The King's Witch (16 page)

“Well, now,” Richard said.

Philip gave a dry chuckle. His red-rimmed eyes darted toward Richard, and he turned and let his servants half-carry him back to his tent. The rest of the crowd was turning away, too, disappointed. Rouquin let out his breath, and went to see to his armor.

ACRE

The sun went down in a bloody haze of smoke and dust. Edythe stood at the door to the Queen’s tent, where the air was cooler, if not sweeter. Back in the tent, Johanna said, “When we have Acre, at least, it will be done. They can call it done, and go.”

Edythe thought nothing so halfway as merely taking Acre would satisfy Richard. She let the tent door drop and went in to set more candles. Johanna looked tired. Edythe brought the Queen a cup of oxymel for comfort. Lilia had disappeared again. They went to bed early.

In the night the blare of horns woke her with a start; sitting up, she could hear horses galloping, somewhere in the distance, and shouting. The horses were coming nearer. She threw the thin cover back. Lilia was still gone, and she was alone on the pallet. She called, “My lady,” and then someone screamed, right outside, and she heard feet running, dozens, hundreds of feet pounding past the tent, and the brass shrieks of horns near and far.

“Edythe,” Johanna cried, and she went from her pallet to the Queen’s. Johanna was standing, pulling her gown over her head—Edythe helped her get the skirts down straight and tied her laces.

“What’s going on?” Edythe said; she wore only her shift, and she looked hastily around for more clothes.

Johanna said, “I don’t know—” A man in mail strode in the tent door, carrying a sword.

The two women shrank back; Johanna flung out her arm to cover Edythe’s nakedness and Edythe looked for a weapon. The knight’s face was wild, but not from the sight of them. He saluted them and cried, in a trumpet voice, “We have guards around you, lady—fear not—stay as you are—” He dashed out again.

Johanna said, “We’re being attacked.” Her hands rose, to pray, or to thrust something off.

They were alone in the tent, even the pages gone. Edythe flung a kirtle over her head and down, yanking at the laces on the back. She got the dress settled on her shoulders and tied the belt awkwardly backward and could not get it tight enough. Johanna trimmed up the wick of the only lamp burning and the light bloomed, yellow.

Edythe thought suddenly of Berengaria.

“My lady, the little Queen—”

“Go bring her,” Johanna said. “Better we’re all together.” She lit another lamp from the first. “Where is Lilia?”

Edythe went out the tent flap into the dark. A guard stood on either side. One was trying to get a torch to burn. The air was windy, warm, full of grit and the stink of smoke and garbage. She could hear drums down behind the ridge where the tents stood—east toward Saladin’s camp. Down there also a wild shouting rose, and the neighing of horses. The Saracens were attacking—they must be striking through the midden there, a battle in the garbage.

The torch caught flame and cast its heavy light around them. A crowd of men and boys ran by her from the south, headed toward the fighting, some in mail, some waving swords, many barefooted. The ten yards along the ridgeline to the church tent, where Berengaria certainly was, looked impossibly far. She burst into a run just as another swarm, these on horseback, thundered across her path.

She stopped; she stood, frozen, not breathing, while they crashed by on either side; a horse brushed against her and she staggered, but they were away and she went only to one knee. They hurtled on past the tents and on to the fighting down the slope. An arrow slapped into the farthest tent, and then another, but stuck halfway through, only making the cloth shake. She fled across to the narrow opening into the church tent.

Much bigger than Johanna’s, this tent was deep and dark, except for a space near the back where a lamp glowed. That was the altar. Around it the young Queen and her maids were huddled, praying. As Edythe came in, Berengaria’s thin white face tipped up toward her.

“What is? What does?”

“We’re being attacked,” Edythe said. “Queen Johanna says we should all be together. She wants you to come there.”

Berengaria licked her lips; she cast a look at the two Navarrese women and then faced Edythe again. “No. We stay. God help us. No other.”

Edythe said, “No, please, you must—”

“I stay.” Berengaria bent over her hands again, praying. Edythe gave up and went back to the tent’s front opening.

Outside, in the dark, the crash and uproar of the battle sounded as if it were rolling toward them up the slope. The wide open space before her was trampled but empty. There were no sentries before the church, and the men who were supposed to guard Johanna’s tent were gone, too, the torch dead on the ground. That meant Johanna was alone. She started forward, but before she had taken a step, three men dashed up from the rear of the camp into the open.

They whirled for an instant to look back, their faces hagridden, and then raced away. After them, between the tents, half a dozen others struggled toward her, marching backward, spread out in a line, still trying to defend themselves. On foot, they lashed out with swords and daggers and even a broken lance. They could not hold back the enemy; a shrieking wave of horsemen in fluttering white robes hounded them up the slope, and one by one the men on foot were going down.

Edythe could not move. These oncoming horsemen were Saracens, killing her people, and they would be on her in a moment. She felt nailed to the ground, struggling even to breathe.
Johanna
, she thought.
Johanna.
Then two black horses hurtled in between this tent and the next. Their riders’ white surcoats shone like sails in the dark. They swung their lances down and charged straight past the retreating Christians into the Saracens.

Edythe yelled, breathless. Before the two black knights the white-robed Saracens looked suddenly small and frail, and the knights plowed into them like a row of dolls and rolled them back all down onto the slope, past the tents. In a moment the space between the tents was clear, except for two bodies lying twisted in the open. Edythe darted swiftly to the nearer, to see if she could help him, but she knew at a glance he was dead. The other was dead, too. She straightened. Around her was quiet and nothing moved, but in the distance rose a thousand-throated screech. Drums thundered. Johanna. She glanced quickly over her shoulder toward the Queen’s tent, saw nothing, and turned back toward the battle.

The sun had not risen but the air was brightening. On her left, past the King of France’s tent, she could see all along the snaking line of the ridge toward the sea. The fighting raged along it, in the murk of dawn one great mass of tangled thrashing shadows; she saw an arm rise, and a horse rear up, and sometimes a helmet, but everything else was a single broad seething struggle, as if it all dissolved into that black rift. Steadily more knights galloped up through the camp behind her and disappeared into the fighting. A riderless horse plunged along the ridge a few strides, reins flying, and on its own turned and charged into the battle.

Then Berengaria was coming toward her, the two Navarrese women stumbling and lamenting after her. The Queen’s face was white. She held her skirts up in both hands and picked her way across the ground, going wide around the two tangled bodies. Edythe straightened, her hands out, and from between the tents Johanna hurried across the open ground toward them.

They all came together at once. Johanna’s face shone; she cried out, “What’s going on? Where have you been?” She flung her arms around them. “They’ve abandoned us—the guards have disappeared.”

“Hurry,” Edythe said. Berengaria had her tight by the hand, and she curled her free arm through Johanna’s and drew them all toward the nearest shelter, the side wall of the French King’s tent where it came down so close to King Guy’s. From this space all they could see was stained canvas and a slice of the sky turning pale above them. Nearby a man screamed, and a horn began to bray, over and over.

Berengaria crossed herself. Johanna pushed on toward the far gap between the tents, and Edythe followed her. From the opening they could see down the long slope. Off to the east a thin line of red showed between the night and the day. The sun’s new light spilled over the edge of the world, casting enormous shadows over the trampled ground. Still in darkness, the fighting boiled through the ravine at the far foot of the slope.

Johanna whispered, “Armageddon.” She reached back and clutched Edythe’s hand. Berengaria had come up behind them, close, her shawl around her.

But it was over now. The battle was over, just men running now, in the distance. Edythe had seen the end of the world, the black rift opening, but now it had closed, and the world was still here. The women stood, looking toward the distant fighting. Johanna said, “God be thanked, they’re giving up.”

“Go back,” Berengaria said. “Come. Inside.”

Johanna rushed after her back through the gap between the tents. Edythe followed. Her hands were shaking and she felt a sudden need to cry. Berengaria, she saw, was not going back to the church tent, but following Johanna. Even she needed company.

A great shout went up from down the slope, a roar of triumph, that echoed a long moment off the ridge. It seemed not to have come from the throats of mere men, but from one great beast. The Crusade. Not the way to peace but an endless war. She went quickly after the other women, feeling cold.

When they went in the door of Johanna’s tent, Johanna stumbled; Berengaria recoiled away, her hands rising; and coming after them, Edythe saw the body lying on the threshold there and gasped.

“It’s Lilia,” Johanna said.

“Oh, my God.” Edythe dropped on her knees beside the girl and laid her hands on her body. Lilia was stiff as wood. She had been dead for hours. Berengaria turned away and made for the prie-dieu. Johanna hovered over Edythe and the dead maid.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Edythe could find no wound, and a wound anyway would make no sense; she must have been dead long before the fighting started.

Johanna said, “Damn them. Damn the Saracens, my poor Lilia. Almost now I want the Crusade.”

Edythe said nothing. She pulled back Lilia’s hair and the neck of her gown; under the maid’s chin her throat was all bruised. In the purplish mottling there were long marks, like the imprint of fingers. Her belly tightened.
Poor Lilia
, she thought. The lover was not so sweet after all. Her eyes burned.
Poor Lilia.

The tramp of feet wheeled her around. Rouquin came in the tent door and walked past her to Johanna’s side. His hair stood on end; he wore no mail, only his swordbelt over his shirt.

“We drove them clear back over the plain. This was their last chance; we’ve beaten them now. Tomorrow maybe we’ll take Acre.” His head turned; he looked down at the dead woman almost at his feet. “What the hell? How did this happen?” He sank down on his heels and put his hand on Lilia.

“We went out,” Johanna said, “and when we came back, she was here. We had no guards. If we had all been here, they would have murdered us too.”

Rouquin straightened up again, staring at her. “What do you mean, you went out? You left the tent? What is wrong with you women?” His voice rose, whining. “Stay where we can take care of you.”

“Oh, you took such care of us,” Johanna said. “Not a guard the whole time.”

“We won,” Rouquin said, hard. “If you’d stay put, at least we’d know where you are.” He looked down again. “I’m sorry about this. I’ll take care of it.” He yelled for men to carry off the body.

Edythe got to her feet. She needed to be by herself, and she went to the side of the tent, where the pallets were, and got busy shaking out the rumpled linen. Johanna sank down in a chair and wept. Berengaria prayed. Edythe’s hands were trembling, and for a moment she could not get the sheet to lie flat on the Queen’s pallet.

A few minutes later she went outside to find a page to bring them food, and Rouquin came up beside her.

“Wait,” he said, with his usual grace.

She stopped and faced him. “My lord.”

He said, “You asked me a question once; now I have one for you. What’s going on here?”

She looked up at him, startled. As if anybody really knew what was going on. “What do you mean?”

“That girl wasn’t killed in the fighting. What happened to her?”

“She had a lover,” Edythe said. “She was seeing someone—someone high, or so she thought, but I don’t know who.”

“She wasn’t killed there. She was dumped there. That’s like a warning. Or a notice. Something.”

Edythe felt a little quiver of alarm down her back. She lowered her eyes. She tried to remember everything Lilia had told her; she thought of the young man brushing against the maid in the marketplace, delivering a summons. “I don’t know,” she said.

He said, “Keep watch. If you find anything out, send for me.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Be careful,” he said, and went off. She stood a moment, struggling to make one piece of all of this, and gave up and went to find the page and their breakfast.