Passionate Brood

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  He had forgotten the thing was still in his hand, and he wiped and sheathed it, hastily. He could have kicked himself. Particularly just now, when he wanted to please her…“I couldn’t give an order which I wasn’t prepared to carry out myself,” he muttered, going down on one knee to dab awkwardly at her shimmering skirt. When he stood up he was gauche and smiling, unsure of her response. “Can’t we kiss and be friends?” he pleaded.

  He would have pulled her against the hungry hardness of his body but she made a slender barrier of her hands. “No—no—I can’t…” she stammered breathlessly. It hadn’t occurred to her that he would want that.

  But he wouldn’t let her go. “You’ve been avoiding me for days,” he accused, half angrily.

  “And you’ve been far too busy to care,” she flashed back. If only he hadn’t been so busy—if only she could have told him her secret then—perhaps he would have seen to it that to-day’s distressing events hadn’t happened!

  But he mistook her resistance for some lover’s hurt at being slighted. He wasn’t humble enough to be very sensitive to other people’s moods. “Well, now at last I have a few hours’ leisure,” he said complacently. “You know we shall have to start at dawn, so let’s forget the whole bloody business and make this last night in Acre ours.” He pivoted with her in his arms, tilting up her chin so that she faced the velvet sky. “Look, my beloved, the same stars are coming out that used to shine on Cyprus. I can see them reflected in your eyes.” Unfortunately, he could also see the vague outlines of a burial party shuffling through the sand and hear the mournful creaking of their carts. He turned in sudden loathing from that side of the wall. Down in the town, as if by contrast, men were celebrating. So why not he, the conqueror of Acre? “Come down, witch woman, and make me forget that madness!” he urged, his natural directness making him betray his shame.

  Berengaria knew his need but scorned to give her body as a drug. “Those poor women,” she excused herself, looking from stars to darkened slums. “They will always come between us…”

  But Richard’s hands were roughly urgent. “What are any other women to me,” he protested, “unless you have grown cold?” Never in his life before had he been thwarted by a woman he desired. And here was his own wife shuddering from him as if he had the plague. Although she was shivering she freed herself deliberately from the warmth of his cloak and the comfort of his arms. “Cold?” she repeated tonelessly. “Yes, I suppose I am cold. But it is my heart shivering—as if someone stamped clumsily across a little grave…” She looked at him with wide, fey eyes and behaved so strangely that Richard let her go. “Rather a sudden indisposition, isn’t it,” he remarked, with scepticism.

  “I really do feel ill,” she assured him more naturally. “Please believe me. It isn’t just because—because of what you did—”

  “I am sorry,” said Richard sullenly.

  Berengaria moved blindly towards the top of the stone steps. “I’m going down to Johanna. I think I shall sleep with her,” she said. She didn’t even wish him “good night” because she didn’t want him to see the tears coursing down her face—tears of desolation because the stars were shining and they were alone and she had no secret to tell him now.

  Richard made as if to follow her. He was worried about her, remembering how upset she had been about that pompous Austrian ass. He thought she was probably in for fever. If so he’d have a litter made for her. However ill she was, he wouldn’t leave her behind. She had been an angel to him when he was ill, and to his wounded men. He specially appreciated that. They were ugly sights, some of them, and he remembered how she had always hated the sight of blood. Come to think about it, what a life for a woman! A far cry from binding up a scratched wrist at a tournament. And now he had pestered her. Richard turned back from the top step. After all, perhaps she would be better with the women. He wished he understood them better. Johanna, of course, was forthright and strong. She’d been brought up among brothers and if you did anything she didn’t like she just flamed out at you like another man. You knew where you were with her. But he was beginning to find out that Berengaria, for all her gentleness, had queer, obstinate principles. The sort of thing he had quarrelled with Robin over. “A man wants a good wife,” he thought with a touch of John’s cynicisms “but not necessarily one who wants to make him into a good husband!”

  He wandered into the watch-tower, stumbling over a bundle of something on the floor. It appeared to be some sort of flag and he could just make out the Moslem crescent. Remembering the affair with Leopold, he picked it up carefully and put it on the window ledge. After all, those fellows defending the bastion had given their lives for it. As he moved to the window he could hear the rhythm of native drums. They seemed to suit the madness of the night. Christians making merry in one quarter of the town and widows wailing in another. Richard wondered if there was anything he could do about the orphaned children, but the drums began to beat insidiously into his resentful, frustrated blood. As always, they called to his inherent lawlessness beneath the decencies imposed by the discipline of Hodierna and the friendship of Robin. They were the heart of the East, which he had sworn to tame. And hadn’t his witch predicted that all his greatest triumphs would be in the East? “Anyhow, I’m damned if I’ll go back to a cold bed as if I wasn’t fit to live with!” he thought, knowing that such triumphs cannot be won without deeds psychologically suited to one’s enemy.

  “Here, give me your lantern!” he called to a passing soldier. “And tell Captain Mercadier if he wants me I shall be sleeping up here away from all that hubbub. What’ve you got on that tray?”

  He spent so much time with his army that even the rank and file addressed him without embarrassment. “Supper for the officer of the watch, Sir,” the man told him, with a respectful grin.

  “Splendid!” said Richard, whipping off the cover and sniffing appreciatively. “Sowerby of York’s on to-night, isn’t he? Get him something hot from the kitchens whenever he wants it and leave that here for me.” The man put food and lamp on a rough wooden table. “And get a fresh plaster for that old wound of yours before we start, Thomas,” Richard shouted after him.

  “I will that, Sir!” the man sang back. The King had remembered his name.

  Richard suddenly realised how hungry he was and wolfed the food standing, washing it down with great draughts of wine. Warm yellow light from the horn of the lantern gave the little stone room a more cheerful aspect, and seen through the narrow arch of the doorway the distant hills looked quiet enough under the winking stars. “Better than all your houses!” thought Richard, as the wine began to warm him. “Many’s the night Rob and I have slept out on the castle walls.” He began to whistle cheerfully between strong, square teeth, unbuckling his cloak and throwing it across the makeshift bed where its jewelled border sparkled incongruously. True, he hadn’t had jewels on his cloak in those days, but he would give them all now to have back the world’s best companion.

  He had taken off belt and hauberk when he became aware of a girl’s voice humming the dance melody of the moment. He picked up his borrowed lantern and to his surprise found Ida still at her favourite niche on the battlements. “My dear child,” he said, “I thought you had gone to the party!”

  She took the lantern from him and set it beside her on the parapet so that it illuminated her face. “I don’t feel like dancing,” she said plaintively.

  “Then you must be feeling very low!” he laughed. He crossed the wall and stood quizzing her, as she sat with one hand resting against the masonry on either side of her slender knees. “My poor little hostage! It must be very lonely for you. I suppose you think me an ogre for bringing you?”

  “I asked you to,” she reminded him.

  “So you did. Though goodness knows why. You know, I think all that stuff about de Lusignon being amorous was just imagination. But I shouldn’t dance at Chalus’s parties if I were you.” He warned her diffidently, as he might have spoken to Johanna before her marriage, not
certain how much of life she knew.

  Apparently she preferred not to discuss the subject. “I am never lonely with you,” she confided. “Only with the Queen. She is so fastidious and she doesn’t like me.”

  Richard’s eyes twinkled at her shrewdness. “The Queen has beautiful manners,” he said gravely. “I expect she thinks we both behave like uncouth savages at times. That putrid Saracen’s head, for instance.”

  Ida dismissed the reminder of her lapse with a grimace. “When you’re masterful she doesn’t like you,” she said.

  He guessed then that she had been eavesdropping. “Apparently not,” he admitted ruefully, moving away from the quick fire of her personal remarks.

  But Ida clasped her palms between her knees and leaned conversationally towards him. “Your women are so strange,” she said. “Now I adore you when you rage round, killing and cursing, and take what you want.”

  Richard burst out laughing. The girl was as good as a whole company of paid buffoons. “That’s because you have a nasty Eastern mind,” he told her, lifting her down from the parapet preparatory to sending her to bed.

  To his surprise she would not let him release her. Even after he had set her down she kept her arms clasped tightly round his neck and when he straightened himself she only let them slide caressingly down his shoulders. Her subtle perfume invaded his senses. “And my body?” she asked, with mischievous amusement. “Is that nasty, too?”

  It was a revelation to Richard—both her words and the pressure of her perfumed limbs. Caught unawares, he was too surprised to move. After a moment or two he loosened her predatory hands. “No,” he said, turning away abruptly. “Your body is very beautiful.”

  She followed him back to the tower and stood leaning against the open door watching him finish his meal. He jerked forward a stool and concentrated on his plate. Clearly he wanted to be rid of her. “Why do you always treat me like a child?” she demanded.

  He looked up with a chicken bone in his fingers and laughed at her. The laughter sounded a little forced, and he was careful to keep his eyes above the level of her petulant mouth. “Well, so you are, aren’t you? The brightest young thing about the camp. Heaven knows how we should all endure these solemn Austrians without you!” He spoke boisterously, determined that that moment by the battlements should not recur.

  But Ida persisted. Having once tasted her power to disturb him she wasn’t going back to any “kind uncle” talk. She picked up his cloak, draping it impudently about herself so that it trailed behind like a bridal train. “I am seventeen,” she said, smoothing the rich velvet to her hips. “If you hadn’t carried me off from Cyprus I should have been married by now. My father was arranging it.”

  “Well, I’d better find you a nice, masterful husband,” suggested Richard carelessly. He threw down the last bone and wiped his fingers on the guard officer’s napkin. Young Sowerby of York would now be able to boast that besides the Queen having lain on his bed the King had eaten his supper.

  “I don’t want a husband,” said Ida sullenly.

  Richard got up and kicked aside the stool. He was tired and wanted to get to bed. “Then what do you want?” he asked impatiently.

  She stopped play-acting with his cloak and moved into the circle of lamplight, standing before him, barefoot and bangled like some submissive slave girl. Her small breasts pulsed to the quick tempo of her breath. “Are you really so blind?” she asked.

  Richard stared at her. Angrily at first and then with quickening blood. He saw the perfection of her youth and for the first time realised her ripeness. She was right—he had been a fool to treat her as a child. She was more like some gaudy tropical blossom, opening in greedy ecstasy to the brief promise of life. With such a warm-eyed wanton in his arms, surely the whole mystery of the East would be his? He passed a hand across his eyes. It must be that damned Cypriot’s drums or this seductive scent…“No, no, my dear. We must both be crazed,” he said. “It’s just because you are very beguiling and I have been a little too kind. You mustn’t think we’re all like Chalus…”

  But she broke in passionately on his desperate reasoning. “Kind!” she cried contemptuously. “D’you suppose my blood doesn’t beat with joy when you are cruel too?” She came and threw herself against his breast. “I worship you, Richard Plantagenet. I have worshipped you ever since that night you rescued me from your soldiers and carried me home on your saddle. I thought you were taking me for yourself—the way your men took the other women from my home—”

  He took her by the shoulders roughly. “You thought that?” he said, trying to remember the details of that casual ride and recalling only that he had been on fire for Berengaria.

  In the shameful recital of her disappointment the girl beat upon his breast with frenzied little fists. “I went on thinking it until they told me you were to be married. And then you sent for me, and I saw your pale, cold bride. And you made me dance at her wedding…”

  Richard held her wrists with savage strength but she didn’t even wince. “You behaved like a common harlot!” he said, remembering how she had danced.

  She struggled to free herself, shaking back the curled masses of her night-black hair. “Then do you suppose I should shrink from you because you are strong enough to kill?” she cried. “Don’t you believe that I am beautiful enough to make you forget all the sins you ever did?”

  Slowly Richard’s arms went round her. She was fragrant and supple as a houri. “Beautiful enough, God knows!” he muttered. “But He has my vows of knighthood—and you aren’t really a harlot but my defenceless hostage.”

  Ida Comnenos laughed away his scruples, lifting red lips to his, “I don’t want the coldness of your Northern chivalry,” she said. “I only want the warmth of your kisses.”

  With an arm still about her Richard kicked at the door. It swung to with a clang, shutting out the mocking invitation of the drums and spilling the wine as he poured their loving cup. “Then here’s to forgetting!” he laughed recklessly.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Robin’s witch was right. Richard went on from triumph to triumph. Slowly but relentlessly he forged his chain of key points along the coast. Philip might fidget and Leopold sneer because they had to rein in their champing chargers to a crawl. Eager young squires might complain that even the baggage wagons and the cooks could have moved faster. But hadn’t Eleanor or Aquitaine—over and over again in the tower room at Oxford—kept her unruly brood enthralled with tales of what happened in the first crusade whenever Louis left a gap? So her son saw to it that there were no gaps. And when a hundred thousand men march slowly like a solid wall there is nothing much that hit-and-run raiders can do about it. The Saracens poisoned the wells and swooped down from the hills a dozen times a day, but French and English, Austrians and Genoese shuffled through the burning sand, some of them with arrows sticking into their shoulders, too tightly wedged between their comrades to fall out by the way. As for the knights and nobles, hadn’t Richard predicted that the plains of Palestine would prove hard? They suffered from sunstroke and sleeplessness and thirst, but when at last they marched into Haifa the sight of waiting provision ships stopped all criticism and even rival leaders were content to leave the campaign in hands touched with genius.

  From Haifa to Jaffa the going was not so good because stunted woods sprawled down to the sea at a place called Arsouf. Only an optimistic fool could suppose the Saracens would miss such an opportunity. They came snaking down from the hills, grinning with fanatic joy at the funny sight of plated horsemen ploughing their clumsy way on horses almost as encumbered as themselves. With a cry of “Allah Akbar” they charged again and again, severing Christian heads with broad-bladed scimitars. But they had laughed too soon at the clumsy knights—one of whom, at any rate, was more swiftly mounted than themselves and cared nothing about encasing his conspicuous head. The odds were three to one on the Saracens at Arsouf and they fought brilliantly on their own ground, but after the battle riderless Arab stee
ds were so cheap that an international Christian army made a meal of them.

  Camped at last among the pleasant orange groves of Jaffa, the indefatigable Plantagenet let his followers rest. They deserved it and things were going well. But he himself worked like a dog getting everything reconditioned and ready for the final push to Jerusalem.

  “Only about fifty more miles, Sir!” Blondel would say of a morning, pouring over their well-worn map. And Richard would think secretly, “If I got on Fauvel now—alone—I could be in the Street of David by nightfall!” But those fifty miles were inland miles, flanked by treacherous hills. The Saracens, he knew, held the road at Ramlah. And never again would he underrate them.

  “With any luck we should be in England by next Spring,” he consoled Berengaria.

  But there wasn’t any luck. The weather broke suddenly. The seasons changed with the swift cruelty of the East. Torrential rains washed away the rough mountain tracks. Where men had panted beneath a pitiless sun they almost died of exposure to the wind. And Philip, who had already experienced one winter under canvas, wanted to go home.

  “If only you hadn’t wasted so much time in Cyprus I might have been back in France by now,” he pointed out peevishly, at the end of a particularly acrimonious staff meeting.

  “I made up for it when I did come,” Richard reminded him good-humouredly, getting up to dismiss the rest.

  “A man ought to put his own country first,” said Philip sententiously. It was Robin’s argument; but at least Robin had been consistent. He hadn’t come at all.

  Richard gathered up his parchments. “I don’t imagine my mother is having a particularly rosy time,” he said grimly. “We’d a letter from her this morning, and it appears that John is making things very difficult for Longchamps.”