The Passionate Brood (15 page)

Once, when they started talking about clothes, she nearly went in and joined them. But, partly out of curiosity, she wanted even the setting of their wedding to be Richard’s. Their voices droned on. She forgot even to listen. She was spent with emotion, living again through each of Richard’s kisses. She might have sat there half the night if Yvette had not found her. “Suppose you caught a chill before the wedding?” she scolded.

“Don’t be a motherly little hen!” laughed Berengaria, snuggling closer into the King’s cloak. Yvette was all pleasant curves and young importance these days, finding herself the only lady-in-waiting to a future queen.

“It’s only because I love you, Madam. And because I promised King Sancho—”

“I know, you funny child! But you won’t have to feel responsible much longer. Richard Plantagenet and I are going to be married to-morrow.”

“Oh, Madam!” Yvette lifted her frivolous skirts and executed a jolly little
pas seul
between the long, slim shadows of the colonnade. But her excitement was mostly for the wedding itself and for the new blue gown she was to wear and because she was to dress the bride. When she thought, in her innocence, about the irrevocable intimacy of their married life she stopped dancing and shivered with foreboding. “Blondel only just saved your rose from being trampled on—that day in the lists—and really your heart lay there too,” she said, with apparent irrelevance.

But Berengaria had no misgivings and—whatever happened—she would have no regrets. To be loved by Richard was worth everything. “Ever since he came laughing up the pavilion steps, thrilled with himself and his blazoned leopards and his ridiculous sprig of broom, I haven’t been able to
see
any other man. I tried—for years—after he went, because I thought they would never let me marry him…”

They sat talking of love for a while, forgetful of all difference in age and rank, until Berengaria suffered herself to be put to bed and went to sleep for the last time a maid, hugging her happiness.

Then Yvette picked up the King’s cloak and, very properly, returned it to the King’s squire. Guided by the spasmodic notes of a lute, she found him on the battlements composing a wedding song. He was just as anxious about it as she was about the bride’s veil, so he insisted on trying it out on her. She hadn’t a note of music in her honey-coloured head, but she said quite kindly that she was sure the song would be a success, and in return for her encouragement he told her how plucky he thought her to come so far from home.

“
Me
plucky!” protested Yvette. “Why, I’d die this very minute if I saw a snake. I dreamed about them for nights when I heard we were coming to the East. But you bustle about quite cheerfully, don’t you, even when you feel like sobbing because nothing’s unpacked and everything feels so strange?” Her blue eyes opened wide the way he meant them to. “However did you guess?” she asked. So he told her the story of a homesick page who was laughed at because he couldn’t lay a table properly, and then comforted by a kind princess.

“You adore the Queen of Sicily, don’t you?” said Yvette, making nasty little discords on the strings of his lute.

But instead of committing himself, Blondel drew her- to the west side of the battlements, and showed her how the same stars must be shining over Navarre. “Look up and count them!” he teased. And when she looked up like an obedient little goose, he kissed her round, astonished mouth.

The wedding, as Richard planned it, was unique. Not in the least the kind of affair either of them had expected, but much more original than the marriages of any of their friends. Instead of walking in stately procession up the aisle of some cathedral with music and incense soaring to the dim vastness of the roof, they were married quite simply in the small, dark chapel at Limassol. Instead of rows of staring subjects there was room for only their relatives and intimate followers and friends. And if Berengaria
did
cry secretly on Raymond’s shoulder before the ceremony because her beloved parents could not be there, her heart must have been warmed by the shouts of welcome that went up afterwards when her husband led her out into the sunshine.

Berengaria never forgot that scene. Companies of armed knights, each with his squire and richly caparisoned horse, out-blazoned the stained glass of any cathedral with the colours of their heraldry. Austere, white-robed Templars stood waiting before the sombre chapel, leaning on the tall swords they had dedicated to the protection of Christ’s pilgrims; and behind them, rank upon rank, were massed the archers and sappers and men-at-arms. Their upturned faces seemed to stretch away to an azure sea where the dragon of England flew from a score of mastheads. Like a proud jewel in the midst of them rode the
Trenchemer,
with her blood-red sails, and closer to the palm-girt shore a new ship had anchored, glittering with the five golden crosses of the Holy City itself. For by a lucky chance Guy de Lusignon, King of Jerusalem, had landed that very morning to welcome the Anglo-Norman contingent.

“Trust a Plantagenet to produce some sort of pageantry!” whispered Berengaria, squeezing the arm she held so formally. And, seeing that the stage was so well set, Richard insisted upon having his bride crowned there and then before them all.

“But where are the crowns?” whispered the agitated bishop.

“At Westminster and Rouen, I suppose,” remembered Richard.

So the Count of Chains, who collected antiques, very obligingly produced a circlet of Roman gold and Berengaria was crowned with that. All through the ceremony she kept thinking how different Richard looked. She was so unfamiliar with his public manner as a king that by the time she came to take her oath of allegiance she felt as if the urgent Richard she loved had gone away and left her with some dignified and rather terrifying stranger. But when she knelt before him he held her trembling hands firmly between his own and—proud daughter of Navarre as she was—she saw in him attributes to which she could give wholehearted homage. And once the solemn moment was over she discovered joyfully that both he and Johanna discharged most of their public duties to a sotto voce accompaniment of racy private remarks which promised to dissipate the dullness of all formal occasions.

After the coronation Richard had barrels of wine rolled out to the troops, and a great wedding feast was served in Isaac’s hall, with the doors set wide to the splashing fountain and the colonnade. “The poor cooks must have worked all night!” exclaimed Berengaria, delighted with the fairy-like effect of the iced cakes and fantastic sugar castles they had produced. And the steward had certainly commandeered the resources of the Comnenos’ cellars.

Blondel’s song was a vast success, and Yvette was sure no bride had ever looked lovelier than her mistress in her stiff white samite gown and the exquisite veil which she herself had embroidered with tiny silver hearts copied from the arms of Navarre. In place of Philip, the King of Jerusalem proposed the bride’s health. “To Berengaria, Queen of England and Cyprus, Duchess of Normandy, Aquitaine, Anjou, and Maine!”—the proud titles rang out as he lifted poor Isaac’s goblet.

“Am I really all that?” she laughed, when the cheering of her guests had died down and the servants had begun to bring in the dishes.

“You don’t look big enough to be,” teased Richard, stooping to kiss the top of her head.

“You’ll find he conquers an odd island or two for you any day he feels like it,” said Johanna.

“I suspect that both these little skirmishes of mine, here and at Messina, were child’s play to the fighting you veterans have had in Palestine,’’ grinned Richard, handing a tasty bit of chicken breast to de Lusignon. “Actually, old Comnenos ran away.”

“And I thought you promised him faithfully you wouldn’t put him in irons,” reproved Berengaria, suddenly remembering their imprisoned host with compunction.

“Neither did I, my sweet,” declared Richard, his splendid teeth making short work of a wing. “Ask any of ’em.”

“Your new husband always keeps his word, my dear,” Raymond assured her. “He had silver chains specially made for him.”

“Just the foxy sort of humour that would appeal to John!” reproved Johanna, through their heartless laughter.

“Well, can’t we have the poor man up to eat some of his own food instead of languishing on bread and water down in the dungeons?” begged Berengaria, who could not bear to think of anyone going hungry on her wedding day.

“He isn’t exactly on bread and water, and I don’t think it would be wise,” smiled Richard. “But I tell you what we will do, my dear. We’ll ask his daughter to come and dance for us.” He looked along the many tables for her but Johanna explained that when Ida had heard it was a wedding feast she had refused to come.

“They will probably take it as a deliberate insult,” warned de Lusignon. “Only the paid dance girls perform in public here, you know.”

But Richard had already given the order. “Oh, she’s only a child and she likes dancing,” he said carelessly.

“Children grow up quickly in this climate,” observed Raymond.

His remark was justified when Ida came into the hall. She had removed all trace of angry tears with a sophisticated touch of kohl; her slender arms and ankles tinkled with bracelets, and the vivid Damascus silks she wore were the envy of the three Western women. She came submissively to Richard, but her dark eyes searched savagely for some flaw in Berengaria’s beauty.

“Since you won’t eat with us,” ordered Richard suavely, “I should like you to dance for our guests.”

The girl recoiled as if he had struck her. De Lusignon quite expected her to refuse. But she had seen Berengaria’s hand creep restrainingly to Richard’s. “I would sooner he had me whipped naked before them all than be spared through that woman’s intercession!” Ida told herself, in the hysterical exaggeration of her first young passion. Besides, she had wanted to dance for him and here was her opportunity. She looked round disdainfully at the perspiring acrobats clearing their paraphernalia from the centre of the hall and saw rows of amused or admiring faces turned towards her and the stern, aesthetic countenance of the Templars who, according to the rules of their order, did not look at her at all…“But I will make them!” she thought, piqued by their indifference. She smiled up at the bridegroom sitting among his principal guests on the
dais.
“I promised I would dance for you—didn’t I—that night when you carried me home on your saddle?” she said, spitefully glad that Berengaria should hear.

She called something in Greek to the native musicians and they played a pastorale on their pipes and zithers. Without fuss or self-consciousness, she began to dance to the fawn-like melody…“She’s quite good!” they all agreed, pleasantly lulled by the innocuous measure, and out of the corners of her kohled eyes she noticed some of them who fancied their virtuosity beating time a little condescendingly. Here was an opportunity to befool those men who had humiliated her country, using the only kind of weapon she knew. She snapped her fingers to a pot-bellied little man who had played for years at her father’s orgies and he changed the tune to an obscene little nasal song. His beady eyes twinkled as his soft, fleshy palms beat out the rhythm on his drums and Ida gave Berengaria’s wedding guests a dance of the back streets and the brothels. Those who had glanced casually between mouthfuls at the jaded antics of the mountebanks and conversed through the customary minstrels’ songs laid down their knives, watching the allure of Ida. Because she was young and supple and well-born she stirred men’s senses as no hardened harlot could have done. And because she brought to the age-old gestures of enticement something of the freshness of a mountain stream, even white-robed monks forgot their vows. As she turned and swayed to the wicked rhythm of the drums, she watched the Templars’ faces. But she danced primarily for Richard, and many of her countrymen—standing about with the sullenness of the vanquished—spat their disgust.

Richard had seen plenty of varieties of the dance in Raymond’s ports of southern France and—as always—the hot, insistent undertone of the drums was the mysterious heart of the East calling to him. But he sat frowning, feeling it was all wrong that this lovely, undisciplined child should be dancing before them—and angrily aware that she had taken a rise out of him. The girl was making herself as insistent as the drums, and he regretted trying to subdue her. Berengaria and the convent-bred Yvette, he could see, were painfully embarrassed; and when the girl had gone Johanna said bluntly, “Well, with all our dower chests of fashionable new clothes we cannot compete with
that
!”

The men sitting near them, released from Ida’s Circe appeal, laughed a little sheepishly. “I suppose you’re keeping her as a hostage?” enquired de Lusignon.

“Looks as if the little bitch ’ud prefer to be kept as his mistress!” guffawed Barbe of Chalus, already in his cups.

“I wish you would let the girl go!” sighed Berengaria, ignoring his provincial coarseness. “She is going to be a grave responsibility.” As if to dismiss the subject, she turned graciously to de Lusignon. “I shall always boast to all my friends that we had the King of Jerusalem at our wedding,” she told him. “And I know you are the one person in the world whom Richard has been aching to talk to.”

Inevitably the two men fell upon the subject nearest their hearts and, with a dozen different knights joining in, poor Berengaria’s wedding feast soon degenerated into a council of war.

“Have you ever seen Saladin?” those fresh out from Europe wanted to know.

But even the most seasoned Templars seemed never to have done so. “He is one of those leaders who know the publicity value of an elusive personality,” said de Lusignon. “But he has more than once given us Christians a lesson in chivalry.”

“Does he still cut in when our men are on the march?” asked Raymond, who had served as a very fledgling knight under de Barre.

“Lord, yes! It’s simply uncanny how the hills look bare one minute and his ferocious hordes are upon you the next, picking off half a company before our heavily equipped fellows can close their ranks.”

“You’ll come to hate those bare hills, Sir,” a gnarled old Templar told the tall Angevin leader of this new crusade.

Richard drank in their words. This was the real thing at first hand. “I remember my mother telling me how lightly the Saracens were mounted, and I used to plan how—if ever I had the luck to get there—I would sacrifice speed to security by making my men march in close formation,” he said.

“The difficulty about slow marches across those plains is the provisioning,” pointed out Raymond, “How are you going to make the water last out?”

“I should hug the coast. Not waste a single man or horse for porterage who could be used for fighting.” Richard was all eagerness, expounding his pet theory. Fruit dishes and finger bowls were pushed out of the way, and every available knife pressed into service to form a rough map of the Levant. Men rose and leaned across each other’s shoulders to look. “It always seemed to me that Louis and his crowd neglected their naval strength. We’ve got plenty of ships. Why can’t we arrange for them to call at each port regularly with supplies?”

“Shounds all right,” admitted Chaìus. “But given the foul storms we’ve had, how many weeks d’you sup-poshe it’ll take them to come from France or England?”

“Only a drunken fool would expect them to come from there!” barked Richard, always rattled to rudeness by the way the impertinent little curmudgeon crabbed all his best ideas. “Look, here’s Cyprus.” He planked down a plate in the middle of the coastline of knives. “An admirable permanent base—and mine.”

Raymond backed up the new idea with enthusiasm. “There’s an excellent harbour further north at Famagusta. It would pay us to leave a garrison and fortify the place.”

“And when you’ve got your supply system working regularly?” prompted Mortaine.

“I’d force the enemy to play my game. Keep away from the hills where he has all the advantages and concentrate on the coastal towns. Mew him up and—” Richard caught a Templar’s sceptic eye and stopped short. “God’s heart, what must you think of me, ranting away in front of a lot of experienced crusaders like this?” he laughed, reddening like any schoolboy and subsiding into his chair.

But Guy de Lusignon had begun to see in this powerful redhead’s enthusiasm new hope for his jaded supporters. He was willing to try anything to get back his throne. “Go on,” he said quietly, waving Richard back to his improvised map. “Your idea certainly holds new possibilities.”

Men came from other tables, crowding round. Berengaria saw their tense faces. Squires with famous names and rich merchants’ sons, their smooth, young faces shining with eagerness—the sex appeal of Ida forgotten as they reached for the Fata Morgana of fame. Scarred old war-dogs like Mortaine listening tolerantly. The servants moving softly. The torches burning low and no one daring to change them. Johanna, listening intently, eaten with family pride. The round wonder in Yvette’s blue eyes. She herself, a bride, half proud and half resentful. And in the middle of it all her handsome lover, whom men already called Coeur de Lion, telling them how to plan a campaign.

“You see, we’ve better battering rams and scaling ladders,” he was explaining with engaging diffidence. “And I feel that, considering their superior numbers, we ought never to risk open engagements on the plains until we’ve taken most of the key points along the coast. The fact of the matter is, my brother Henry and I were always terribly keen about armaments. People used to tell us the walls of Jerusalem were almost impregnable, so I spent years studying architecture under Maurice, the man who was building Dover castle for my father. He helped me to make calculations and get out designs for a sort of super catapult. I tried it out at the siege of Taillebourg.”