The King's Witch (20 page)

Edythe watched him go from behind the pistachio trees. She had almost yielded to him. Even now part of her longed to go after him. She thought of his lips on her wrist, and her knees weakened.

She could not love him. She had no rank, and he was high-born, far above her. She remembered what Johanna had said: He could be King of Jerusalem. If he married Isabella. He would marry an heiress.

He would never marry Edythe. Even if she were a Christian. He wanted only one thing. All she could do was refuse him.

She shut her eyes; she imagined the house in Troyes, the people in the house, burning. She carried them along, somehow, a burning only she could feel, at the center of everything. She went into the citadel, toward somewhere dark and alone.

ACRE

“He won’t let me go to his council.” Johanna was pacing up and down the room. “He won’t even let me sit there.”

Berengaria was there, her hands idle. She turned to Edythe. “What is this? She is mad today.” Her French had much improved, being around them more.

Edythe watched Johanna swoop around the room, sending the maids scurrying out of her way. The Queen could not be still, and her fingers picked at each other, as if she would tear herself to tatters. Edythe turned to Berengaria, whose eyes followed fascinated after Johanna, and said, “Please, my lady, would you take everyone out to the garden?”

Berengaria murmured. “It is not pretty out there,” she said.

“Well, then,” Edythe said, remembering the broken sticks of the garden, remembering also what had happened there between her and Rouquin, “you can make it pretty, my lady. You can enjoy yourself in doing it. Get the servants out. They’ll know how to do the work. Go.”

Berengaria’s head sank down between her shoulders, but her gaze went toward Johanna, still shouting at the far end of the room. Her eyebrows twitched. Turning, the little Queen clapped her hands, calling her other women after her. She spoke in her own tongue and led a little procession out the side door.

When they were alone, Johanna wheeled at the far end of the room, and Edythe faced her. “What is it, my lady?”

Johanna strode toward her, her face stormy and her hands clutching at each other. “I cannot tell you.” She sat down on the divan there and put her head in her hands and wept.

Edythe sat beside her and curled one arm around the Queen’s shoulder, to steady her, to give her a place to rest. “What has happened?”

The Queen straightened, turning out of her embrace, her shoulders hunched. This new habit of worry had worn creases into her face. She took Edythe’s hands tight in her own. Her eyes shone too bright. “You must swear to tell no one.”

“My lady, you know this.”

Johanna’s gaze searched her face. As if what she saw there convinced her, she said, “The Templar. De Sablé. He knows. About me and Philip Augustus. He holds it over me like a ransom.” She wrenched her hands from Edythe’s and turned away. “And they will not let me go to this council, where I could at least seem to obey him—”

“Obey him.” Edythe leaned toward her. “You mean he has given you commands?”

“He will that I support Conrad for King, and keep Philip here,” Johanna said. “Or he might—He will tell Richard. He will make it seem much worse than it was. If he tells Richard—” Her hands were jerking and tugging at each other again.

Edythe said, “Draw the thorn. Tell Richard first.”

“What?” Johanna swiveled toward her.

“Tell him,” Edythe said. “He should know all, anyway—about de Sablé.”

The Queen’s wide eyes regarded her a moment. Her face smoothed out, her lips softer. “If I tell him, then he will find out—everything. And he will hate me.” A tear shone on her lashes.

“He will not hate you,” Edythe said. “He loves you, more than anyone, I think. Tell him.”

“I cannot. I cannot. He would look at me so—” She turned, and clutched Edythe’s hands. “You must not tell him. Swear you will not.”

“My lady, I swear it,” Edythe said. “But at least do not stoop to heed the Templar. He won’t do anything. If he tells Richard, then his hold on you is gone. He must have other hens to pluck here; he is just boiling the water.”

Johanna’s mouth dropped open. “You think he is only feigning.”

“All know Philip wants to leave—how could you make a difference? De Sablé wants to get you in the way of obeying him—like teaching a dog.”

“Ah, God,” Johanna said, “what a way to say it.” But she looked much easier, and her voice had lost its whine.

“And,” Edythe said, “You know very well there is a way we can go to the council, and hear all, if not speak.”

Now Johanna actually smiled at her. “Oh, you are sideways wise, as my mother said.”

“Then, come,” Edythe said. “And see what happens.”

Philip said, “We have won a great victory here. We have repaid Saladin for the disaster of Hattin, I think.” He spoke a little mushily. He had lost many teeth in the fever. A dark velvet cap covered his head, which was allegedly bald as an onion. He coughed.

Edythe and Johanna crept into the front of the empty musicians’ balcony on the wall above the high table. Through the latticework of the balcony’s front wall they could see down on the heads of the chief men of the council, stretched along the back of the table, their pages and vassals moving constantly around them. Philip was directly below Edythe, Richard to his right; she could see some of Richard’s face but only the top of Philip’s head. Swiftly Edythe looked around the crowded hall and near the far corner of the side table found a pack of black and white knights, Robert de Sablé among them, the red cross vivid on his chest.

She thought suddenly of Lilia, who had known about Johanna and the King of France, dumped as a warning on Johanna’s doorstep. Now she wondered less that Johanna was afraid. She glanced at the Queen beside her; Johanna was looking intently down through the lattice, her brows fretted.

Edythe pressed her lips together. She regretted promising to tell no one, but she would regret more breaking the promise. Below them Richard lifted his cup. “God be praised, and all our brave and valiant men, that Acre is ours again!”

The hundred-odd men in the hall all shouted, exuberant, pleased with themselves. All around they lifted cups and saluted one another, and the boys with the ewers ran back and forth filling the cups again. The men below the gallery were talking again, and Edythe cocked her head to hear them.

The King of France was saying, “In fact, this victory is so great I believe I have fulfilled my vow.”

Johanna made a small noise in her throat. Her right hand pressed flat on the latticework. Below them, Richard’s yellow head, circled by his crown, wheeled around toward Philip. “What are you saying? All week now the whole city has buzzed that you are planning to go back to France, with the work undone.”

Guy de Lusignan sat on his left hand, and Conrad of Montferrat on Philip’s left; both of these would-be kings tilted forward to attend this, and the rest of the crowd hushed.

“Well, yes,” Philip said. He twisted on the cushioned bench. Edythe wondered why he wore no crown. Perhaps his scalp was still tender; excess of yellow bile made the skin sensitive. He looked very yellow. Likely his humors were still unbalanced after the sickness, his body as crooked inside as it was outside, and he had a bilious temper, bitter and cold. He said, in a smooth voice, “I have taken Acre. I have come to God’s help in His own land. I have served my King the length of my fee, and I will go back to France. Ah, dear France—”

“The Crusade—the service of God is greater than dear France! You swore to take back Jerusalem.”

Edythe flicked a glance at Robert de Sablé, who was watching, as ever, smiling, as ever.

Beyond Philip, Conrad yawned, like a cat, tipping his head back, his teeth showing; his earlobes glittered in the torchlight. “In truth, you know, the Crusade is finished, my lords. The Saracens are alerted. They will not let us do too much more. We have got Acre back, at great cost. Why put that at risk? They have ruined Jaffa and they are destroying Ascalon now, which is as far south as we’ve ever gotten. Without those seaports we have no chance of holding the hinterland. What remains is to choose the rightful King for what we do have, so we can get the most out of it.”

Richard’s head swiveled; he leveled a brief, savage look at Conrad. Edythe remembered what he had told her that night in the tent. He needed the Crusade.

In a bright, clear voice, Guy said, “I will not leave off the Crusade until we hold Jerusalem and the True Cross is in our hands again.”

There was a little cheer from those who heard. Richard straightened. His hands appeared on the table before him. “That’s why you are the King,” he said, loudly. He picked up the knife on the table and began jabbing it at the cup before him.

Conrad banged his fist down. “By what right? By what right? I am married to the heiress of Baldwin the Leper—”

“The Leper at least held the kingdom,” Richard snarled. He slammed the knife down so hard it rebounded with a twang into a long arched flight down the room. “We shall take Jerusalem! Go, if you will, then, King Philip—I swear, I shall not leave here until Jerusalem is Christian again!”

Johanna sat back, her hands on her knees. “The devil.” Another cheer rose, not much stronger than the one before. They were growing used to his pledges, Edythe thought, to these vaulting catapult flights of words. She put her eye to the latticework, holding her breath to listen.

Philip said, “Conrad is right, the Crusade is dead.”

“How can you say that when we just took Acre—”

“A pimple on the backside of Asia,” Conrad said, with a sneer. “Like Tyre. Like Antioch. They cling to the edge. But the land belongs to the Saracens, and Jerusalem is far inland.”

Guy said, in that same mirror-bright voice, “Yet we can take it, with Lionheart to lead us.”

Edythe muttered, “The foot-kisser.”

Johanna nudged her. “Then he’s kissing the wrong part.” Edythe clapped her hand over her mouth to smother a laugh.

Below them, Richard shot up to his feet, shouting. “What right have you then to choose a King of Jerusalem, if you count it already lost? Let Guy be the King, who keeps faith!”

In the ranks of knights and lords watching, half of the men said, “Guy. King Guy,” with much less enthusiasm than they had cheered themselves.

Conrad stood, his ears twinkling, his face dark with choler. “I am the King! The blood of the Kings lies in my arms at night—my son will be grandson and great-grandson of a King of Jerusalem—So shall his father be—King!”

The other half of the gathered nobles said, “Conrad. King Conrad.” They seemed no happier with that. They knew what they did mattered nothing anyway. Their eyes were on Philip and Richard.

Philip said, “He has the stronger claim.”

Richard swung toward him. “You damned serpent-tongued coward. You swore sacred vows for this Crusade.”

Philip was watching him only through the sides of his eyes. He said, “Master of talk. But what you say means nothing.”

“I said I would take Acre—”

“You said we would divide everything. Where’s my half of Cyprus?”

“Cyprus!” Richard’s voice rose. “You weren’t anywhere near Cyprus. Where’s my half of Flanders, then?”

Philip sneered at him. “Talk, talk. This two hundred thousand dinars, which the Sultan will give to ransom the garrison here, do I get half of that?”

His head was tipped a little; Edythe could see only the side of his face but she read the cunning in his eye. She thought, Johanna had no influence on him anyway. Beside her, the Queen was stiff as a plank.

Richard said, “Why do you think I asked so much?” His hand slapped the table. They had been more than a week in Acre and no word had come from the Sultan about the ransom.

“Well,” Philip said. “I can wait awhile longer, for one hundred thousand dinars, and half of the True Cross.”

Johanna whispered, “Oh, good, maybe . . .” She bit her lip. Edythe put an arm around her.

Conrad said, harshly, “But I shall be the King.”

Richard flung himself down on the bench again. “Well,” he said, his head turning slowly in Conrad’s direction, “if he leaves, and there be only me to lead the Crusade, then I think you shall not be King.”

Conrad’s face stiffened. Just beyond him, Guy shone, bright as the flashy jewels in Conrad’s earlobes, but he had the rare sense to stay silent. Conrad was rigid, his fists at his sides. Sweat popped out on his forehead. He turned and looked out at the nobles of Christendom and Outremer, gathered in the council, and no one moved or called his name.

In the glaring silence, Richard said, “When Guy dies, then you can be King. Because of Queen Isabella, who bears the Leper’s blood. Which was blood, you know, ultimately, of an Angevin.” He almost spat this at Philip.

“Devil’s get,” Philip said, quietly. “Doubly so, because of the whore your mother.”