The King's Witch (17 page)

Johanna went to Mass, and said prayers for Lilia; when she was coming away, the Templar Grand Master came by her, as if by accident. For a moment he walked step by step with her, his eyes straight ahead, as if he did not see her.

He said, “I shall have speech with you, my lady. Wait for my call.”

“What—”

But he was moving away, his back to her. He had commanded her, as if he had some power over her. She tried to understand this in any way other than that he knew she had gone behind Richard’s back to Philip Augustus. And she thought of Lilia, and her whole body went cold.

In the morning the white flag flew again at the gate of Acre. Edythe went out with the other women to watch as Richard and the other high lords of the Crusade met the leaders of the garrison. With their underlings all around, the Crusaders made a great pack, waiting at the top of the road. The rest of the army, scattered over the slope around them, was slowly moving closer.

Edythe went in among these people, going toward the Kings. The crowd was drawing steadily together, surrounding the road where the Crusader lords stood, and the weary men from Acre dragged their truce flag up toward them. Against her will she looked for the French King and saw him, wrapped in a fancy gown, a white scarf around his head.

Now she could hear Richard talking.

“They know my terms. Nothing has changed. They are the same as the last time.”

She began to pay attention to this; Humphrey de Toron was there, and translated what Richard had said to the man standing under the white flag.

This was the commander of the defense at Acre. He was in rags. The bones of his shoulders showed even through his shirt, and he was bracing himself against the flagpole. His lips were crusty with sores. He spoke, and Humphrey turned to Richard and said, “He agrees. They surrender.”

She gasped. Her spirits, which had been so downcast, flew up like a swallow. Around her a roar rose among the Crusaders close enough to hear, and then it swelled and spread, rippling out across the whole camp.

“God wills it—God wills it!”

The ragged man slumped against the flagpole. Richard turned to the other lords.

“My lords? Do you agree?” His voice was bland, although he had to shout to be heard over the din.

Guy and Conrad were bowing and nodding already in a happy babble. The French King faced Richard like a dog in a fight. The cloth on his head had slipped back, showing his bare bony scalp. His lips writhed above the stumps of his yellowed teeth. Edythe, a few feet away, heard nothing, could only see that he spoke, because of the thunderous cheering and whooping erupting from the camp. All across the slope the Crusaders were moving, were plunging toward Acre in an unruly tide.

Her elation faded. She lowered her eyes, and doubt filled her. She wondered what all this meant; was it over? Then she saw someone else riding into the camp, another white flag, but this one from the east. These were Saracens again, the envoy from the Sultan Saladin. Their real enemy. She had been right: Nothing was over.

She stopped. Humphrey stood with his hands folded over his belt. Richard stared unblinking at the French King until Philip Augustus at last lowered his eyes. Richard turned to Humphrey, and Edythe saw his lips move but she could not hear him. Then the newcomers rode up and someone gave a yell and the wall of retainers parted to let them through. The crowd had flooded downhill so far they were no hindrance between the oncoming Saracens and the Kings.

Three of the Saracens dismounted from their horses and strode forward. Brusquely, with no greeting to the Kings and lords around him, the leader went up to the ragged man leaning on the staff and spoke to him in their own tongue, a long question. The ragged man said only one syllable, and the Saracen flung his hands up and looked up at the sky and said something very plainly not a humble prayer of thanks.

Richard said, “Well, hail, my lord Safadin, welcome to Acre.”

The Saracen stood still a moment. He was tall, not young, dressed in plain white robes; he was, Edythe thought, the most handsome man she had ever seen, making even the elegant Conrad seem coarse as clay. The Saracen’s carved dark features were bold and strong above the pointed black beard, his thick brows bent into a frown over his large dark eyes. He wore a magnificent embroidered robe, a sash of cloth of gold, a turban intricately braided.

He said, suddenly, in clear French, “What are the terms?”

“The terms are the same as I spoke them before. I will give over the remains of this garrison for two hundred thousand dinars, all your French prisoners to go free, and the return of the True Cross.”

The Saracen, Safadin, threw his hands up. “The Sultan will not agree to this.” He wheeled toward the man under the flag and said another splatter of their own tongue and turned back to Richard. “We cannot agree. You cannot accept this surrender.”

“My lord,” Richard said, and flung his hand out to the city. “None of us has any choice.”

Safadin wheeled toward where he pointed, and all the other heads turned in unison toward the city. A cry of dismay rose from all the Saracens, but the Crusaders yelled, triumphant.

Edythe followed their gaze. Down there the surge of the Crusaders toward Acre had taken them across the beaten ground and in over the broken wall. They were flooding into the city, and now, suddenly, above the remnant of the Tower by the gate, a banner flapped and caught the wind.

The King of France crowed; it was his green pennant. But then beside it Richard’s great blue flag unfurled flat, and higher.

The roar that went up from the Crusaders made Edythe’s ears ring. Safadin threw his great-turbaned head back, turned on his heel, and stalked to his horse. In a moment he and his escort were galloping off across the almost-deserted Crusader camp. Edythe had her hands over her ears; she lowered them, looking down toward Acre, wondering if now they would go in there and actually live in a house. Beside the banners of the two Kings a third flag appeared, black, with some yellow emblem.

She sighed. She turned toward the camp again, where she could see Johanna now, come out of her tent, watching what was going on. The pack of the Crusader lords was breaking up. The French King hobbled away, a page coming after with his stool, and the two Kings of Jerusalem glared at each other for a while until they allowed their underlings to talk them apart. Richard stood there with Rouquin. He glanced at the city, his face shining, his eyes brighter than the sky.

“We did it,” the King said. “And the moon not even full yet.” His eyes narrowed, vexed. “Get that Austrian’s banner down off the tower.” He walked off, shouting for his horse. Rouquin went down toward Acre; after a few steps he was running. Edythe walked on up through the trash and char and dust of the camp toward Johanna.

ACRE

Johanna stood in the middle of the tent and directed the packing. After the battle, Berengaria had not left them; nor had she said much. She had changed, somehow, a quizzical look on her face, a kind of deference, although not to any of them. She sat by herself most of the time, her forehead creased. Now she perched on a stool beside Johanna while her women and her pages packed her goods.

Edythe had been folding bedding and shaking out gowns and shifts; she bent and pulled out one of the chests from beneath the pallet to store them in. Behind the chest, she saw another little box, hidden away there. Lilia had slept in this bed; it was surely hers.

“What shall I do with Lilia’s things?”

Johanna glanced over. “What things?”

“Her clothes.” Edythe laid the dead girl’s second gown on the pallet, remembering Lilia wearing it, how she had loved the fine silky cloth. Johanna came up beside her. At once she saw the little box.

“What’s that?”

Edythe busied herself with stowing the bedding in the chest, putting Lilia’s gown on top. The Queen stooped for the little box. She called over the pages to break up the pallet and take it away, turned slightly into the light, and tipped back the lid.

The box was two hands long and one wide, and not deep. Johanna picked with her finger at the few baubles and ribbons and combs. “Not much. Poor girl. What’s this?” She took out a little bundle wrapped in silk.

Invited, Edythe went over and looked. “What are they?”

Johanna had peeled back the silk. She twitched, and her voice went thin. “Just some reeds. There are a lot of them.” She thrust the bundle back into the box and dropped it all into the brazier. “I told her not to be so free with men.” She walked off, brisk, her back stiff.

Edythe watched her go, puzzled. The Queen had been much on edge of late. She wondered what the reeds had to do with it. Her mind went back to the day on the beach, when she had seen Lilia take a secret summons; that might have been such a reed. So they did have to do with a man. Still she wondered at Johanna’s anger. She looked down at the brazier, where the box was flaming, the reeds already burned.

The Crusaders had been pouring into Acre from the moment they knew they had won it; the surrendered garrison had withdrawn behind a line of pikes into a little walled quarter with a gate, to wait until their ransom was paid. King Philip, by demand, took charge of guarding them, but Richard had arranged to feed them. The rest of the Crusaders streamed into the city and took over what they willed.

The Queens and their little households came in near the end of the day, when the camp was all but deserted and the city streets not so full. They entered through the main gate, where now only the French King’s banner and Richard’s flew. Rumor had it the Duke of Austria, whose banner there Rouquin had torn down, had immediately left for the West.

The army was very short of horses. Richard had sent mounts only for his sister and his wife, so Johanna rode first, with Berengaria beside her. The rest of the women walked after them in a little parade.

The gate was smashed, still, although already Christians were working on the wall on either side, hauling the great stones back into place. The pavement of the narrow street was broken and dusty. The way took them by the first blasted houses of the city, where the war had reached in, crushed walls and roofs to rubble, and turned the gardens to dust.

Nonetheless, Acre was theirs; they had brought the city back to Christ. Edythe, walking behind Berengaria, felt her spirits lift, and she looked around her eagerly. They went through the momentary cold darkness beneath an archway. Beyond a gate, the street widened suddenly into a square.

They were deep inside Acre now. The houses here still had roofs and walls, although all the gates were broken in, the doors beyond were gone, and the gardens in between only dirt and stones. What had been a scaly feather-topped palm tree on a corner was only a rotting six-foot stump.

Yet it had been beautiful. Here and there on the tops of the walls some decoration still stood, six continuous feet of a filigree of stone, a single carved trefoil. The shapes of the houses invited her. Blank walls sealed them off, but through the open gates and doors she could see the buildings within, painted bright colors, with tiled floors, designs and pictures painted on the outside walls. On some were dark brown handprints that seemed stamped in old blood.

The place seemed still abandoned. The Crusader army had moved into the city, but it was so big it had swallowed them; she heard a shout, somewhere far off, and a couple of pages ran through a cross street, but the houses they rode by all seemed empty. They rode along a crooked street, past the high blank yellow stone of a wall; balconies jutted above like jaws under the edge of the roof, covered with lattices like strange teeth.

Her nose picked up the tang of the shore, but none of the teeming odors of life. This place was dead. No birds flew, no pigeons, not even vultures in the pale sky overhead, not a cat sunned itself on a high wall, no dog prowled.

They came into another paved square, where at the gates of the walled houses guards stood. In the center of the square was a ruined fountain, a stone angel in the middle, his head and one wing broken off. He spilled invisible water from a shell into an empty basin, crusty with dried weed.