Devil's Bargain (39 page)

The Seal twisted—curving away from him, settling like a tamed bird into Mustafa’s outstretched hand. Mustafa hissed and recoiled, but the chain caught in his fingers. Sinan fell on him with a hawk’s cry.

Mustafa struck him with the Seal. The blow was ill aimed, with little force; it should barely have stung.

Sinan made no sound at all. He shrank in upon himself, withering and shriveling, dwindling to the image of utmost age. All the power, all the life and youth and strength, drained out of him, until he crumpled mewling to the floor.

Mustafa’s face twisted. He dropped to his knees beside the drooling thing, set hands to the raddled neck, and snapped it as if it had been a dry stick. Then he cut the head from that broken neck, working with great concentration, all the while with the Seal dangling from his hand.

There was no blood. It was all gone, all shrunk to dust.

When Mustafa began blindly to hack at the headless body, Richard caught his hand. Somewhat surprisingly, he stopped; he looked up. His eyes were perfectly clear. “You should cut out his heart,” he said, “and bury him in holy ground. Or he’ll come back.”

“I think you’ve killed him dead enough,” Richard said.

Gingerly he set hand to the chain from which hung the Seal. Mustafa’s fingers tightened briefly, but when Richard tugged, he let go.

Richard had been thinking that he would grind that monstrous thing under his heel, and so the world would be shut of it. But once he had it, he could not bring himself to destroy it. It had shielded him; it had destroyed the enemy of Christendom and Islam alike. In a way, he owed it something.

The chain found its way about his neck. The Seal settled in its accustomed place beside his heart. He pulled Mustafa to his feet.

The boy rolled his eyes at the Seal, but he was a wise child—he did not speak of it. Richard brushed a finger across his chin where the beard was beginning to thicken, and said, “You did it, boy. You destroyed the Old Man of the Mountain.”

Mustafa shook his head. “It wasn’t I. I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie,” Richard said. “If I thought you’d take a kingdom, I’d give you one. It’s the least I can do, after what you’ve done.”

“I don’t want anything,” Mustafa said. “Just let me stay near you. Let me serve you. It’s all I ever wanted.”

“Gold, then,” said Richard. “A place of your own. Good weapons. Horses—you must have horses.”

Mustafa shook his head, as stubborn in his way as Richard. “I only need enough to keep me fed and clothed, and a mount and a remount, and a place at your back. I don’t want any more.”

Richard glowered at him. “Damn it, boy. Can’t you make it easy to be in your debt?”

Mustafa lowered his eyes. “No, my lord,” he said. “I’m sorry, my lord.”

“You are not,” said Richard, but without anger. “Take what you will take, then, and be sure I’ll give as much again and again—for without you I would be that man’s thrall, and God help the Crusade.”

Mustafa looked up. “There is one thing, sire.” And when Richard raised his brows: “The Old Man’s heart. Give me that.”

“If he has one,” Richard said, “you’re welcome to it. Though what you want with it—”

He broke off. Better not to ask. He was in the world of spirits and sorcery: that was all too obvious. Mustafa was comfortable there. Richard, by God, was not.

He would keep the Seal. It was too dangerous to give away. But he was damned if he was going to let it rule him. He was a king of men, a commander of armies. Sorcery was no part of what he was.

“God’s feet,” he said. “I need another bath. Fetch someone to get rid of this.”

He jabbed his chin at the body beside the tub. Even as he opened his mouth to say more, it fell in upon itself, collapsing into dust. Mustafa sprang too late, snatching at the heart; but even as his fingers closed about it, it puffed into nothingness. Not even a smudge remained.

The Old Man of the Mountain was destroyed. Richard was victorious in Jerusalem. There was still a great deal to do and
settle, and Richard had best be getting to it. He called for his servants, for a new bath for himself and another for his savior, and never mind Mustafa’s objections to such royal pampering. Mustafa had done a glorious, a heroic thing. He would simply have to live with the consequences.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-FIVE

T
he High Court and the council of the kingdom elected Richard King of Jerusalem, but the truest acclamation and the most sincere election was that of the army and the people of the city. The barons and the bishops did what was politic. The people followed their hearts.

Richard did not pretend to be surprised. Nor—and on that, there had been numerous wagers—did he refuse the crown when it was offered. The one likely contender for it, the young lord Henry, was the first to propose that Richard be given the kingship, and the first to offer him fealty.

No one spoke of the lady in whom supposedly resided the right to the throne. She had not been seen since Conrad was laid in his tomb in Tyre. She was alive—there was no rumor of her death—but immured in a convent.

That queen was out of play. But Eleanor was very much in evidence. She arrived in Jerusalem on the day after Richard was named king, entering in full and royal state, escorted by the Queen of England and the Queen of Sicily, amid a flock of noble ladies and daughters of high houses in Outremer and in
the west. They were adorned with the spoils of the East, glorious in gold and silk.

Richard met his mother at David’s Gate and rode with her to the Holy Sepulcher, where, as he had done before her, she lingered a long while in silent prayer. The shrine was more nearly itself again, the crosses restored and all the lamps and candles lit. There had been a great rite of reconsecration after the city was taken, in which the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Archbishop of Canterbury and a phalanx of lesser clerics scoured out the dust of Islam and restored the blessing of Christian sanctity.

Sioned had come to Jerusalem two days after it was taken. Master Judah made no secret of his disapproval—she had lain near death for days and was still weak from it—but she could not lie useless at Beit Nuba. Once she was up and about and in the sunlight, strength poured into her with miraculous speed.

Unlike the queens, she entered without fanfare, coming in with some of the baggage from the now mostly dismantled camp. Master Judah had established himself in one of the old hospitals near the Tower of David, and settled quickly to the task of tending the wounded and looking after the sick. He maintained an air of studious calm, but there was a luster on him that had not been there before. He was in the greatest of all holy cities, the city of his own people. He had, in a way that was very real and very immediate, come home.

Sioned astonished herself with the same sense of having come where she belonged. This was not the city of her belief, but as she walked those streets that had borne so much worship and so much contention for so long, she felt herself settling into it as into a well-worn garment. It was right that she was here.

Some of the Muslim captives were kept in Master Judah’s hospital: the wounded, and those who had some skill in the arts of medicine and surgery, whom the master could put to use while their kin negotiated their ransom. Sioned was put to work among them, because she spoke Arabic and because she
harbored no hostility toward them. From them she learned of the royal prisoners in the Tower of David: several of the sultan’s sons including his heir, and a handful of his brothers, the chief of whom was the lord Saphadin. Richard had set no ransom on him or on the prince Al-Adil; he was debating what he should do, people said, and considering that it might be wise to keep those two as bargaining counters.

She did not go to see Ahmad. He was safe, she heard; his wounds had been slight, and the blow to the head was healing well. Richard was treating him with every courtesy, as a friend who happened to have been on the opposite side of a war.

By the time the queens came to Jerusalem, Sioned had settled into a life that she could live, she thought, indefinitely: days in the hospital, nights in a pleasant room that opened on a stair, and that stair led to a garden on the roof. She slept on the roof more often than in the room, lulled by the scents of rose and jasmine. There was a nightingale in a larger garden nearby, which sang her to sleep.

Sometimes during the day she had leisure to walk through the city, to visit the markets that had come alive with the conquest and were full of wonderful things, or to look on the many shrines and watch the pilgrims come and go. She had not been to Gethsemane yet, or Golgotha, but she had spent a long afternoon in the court of the Temple, now cleansed of the wrack of battle, and gone down to the old wall, the wall of the Temple of the Jews, so heavy with grief and old anger that she could not bear it.

Preparations for Richard’s crowning were proceeding with frantic speed. He had taken Jerusalem on the remembrance day of Hattin. He announced his desire to be crowned on the feast of Mary Magdalene: the day on which the first King of Jerusalem was given his crown and his title—eighteen days to cleanse the city, settle the armies, convene the High Council, and prepare a magnificent feast and festival. The king’s chamberlain was beside himself, and the servants were in a frenzy.

Sioned would have happily remained anonymous among the crowds at the coronation, but Richard had time amid all the
rest of his duties to remember that he had a sister other than Joanna. She came in from the market, the week before the crowning, to find a company of Joanna’s ladies waiting with bolts of silk and chests of jewels. The king’s sister, they said, was to appear in her proper rank and station, and they were entrusted with the achieving of it.

This would not be as desperate a case as her expedition to Tyre. They went so far as to agree to less extremely fashionable attire; the wimple and veil were almost plain and the cotte cut less than strangling-tight. They did not remark on the soft curve of her belly—it was barely visible yet.

When they were done, even she could confess herself satisfied. Wimple, veil, and chemise were of fine muslin the color of cream. The cotte was of silk the same luminous blue-violet as her eyes, subtly brocaded, laced with silver cords. Joanna’s ladies had sewn strings of sapphires round the bodice and down the sleeves, interwoven with pearls. She hardly needed the heavy collar of silver and sapphire, or the girdle that matched it, weighing her down with royal wealth. Even the shoes were of violet silk embroidered with pearls.

She looked well in it. Very well, for a fact. It was almost enough to make her vain.

The day of Richard’s coronation dawned bright and preternaturally clear, with a promise of blistering heat. He would be feeling it: he rode in procession from the Templum Domini to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the hour of terce, halfway between sunrise and noon. He rode under a golden canopy, which at least kept the sun off his head, but the crowds along the thoroughfare and the bulk of the procession suffered the brunt of the light and heat.

The ladies, like the king, had the blessing of a canopy. Berengaria elected to ride in a litter, but Eleanor and Joanna scorned such a thing. Fine horses carried them, and fine mules their ladies.

Eleanor was not at all perturbed by the demise of her most
useful ally. It had been a service—and a reprieve. Sinan had held to his part of the bargain; his death removed the need for payment.

Richard still had the Seal. It was quiescent, biding its time. Eleanor had chosen not to ask for it—not yet. Not until the crown was safe on his head and Jerusalem was safe in his hand. Then she would demand that he keep his promise.

The procession was lengthy and moved slowly. Richard was at the end of it, with his ladies just ahead. The front of it was an army of priests and monks led by the Knights Templar and the Knights of the Hospital, escorting the Patriarch and all the bishops and archbishops of Syria and the Crusade. Behind them rode the barons of the High Court, then the lords and knights from the west, then at last the royal ladies and the king and a rear guard of chosen knights in gold-washed mail and surcoats of cream-white silk.

As they marched, they crushed sweetness: flowers and garlands flung from the rooftops, and drifts of rose petals scattered thickly underfoot. Women called out to them and dropped veils and sleeves on them, while their husbands and brothers and sons brandished banners blazoned with the golden crosses of Jerusalem.

There were no infidels in the procession. This was a day for Christians, for the victors of the Crusade. Some of the more illustrious captives would be at the feast after, but as guests, not prisoners. Richard could be both gracious and generous in victory.

Sioned let herself be glad for him. Tomorrow the world would come back with all its wars and quarrels. This difficult realm, this house of war, would need a great deal of ruling, even with the House of Islam thrown into disarray by the death of its sultan and the captivity of his kin. Richard would have to decide whether to march on Damascus or drive toward Egypt—while keeping his own army intact, which was an undertaking in its own right. Far too many of them, of all nations, were firmly convinced that now the Holy Sepulcher was won, they were free to go home. It mattered little to them that the tomb could not stay won if men were not there to protect it. That was for others to do, they said. Their duty was done.

But today there was only joy, and the glory of victory. The procession ended at last in the cool dimness of the Holy Sepulcher, where the Patriarch waited in front of the tomb. Richard’s sword still lay there, its golden hilt gleaming.

On entering the shrine, Richard was divested of his massive golden mantle and his golden mail. In a simple linen shirt like a penitent, he advanced on his knees down the length of the church and prostrated himself before the Sepulcher. All the while the choir sang the
Te Deum
, he lay there, abject in humility.

As the great
Amen
died away, the Patriarch raised him to his knees, anointed and blessed him, and held the crown above his head. It was a simple thing, wrought of iron, with little adornment: more helmet than royal coronet. The Patriarch said, “On this day nigh a hundred years ago, the good knight Godfrey was persuaded to take this crown. He was greatly unwilling; his electors resorted to force, until at last he gave way. He was a humble man, a great warrior of God, who lived for nothing but to serve his faith and to defend the Holy Sepulcher. Even after he had accepted the crown, he begged not to be called king. He was a guardian, he said, a protector: the Defender of the Holy Sepulcher.

“These are lesser days and we are lesser men, but God has seen fit to restore to us the tomb in which His son was laid before his Resurrection. Once again we are given the charge of protecting His own. Once more we have chosen a king to command our armies, to oversee our court and kingdom, and to defend the Holy Sepulcher.”

The Patriarch paused for breath. The crown was heavy: even with his acolyte supporting them, his arms trembled. Yet he would not shorten the rite for mere fleshly frailty. He gathered himself and began again. “Richard, King of the English, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, manifold lord of the realms of the west, do you accept this crown and this kingdom, and all that attends it?”

Richard knelt motionless. The light of lamps and candles turned his hair to copper. His eyes were on the crown, but only the Patriarch could read what was in them.

After a long pause he said, slowly at first and then with greater clarity, “I accept it. I accept it all.”

That was truth, Sioned thought. He did accept it. For all his faults and for all his failings, Richard did not shrink from either duty or obligation, if they came attached to the things that he truly wanted. And he did want this. With all his heart he wanted it.

The crown settled on his head. He, accustomed to the weight of kingship, barely bowed beneath it. Acolytes laid on his shoulders a massive mantle of Tyrian purple. He rose in it, as true an image of a king as had ever stood in this place.

The roar of acclamation was deafening. It went on and on, strong enough to rock the pillars, until it rose to a crescendo and slowly died.