Shield of Three Lions (47 page)

I BOARDED THE SHIP TO LEAVE FOR THE HOLY LAND with great trepidation, for the time for departure couldn’t have been worse: I was bleeding again. Was the rest of my life to be measured out in segments between bleedings? Were all great events to correlate with this loathsome monthly horror?

King Richard straddled the metal ramming beak of the
Trenchemer
as it rose and fell on the waves.

“See what I mean?” An oarsman nudged his mate. “Looks to be his own prick.”

“Stiff as a poker, hot as a forge.”

“Clinks all night it do, striking ore.”

“Aye, poor queen. All night and all day too, swives her bolt upright.”

“No wonder the poor wench looks so pale and with them black circles.”

“But marriage agrees with him, our merry king, God bless him. Could almost pity the Antichrist Saladin. He’s met his match in Richard.”

At that moment the king stepped down and waved.

“Heigh-ho, Your Highness! Good health to thee!” The delighted sailors waved back.

But Richards smile was fixed on me where I sat cross-legged on a cask of herring. I tried to resist, but lifted my hand as well. Enoch watched the exchange with murder in his eye.

Sometime later, our eagle-eyed lookout called from the mast, “Land ahoy! Holy Land to the luft!”

We all scrambled quickly to the rail for the first sight of God’s home, but we saw only a smudge. An hour later we discerned details. Shading my eyes against a searing glare, I looked beyond bare dunes to wave after wave of windswept sand. On the distant horizon, forbidding rocky hills cut the sky.

“There be the land of milk and honey,” Roderick commented dryly. “Fields like emeralds,” I said.

“To think that God could have chosen Scotland,” Enoch added. “Mayhap He didn’t want Jesus to like His home on earth too much.”

Most of the Crusaders seemed as disappointed as we were at this first view of the Holy Land, though a few muttered that every country had its barren spots, that surely the area around Jerusalem would be beautiful beyond words. Only the king was undismayed.

We danced along the dead shore all afternoon on our way to Tyre. King Richard could not stand still for three heartbeats together but rushed from one end of the galley to the other, talking incessantly, touching his men. I had my share of touches and comments but as the day waned I felt alienated from the euphoria of crusading. Perhaps it was because I was a girl, or because I wanted to go home, or mayhap ’twas because of Roderick.

Enoch and I worked hard on Roderick’s leg which had developed a seepage. We combined a mix of Enoch’s former experiences in battle and our lessons from Ibn-al-Latif in our treatment. Enoch washed the leg with sea-water, then wine, then sewed it as neatly as
Dame Margery could have with wine-soaked thread. Finally he placed it where the sun would dry it and prepared a poultice of herbs and lemon-juice for the night.

“I’ll carry ye ashore,” he promised the poor knight, “for ye mun give the stitches time to heal. Yif there be a stick of wood in the city of Tyre, I’ll make ye a cane to use in Acre.”

“Thank you,” Roderick groaned. Then when Enoch went to empty the slops, “Your brother’s a saint, Alex.”

“A
saint
!” I brayed. “Then Saladin be the Angel Gabriel!”

Roderick shook his head and reproved me. “For shame, Alex. Everyone notes what a devoted brother he be to you. I’ve heard it said that never did a man love his own child more than the Scot loves thee.”

“The Scot may love me, but he loves my land more. He’s stolen my writ from the king so he can claim my castle alone. I tell thee true, Roderick, that he stays with me only to usurp my title and land—if that be love.”

Roderick shook his head, still toty from the wine I’d poured into his gullet for pain.

“Well, be as be may, you’ve both been friends to me and I’ll ne’er forget. Later you must tell me more about your estate. My uncle is a powerful man in the north and mayhap he can help you.”

By this time Enoch was back and our conversation ended. Then the exuberant king drifted close and sat with us a few minutes. We should put on our best dress, he explained, for we must make an impression upon Tyre. The governor there was Count Conrad of Mont-ferrat who wanted to be King of Jerusalem once Richard had won it back.

“He’s bound to give us a royal welcome,” the king prophesied, “and we must display our power to establish future authority in this area.”

He’d already alerted others as well, to judge by the knights’ sudden efforts to shave, comb windblown locks and make themselves neat.
As we are seen, so are we esteemed.

God dropped our wind directly before the port of Tyre. For the first time we saw signs of human habitation in one of these great
forbidding fort-towns, for the water bobbed with boats of commerce, and camels waiting to be loaded lined the quays. King Richard sent his priest Nicholas, the Earl of Leicester and Baldwin of Bethune to convey the king’s greetings and ask permission to enter the city As we waited impatiently for their return, Richard ordered the musicians to strike up a sweet air to celebrate our entry into God’s land. It seemed an eternity before we saw our small craft row toward us alone.

“God’s feet, did he send his emissary with our men?” the king asked his counselors. “I expected a small fleet.”

Then our own messengers were back on deck, all red-faced with anger.

“Count Conrad regrets that he cannot permit the English king to enter this city,” Leicester reported in a voice of steel.

“The
count
cannot permit the
king?
” Richard repeated, all euphoria gone. “Explain yourself.”

Baldwin continued. “He says he takes his orders from King Philip of France, My Lord. It seems that King Philip sent a runner from Acre with strict orders that on no account was Conrad to permit you the hospitality of his city; and Conrad says he does homage to France, not to England.”

There was a long silence as Richard’s lips pressed thin and white with anger, and his voice chilled the furnace air. “Mark me well: This Conrad will never become King of Jerusalem. As for King Philip, God help him.”

He told us to camp outside the city walls on God’s own ground, unpolluted by the presence of the Infidel. Again the musicians struck, this time “The Wood of the Cross.” As the voices resounded, the grim king prepared to disembark first.

Loaded like a mule, I staggered in the soft hot sand after Enoch who carried Roderick in his arms.
Deo gratias
, Sir Gilbert had advised me that he and the Pisanos would serve the king that night. We pitched our tents in a line under the shadow of the high bluff wall of the city, not that we needed shelter for warmth but against the heat and blowing grains of sand that cut us like needles.

I patted the sand into a hummock so that Roderick could rest
his back comfortably, then helped Enoch prepare our supper. I shared with Roderick a wooden bossie of porridge mixed with sodden mutton, which was not too bad washed down with methiers of strong ale. Then as a special treat, Enoch gave us salted lamprey which encouraged more drinking, with a dessert of marrow bones, “guid fer healin’ the wound.” Satisfied at last, we lolled on the sand gazing seaward where the sun flopped like an egg over the horizon, leaving us in instant darkness.

“The moon looks big with child,” Enoch observed. “The way she bulges, could be twins.”

Instinctively I touched my twins’ caul where it rested on my right thigh.

“Aye,” Roderick agreed. “From the size of those fat stars, they could be baby moons. At home they’re different, more blue and scattered, like slaeberries.”

“Aye,” we all agreed. “And yet,” I added, “these must be the selfsame stars.”

“Nay, ye’re forgettin’ yer astronomy, bairn. Ye’ve ne’er seen the Southern Cross in Wanthwaite but there it be, Cygnus with Alpha Lyra on the left. We’re on the far side of the glabe.”

“What’s a glabe?” Roderick asked.

“Globe. Enoch means that the world is a round ball and we’ve sailed around a curve so that the sky is different.”

Roderick began to laugh helplessly and begged the Scot to tell further outlandish tales. “It takes my mind off my leg.”

The more Enoch protested that this was a scientific fact learned from a great Arab philosopher, the more gleeful Roderick became. “So are we walking upside down then? Good! I can use my hands instead of my injured leg.” And he beat the sand in his mirth.

Actually I, too, wondered why we were right side up when the globe showed us to be sideways, but Enoch explained that an Arab called Yaqat was working in Palermo to find the reason.

“Be as be may,” I said, suddenly solemn, “I wish I were in England. That was the land of milk and honey if we’d only known.”

“Aye,” they agreed, and were silent.

Then Enoch began a familiar song of the north and Roderick and I joined in, despite our mix of dialects:

Spellbound by our own song, it seemed to me that the spangled curtain of night parted just a crack so that I saw the green upon
green of bending trees in the park, the greensward glistening in a rising mist. Then another voice broke my trance. King Richard was approaching. Was he coming to take me to his pavilion? But I couldn’t …

“Excuse me,” I mumbled. “I’ll be right back.”

“Waesucks, bairn, yer eyes be full of stars,” Enoch called after me, meaning that he’d seen my tears. I threw myself into a hollow and let them soak into the greedy sand.

“Don’t let me stop your singing,” I heard the king say. “That was a lilting carol in the English style, I believe, very sweet.”

“Scottish, Your Highness,” Enoch corrected him.

“The same thing.” Richard laughed derisively. “But I thought I heard a boy’s treble as well. Was it Alex?”

“Aye,” Enoch replied.

And there was an awkward pause.

“Sir Roderick, how is your leg? Draining well?”

“Yes, Your Highness, thank you. Alex and Enoch are fine at physic.”

“I’ve noted as much myself.” Another pause.

“When I write London, I’ll see that your uncle hears of your courage.” Then the king continued casually. “Where is young Alex?”

“Well, to say sooth, Your Grace, the young scamp war sickened by the sea, sae his cod be slack as a sock. Quhat with the noxious fumes fram his stomach and the bilgewater from his bowels, I sent him into the sand. ‘Any tom-cat would shame you,’ says I, ‘have the decency to bury yer flux in a hole whar it won’t offend honest Crusaders.’”

The king seemed as astounded at this description as I was.

“’Tis hard to believe, when he appeared perfectly well not two hours hence. Have you given him some potion to help?”

“Aye, verjuice mixed with grinded earthworms. ’Twill do the trick in time.”

“I see.” The king hesitated and I feared he was going to wait to check my condition himself. “Well, tell him I asked.”

And with more courtesies on both sides, he strolled away.

“I didn’t know Alex had the gripes,” Roderick said.

“Ye were too drunkalewe to notice. I didna want to shame the lad before the king but, ’tween us, Alex sneaks eels when ye’re not lookin’ and makes himself sick. I’ve told him and I’ll tell ye that ye mun be keerful about eat and drink in this Holy Land. ’Tis said that the flux killed more Crusaders than the Turks did last time round.”

I squirmed in my hollow listening to these outright lies. What possessed the Scot? Why had he painted such a revolting image of me? What would the king think?

Then I had a revelation! Enoch attributed the flux and gripes to me because he smelled my bleeding.
Benedicite
, I dare not crawl back to my goatskin if that were the case. I dug a hollow in the sand for sleep, wallowed in self-pity, rubbed my eyes with fists and got sand under my lids.