exquisite veil which she herself had embroidered with tiny silver hearts copied from the arms of Navarre. In place of Philip, the King of Jerusalem proposed the bride’s health. “To Berengaria, Queen of England and Cyprus, Duchess of Normandy, Aquitaine, Anjou, and Maine!”—the proud titles rang out as he lifted poor Isaac’s goblet.
“Am I really all that?” she laughed, when the cheering of her guests had died down and the servants had begun to bring in the dishes.
“You don’t look big enough to be,” teased Richard, stooping to kiss the top of her head.
“You’ll find he conquers an odd island or two for you any day he feels like it,�
�� said Johanna.
“I suspect that both these little skirmishes of mine, here and at Messina, were child’s play to the fighting you veterans have had in Palestine,’’ grinned Richard, handing a tasty bit of chicken breast to de Lusignon. “Actually, old Comnenos ran away.”
“And I thought you promised him faithfully you wouldn’t put him in irons,” reproved Berengaria, suddenly remembering their imprisoned host with compunction.
“Neither did I, my sweet,” declared Richard, his splendid teeth making short work of a wing. “Ask any of ’em.”
“Your new husband always keeps his word, my dear,” Raymond assured her. “He had silver chains specially made for him.”
“Just the foxy sort of humour that would appeal to John!” reproved Johanna, through their heartless laughter.
“Well, can’t we have the poor man up to eat some of his own food instead of languishing on bread and water down in the dungeons?” begged Berengaria, who could not bear to think of anyone going hungry on her wedding day.
“He isn’t exactly on bread and water, and I don’t think it would be wise,” smiled Richard. “But I tell you what we will do, my dear. We’ll ask his daughter to come and dance for us.” He looked along the many tables for her but Johanna explained that when Ida had heard it was a wedding feast she had refused to come.
“They will probably take it as a deliberate insult,” warned de Lusignon. “Only the paid dance girls perform in public here, you know.”
But Richard had already given the order. “Oh, she’s only a child and she likes dancing,” he said carelessly.
“Children grow up quickly in this climate,” observed Raymond.
His remark was justified when Ida came into the hall. She had removed all trace of angry tears with a sophisticated touch of kohl; her slender arms and ankles tinkled with bracelets, and the vivid Damascus silks she wore were the envy of the three Western women. She came submissively to Richard, but her dark eyes searched savagely for some flaw in Berengaria’s beauty.
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