The King's Witch (31 page)

“Nothing.”

“You believe that.”

She frowned at him, bewildered. “You play games with me.”

“No, woman. You play a game with yourself, you make up this problem, to hide from who you are, and what you really think. God made you. You are this woman, God’s child, complete in yourself. Anything you try to change or hide is false and will fail. Be who you are. Take the book. Give your patient a tincture of artemisia, very softly heated, in a dilute dose, perhaps one drop to two hundred, as soon as you know he is sick. Come back and tell me, if you wish, how he does with that.” He straightened. “Now, go, so I can get back to my work.” She rose and went.

She walked back up into Jaffa and wandered through the narrow crooked streets, past men raising new walls and hauling big chunks of rock, and through markets and squares. She saw nothing. Her mind was a seething uncertainty. She held the book under her cloak, tight against her breast. She could not fathom what the old man had said to her. The words tumbled in her memory, huge and small, clear and vague. Sometimes it seemed to her like the wisdom of the world and the next moment a rare stupidity. Of course she was who she was. But who was she? She had come all this way for nothing. And yet when she thought of the way she had followed, she was astonished and glad. Surely the old man had understood. But she could not really say what he had told her, or what the words had really meant. In her hands, her father’s book, which she could not read. At last, exhausted, she went back to the palace by the sea.

Johanna said, “Where were you? I sent people all over looking for you. Besac has been asking for you. Richard is leaving. He has announced it; he will march on Jerusalem in three days.”

“Three days,” Edythe said, excited. Everything seemed to be happening at once. In Jerusalem, maybe, she would find the real answers.

Johanna had work for her, and a lot of gossip; Berengaria and she were on the outs again, the little Queen taking all her meals in her own chamber, and the two never even seeing each other except in church. Johanna said, “She’s a fool. She wants to go back to Acre, to her garden, and she cares nothing for Richard.”

Edythe agreed with that. She had seen Berengaria that morning, because she had a headache, and Berengaria had spoken longingly of the garden and never mentioned her husband. Now Edythe sat with Johanna in the great hall, sewing a fringe onto a great rug to cast over Richard’s throne. Johanna chatted amiably about the throne of Sicily, which had been very majestic, and that led her to the fabled throne of Byzantium, which was supposed to speak, float up into the air, and change colors. They were to dine the next afternoon and she wanted some musicians, and a train of luters and tambour players was waiting to be rehearsed. She expected Edythe’s opinion on them and kept her for every one. Edythe listened only enough to agree with her. In her mind, over and over, she thought,
Jerusalem. At last, Jerusalem.
She worked her needle through the thick stuff of the fringe and slipped it down into the rug.

She went the next morning to the hospital; she had to hide the book, anyway, and she could put it there on the shelf with her herbal. The hospital always pleased her; she could always find work there. A woman had come in with dropsy, and Besac was withdrawing the excess humor from her belly with a long silver tube. When he was done with that and they had laid the patient down, Edythe said, “Do you know anything of tincture of artemisia?”

He said, “Artemisia, artemisia,” tapping his fingers on his chin. She knew this for a sign he had only the vaguest notion of what he was about to say. He said, “You want a tincture? I believe it has some action on the choleric humor.”

This made sense, since it was treatment for a fever. She said, “I need to find some.”

“I am sending later for some things from Tyre. I shall write it down.”

She started after him, toward the little corner where he made his desk, but then a page came in the hospital’s front door, stepped to one side, and said, “The King!”

She wheeled to face him and fell into a proper curtsy. Besac went almost to his knees. Richard came in, trailing attendants like a comet.

“Well,” he said, “I see the rumors are not idle, then; you have made good use of this.”

Besac hurried forward, bending and stooping. “My lord, my lord—”

He showed Richard around the hospital. Edythe hung back, pleased, thinking Besac a little fevered himself over this. Rouquin was not there, only pages and some yawning squires. She thought of Jerusalem again—she wanted to have the artemisia to take on the trek, in case the King fell sick; waiting for Tyre was too long.

Richard came back up the long narrow building. “Excellently done,” he said, at which Besac almost rolled over, puppylike, his butt wiggling. Richard’s gaze slipped past Edythe as if she were not there. He said, “Master Besac, I want you shriven. You will go with us to Jerusalem on the morrow.”

She startled, cold. For the first time she realized she might not go. Besac was actually now kissing the King’s sleeve. Above his bobbing head, Richard’s gaze finally met hers. But he said nothing, and turned and went.

Later, on the pretext of having some medicine for him, she managed to get into his chamber and maneuver a moment alone with him. She said, “My lord, I want to go to Jerusalem.”

He was sitting on a divan, trying to tune an old lute. Humphrey de Toron had just gone out. The cup with the oxymel was on the floor by his feet. He said, “You can’t. And you know why.” His voice was reasonable, as if surely she saw this the same way he did. “From Acre to Jaffa was one thing. This time we are going to the Holy City. We must all be confessed and shriven pure. I am taking no woman.”

She said, frozen, “And certainly not a Jew.”

“We must be pure.”

She turned away, stiff with rage, her body seeming made of wood and slightly disjointed. He said, “When I have the city, and the gate is open, then you can come in and no one will notice.”

At that moment, she hated him; if she had found a knife to hand she would have plunged it into him. Instead, she crept out of the room, went down onto the balcony, and there wept into the salt sea.

She plotted to leave, to go by herself, but she knew that was impossible. The hills were full of Saracens, and even the Christians now were her enemies. She wept again. Johanna saw her and put an arm around her.

“What is it, now?” The Queen laid a cheek to her hair. “This terrible war.”

She muttered, not comforted. She helped Johanna rearrange the Queen’s chamber, with new hangings on the walls.

At the dinner Richard was lively, calling back and forth to the men around him, and eating very well. Johanna sat beside him and he kissed her often.

He asked Rouquin about some fighting recently, and Rouquin said, “It’s like at home. They set an ambush, I set a counterambush, they try to circle around behind me, I circle around behind them. Little raids, nobody really hurt.” He had brought in a flock of sheep from his last ride out, which had made excellent mutton pies.

Johanna nudged her brother. “You have not told me of this big battle you had. The trouvère is making many verses. Are they true?”

Richard made a sound in his throat. “Don’t ask me. I was in it. I don’t remember much but the noise.” He stabbed another kiss at her cheek. “All you need to know is that by Christmas you will be sleeping in the Tower of David. On Christmas Eve you will hear High Mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.” He turned to shout across the room, exuberant.

The excitement ranged around the room in waves. Edythe, by the wall, felt cold, alone. After all she had done, he had cast her aside. Serving Jesus, serving a Plantagenet, had gotten her nowhere. She left as soon as she could, going around the side of the room to the porch, toward the stairs.

Behind her, a voice called. “ Edythe. Wait.”

She stopped, in the dark above the steps, and Rouquin came toward her.

She flushed, sure he knew now; she said, desperate, “ I served—I did everything he asked—”