The King's Witch (14 page)

She said, “I have a patient with a recurrent fever.”

He gestured toward the beds on either side. “All these fevers, Lady.” He was being courteous; she was a guest, somehow connected to Lionheart; still, she was only a woman.

“How do you care for them?”

He talked about the Zodiac, retrogrades and necessary causes, fire and earth; his hands milled in the air. It was important when the disease began. Where the planets were. If the patient fell sick at the full moon, he would be driven mad. The old doctor had told him this. As he spoke, she got, in hints and pieces, that he was not a monk at all, but a knight who had come to fight the Saracens. When they saw the bloodshed and the sickness, he and some of his fellows broke up their ship to build this place for the sick and the dying to come. Mostly he carried blankets and chamber pots and fed people. But he believed he had found a vocation and would enter holy orders as soon as he got home.

“And, my lady,” he said, “where to study you?”

Having no ready answer for this, she made none, and he said, with infinite condescension, “Ah, so. An empiricus.” Edythe left knowing nothing more than when she went in, except the German knight’s bad Latin.

On the way back, she came on a market above the beach, a row of vendor stalls under a canopy, that had not been there before. Johanna, in a cloud of pages and squires, was buying everything she could pick up. The vendors crouched in wait for her and launched volleys of words to draw her to them, but she walked through them as if they were not there. Lilia trailed her, and two knights stood at the head of the market, keeping back everybody else who wanted to buy. Once when a vendor got too insistent, Johanna only lifted her gaze toward the knights and the local man backed hastily away.

Behind them, Edythe went along the makeshift stalls, looking over the nuts and flowers and onions. The vendors jostled for her attention. “Zingiber?” she said. They mumbled together but no one had zingiber. She bought dates and two combs of honey wrapped in a big leaf. A thin man who knew a lot of French sold her a thumbsized pot of a potion to make people sleep.

“Jews?” she said, quietly. “Are there Jews here?” She should send a letter to Eleanor.

If she found more Jews, would they know her too?

The Syrian shrugged. His cheeks sucked hollow. His head shook just a little. He did not ask about among his fellows, as the vendors usually did when they did not have what she wanted. “Jaffa,” he said. “Jaffa, maybe.”

In front of his stand, two boys, naked under their long, thin shirts, held out their palms and jabbered at her; she did not understand the tongue but she knew the cupped hands. She gave them each some dates.

The crowd was steadily thicker. The page had gone with the Queen, and Edythe ran a little to catch up. Ahead of her in the swarm she saw Lilia bump into a young man who never looked at her. They moved apart as if it were all an accident, but now Lilia had something in her hand, which she slid quickly into her sleeve. Edythe caught up with them and they returned to the circle of tents, inside the shell of their guards and attendants.

At the height, where they could see out over Acre again, Johanna cried, “Look!” and pointed toward the city.

Edythe turned. Quiet all day, now men burst up from the yellow rock pile and charged toward the wall. From the other side the Saracens were scrambling to defend it. Johanna pointed not at this, but at the hill before them, where Richard sprawled on his litter. The bearers had set it down but still stood at the corners. One of each pair carried a shield, but the litter was as open as a bed. Rains of arrows and stones volleyed down toward it. The King paid no heed and everything fell just short. A crossbow lay beside him; he was reloading another. The bearers stooped to pick up his litter again.

Johanna said, “God shield him. God keep him.” She jerked her gaze away; she would not look. She led the other women back through the dirt and clutter of the camp to their tent. Edythe hung back, her head turned over her shoulder. With a bellow, suddenly the litter jounced down straight toward the wall, into a cascade of arrows and rocks, Richard firing his crossbows as he went. Rocks crashed around him. He waved one arm, fending off a blow. From beyond the wall, on the Saracen side, came a furious banging of drums. Edythe slipped into the tent, and as she did, Lilia passed her, leaving.

The dark was coming. Another day consumed. Johanna knelt down at the back of the tent and prayed for her brother, for herself, and even for King Philip, who she had heard was scorching with fever, his hair and teeth falling out. The French were saying Richard had poisoned him. And then himself, by mistake. As proof of this they said he had also poisoned Baldwin of Alsace, the lord who had challenged Richard in the council, and who had died.

Richard might die, even saved from the sickness, die before her eyes, felled by an arrow or a sword or a stray rock, trampled like her brother Geoffrey. She crossed herself, her eyes closing. He could not die.

She wondered why she let herself care so much again, after everything that had happened. She would do whatever God asked of her henceforth—Masses and prayers, alms for the poor and barefoot pilgrimages—if her brother lived. But she had offered it all before, for her baby, her husband, and they had died anyway.

If Richard lived, perhaps he had never been so sick. And she owed God nothing.

Meanwhile, she would send in secret to King Philip Augustus, wishing him well. Reminding him what she had said, that he should leave the east, which was doing him such evil.

Edythe sank each honeycomb in ajar of wine, put covers over the round mouths, and weighted the covers. Johanna was at her prayers still. A page came in the door, stood to one side, and said, “The King of Jerusalem.”

Johanna rose, shaking her skirts out. “All right. Send him in.” Her voice was low; Edythe knew she was tired of this.

Edythe expected Guy de Lusignan, but the man who walked in was taller than Guy, younger, with thick dark hair and a dark drooping mustache. A soft wide bonnet sat tilted over one ear. His Byzantine cloak had a deep hemline of shredded gold and a gold clasp at his shoulder. Other, lesser men swirled around him, but he had a fighting-cock strut that drew all eyes, a look proud and cold. This, then, was the second King. Edythe backed away, watching Johanna in the center of the room.

“My lord Conrad,” the Queen said, coolly.

Edythe put her hands together. There was likely some danger in this. He performed a flourish of a bow, wrists turned back, fingers spread. Edythe remembered that he had been at the Byzantine court; he had very Greek manners. He said, “I am delighted to set eyes on the beautiful Queen of Sicily, whose fame has preceded her.”

“Well,” Johanna said, and crooked a finger at a page, who ran up with a stool. “You could have done that much sooner had you let us into Tyre when we first came there.” Edythe could hear the tension in her voice: She had to measure every word, for what she said here could be exactly wrong for Richard’s cause.

The black King bowed again. “A misunderstanding, certainly, my dear lady.” He lifted a hand and one of his men came forward with a pouch. “I come to you, my beautiful Queen, as a mere messenger.” From the pouch he fingered up two long folded letters, sealed, which he handed to her.

“Mother,” Johanna said, looking down at the first letter in her hands. She dropped the second without a glance to the floor. “By your leave, my lord.”

Conrad was already going. Edythe realized he had gotten what he wanted: acceptance by a Plantagenet. Johanna had opened the letter from her mother and was deep in reading it, her face bright, laughing now and then. The tent door swung shut. Edythe craned her neck to see the other letter, lying on the floor by the Queen’s feet.

“Mother says to tell you, ‘Well done, O good and faithful servant. ’” She glanced at Edythe as she said it, then saw her trying to read the other letter and gave her another, narrower look. “Go ahead, pick it up, see who it’s from, since you’re so curious.”

Edythe flushed. Johanna laughed. “Oh, do.” She went back to her letter.

“Is all well in Poitiers?” Edythe said, guardedly. She picked up the letter and turned it over, not recognizing the hand or the seal.

“She says so. She caught John at a plot to take the treasury and made him apologize until he cried; it’s a very merry tale she makes.” She folded the thick paper into thirds again. “You know everybody between here and Poitiers has read it. Who is that?”

Edythe broke off the seal. “I don’t know. Oh. Isabella of Jerusalem. Here.”

Johanna took the letter; her gaze leaped down the page. After a moment, she was frowning.

“I’d hoped for something more friendly, after we talked so well together, back in Tyre.”

“Likely she thought it would be read, also,” Edythe said.

“Well,” Johanna said, turning the page over, to look at the seal. “It was.” There were old traces of wax on the paper; whoever had opened it hadn’t even bothered to reseal it carefully. “I do nothing that is not spied upon.” She flung the letter down.

Edythe took it, curious, wondering why then Isabella had sent it at all. She balanced it on her fingers, noting the thick paper, the ink nearly purple, the letters formed in an even slanted hand.

“My lady, mark this, it’s two sheets.”

Johanna swiveled toward her. Edythe was trying to pick apart a corner of the letter; her nails were short and stubby and no use at this, and Johanna tore the letter from her grip and ran her thumbnail along the edge.

Like splitting a walnut shell, the letter came apart into separate leaves. Johanna said, “Aha,” pleased. She gave Edythe a quick look. “Well done, O good and faithful.” She bent over the hidden letter, delighted.

Edythe thought,
Yes, Plantagenet
.

Around sundown, Edythe went across the circle of the tents, to Richard’s tent.

She sent a page in ahead of her, and when she went in, they were all looking at her. She stood and made a nice bow to cover a glance around the tent.

Like all of Richard’s housings, it was a jumble of war gear, chests, and armor. The air stank. The bare ground was packed hard and uneven. A mail shirt hung on its cross by the lamp, its circlets glimmering like an animal shell. The iron skull of his helmet hung crooked on the upright. He himself sat on the pallet in his shirt, and Rouquin stood behind him. Half a dozen other men took up the room around her: his cousin Henry of Champagne, and Guy and Hugh de Lusignan, and some Hospitallers.

She said, “I crave your pardon, my lord; I came to see how you did. I will come back.”

She could see that he was shivering, and his shirt stuck to his body, soaked with sweat. He had a cup of wine in his hand. He said, “Oh, excellently well. Well. Well.” He took a deep drink of the wine. He turned his gaze at the other men. “Everybody get out, now. My physician is here.”

They all filed out. Rouquin started to go, and Richard turned his head. “Stay.” He smiled at her. His teeth chattered. “Be our duenno.” Rouquin, behind him, rolled his eyes.