The Passionate Brood (20 page)

He had forgotten the thing was still in his hand, and he wiped and sheathed it, hastily. He could have kicked himself. Particularly just now, when he wanted to please her…“I couldn’t give an order which I wasn’t prepared to carry out myself,” he muttered, going down on one knee to dab awkwardly at her shimmering skirt. When he stood up he was gauche and smiling, unsure of her response. “Can’t we kiss and be friends?” he pleaded.

He would have pulled her against the hungry hardness of his body but she made a slender barrier of her hands. “No—no—I can’t…” she stammered breathlessly. It hadn’t occurred to her that he would want that.

But he wouldn’t let her go. “You’ve been avoiding me for days,” he accused, half angrily.

“And you’ve been far too busy to care,” she flashed back. If only he hadn’t been so busy—if only she could have told him her secret then—perhaps he would have seen to it that to-day’s distressing events hadn’t happened!

But he mistook her resistance for some lover’s hurt at being slighted. He wasn’t humble enough to be very sensitive to other people’s moods. “Well, now at last I have a few hours’ leisure,” he said complacently. “You know we shall have to start at dawn, so let’s forget the whole bloody business and make this last night in Acre ours.” He pivoted with her in his arms, tilting up her chin so that she faced the velvet sky. “Look, my beloved, the same stars are coming out that used to shine on Cyprus. I can see them reflected in your eyes.” Unfortunately, he could also see the vague outlines of a burial party shuffling through the sand and hear the mournful creaking of their carts. He turned in sudden loathing from that side of the wall. Down in the town, as if by contrast, men were celebrating. So why not he, the conqueror of Acre? “Come down, witch woman, and make me forget that madness!” he urged, his natural directness making him betray his shame.

Berengaria knew his need but scorned to give her body as a drug. “Those poor women,” she excused herself, looking from stars to darkened slums. “They will always come between us…”

But Richard’s hands were roughly urgent. “What are any other women to me,” he protested, “unless you have grown cold?” Never in his life before had he been thwarted by a woman he desired. And here was his own wife shuddering from him as if he had the plague. Although she was shivering she freed herself deliberately from the warmth of his cloak and the comfort of his arms. “Cold?” she repeated tonelessly. “Yes, I suppose I
am
cold. But it is my heart shivering—as if someone stamped clumsily across a little grave…” She looked at him with wide, fey eyes and behaved so strangely that Richard let her go. “Rather a sudden indisposition, isn’t it,” he remarked, with scepticism.

“I really do feel ill,” she assured him more naturally. “Please believe me. It isn’t just because—because of what you did—”

“I am sorry,” said Richard sullenly.

Berengaria moved blindly towards the top of the stone steps. “I’m going down to Johanna. I think I shall sleep with her,” she said. She didn’t even wish him “good night” because she didn’t want him to see the tears coursing down her face—tears of desolation because the stars were shining and they were alone and she had no secret to tell him now.

Richard made as if to follow her. He was worried about her, remembering how upset she had been about that pompous Austrian ass. He thought she was probably in for fever. If so he’d have a litter made for her. However ill she was, he wouldn’t leave her behind. She had been an angel to him when he was ill, and to his wounded men. He specially appreciated that. They were ugly sights, some of them, and he remembered how she had always hated the sight of blood. Come to think about it, what a life for a woman! A far cry from binding up a scratched wrist at a tournament. And now he had pestered her. Richard turned back from the top step. After all, perhaps she would be better with the women. He wished he understood them better. Johanna, of course, was forthright and strong. She’d been brought up among brothers and if you did anything she didn’t like she just flamed out at you like another man. You knew where you were with her. But he was beginning to find out that Berengaria, for all her gentleness, had queer, obstinate principles. The sort of thing he had quarrelled with Robin over. “A man wants a good wife,” he thought with a touch of John’s cynicisms “but not necessarily one who wants to make him into a good husband!”

He wandered into the watch-tower, stumbling over a bundle of something on the floor. It appeared to be some sort of flag and he could just make out the Moslem crescent. Remembering the affair with Leopold, he picked it up carefully and put it on the window ledge. After all, those fellows defending the bastion had given their lives for it. As he moved to the window he could hear the rhythm of native drums. They seemed to suit the madness of the night. Christians making merry in one quarter of the town and widows wailing in another. Richard wondered if there was anything he could do about the orphaned children, but the drums began to beat insidiously into his resentful, frustrated blood. As always, they called to his inherent lawlessness beneath the decencies imposed by the discipline of Hodierna and the friendship of Robin. They were the heart of the East, which he had sworn to tame. And hadn’t his witch predicted that all his greatest triumphs would be in the East? “Anyhow, I’m damned if I’ll go back to a cold bed as if I wasn’t fit to live with!” he thought, knowing that such triumphs cannot be won without deeds psychologically suited to one’s enemy.

“Here, give me your lantern!” he called to a passing soldier. “And tell Captain Mercadier if he wants me I shall be sleeping up here away from all that hubbub. What’ve you got on that tray?”

He spent so much time with his army that even the rank and file addressed him without embarrassment. “Supper for the officer of the watch, Sir,” the man told him, with a respectful grin.

“Splendid!” said Richard, whipping off the cover and sniffing appreciatively. “Sowerby of York’s on to-night, isn’t he? Get him something hot from the kitchens whenever he wants it and leave that here for me.” The man put food and lamp on a rough wooden table. “And get a fresh plaster for that old wound of yours before we start, Thomas,” Richard shouted after him.

“I will that, Sir!” the man sang back. The King had remembered his name.

Richard suddenly realised how hungry he was and wolfed the food standing, washing it down with great draughts of wine. Warm yellow light from the horn of the lantern gave the little stone room a more cheerful aspect, and seen through the narrow arch of the doorway the distant hills looked quiet enough under the winking stars. “Better than all your houses!” thought Richard, as the wine began to warm him. “Many’s the night Rob and I have slept out on the castle walls.” He began to whistle cheerfully between strong, square teeth, unbuckling his cloak and throwing it across the makeshift bed where its jewelled border sparkled incongruously. True, he hadn’t had jewels on his cloak in those days, but he would give them all now to have back the world’s best companion.

He had taken off belt and hauberk when he became aware of a girl’s voice humming the dance melody of the moment. He picked up his borrowed lantern and to his surprise found Ida still at her favourite niche on the battlements. “My dear child,” he said, “I thought you had gone to the party!”

She took the lantern from him and set it beside her on the parapet so that it illuminated her face. “I don’t feel like dancing,” she said plaintively.

“Then you must be feeling very low!” he laughed. He crossed the wall and stood quizzing her, as she sat with one hand resting against the masonry on either side of her slender knees. “My poor little hostage! It must be very lonely for you. I suppose you think me an ogre for bringing you?”

“I asked you to,” she reminded him.

“So you did. Though goodness knows why. You know, I think all that stuff about de Lusignon being amorous was just imagination. But I shouldn’t dance at Chalus’s parties if I were you.” He warned her diffidently, as he might have spoken to Johanna before her marriage, not certain how much of life she knew.

Apparently she preferred not to discuss the subject. “I am never lonely with you,” she confided. “Only with the Queen. She is so fastidious and she doesn’t like me.”

Richard’s eyes twinkled at her shrewdness. “The Queen has beautiful manners,” he said gravely. “I expect she thinks we both behave like uncouth savages at times. That putrid Saracen’s head, for instance.”

Ida dismissed the reminder of her lapse with a grimace. “When you’re masterful she doesn’t like
you
,” she said.

He guessed then that she had been eavesdropping. “Apparently not,” he admitted ruefully, moving away from the quick fire of her personal remarks.

But Ida clasped her palms between her knees and leaned conversationally towards him. “Your women are so strange,” she said. “Now I adore you when you rage round, killing and cursing, and take what you want.”

Richard burst out laughing. The girl was as good as a whole company of paid buffoons. “That’s because you have a nasty Eastern mind,” he told her, lifting her down from the parapet preparatory to sending her to bed.

To his surprise she would not let him release her. Even after he had set her down she kept her arms clasped tightly round his neck and when he straightened himself she only let them slide caressingly down his shoulders. Her subtle perfume invaded his senses. “And my body?” she asked, with mischievous amusement. “Is that nasty, too?”

It was a revelation to Richard—both her words and the pressure of her perfumed limbs. Caught unawares, he was too surprised to move. After a moment or two he loosened her predatory hands. “No,” he said, turning away abruptly. “Your body is very beautiful.”

She followed him back to the tower and stood leaning against the open door watching him finish his meal. He jerked forward a stool and concentrated on his plate. Clearly he wanted to be rid of her. “Why do you always treat me like a child?” she demanded.

He looked up with a chicken bone in his fingers and laughed at her. The laughter sounded a little forced, and he was careful to keep his eyes above the level of her petulant mouth. “Well, so you are, aren’t you? The brightest young thing about the camp. Heaven knows how we should all endure these solemn Austrians without you!” He spoke boisterously, determined that that moment by the battlements should not recur.

But Ida persisted. Having once tasted her power to disturb him she wasn’t going back to any “kind uncle” talk. She picked up his cloak, draping it impudently about herself so that it trailed behind like a bridal train. “I am seventeen,” she said, smoothing the rich velvet to her hips. “If you hadn’t carried me off from Cyprus I should have been married by now. My father was arranging it.”

“Well, I’d better find you a nice, masterful husband,” suggested Richard carelessly. He threw down the last bone and wiped his fingers on the guard officer’s napkin. Young Sowerby of York would now be able to boast that besides the Queen having lain on his bed the King had eaten his supper.

“I don’t want a husband,” said Ida sullenly.

Richard got up and kicked aside the stool. He was tired and wanted to get to bed. “Then what do you want?” he asked impatiently.

She stopped play-acting with his cloak and moved into the circle of lamplight, standing before him, barefoot and bangled like some submissive slave girl. Her small breasts pulsed to the quick tempo of her breath. “Are you really so blind?” she asked.

Richard stared at her. Angrily at first and then with quickening blood. He saw the perfection of her youth and for the first time realised her ripeness. She was right—he had been a fool to treat her as a child. She was more like some gaudy tropical blossom, opening in greedy ecstasy to the brief promise of life. With such a warm-eyed wanton in his arms, surely the whole mystery of the East would be his? He passed a hand across his eyes. It must be that damned Cypriot’s drums or this seductive scent…“No, no, my dear. We must both be crazed,” he said. “It’s just because you are very beguiling and I have been a little too kind. You mustn’t think we’re all like Chalus…”

But she broke in passionately on his desperate reasoning. “Kind!” she cried contemptuously. “D’you suppose my blood doesn’t beat with joy when you are cruel too?” She came and threw herself against his breast. “I worship you, Richard Plantagenet. I have worshipped you ever since that night you rescued me from your soldiers and carried me home on your saddle. I thought you were taking me for yourself—the way your men took the other women from my home—”

He took her by the shoulders roughly. “You thought that?” he said, trying to remember the details of that casual ride and recalling only that he had been on fire for Berengaria.

In the shameful recital of her disappointment the girl beat upon his breast with frenzied little fists. “I went
on
thinking it until they told me you were to be married. And then you sent for me, and I saw your pale, cold bride. And you made me dance at her wedding…”

Richard held her wrists with savage strength but she didn’t even wince. “You behaved like a common harlot!” he said, remembering how she had danced.

She struggled to free herself, shaking back the curled masses of her night-black hair. “Then do you suppose I should shrink from you because you are strong enough to kill?” she cried. “Don’t you believe that I am beautiful enough to make you forget all the sins you ever did?”

Slowly Richard’s arms went round her. She was fragrant and supple as a houri. “Beautiful enough, God knows!” he muttered. “But He has my vows of knighthood—and you aren’t really a harlot but my defenceless hostage.”

Ida Comnenos laughed away his scruples, lifting red lips to his, “I don’t want the coldness of your Northern chivalry,” she said. “I only want the warmth of your kisses.”

With an arm still about her Richard kicked at the door. It swung to with a clang, shutting out the mocking invitation of the drums and spilling the wine as he poured their loving cup. “Then here’s to forgetting!” he laughed recklessly.

Robin’s witch was right. Richard went on from triumph to triumph. Slowly but relentlessly he forged his chain of key points along the coast. Philip might fidget and Leopold sneer because they had to rein in their champing chargers to a crawl. Eager young squires might complain that even the baggage wagons and the cooks could have moved faster. But hadn’t Eleanor or Aquitaine—over and over again in the tower room at Oxford—kept her unruly brood enthralled with tales of what happened in the first crusade whenever Louis left a gap? So her son saw to it that there were no gaps. And when a hundred thousand men march slowly like a solid wall there is nothing much that hit-and-run raiders can do about it. The Saracens poisoned the wells and swooped down from the hills a dozen times a day, but French and English, Austrians and Genoese shuffled through the burning sand, some of them with arrows sticking into their shoulders, too tightly wedged between their comrades to fall out by the way. As for the knights and nobles, hadn’t Richard predicted that the plains of Palestine would prove hard? They suffered from sunstroke and sleeplessness and thirst, but when at last they marched into Haifa the sight of waiting provision ships stopped all criticism and even rival leaders were content to leave the campaign in hands touched with genius.

From Haifa to Jaffa the going was not so good because stunted woods sprawled down to the sea at a place called Arsouf. Only an optimistic fool could suppose the Saracens would miss such an opportunity. They came snaking down from the hills, grinning with fanatic joy at the funny sight of plated horsemen ploughing their clumsy way on horses almost as encumbered as themselves. With a cry of “Allah Akbar” they charged again and again, severing Christian heads with broad-bladed scimitars. But they had laughed too soon at the clumsy knights—one of whom, at any rate, was more swiftly mounted than themselves and cared nothing about encasing his conspicuous head. The odds were three to one on the Saracens at Arsouf and they fought brilliantly on their own ground, but after the battle riderless Arab steeds were so cheap that an international Christian army made a meal of them.

Camped at last among the pleasant orange groves of Jaffa, the indefatigable Plantagenet let his followers rest. They deserved it and things were going well. But he himself worked like a dog getting everything reconditioned and ready for the final push to Jerusalem.

“Only about fifty more miles, Sir!” Blondel would say of a morning, pouring over their well-worn map. And Richard would think secretly, “If I got on Fauvel now—alone—I could be in the Street of David by nightfall!” But those fifty miles were inland miles, flanked by treacherous hills. The Saracens, he knew, held the road at Ramlah. And never again would he underrate them.

“With any luck we should be in England by next Spring,” he consoled Berengaria.

But there wasn’t any luck. The weather broke suddenly. The seasons changed with the swift cruelty of the East. Torrential rains washed away the rough mountain tracks. Where men had panted beneath a pitiless sun they almost died of exposure to the wind. And Philip, who had already experienced one winter under canvas, wanted to go home.

“If only you hadn’t wasted so much time in Cyprus I might have been back in France by now,” he pointed out peevishly, at the end of a particularly acrimonious staff meeting.

“I made up for it when I did come,” Richard reminded him good-humouredly, getting up to dismiss the rest.

“A man ought to put his own country first,” said Philip sententiously. It was Robin’s argument; but at least Robin had been consistent. He hadn’t come at all.

Richard gathered up his parchments. “I don’t imagine my mother is having a particularly rosy time,” he said grimly. “We’d a letter from her this morning, and it appears that John is making things very difficult for Longchamps.”

“Then let us go home together,” urged Philip.

Richard turned as if he had been stung. Up till then he had taken it as part of the daily grumbling. “Go home? Give up—after all we’ve done!” he echoed.

Philip lay back wearily against the fleurs-de-lis that sprigged the blue velvet of his chair. He had come as a duty, no doubt, hoping for a swift, showy campaign; and must have hated the way the laurels were snatched from him by a man who was in part his vassal. At home—as a statesman—he shone supreme. “I feel I should be of so much more
use
in France,” he excused himself, with rare honesty.

Richard had known him since he was a pale, friendly youth. Because of the glitter of his position he had many a time rated his vain counsel higher than his own father’s wisdom. “For Christ’s sake don’t leave me in the lurch just now!” he implored.

Philip murmured something about money.

“Stay on at my expense,” invited Richard, out of the generosity of his own empty coffers. But Philip was obdurate. What was the good of being King of France if one had to eat badly cooked food in a draughty tent?

Even the French nobles were ashamed of his defection and half of them stayed on with the Plantagenet, but it meant he had to feed them. So when the French king sailed he deliberately turned his back on the great blue and gold banners streaming from his masthead and—although he spent years haggling over French soil—he never spoke again to Philip Capet.

Next morning, his army still further depleted by the strong garrison it was necessary to leave at Jaffa, Richard pushed inland as far as Beit Nuba. There were no walls to mend there—nothing to keep cold men occupied. Only a few flat-roofed hovels and torrential rain and ubiquitous mud. For the first time since leaving Dover Richard knew doubt. If only he could hold out and keep his men from cutting each other’s throats until the Spring! He sent Raymond back to Jaffa for reinforcements, hoping to come to some sort of winter truce with Saladin.

Berengaria remembered that Saladin’s friend, Bohadin, had once enjoyed the hospitality of Pamplona and urged Richard to visit him in the hills. Reluctantly, he put his pride in his pocket and went. “I’d better leave Blondel with you in case I don’t come back,” he insisted uneasily. But for once Berengaria was the more confident of the two. “They aren’t savages,” she assured him. “Bohadin is writing Saladin’s biography, and he will be most interested to meet you.”

When Richard came back some days later he was wet to the skin, shivering with ague, and disappointed because, after all, he hadn’t seen Saladin.

“My dear, I am so sorry!” said Berengaria, who also understood the two men’s sneaking interest in each other. “Weren’t you able to discuss the possibilities of a truce after all then?”

“Oh, yes. This Bohadin seems to be in his confidence. He didn’t poison my drinks or anything, and he speaks Norman as if he’d lived in Rouen all his life.” Richard’s comments were punctuated by the flop of sodden garments to the floor as the pages prepared the steaming bath she had insisted upon. “And you’d never guess the decent thing Saladin did! He had the Holy Rood sent from Jerusalem for me to see. And do you know, ’Garia, they all treated it as reverently as we should. Yet all the time I was collecting money for this crusade I pictured them spitting on it.”

“Didn’t you know they venerate Christ as a prophet?” smiled Berengaria, knowing how much such a gesture must have pleased him. “I must read you my translation of the Koran, Richard. Parts of it are very beautiful.”

When he came for his supper, refreshed and shaven, he lifted her chin with caressing fingers. “And what have you been doing, my love?” he asked.

“Trying to persuade your independent sister to marry my lovesick cousin,” laughed Berengaria.

“Then I take it you don’t find marriage so bad?” He looked at her searchingly as he kissed her. He often wondered if she guessed about Ida, and had wisely left the little baggage at Jaffa.

Berengaria avoided a direct answer. “If ever a man deserved to be happy, it is Raymond,” she said.

“And what does the tempestuous jade herself say about it?” asked Richard, picking over his food. It was so unlike him to be fastidious that his wife watched him with concern. “She wants to get back to England first. Richard, do you suppose Robin really loved her? Except as a sister, I mean. Wouldn’t he have come to Sicily if he had?”

“He may not have known about William’s death.”

“But surely you tried to tell him?”

“My dear woman, I rode hell for leather all through a night of weather like this. But God Himself couldn’t find Rob if he wanted to hide in a wood’. And England is full of woods.”

Berengaria sat down opposite to him in homely intimacy. “He loved
you—
but he didn’t come,” she said. “Perhaps it was just that there were things he loved more.”

“You talk as if you knew him,” said Richard, glancing up quickly from his plate.

“I’ve been reading his book.”

“Oh, that—all about astrology and unsanitary cottages and noblesse oblige.”

“I found a copy amongst your things—it was like a friend when you were away fighting—” She never could bear to talk about those lonely, anxious hours. “But Raymond is a relation. And he’s here, being much too patient. I wish we could do something about it.”

“I have,” said Richard. He pushed aside his plate and sat back with an air of complacency, although it is doubtful if his machinations had been prompted by much altruism. “I’ve offered Johanna to Saladin’s nephew.”

Berengaria sat staring at him. “I can’t believe you’re serious—”

“I don’t suppose Saladin can either,” chuckled Richard. “But Bohadin and the rest of them were tremendously impressed. It ought to flatter them into signing a truce, and if I know anything about Joan she’ll go off in a tearing rage and marry Raymond to-morrow.”

They couldn’t pursue the conversation because Raymond had just returned from Jaffa and Johanna came to the King’s tent with him, eager for news. But all Richard wanted to hear about was reinforcements. How many could they spare?

Raymond produced a list which he laid reluctantly at Richard’s elbow. “What, only a paltry hundred!” exclaimed Johanna, reading it over his shoulder, and Richard looked up for some sort of explanation. His hands shook with ague, crackling the parchment as he held it. “I know Philip’s desertion must make some difference—” he began bleakly.

“I wish to God Philip were the only one!” burst out Raymond.

Richard slid back in his chair, steadying his hands on the arms of it. “What d’you mean?” he demanded.

“It’s this sea-board policy,” explained Raymond, hating to find a flaw in a friend’s best stroke of genius. “You see, Richard, with ships plying all the time between here and Cyprus it’s so fatally easy for fellows to slip away when they’re fed up. Back to Marseilles or Venice or anywhere.”

Richard saw the flaw; but instantly he blamed Philip. “And how long has Capet’s craven example been rotting my armies?” he growled between set teeth.

“It seems they’ve been slipping away by night—in twos and threes—ever since you came up here.”

“But what the hell are the staff people at Jaffa doing? Can’t they put a stop to it?”

“They do their best,” reported Raymond. “But they haven’t your pull. They didn’t take Jaffa, for instance, by bluffing the garrison into believing they’d an army instead of half a dozen knights at their heels—and that appears to be the sort of joke your queer subjects understand.”

“You see, my dear,” said Johanna, “they honestly believe your life is charmed so they’d follow you anywhere.”

“Then I certainly can’t afford to hang about here any longer—rain or no rain,” decided Richard. He got up, without his usual alacrity, and asked now many men had died of fever since he had been gone.

“At least a fifth, Sir,” estimated Blondel.

“So even if this list of reinforcements were twice as long, we should still lack men as well as money.” Richard looked round the little group of intimates whom he trusted. “You know, don’t you, that I was fool enough to lend Philip some? I thought I could bribe him to stay—the way I bribed him about Ann. And now, God curse him, he’s made off with men and money and ships. And Jerusalem still stands.”

It was the first time any of them had heard that note of bitterness in his voice. He had endured jealousies and disappointments and news of treachery at home, and through it all he had kept unfalteringly cheerful. Right from the first they had looked to him for encouragement. When their ships were storm-tossed they had been heartened by the steady light from his masthead. And now, for the first time, it was as if they peered through the hazardous mists of the future and found that cheerful light grown dim.

It was more than Blondel could stand. “Sir, at Arsouf you killed seven thousand and the odds were on the enemy,” he reminded his master. “We are ready to start to-morrow—every one of us. The men know that you—and you alone—can take Jerusalem.”

Richard would have given anything at that moment for the same conviction. He turned to the only one of them who had been crusading before. “Look here, Raymond, we must decide this here and now. Every day we waste is costing us men and money, and—what with the weather and subsidising half the French army—we can’t hold out here much longer. It seems to me the position is this. Either we must push on to Jerusalem at once or we must conclude this truce and turn back and consolidate our position on the coast—with a view, of course, of returning here in the Spring.”

Raymond was a good man to appeal to in a quandary because he never let his decisions get mixed up with his desires. He faced Richard squarely across the table. “In my opinion it’s impossible to take Jerusalem now,” he said.

Richard took the blow unflinchingly. “Why?” he asked tersely.

“For one thing, it’s the wrong season. Every approach would be a quagmire. You’d never get your war machines up there.” It seemed so maddening that they should have sweltered across thirsty deserts for months only to be balked by too much water now! “And then,” added Raymond, “there’s the unique position of the city itself.”

“Draw me a plan of it,” said Richard.

Raymond looked up in surprise. “One forgets you’ve never seen it,” he said.

But Richard was already helping Blondel to clear a space by the entrance. “Here in the sand—where the light’s good,” he said.