Devil's Bargain (27 page)

“Would the successor be required to take the bride who bears the blood-right?”

“It would be politic,” she said, “and practical as well. Her dowry is rich. But if that revolts you, there are convents in plenty that would be glad to count a queen among their number—and all the property that she can bring as her dower to God.”

“That would be a waste,” he mused not entirely reluctantly, “of lands and riches. Of beauty and wit, and I think a little wisdom.”

“She’s wise enough,” Eleanor said with a wave of dismissal. “Do you want her, then? Would you be willing to take her on condition that you leave the crown to Richard for as long as he stays in this country?”

“That could rouse dissension,” Henry said, “and rally people to what they fancy is my cause.”

“So it could,” said Eleanor. “She’s best disposed of, then, in a suitably cloistered order, until the time is ripe to bring her out and attach her blood-right to your claim.”

“She won’t consent,” Henry said. “I believe she has no calling to religion.”

“Consent can be won,” Eleanor said with dangerous gentleness. “A vocation can be found even in the most barren heart. If later it proves that both consent and calling were false, why then, what gratitude might she offer the knight who rides to her rescue?”

“You do think of everything, lady,” Henry said.

“Of course I do,” said Eleanor. “I’ve learned the hard way to leave nothing to chance—and if I must gamble, I always leave an escape. I’ve served my last day in prison, in this life or any other.”

Yet you would imprison her,
Henry thought, but he did not dare to say it.

It was well he held his tongue. Eleanor said, “We have a bargain, then. Richard takes Jerusalem and gains the crown by acclamation. You stand heir to him until he goes back into the west. Then the kingdom is yours.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime,” said Eleanor, “the lady of Jerusalem will retire to a convent to repent her sins and to mourn the untimely death of her husband, in which her sin of sloth played a part. The kingdom will be held in the hands of its High Court, such of it as is still left, with the aid and assistance of the lords of the Crusade. Of course the King of the English will speak strongly
there, and his words will be heard, and better yet, heeded. There will be no question, once Jerusalem is taken, as to who is best fit to bear the crown and the title.”

Henry bowed to her will. “Go,” she said. “Shine in council. The king should be seen, and the king’s heir. I’ll come when the two of you have charmed them sufficiently.”

He left her sitting still while her maid settled her wimple and veil at the perfect angle. She was the living image of a queen. The Crusade would bow before her as Henry had. How could it not? Where Eleanor was, no lesser will could prevail.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-NINE

T
he army of the Franks spread over the stony hills beyond Beit Nuba, a day’s march from Jerusalem. Heat shimmered over them, even so close to sunrise; a pall of dust sat above them, buzzing with flies.

And yet they were in high good humor; they laughed and sang in the shade of their tents, sharing out a ration of wine that the king had ordered for them. Their numbers were about to double, rumor had it: the young lord Henry was coming from Tyre by way of Acre, with all of the French forces and a company of knights newly come from England and Normandy—fresh strength, fresh steel, fresh horses to strengthen the Crusade.

That was Eleanor’s doing. Duke Hugh, it was said, had contemplated seizing Tyre and holding it against Richard, but in Eleanor’s presence he had never gone beyond the thought. He had taken the cross anew at the feast of the Ascension, side by side with Henry of Champagne.

“Ah, Mother,” said Richard when he heard. “What would I have done without you?”

He was in even greater good humor than his men. He still would not look on Jerusalem—but he would see it soon. Today he was to receive a familiar guest: the lord Saphadin had come one last time from the sultan with offers of settlement and peace.

Sioned had been up a little earlier than usual; she who was never ill had been drastically indisposed, although it passed within an hour of waking. She found herself ravenous then, and went looking for whatever the cooks might have saved for her.

She knew that Ahmad was coming to the camp today. She had not seen him in the flesh since she went to Tyre, though she had seen him often in dreams. They were on opposite sides of the war again. She found it did not grieve her as much as it would have once. She feared for his life each time he rode on a raid, but she would have done that if he had been a Christian knight. The love between them was unshakable. One day, if they both lived, they would be together. That day would be soon, the gods willing.

There was a peculiar pleasure in being more or less anonymous in trousers and headdress, watching him ride in as she had the first time, the greater part of a year before. She loved the way he sat on a horse, the way he carried his head high in its turbaned helmet, the way he acknowledged greetings with a princely bow and now and then a swift smile. They loved him here, enemy though he was; he was a man after their own heart, a knight and a warrior, a worthy friend and adversary to the Lionheart.

He had come with a handful of his sons, young men all stamped with the familiar lines of his face. She had not seen so many of them together before. Had he brought them for her benefit? They were a fine pride of young lions, clear-eyed and light on their feet, with a watchful look as befit soldiers on guard about their lord, but no shrinking of fear.

Richard plucked the father from the midst of them and pulled him into an exuberant embrace. “Saphadin! My good friend! It’s splendid to see you again.”

Ahmad returned the embrace with somewhat less
exuberance but no less cordiality. “Malik Ric. You look well.” He said it in Norman French, and fluently enough, too, which made Richard roar with delight.

“You’ve been studying! We’ll make a Frank of you yet.”

“Not in this lifetime,” said Ahmad, but with a smile.

Richard carried him off to the council. Sioned meant to be there, but she lingered for a little while to take the measure of his sons. Most of them were mortal, but two—the oldest and the youngest—shimmered with magic. She thought she saw in them a memory of Safiyah as well as of their father.

The thought made her smile. Her morning’s indisposition was gone, but there was an odd warmth in her belly. Her hand came to rest over it.

She started. It could not be. She could not—

And why not? She knew how children were made. She had done a great deal of it in that place out of time. It would have been more astonishing if nothing had come of it, than that something evidently had.

She had been taking pleasure in seeing him without his knowing it, but she had had every intention of stealing a moment to speak with him when he was done with Richard. Now she wondered if she should approach him at all. They shared the secret of their time together, a secret she had told to no one but Henry. To everyone else she had said only that she was safe in the care of a friend. Most, Richard among them, had concluded that Henry had made some arrangement to spirit her out of Tyre; it was then supposed that she had been kept in a house of religion until Conrad was safely dead.

It was certainly a more credible story than the truth. Henry, bless him, had seen the sense in keeping silence. That silence now was habit, a habit she had been inclined to break, at least in Ahmad’s presence. But this new secret changed things.

She wanted it to herself for a while. Not too long—even the voluminous garments she could hide in would not conceal it forever—but long enough to understand what she felt. Whether it was joy or apprehension; delight or dread; or a mingling of all of them.

She had meant to slip into the council under the canopy by Richard’s tent. Instead she went back to the surgeons’ tents, where there was occupation enough, preparing medicines and bandages for the battle that was coming.

It was harder than she had expected. To know that he was in the camp and to turn willfully away from him was a wrenching in her middle. But that same middle had roiled with morning sickness a bare hour before, and the memory bolstered her determination to be alone. He should know; he deserved to know. But not for a while.

The lord Saphadin had been studying the
langue d’oc
, but he was not yet sure enough of his knowledge to trust himself in negotiations. He trusted Mustafa for that, as Richard did, in an easy colloquy that rambled all around the doings of every common acquaintance, the weather, the hunting, the state of the roads, until it came at long last to the point.

“I’ve had enough of dallying about,” Richard said. “It’s time to do what I came for. I’m taking the Holy Sepulcher.”

“It is time,” Saphadin agreed, “though maybe we can settle it even now without bloodshed.”

“That would be a pleasant outcome,” Richard said. “What is your brother offering?”

“That you come in peace,” Saphadin said, “and take charge of the Holy Sepulcher. We keep the Dome of the Rock and the east of Jerusalem. From here to the sea, you keep, and from Tyre to Jaffa. We keep Ascalon and all lands north of Tyre and west of Jerusalem. Pilgrims have free passage through all the lands, and caravans pass unmolested.”

“Tempting,” said Richard, actually managing to sound as if he meant it. “Fair, in its way. How would we seal it? Meet in the Holy City and pray at one another’s shrines?”

“That would do,” said Saphadin. “We might also, in time, consider such an alliance as you proposed before. The Queen of Sicily objected too strongly to an infidel marriage, but perhaps another lady of your people would be amenable to a match.”

“That’s always a possibility,” Richard said. “Do you have any particular lady in mind?”

Saphadin lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I might. When all else is settled, we’ll speak of it. Yes?”

“Yes,” said Richard without evident suspicion. Mustafa had not realized he was holding his breath until he suddenly remembered to breathe.

That was all, in the end, that they had come to say. They took their time in parting, letting their conversation wind down as leisurely as it had arrived at its purpose. Maybe they were a little reluctant to part. The next time they met would be across a battlefield.

They both knew that. Saphadin declared that he would bring Richard’s agreement to his brother, but Richard would not keep the peace for much longer than it took Saphadin to reach Jerusalem. As soon as Henry arrived with his reinforcements, the attack would begin.

At length Saphadin drained his cup of sherbet, rose, and took his graceful leave. His escort was waiting. He did not dally—not precisely—but he took his time, carefully not looking about for someone whom he had been expecting. That person did not appear. Mustafa could not tell if he was disappointed. Certainly he was in no haste to ride away; when he did, he did it slowly, as if he had all the time in the world.

Mustafa was somewhat surprised himself. He had seen Sioned earlier, but not since the council began.

Whatever her reasons, they must have been sufficient to keep her away. He did not doubt that he would discover them in time. Like Saphadin, he was in no hurry. He had more than enough to preoccupy him elsewhere.

Richard yawned hugely and stretched, and peered at the sky beyond his canopy. There was not quite enough time for a hunt—whether he hunted gazelle or Turks. He could hold audience before dinner, he supposed, and then dine with his war council, and tell them what the sultan’s brother had said. It would be
good for a little amusement, and some speculation as to how matters would be settled later, after he had won Jerusalem.

But first he would take the cup of wine a servant was offering from the shelter of his tent. He did not drink wine when he entertained Muslims; it was a courtesy, and one they were grateful for. Sherbet was pleasant enough, but today he had a noble thirst. Wine lightly watered would quench it admirably.

He had not seen this servant before. It was an old man, greybearded, in the long soft shirt and loose trousers of this country. He served the wine with quiet grace, and a bow calculated to remind Richard of their respective stations.

Richard noticed servants. Most noblemen did not; servants were hands to fetch, that was all, and bodies to use as they saw fit. Richard had a spark of curiosity in him, to know their names and their kin and where they came from. He knew all the men who waited on him, both his squires and pages and the native servants who had come, some as captives, others of their free will.

This one did not look like a captive. He performed his service with the air of one who grants a favor, and waited with visible patience for Richard to drain the cup. It was good wine, not too heavily watered, and cold—cooled with snow as the sherbet had been. Richard drank it down and smacked his lips. “Good! Do I know you, sirrah? Are you newly come to the camp?”

“Very newly, majesty,” the man said. His French had a strange resonance to it, as if another voice rang beneath it, in another tongue. “Will you come within, majesty? We have fresh linen waiting, and a clean cotte.”

Richard was never averse to a change of clothes, especially in this heat. His guards were standing about, unconcerned. Mustafa had made himself scarce. There was no one else nearby to trouble him. “A bath? I don’t suppose that would be forthcoming as well?”

“Not immediately, majesty,” said the servant, “but if you would wait . . .”

“Never mind,” Richard said. “I’ll take the clean clothes and welcome.”

The servant bowed again, not quite low enough for mockery, and stood back to let him enter the tent.

The clothes were new indeed, and beautiful: fine white linen and crimson silk. Richard thought he recognized the silk from the last caravan he had taken.

As the old man dressed him, he said, “I don’t believe I’ve heard your name.”

The servant was kneeling in front of him, fastening the laces of his hose. Richard thought he saw the faint curve of a smile on the bearded lips. “You have heard it, majesty,” the old man said, “but not perhaps in this place.”

That was an easterner: forever mysterious. Richard had learned not to bellow in frustration; it only made these people more determined to be cryptic. Richard peered into the old man’s face. “I never forget a face,” he said. “I’ve never seen yours before.”

“You will see it again,” said the old man. His smile had widened. He dressed Richard in the cotte, deftly, while Richard stood scowling at him.

“You’re not a servant,” Richard said suddenly. “Tell me what—”

“Not this time, I think,” said the old man. He laid a golden collar about Richard’s shoulders, and held the coronet that he wore to feasts and councils. Richard, well trained by decades of servants, bent his head.

The old man crowned him as servants had done for time out of mind. But this was not the same. The weight of the coronet seemed unwontedly heavy, its clasp unusually cold. He met the old man’s eyes as once, on a day of purported ill omen in England, he had met the gaze of the archbishop who crowned him king.