Devil's Bargain (14 page)

“A beautiful young sister and a beautiful young cousin,” she said. “Isn’t it a little too obvious?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Richard said. “It’s so obvious as to be contemptible. While he’s sneering at me, you can see whatever is there to see.”

She had to nod at that, however reluctantly. “That’s almost clever.”

“Isn’t it? And I thought of it all by myself.”

She bared her teeth at him. “Don’t expect me to take you for an idiot. Suppose I do this for you. What do I get out of it?”

“My favor.”

“I already have that.”

“Little minx,” he said mildly. “I’ll give you a manor, then. Do you want one in England or in Anjou?”

“Give me one here,” she said, “when you take Jerusalem.”

His eyes widened slightly. Good: she had surprised him. “You’d stay?”

“If I can.”

“Done, then,” he said. And to his clerk: “Brother Hubert, write it down.”

“Also write,” Sioned said as the monk bent to his parchment, “that I will hold said manor in vassalage to my brother, Richard, and no other Christian lord or king; but if this land should be conquered again, I may choose to whom I give my fealty.”

The monk’s pen scratched busily. She had been holding her breath; she let it out. Richard had voiced no word of objection. Henry was regarding her with an odd expression, as if he had never seen her before.

She was used to that. She regarded them both with a bland expression. When the king’s decree was written and copied, signed and sealed, she took her copy of it and tucked it tidily away. “I’ll do as you ask,” she said then. “When do we go?”

“As soon as you can,” Richard said. “When you come to Acre, ask Joanna to fit you out in proper gear. You’ll go as a lady of substance and a king’s favorite; and you’ll look the part. I don’t want you coming in front of Conrad in your usual old rag of a thing, or worse yet, Turkish trousers.”

Trousers might intrigue the man, Sioned thought, but she held her tongue. In spite of herself, she was pleased with this embassy. She should be racked with guilt to abandon the sick and wounded, but it seemed she was as callow a soul as any
other. To be behind real walls, in real warmth, maybe even with the prospect of a bath . . . it would be bliss.

She resisted the urge to scratch at the inevitable crop of winter vermin. Richard, having got what he wanted from her, had turned back to Henry. She should listen: there were things she needed to know, nuances of politics that would serve her. But she was lost in contemplation of hot water on skin too long deprived of it.

A name brought her abruptly back to the matter at hand. “. . . Saphadin,” said Richard. “He may be there if Conrad really is plotting treachery with the sultan. He’s a tricky one; don’t try to out-wile him, you won’t succeed. Be simple, be transparent. Be the pretty fool that you seem to be.”

“I understand, uncle,” Henry said.

So did Sioned.
He
would be there. He knew her—too well. He would know what she was doing and how. If he told Conrad—

She had better hope that he did not, or better yet, that he was not there at all. For she did want to go. She did want to see Tyre.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

“S
weet saints!” said Henry. “You do clean up well.”

Sioned laughed. She had done a great deal of that since she left Ascalon: he truly was delightful company. Now that they were in Acre, in the swirl and sparkle of a proper royal court, the war and its miseries seemed impossibly remote.

No one was hungry here, or wet, or cold. The ladies lived in perfumed comfort. Whatever her pretensions to asceticism, Eleanor had no use for wanton displays of self-sacrifice.

Joanna had taken on with relish the task of turning Sioned into a lady. The bath had been as wonderful as Sioned had imagined it would be: a proper eastern bath, and properly thorough. When she emerged from it, she was subjected to the basilisk scrutiny of Joanna’s own personal maid. “A disaster,” that worthy woman decreed, “but salvageable. Chin up, child! Don’t slouch.”

Sioned obeyed before she had time to think. She was pushed and pulled, primped and preened, plucked and curled and painted until she did not recognize herself at all. But Henry was delighted. So, to her dismay, were too many others. He protected
her—and that delighted him, too. But she would have preferred to put on trousers again and retreat into Richard’s army.

“Courage,” Henry said. He had a quick eye and a soft heart. She resisted the urge to cling to his hand, but she was glad to let him stay at her side as she braved the court in her new guise.

This was war, in its way. She was fighting for her brother’s cause. Her armor was Byzantine silk; her weapons were her eyes and her smile. She tempered them here, in the forge of Eleanor’s court.

She still would have preferred sword and bow and a battle on a field. As splendid as they all insisted she looked, she was altogether unable to warble and simper like a proper court lady. She only knew how to speak plainly.

“Conrad won’t care,” Henry said when she had withdrawn from the fray, retreating to a quiet corner in the shadow of a pillar. “All you need do is be quiet and listen, and look beautiful. He’ll never know the difference.”

“I hadn’t heard that Conrad was a fool,” Sioned said with a touch of sharpness.

“Oh,” said Henry, “he’s not. But he does have an eye for a fine woman.”

“He’s a fool,” Sioned said.

Henry grinned at her. “For you he will be—he and half the men in his court. They’ll be in your brother’s camp before they know it.”

“That much I can hope for,” she said. She smoothed the crimson silk of her gown and drew as deep a breath as she could in lacings so tight. “Back to the practice field, sir.”

She held out her hand as she had seen one of the
pullani
ladies do, with an imperious flourish that made him laugh. He took it and kissed it and held it for a moment to his heart: light, no meaning in it, but still there was a fraction’s pause. Then the world went on its way again, and the court with it.

This gilded warfare was exhausting. By evening Sioned was ready to collapse, but when she came to the room that she
shared with three of Joanna’s ladies, there was a page waiting for her. He wore the livery of Aquitaine.

Her heart stuttered in her breast. It was foolish; the queen would hardly do her harm while she was in Richard’s service. Still, a summons from that lady was no trivial thing even for one of her own legitimate children. If one happened to be old Henry’s by-blow, with secrets to keep, then there was good reason to walk softly.

At least she was dressed for a royal audience. She swallowed a sigh and followed the page to Eleanor’s rooms.

The queen had left the court somewhat before Sioned had, and was now at ease, wrapped in a soft warm robe and seated by a brazier. One of her maids had been reading to her: Sioned heard a scrap of it. It was not what she would have called edifying, unless the romances of Provence could be said to instruct the listener in the arts of love.

Whether that remembrance of her own country had softened her mood, or whether she had set out to lay a trap, Eleanor was the soul of courtesy. “Lady Jeannette,” she said, casting Sioned’s name in her own tongue where evidently she found it more comfortable, “be welcome. Here, sit. Will you have wine?”

The wine was wine of Cyprus, rich and sweet, and mulled with spices. Sioned considered briefly that it might be poisoned, but Eleanor’s weapons were of another sort. She drank with pleasure, if sparingly—she would need her wits about her.

Eleanor began softly. “My son thinks highly of you,” she said.

“He trusts me,” said Sioned.

The queen’s brow arched. “I gather that trust is well placed.”

Sioned shrugged slightly. “I do what I can. He’s my brother and my king.”

“In that order?”

“Would you prefer the opposite?”

“He is my son and my king,” said Eleanor. She paused. “Indulge me now. Tell me what he sends you to Tyre to do.”

Sioned chose her words carefully. She was being examined like a pupil in a school. What the penalty would be for failure, she did not precisely know, but she had no intention of discovering it. “There are two contenders for the throne of Jerusalem—which though it may be fallen is still a rich prize, particularly if Richard wins it back. Guy, who lost both it and the royal wife who gave him the right to the title, has been insisting that he is still the crowned and consecrated king. But Conrad, who rules in Tyre, has married the late queen’s heir, the fair Isabella, and he contends that through that marriage he also took the right to call himself king.

“Guy is a fool,” said Sioned, “and a waster of kingdoms, but he comes from Anjou and is sworn in fealty to its count, who happens in this generation to be Richard. Conrad owes Richard nothing. He took Tyre and held it after Guy lost the kingdom, and he won altogether too many knights of the kingdom to his service. And now the Duke of Burgundy has taken the knights of France to him. There may be a war brewing—one that has nothing to do with the war between Christian and infidel.”

Eleanor nodded at the recital. “And your part is to seduce Conrad?”

That was bluntly spoken. Sioned resisted the temptation to be as blunt. “My part is to discover what he intends, and if I can, to dissuade him.”

“To seduce him.” Eleanor looked her up and down. “You do look the part. Can you play it as well?”

“Henry says I can, if I don’t talk.”

Eleanor’s laughter was melodious still, a bright ripple of sound. It startled Sioned into speechlessness. “Men,” said Eleanor, “are all alike. One glimmer of intelligence and they’re paralytic with terror.”

“Henry seems to control the horror well enough,” Sioned said.

The queen’s eyes sharpened. “You like my grandson?”

“I rather doubt he’s for me,” Sioned said dryly.

“Why not?”

“What can I bring him? A bag of medicines and a king’s trust?”

“Neither is entirely worthless.”

“Neither of them is a royal dowry.”

“Do you want that?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Do
you
?”

“No,” Sioned said. “Not for itself. For what it might buy me . . . maybe. If the prize is worth the price.”

“You have a clear eye and a hard head. And,” said Eleanor, “somewhat more than that. Is it true, what I hear? Have you been studying certain arts with certain of the infidels?”

Sioned went perfectly still. For all her pretensions to wariness, Eleanor had caught her off guard.

She must answer; silence would be more damning than a lie. But when she spoke, she chose to tell the truth. “You know I have, majesty.”

“Why?”

“Because I must,” Sioned answered.

Eleanor nodded as if in approval. “What irony,” she said, “that of all my children, only Geoffrey had the power; and a simple fever carried him off. Yet you who are none of mine are everything that I would have wished for in a child of my body.”

Sioned had her doubts of that, but she kept them to herself—even when the queen took her chin in those long fingers and tilted her face to the light.

“Beautiful,” mused Eleanor, “and gifted in the powers. Yet I barely noticed you. You’ve been avoiding me, yes? Are you afraid of me?”

Sioned could not nod; the queen held her too tightly. She lowered her eyelids in assent.

“Good,” said the queen, letting her go. “Fear is wise. Will you be continuing your studies?”

“If I can, majesty,” Sioned said.

“Do it,” said Eleanor. “Learn all that you can. Every weapon that they give you, you can turn to our purposes.”

“Do you think they would give me weapons? Would they be as foolish as that?”

“Use your beauty,” Eleanor said. “Use your gifts. Persuade them that you can be trusted.”

“Do you trust me?” Sioned asked her.

“Richard trusts you,” Eleanor said, “and I have means of assuring that his trust is not misplaced.”

Sioned bent her head to both the assurance and the threat. She offered no promises, took no oaths. Nor did Eleanor ask them of her—whether out of arrogance or wisdom, Sioned could not tell.

“Jerusalem will be ours by the summer,” Eleanor said. “Conrad may be part of it, or he may not. The choice is his.”

“And if he sets himself against Richard?”

Eleanor shrugged minutely. “He’s not a fool by any means, but he is ambitious. Ambition will be his downfall.” She sighed as if in sudden weariness. “Go, child. Serve your brother well.”

“Always,” said Sioned.

The queen’s expression hardened ever so slightly. “I do hope so. Go now. I must rest.”

Sioned did not doubt it. The power that had been pressing on her with almost invisible subtlety had grown immeasurably stronger just after Eleanor professed exhaustion.

It did not penetrate her wards, though it cost her something in both strength and composure to sustain them against it. Only her outer thoughts impinged on it, harmless and rather vapid, and touched with fear of the great sorceress.

The fear at least was real, though Sioned might have preferred to call it hearty respect. The queen was drawing power from the earth below, taking in darkness with the light. If she had devoted all of it to the matter of enlisting her late husband’s bastard in her magical army, Sioned would have had no hope of escape. But Sioned was a small concern among the many that engaged her.

Sioned staggered a little as she made her way to her room. The floor seemed unsteady underfoot. For a moment the world wavered and flowed. She was still in Acre, but there was no queen here; Eleanor was far away in England, and the Crusade, with all that it had hoped and fought for, was crumbling rapidly
into nothing. A world of what-ifs, she thought; a world as it might have been. A world she neither wanted nor sought, nor ever wished to live in.

Then, between one step and the next, the earth was still. She walked through the web of the queen’s wards in a country that the queen meant to conquer. Once she had conquered it, would she sail home? Or would she stay and rule? Did she herself know for certain which it would be?