The Passionate Brood (17 page)

Berengaria’s honeymoon lasted for only a week. For seven days Richard held up his crusade and forgot everything in the world but her. They rode together to the snow-capped mountains where goats and peasants cared nothing for their rank, and rested in valleys where bright-green lizards scuttled between the sun-baked rocks. He teased and worshipped her by turns, and she made him talk about Oxford and how he sometimes hated himself for the way he had quarrelled with his father, and about Henry and Robin and Hodierna until she knew him, the way women must, right backwards to his boyhood. They were utterly sufficient to each other, and because they were war-time lovers each moment was precious with the poignancy of parting. “Whatever happens, this one short week will have spoiled us both for any lesser loves,” Berengaria consoled herself, when it was over.

That last evening at Limassol she felt as if she were deliberately releasing him from her enchantment and giving him back to his world. He seemed to have forgotten his grief for Robin in the manifest happiness of a man possessing both the woman and the work he loves. During their brief honeymoon he had discussed with her the advisability of leaving Guy de Lusignon in charge of Cyprus until Jerusalem should be retaken, and all that last afternoon she had willingly played her part in the formal ceremony of handing over the island. Immediately after a hasty supper Richard was off to the harbour with Mercadier preparing for embarkation and Berengaria loyally slipped away. Having married a public hero she must school herself to share him. But when they were up in her rooms packing Yvette, glancing down at the busy quay, exclaimed: “Just look at the Cypriot princess hanging about barefoot like any peasant!”

Berengaria’s heart warmed to the antipathy in her voice, but she treated the youthful criticism much as she used to treat the uncharitable remarks of Isabella and Henrietta. “If we lived in this climate and had such lovely feet I expect we should want to go barefoot too,” she said, moving to the window.

And Johanna, sorting out some gay Syrian embroideries, remarked good-naturedly, “With her mother dead and her father in prison, Ida is little better than an orphan. I expect she is waiting to say ‘good-bye’ to Richard.”

She evidently was. She lurked in the shadow of the harbour wall until he left Mercadier and waylaid him as he came up the slipway alone. Berengaria saw her sudden tears, her feigned start of surprise, and the appealing gesture of her clutching hands. She couldn’t hear what either of them said, of course, but she saw Richard bend to comfort the girl. “How can men be fooled by that baby stuff after the way she danced!” she marvelled. She watched them cross the quay, dodging the burdens of the laden sailors. Ida was all vivacity now, laughing back at him as they climbed a flight of slippery stone steps. Berengaria noticed with annoyance that she had managed to get a sprig of broom from somewhere or other and saw her reach up to stick it in his helmet for luck. Richard seemed inordinately pleased and kissed her for it before they were lost to sight beneath the arched gateway of the citadel. It was all so open and natural, and yet Berengaria was aware of a horrible stab of jealousy.

“Would you like me to arrange for some family of good repute to look after Ida Comnenos after we are gone?” she asked that night when Richard had come to bed.

“No need,” he answered, in a matter-of-fact sort of way, “I’ve decided to take her along.”

Berengaria sat up in the wide bed and stared at him incredulously. “But surely Guy de Lusignon will keep an eye on her,” she said.

“Both, I fancy!” Richard unbuckled his sword belt and threw it across the end of the bed with a short, significant laugh.

“Whatever do you mean?” protested Berengaria.

“I oughtn’t to have made her dance that night. Of course, the poor child didn’t actually
say
he’d been pestering her—”

“Of course not. She just brought you a bit of planta genista and pawed you and cried—”

Richard looked up in bewilderment from the chausse he was bending to unlace. He had never before heard that sharp note in Berengaria’s voice. It was the nearest they had ever come to a quarrel and he hadn’t an idea what it was about.

“At least she might have managed this ‘whither thou goest I go’ business without dragging poor Guy into it!” The new Queen of England thumped a pillow and lay down again. Did the conceited little hussy really imagine both kings admired her? Actually, if the King of Jerusalem had shown signs of admiring
anybody
it had been herself. Berengaria pulled herself up with shamed amusement. “Mother of God, what’s the use of being an educated woman if loving a man makes one think like a fish-wife?”

She let Richard finish undressing in silence but when he had stamped out the torches and taken her in his arms she turned her face from his kisses. “Richard,
must
you bring that girl?” she begged, with persistent foreboding.

“Who—Ida?” By the light of a rising moon Richard was amusing himself making a pattern of her dark hair on the pillow. “You look like an angry Medusa!” he teased, spreading it in snake-like waves, above her heart-shaped little face. But Berengaria was not to be fondled out of her answer. “I’ll see she isn’t any bother,” promised Richard. “But if I leave any of the Comnenos tribe at large here, de Lusignon will probably have more bother with the natives. You see, sweet, I can’t afford to leave much of a garrison.” He was so obviously indifferent to the girl’s charms that Berengaria snuggled luxuriously against his shoulder and went to sleep calling herself a fool.

They sailed next morning and in six months news of the fall of Acre was ringing round the Christian world. The name of Richard Cœur de Lion was on all men’s lips. For although Philip of France and Leopold of Austria and the rest had done the spade work, everybody knew it was he who had brought genius to the enterprise. By capturing a heavily armed supply ship vital to the beleaguered garrison he reminded them that, besides Angevin anger and Plantagenet pride, the blood of Norse pirates ran in his veins. The sight of his victorious fleet must have been like wine to the jaded crusaders blockading Acre, and his personal courage and tireless enthusiasm certainly inspired a more vigorous and concerted attack.

During those months of hard and brilliant fighting Berengaria saw little of him except in the company of other men or when he was too tired to talk. He spared neither himself nor her. He would clank into their tent, bloodstained and begrimed, and almost before Blondel could unharness him he would fling himself across the bed and sleep. Sometimes, when things went well, he would make love to her—fiercely, exultantly, unaware that although her body responded ardently her mind was still recoiling from the bloodstains. If she knew that Richard was leading some fresh attack the long, grilling days of suspense drained her of any emotion at all, so that living up to the cheerful confidence of the two Plantagenets was all effort and pretence. She would stand at the tent door watching for Richard’s conspicuous figure among the crowd of armed men and horses that milled about the walls of Acre, knowing that only some sort of miracle could defend his recklessness. Or she would go and try to cheer the wounded, all the time cowering from the sound of men’s approaching feet lest they should be bringing him back to her dead. She knew that his men had orders never to let her stray within range of the enemy’s bows, but it was the arrows that rained round
him
she feared.

“But, beloved, don’t you remember I bear a charmed life?” he would say laughingly to comfort her whenever she begged him to be more careful. And he came back to her unscathed from such bloody encounters that by the end of the siege she had almost come to believe in Robin’s witch.

When at last he went down with fever Berengaria was almost thankful, thinking she would be able to nurse him and keep him safely to herself. But long before he was well enough to sit a horse he had himself carried on a litter to direct the sappers and the battering-rams. And just as he ignored a mounting temperature he had singleness of purpose enough to ignore the jealousy of Leopold and Philip. Inevitably he dominated every scene, unconsciously dwarfing other men. Some of them hated him for it. Most of them would have followed him to hell. For there was a glamour about Richard in those days which was almost like a visible flame.

The war-weary army of occupation, only longing to get back to their homes in Europe, had naturally welcomed any driving force likely to curtail the interminable siege. And men of his own expeditionary force who had leaned across each other’s shoulders to listen at Berengaria’s wedding feast saw the campaign of the dinner knives coming true before their eyes and felt the solid comfort of supplies from Famagusta warming their bellies for the fight. Acre, the first of Richard’s key ports, had fallen. Haifa was their next objective. Then Jaffa, the port of Jerusalem itself.

As soon as the crusaders had actually taken possession of Acre the European women were able to spend the cooler parts of the day sitting on the walls. There was more air up there and they were glad to get away from the stifling streets where gaunt olive-skinned women and their half-starved children wrung poor Berengaria’s heart. “If only this dreadful hammering would stop!” she sighed, moving further into the shade of a little crenellated watch tower as the pitiless sun began to climb.

“But Richard must repair the fortifications,” said Johanna, letting a bandage she was rolling trail in the dust. There was dust everywhere, and flies and heat, but it didn’t seem to affect her. She had the Plantagenet vitality that throve on discomforts.

Berengaria looked out over the endless plain ridged here and there with grey-green vineyards. Behind her on the western side of the town their ships lay motionless, mirrored in a molten sea, while immediately below her the men mending the main land gate shouted to each other in an unintelligible medley of Norman and Saxon which was beginning to become a language. Berengaria sighed again, wondering if she ever
would
be able to understand them.

Johanna gave her a quick, anxious glance. She noticed that her pallor lacked the inward glow that used to warm it.

“At least you need not worry about Richard now,” she said comfortingly. “You know he’s down there outside the walls having the time of his life showing them all what a marvellous mason he would have made.”

“But those poor wounded—”

“The Hospitallers will look after them.”

“But they are my people now, and it takes a woman—not sexless monks—to sew comfortable bandages and talk to them about their children and picture their homes. Some of them suffer so horribly—Richard says the Saracens are using poisoned arrows now.”

“He ought not to let you visit the wounded. He’s so used to that sort of thing he doesn’t realise how it affects you. Robin’s just as tough but he would have
thought—
” Johanna stopped abruptly. She was trying hard to forget Robin these days. She tumbled the last of her ineptly rolled bandages into a basket and sauntered across to the battlements. Sick nursing bored her anyway. All her kindnesses were gay, spontaneous, and consistent with her own immense enjoyment of life. She did not know the kind of queen Berengaria meant to be. Besides, she could hear Raymond talking to someone round a bend of the wall. “Well, don’t wear yourself out,” she said. “There’s Ida eating sweetmeats further along the city wall. She’d probably like to be asked to do something. One can’t help feeling sorry for her—a hostage away from home.”

“Yvette is still further from
her
home,” observed Berengaria, tearing some of her best head veils into strips for dressings.

But freedom was the breath of life to Johanna, so she had to champion the Cypriot girl. “But don’t you see, Yvette is
free?
She’s in the middle of her first love affair. She has congenial work, and she adores you.”

Berengaria looked up, surprised by her vehemence. “Judging by the way Ida hangs about Richard, her life scarcely seems devoid of emotional interest,” she remarked dryly.

But Johanna wasn’t listening. Raymond and Blondel had suddenly appeared round the corner of the watch tower swathed in masons’ aprons, their faces white with dust. “You look like a couple of death cart men!” she told them unkindly.

“I feel like one of the corpses!” groaned Raymond, sitting on some fallen masonry to mop his forehead. “If anyone had told me I’d be talked into leading a repair squad in this climate! But what else can we do when Richard himself is showing archers how to hew stones? For God’s sake, someone, send for a drink!”

“The King has issued orders that everyone, irrespective of rank, is to work six hours a day mending the walls before we go,” announced Blondel, letting a basket of tools slide gratefully from his sweating shoulder.

Johanna sent a page scurrying for wine, and Berengaria put away her work with a strained sort of smile. “A few weeks ago you were risking your lives to
destroy
the walls,” she reminded them. “That is where war is such waste!”

“Waste!” exclaimed Raymond indignantly, through an inadequate handkerchief with which Johanna was endeavouring to remove some of the grime from his sunburnt face. “My dear Berengaria, how can you talk of your husband’s achievement like that? It was the rest of the crowd who were wasting time out here all winter, and along comes Richard and takes the town almost as soon as he lands!”

Richard himself appeared at that moment at the top of a scaling ladder set up from the fosse below. “To hear you talk, my dear fellow, anybody would think I took the place single-handed!” he protested, swinging a leg over the battlements. “What about the French, the Austrians, the Venetians, the Genoese, and all the rest of our noble allies?”

“Well, what about them?” jeered Raymond. “I didn’t see old Leopold do much except hoist his standard from the watch tower after you had mopped up this ward of the town.”

Richard glanced up with tolerant amusement at the Austrian standard drooping listlessly above them. There was so little breeze that it might just as well have been embroidered with leopards or fleurs-de-lis or unicorns for all anybody could tell, so it didn’t matter much. And in any case his attention was immediately distracted by a pull at his elbow. He had no sooner straddled the battlements than Ida had joined the friendly little group. She had brought him a basket of nectarines and oranges temptingly arranged on cool green fig leaves.

“A good thought, Ida! If I’d have known you had anything so delectable I’d have come and sat over there!” exclaimed Raymond.

“The Count of Toulouse would have to be very thirsty before he preferred
my
company to yours,” she said to Johanna with teasing shrewdness. Richard, who was learning matrimonial wisdom, picked over her basket for the choicest fruit and carried it across to his wife.

“She hasn’t eaten anything this morning,” Johanna had to say, drawing attention to her pallor.

“It’s this pestilential heat,” said Raymond.

But it wasn’t only the heat. Berengaria felt sick—swooningly sick. She did not want other people to know—to whisper and to guess her secret. She wanted to tell Richard some lovely time when they were alone. When the Syrian night was warm about them like a cloak, shutting out war, and the stars were shining the way they did over Cyprus. “I shall have a better appetite when all this starving garrison is set free,” she said evasively.

“It won’t be long now, my dear,” Richard assured her. “Almost the best part of this victory will be getting back our own prisoners in return.” He made the page pour her wine first and, steadied by it, she followed him to the battlements. With Johanna and Raymond and Blondel they leaned against the parapet watching the new portcullis being lifted into its grooves by powerful pulleys. Its cruel iron teeth grinned defiance to the surrounding plain. “I shall feel happier about pushing on to Haifa when that’s fixed,” said Richard. From their vantage point they could see most of the battered roofs and minarets of the city, and it was obvious how much the Norman trebuchets and other war machines must have contributed to the final capitulation. They began assessing the damage and fighting their battles over again. “I suppose your precious new catapult was responsible for that, Richard?” said Raymond, pointing out a nasty crater in the bastion immediately below them.

“Why did we bring the stones for it specially from Sicily, Sir?” asked Blondel.

The proud inventor explained how the volcanic nature of the rocks there made them splinter more easily and so become a much deadlier weapon. Fragments from one stone might kill as many as a dozen men, he told them.

And all the time Ida hovered on the edge of the group. She hated the way these fair-skinned crusaders discussed things with their women. They seemed to share so many interests with them besides sex. Yet it seemed to her that a virile red-head like Richard could not possibly be cold. She stole a glance at the firm, full contour of his lips and was consumed by a desire to find out. Her gaze passed contemptuously to the pale bride by his side. Unaware that she was being observed, Berengaria drooped from her usual dignity, a hand pressed to her side. To anyone bred to the gossip of a harem it was easy enough to guess the cause. A savage triumph tingled in Ida’s undisciplined blood. Soon this exquisite wife of Richard’s would be plain and clumsy. She pulled the gaudy sash more tightly across her own svelte hips, prepared to do anything—however spectacular—to attract his attention. Driven by the same devil that had made her dance desire into the chaste Templars, she swung herself over a machicolation of the battlements and with sure, bare feet clambered out across the bastion at which they were all looking.

“Come back, you little fool!” called Raymond, and Blondel—who was standing nearest—made a grab at her. But she eluded him and stood defiantly at the downward slope of the bastion with the first breath of wind from the far-off Lebanons moulding her barbaric draperies about her lovely, slender limbs. She had regained their attention surely enough when suddenly she began pointing excitedly into the bowl of the crater, which was invisible to them. “It is true what King Richard said about the stone,” she cried. “The hole is full of dead. A dozen at least. All blasted with splinters. An arm here…A leg there…” She clambered round the rough edge of the crater like a mountain goat, swooping suddenly to scoop up something. “And here’s a head!” Turning with a flashing smile to Berengaria, she held the horrible thing aloft by its matted hair. The half-decayed face of a Saracen stared up at them with bird-pecked eyes and agonised grin.

Berengaria stifled a scream. Too late she flung both hands across her eyes. Not for worlds would she have looked upon that hideous thing. She made a blind fending motion, as if to drive the sight of it from some frightened child. “Please, please, Richard,” she moaned, “have it covered up quickly.”

Richard had his back to her. He did not see her sway, nor Johanna’s arm go round her. He and Raymond were already over the battlements examining the crater with experienced eyes. They saw only the obvious cause for her distress. “Quickly is the word in this climate,” agreed Raymond, holding his discarded apron to his nose.

Berengaria begged Johanna not to make a fuss and went to sit in the shade. The whole world seemed to have gone black and the sunlight to have turned cold. “I must forget it,” she told herself, staring resolutely in the opposite direction at the sea. “Even Ida couldn’t have been wicked enough to hold the dreadful thing up purposely…” Everything going on around her seemed unreal and negligible. She saw Richard lift the girl back on to the wall—saw him standing with a carelessly, approving arm still about her shoulder telling her her quick eyes had probably saved the garrison from fever. Then he was arranging with Blondel about a burial party and a squad to fill in the masonry.

“Most of the men are packing up for the march or trying to get the land gate finished before nightfall,” Blondel reminded him.

Richard scanned the hive of industry he had recently left. “Well, what are those Austrians doing over there dicing away the coolest part of the day?” he demanded irritably. “Send some of
them
for picks and shovels.”

Blondel went reluctantly. It wasn’t the first time he had been sent with high-handed messages to foreign contingents, and he knew their trick of pretending not to understand one’s smattering of their various languages. Moreover, he had hoped to clean himself up and spend the noon rest hours with Yvette.