The King's Witch (24 page)

She saw a horse go down, and the rider leap from it and begin to walk, still carrying his lance. Someone quickly brought him a fresh horse, and other men ran to the dead one and stripped off its harness. The Crusader army paced on steadily, and the Saracens, wailing, fled away again.

This time they came from the rear, and the last few ranks of the Crusaders wheeled and lunged to meet them.

Ayberk said, “Bad. See. They stop. Bad.”

She looked down to the south, to the front of the army, which had pulled away. And now the whole rear guard had stopped marching, was bunching together and turning to face the Saracens.

The gap widened between them and the main army. The highpitched screaming of the Saracens took a keener edge, and the waves of arrows came closer and faster. Then, from the south, a horn blew.

She turned, looking that way. A line of horsemen was galloping up the beach. As they rode, more and more men peeled away from the army, until hundreds of knights pounded up along the sand toward the embattled rear guard. They came in a thundering pack, their surcoats fluttering, their lances upright. They reached the end of the main army, where there was more room, and without a signal that she could see, the pack stretched out, the men behind galloping up to the front, so that they formed into a single rank. The horses at full stride, the men riding long-stirruped and tall, they flowed over the land like a great sword. She caught her breath, her heart pounding, caught by the power and beauty of this charge.

“The Basileus Richard,” Ayberk cried, and pointed.

The first of them all, she saw, wore a crown over his helmet. Then Rouquin was there somewhere. She beat her fists on the rail. They streaked down past the bedeviled rear guard, and in a ragged pattern the lances swung to level, and stirrup to stirrup and head to head the charge hurtled into the lighter Saracen horsemen.

The white-robed archers went down as if a wave of iron had broken over them. Ayberk whooped, delighted. The rest of the Saracens were whirling, fleeing, but on the sand behind the charge lay trampled bodies, a crippled horse trying to stand. The Crusader charge took them straight in among the rear guard, and every Saracen was running.

“No,” Ayberk cried. “Stop.”

She glanced at him, turned back to see what he meant. The inland few men of the charging Crusader line had veered off to chase the Saracens back toward the hills. This seemed a daring move to her, and she wondered they did not all follow it. Then halfway to the hills the fleeing Saracens turned, circled, and engulfed the men chasing them.

“Oh, no,” she said. Cut off from their own, and scattered apart as they rode, the handful of Crusaders were caught in the midst of hundreds of horse archers. Now the lighter, faster Saracens had the edge. She gasped; her hands beat the railing. The trapped Crusaders were struggling to get back to the others, but steadily they were surrounded; their horses stumbled; a knight staggered on the ground, trying to fight, and then fell. The Saracens raised their tremulous cry of triumph. The rising dust hid them. Nearer, by the beach, the rear guard had begun moving again, faster, she thought, as if flogged, the men-at-arms running.

Ayberk said, “Ahead is camp.”

She licked her lips. She could see the first ships of the fleet turning in to the beach. Up above the sand were ruins, archways, piles of bricks. She craned her neck, looking back the way they had come; the rear guard was catching up with the rest of the army again, and she could scarcely see the fine film of dust, toward the hills. No Christian knight came back from there. She thought,
If I stay here, I will never find out
.

Then
, she thought,
I won’t stay here
.

But it was twilight before she managed to wade ashore, carrying her sack of potions and balms and jars. The army had begun laying out its camp in the meadow by the ruins, putting stones in rings for fires and marking out spaces with saddles and lances. She had no trouble finding Richard. He alone had a tent, a great sway-backed sprawl of cloth draped over poles and rope, the edges held down under bales and casks. A sledge heaped with wood was drawn up before it, and as she drew near, a man was building a fire out in front. A groom led around a weary horse, stripped to a halter. In the midst of a swarm of squires and pages, Richard stood giving orders and drinking a cup of wine. He already had his mail off.

When the last man had gone, he turned to her. “What are you doing here?” he said. “I was just about to send for you. Come on, then, here he comes.”

Her heart turned to an icy rock. Someone had been hurt. Three horsemen were trudging up toward the King’s campfire, and she recognized Rouquin’s gray horse.

But Rouquin was hale and in the saddle. He swung down into the firelight; three arrows stuck out of the shoulder of his mail. She caught her breath. Then he was helping the man behind him dismount, and that man leaned hard on him and sobbed in pain.

Richard said, “You stupid ass, Mercadier, you should have died out there. Get over here.” He turned to her. “Fix him.” He drank from his cup.

She stood, heart pounding, while Rouquin and the two others brought the injured man up into the firelight and sat him down.

She squatted in front of him and looked him over. Mercadier had no arrows in him; his helmet was off, his short black hair plastered to his head, his eyes open. His round brown cheeks were drawn hollow, but in spite of the pain creasing his face he did not seem to be wounded. She said, “Mercadier. Where does it hurt?” Then she saw his right arm, hanging by his side, the forearm twisted out.

“His horse went down,” Rouquin said, behind her.

She stood up. “Can you get out of the mail?”

Mercadier struggled left-handed with his mail, and then another man bent and helped him. Still he was gasping and soaked with sweat when they got it off. The other man unlaced the Brabanter’s padded jack and pulled that off, too. She glanced at Rouquin; Richard had given him the cup of wine and stood behind him worrying the arrows one at a time out of his mail.

She turned back to Mercadier. Even without touching him, she could see by the way the arm hung that the bones had come apart at the shoulder. She had seen this relocation done once, a long time ago. Then it had seemed wonderful to her, the way the body wanted to be whole. Now she hoped she remembered it that well. “Somebody sit back to back with him.”

The other man sat down, and Mercadier leaned against him. Edythe squatted before him again.

“This will hurt,” she said.

“Hurts now.” Sweat lay in droplets on his forehead and his black beard.

She took his injured arm by the wrist and elbow and laid the forearm over his belly so that his upper arm hung straight against his side. With her left hand she held that elbow fast, and with her right on his wrist she began turning his forearm out away from his body.

He gasped and gulped, his eyes popping, and the man behind him gripped his other arm to hold him. She felt the bones turn, the joint snagged briefly, and then the top of his arm rolled over the rim of the socket and dropped into place. She sat back, her hands empty.

He shut his eyes, breathing hard, but his face was suddenly smooth. The man behind him let him go. Mercadier lifted his other hand to his shoulder and opened his eyes toward her. “Thanks.”

“Be careful with it.” She said. “I’ ll bind it up for you.”

Richard said, “If my own men won’t heed me, what good is this? We have to keep the march. Don’t break after them. When they attack, they can do nothing if we stay together. The mail stops the arrows, see?” He flung down the two arrows in his hand, which he had just tugged out of Rouquin’s mail. “Just stay in the march, damn you; I thought you were a good soldier.” He was yanking on the last arrow. “This one is deep.”

Rouquin grunted at him. Edythe got up, her gaze on him; he looked well enough, although he was breathing hard as Richard wiggled the last arrow loose. She had not let herself look at him since the kiss. Now she had an excuse, and she took it.

She said, “Let me see that.”

He said, shortly, “It’s nothing.” He kept his eyes down. He gave Richard the wine cup, and Richard tossed it to a waiting page.

“Let her look. I need you, and a few of those felt as if they bit.” He swung toward Mercadier. “You damned near got your lord killed, see.”

“Sire—”

“Shut up.”

Rouquin stripped off his mail and the padded jack under it. His chest was soaked with sweat, the red hair plastered to the skin. She glanced at the arrows; the long heads were bent and nicked from the mail. Two of the three had penetrated far enough to make small nasty wounds.

“Sit,” she said. She took the flask of vinegar and a pair of pincers from her pouch. He sat on a barrel. The arrows had carried shreds of cloth and fiber from the jack into the star-shaped holes, and she picked those carefully out with the pincers. She washed each cut with the vinegar and smeared it with yarrow balm. He looked bigger with his clothes off. His chest was massive and hard-muscled under the great arches of his shoulders. Touching him, she remembered kissing him and wanted to kiss him again, everywhere.

Remember
, she thought.
Remember why you are going to Jaffa. Don’t be distracted by a man beyond your reach anyway.
He didn’t care; he wasn’t looking at her.

Richard was saying, “Hugh of Burgundy is a complete fool.” He nodded at a page offering him a cup of wine. “Give it to him.”

“You put him in the rear guard,” Rouquin said. The page brought him the cup. She was standing by his knee working on the deep wound in the front of his shoulder, and for an instant as he reached for the wine their eyes caught.

His look was so intense she gave a shiver. She tore her gaze away, hot down to her heels. Her fingers pressed on the heavy muscle of his arm. She rubbed the yarrow over the slit in his shoulder, her knees trembling.

“I’ll send the Hospitallers to the rear guard,” Richard was saying. “At least they obey orders.” He gave a deep, humorless laugh. “That was a nice charge. We’ll teach the Saracens not to try to stand up to us.”

The other men growled agreement. They were turning chunks of meat over the fire, and slowly they all fell to eating. She backed away; a serving man brought her a piece of bread with a bit of meat on it. Richard said, “Make her a place in the tent. I’ll be her dragon.” He laughed. Rouquin was by the fire with the rest of the men, eating. She went back into the tent and sat down; by the door a torch already burned.

The meat was almost raw. The juice dripped down her chin. She remembered how Mercadier’s arm bone had moved under her hand, how it had slipped back where it belonged, and a deep satisfaction flooded through her.

She thought of Rouquin, and shut her eyes. Remembered why she was going to Jaffa. But she wanted him, and now she saw that he still wanted her. She ate the bread soaked in blood and wiped her hands on her kirtle.

The sea was pleated blue and silver; where the breakers rushed over the rocks the foam was lacy white. Humphrey de Toron leaned his arm on the seawall. The pile of the monastery loomed behind him and he could hear the monks chanting Vespers. He had been waiting all day, and she had not come. Soon the sun would go down and he would have to admit they had failed.

When the Crusade left Acre to go south, he had come north, up to this little monastery on top of the white rocks called the Ladder of Tyre. In the sea-washed caves below there once had been hermits, but now the monastery favored a more comfortable way of life. He watched the sun sinking, wondering what to do next.

“Freo.”

He wheeled around. Isabella came out the door, alone.

“Oh, my God,” he said, and she came to him and they embraced. Married as children, they had had only each other all through the bad times of stepfathers and stepmothers and wars and hostage, and he would always love her best of all. And she was adorable. He stepped back, looking into her eyes.

“You are the most beautiful Queen in the Holy Land.” He laughed. “Believe me. I’ve seen a few.” He leaned on the wall again. “Including she of Sicily, who is keeping Conrad in Acre, so that we could meet. But she won’t be able to hold him there for very long, now that Richard’s gone.”

“The dog,” Isabella said, with force. The end of her coif fluttered in the wind. She was supposed to be in common dress, which for her meant a long dark gown with thin gold trim, gold slippers, gold on her fingers and in her ears. She went on, “How could he disdain the Crusade? Call himself King and yet not go to the rescue of Jerusalem?”

Humphrey said, “There, actually, I agree with him. We cannot hold Jerusalem.”

“Oh, Freo.” She came up into the wind. “Then it is all gone, isn’t it, what so many have died for, gone.” She turned on him, her cheeks ruddy in the wind. The sun was going down and spilled its light all over her, so that even her tears were golden.