Queen of Swords Read online

  Queen of Swords

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue

  I

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  II

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  III

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Seventy-Five

  Seventy-Six

  Seventy-Seven

  Seventy-Eight

  Seventy-Nine

  Eighty

  Author’s Note

  The Three Queens Series

  Copyright

  Prologue

  La Forêt Sauvage

  Anno Domini 1129

  They had made an ordered place, here on the wild wood’s edge: green fields and vineyards, village and farmstead, and over them the grey bulk of the castle. Its towers looked to all the world about; and all the world, it seemed, was forest. Except where the river ran, a strong slow flood running from dark into dark, wood into wood; but here it glinted in sunlight.

  Old Lord Waleran’s vineyards terraced the slopes on the far side, the north side, looking to the gentle south. Waleran’s folly, to clear the wood across the river from the safety of his castle and plant vines that must be tended all the year through, and guarded as closely as his daughters. But God and His Mother protected them, and St. Bacchus who cherished the vine and its fruit; and the wine, Waleran’s Blood as it was called, was a sweet and heady vintage, rich in its rarity.

  On a fair day in early spring when the vines had barely begun to bud, the Lady Richildis oversaw the broaching of a cask. The wine flowed as always, like dark blood; as always, the steward offered her the first cupful. As always she declined. He grinned and shook his head and drank deep.

  “Our wine has never traveled well,” Lady Agnes observed. Neither voice nor face betrayed any expression in particular. Still Richildis fancied that she heard a hint of sharpness, saw the suggestion of a frown on the wide smooth brow. “And that was only as far as Poitiers.”

  “Father took a jar to Paris once,” Richildis reminded her, “and it arrived in reasonable condition. Or so he said.”

  “Your father,” said the Lady Agnes with some asperity, “could down a jar of vinegar and reckon it excellent. Whatever the number of his virtues, a palate for wine was never one of them.”

  Richildis shrugged. “Still: I mean to try. I’ll pray to St. Bacchus, and invoke old Waleran. He’d have approved, I think, if he had known where the fruit of his vines would go.”

  “You always were headstrong,” said Lady Agnes. She sighed, but she did not press further.

  Richildis was rather surprised. Lady Agnes was never one to spare the force of a rebuke. But Lord Rogier’s death had quenched her. She was the wife of his old age, no tender maid herself when she married him but a widow of lands and standing, well prepared to take in hand his scapegrace sons and his hoyden of a daughter. Everyone had expected her to outlive him. But not so soon. Not so swiftly.

  Richildis’ throat was tight. She had not expected it, either. There had been no warning, no omen, no clap of thunder or croaking of ravens. He had ridden out of a morning, gone to see to this or that about his lands, and simply not come back. One of the men-at-arms had found him near the forest’s edge, lying where he had fallen, and his old destrier with the reins on its neck, cropping winterworn grass. The horse had not thrown him, that anyone could see. He had fallen, that was all, as if the hand of God had struck him.

  The hand of God, or his own grief. The elder of his sons had died in the fading of the year, dead of a fever that struck hard and swift and left but ashes in its wake. There had been no grace in Giraut’s death, and no honor. Nothing but needless misery.

  Richildis stiffened her back. She had sworn on the day her father died: whatever grief beset her, she would not give way to it. Rogier had, and had died – of a broken heart, as near as made no matter. Those who were left, his daughter and his wife, had no choice but to endure.

  While Richildis saw the wine decanted into jars that would, she hoped, survive the journey she was contemplating, Lady Agnes departed in silence.

  * * *

  Richildis found her where she most often was, these days: in the dim and stone-cold chapel. It was never a place that Richildis would have chosen, nor Agnes either while Rogier was still alive. But the chill of the old stones, that never completely left them even in the summer’s heat, seemed matched to the chill in Agnes heart.

  Richildis knelt beside her on the hard cold floor, crossed herself and murmured a prayer to the Lady whose image stood beside the altar. Quickly then, before she could think better of it, she said, “Come with me. Pack your belongings and go. We’ll both make the pilgrimage. We’ll find my brother and bring him home again.”

  Agnes signed herself with the cross, slowly, as if she had not heard; but Richildis knew that she had. After a stretching while she said, “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Richildis demanded of her. “Thierry’s a good enough seneschal. He’ll hold the demesne till we come back.”

  “Surely,” said Agnes with a hint of her old spirit, “and rob us blind while he does it. Or sell La Forêt to the highest bidder, and look all innocence when we come back, because of course he never imagined that we would mind.”

  “Then find another seneschal,” Richildis said, “and let him take it all in hand. Father Maury, perhaps, or—”

  “No,” Agnes said. “I don’t want to go on pilgrimage, not even to Jerusalem. I was never born here, but here I belong. Here I intend to stay.”

  “And when I find Bertrand,” Richildis said with deliberate cruelty, “and bring him back, if he should displace us both with a wife and heirs – what then, my lady? What will you do?”

  “Then,” said Agnes, grimly composed, “I shall go where God and Our Lady lead me. Until then I’ll stay here. I’ve no mind or heart to chase the wide world round, looking for a fool of a boy who cannot
possibly be aware that he’s the Lord of La Forêt.”

  “Not a boy,” Richildis said, but softly, almost to herself. “Not any longer. He’ll have grown. He might even – be—”

  “Do not you think it,” Agnes said, so fiercely that Richildis started. “Rogier and Giraut are dead, but Bertrand is alive. Never for a moment doubt that. You may go to find him, since you trust messengers no more than I trust our worthy seneschal. I shall stay here and make certain that when he comes he has a demesne to be lord of.”

  Richildis knelt mute, staring at her. And truly, what was there to say? People had called Richildis mad and worse, for insisting that she and no other go all the way to Outremer, to the kingdom beyond the sea, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, to fetch her brother home. But never Agnes. Agnes was as mad as she, perhaps, as persistent in her refusal to go as Richildis in her refusal to stay.

  They both grieved, and both alike, although the choices that they made had been so different. Richildis could not have borne to stay, not with father and brother dead and Bertrand gone so long, doing as so many younger sons had done since Jerusalem was won from the infidel, defending the Holy Sepulcher. Richildis had raged at him when he left, hated him for going away, for abandoning her.

  Now she was abandoning Agnes, leaving her all alone, and La Forêt in her hands, with no one else to share the burden.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Agnes spoke ahead of her. “No, you may not stay. You insisted on this venture; you will complete it. Your pride will allow no less.”

  “I am stronger than my pride,” Richildis said stiffly.

  Agnes raised her fine dark brows. “Are you indeed? Then let it rule you. I’ll not have you growling and glooming about, begrudging every moment that’s not spent in Outremer hunting down your brother.”

  Since that was eminently true, Richildis did not dispute it. But she said, “You’ll be alone.”

  “I have been alone,” said Agnes, “since they brought my dear lord home and laid him at my feet.” She rose, graceful as she always was, and smoothed her skirts. Her face was as calm as her voice, as if the words did not matter; and in that was all the sorrow in the world. “You will go, daughter of my husband. I will stay. That is as God wills it.”

  And that, thought Richildis, was the end of it. She rose herself, though never as smoothly as Agnes had, and went to do as she had vowed to do. To leave La Forêt; to journey to Jerusalem. To bring her brother home again.

  I

  Lady and Princess

  A.D. 1129–1133

  One

  Helena in the markets of Acre was a force as terrible as any army of the Saracen. Armed with a purse full of silver and gold, armored in her third-best silk gown with its headdress that recalled the tribesmen of the desert, escorted by her redoubtable maid and a solid half-dozen bearded and braided Turks, she took the stalls by storm, and left the merchants in a state halfway between shock and bliss. Helena yielded to no one in the art of extracting the best price possible; but she paid well and she paid fair, and she bought goods enough to stock her own marketplace if she had troubled to establish one.

  Bertrand happened across her between the street of the goldsmiths and the avenue of the spice-sellers, just as she emerged triumphant from a cloth-merchant’s stall. The most villainous-looking of her guardsmen staggered under the weight of a vast bundle.

  “Cotton!” she said by way of greeting, with considerable satisfaction. “Cotton of the finest, a shift for everyone and a nightrobe for me, and if you behave yourself, I might – I just might – let you have a length for yourself.”

  Bertrand laughed. “Only if it’s crimson, and only if the dye is fast.”

  Her eyes slid at him – wonderful eyes, wide and dark as a doe’s, painted skillfully with kohl. A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “You still love the color? After…?”

  He flushed in spite of himself. There had been a gift, one of the king’s bounties, a robe of honor, and a sudden storm of rain, it being winter in Jerusalem; and he had discovered to his enormous dismay that the king had been cheated somewhat in the quality of his goods. That would have been endurable, but he had gone straight from the storm to Helena’s arms. He had never known till he was naked in them, that he had been dyed as rich a crimson as ever left the vat.

  It had worn off eventually, with a great deal of help from her bath-servants – and they had been discreet, he had reason to hope, though not perhaps for terror of his sword.

  She had been watching him remember, following the track of his thought as she so often did. Her smile hid now in both corners of her mouth. “Ah, but the color so becomes a fair man. Even to the blush on his cheeks—”

  He caught her, right there in the bazaar, and no matter who was looking, and stopped the rest of it with a kiss.

  That was not quite wise. She freed herself deftly, the glitter of her eyes warning him: some things she reserved to herself, and first of them was her dignity. He did not cry her pardon, but he set a prudent distance between them, putting on the demeanor of a proper young man in the presence of a lady.

  She was not so swift to forgive him, but neither did she send him away. She suffered him to follow as she continued her assault on the markets of Acre.

  When she had laden another of her guardsmen with packets of spices, she inquired, “Haven’t you duties to call you?”

  Bertrand shrugged slightly in his fine new coat. It was silk, and of better quality than the one that had embarrassed him in Jerusalem. The king had not given it. This was the king’s daughter’s gift, the Princess Melisende whose eastern mother had taught her to tell gold from dross, and deep-dyed silk from middling clever counterfeit. Thinking of her, he said, “They’ve sighted the fleet. It should be in shortly after noon.”

  “And here it is, midmorning already, and you dallying in the market.” Helena’s brows, that needed little plucking or painting to preserve a perfect arch, drew together. “Was it but a rumor, then? You never swore yourself in knightly service to the Princess Melisende?”

  “No rumor,” Bertrand said, keeping the heat out of his voice. “I’ll be at the quay with the rest of her train, and in good time, too.”

  “Then you’d best leave now,” she said briskly.

  “Only if you come with me.”

  The elegant brows rose. A curl of midnight hair had escaped her headdress. He restrained the urge to stroke it back where it belonged. “I, come with you?” Her voice was light; brittle, one might have thought. “I think not. It’s hardly proper, the likes of me among the princess’ attendants.”

  “I had thought,” said Bertrand, “to find you a pleasant place to watch, where no one would crowd or trouble you.”

  To himself he sounded feeble, but she did not lash him with mockery and well she might have done, if she had had a mind. “I’ll find my own,” she said, still lightly, still with that brittle edge. “You go. Wait on your king and his beautiful daughter.”

  “Why,” said Bertrand with the force of revelation. “You’re jealous.”

  “I am not,” Helena said, and now her voice was cold. “Go. You’ll be late.”

  He wanted to linger, to protest, to coax the truth out of her, but she had the right of it: he was late. He bowed over her hand, which lay still and cold in his, and left as quickly as the press of people would let him, aiming for the harbor. He could not have heard what he thought he did, nor would she have said it; yet he fancied that he heard her voice, half bitter, half wry: “Yes, go, my dear sweet fool.”

  * * *

  The oddness of Helena’s mood did not quite slip away forgotten, but Bertrand had ample to occupy him. Acre was a crowded city always; its harbor saw ships from every port in Christendom, coming and going, bringing pilgrims from the west and bearing them away again. Today however it was thronged as he had never seen it, filled to bursting. The whole High Court of the Kingdom of Jerusalem had come here, and all their servants and hangers-on, to meet the ships that sailed from France.
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  Bertrand struggled through the mobs, all of which seemed as intent as he on coming to the quay before the French ships reached it. He was privileged: once he had fought his way to the front, ruffled and sweating but still, he hoped, presentable, he was let through the ring of guards. The captain of this particular detachment, Richard Gaptooth, knew him; grinned and let him by into relative quiet.

  It was relative only, and hardly less crowded than the streets had been. A thickening of the press marked the king: Bertrand saw him standing taller than the men nearest him, the high fair head gone lately silver, lifted easily under the weight of the crown. Baldwin of Le Bourg, once Count of Edessa, now and for the past ten years King of Jerusalem, Defender of the Holy Sepulcher, stood leaning on the shoulder of his sometime rival, often enemy, and just as often friend, Joscelin, who had taken the County of Edessa when Baldwin left it to be king in Jerusalem. Joscelin, smaller, once darker and now much greyer, was laughing at something the king had said.

  Bertrand sighed faintly, hardly aware that he was doing it. They were like brothers, those two: allies and enemies, friends and devoted rivals. He had had a brother like that once, far away in Anjou.

  Giraut had been a prig, as meek as a monk and much inclined in that direction; but the eldest son of a nobleman was not often permitted to indulge his religious proclivities. Bertrand, who might properly have done so, had no such calling. No, he thought, remembering the night before, and Helena’s warm and scented bed: no, not in the least.

  As for whether she was jealous of his princess: well, and women were strange. Melisende was a beauty as one would expect, daughter that she was of tall fair Baldwin and graceful dark Morphia of Melitene. She had inherited the best of both of them. Her eyes were great and dark, Armenian eyes, with smoke-dark lashes and strong dark brows. But her hair was like her father’s, wheat-fair, and her skin was nigh as fair as his, with the suggestion of a golden sheen. The sun dyed it gold indeed, when she would let it; and that was more often than her maids would like, for she was fond of riding in the sun.

  She stood in her own flock of attendants, not far from her father. They made Bertrand think of geese, milling and chattering, and among them her sisters, the little princesses, dark plump Hodierna and silver-fair Yveta. The second sister, the Lady Alys, who had married the Prince of Antioch only last year, had her own orbit and her own attendants, and kept them jealously apart, though the edges of her following blurred into those of Melisende’s own.