“Then let us go home together,” urged Philip.
Richard turned as if he had been stung. Up till then he had taken it as part of the daily grumbling. “Go home? Give up—after all we’ve done!” he echoed.
Philip lay back wearily against the fleurs-de-lis that sprigged the blue velvet of his chair. He had come as a duty, no doubt, hoping for a swift, showy campaign; and must have hated the way the laurels were snatched from him by a man who was in part his vassal. At home—as a statesman—he shone supreme. “I feel I should be of so much more use in France,” he excused himself, with rare honesty.
Richard had known him since he was a pale, friendly youth. Because of the glitter of his position he had many a time rated his vain counsel higher than his own father’s wisdom. “For Christ’s sake don’t leave me in the lurch just now!” he implored.
Philip murmured something about money.
“Stay on at my expense,” invited Richard, out of the generosity of his own empty coffers. But Philip was obdurate. What was the good of being King of France if one had to eat badly cooked food in a draughty tent?
Even the French nobles were ashamed of his defection and half of them stayed on with the Plantagenet, but it meant he had to feed them. So when the French king sailed he deliberately turned his back on the great blue and gold banners streaming from his masthead and—although he spent years haggling over French soil—he never spoke again to Philip Capet.
Next morning, his army still further depleted by the strong garrison it was necessary to leave at Jaffa, Richard pushed inland as far as Beit Nuba. There were no walls to mend there—nothing to keep cold men occupied. Only a few flat-roofed hovels and torrential rain and ubiquitous mud. For the first time since leaving Dover Richard knew doubt. If only he could hold out and keep his men from cutting each other’s throats until the Spring! He sent Raymond back to Jaffa for reinforcements, hoping to come to some sort of winter truce with Saladin.
Berengaria remembered that Saladin’s friend, Bohadin, had once enjoyed the hospitality of Pamplona and urged Richard to visit him in the hills. Reluctantly, he put his pride in his pocket and went. “I’d better leave Blondel with you in case I don’t come back,” he insisted uneasily. But for once Berengaria was the more confident of the two. “They aren’t savages,” she assured him. “Bohadin is writing Saladin’s biography, and he will be most interested to meet you.”
When Richard came back some days later he was wet to the skin, shivering with ague, and disappointed because, after all, he hadn’t seen Saladin.
“My dear, I am so sorry!” said Berengaria, who also understood the two men’s sneaking interest in each other. “Weren’t you able to discuss the possibilities of a truce after all then?”
“Oh, yes. This Bohadin seems to be in his confidence. He didn’t poison my drinks or anything, and he speaks Norman as if he’d lived in Rouen all his life.” Richard’s comments were punctuated by the flop of sodden garments to the floor as the pages prepared the steaming bath she had insisted upon. “And you’d never guess the decent thing Saladin did! He had the Holy Rood sent from Jerusalem for me to see. And do you know, ’Garia, they all treated it as reverently as we should. Yet all the time I was collecting money for this crusade I pictured them spitting on it.”
“Didn’t you know they venerate Christ as a prophet?” smiled Berengaria, knowing how much such a gesture must have pleased him. “I must read you my translation of the Koran, Richard. Parts of it are very beautiful.”
When he came for his supper, refreshed and shaven, he lifted her chin with caressing fingers. “And what have you been doing, my love?” he asked.
“Trying to persuade your independent sister to marry my lovesick cousin,” laughed Berengaria.
“Then I take it you don’t find marriage so bad?” He looked at her searchingly as he kissed her. He often wondered if she guessed about Ida, and had wisely left the little baggage at Jaffa.
Berengaria avoided a direct answer. “If ever a man deserved to be happy, it is Raymond,” she said.
“And what does the tempestuous jade herself say about it?” asked Richard, picking over his food. It was so unlike him to be fastidious that his wife watched him with concern. “She wants to get back to England first. Richard, do you suppose Robin really loved her? Except as a sister, I mean. Wouldn’t he have come to Sicily if he had?”
“He may not have known about William’s death.”
“But surely you tried to tell him?”
“My dear woman, I rode hell for leather all through a night of weather like this. But God Himself couldn’t find Rob if he wanted to hide in a wood’. And England is full of woods.”
Berengaria sat down opposite to him in homely intimacy. “He loved you—but he didn’t come,” she said. “Perhaps it was just that there were things he loved more.”
“You talk as if you knew him,” said Richard, glancing up quickly from his plate.
“I’ve been reading his book.”
“Oh, that—all about astrology and unsanitary cottages and noblesse oblige.”
“I found a copy amongst your things—it was like a friend when you were away fighting—” She never could bear to talk about those lonely, anxious hours. “But Raymond is a relation. And he’s here, being much too patient. I wish we could do something about it.”
“I have,” said Richard. He pushed aside his plate and sat back with an air of complacency, although it is doubtful if his machinations had been prompted by much altruism. “I’ve offered Johanna to Saladin’s nephew.”
Berengaria sat staring at him. “I can’t believe you’re serious—”
“I don’t suppose Saladin can either,” chuckled Richard. “But Bohadin and the rest of them were tremendously impressed. It ought to flatter them into signing a truce, and if I know anything about Joan she’ll go off in a tearing rage and marry Raymond to-morrow.”
They couldn’t pursue the conversation because Raymond had just returned from Jaffa and Johanna came to the King’s tent with him, eager for news. But all Richard wanted to hear about was reinforcements. How many could they spare?
Raymond produced a list which he laid reluctantly at Richard’s elbow. “What, only a paltry hundred!” exclaimed Johanna, reading it over his shoulder, and Richard looked up for some sort of explanation. His hands shook with ague, crackling the parchment as he held it. “I know Philip’s desertion must make some difference—” he began bleakly.
“I wish to God Philip were the only one!” burst out Raymond.
Richard slid back in his chair, steadying his hands on the arms of it. “What d’you mean?” he demanded.
“It’s this sea-board policy,” explained Raymond, hating to find a flaw in a friend’s best stroke of genius. “You see, Richard, with ships plying all the time between here and Cyprus it’s so fatally easy for fellows to slip away when they’re fed up. Back to Marseilles or Venice or anywhere.”
Richard saw the flaw; but instantly he blamed Philip. “And how long has Capet’s craven example been rotting my armies?” he growled between set teeth.
“It seems they’ve been slipping away by night—in twos and threes—ever since you came up here.”
“But what the hell are the staff people at Jaffa doing? Can’t they put a stop to it?”
“They do their best,” reported Raymond. “But they haven’t your pull. They didn’t take Jaffa, for instance, by bluffing the garrison into believing they’d an army instead of half a dozen knights at their heels—and that appears to be the sort of joke your queer subjects understand.”
“You see, my dear,” said Johanna, “they honestly believe your life is charmed so they’d follow you anywhere.”
“Then I certainly can’t afford to hang about here any longer—rain or no rain,” decided Richard. He got up, without his usual alacrity, and asked now many men had died of fever since he had been gone.
“At least a fifth, Sir,” estimated Blondel.
“So even if this lis
t of reinforcements were twice as long, we should still lack men as well as money.” Richard looked round the little group of intimates whom he trusted. “You know, don’t you, that I was fool enough to lend Philip some? I thought I could bribe him to stay—the way I bribed him about Ann. And now, God curse him, he’s made off with men and money and ships. And Jerusalem still stands.”
It was the first time any of them had heard that note of bitterness in his voice. He had endured jealousies and disappointments and news of treachery at home, and through it all he had kept unfalteringly cheerful. Right from the first they had looked to him for encouragement. When their ships were storm-tossed they had been heartened by the steady light from his masthead. And now, for the first time, it was as if they peered through the hazardous mists of the future and found that cheerful light grown dim.
It was more than Blondel could stand. “Sir, at Arsouf you killed seven thousand and the odds were on the enemy,” he reminded his master. “We are ready to start to-morrow—every one of us. The men know that you—and you alone—can take Jerusalem.”
Richard would have given anything at that moment for the same conviction. He turned to the only one of them who had been crusading before. “Look here, Raymond, we must decide this here and now. Every day we waste is costing us men and money, and—what with the weather and subsidising half the French army—we can’t hold out here much longer. It seems to me the position is this. Either we must push on to Jerusalem at once or we must conclude this truce and turn back and consolidate our position on the coast—with a view, of course, of returning here in the Spring.”
Raymond was a good man to appeal to in a quandary because he never let his decisions get mixed up with his desires. He faced Richard squarely across the table. “In my opinion it’s impossible to take Jerusalem now,” he said.
Richard took the blow unflinchingly. “Why?” he asked tersely.
“For one thing, it’s the wrong season. Every approach would be a quagmire. You’d never get your war machines up there.” It seemed so maddening that they should have sweltered across thirsty deserts for months only to be balked by too much water now! “And then,” added Raymond, “there’s the unique position of the city itself.”
“Draw me a plan of it,” said Richard.
Raymond looked up in surprise. “One forgets you’ve never seen it,” he said.
But Richard was already helping Blondel to clear a space by the entrance. “Here in the sand—where the light’s good,” he said.
So Raymond drew his sword and began to trace the Holy City for them on the ground. It cost him an effort of memory because he had been young and careless when he had seen it. He made a mound to represent the Holy Sepulchre and piled up sand for the walls. “Here would come the Jaffa Gate at the end of our road,” he said, leaving a space. “And here, if I remember rightly, runs the Via Doloroso from the steps of Pilate’s Palace to Golgotha. And here on the far side of the city is the Golden Gate through which Christ rode. It is said that only some great conqueror shall enter by it now.” The women seated themselves on stools and Blondel came and looked over their shoulders with the King’s half-polished shield in his hands. They all watched Raymond’s moving sword- point in spellbound silence, a queer parti-coloured light from the striped tent on their faces and the steady downpour beating overhead. When he had finished his model of the city itself he raised the contour of her seven hills. “You must remember,” he said jerkily between his labours, “that not only is Jerusalem set upon hills, she is also surrounded by a bare, coverless plain. And we should be here—” he said, rounding off his effort with a few rough crosses indicating the end of the Jaffa road. “On that plain. Between two hostile armies.”
“Why two?” asked Johanna.
“Because Saladin is far too clever ever to allow them to unite.”
“He always has divided his forces,” agreed Richard. “And if only Philip hadn’t deserted we could have done the same.”
“While we were busy besieging the army of occupation,” went on Raymond, “these hills over here would provide excellent cover from which the second army could swoop down, and outflank us. We’d have hardly a withered thornbush for cover, Richard, and the moment you turned to repulse them the gates of Jerusalem would let loose a horde of the garrison on your heels.”
Raymond straightened himself and sheathed his sword. One after the other they lifted questioning eyes to the man who must decide. Richard went to the entrance of the tent as if for space in which to think. Outside the usual scene was spread before his eyes. Men gossiping in little knots as they cleaned their accoutrements, grooms whistling as they rubbed down their masters’ horses, and, over by the baggage wagons, thin spirals of smoke showing where the cooks were preparing the midday meal. All of them men who had come through hell for him—his men, of whom he was inordinately proud and many of whom he knew by name. He remembered seeing some of them march uncomplainingly, stuck with arrows like the martyred Christopher. He thought of their waiting women and pictured the homes they had set out from—comfortable walled farms in Normandy, heath hovels among the golden broom of Anjou, small wooden cottages beneath the apple trees of Kent. The swift, unobtrusive movement as he crossed himself showed from whence the strength for such a decision was sought. Perhaps in those pregnant moments he made reparation for the murdered garrison of Acre. When he turned back into the tent he had given decent burial to his life’s immediate ambition. “I can’t juggle with so many confiding lives,” he said.
Berengaria’s eyes shone with pride and pity. “Oh, Richard,” she cried, in that low, vibrant voice of hers, “that was the finest victory of all!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Richard was not the sort of man to hold an inquest on a decision once it had been made. “But I’m willing to follow any man who thinks he can pull it off,” he compromised eagerly.
Raymond avoided the appeal in his eyes. He had few illusions about his own generalship, and none at all about Leopold’s. “There isn’t anyone else,” he said firmly.
“Then we must draw up some sort of pact about these ports,” sighed Richard, trying to talk as if it were just an ordinary routine job—as if to-day were no different from any of the other days since they had landed. “Summon a staff meeting in the town, Blondel,” he ordered briskly, “and tell them I’ll be there in quarter of an hour. I’ll get Bohadin to come to us this time.”
“Hadn’t we better return their hospitality by inviting Saladin’s nephew as well?” suggested Berengaria, jogging his memory.
Richard rose to the occasion with a game attempt at his usual cheerful enthusiasm. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “Then you and Johanna can get to know him. He’s a handsome young devil, and knows all there is to know about horses.”
They were both watching Johanna with covert amusement. “Do you mean we shall have to eat with him?” she asked, with a patriotic sniff.
“Well, as a matter of fact, my dear,” said Richard blandly, “I was proposing that you should sleep with him.”
Johanna stared at him uncomprehendingly. “What the hell—” began Raymond, but Berengaria pressed her foot down hard on his mailed toes. “You asked me to help, didn’t you?” she hissed fiercely.
“You see, I was playing for time,” Richard was explaining. “So it’s tremendously important to keep these Saracens in a good skin. They said their ardent young sheik ought to be married before next Ramadan, and I supposed you’d be wanting another husband soon. Specially as poor old William…”
Johanna interrupted like a whirlwind. “D’you mean you’ve promised me to a brown man?” She was so livid with anger that she didn’t notice Berengaria’s twitching lips as she said soothingly, “Just olive colour, dear, like Ida; and they say these sheiks make such thrilling lovers!”
“Weren’t those two romantic women of yours, Henrietta and whatever her name was, always hoping to be seduced by one?” put in Richard.
Poor Johanna gazed from one to ano
ther of them, bewildered by their heartless indifference. And there was Raymond, who had been professing such high-flown love for weeks, accepting it quite calmly. Why didn’t he get up and challenge Richard to single combat or something? Perhaps, after all, he didn’t really care. Did any man, when it came to the point? “You must all be mad—thinking I could endure to live mewed up in a harem with stuffy, secret lattices and spiteful little cats like Ida talking sex all day. I’d sooner have married Tancred. What on earth did you rescue me for?”
Raymond, who ought to have been throwing his gauntlet in Richard’s smug face, seemed to have withdrawn himself from the argument except to remark irritatingly that he had heard in Jaffa that Tancred had married someone else.
In her flurry Johanna failed to see which way they were driving her. She only knew that it was maddening to be a woman. She had felt all this before, but Richard had been sympathetic then—before he parted from Robin. “You said that this time I could choose!” she reminded him.
“You take such a long time choosing,” Richard pointed out, calmly picking up the various parchments he wanted for the meeting.
What was the good of choosing, thought Johanna, if you were not sure the man you chose wanted you? One had to have time to go home and find out. And if one married a jealous Saracen one wouldn’t go home at all. There would be rocks and sand and horrid little stunted fig trees for ever until one’s soul withered for the cool green grass of meadows and the dappled shade of beech trees. “You can’t do this to me—you can’t,” she cried, beating on the table with her capable, horse-wise hands. “You may be head of our house, Richard—but I am Queen of Sicily.”
“Dowager Queen,” murmured Berengaria, going along with Richard to the town.
Johanna could have killed her. She stood and watched them go. They were her companions—of her own generation—and yet they were trying to treat her as if she were still just a pawn. Once a man had power expediency became everything, she supposed, and promises and affection didn’t count. Richard cared more about taking Jerusalem than anything on earth. Having been balked, he was ready to offer her on the altar of his ambition. And she would have to pay for his success with the rest of her life. She put her head down on the table among the remains of his meal and sobbed.
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