Queen of Swords Read online

  Father dead. Giraut dead, by the devil’s black arse. Richildis here, of all places in the world, whom he had envisioned a child still in La Forêt, with her silver-gilt eyes and her gold-bronze braids and the ant-trail of freckles across her nose. This stiff and upright lady could not be his hoyden sister, and yet he had no doubt of it.

  Ages late and much too soon, they came to the place he had been seeking. It was a house like many another in this sunstruck country, bare walls unadorned, black unwelcoming slot of gate, nothing about it to betray what lay within. He waited for, and quickly heard, the intake of his sister’s breath as the gate opened to his hand, the aged turbaned porter bowing and murmuring in Arabic, admitting them to a kingdom of light and coolness both, and peace: the singing of birds, the ripple of water in a fountain, the scent of blossoms on a gentle waft of air.

  Servants came as they always did, by magic he used to think, taking them both in hand. Richildis clung to Bertrand, stiffer than ever but plainly terrified. “Hush,” he said as if to a startled mare. “Hush, be still. They mean no harm.”

  She unlocked her fingers from his arm, leaving behind the throb of bruises. Her eyes rolled white within the veil as the three maidservants bore her away. He called after her, trying to reassure her. “They’re only going to get you into something cooler. I’ll be here when you come back. I promise!”

  She was gone before she could have heard the half of it. He sighed. Marid the chief of servants, with his beautiful manners that he had learned in Baghdad, offered Bertrand all the courtesies to which he was accustomed: the bath, the silken robes, the cool and shaded room and the cup of sherbet, and dainties for his pleasure. Bertrand was glad of them all, yet with a stab of guilt, and then of anger. His father and his brother were dead. And what did he do? He brought his sister to this of all houses in Outremer, presumed on her tolerance and the householder’s charity, as if he had a right to either.

  In a little while one of the three maids brought Richildis to the room in which Bertrand was sitting at his ease on carpets as people did in the east. Richildis looked stiff and rather stunned. She was clean, her hair washed and curling damply about her face, her gown as modest as she might have asked for, and a veil fastened by a fillet, Frankish style and eastern fashion. Someone had chosen the colors well: soft blue, pale gold that caught the shimmer of her hair.

  Bertrand mustered a smile for her. “Why, sister! You grew up beautiful.”

  She frowned. “Oh, I’m not that. Don’t feel you have to flatter me. What is this place? Who are these people? Is this your house?”

  He chose to answer the last question first. “No. My house, such as I have, is in Jerusalem. This belongs to a… friend.”

  She heard the hesitation. Of course she would. “Some other man’s wife?”

  Time was when he would have struck her for that. But he was grown older, and he had learned in a hard school, that one did not indulge one’s every fit of temper. “As it happens,” he said, “no. I’ve given up trespassing in other men’s beds.”

  “That comforts me,” she said. She sounded as if she meant it. She yielded at last to the maid’s mute urgings, sat on the low divan that would be more to her western taste than a heap of carpets on the floor, and took the cup that she was given. She started a little: the silver would be cold, the sherbet cooled with snow.

  “Drink it,” Bertrand said when she hesitated. “It’s good. It’s made with lemons – one of the fruits of Paradise. And with sugar, which is less sweet than honey. That’s snow in it, from the mountains of the Lebanon.”

  Richildis sipped. He saw how her eyes widened; grinned before he thought, before memory struck once more. She did not smile back, but she sipped again, and yet again.

  She drained the cup and set it down on the table beside the divan. At once the servant was there to fill it. She did not reach to take it. Her hands had knotted in her lap. “You do realize,” she said as if the words were part of a long and wearisome conversation, “that you are now the Lord of La Forêt.”

  Bertrand had not let himself understand what it meant that both his father and his brother were dead. He did not want to understand it. “I am the Lord of Beausoleil near Banias. I have a house in Jerusalem. My service is sworn to the Princess Melisende.”

  “You are the Lord of La Forêt,” said Richildis.

  Bertrand shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. When I left, I left for good and all. I swore an oath on holy relics. Never, I said. Never would I come back to the place that had cast me out.”

  “The place never cast you out,” Richildis said, merciless in her precision. “Our father, who was as much enraged by your refusal to repent your sin as by the fact that you sinned at all, spoke words that he ever after repented. When Giraut died, he told me that you would have to be sent for. It was time, he said, to end the quarrel. But he died too soon. He never sent the messenger.”

  “He never meant to.” Bertrand turned his own cup in his hands, the sherbet growing warm, the snow melting, but he had no taste for it. He, who loved sherbet best of all the delicacies that were made in Outremer. It tasted of ashes, ashes and cold memory. “You were a fool,” he said, “to come here. You’re as much of his blood as I am. You should have taken the demesne, found a man to protect it for you, and ruled it for yourself.”

  She shook her head, as stubborn as she had ever been. “It wasn’t mine. It never was. It was Father’s, and then Giraut’s. Now it’s yours.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Oh, please,” she said. “You sound like a child. Of course you want it. It’s lordship, lands, power.”

  “I have all those here. More than I would ever have had in Anjou. That little drafty castle, the roof that always leaked in winter, the stink of the privies in high summer: what do I want with them? You can have them. I give them to you. Take them and be glad.”

  “No,” said Richildis.

  His eyes narrowed. He looked at her, looked hard, as if he had not seen her before. “You don’t want them, either.”

  “What I want is of no consequence. They belong to you.”

  But he refused to hear her. He was listening deeper, beyond the words. “A bird,” he said, “in a cage, with its wings clipped. A white mare in a tight-closed stall, cut off from the open fields. You, too, little sister. You want to fly as much as I ever did.”

  “I do not,” she said, stiff and stubborn and willfully blind to herself. “I came to fetch you home. You will come with me. You must.”

  “But I won’t,” said Bertrand. “What will you do? Seize me, bind me? Throw me in the hold of a ship and carry me away?”

  “Bring you in front of Count Fulk,” she said, “and bid him lay the duty on you, as your sworn and sovereign lord.”

  “But,” said Bertrand, “he is not my lord. I never swore fealty to him. Only to King Baldwin, and after him the Princess Melisende.”

  “You were born to La Forêt in the County of Anjou. The Count’s claim supersedes any claim that these outlanders may make.”

  “Fulk is count no longer – he passed the title to his heir; that was in the agreement, I saw it when it was written. He came to be king in Jerusalem.”

  Richildis set her lips together. Bertrand knew better than to think he had defeated her. But he had driven her into a kind of retreat.

  While she mustered her forces, he nibbled on an almond-cake. He was dizzy, though not with hunger. Father dead. Giraut dead. Richildis—

  “Do you remember,” she asked him, as if absently, “the month of May in La Forêt? The long winter gone, and the sun returned, and the meadows all starred with flowers, and in the wood, the black wood gone green with spring, the birds singing till surely their hearts would burst?”

  “I remember,” said Bertrand, “that it was Martinmas when I was driven out, cold November rain, grey skies, grey walls, grey wood dripping sodden as I rode away. And all for a silly flit of a girl who found her lawful lord too fatly dull for words. He sho
uld have worn his horns with more grace – and been less public about his inability to pleasure any woman, let alone father a child.”

  “I rather admired him for telling the truth,” Richildis said.

  “He was too blind angry to lie,” said Bertrand. “Idiot. Who’d have known, otherwise? He’d have had an heir, however he got it.”

  “You still don’t repent,” she said, a little sadly, a little coldly.

  “Oh, I repented richly,” said Bertrand. “I haven’t touched a wedded woman since. But that changes nothing. He still made a fool of himself, and ended up a laughingstock. And there was no one to inherit his lands when he was dead, except the wife he lacked the will to put aside; and she would pass it to her bastard, unless she found another man to sire a legitimate heir. Did she do that, do you know? I always wondered.”

  “She died bearing the child,” Richildis said. “It was a daughter; she’s in a convent now. She’ll take the veil when she’s older, I suspect.”

  Bertrand stared at his fists. They had clenched; he had not been aware of their doing it. “Are they all dead, everyone I ever knew? Isn’t anyone alive?”

  “I am,” said Richildis. “Lady Agnes is. She sends her love.”

  “Ah,” said Bertrand. “Lady Agnes. I meant to say goodbye to her.”

  “You may tender your apologies in person,” said Richildis.

  “I will not,” Bertrand said. “I am not going back to La Forêt.”

  “Are you not?” said Richildis.

  He glared at her. “Don’t think you can plot and scheme me into giving way. I took an oath. I mean to keep it. You go back, marry someone steady, have it all and be glad of it.”

  “No,” said Richildis.

  And there they were, at an impasse. They had fought like this as children, over this or that, blind alike and stubborn alike, and no yielding in either of them.

  Bertrand was the elder. He should be the more reasonable – but not if reason meant giving up all this bright and sunlit country, and going back to France. He calmed himself by force of will, drew a long breath, said levelly, “You must be tired, and I know the heat is dragging at you. Rest here as long as you like, and ask whatever you please; the servants will be glad to oblige.”

  “And their mistress? Will she be glad to find a strange woman here, dropped like a stray sack upon the road?”

  “Helena is a wise lady,” Bertrand said, “and generous. She’d rather see you here, well tended and looked after, than turned loose in the palace.”

  “Ah,” said Richildis. “So her name is Helena. May I ask what she is to you?”

  Bertrand hesitated. He felt the slow heat climb his cheeks.

  She saw it, damn her. Her lips quirked very slightly – a shadow of the laughter that he remembered, as this thin severe creature barely recalled the bright-eyed child. “Ah,” she said again. “No; I think it would be best if I braved the palace. Or there may be a convent that can spare a bed.”

  “What, are you too priss-proud to share a house with a woman of shadowed repute?”

  For an instant he saw the child she had been: the flash of interest, the quick question: “Is she really?” Then the woman had returned, prim as a nun. “Please tell the servants to fetch my things. I don’t think they speak the langue d’oeil.”

  “They understand it reasonably well,” Bertrand said, “but I am not going to order them to do anything. You are staying here. The palace is a warren, and there’s barely room to breathe. The convents will clip your wings worse than La Forêt ever did. You’ll be safe here, and protected, and allowed a room to yourself.”

  She was tempted, he could see it. But she set her chin against him. Which only made him the more determined that she should stay. Helena would not mind. Not greatly. This was his sister, after all. Her very muleheadedness would prove it.

  He turned toward the door. One of Helena’s Turks stood in it, had been standing there for a while, quietly on guard; and listening, too, no doubt: they all understood Frankish, though few of them deigned to speak it. “Kutub,” Bertrand said in Arabic, “in Allah’s name, if it pleases you to guard this lady, I would be most grateful.”

  Kutub bowed gravely, though his narrow black eyes were glinting. “It would please me, lord Frank, as fair as this lady is, and so strange to all that is here. May she go where she wills?”

  “She is not a prisoner,” said Bertrand, “but it might not be wise for her to wander in the city. If she could remain here until your lady returns…”

  “As you will, lord Frank; and then, of course, as my lady wills,” Kutub said.

  Bertrand inclined his head as easterners did, acknowledging the rights of that. When he turned back to his sister, she was glaring at them. She knew what he had said, though it was in no language that she could have understood. “This is Kutub,” Bertrand said to her. “He’ll look after you. I’ll come back when I’m done with the duties I’ve been shirking.”

  Richildis rose as he rose, stiff with anger. “I am not staying here! I’m coming with you. Just show me to the palace; then I can—”

  “No,” said Bertrand. He did not bow, nor did he offer to embrace or kiss her; they had done none of that, nor would, it seemed. He simply left her.

  She sprang after him, but Kutub set himself in her way. He was gentle, he was respectful, but he was immovable.

  Bertrand could not resist a glance back. Richildis neither shrieked nor wept, nor did she try to batter her way past the Turk. All her rage had gathered in her eyes and focused on her brother.

  He would pay, he could well see. But later. For now she was safe; and that, when it came to it, was all that mattered.

  Four

  Richildis, abandoned in a stranger’s house, held prisoner by a bearded, turbaned, slit-eyed cutthroat, considered the utility of a fine and ranting fit. But there was no one to hear but her jailer. Nor would she give him the pleasure of seeing her weep.

  After what he seemed to reckon a judicious interval, he bowed in elaborate eastern fashion and said, “Come, Khatun. Come with me.”

  His accent was atrocious, but she understood him well enough. She should refuse, perhaps. Who knew what he would do, infidel that he was? But she had grown weary of that room, and she was angry enough to be reckless. She followed where he led.

  He conducted her through the house by ways that she had gone to be bathed and clothed, then up a stair and through an intricately latticed door. The passage behind it opened on a room less wide and high than the one below yet airy and cool, with a small black person plying a great fan, and another of the low eastern couches, and shutters that opened on a balcony. The scent of roses dizzied her. There was a garden below, in full and intoxicating bloom, red and white and gold and pink.

  Even roses were more vivid here, their scent stronger. France beside Outremer was a pale and feeble country, its skies washed to grey, its colors muted, its scents dulled. She shut out the light and the fragrance of roses, and huddled on the couch. The cool dimness and the flap-flap of the fan lulled her, though she fought it. Little by little she slid into a stupor.

  * * *

  She must have slept. Her body was heavy. The hand that she struggled to raise was wan and pallid, like a winter morning. It was cold, yet the rest of her was feverish. Her mouth was ashen dry.

  The jar beside the couch held water, cool and clean. She drank thirstily, though not without a moment’s pause to wonder if there were some drug or spell laid on the cup. All that she had heard of the east were snatches and fragments, old fears, scattered tales, the scrap of a song: Car felon sont Sarazin.

  She dragged herself up. Once she was on her feet, had reeled and then steadied, she felt a little stronger. The fan was still, its wielder gone. She was all alone.

  She stumbled to the window, took a breath, opened the shutters. Fierce light stabbed her eyes. But not as fierce as it had been. Its angle was longer, its edges less blackly distinct. And was it a little, just a little, cooler?

 
; A sound made her whirl, snatching at a weapon, any weapon; but there was none. The door was open. The Turk who had brought her here was standing in it, bowing lower than he had to her, down to the floor.

  The woman who stepped lightly past him was as foreign as he, though not, Richildis could see, of his kind and nation. She was not a small woman, nor was she as tall as Richildis. Beneath swathings of silk her body was difficult to see, but it was not particularly slender. Rounded, rather, and richly so. Her skin was the color of fine ivory, her eyes great and dark, her hair blue-black and abundant, its waving exuberance held in check by tight plaits and a glitter of pins, with a drift of veil laid over it.

  She was incontestably beautiful, with the great-eyed and oval-faced beauty of an eastern saint. Not that any saint would paint her face as this woman did, with what appeared to be great artifice; nor could the odor of sanctity partake of such dark richness as wafted from her: musk and sandalwood and a memory of roses.

  Richildis was rather startled to hear her speak in plain Frankish with an accent so faint as to be almost imperceptible. “Lady,” she said. “I’m pleased to see you awake and looking well. My name is Helena; this is my house in which you find yourself a guest.”

  Richildis back stiffened. “Madam,” she said in return. “I, as you must know, am Richildis de La Forêt. I must cry pardon for my brother. He compelled me—”

  Helena broke in so smoothly that Richildis was hardly aware of being interrupted. “Ah; yes. My lord Bertrand sent me word that you were here. I take it that you weren’t consulted?”

  Richildis glared, not at Helena but at the Turk who stood in the door behind her. “I was neither consulted or given a choice.”

  “Aye me,” sighed Helena. “How like my lord Bertrand.” She turned to the Turk, spoke rapidly in what must have been Arabic: harsh and sweet at once, with strong music in it. The Turk bowed to the floor, leaped up, made himself scarce.

  Helena turned back to Richildis. “Kutub has gone to set the servants in order. We’ll dine in an hour. Meantime, would it please you to walk in the garden for a bit, to comfort your spirit?”