The Passionate Brood (14 page)

“Look, the French fleet is beginning to weigh anchor,” cried Johanna, curling herself up on the window seat with the unstudied ease of a boy.

“Oh, good!” breathed Berengaria, feeling released from the untiring tentacles of Ann.

But Richard did not seem to think it so good after all. “Philip has more ships than I,” he remarked, watching them sort themselves out from the Normans and the English.

“That must be unbearable for you!” mocked Eleanor, still sitting at table peeling a pear.

The others laughed but Richard continued to scowl, counting them as they moved majestically towards the open sea. Already a following wind was billowing out the golden lilies on their sails. Berengaria squeezed his arm. “You are thinking, aren’t you, that but for me you would be in virtual command of both fleets?” she asked, a little forlornly.

“No, no, of course not,” he denied hastily, realising with a momentary stab of dismay that his thoughts would never be quite his own property again. “But I must push after him soon. I can’t let all Europe say I left him to raise the siege of Acre single-handed.”

“I am ready to start whenever you like,” she offered.

Richard took both her hands between his own the way he did when men swore fealty to him. “I shouldn’t think any man was ever so blessed in his womenfolk,” he said, smiling down at her tenderly. “But the devil of it is we shall have to sail separately.”

“W-why?” faltered Berengaria.

“Well, my sweet, now that we are together at last it is already April. And you must see that, as a soldier of the cross, I cannot marry in Lent.”

Berengaria gave a little gasp and sat down beside Johanna, staring at him. Here was a complication which had never occurred to her. In the gay, go-ahead court of Navarre her education had been intellectual rather than religious, so that the ruling of the church seemed harsh. She had come so far and given so much for Richard’s sake, and already their barely tasted romance was turning into disagreeable reality. She saw herself tossing about indefinitely on rough seas, without either the comfort of her home or the thrill of a husband. She felt like crying, but supposed these strong-minded Plantagenet women would only despise her for it. Instinctively, she turned to her cousin—the one person who was always so reliably sane.

“Raymond, what do
you
think?” she asked, almost beseechingly.

Raymond was a crusader too, and recognised the unseemliness of a royal marriage feast in Lent. But recognising also the pathetic signal of her fluttering lashes, he suggested something soothing about a message to the Pope.

But Richard was adamant. Besides being a crusader, he was deeply and simply religious. Plenty of people, he knew, were going to the Holy Land because they loved adventure. They could not love it more than he. But the very simplicity of his nature made it possible for him to keep his real goal quite clearly before him. Focusing his vision upon the far-off end of endeavour, he could always see the red cross of Christendom crowning the hills of Jerusalem. He wanted that more than anything in the world. He saw himself on his knees offering it to Christ. The gift, of course, would be Christ’s—but his—Richard’s—would be the power and the glory. And this splendid goal was coming nearer and nearer until soon, he felt sure, it would be a definite fact for all the world to see. He was not to know that only the hardness and heartbreak of the task could ever teach him to want Christ to have the city, without caring whether it were Richard Plantagenet or some other who gave it to Him. Even though by that time he himself might have become the greatest crusader of them all.

Berengaria shivered a little, as if recognising in his stern adherence to his vows a fanaticism that could out-grow love, just as Richard detected in her something of the tolerant humanitarianism which had seemed to him almost pagan in Robin. But in the high noon of their love these things were as yet but unlengthened shadows. Berengaria knew only that she had keyed herself up to surrender to his frightening but delicious urgency and now found herself in the humiliating position of rebelling against his continence. Sancho the Wise had taught her to respect the mental processes of all sorts and conditions of men, and she herself was too fastidious to pit her physical lures against a man’s conscience. But the fact that their marriage was to be delayed through no lack of ardour did not make things easier for either of them.

“You can sail in the Bishop of Beauvais’ galley and we will be married in Syria at Easter,” said Richard.

“That will be best, I suppose,” agreed Berengaria. Then, remembering Eleanor—that tower of strength—would be going back to England, she added involuntarily, “But, oh, Richard, I shall be so lonely!”

Johanna turned suddenly from her contemplation of the fleet. “I will come with you,” she offered.

They stared at her in surprise.

“I thought you said you were counting the days to get back to England and the hawking and the comfortable green hills?” said Eleanor.

But all savour had gone out of these things. How could one bear the sight of beech trees without the sound of Robin’s voice or come home from hunting without the kindness of his smile? “It will probably be more amusing in Syria,” said Johanna casually. “And in spite of Tancred I am still a respectable widow, so I shall be able to chaperon the bride-to-be.”

“Would you really do that for us?” Richard wrung her hand as if she were a man, and Berengaria kissed her. “It is going to be wonderfully different for me having a sister!” she said gratefully.

Raymond wanted to tell Johanna that she had won her spurs like a good knight—coming through suffering and humbled pride to courage and generosity. He wanted to beg forgiveness for looking on her humiliation and to cry aloud that she was beautiful. But because he could not bear her smiling at him cheaply he was dumb.Gallantly, she threw off the fetters of her resentment. “So it has all come true!” she cried, going to her brother with a radiant smile. “The splendid ships and the shared adventure. All that your old witch promised us, Richard.”

“Even to the charmed life, I hope,” he laughed, putting his home-made ring back on her finger next to William’s costly one.

“Did she really promise you that?” Berengaria didn’t really believe in witches but, after seeing the arrows that had whistled about his head that morning, she was ready to grasp at any sort of assurance.

“There was a proviso, of course,” admitted Eleanor, wiping her fingers after her fruit.

“There always is,” laughed Raymond. “It lets the old witch out if anything goes wrong.”

But Eleanor was quite serious about it. “Because Robin made him save her from a ducking or something, she says no one can kill Richard so long as he fights in a just cause.”

“And you couldn’t have a juster cause than crusading, so why worry?” said Raymond cheerfully.

Eleanor rose from the table and kissed Richard on either cheek. Tall as she was, she had to reach up to place her hands on his shoulders. “So God will keep you, my son, for my old eyes to see again,” she prophesied resolutely.

Richard’s hands closed hard over hers, and Berengaria created a diversion in order to leave them alone a little longer in their world which she was so soon to invade. “My dower chests!” she exclaimed. “They are still down in that verminous hut.”

“Blondel will have seen to them,” Johanna assured her.

“And I do hope Yvette will be happy. Both her parents died of the plague, you know.”

“No need to worry about her. Yvette is such an attractive little person, Blondel won’t miss the opportunity of seeing to her too.”

Richard came and slipped an arm through Berengaria’s, drawing her towards the door. “Let us all go down and bait Tancred now those Frenchmen have gone,” he suggested.

But Raymond lingered a moment with Johanna. “Thank you for offering to sail with my cousin—and for your party,” he said. Evidently, Johanna was beginning to realise how badly she had treated him, and to cover her embarrassment he went on lightly, “This Blondel of yours sounds invaluable. I remember how he requisitioned one of my best shirts for your brother at Pamplona.”

For the first time Johanna looked at him with real friendliness. “Come to think of it, I don’t know what we should do without him,” she laughed. “He is the perfect squire. Mends all the things we break and finds all the things our mother loses. In fact, if Richard himself got lost I imagine Blondel would find him.”

Richard and Berengaria were not married in Syria after all. The ships which had looked so fine off Dover and Messina were tossed about like cockleshells on an angry Mediterranean for weeks. Only the riding light of Richard’s red-sailed flagship by night and the coercion of his cheerful voice by day kept them together in any semblance of a fleet. Battered by the storm and beaten out of their course, some of them finally found shelter under the lee of Cyprus.

If Richard had profited by what his elder brother had said about bringing women, his great galley
Trenchemer
and several of his troopships could probably have made Beirut. But news came that Isaac Comnenos, the thick-lipped, plausible little emperor of the island, was plundering the Bishop’s ship as she lay helpless off Limassol and trying to persuade him to bring the European women ashore. Berengaria and Yvette were by that time far too sea-sick to care what happened to them; but Richard could remember laughing over Picot’s bawdy stories about Isaac’s overcrowded harem, and his voice became full of profanity instead of cheer. He put the
Trenchemer
about, called for landing parties from the rest of the ships, and treated the inhospitable port of Limassol much as he had treated Messina.

Isaac fled inland to the hills and for three whole days Richard fought up and down the island until he caught him and sent him back to the coast in chains. And then quite suddenly he had time to notice that the spring flowers were in bloom and that it was no longer Lent. After fighting the sea for three weeks and the Cypriots for as many days, he ought to have been too exhausted to do anything but sleep. But instead he decided it was time to get married.

Riding down from Mount Troodos with a following of weary knights, he turned in the saddle to grin persuasively at his gifted squire. “Make me a song for my wedding night, Blondel!” he ordered.

“Considering the bride’s beauty, you’d better make it pretty amorous!” advised Barbe Vidomar, the black-visaged Count of Chalus, enviously.

“And considering the bridegroom’s long Lenten fast, Blondel, you’d better make it before to-morrow night!” chuckled jolly old Sansterre of Mortaine.

Pursued by a gust of their friendly laughter, the prospective bridegroom spurred on ahead across the sandy plain. The storm seemed to have spent itself with his battle rage and the peace of eventide hung over Cyprus. Flat on the rim of the Mediterranean he could see the walls of Limassol. Caravans of haughty camels padded past him bearing the wealth of the Levant to Nicosia, and shepherds led their patient, black-faced goats to folds at scattered farms. “This is really the beginning of the East,” exulted Richard, catching passing glimpses of olive-skinned women preparing an evening meal in the walled yards of their little flat-roofed homes.

Some of his men were already fraternising with the Greeks, dallying with dark-eyed girls as they drew water from the wells and quenching their thirst from native pigskins. Some were merely rowdy and others were quite openly looting. Once or twice, in the short twilight, men hurtled almost under his horse, chasing some dusky beauty. It was amusing to hear the jackdaws imitate their tipsy laughter and the shrill, inviting screams of the girls. Had Richard been engaged on some stern campaign he would have controlled them with iron discipline; but here on this lovely, lazy island after their cramped tedium aboard ship, he shut his eyes to it.

Only once did he interfere—and his interference cost England a queen.

As he rode into Limassol he saw a girl run from the shelter of a house pursued by two English archers. She neither screamed nor giggled, but ran with the grace of a deer along the narrow street towards him, eluding their grasp by inches. From the shadow of the city gate Richard watched the chase dispassionately, much as he might have followed the cunning of some hard-pressed deer. She ran so close that he could hear the quick sob of her breath, and when one of the soldiers grabbed away her cloak he noticed that she was little more than a child. Instantly, his gorge rose.

“Get back to camp or I’ll slit your throats!” he thundered. At the sound of his voice both men slunk away up some back street as if they had seen the devil, and the girl was left, panting and dishevelled, leaning against the city wall.

“You got what you asked for, hanging about the streets when men have done fighting,” Richard told her sharply, “Go back to your father’s house.”

She raised beseeching, dark-lashed eyes. Even in the half light he could see that she was slender as one of the young palm trees that grew on Troodos, and that her small breasts were still pulsating like the heart of a frightened animal. “My father has been taken prisoner,” she said.

“Well, haven’t you a mother—or some woman to look after you?” he asked irritably. But her answer came pat. “They are all with your soldiers”—and that seemed to make it his responsibility. He could hear Mortaine and Barbe of Chalus and the rest of them coming along the road behind and was in no mood to be chaffed on the subject of knight-errantry as well as matrimony. Almost angrily he stuck out a foot. “Jump!” he ordered. And light as thistledown she set her bare foot upon his mailed one and let him pull her to the saddle before him. With a click of his tongue he set the great war-horse in motion again towards the Emperor’s citadel where he had taken up his abode. As the girl swayed against his shoulder she smiled up at him shyly, her teeth like small square pearls in the childish oval of her face. “I saw you wade ashore waving your great battle-axe. Is it true that you killed a lion?” she asked naïvely.

Perhaps Richard was flattered that she knew him. “I’m afraid I’ve never met one,” he laughed more amiably. “What is your name? And how is it you speak French so well?”

“My name is Ida, and we had French tutors when we were small.”

Now that she was so close he noticed that she smelled sweet and that there were silver bangles on her arms. “I will have you taken home,” he said.

But she shook her head so that the top of her short, dark curls brushed his cheek. “My home has been taken over by a thieving Anglo-Norman,” she told him fearlessly.

“Find me the man and I will punish him,” he promised.

“What would you do to him? Slit his throat?”

He shook her in the crook of his arm as one shakes an unmanageable child and told her not to be such a blood-thirsty little wretch.

“But you said—just now—to those English pigs—”

“Only to teach them not to frighten pretty little girls. I can’t afford to kill my best archers. But if you think you can describe the undisciplined swine who looted your home and turned you out on to the street—”

Ida turned in his arm, examining him impudently with smiling, sloe-black eyes. “He’s tall and strong enough to take whatever he wants,” she enumerated in her quaint, broken French. “His hair is reddish—his nose a soupçon too long perhaps—and his mouth? Oh, yes, that is very well. It is firm and hard and, like all the accursed Normans, he keeps his lips shaven—”

“That’s enough!” laughed Richard, jerking his cheek from the liberties of her exploring fingers. “I’m glad I picked you up if you’re Isaac Comnenos’ daughter. And sorry,” he added, more soberly, “about your home.”

“I don’t mind much,” she shrugged, staring disdainfully from her high perch at the pink-faced foreigners guarding its gates. “He ran away when you offered to fight him for it—and, anyway, I always hated him.”

“I didn’t exactly dote on
my
father,” admitted Richard, wondering what sort of woman had helped the old Levantine to produce anything so refreshing.

Casting about in his mind as to what he should do with her, his eyes lighted thankfully upon Johanna returning from an evening gallop with Raymond, whom he had left in charge of the garrison at Limassol. “The sands-are marvellous!” she called to him, her fair skin aglow with exercise. “We’ve been exploring a place farther round the coast called Famagusta.”

“There’s a really useful harbour there,” Raymond told him, as they rode into the Citadel courtyard. “Deep enough water for our biggest ships and facing Beirut.”

“Good. I must take a look at it,” said Richard. “Where is Berengaria?”

“In Isaac’s garden. Of course, if she’d known you were bringing home a native beauty—” Johanna was all curiosity about the refugee on her brother’s saddle, but the Count of Toulouse cut short her laughing indiscretion by lifting her down from her horse. Even if he wasn’t tall and good-looking like Robin, he made a pretty good job of it.

Richard put Ida down and rode closer to them. “It’s the old Greek’s daughter,” he explained. “I caught two of our fellows chasing her like a common troll. I wish you’d take care of her for me, Joan.”

“She seems to make a habit of taking care of people for you,” grumbled Raymond. But Johanna looked compassionately at the lonely little figure surrounded by Plantagenet possessions in her own courtyard. “Oh, well, I suppose it must be rather grim for her the way we’ve spread ourselves in all the Comnenos’ best rooms,” she conceded reluctantly.

“Being a princess of sorts, she ought to make a useful hostage,” Raymond reminded them.

Richard had already thought of that. “Give her everything she wants but don’t let her stray again,” he said, dismounting and beckoning to the girl to join them.

She came with the docility of a captive and a grace achieved only by those who go barefoot. She knew they were discussing her, these two powerful men and the straight-limbed Northern woman who rode astride. “Here is a lady who will look after you, Ida,” said Richard, unaware that—having just escaped from life in the women’s quarters—this was the last thing she wanted.

She hung back, staring at Johanna with hostility. “Who is she?” she asked suspiciously.

“My sister, Queen Johanna of Sicily,” he answered curtly. “And you will obey her.”

The girl’s manner changed instantly. She touched one of Johanna’s burnished plaits with a conciliatory gesture. “Her hair is the same colour as yours. I shall like her,” she said.

“There’s a second-hand compliment to give anyone!” laughed Johanna. “Let us go in, Ida. I need a bath after my ride, and we will see if we can find some of your women and clothes and things.”

Before going in Ida turned to thank Richard for bringing her home. “But your heavy Flemish horses are too clumsy for this kind of country,” she told him. “When you cross to Syria you will find their hooves sink in the sand. I will give you Fauvel—the Arab gelding my father ran away on.”

Surprised at her perspicacity, Richard bent down and kissed her lightly. “Thank you, my dear,” he said gravely, winking across her head at Johanna, who knew he had already taken the horse.

With a casual “good night” to them, she drew the little hostage indoors. Raymond swore softly. Just as he was beginning to make some headway with his suit, Richard must needs turn up with this new toy. What with weddings and dower chests, Johanna had had little enough time for him these last three days and now, he supposed, she would always have the wretched little Cypriot in tow. He turned to tell Richard what he thought of him. “Didn’t you
see
how the little cat sheathed her claws the moment you said Johanna was your
sister
?”

But Richard had disappeared. He had probably forgotten their existence. With long, eager strides he had made his way to the deserted garden behind the women’s quarters. Although officially of the Orthodox church, Isaac had planned it harem fashion with a fountain splashing in the middle and shady colonnades where he could walk with his favourites. The semi-Eastern twilight was short and the cypress shadows long, and Berengaria sat in her filmiest samite gown on the low coping of the fountain. “Wherever two stunted flowers manage to raise their heads above the sand, there I shall always be sure of finding you!” laughed Richard triumphantly.

She turned before she could hide her passionate joy.

“Enchantress!” he muttered, pulling her close against his hungry body. Because he had taken her off her guard Berengaria returned his kisses without pride or prudence. All her senses answered his. For days she had been mad with anxiety and longing and now, suddenly, he had lifted her into this ecstasy of happiness. She did not foresee that if she married him most of her life would be brief Heavens between one battle and the next. She only knew that it is given to few women to have so fierce a lover.

“If people tell you there have been other women, forgive me,” he said after a while. “I don’t even remember what they looked like…It didn’t seem to matter…No one has ever made me feel my body was theirs before!”

Considering his rank and vigour, Berengaria was intelligent enough to see that it could hardly have been otherwise. “I shall mind only those who come after,” she said, exulting in a comradeship that drove him to complete candour.

“Little fool!” he whispered. “How could they?” And then, with lips urgent against hers, “Need we wait for Syria? Can’t we be married here—to-morrow?”

Berengaria pressed both palms against his racing heart, trying to free herself enough for thought. “You know how I love this island—and fierce, impatient red-heads!”

Richard released her to capture both her small marauding hands. He—who feared no man—was almost afraid to let her know the devastating power she had over him. “And you won’t mind not waiting for a cathedral—and Philip of France—and all the conventional trappings?”

Berengaria shook her small, dark head. “There was a time when I should have—but now those things don’t count.” Her brown eyes looked deep into his tawny ones, giving him truth for truth. Her body was soft with surrender, her lips a lure he dared no longer dally with. Because of Ann’s perfidy he wanted to keep her sacred. So he turned away abruptly and started shouting for the servants.

“Bring lights into the hall—and fetch me the Bishop of Beauvais,” he ordered. His voice rang to the vaulted roof, full and round with happiness.

Berengaria could have followed, but she wanted to keep the bloom of her happiness unbrushed by other contacts. Richard’s cloak lay where it had fallen when he took her in his arms. She picked it up and wrapped herself in it, fancying it still warm from his body, and sat there by the fountain until the stars pierced the black velvet of the Cyprian night. She could hear them planning her wedding. Richard’s crisp voice and the Bishop’s suave one. Other people were sent for—Raymond, Blondel and Mercadier. The marshal and steward were wakened and given orders. Through the branches of an acacia shrub Berengaria could see them all moving about in the lighted hall—the Bishop’s fine gesticulating hands—a sleepy cook with straw still in his hair passing the open doorway—someone’s shifting sleeve or the flash of a ring and, from time to time, the warm glow from a torch illuminating her lover’s head. “Heavens!” she thought, with a little tender smile, “doesn’t the man ever sleep?” Irrelevantly, she fell to wondering how many men he had killed that morning—and now to be discussing colour schemes!