The King's Witch (21 page)

Edythe twitched; she loved Eleanor. Richard only sneered. “So? And who was your real father, anyway?”

Philip’s body screwed itself tighter; his cap slipped, and she saw the blue-white of his scalp above his ear. But he knew, surely, the dangers of word-fighting with Richard. He said, “Thus even more is the Crusade clearly doomed. I am going home.” One hand reached up and smoothed the cap back where it belonged. “I have given much to this place.”

“Aye,” Richard said. “So I hear. All sorts of relics, and you aren’t even dead yet. What a saint.”

Johanna said, “Here he is, coming.”

Edythe looked up. De Sablé was walking toward the Kings. Her hair stood on end. He would betray the Queen now; he would accuse Philip of scheming with her—but he was bowing.

“My lords, my brothers and I must go to Vespers soon. I have come to ask your leave, and also to assent to your decision here.”

Johanna’s breath came out in a rush. The Kings spoke, and the Grand Master bowed, and then the Hospitallers came, and a steady parade of the other men. The council was over. They were taking Richard’s solution. Richard was staying; Philip was not. Therefore they would follow Richard, no matter who was King.

The women stole out of the balcony and back down the stair. On the landing Johanna took Edythe by the sleeve. “Philip is going. He may halt a little, but he wants to go and he will. This must all be over soon.”

“My lady, I hope so.”

“The Templar said nothing.”

“My lady, he gets no good of it, he loses all his hold on you, and Richard would hate him for it. He would not dare . . .” She left off what he would not dare.

“But—still—” Johanna lifted her head. “How can I be sure? Pray God he leaves me alone now.” She lowered her gaze to Edythe. “Again, swear to me in your truest voice, you will not tell my brother.”

“I will not, my lady.”

“Come, then, before someone catches us.”

Days passed. The Saracens did not send the ransom. Saladin’s brother Safadin came, to ask for more time. The summer heat wore on. In the garden of the citadel, Berengaria had a force of servants prune and pluck and dig and carry water. Nothing much changed, except the place seemed cleaner. It was cool there, in the evenings, when even the citadel was too hot for comfort.

The city thronged with Crusaders filling the taverns and the whorehouses, which only days before had been empty ruined buildings. In the alleys women sold themselves to men while other men waited in line. The markets sprouted around the open squares, and every day the cost went up of everything sold there: bread and oil and wine as well as the beautiful cloth, the sweet dried fruits, the henna green as pistachios, the ironwork and goldwork and leather. Strings of the huge groaning beasts Edythe now knew to call camels lay folded on their scabby legs in the harbor while naked brown men unloaded their cargoes onto ships. Donkeys stacked with hay trotted switch-tailed down the streets. The reek of sweat and piss and rot lay over everything. Drunken men and beggars littered every corner, every square. In the late summer heat, even in the citadel the noise went on all night.

Berengaria said, “Is it not better?”

Johanna sat beside her, looking around at the garden. “Oh, much better, my lady.” She turned to Edythe. “Bring me a cushion.”

“Yes, my lady.” The woman scurried off, her eyes lowered and her head bent; Johanna wondered at this odd cringing attitude in her. Johanna herself had been feeling lighter of heart since the council passed with no trouble. Maybe Edythe was right, and she could forget de Sablé. She looked around at Berengaria’s garden.

It was hard to see much change. Some patches of yarrow grew in the back, and in the center a straggling rosebush, more stem than leaves. Some of the low bushes in front did look greener, and the rock walls were mended, and Berengaria had caused little lamps to be hung in the trees and set into niches in the walls, so the long blue evening was spangled with light. On the raked soil between some of the half-dead bushes were spiders of stems and leaves. “You should have them pull up the weeds, though.”

“No—” Berengaria looked at her, her brow wrinkled. “I bade them not. They grew—they belong here. I want to see what they become.”

Johanna laughed. “They will become weeds. No, do as you like, sister, I like it already.”

She had brought her court out to enjoy the breeze from the sea, and the garden was pleasant, cool, out of the wind. It reminded her a little of Palermo, except of course the gardens in Palermo were splendid. Edythe came back with a cushion and sat behind her, her eyes downcast, and Johanna wondered again briefly what was wrong with her.

Sitting on the pavement with his lute in his lap, a Norman trouvère played, a handsome little song about the glories of King Richard on Crusade, with pennants and splendid horses and beautiful ladies waving their silken sleeves. This trouvère had already said he would write a song about the whole Crusade, and many people were making sure he knew their names and deeds.

The pages brought them wine, bits of fruit soaked in sugar, tiny pastries folded around dates, dates stuffed with pistachio and honey. Johanna licked her fingers. Surely now it was over with the Templar. The trouvère stood and bowed, his lute in his hand, and she patted her hands together in applause. He was better at the words than the lute, but she sent him a purse anyway, since the words were probably more important.

Henry of Champagne, her cousin, took the lute and played. Like all his family, he was excellent at music; he knew songs from the matter of Britain, Parsifal, and gentle Galahad. In the gusty balmy dusk people picked up the refrains. He played well enough for a knight, and his voice was deep and true. He sang the questions in Parsifal in a rolling booming tone that got them all crying out.

“Whom does the Grail serve? Why does the Lance bleed?”

A woman across the way wailed, overcome, and people clapped. Johanna crossed herself. They did this all for God; she would not lose sight of that. She thought,
When we are done, perhaps, the song of the Norman will sound so
. When the bad had faded away, as it must, while the good was pure, uncorruptible gold.

She turned to Edythe. “If my brother were here, he would play. Richard plays as well as any troubadour.” She lifted her voice. “Rouquin! Rouquin, take the lute, and show them.”

Across the garden, in the dark behind the glow of the lamps, Rouquin shook his head.

Johanna cried, “Oh, do, please.”

He shook his head again, and then he was leaving, going away out the back. Beside her, Edythe straightened, her head rising, and sighed. Johanna gave her a long glance, and called to someone else to play.

ACRE

Edythe knew the city better every day. She went through a maze of narrow streets where shoemakers sat crosslegged in the shade with their awls and knives and scraps of leather, where women sold eggs and figs and children played in the dust, and found a sign she recognized: a little jar with a stick in it. The shop had no door, only three walls around a space two people long and one person wide.

Inside were drawers and shelves built into the walls, holding tiny stoppered pots, silk envelopes, and bowls with lids. A scale stood on the table at the end. Even as she stepped under the roof a man was bowing to her, smiling, rubbing his hands together.

“Welcome, lady, welcome.”

She said, “I am a physician.”

He bowed, smiling, as if anything could happen.

“I have a patient with a recurring fever.”

He went to his shelves and began taking down jars and pots, opening them, giving them to her to sniff the oils they contained. “This for stomach. Good for stomach.” It smelled like mint, like orange. “This for fever, this for throat.” She sniffed deep of the complex scents.

“Ah.”

“For restlessness. For sloth.” He put another pot to her nose. “To bring man.”

She drew in a disquieting animal aroma.

“To make man hard and strong.” His eyebrows jacked up and down.

She laughed. None of this seemed what she needed, but she coveted it all, just to smell. She bought several jars; having Richard’s purse, she needed not haggle. She said, as if an afterthought, “Are there Jews here?”

“Jews. No Jews in Acre.” He shook his head, regretfully. “Jews have magic over herbs.” She paid him, and left.

She wanted the Jews now not only to send messages to Eleanor, but to answer her own questions. She crisscrossed the old city but found no houses with the holy scroll beside the door. At last, collecting her courage, she went to the big central fountain and found the old beggar sitting in the shadow of the broken palm tree.

“Alms—”

Wordlessly she sat down beside the heap of rags, took the clawlike hand, and put a piece of bread into it. The old woman smelled bad. Her eyes were like raw mussels. A steady passage went by in the street: horse hooves stirring the dust, the padding bare feet of ordinary people, running children, a stray chicken, the curled toes of donkeys. She fed the old woman dates and bread, until the beggar said, “You came before.”

“Yes.”

“You know me.”

“No,” Edythe said. “Only what you told me, that you had been here awhile.” She had drawn back behind the palm trunk, to keep from being seen from the street, and she folded her knees up and wrapped her arms around them.

“Then you want something.” The old mouth chewed on the air. “What is it?”

“Were—” It was hard to get the words out. “Were there ever Jews here?”

The old woman growled. “Jews. The dogs. They brought the Hagarites on us. Everybody said so.”

Edythe said nothing, wondering what Hagarites were. She felt cold, afraid she had given away too much. The beggar rocked back and forth, her old scrawny head tipped back.

“They went down by Jaffa. The old man had some sons, I think. Mordecai. They were rich, once.”

“Mordecai,” Edythe said, startled. But it was a common name.

“I know everybody.” The old woman yawned. “I know.” Her head moved to one side. Edythe waited for the old woman to say more, but then a gentle rumble of a snore came out of the pile of rags, and Edythe went away.

On her bed Johanna found a little flat bit of reed, only a few inches long. Her skin went cold. She glanced around, to make sure she was unwatched, and picked it up. There was a daub of ink on the underside. With a gesture like shying from a snake, she cast it into the chamber pot.

Nonetheless, she was there, the next evening, alone, at the foot of the stair by the sea wall. She faced him, brave, her head up, ready to be chided, and to defy him. She reminded herself what Edythe had said. He bowed to her.

“What happened happened, I know. Not much to be done.” He sighed, as if they were both disappointed.

She began to say, “I will no longer—”

He said, “But I would have the letters of the Queen, which surely is within your grasp.”