The King's Witch (26 page)

She could see at once that he was dying. He was pale and he breathed in little gasps, and his wide eyes were unseeing. Matter dribbled from his nose. She knelt down beside him. One of the gowned men came toward her.

“God’s greeting. I am Doctor Roger Besac—can you bleed this man?”

She started, angry. They thought she was a common bloodletter. She said, “No—he’s dying; it won’t do any good anyway. Get a priest.”

Roger Besac looked at the bucktoothed boy. “I told you,” he said, and went around the cart again.

She sat down by the dying man. “How was he hurt?” She touched his throat, to feel the pulse from his brain, and it was thin and fluttery and she knew there was no hope.

“His head,” the bucktoothed boy said. “Not even fighting. He fell asleep and fell under a wagon and it rolled over his head.”

“Ah,” she said. “Ah,” and laid her hand gently on the man’s matted, filthy hair. The wide dark eyes looked at nothing. The matter issuing from his nose smelled bad. She felt the print of the wagon wheel crossing the bone beneath her fingers.

The priest came with his oil and his mumbles, and she got up to give him room. The bucktoothed boy was sitting on the ground crying. She crouched beside him a moment, but he turned away from her and put his arms across his face.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he shuddered away from her.

Useless, she walked up toward Richard’s tent again; her body felt like stone. She began to cry silently, tears dripping down her cheeks. She remembered the beggar saying, “Everybody loses.”

“Edythe.” Rouquin came up to her.

She gathered herself, shaken, telling herself she had seen men die before, that sometimes it was better to die. The big knight scowled at her. He had taken off his mail but still wore the jack, and he stank. “Where were you? He is looking for you.”

“Is he hurt?” she said.

“He’s fine. He’s the greatest fighter in the army. Any army. Nobody can get near enough to him to hurt him.”

She knew this to be untrue. She hoped no one could get so near to Rouquin. Talking steadied her. Drove the dark away. She had to keep herself from reaching out to him. Instead she said, “How do those wounds feel?”

“They still itch a little. It’s all right. It’s my shield arm. I just let the bastards get too close, pulling Mercadier out of there.”

She wiped her eyes. He was watching her intently, and he said, “What happened?”

She started up toward the tent again. “Somebody died. They asked me to help him, but I couldn’t.”

He walked beside her, unlacing the top of his jacket, sodden with sweat. “Damn, woman, you can’t save everybody. You’re supposed to be Richard’s doctor, not the whole world’s.”

“I can’t save anybody.” She thought,
Tomorrow he could be dead. I could be dead. And never have what we both want.
The whole world shrank down to this moment. She stopped and put her hand on his arm.

“Rouquin—”

He faced her with that same hard look. “What?”

She felt, suddenly, everybody watching them. She said, “Nothing.” She went on toward the King’s tent.

At the fire, a cook gave her meat and bread, and she took it into the tent to eat, where she could sit with her back to a crate. The tent door darkened a moment and Rouquin came through, a cup in his hand, and sat down beside her.

He did not speak, only put the cup between them. The jack was gone and he was wearing a dry shirt, the sleeves torn off, his arms bulky with muscle, scratched and scarred. He smelled slightly better.

She said, “It seems so hard. Fighting like this.” She took the cup and drank some of the unwatered wine; it was half-turned. With a glob of honey it would be oxymel. She ate more bread.

“It isn’t what I’m used to,” he said. “At home, it’s all ambushes and raids, home by morning. This marching, marching, the heat, the Saracens like gnats all around us, and we don’t even strike back—I don’t know how this will end. We can’t beat them; they can’t beat us.”

“Won’t it end in Jerusalem?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just follow Richard.” His hand scrubbed through his hair. He said, quietly, “It’s different, is all. Everything here is different.”

Maybe talking eased him, as it had her. She remembered when they had sat together beside the sick King; he was that Rouquin now, not angry, nor harsh, but inward and unsure, even his voice lower. He picked up the wine and drank some and spat it out. “God, this is privy dribble.”

She laughed; he turned smiling to her. Then Richard’s voice sounded outside.

“Rouq’, come here.”

He grunted. “I knew this was going to happen.” He got up and stalked off; in the light of the doorway, she saw him pull his belt up, square his shoulders, make himself again into the outward Rouquin. She ate the rest of her dinner, hoping he would come back, but he did not.

Rouquin roused his men in the dark before dawn; the fleet had already left, with Edythe safe aboard. He harried his men along, getting them moving off before the sun broke up over the horizon. Ahead, in the first gray light, spindling trees covered the rolling coastal plain. Their leaves were turning and the whole wood looked like a smear of yellow across his path. He rode on the left flank, with the Templars, the vanguard spread out in several ranks ahead of him. Their banner had already disappeared into the wood. Rouquin turned to Mercadier and pointed a finger and pushed his palm forward, and the Brabanter officer went up to move the men in closer to the vanguard’s flank.

The sun rose red as blood on his left. Richard, trailing squires, Hugh of Burgundy, and Guy de Lusignan, rode up beside Rouquin and reined his horse in. He leaned his forearm on his saddle pommel; his mail glove glinted back the first red daylight.

“You said this wood is an hour’s ride across?”

“The rear guard should clear it by midmorning. They aren’t big trees, just clumps.” Rouquin had scouted the wood the night before. Guy was looking from one to the other of them, frowning. Hugh was just staring at the trees.

“And you think Jaffa is close by.”

“The road to it is.”

“What day is it?”

“Unh—” He knew the phases of the moon better than the days of the week.

Guy said, “Sire, I believe it’s Friday.” He gave Rouquin an apologetic smile.

Richard sat up straight in the saddle and looked south. “Saladin has been moving along south of us all along. He’s south of us now. I think when we come out of this wood he will attack us. He’ll count on the trees breaking up our line of march. And he cannot let us get to Jaffa.”

Guy said, “Well, there’s not much left of Jaffa, really.”

Rouquin ignored that; on things like this Richard was usually right. “So—”

“So we form up as close as we can now, through the wood. No straggling. Nobody out of line. The Templars in the vanguard. Your men and mine here on the left, the Angevins on the right side. Guy and Hugh in the middle, and the Hospitallers in the rear guard. We’ll set a screen of foot soldiers in front. You command the vanguard, all across. Make sure they keep going. Stay tight. If we’re attacked, don’t let them charge. No matter what, until I say so.” Richard’s voice was taut. Maybe he wasn’t so sure as he seemed. “I’m depending on you.”

“I will do it.”

Richard smacked his arm, by way of parting, and turned to Guy, who was putting on a gaudy plumed helmet. “Come with me.” He galloped off, the other men clattering after him. Rouquin rode forward into the wood.

The trees were small, crooked, many of their leaves still on the branches, so as the sun rose the wood grew shady. He wove a way through, trying to get around the corner of the vanguard. As Richard had foreseen, moving through the stands of trees was breaking up the march into separate groups of riders and men-at-arms, scattered for almost a mile from the edge of the sea to the far side of the forest.

He found his own men first, where he had sent them; Mercadier raised a hand to him, and Rouquin lifted his fists over his head and banged them together and Mercadier waved. He would hold the left side of the front line, just behind the men-at-arms. Then Rouquin turned west, toward the sea, where the vanguard was already deep into the forest.

De Sablé had let his black and white knights spread out, getting through the trees; in the shadowy light, they looked like many more than they were, but they were farther apart with every step, straying out of any kind of order. Rouquin reined his horse up to four of them.

“Where is de Sablé? You’ve got to keep closer together.”

“How far is it?” The Templar he had spoken to wiped his sweating face on the skirt of his surcoat.

“Soon. Where’s—”

“What if they set the forest on fire?”

Rouquin waved one mailed hand at that, dismissing it. “Push up. Get into a rank.” He nudged his horse on, fighting a way between two stands of the trees, the branches rubbing on his knees. His horse’s hooves scuffed up the mat of dry leaves on the ground, crackled on fallen branches. A fire here would cook them like pigeons. If the army came out of the woods scattered like this, Saladin’s men could pick them off one at a time.

Through the yellow trees he saw the Templars’ black and white banner, finally, up ahead, and steered toward it. The trees kept him from going straight, and he had to struggle to catch up with the Grand Master. Before he reached de Sablé he came upon a pack of men-at-arms, with their crossbows and javelins, roaming along behind the knights singing and drinking, and yelled at them to get where they belonged. They put their flasks away and ran. De Sablé saw him finally and reined in and waited.

“Get your men closer together.” Rouquin rode up beside him.

“This wood—” The Grand Master thrust back his visor, so he could see better, and looked all around. “Will they fire the wood?”

“Ah, God—” Rouquin glared at him. “Get your men into ranks! See—” The first knights of the rest of the army were closing up behind them. Between the trees for a moment he saw Guy de Lusignan’s red plume in the middle of the pack. Richard was driving the whole army into a tight column as if they were riding down the middle of a road. De Sablé saw this and turned his horse and shouted, waving his arm. The black and white knights on their black horses began to press in toward the center, breaking through copses of trees, filling the gaps between them.

Ahead of them Rouquin could see a solid line of men-at-arms, at last all marching in front. The army as it packed together made more noise, a continual crash and thud like a gigantic beast. Through the yellow trees, beyond the men-at-arms, he could see open sky. At least there would be no fire. They were coming to the end of the wood. He went back and found his squire, on the left flank with Mercadier and his men and now Richard’s Poitevins, and got his lance.

Richard, at the inland front corner of the army, left the trees behind and rode out into the blaze of the morning. Ahead the ground rolled away down a shallow slope; the sea glistened on the right. The slope curved slightly into a valley between a low hill on the inland and a cluster of rocks near the beach. As Richard rode closer he saw that this rock pile was a ruined town.

On the hill opposite, rings of white tents crowned the height, the enemy camp.

A low roar went up from the packed army behind him as they saw this, and their pace quickened, but no one broke ranks. They followed him steadily forward into the trough of the valley, between the hilltop camp and the ruin. In the distance now he could see the pale line of a road going to the coast.

Rouquin had said that road led to Jaffa. Richard regripped the lance he held butted into his stirrup; his horse strained at the bit, tossed its head, its hoofs beating at the ground. He lifted his gaze to the Saracen camp, there. Along that hill, all around it, he could see horsemen moving, the light mares of the Saracens like dancers, the white robes rippling like wings. Then a drum began to pound.