It was hard for Raymond to see the proud flame of her courage brought so low, but he had the sense to let her cry. But when at last she looked up and said ungraciously, “You still there?” he came and lifted her into his arms. They were strong and comforting. One felt that what he took he would hold. “You don’t have to marry this sheik, you know,” he said, smiling very tenderly into her tear-drenched eyes.
Johanna pushed back her lovely, disordered hair. “Richard can’t have meant it,’’ she said distractedly.
“Whether he did or not,” said Raymond, “you come first with me. I’m willing to risk his friendship if you will marry me. I’m not so young, little love, nor particularly handsome—but perhaps as an alternative—”
Johanna began to laugh at him, as she dabbed away her tears. “That’s just the trouble, Raymond. You’re world’s too good to be an alternative. You stand apart from other men like pure gold. I should probably have married you months ago if I didn’t like you so much.”
Raymond kissed her lingeringly and without restraint. “How much?” he asked afterwards.
“Enough to be quite honest with you—always,” said Johanna, her arms still about his neck.
He asked what he had always wanted to. “You still love that fellow in England?”
She nodded.
He released her hands gently and held them between his own. His eyes were deep with understanding. “Isn’t it just the remains of calf love?” he pleaded. “I used to feel that way about ’Garia, you know. It became a sort of habit. Wouldn’t you, conceivably, feel different about it—kind of flat and cheated—if you went back to England and saw him again?”
Johanna fidgeted with the clasp of his cloak, trying to find the answer for herself as well. “Oh, Raymond, truly I don’t know,” she said at last lifting the lovely candour of her eyes to his. “All I know is that if he really wanted me he could make me leave you.”
It was a grave decision to offer a man, and it would take a bigger man than most to live it out without complaint. “I’ll take a risk on it,” said Raymond, just as he had said about Richard’s friendship. According to his code, the woman one loved was worth the highest stakes a man could pay for her.
He left her and went to find a priest and, as her brother had predicted, they were married in hurried secrecy that night. There was no magic of Cyprian pipes nor any panoply of stars. “Only a second-best night, like her caring,” thought the bridegroom, envying Richard’s luck. But it was the night he had hungered for ever since he had first seen her, mutinous and abstracted at her own feast because this Robin hadn’t come. It would be his fixed intent to kiss that frustration from her lips for ever.
“There’ll be no more sheiks or amorous kings or outlaws,” he told her with firm tenderness when she waked in his arms next morning.
“I know,” said Johanna. In the creeping sunlight she could see it blazoned on the shield hanging from his tent pole. “Je maintein-drai,” with a clenched mailed fist surmounting it. It made the flying footsteps of her own girlhood pursuing Robin round the battlements seem a very long way off. She felt comfortable and safe lying there while Raymond dressed—as if the stirrings of adventure were dead.
He came to her, buckling his belt. He looked happy and dear and resolute. “I must go and confess to Richard,” he said.
Johanna scrambled up in bed reaching for her wrap, all comfort and security forgotten. “You did it for me. I must come too,” she cried. “Just because I’m a woman I can’t stay here and hide.” And when, adoring her gallantry, he forbade her to come, she flared out at him. “You forget I’m—”
But he kissed the haughty words from her lips. “You are neither a Plantagenet nor a queen this morning,” he laughed down at her, “but just the Countess of Toulouse. And we don’t let our women go into the front line of battle.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
By the time Bohadin came Richard was sweating out his strength on a sick bed at Jaffa. They had brought him down on a horse litter, and this time he had been too ill to care. “England will bleed for this…” he had kept muttering, as if his thoughts had wandered far from his crusade.
“Why must he keep, saying that?” wondered Berengaria. The doctors had gone and Blondel had just brought her a fresh basin of water to sponge their patient’s feverish skin. She didn’t know what she would have done without Blondel. He was sending a page for fresh palm leaves to keep away the flies. Flies and sand and blood…That seemed to have been the rhythm of life for months. She had almost forgotten what life in a well-appointed castle felt like.
She let the sponge slither back into the basin and straightened her aching back to look round the room, with its bleak paraphernalia of sickness. It was lit by one small window, and the plaster of puddled mud and straw was peeling off the walls in places. The native fire in the middle of the floor appeared to be fed with a repulsive mixture of charcoal and camel dung. And she had willingly exchanged her lovely, cherished life for this.
Because she was tired she looked down at her husband’s haggard face, fringed with the ruddy stubble of a nascent beard—at the long, quiescent body that had always been so restless—and wondered almost impersonally what she would do if he were to die. She would be able to go home, of course. Probably she would be expected to marry again. But, however one suffered, life without Richard was unthinkable. Love with any other man would be a stagnation. Remembering his fierce caresses, she knew in her heart that this awful room was a paltry price to pay for any one of them.
Blondel was back with the palm leaves and the monotonous commination went on. “England raped and starved—to buy a strip of sun-scorched land…” The limbs mounding the coverlet stirred. As if roused by some continuity of ideas Richard opened his eyes. “God, I am thirsty!” he said. They gave him some water and he drank greedily, gathering his wits as he stared at her over the cup. Presently he waved it weakly away and smiled at her. “You, my dear! I was dreaming about Robin.”
“Yet you seldom speak of him,” said Berengaria, restraining herself from laughing hysterically because she had supposed a mere bout of fever could kill him. She wanted to tell him how empty the world had looked without him.
Richard passed a hand across his clammy forehead. It seemed incredible that anything so white and shaky could have wielded the great broadsword propped in a corner. “He’s becoming my inescapable conscience,” he complained. “Suppose while I’m away—someone murdered Arthur?”
“Why on earth should they?” laughed Berengaria briskly, straightening the bed clothes.
It sounded fantastic, of course, but Richard knew why one man might. He could see John now, play-acting in the crown, and Robin feeling as if someone had lifted the chalice off the high altar. But he supposed it was because he was still a bit light-headed.
Berengaria changed the subject abruptly to distract him. “Bohadin is here in Jaffa.”
Richard raised himself eagerly. He looked better already. “Then I’d better see him,” he said.
“My dear, not to-day. It would tire you far too much.”
He looked round for his clothes and saw all the basins and medicines and things. His gaze returned to his wife’s face. “It’s not I who am tired, lying here all day,” he said. “Your dear eyes are all smudged for want of sleep.”
They filled with tears at his unexpected tenderness. But the pages were tidying up the room and she laughed away the moment with a triviality. “You wouldn’t want visitors if you could see your beard,” she said. “Please, Blondel, hold up the King’s shield.”
Richard explored a reflection which kept getting mixed up with leopards passant. With a tentative thumb and forefinger he stroked his bristling chin. “Umph, I rather like it,” he grunted. “What about letting it grow?”
“It would certainly set a new fashion in England, Sir,” laughed Blondel, delighted to hear him talking normally again.
“It might if I could persuade John to grow one too.” Never having been the show
piece of the family in his youth, Richard was devoid of personal vanity.
It was good to hear them joking, and presently Johanna came in and was surprised to find him sitting up. She had brought one of the new cloisonné dishes piled high with Richard’s favourite fruits. “Ida Comnenos sent you this,” she said, “and she wants to know when she can come and see you.” She set the costly offering on the window ledge where the westering sun struck a gem-like brilliance from the mosaic of coloured metals and warmed the rich, downy bloom of each fruit. It was a gift that caught the eye, lending the shabby little room an illusion of luxury. Richard looked at it and grinned. It was so exactly like Ida. He glanced covertly at his wife who, seeing that he was set on seeing Saladin’s envoy, was busy tidying up. “I can’t see anyone just now,” he said, non-committally.
Bohadin the historian was an impressive figure, with his white patriarchal beard and eyes that burned like beacons of intelligence in his benign old face. When Raymond brought him into the room he seemed to freshen it with a breath of mountain cedars. His spotless white camel-hair burnous shamed the dingy garments of his solitary follower, and Richard—who was all emphasis and movement—thought that his still, contemplative dignity probably served as better protection than an escort. “Allah be with you all!” he said, touching forehead and heart in the beautifully symbolic greeting of his race.
“Just like the oldest of the magi!” thought Johanna, and Berengaria was enchanted with him. She could remember sitting on his knee as a child enthralled by his store of Eastern fairy tales. “My white hairs must have been black in those days,” he laughed, when she reminded him of it. If he was amazed at the metamorphosis of a pampered princess, he was too polite to say so. He sent all manner of flowery messages to her father and complimented her on her efficient nursing. And then they got down to the business of the treaty. Because Richard was too weak for legal terms, Raymond epitomized the document for him. “The main point is, of course,” he concluded, “that in return for our solemn pledge to withdraw our troops from Jerusalem, Saladin is prepared to leave us in undisputed possession of all the ports we have captured.”
“All except Ascalon,” Bohadin reminded them suavely. Richard frowned, thinking of his boastful song and how he and his men had strewn those plains with dead for nothing. “We must have one outlet for our merchandise,” the envoy insisted with a smile, the softness of which deceived nobody. “But if you will agree to this, we are willing to let the truce stand for three years.”
“Three years!” ejaculated Richard. Actually, he had not seriously considered a cessation of hostilities lasting longer than three months. He felt flattered that Saladin should have suggested it and wondered for the hundredth time if he had been a fool not to press on to Jerusalem. But perhaps, after all, a long truce would be best. It would give him time to go back to England and see what John was doing, and to find out what Philip was up to on the Continent.
“You have set your heel so hard upon our land,” Bohadin was urging, “that only years of seed time and harvest will heal her scars.”
Richard loved the warm Eastern imagery. He took the imposing-looking parchment from Raymond and was vexed to find that his hand still shook. He only hoped those sharp-eyed Levantines wouldn’t attribute the enraging symptom to emotion or fear, but—being driven to sign the thing—it was characteristic of him to do so with a good grace. “I count it no dishonour to call a draw with Saladin,” he said formally. “And I only wish I could meet him!” he added from his heart.
“To prove to you that his own wish is twin to yours, he has sent you something more personal than a parchment,” smiled Bohadin, beckoning to his unkempt follower. “This man has almost incredible skill in curing fevers. When he isn’t soldiering he spends much time curing the ills of our people.”
The man came forward. He was a villainous-looking fellow with an aquiline nose and a bandaged forehead. He peered at Richard out of the one fierce eye that was visible and put a skinny finger on his pulse. Berengaria hoped he wasn’t verminous. From the folds of his kaftan he drew a bag of herbs which he began grinding between his palms until they looked like a fine white powder. One by one he let them fall into the water in the King’s cup. He appeared to be muttering some incantation; but probably he was only counting them. To European minds the whole scene was suggestive of poison.
Johanna’s clear, quick voice cut across the tense atmosphere. “But what can an ignorant soldier do for my brother which our trained Hospitallers cannot?” she asked, voicing the thoughts of all of them.
“Even they had to learn from us how to use poppy juices to put your wounded to sleep before an amputation,” Bohadin reminded her. And the herbalist, having prepared his potion, offered it to the King. “Salah-ed-Din himself desires your health!” he said in his own tongue.
“Now that I have signed away the power to fight him, eh, my man?” laughed Richard, who—like the rest of them—had picked up a smattering of Arabic. He was already tired and beginning to feel fuddled again with so many people in such a small room. But to his amazement before he could drink the stuff, his well-trained squire had interfered. “Suppose it’s another trick—like the blinded prisoners?” he stammered.
Richard was furious. He was aware that what Johanna called his “dais manner” was slipping away from him and that quick Arab resentment was rising beneath Bohadin’s suave manner. “I can see that to set this young man’s mind at rest I had better leave my man as a hostage until his patient is better,” he was saying stiffly.
“God help him if he isn’t!” muttered Raymond, with more fervour than lucidity.
Six pairs of eyes were focused on Richard. To everybody’s surprise it was Berengaria whose courtesy snapped next. But then she had the most to lose. It was only a brief half-hour ago since she had looked into a future without Richard and found it desolate. She leaned over the back of his chair, reaching for the cup. “Richard, don’t drink it!” she implored, in a voice that cracked.
Richard caught at her hand. All the faces staring at him were merging into a grotesque blur and he felt the need of holding on to something dear and comforting and familiar. “I thought you hated war?” he said. “Don’t you know, sweet, distrust is just the diet it fattens on?” He had spilled some of the water by reason of his miserable ague, but he lifted the rest and tossed it defiantly down his throat to finish the argument. He heard the clatter of the horn beaker as it rolled to the floor. Out of the confusion of faces one swam close to his own. It was the fellow with the bandaged eye, and he was looking inordinately pleased. Richard felt a beautiful new coolness creeping through his veins. He was aware that people were drifting quietly out and that his healer had gone to squat humbly in the shadows by the door. Just before he dropped off to sleep he heard his sister laugh in a shame-faced sort of way and say to Blondel, “We must have been thinking of Rosamund de Clifford.”
By the time Richard waked the sun was hanging low like an orange over the rocks. The room was very quiet and Berengaria was sitting beside him, her hands folded neatly in her lap. There was something almost severe about her stillness, and the cold evening light from the window was being unkind to the first faint lines about her mouth. Looking at her through lazy lashes, he realised that she had changed since Acre, bearing things with the sort of patience that develops character and weeds the bright, disordered bed of Youth. He remembered how gay she had been at Pamplona and felt responsible for her lost laughter. When they got home he must make up to her for all the discomforts she must have suffered in this make-shift life.
Feeling his gaze on her she looked up and smiled. He was so obviously at ease that there was no need to move. It was one of those leisure hours when people find out that marriage can be something deeper and even more satisfying than a union of the flesh. “And so,” said Richard drowsily, rounding off their thoughts with a sentence it had seemed unnecessary to begin, “there seems nothing left but to pack up and go home!”
To Richard going home m
eant also a confession of failure, the daily grind of council meetings and exasperating discussions about money. But Berengaria conjured up a pleasant picture composed of a riverside village called West-min-stair, Eleanor’s welcoming smile, and a pleasant room in Oxford Castle where they all seemed to have lived. “I hope your mother will be pleased about Johanna and Raymond,” she said.
‘“Joan must be longing to go home,” said Richard. “So I’d better arrange for him to take you both back to England.”
“Take?” Berengaria gasped. “But, Richard, aren’t you coming?”
“There’ll be a lot to clear up here,” he pointed out evasively. “Suppose I meet you in Rome?” Seeing the consternation in her face, he covered the hands in her lap with his own. “I know you’re counting the days for a rose garden and somewhere to hang your clothes!”
But Berengaria’s hands were unresponsive. She looked up at Ida’s lavish gift on the window ledge and her cheeks flushed hotly. “Richard, you’re not staying behind because of that Cypriot girl, are you?” she asked.
Richard laughed comfortably. “Who says I am staying at all?” he countered. “If you must know, Jealous One, I’m going on a pilgrimage—without any women at all. Mercadier can see to all the donkey work of re-embarkation.” When Berengaria turned to stare at him he hunched himself up on one elbow, possessing himself of one of her protesting hands and pulling back her fingers one by one so that they snapped like miniature catapults on the embroidered stags and lions. “Listen, my sweet,” he went on, with the expansive persuasiveness people always use to cover a very poor case. “I simply haven’t the face to skin my poor islanders again for the next crusade, so I thought I’d join one of those parties of pilgrims we are always seeing crossing from here to Rome. I’ve planned to go through all the principal cities in Europe collecting for it. I ought to get quite a lot out of all those wealthy Byzantines.”
Passionate Brood Page 23
