The King's Witch (36 page)

She ran to help. They saved the horses, but the whole wagon was on fire. They dragged the rest out of the way, hauling them close together, in case there was another attack.

Abruptly the knights were galloping back around them, arrows in their mail and shields, roaring. They howled at each other and made their horses rear and prance. Their faces blazed. They had fought the Saracens in some blind draw and crushed them. A little rain began to fall, and with the other squires she crept in under the wagons, watching the knights whoop over their victory.

The boy next to her said, “They are hot, look at them.” His voice was wistful. “ I’ll be such a knight as that.”

She made some indefinite sound. He was one of the squires to Rouquin’s company; his name was Walter. He seemed familiar and she knew she had seen him before, probably often, but only now she paid attention. Now that they shared the Crusade. She turned to watch one knight rear his horse up and make it leap four great bounds on its hind legs along the road, and the others cheered.

They stayed where they were, built camps around the wagons, in the rain. The fire sputtered and the meat was raw and turning bad. Sometime just before sundown, when she was halfway dozing, she looked up and saw Richard dismounting from his horse on the other side of the camp.

She crouched back among the other squires. Richard came into the middle of the camp, on the other side of the fire, his eyes steadily on the squires. He wore no helmet, no sign of rank, only a dirty white surcoat over his mail. His blue eyes blazed. He said, “Your masters say you saved these wagons. By God’s spurs you are worthy, and I love you for it, I shall dub each one of you by my own hand, when this is done.”

The boys all cheered, and some stood up, and said their names and bowed; Walter leaped to his feet and bowed and bowed, grinning all over his face. She stayed sitting, hidden among them, but what he had said swelled in her mind. He had meant her, too. He had praised her, too. She would have done anything for him. She deserved Jerusalem.

They slogged on. The wagons that had burned had held most of the fodder for their horses. Besides the constant search for dry wood, now they were looking also for grass, for hay, anything in this desert country that the horses would eat. She thought the army was growing smaller. She saw little of Rouquin, who was in the saddle before she woke up until after she was asleep. She asked Walter if there were fewer men, and he shrugged.

“ Probably they’re leaving. They did last time.” He had an armful of grass; she had found a narrow meadow in a draw just off the road, along a creek rapidly filling in the rain, and they were cutting all they could before the rising waters drove them out. The wet grass was soaking her jerkin. He said, “You’re a girl, aren’t you.”

She mumbled a denial. He said, “ It’s all right. There’ve been other girls. There were girls the first time. At least I’ve heard. Like that song.” He began to sing an old ballad, about a woman who followed her husband to the Holy Land.

She thought probably he had seen her before, too, back at Jaffa, at Acre, but he had not recognized her, not paid attention, until they shared this. They went back up to the camp and fed the snorting horses; the roan tried to bite her. She went to help the cook. Walter sat by the fire, yawning. That night again she never saw Rouquin come into camp, and he was gone when she woke up.

Plodding on through the mud, she grew hungrier. In the higher hills, they took another assault of arrows, and again the knights drove the Saracens away. The wagons were empty anyway, except for lances and shields.

Walter said, “ I’ ll keep going. Won’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”

“Yes, but then you have—” He nodded toward Mercadier. With a start she realized that he saw her lie down each night beside Mercadier, and so he thought her the Brabanter’s woman. She said nothing.

They trudged on. There was nothing to eat. The horses neighed with hunger. The sun could not break through the low clouds; it would rain again soon. She thought she should pray. She plodded along beside Walter, her head down, afraid she would give up. A drop of rain hit her nose. Another, and another.

Then the foreguard was yelling, and the rear guard dashed by to help them. She caught a glimpse of the great roan bolting past, its long ugly head stretched forward, the mailed rider drawing out his sword.

The shouting up front became clamorous. Ahead the road topped a saddle ridge, and they labored, panting the last few hundred yards, and from the summit looked down into a long, wide valley. As the wagons rolled onto the down slope, they could see the valley floor, where the knights had surrounded a collection of laden animals: donkeys, and many camels and some horses, and a flock of sheep and goats. Walter thumped her back.

“A caravan! We’re saved!”

She let out a yell. They had found food. The rain even lessened awhile. The knights let the handful of Saracens driving the caravan leak through their circle. They unpacked the camels and let them go and slaughtered the sheep and goats, built fires, put meat over them, and they began eating; they were eating well past sundown, when Rouquin finally came in.

“Hah, you like that, hah?” He sat beside her. She saw Walter’s eyes widen, and the squire slide away. She gave the dripping haunch in her hands to Rouquin.

“ Eat. There’s plenty. It’s delicious.” There was blood running down her chin.

“Yes. Nothing like a fast for seasoning.”

The singing began again, but this time they were singing Christian hymns, and she only listened. They were going to Jerusalem, all together, that was what mattered. She lay down, and he lay next to her.

The rain began again. She hunched down under her cloak, and then he spread his cloak over them both and drew her close to him. He slept in his mail and he was cold and damp against her, but he kept the rain off. She pressed her face into the shelter of his body. Surely the caravan was a sign. God favored them. This time they would come into the Holy City.

They moved on through driving rain. They had abandoned most of the wagons and she rode one of those horses now, first by herself, then with Walter up behind. They rode bareback, the harness reins chopped short. She had never ridden astride before, and it surprised her how different it was. Eleanor, she remembered, had ridden astride.

Behind her, Walter crept closer on the horse’s back, put his arms around her waist as if to hold on, and began to move his fingers toward her breasts. She looped the reins into one hand and gouged the nails of the other across his wrist.

“Ow,” he said.

“Oh, did I hurt you?” she asked, looking to see who noticed. Nobody paid them heed.

“Slut,” he said, under his breath, but he withdrew his hands, and just held to the back of her belt. In the afternoon, they dodged another spray of arrows. Several of the knights lost their horses, and one took their horse, so they were walking again.

Rouquin whispered, “Are you sorry you came?”

“No,” she said, amazed that he asked. “No.”

But there was no food anymore. All night the hungry horses neighed and her stomach hurt and she dreamed of eating. In the bleak wintry hills nothing grew but thorns and scrub. On the up and down road, she saw Richard riding ahead of them and realized how many had deserted, how small the army was becoming.

She saw him again when they came to a river, and he pulled off to the side to watch them all cross. She caught only a glimpse of his face, but that was enough. His eyes were hollow, his skin a bad color. She knew, with a knot in her stomach, that he was getting sick again.

She thought,
In Jerusalem, he will get better
. She thought of the tincture, back in Jaffa; she should have brought it. Maybe she could find some in Jerusalem. She should have brought it.

Then he would have known. But she should have brought it.

The next morning, in the driving rain, she was helping break the camp when the chief men began to move up toward the front of the army. She saw they were having a council. Walter said, “This is what they did when they turned back the last time.” Her stomach rolled. They must be close, she thought. It must be only over the next hill, beyond the next bend in the road. But the men were gathering, up there, and she could hear them shouting.

“Sire, we cannot go farther. There’s nothing to eat. God knows what lies ahead of us. Saladin and all his troops—”

“And us so weakened, Sire—”

Richard stood with the cloak pulled tight around him, shaking. The corruption of his body was more to him than the arguing around him. De Sablé came at him again. “ How can we even mount a charge if we are attacked? We have lost half the horses.”

He thought,
That hardly matters, since we’ve lost half the men
. Gerald of Nablus, the Hospitaller, rose up before him, adamant here as he never was against the Saracens.

“Sire, we must turn back. There’s still the long way to the coast and we have no food.”

They had food. Not much. It was the horses he pitied. He felt cold all the way to his bones, as if each stroke of rain pierced him like a lance. He wanted to lie down, but they were miles from any bed.

Rouquin was there, his face streaming in the rain, his eyes hard, accusing. “ In the great Crusade, they never turned back. They took Jerusalem.”

Guy said, “My lord, I am low minded saying this, but the Grand Masters are right. We must go back.”

Richard held his jaw fast, to keep his teeth from chattering. Around him were men who owed him their swords, their power, even their lives: Guy whom he maintained as King, Henry of Champagne who was his cousin, Guy’s brother Hugh whom he had made lord of Ascalon, the orders whose coffers he filled regularly, and they were curling their tails up between their legs and getting ready to run.

But he needed them. Without them, he himself could not go forward.

He bent his head. “Go tell the rest, then. We will go back.” His muscles hurt, every part of his body throbbing.

Rouquin surged up in front of him. His gray eyes were wide with fury; Richard thought suddenly of his father, raging like this. Rouquin’s voice spat at him.

“You can’t do this. You swore to lead us.” He wheeled toward the men already hurrying off to retreat. “ I will go on; who will go to Jerusalem with me?”

Mercadier stood there, but Rouquin’s voice stretched to reach the others, already gone into the haze of the rain, their backs to him. Nor did they heed him. No one turned to join him, but all rushed away.

Richard clutched the cloak around him. He had to get somewhere warm and safe. With his doctor, and her gentle hands and her potions against the pain. He looked at Rouquin and said, “I order you to retreat.”

She was sheltering under a wagon when Rouquin came back, and from his face she saw what had happened. She turned her gaze down. His voice was bitter, the words chopped, broken in her ears. The Crusade was over. They would not see Jerusalem. The old beggar was right: Nobody won.