Crusader Captive (9 page)

She soon discovered he was a wealth of information on diverse topics ranging from political maneuverings to the latest ladies’ fashions to the controversy swirling around Eleanor of Aquitaine.

“It’s true?” Jocelyn gasped. “The Pope will give her an annulment from Louis of France?”

“So it’s rumored, although it was Louis who petitioned for the dissolution of their marriage. Even kings don’t like to wear horns apparently.”

The reasons behind the annulment went well beyond Eleanor’s supposed affair with her uncle, of course. In their fifteen years of marriage, the queen had born Louis two daughters but no son and heir. Moreover, from all accounts the French king was as meek and pious as his wife was strong-willed and worldly.

“It’s said she’s already planning marriage to Henry of Anjou,” Simon commented. “Soon, if she and Henry have their way, to be king of England.”

Envy and an almost choking wish that she could emulate the redoubtable Eleanor imbued Jocelyn’s response. “Now there,” she said fiercely, “is a woman who rules her own fate.”

“She does, indeed.”

They rode in silence for a few moments before Jocelyn broke it.

“Eleanor’s cousin and supposed lover, Raymond, fell in the battle for Inab, and the infidels sent his head in a silver box as a gift to the caliph of Baghdad.”

“The same battle in which we lost Edessa and much of Antioch,” Simon commented grimly.

“The very same.” She slanted him a quick glance. “Baldwin has sworn to recover all the lost territories. As have the patriarch of Jerusalem and the grand masters of both the Templars and the Hospitallers. You will see much fighting in the months to come.”

It was his turn to shrug. “Fighting is what I know.”

And all he was likely to know, she acknowledged with a tightness in her chest. Except, of course, the honor and glory of serving God. He would have no wife. No sons to carry on his name. No daughters to comfort him when he grew too old to swing a sword.

Longing swift and sharp pierced Jocelyn’s breast. How she ached to wed a knight like Simon de Rhys! One who would give her sons and daughters strong and steady of purpose. A knight honorable to a fault, she added on a smothered sigh.

She could not but wonder at the twists of fate that had bound him to a dissolute father’s vow and her to a king who would deliver her like a sack of gold besants to a would-be ally.

The irony of their respective positions dogged her thoughts for the rest of that day and into the night. It was still with her when her cavalcade topped a rise and the walls of Jerusalem appeared in the distance.

The sight of those golden-hued walls both humbled Simon and filled him with awe. This city was the goal of every pilgrim, every Crusader. It was why they left all that was familiar, why they traveled so many thousands of leagues and endured such hardships. And why he would spend the rest of his life with sword in hand, defending the holy sites within its encircling walls.

He could see the massive round dome of the mosque that the Crusaders had rechristened the Temple of Moriah when they retook the city during the First Crusade. Within a stone’s throw of that, he knew, was the Western Wall. It was all that remained of Solomon’s second temple, destroyed by the Romans along with the rest of Jerusalem some seventy years after the death of Christ.

And adjacent to the wall, he thought with a quickening of his pulse, was the building that housed the headquarters of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. He knew well the rumors that swirled about the order’s chosen site. Some said the first Grand Master had petitioned for just that location. Others suggested the Templars had tunneled through the wall in search of the Ark of the Covenant reputedly hidden from the Romans so many centuries ago. Still others whispered that they’d found the sacred relic and secreted it away in one of their great fortresses so it might be kept safe.

Simon had no idea as to the truth of any of these rumors, but the fact that he, too, would soon join this world-renowned order of warrior monks flooded him with both awe and a secret dismay.

He speared a glance at the woman beside him. Until she’d burst into his life, he’d resigned himself to becoming a Knight Templar. With some regrets, to be sure, but none that he could not live with. Now he would have to work doubly hard to empty his mind of the raw, carnal desire just the memory of her would rouse in him. His jaw tight, he turned his attention back to the great dome.

Using it as a beacon, he jostled for space so their entourage might take the road that led to the fabled Lion’s Gate. The way was so crowded with pilgrims and merchants and knights and mendicant monks begging alms for the poor that when the gates burst open and a heavily armed troop emerged, the throngs of wayfarers had to leap out of the way.

Simon had no difficulty recognizing the royal standard fluttering at the head of the column. It displayed the same large cross and four smaller crosses as the seal on the missive Jocelyn had received.

“That’s the king’s standard,” he said with a sudden tightening in his chest.

“I see it,” she replied tersely.

Two standards flanked the king’s pennant. The one on the left showed a gilded swan on a field of blue. Jocelyn identified it for him with a low exclamation.

“That’s Queen Melisande’s standard. She rides with her son.”

The banner fluttering on the other side of the king’s was the Beauseant of the Knights Templar. Beau for “noble” or “grand.” Seant translated “to be.” Both a symbol and a cry to battle, the banner’s simple design of a plain white field above an equally plain field of black was recognized by friends and feared by foes throughout the known world. As long as the Beauseant flew, no Templar would quit the battlefield. And as long as a single Templar stood bloody but unconquered, the Beauseant would fly.

That flag represented Simon’s destiny. Everything he would relinquish in the secular world. Everything he would gain in the spiritual. Never before had he felt so torn between those two realms.

When the thundering cavalcade approached their small entourage, he spotted a heavily armored knight in the lead. A gold coronet decorated his helm. It sparkled in the afternoon light when the man drew rein mere yards away. With a jangle of arms and shields, the rest of the troop followed his lead.

“Lady Jocelyn!”

She bowed her head. “My liege.”

So this was Baldwin, the son and grandson of kings. Simon formed a swift impression of a bold, handsome face and shoulder-length gold-red hair showing beneath the helm. He should have hacked it off, Simon thought dispassionately. That hair would mark him as a target as surely as the gold coronet.

The woman beside the king possessed older but no less striking features. Despite the lines at the corners of her eyes, Queen Melisande exuded the vitality of a woman half her years. But it was the man on Baldwin’s right who riveted Simon’s attention.

Bernard de Tremelay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Thin to the point of desiccation, de Tremelay wore a square helm, a coat and hood of finely polished mail and the Templar’s white surcoat emblazoned with a red cross. His eyes seemed to burn everything they touched. Simon felt their searing heat before the king’s terse question reclaimed his attention.

“Why are you here, lady? Did I not send word that you were to ready yourself for a journey to Damascus?”

“You did, sir, but I’ve come to speak with you about that.”

“You’ve made your feelings about marriage to the emir clear enough,” the king snapped. “I have neither the time nor the desire to discuss it with you yet again.”

The whip in his voice drew Jocelyn’s brows together, but she forebore to press the issue. Instead, her gaze swept the heavily armed troop.

“May I ask why you’re so pressed, sir? What has occurred?”

“The Fatamids have taken Blanche Garde.”

“By all the—!” she gasped. “Blanche Garde is one of the strongest keeps in the kingdom. How could it fall?”

“We’re told it was by treachery within,” the king answered grimly. “We go now to retake it.”

Jocelyn didn’t so much as hesitate. “I’ll go as well.”

“No, lady. We must needs ride hard and fast. You will remain here in Jerusalem.”

The tempered steel Simon had glimpsed when she’d urged her mount onto a rickety wooden bridge surfaced once again. She glanced from the king to his mother and back again. She didn’t state outright that she could ride as hard and fast as Queen Melisande, but the implication was clear to all. Then the Lady of Fortemur showed her colors.

“One scribbled line from me will put twenty mounted knights, a company of archers and a full complement of foot soldiers to arms. If my men know I ride with you, my liege, they will not eat or sleep until they reach my side.”

The truth of her words weren’t lost on either the king or his mother. Vassals owed their overlord only a specified number of men-at-arms, and then only for an agreed-upon number of days each year. Such arrangements made fielding an army on short notice difficult at best. Baldwin was not such a fool as to dismiss this chance to augment his hurriedly assembled forces.

“Then you will ride with me, lady.” His glance shifted to Simon. “Is this one of your knights? I recognize him not.”

“Allow me to present Simon de Rhys, Your Majesty. He’s newly come to Outremer.”

“De Rhys?”

Simon stiffened as the king’s shrewd eyes measured him up and down. To his relief, it appeared the rumors concerning Gervase de Rhys had not yet reached his ear.

“Have you sworn allegiance to Lady Jocelyn, de Rhys? Or do you hope to serve the Crown?”

“I would serve her or you gladly, sir.”

None but Jocelyn knew what it cost him to continue. He couldn’t look at her as he did.

“But I am pledged to the Knights of the Temple.”

The Grand Master leaned around the king to give Simon a sharp glance. “You are an aspirant to our order?”

“I am, Your Grace.”

“Why did you not join before you took ship for Outremer?”

“There was not time to undergo the initiation.”

“Nor is there time now,” the king said, impatient to be on his way. “You may attend to the matter once we retake Blanche Garde, de Rhys. Betimes, Lady Jocelyn has seen fit to make you captain of her guard. You will continue in that capacity until relieved of your charge.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you, Lady Jocelyn, will attach yourself to my lady mother’s train. Now, for the sake of my kingdom and the God we all serve, let us away!”

Jocelyn took only enough time to pen a hurried note to Sir Hugh and pluck the few things from her traveling trunk that she deemed necessary. She sent Lady Beatrix back to Fortemur with the note, the two pages and sufficient guard to see them safe. The queen’s entourage included more than enough women and pages to see to her needs.

Then she and Simon and the remainder of her troop fell into place for what they knew would be a grueling ride.

Chapter Nine

B
lanche Garde. The White Guard.

The name suited it, Simon decided when he drew rein on a distant rise and surveyed the fortress crowning a high, chalky outcropping. He was drenched in sweat and caked with grime from a journey that had covered more than twenty leagues in just over twenty-four hours. Yet he needed little more than a glance to appreciate the truth of King Baldwin’s assessment. The castle could only have been taken by treachery. Its walls were too strong, its hilltop position too commanding.

“By the bones of St. John!”

The smothered exclamation came from young Will Farrier. For all his lack of experience ahorse, the lad had managed to keep up during the ride. He would ache clear to his soul when at last they made camp, though.

“Are those…?” He swiped his tongue over dust-caked lips and gaped at the plumes of black smoke rising from within Blanche Garde’s massive curtain wall. “Are those funeral pyres?”

Simon dipped his chin in a curt nod. He’d seen his share and more of such pyres. They were lit to burn the corpses of those who’d fallen in battle or been put to the sword afterward. The dead must needs be disposed of quickly in heat such as this to prevent pestilence or disease. From the number of black plumes, it appeared that few of Blanche Garde’s defenders had survived the surprise attack.

He dragged his gaze from the curling smoke to the army he’d ridden with. It was separating into two columns to take up positions surrounding the chalky prominence Blanche Garde occupied. The king’s forces were as yet too few to launch a full-scale assault. Until more of his barons arrived to augment the ranks and his engineers had constructed the necessary siege engines and scaling towers, all Baldwin could do was contain the enemy within Blanche Garde’s walls and attempt to negotiate a surrender.

There was little chance of that, Simon guessed. The very fact that the Fatamids had resorted to trickery to take the castle suggested it must have been well supplied to withstand a long siege. Those same supplies would now fortify Blanche Garde’s occupiers for months, if not years.

His thoughts filling with strategies and tactics employed during a siege, Simon signaled to Fortemur’s contingent to follow him. Moments later he staked claim to a campsite close to a copse of almond trees. The thick-trunked trees would provide shade as well as defense. More to the point, they were fed by a tickling, rock-strewn spring that would slake the raging thirst of both man and beast.

Once he’d set them to constructing temporary shelters and had put Will to work currying the tired horses, he shed his helmet, pushed back his mailed hood and went to see how Jocelyn fared.

He found her without much difficulty. The king’s men had pitched Baldwin’s red-and-yellow-striped tent on a rise that gave a clear view of the hilltop fortress. His mother’s blue tent was lavishly embroidered with gilded swans and sat farther back behind the lines. The Templars, Simon saw, had taken up a position opposite the castle’s main sally port so they might be the first line of defense against any attack launched by those who now held Blanche Garde.

Although the king had set such a pace that it would be at least another day, maybe two, before the supply wagons caught up, his keen-eyed archers had brought down doe, wild boar, quail and rabbits en route. The king’s marshal had also requisitioned olives, fruits, ale and grain from the farms and villages they’d passed through. As a consequence, meat already sizzled on spits and a small army of pages and squires hurried about the camp seeing to their masters’ needs. Simon stopped one wearing the queen’s colors outside the blue-flocked tent.

“You, lad. Inquire within of the Lady Jocelyn of Fortemur. Tell her Simon de Rhys would speak with her.”

The page ducked inside the tent. He ducked out again some moments later and held the flap up for Jocelyn to emerge.

Simon could not believe the hunger that reared up and clawed at him like a sharp-taloned beast. He had but to look at her to feel his heart jerk and his breath slide back down his throat.

She’d washed off her travel grime and tamed her hair by parting it in the center and catching the sides back. She still wore her traveling gown but had shed her cloak. In the early-evening light her lips had the hue of a ripe peach. The need to taste them put a brusque edge to his words.

“Are you well disposed, lady?”

“Well enough.” She gave the tent behind her a rueful glance. “Melisande has ridden the length and breadth of this kingdom a dozen times or more during her years as both queen and regent. She’s a seasoned campaigner. You need not fear for my comfort or safety.”

Simon had to admit the times bred remarkable women. Like Eleanor of Aquitaine, Melisande of Jerusalem had more than proved herself. Daughter to one king, mother to another, she’d governed a kingdom beset by enemies on all sides for more than two decades.

Jocelyn of Fortemur was bred of the same stock. So Simon wasn’t surprised that she was more concerned about her people’s comfort than her own.

“What of my men? Where are they positioned?”

He gestured toward the stand of almond trees fed by the rocky creek. “They’re there, just beyond that copse.”

“Show me.”

They wove their way past hastily erected tents and shelters to the trees. Their leaves were a rubbery green, their trunks were as thick around as a baker’s midsection. Simon took Jocelyn’s arm to help her navigate the uneven ground, then stood quietly while she conferred with the sergeant of her guard.

“Sir Simon made sure we are well provisioned,” the burly lancer assured her. “We have ale and meats and feed for the horses and mules.”

She turned to the youth hauling a bucket of water from the stream. “And you, Will? How do you fare in your new duties as squire?”

The farrier’s son made a gallant attempt at a smile. “I ache from my head to my toes, lady. Just as Sir Simon promised I would.”

“You’ll ache more before this is done, I fear.”

“So I am told.”

Jocelyn didn’t miss the lad’s quick, deferential glance at his new master. She could see it had taken de Rhys only a few days to earn his respect and that of her small troop.

Even less to earn hers.

She couldn’t help but think of how it had taken him mere hours to change from the filthy, ragtag slave she’d purchased in El-Arish to the steel-voiced knight who’d ordered her to remove both her clothing and his. To this day Jocelyn wasn’t sure how he’d turned the tables on her so swiftly.

Now he was back in his own milieu. He ordered the disposition of her men with the instinctive air of one used to command. They sensed that he knew whereof he spoke and followed without hesitation where he led.

Confident that she could leave them in his care, she addressed the sergeant of her guard once more. “Sir Hugh should arrive late this night or early in the morning with supplies and reinforcements.”

“Aye, lady. Sir Simon told us.”

“Until the morrow, then.”

“Until the morrow. God keep you.”

Simon fell in beside her as they retraced their steps. Smiling, she commented on her observation that he’d won the trust of her men.

“Your name falls readily from their lips.”

“Not nearly as often as yours does.” He held a branch aside for her. “They do you credit, lady. They’re well trained and quick to follow orders.”

“That’s more Sir Hugh’s doing than mine.”

“I beg to differ. Everyone in a keep, from the boys who muck the stables to the most senior knight, take their tone from their lord. Or in this case, their lady.”

She acknowledged the truth of his comment with a shrug that in no way made light of the burden she carried night and day. She’d been born to high honors. They were her right, and her constant, unceasing responsibility.

Her steps slowed and she paused in a patch of shade. In truth she was in no great hurry to return to the queen’s tent. It was a noisy, crowded place. The nobles who’d supported Melisande in her struggle to hold on to the reins of power still deferred to her judgment. Her son’s adherents were no less loath to seek the advice of one who’d ruled so wisely for so many years. Even Baldwin had made an appearance at his mother’s tent soon after they’d encamped, with promises to return again to share the evening meal.

When he did, Jocelyn would ask to speak privately with him. She hadn’t forgotten the reason for her hasty journey. How could she? With this latest incursion by the Fatamids, an alliance with the Emir of Damascus had become even more crucial. Her chest went tight at the thought of the firestorm that would erupt when she revealed her altered state and—she prayed!—unsuitability as a bride for Ali ben Haydar.

Swallowing her fears, she ran a palm over the scaly bark of a low-hanging branch and lifted her gaze to Simon’s. He’d removed his helmet and pushed back his mail hood, leaving his hair to stand in sweaty spikes. She had to dig her nails into the bark to keep from reaching up to smooth the strands.

“Will you remove to the Templars’ camp when Sir Hugh arrives?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. They both knew they’d been gifted by these few extra days together. They dared not tempt fate by demanding more.

“I think it best.”

“Do you…? Do you wish me to ask the king if he’ll stand sponsor to you with the Grand Master? It would speed your initiation.”

The blue eyes looking down into her darkened. “I can’t ask more of you than you’ve already given me.”

How she ached for this man’s touch. Longed for his kiss. Was she so perverse that she wanted only what she could not have?

“I could give you more, Simon.” The words spilled out before she could stop them. “I could beg the king for a different boon. Ask him to speak with the Grand Master about releasing you from your father’s vow.”

She saw hope flare in his eyes, swiftly come and just as swiftly gone.

“I won’t forswear myself.”

His insistence on clinging to the shreds of his father’s honor stirred a welter of most contradictory emotions in Jocelyn’s breast. Admiration and frustration. Pride and despair. Atop all swirled the realization that by holding fast to his vow he would be lost to her forever.

She’d been raised by a grandsire who would cut off his arm before he would lift a sword against his sworn liege. Three days ago she would have wagered all she owned that her grandfather’s blood ran true in her. Never had she dreamed that she would ask—or allow—a man to go back on an oath once given. Yet she couldn’t hold in an urgent plea that he rethink his obligation.

“You’re not responsible for your father’s sins, Simon.”

When he stood stubbornly silent, her frustration flared into reckless determination. She pressed her hips against the low-hanging branch, tipped her head and laid her palms on his broad chest.

“Nor should you allow him to bind you to a life of celibacy.”

Still he wouldn’t speak. Goaded, she dug her fingertips in the leather surcoat covering his mail.

“You’ve given me a taste of the pleasures a man and woman may share. Do you not wish to show me more? Do you not want me, as you’ve made me want you?”

Hundreds of armed men were camped within shouting distance. Smoke from their cook fires and from the pyres of Blanche Garde drifted on the air. Yet the thick branches and screen of green, rubbery leaves gave her the illusion that there were only the two of them. Alone. Together. This one last time.

“Let me speak to the king,” Jocelyn pleaded. “Or to the queen. If you prove yourself here, they would grant you a holding. You could take a wife. Have sons and daughters to give you comfort. Hell’s teeth, Simon, don’t you want someone who will love you and—”

With a snarl, he fisted his hands around her upper arms.

“Yes, I want that! And you, Jocelyn. I ache for you. So much I must needs use every ounce of my will to keep from spinning you around, bending you over that branch and dragging up your skirts so I might bury myself in your hot, wet flesh. Is that what you wish to hear?”

It was! Of a certainty, it was!

Her triumph must have shown in her eyes because the face so close to her own hardened. She read his intent even as he swooped down to cover her mouth with his.

The kiss was meant to punish, and it did. His lips ground against hers. His fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arms. She felt their bite before he loosed his hands and banded an arm around her waist. Widening his stance, he hauled her hard against his chest.

Too late Jocelyn realized she’d prodded a sleeping dragon. She couldn’t escape its ferocious assault. Nor, she admitted as her blood pounded in her veins, did she wish to.

This wasn’t the cold, dispassionate knight who’d ordered her to remove her robes. Nor yet the skilled lover who’d brought her to such exquisite pleasure. This was a man with his blood up. One who at the least sign of surrender would take her as violently as he’d threatened.

She came within a hairbreadth of that surrender. Every part of her ached to feel again the exquisite torment of his fingers stroking her flesh. His rigid shaft stretching her. His length filling her.

Yet even as she opened her mouth to the brutal assault of his tongue and teeth, she knew she couldn’t destroy what she admired most in this man. Whether she willed it or not, he held his honor dearer than his life. And would come to hate her if she stripped it from him.

Gasping, she tried to pull away. He countered by shoving a hand through her hair to hold her head still. His mouth took hers.

“Simon!” Jocelyn broke her lips away as she pounded his unyielding form. “Simon, I beg you…”

It took some moments for her protests to pierce his unleashed lust. When they did, his head came up. His eyes burned into hers for long moments before he thrust her away almost violently.

“Get you back to the queen’s tent.”

She couldn’t leave him like this. In a futile effort to soothe the fearsome creature she’d released from its chains, she held out a hand.

“Simon…”

“Now, woman!”

Jocelyn could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d cowered in the face of danger. This was one of them. Grasping her skirts in shaking hands, she fled the copse of almond trees.