Warrior's Song (26 page)

    "I have heard it said that you do not always agree with another military order, the Hospitalers."

    "And you find that strange, Lady Chandra? It is true, and the reasons for our disagreements precede my birth. If we take one side of an issue, you can be certain that the Hospitalers will take the other."

    "As Christians," Chandra said, "I believe we should all fight on the same side."

    Sir Elvan merely smiled. "Nothing, my lady, is ever so simple, I fear."

    "No," she said after a moment, nodding, "I think you are right."

    Chandra took her place beside her husband on the soft, down-filled pillows. Small sandalwood dining tables were set close together across the courtyard, a red-robed slave standing beside each of them. Along a long table at the far end of the courtyard, Prince Edward and Princess Eleanor sat with Ali ad-Din and King Hugh of Cyprus and Jerusalem. Although Edward wore a pleasant smile, he had a distracted air about him that seemed to Chandra to be shared by all of his nobles present tonight.

    She heard Roger de Clifford say to Jerval, "It seems that King Hugh has arranged a farewell banquet for himself tonight, Jerval. He is returning to Cyprus."

    "He should remain. He should show support for Prince Edward," Jerval said.

    "He cannot afford to remain here much longer, else he might lose Cyprus to his greedy barons."

    Chandra took a bite of the roasted lamb, then turned toward Jerval when he said, "I suppose you're right, Roger. Now that his barons have sent word that they will only serve in the defense of Cyprus, there is little reason for him to stay. Edward, at least, took it well. Though King Hugh had promised us men to defeat the Saracens, in truth, their numbers would not have added much."

    Chandra said, "I can scarce believe that a king has so little control over his kingdom. Methinks King Hugh should muzzle his barons."

    Roger de Clifford blinked in surprise. "I did not think you ladies had any interest in or knowledge of the matter."

    Chandra cocked an eyebrow. "Why would you think that, Sir Roger?"

    Jerval said, after a moment, "Where did you hear of our problems with the Cypriot barons, Chandra?"

    "From Ali ad-Din. I asked him why King Hugh of Cyprus was here with so few men."

    "He fears treachery, that's why," Eustace said. "What chance have a thousand men against the damned Sultan Baibars and his hordes of Saracen soldiers?"

    "Do not forget," Graelam de Moreton called out, "that the Venetians— our Christian brothers— are busily supplying Baibars with all the timber and metal he needs for his armaments. And the equally Christian Genoese supply them the slaves to build their weapons."

    "Do you know that when Edward reproved the merchants," Payn de Chaworth said, his brow knit in an angry frown, "they simply showed him their licenses from the High Court at Acre? By God, I would drive them all into the sea."

    Joanna de Chaworth, smiling at her husband with a lustful eye, interrupted the grim conversation. "I cannot get used to these white grains called sugar." She held up a sweetmeat made of dates and lemons, sticky with the sweet substance, for her husband's inspection. "I still cannot believe, my lord, that it will replace honey, as you keep telling me."

    Payn smiled, leaning toward his wife. "It is one of Palestine's main trade goods to the West, Joanna."

    The rich meal and heavy wine did not lighten the men's mood, and when Ali ad-Din called for the dancers, Jerval, Payn, and Roger de Clifford left the table to join the prince.

    Graelam de Moreton eased himself down beside Chandra. She did not move away from him because that would show fear. She had seen little of him since they had left England. In Sicily, if rumor was correct, he had amused himself by indulging freely in the women offered to the English nobles by King Charles. She eyed him, wanting to send her fist into his smiling face.

    "I don't like it when you smile," she said. "It means you are up to no good."

    "Ah, we will have to see about that, won't we? Do you enjoy the music, Chandra?"

    "I suppose it is music," Chandra said, the clacking cymbals and the tinkling bells still sounding strange, even after weeks of hearing them every waking hour. "Do you not wish to join the prince and my husband?"

    "Aye, perhaps in a moment. Is not the girl in the red veils Beri, Ali ad-Din's slave?"

    She nodded, frowning as she said, "It is a pity that such a lovely, soft-spoken girl must be a slave."

    He looked for a moment into his silver goblet, into the deep-red Cyprian wine, then said, "Doubtless even Beri has some amusement in her life."

    "I have seen what amusements you promise for women, Lord Graelam. But of course you look upon women— slaves or free— as naught but instruments for your pleasure, do you not?"

    He watched her for a long moment, before saying easily, "You still fear me."

    "I'm not afraid of you, my lord. I was merely thinking of Mary, the young girl you raped at Croyland."

    Graelam raised a black brow. "I did not wish to do it. I could think of nothing else to make you tell me where your brother was hidden."

    "She was innocent." Of course, it was too late now. She added, "The slave girl yon, Beri— I told her you were ruthless."

    "Fair enough. Your dagger, Chandra— my shoulder was raw for weeks, and each time I flexed my shoulder, I thought of you. Then, of course, when my men returned with your noble father's message, I found myself a bit angered." He shrugged his broad shoulders, adding, his voice deeper now, "Let me give you warning. We are in a treacherous land where men trade their souls to gain an advantage. You must take care."

    "Is that a threat, Lord Graelam?"

    "A threat? It is an interesting question, but one that is much too simple."

    "I have wondered why you are here."

    "The truth is that we are a pitiful lot. If you would know another truth, Chandra, my motive for being here is not quite as noble as it could be."

    "You wish for glory."

    "Glory?" His voice was incredulous. "By God, your father did you a great disservice. Take our lauded conquest of Acre. Be thankful your husband did not allow you in the fighting for this wretched city. In that, at least, I must admire him. You imagined the glory of our victory from a distance. I felt flies crawling over my face. The heat was so intense that I felt baked beneath my armor, and I was blinded by my own sweat. There is no glory in this hellhole, Chandra. Edward's noble cause is doomed; you have but to listen to know that. There is nothing in this miserable land save disease and death and treachery. Look yon at Ali ad-Din, our fawning host. He is as treacherous and ruthless as any of Baibars's emirs, as dishonorable as the damned Venetians and Genoese, and he licks Edward's boots only to ensure his own safety. Do not blind yourself with the myth of glory, Chandra."

    "I do not blind myself, Lord Graelam, particularly to your treachery."

    He laughed. "Your memory pleases me, Chandra." He shrugged, but his voice once again became serious. "Think on what I have said, though I imagine that your proud husband has told you much the same things."

    "Nay, Jerval said nothing of the fighting when we arrived at Acre."

    "But you saw his surcoat— it was covered with blood."

    "Aye, but it wasn't his blood. A man fights as he must— a woman as well. There is honor in fighting, Lord Graelam, if the man or woman fighting knows honor to his soul." She rose quickly. "Princess Eleanor is waving to me, my lord. I must attend her now."

    Graelam watched her walk gracefully toward the princess, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully on her back. It seemed that she hadn't yet heard that her husband had taken Beri to his bed. He had been told by Eustace de Leybrun, a kinsman of Jerval de Vernon's. Was it true?

    Edward looked about the faces of the nobles inside his pavilion and loosened the tie of his tunic. It was near to midnight, for Ali ad-Din's banquet had lingered long.

    "King Hugh is leaving shortly to return to Cyprus," he said.

    "Not that it much matters," Jerval said.

    "Christ, it is so infernally hot," Payn de Chaworth said.

    Edward felt as though he was drowning in his own sweat, but he said, "I understand that the Sultan Baibars considers us a sufficient threat to hold in his steel claws, at least for the moment." He suddenly slammed his fisted hand against his open palm. "What chance have we against Baibars?"

    Payn de Chaworth gave Edward a tired smile. "We must be patient."

    "Nay," Edward said, rising. "I will not sit idly here in Acre watching the bloody Genoese and Venetians trade all the wealth of Palestine to the damned Saracens."

    "My lord," Jerval said. "We came to Palestine to reconquer the cities and castles captured by Baibars. I suggest that we do just that, beginning with Nazareth. By God, it is our Christ's city and it is in heathen hands."

    Edward's eyes gleamed with sudden decision, and his fine chiseled features hardened with purpose. He walked to stand beside Jerval, towering even taller than he, his head brushing against the top of the pavilion. His mouth widened into a pleased smile. "Sir Jerval is in the right. With God's aid, we will succeed in this venture. Gather the men and provision them for the march to Nazareth. We leave in the morning."

    Jerval did not return until very late. Chandra felt his cool hand upon her cheek, and she smiled at him, still half asleep. "Is something wrong?"

    "Nay. We leave for Nazareth in the morning."

    "I go with you?"

    "I'm sorry, but we must take Nazareth first; then you will come when all is secured. Sleep now. I will wake you at first light."

CHAPTER 26

The dust kicked up from the rutted road by the horses' hooves was a hazy white under the sweltering morning sun. Chandra craned her neck westward for a glimpse of the Mediterranean, but they were too far inland to make it out. Nothing grew here save an occasional yellowish shrub. Even the hearty olive trees, gnarled and bent, lay a mile or so to the west, still within sight of the sea, across a barrier of dunes and craggy rocks.

    Although Chandra's head and most of her face were covered with thin white gauze, she felt gritty sand in her mouth each time she breathed. She, Eleanor, and several of her ladies were on their way to Nazareth to join Edward and his army. They were well protected, surrounded by a hundred soldiers, Payn de Chaworth at their head. Eleanor rode in a covered litter, her only concession to her pregnancy. She had been as excited as Chandra to leave the confines of Acre, thanking God for their victory in Nazareth.

    Chandra clicked her nimble-footed bay mare to the fore of the troop, to search out Arnolf. Instead, it was Payn who reined in beside her. He wore a white linen surcoat over his armor, his only defense against the baking sun, and his head and face, like hers, were covered with swaths of white cloth.

    "I was trying to find Arnolf," she said, smiling at him. "You look tired, Payn."

    "Nary a bit," he said, looking back briefly toward Joanna, who rode next to Eleanor's litter. "I wager you want to hear all about the battle."

    She heard amusement in his voice and turned in her saddle to see his eyes crinkled above the line of cloth. "Certainly more than that we won, and God be praised."

    Before he spoke, Payn once again twisted in his saddle to check the troops behind them. Their party formed a wide phalanx, the ladies in the middle, surrounded on all sides by Edward's men.

    "My Joanna would likely prefer spending this day in the cool bathing room at Ali ad-Din's residence."

    "It is dreadfully hot," Chandra said, wiping sand from her forehead as she spoke. "Come, Payn, please tell me how you took Nazareth."

    Payn raised a sandy brow at her excitement. She leaned toward him as he said, "All right. Edward's spies told us the Saracen garrison at Nazareth had grown lax, especially at night. We were able to form in a semicircle, twenty men deep, about the walls before dawn. You are probably picturing the thick walls of Acre, but Nazareth was besieged by the Saracens several years ago, and they had not bothered to rebuild. Our Lord's city is a filthy, devastated place, its wealth long ago looted, and truth be told, the Saracens had little heart to defend it. We lost few men breaching the walls. But the Saracens did not want to leave us any gain. Instead of fighting us, they butchered Nazarenes as they fled through the streets. I did not see much, for Edward sent me back to fetch the ladies, but what I did see was not a pretty sight."

    "War is never pretty," Chandra said.

    Payn looked at her, his head cocked to one side, knowing that she was mouthing words without really comprehending their meaning. There had been no devastation in Acre, and she still had no concept of what armies could do to a people caught in their midst. "Perhaps your father raised you to picture war as the battles of gallant knights, riding in honor," he said. "It is not the heroic Roland, my lady, dying with dignity, a prayer to God on his lips. War in the Holy Land against the Saracens is a hell most men would give their souls to forget."

    She said nothing to that, but Payn saw that she was looking very thoughtful.

    Chandra's first impression of Nazareth from a distance was a peaceful one. The city was set upon a rise, and to Chandra's surprise, there were lush date and palm trees surrounding it.

    "Nazareth was built," Payn said, "as a trading center. There is water, and once the city was as beautiful as Acre, so I'm told. It isn't beautiful now."

    As they drew nearer, she saw that the city was like a giant ravaged carcass, its dirty brown stone walls in ruin. There was a pungent odor in the air, a nauseating smell that made her stomach roil. She looked a question toward Payn.

    "It is the stench of the dead and dying," he said. "It was here before we arrived. As I told you, the Saracens killed and maimed as many people as they could, believing, I suppose, that we would take whomever they left unharmed as slaves."

    Their horses picked their way through the rubble in the narrow streets. Children in pitiful rags stood huddled in doorways, staring at them with dull eyes. They were too weak for the Saracens to bother with, Payn told her matter-of-factly.

    "But they are only children," she said blankly, fury and helplessness filling her.

    "That is why they still live. The Saracens knew they would die before they could be sold as slaves."

    She saw bedraggled women, their stomachs bloated with hunger, tending to men whose cries of pain rent the air. Her mare snorted and sidestepped a pool of blood. A man's body, covered with a rag, lay alone at its center, blackened by the ferocious hot sun. She gagged, unable to help herself.

    "How can this be our victory, Payn?"

    He shrugged, weary and saddened. "It is worse than I thought. You, Joanna, and the other ladies will stay with Eleanor," he said, pointing to a small stone house that lay ahead of them beneath the collapsed northern wall of the city. "That is Edward's headquarters."

    Chandra followed Eleanor into the bare, derelict interior of the house. Wounded English soldiers lay on blankets along its walls. "Where is Jerval?" she asked Lambert, who was kneeling over a wounded soldier.

    He raised his once-happy boyish face to her, and she drew back at the haunted look in his eyes. "He will return," Lambert said, his voice dead.

    She saw Graelam holding a gourd of water to the pinched lips of one of his squires, the look on his face one of fury mingled with despair. His eyes met hers briefly, and for the first time, it was Graelam who looked away.

    Chandra stayed close to the women, praying for the sun to set on the misery. She heard Edward say to Eleanor, "If I had known that it would be so wretched, I would not have sent for you. We lost few men. But the people, by God, the people."

    Eleanor's face was pale, her dark eyes dimmed with the suffering she had seen. "It is beyond anything I could have imagined," she said, her hands against her swelled belly.

    "You will stay within. I do not want you outside."

    Chandra helped Eleanor and her ladies prepare a small chamber in the back of the house for them, but she could not remain with them, hidden away. She stood in the doorway of Edward's headquarters, awaiting Jerval. When he finally strode toward her, his surcoat drenched with sweat, she saw that he was carrying a small girl in his arms, one of her legs wrapped in the bloody hem of his surcoat. He nodded at her, and she felt suddenly like an outcast, her body clean and whole, her belly filled with food. He looked unutterably weary. She felt tears start to her eyes when the child looked at her, for she did not utter a sound or a groan, and her dark eyes were glazed with shock.

    "I saw a Saracen hack at her leg," Jerval said blankly, the first words he spoke. "He simply leaned low off his horse's back and slashed his scimitar. I killed him, of course, but it was too late for the child."

    She remembered her glib words to Graelam the night of Ali ad-Din's banquet, idiocy about glory and honor, and her meaningless words to Payn just hours before that war wasn't pretty. She'd had no idea, none at all. They were just words she'd spoken, just silly words spoken by an ignorant fool. "I'm sorry," she said. "Oh God, I'm sorry." But her words meant nothing in the face of the horror that surrounded them, and she knew it.

    She watched him lay the child tenderly down upon a blanket and force some water between her pinched lips. Her small head lolled to one side. He rose and looked about the wall at the English soldiers.

    "You are all right?" she asked him.

    "Nay," he said, "I am not all right, but I am alive and healthy, which is more than I can say for these poor wretches." He shook his head, as if to block out the chaos outside the house. "I wish that you had not come."

    "Is there nothing we can do?"

    He ran his fingers through his matted hair. "Aye, many of the people are starving. I am taking some men to give them what food we can."

    "I would go with you, Jerval."

    She saw that he would refuse, and quickly added, "If I must be here, do not deny me a useful task."

    He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, then shrugged. "Very well, but you will stay close beside me. I do not know if there is still danger. You can help us gather the food."

    It was late afternoon when they left the English quarters, and the sun still blazed overhead, making the stench almost unbearable. She would have given away all the bread she carried to the men and women huddled close by Edward's headquarters had Jerval not stopped her, his voice grim. "Nay, there is much need. You must dole it out, else you'll have nothing for the rest of the people."

    She just shook her head, but she heeded him and followed him through the labyrinth of rubble in the narrow streets. They saw women crouched down in the piles of waste, burrowing for food or clothing.

    "The Saracens took pride, I think, in beggaring the Nazarenes," Jerval said wearily. He turned to see Chandra leaning over a ragged woman in the doorway of a small house. She was shaking her, begging her to take a hunk of bread. Her voice rose, almost angrily, when the woman did not raise her head.

    He felt a stab of impotent pain and touched his hand to Chandra's shoulder. "She is dead, sweeting. Come, there is nothing you can do for her."

    Chandra raised angry eyes to his face. "No, you are wrong, Jerval. No, she isn't dead, she isn't. She's merely sleeping. It is so very hot, you see, and there was such violence. Sleeping, aye, she's just sleeping."

    He saw that she could not accept it and forcibly drew her to her feet. He said to one of the soldiers, "Tell the men that there is another for the funeral pyre.

    "Come," he said, forcing her away. "There are living who need our food."

    She said not another word throughout the rest of the afternoon, even when they passed one of the burning funeral pyres. When they had no more food, she raised glazed eyes to Jerval's face. "What are we to do?"

    "Nothing. I'm sorry, Chandra." He drew her against him for a moment to block out the squalor around them.

    He led her back to Edward's headquarters as evening fell. Chandra passed by the wounded English soldiers and fell to her knees by the small girl whose leg the Saracen had hacked off. There was a film of white over her staring dark eyes. She was dead.

    Geoffrey Parker, one of Edward's surgeons, knelt down beside her. "The child had no chance," he said.

    Chandra heard Jerval give a low growl in his throat behind her. She watched him lift the small child in his arms and carry her from the house. She rose to accompany him, wishing there were something she could say to him, but he strode away from her as if she were not there.

    "She is beyond pain," Geoffrey Parker said, touching his hand to her arm.

    "He is taking her to be burned," Chandra whispered, and felt the pain so deep, she knew it would never leave her.

    "Aye. Come, my lady. If you wish it, I could use your help with our wounded."

    She looked up some time later to see Jerval strapping on his helmet. She jerked to her feet, filled with sudden fear. "What are you doing? Where are you going?"

    "There are reports of Saracens outside the walls. Stay here and do not worry. I will be back soon." He left her without another word, Lambert at his side.

    Joanna de Chaworth handed her a piece of bread. "Here, Chandra, you must eat something. Eleanor sent me to fetch you. She wants you to rest now."

    Chandra looked at the bread, held out to her as the dead woman should have seen it. "Nay," she whispered. "I have no wish for food. Oh, God, Joanna, the waste of it, all the suffering, it is too much to bear."

    When the wounded men were tended, Chandra walked to the doorway and sank down, waiting again for Jerval to return. The night air was cool upon her face. Over the housetops beyond, she could see black smoke billowing upward from the funeral pyres.

    "Lady Chandra!"

    She looked up to see Lambert running toward her.

    "It's my lord," he said, clutching at her arm. "He has been wounded. The Saracens came upon us from the rocks."

    Geoffrey Parker, Edward's physician, jumped to his feet and hurried to the door. For an instant, Chandra could not move. She could bear no more suffering, no more death. Oh, God, please, not Jerval.

    "My lady!" Geoffrey shouted to her. "Prepare a place for him, quickly."

    "God's teeth!" she heard Jerval bellow, pain deep in his throat. "Do not tear my flesh from my damned bones!" He was carried through the door by Payn, Rolfe, and two men-at-arms.