The King's Witch (25 page)

“Why did you not fight for me? Why did you let me go like that?”

“He would only have killed me, Bella. He wanted to kill me. And then he’d still have taken you. God, if I could have saved you that way, I would have, I swear it, but it would have been for nothing.”

She put out her hands to him, and he took them. “Freo, he does every night what you said. Every night. It’s like having a grunting dog lying on me. Worse.”

“I’ll help you. Johanna is in Acre now, and she will help you. If you can get out of Tyre, we can help you fly beyond his reach—Antioch, even Constantinople.”

“If we could find a priest to give me an annulment—”

She chattered on awhile about the annulment, which was highest in her mind, as if she could erase Conrad utterly from her life with a priest’s few spoken words. Humphrey knew there would never be an annulment. If Conrad had been grunting on her, he knew very well that Humphrey never had. Conrad had already sneered at him about that. He hated Conrad for a lengthening string of insults, the forced marriage, the challenge Conrad knew he would not accept, the gossip behind his back, the sneers and sideways smiles to his face. As if by making out Humphrey less, Conrad himself would be more.

“Bella,” he said. “If we get an annulment, you would have to marry again.”

“Anyone but him. If I can’t have you again, anyone.”

“We’ll find someone good.” They embraced again. With their arms around each other, he remembered how it had felt, before, when the world was whole, changeless as adamantine, and made for them. Before Guy lost the kingdom and it all came down like a tower of glass. Before Sybilla died and Isabella suddenly was the blood knot.

“I have to go,” she said. “I must be there by Compline.”

“Trust Johanna; she’ll help you get out of Tyre.” He would deal with Conrad. The trick was to find some way that would not lead back to him, since Conrad had many allies who would be quick to avenge him, and Humphrey anyway wanted nothing against his name.

He had no wish to be King. He had seen what became of Kings, sacrificed on the altar of a sword. He thought that Richard would get enough of the kingdom back to give the title some flesh, but it would not be his flesh. He wished Richard himself could be cajoled into staying here and being King. Maybe then even Jerusalem would be within reach.

But the Lionheart had brought back Acre already, and soon he would have Jaffa, and then maybe even Ascalon, and the whole coast between, a fit kingdom of merchant cities, thriving with the trade of both sides. Richard was rebuilding the glass tower, if not the same, yet good enough. Humphrey thought he had never met a man before like him. He watched her go away, slim and beautiful, Isabella, whom every man wanted, but he only wanted Richard.

King Conrad spent more time than Johanna liked in Acre, where, with the other lords gone, her court was hardly more than a household and could not interest him. He spent much of the day looking over the city, its walls and defenses, rapidly being rebuilt at the direction of Templar masons. In the evening he yawned through the lute-playing and singing and got too drunk, and she was very glad to hear him say he was going on to Cyprus.

He said, “I can make some arrangements with the merchants there to bring their ships to Tyre, and to Acre also. Thus we will all get rich.” He smiled at her. He was always trying to take her hand; his palms were sweaty, his fingers creased and ugly in their coiled rings.

She said, “My lord, I should be glad of a few traders in.” When he kissed her hand, she wiped it on her sleeve. He left with many bows, and she sent at once for paper and ink and a quill pen to write to Isabella, in Tyre, that her husband would be gone to Cyprus and she should escape at once. This she managed to send that same morning to Tyre.

In fact, more ships were coming to Acre’s harbor, and the markets were growing. A few days after Conrad sailed away to Cyprus, she got another packet of letters, and went out into the garden to read them. Berengaria had gone to Mass and would likely be there all day, bobbing and praying. Johanna sat on the bench with the letters in her lap.

Both were from her mother, the first fretting about Prince John and his endless inept scheming, and the second announcing her alarm that Philip Augustus was reportedly on his way back to France. Apparently he had stopped in Rome and tried to get the Pope to release him from the Crusaders’ peace with Richard. The Pope had not relented.

Johanna said, under her breath, “The damned Gnome.” But Philip was looking for another wife, and Eleanor took several mean and funny turns on this theme, so Johanna was laughing by the end.

She crumpled the letters quickly in her hand, lest anyone even see them, and looked around for a brazier. If she burned them, she could not then give them to anyone else. She had realized too late what a mistake that was; now de Sablé had proof that she was loose with the family secrets. She wished she had thought more about that. She wished she had asked Edythe. A page came up the garden walk, and said, “My lord Humphrey de Toron.”

She folded her hands around the wad of paper in her lap. The slender young lord came up the walk and bowed to her; she was always taken by his elegance at this. All the local lords had this kind of sleek address, as if they lived in a more delicate world than the common Western oaf. In most it was artifice, but Humphrey made it look very fine.

She said, “God be with you, my lord. Come sit by me.” And when he did, she said, “I have good news. I believe Isabella will be free of Tyre within the week. I have sent to her that Conrad has gone to Cyprus, and she can flee away.”

The lean young face before her did not smile, as she expected. He said, “My lady, Conrad is going to Tyre.”

Her heart clenched. She said, “He told me he was going to Cyprus. To make arrangements with merchants.”

“He lied. He sailed to Tyre.”

She gripped her fists together. “The dirty swine. Does he know, then? About me and Isabella.”

“Maybe not. More likely he found out I saw her at the Ladder of Tyre.” Humphrey gave a shake of his head. “Conrad has no use for truth; he lies just to keep his edge. But it’s possible—he could know. He could be managing everything between you and Isabella for his own ends.”

She closed her hands over her mother’s letters. She thought of what Edythe had said about de Sablé, that he trained her like a dog. Suddenly she hated de Sablé the more for what King Conrad had done. “What a snake he is.”

Humphrey shrugged.

“Maybe she can still escape.”

He sat perched on the bench, rocking slightly back and forth, ready to take flight. “Maybe. Ladymas is soon; there is much celebration in the city then, crowds, processions and Masses, people in the street late into the night. If she cannot, she has the wit to know, and not to try.”

“Well,” she said. “Then we will have to try again.”

“Anything is possible.” He bowed his head toward her, and his voice fell, soft, intimate. “My lady, you have my constant gratitude for this. I am in your debt forever.”

Berengaria’s maids were coming down the walk, and the little Queen after them, with a veil over her face in the Byzantine fashion. Humphrey greeted her with a bent knee and a flourish, and for a moment the three talked of the weather, the quiet of the city with the army gone, the lovely music to be had. Johanna was not staying in the garden while Berengaria was there, and she started up the walk to the citadel, still carrying the letters.

To her surprise Humphrey followed her. She took this for a compliment, that he attended her rather than the Queen of England. A few of his pages followed. They went across the courtyard and into the bottom of the citadel.

There in the empty corridor a brazier burned, and she paused long enough to throw the letters into it. Humphrey saw her; he gave her a sharp look but said nothing.

She said, “Oh, I was just tired of carrying around all that paper.” The letters blazed up. He made no comment, and they went up to her hall and sat there and drank wine and gossiped.

THE WAY TO JAFFA

The army marched only in the morning, because of the heat, stopping wherever they found water. Edythe rode on shipboard. The ship glided along just off the beach; she could see individual men, the foot soldiers dragging their javelins, the knights making their horses dance, up there past the fringe of sea grass. The galley kept pace awhile across the narrow water with a cart, drawn by mules, a tall staff in the middle holding a red banner. All morning, the dust clouds hung in the air, and the Saracens’ wavering cries came and went.

Ayberk pointed to the cart with the banner. “There they take the wounded.”

In the afternoon when she came ashore she wanted to find the red cart, but Richard had taken a slice across the ribs from a lance. When she reached him, he was standing by a campfire drinking, his shirt already off, and the gash bleeding down his side. His body was more slender than Rouquin’s, his skin white.

The wound was shallow but long, and she had to sew it. She used silk thread, because he was a King. The hard part was making sure the edges matched. All the while, he stood talking to his officers, sending them here and there, never wincing at the needle. She tied off the last knot, gave him a tonic to drink, smeared yarrow on the cut, and laid a strip of linen over it; since she had seen the texture of the armor padding she had worried that the scab on a healing wound might stick to it, and the linen seemed a good remedy. The squire came with Richard’s shirt.

Then suddenly something walked over her foot, and she looked down and saw a huge black spider on her toes.

She screamed and kicked violently; the enormous black mass flew away in a wild high loop through the air. It landed on its back on the ground, many legs squirming above a hairy body the size of her hand. The men around her dodged it, laughing, and Mercadier scooped it up into a helmet.

He thrust the helmet into her face, and she recoiled, with another scream.

Now they were all laughing at her. It was a joke; they had planned it. She scowled at them, outraged, humiliated, and that made them laugh more, even Richard. She could hear the spider’s claws tapping on the sides of the helmet. She stood up straight and walked back into the tent to be alone.

On the galley she sailed by flat sandy beaches, past deserted villages, rock outcrops, old walls, and broken towers. The heat was relentless, soaking her through to the skin even under the screen of her tent. She kept the sides up, but there was no wind. In the distance rose plumes of smoke. Ayberk told her the Saracens were burning the villages ahead of the Crusaders, to deny them supplies, but of course the fleet carried supplies enough.

On the ship she ate bread and drank sour wine. At night, when she walked into the camp, she ate what the men ate. Every few days they heard Mass, the whole army chanting at once.
Holy Sepulcher, help us.
One evening she reached the tent before the King was there, and a man-at-arms in a green and red striped jacket came up to her.

“Please. Lady, please. My brother. Can you help? Please help me.”

He was younger than she was, a scrawny straw-haired boy with buck teeth. His French sounded like hers. She went after him, down through the camp.

Usually all she saw of the camp was going through it on her way to Richard’s tent, when the army was just moving in. Now they were all sitting around their fires, cutting wood, bellowing and drinking, half-naked in the heat. She walked through them as fast as she could, following the yellow-headed boy.

Somebody hooted after her. Somebody else hissed. “Take care. That’s Richard’s witch.”

After that she walked easier. She thought now, also, she should have just stepped on the spider.

The bucktoothed boy took her to the cart with the banner, where the wounded were taken. There were several wounded lying on the ground around the cart, and three gowned men standing around, but the bucktoothed boy led her around behind the cart, to where another man lay on a blanket.