As she went from fire ring to fire ring, the men around her sent up a constant shrill lewd pipe and whistle, and some reached out to grab at her skirt. She moved quickly, to keep them off. She should have brought a knight, she thought; the page was only a child. She could have asked Rouquin. The idea warmed her, and she wished she had.

When they would not sell her their scraps, she said, “This is for the King. Do you deny Richard?” Then they sold her what they had. Hearing Richard’s name, they kept their hands away.

She was tired and the sun seemed too bright and her throat felt scratchy. With the page behind her hauling the basket along, she went back to the royal tent to find at the doorway a large wooden frame, a bed in the middle, and a gang of half-naked men crouched around it.

She bade the page put the bones on to cook and went by into the tent. Inside, men in mail and surcoats made a wall of backs between her and Richard. She crept along past them and got close enough to see that he was eating, sitting up with Rouquin’s help. Johanna pulled her away by the arm.

“You have to sleep.”

“I need—”

“Sleep,” Johanna said, and towed her to the Queen’s own bed and made her lie down. She slept at once. When she woke, thirsty, she saw that Richard was gone, the tent empty except for Lilia, dozing, and a few idle pages playing dice. A pot full of bones bubbled on the brazier. She slept again and woke around noon.

The tent was quiet. Johanna and Lilia had left. She put on a fresh gown and a kirtle and brushed her hair a few strokes, skipping over the knots. She summoned in the page and said, “I need to talk to other doctors. You must find me other doctors.” He went out. She ate the last of the bread; the cheese was gone.

The page took her across the camp to the west, toward the sea. As she went, her skirts gathered up in her hands, she looked over the siege before her.

Every day the place seemed less a city and more a vast heap of stones. From here she could see the broad dent of the moat, dry and stuffed with rocks and dirt and what looked horribly like dead bodies. Out on the knob of the promontory the tall, thin tower stood, too far for any catapult to reach, and from the big ruined fortress in the harbor the black flag of the Saracens flew out on the stiff breeze.

But the ships that crowded the harbor were all Christian, Richard’s ships. They could not get near the Black Tower, wreathed in half-submerged rocks, but everywhere else the Crusaders held the bay. No supplies could get into Acre, and the Tower itself looked abandoned, in spite of its brave flag. They were winning, she thought, and her heart leaped. There was an end to this.

She shaded her eyes with her hand. A red galley she had not seen before was rowing toward the shore, and from the beach a flock of little boats hastened toward it.

The page led her across the camp, weaving a way between the camps, and the men followed her with their eyes but made no sound. Their stares unnerved her. She walked as fast as she could, and the page got her quickly under cover—a strange rambling shelter, half tent and half wooden shed.

She went forward a few steps, looking around. The only light came through the doors and the tent fabric, and she could not see well for a moment. Lining either side of the long, narrow space were heaps of straw spread with coarse blankets, and on these makeshift beds lay bodies. A stout man in a monk’s cassock came toward her; the page had just announced her, which, since she had no power of her own, had taken all his breath.

The monk said, in bad French, “Well met, then. The Queen Sicily is known to me. I self Sir Markus Staufen.”

“Do you speak Latin, my lord?” He was a monk. Of course he spoke Latin. “Have you a doctor?”

“Alas,” said the German knight, who spoke less Latin than he believed, “our doctor has dead. Many having dead here, Lady.”

She said, “I have a patient with a recurrent fever.”

He gestured toward the beds on either side. “All these fevers, Lady.” He was being courteous; she was a guest, somehow connected to Lionheart; still, she was only a woman.

“How do you care for them?”

He talked about the Zodiac, retrogrades and necessary causes, fire and earth; his hands milled in the air. It was important when the disease began. Where the planets were. If the patient fell sick at the full moon, he would be driven mad. The old doctor had told him this. As he spoke, she got, in hints and pieces, that he was not a monk at all, but a knight who had come to fight the Saracens. When they saw the bloodshed and the sickness, he and some of his fellows broke up their ship to build this place for the sick and the dying to come. Mostly he carried blankets and chamber pots and fed people. But he believed he had found a vocation and would enter holy orders as soon as he got home.

“And, my lady,” he said, “where to study you?”

Having no ready answer for this, she made none, and he said, with infinite condescension, “Ah, so. An empiricus.” Edythe left knowing nothing more than when she went in, except the German knight’s bad Latin.

On the way back, she came on a market above the beach, a row of vendor stalls under a canopy, that had not been there before. Johanna, in a cloud of pages and squires, was buying everything she could pick up. The vendors crouched in wait for her and launched volleys of words to draw her to them, but she walked through them as if they were not there. Lilia trailed her, and two knights stood at the head of the market, keeping back everybody else who wanted to buy. Once when a vendor got too insistent, Johanna only lifted her gaze toward the knights and the local man backed hastily away.

Behind them, Edythe went along the makeshift stalls, looking over the nuts and flowers and onions. The vendors jostled for her attention. “Zingiber?” she said. They mumbled together but no one had zingiber. She bought dates and two combs of honey wrapped in a big leaf. A thin man who knew a lot of French sold her a thumbsized pot of a potion to make people sleep.

“Jews?” she said, quietly. “Are there Jews here?” She should send a letter to Eleanor.

If she found more Jews, would they know her too?

The Syrian shrugged. His cheeks sucked hollow. His head shook just a little. He did not ask about among his fellows, as the vendors usually did when they did not have what she wanted. “Jaffa,” he said. “Jaffa, maybe.”

In front of his stand, two boys, naked under their long, thin shirts, held out their palms and jabbered at her; she did not understand the tongue but she knew the cupped hands. She gave them each some dates.

The crowd was steadily thicker. The page had gone with the Queen, and Edythe ran a little to catch up. Ahead of her in the swarm she saw Lilia bump into a young man who never looked at her. They moved apart as if it were all an accident, but now Lilia had something in her hand, which she slid quickly into her sleeve. Edythe caught up with them and they returned to the circle of tents, inside the shell of their guards and attendants.

At the height, where they could see out over Acre again, Johanna cried, “Look!” and pointed toward the city.

Edythe turned. Quiet all day, now men burst up from the yellow rock pile and charged toward the wall. From the other side the Saracens were scrambling to defend it. Johanna pointed not at this, but at the hill before them, where Richard sprawled on his litter. The bearers had set it down but still stood at the corners. One of each pair carried a shield, but the litter was as open as a bed. Rains of arrows and stones volleyed down toward it. The King paid no heed and everything fell just short. A crossbow lay beside him; he was reloading another. The bearers stooped to pick up his litter again.

Johanna said, “God shield him. God keep him.” She jerked her gaze away; she would not look. She led the other women back through the dirt and clutter of the camp to their tent. Edythe hung back, her head turned over her shoulder. With a bellow, suddenly the litter jounced down straight toward the wall, into a cascade of arrows and rocks, Richard firing his crossbows as he went. Rocks crashed around him. He waved one arm, fending off a blow. From beyond the wall, on the Saracen side, came a furious banging of drums. Edythe slipped into the tent, and as she did, Lilia passed her, leaving.

Richard might die, even saved from the sickness, die before her eyes, felled by an arrow or a sword or a stray rock, trampled like her brother Geoffrey. She crossed herself, her eyes closing. He could not die.

She wondered why she let herself care so much again, after everything that had happened. She would do whatever God asked of her henceforth—Masses and prayers, alms for the poor and barefoot pilgrimages—if her brother lived. But she had offered it all before, for her baby, her husband, and they had died anyway.

If Richard lived, perhaps he had never been so sick. And she owed God nothing.

Meanwhile, she would send in secret to King Philip Augustus, wishing him well. Reminding him what she had said, that he should leave the east, which was doing him such evil.

Johanna rose, shaking her skirts out. “All right. Send him in.” Her voice was low; Edythe knew she was tired of this.

Edythe expected Guy de Lusignan, but the man who walked in was taller than Guy, younger, with thick dark hair and a dark drooping mustache. A soft wide bonnet sat tilted over one ear. His Byzantine cloak had a deep hemline of shredded gold and a gold clasp at his shoulder. Other, lesser men swirled around him, but he had a fighting-cock strut that drew all eyes, a look proud and cold. This, then, was the second King. Edythe backed away, watching Johanna in the center of the room.

“My lord Conrad,” the Queen said, coolly.

Edythe put her hands together. There was likely some danger in this. He performed a flourish of a bow, wrists turned back, fingers spread. Edythe remembered that he had been at the Byzantine court; he had very Greek manners. He said, “I am delighted to set eyes on the beautiful Queen of Sicily, whose fame has preceded her.”

“Well,” Johanna said, and crooked a finger at a page, who ran up with a stool. “You could have done that much sooner had you let us into Tyre when we first came there.” Edythe could hear the tension in her voice: She had to measure every word, for what she said here could be exactly wrong for Richard’s cause.

The black King bowed again. “A misunderstanding, certainly, my dear lady.” He lifted a hand and one of his men came forward with a pouch. “I come to you, my beautiful Queen, as a mere messenger.” From the pouch he fingered up two long folded letters, sealed, which he handed to her.

“Mother,” Johanna said, looking down at the first letter in her hands. She dropped the second without a glance to the floor. “By your leave, my lord.”

Conrad was already going. Edythe realized he had gotten what he wanted: acceptance by a Plantagenet. Johanna had opened the letter from her mother and was deep in reading it, her face bright, laughing now and then. The tent door swung shut. Edythe craned her neck to see the other letter, lying on the floor by the Queen’s feet.

“Mother says to tell you, ‘Well done, O good and faithful servant. ’” She glanced at Edythe as she said it, then saw her trying to read the other letter and gave her another, narrower look. “Go ahead, pick it up, see who it’s from, since you’re so curious.”

Edythe flushed. Johanna laughed. “Oh, do.” She went back to her letter.

“Is all well in Poitiers?” Edythe said, guardedly. She picked up the letter and turned it over, not recognizing the hand or the seal.

“She says so. She caught John at a plot to take the treasury and made him apologize until he cried; it’s a very merry tale she makes.” She folded the thick paper into thirds again. “You know everybody between here and Poitiers has read it. Who is that?”

Edythe broke off the seal. “I don’t know. Oh. Isabella of Jerusalem. Here.”

Johanna took the letter; her gaze leaped down the page. After a moment, she was frowning.

“I’d hoped for something more friendly, after we talked so well together, back in Tyre.”

“Likely she thought it would be read, also,” Edythe said.

“Well,” Johanna said, turning the page over, to look at the seal. “It was.” There were old traces of wax on the paper; whoever had opened it hadn’t even bothered to reseal it carefully. “I do nothing that is not spied upon.” She flung the letter down.

Edythe took it, curious, wondering why then Isabella had sent it at all. She balanced it on her fingers, noting the thick paper, the ink nearly purple, the letters formed in an even slanted hand.

“My lady, mark this, it’s two sheets.”

Johanna swiveled toward her. Edythe was trying to pick apart a corner of the letter; her nails were short and stubby and no use at this, and Johanna tore the letter from her grip and ran her thumbnail along the edge.

Like splitting a walnut shell, the letter came apart into separate leaves. Johanna said, “Aha,” pleased. She gave Edythe a quick look. “Well done, O good and faithful.” She bent over the hidden letter, delighted.

Edythe thought, Yes, Plantagenet.

She sent a page in ahead of her, and when she went in, they were all looking at her. She stood and made a nice bow to cover a glance around the tent.

Like all of Richard’s housings, it was a jumble of war gear, chests, and armor. The air stank. The bare ground was packed hard and uneven. A mail shirt hung on its cross by the lamp, its circlets glimmering like an animal shell. The iron skull of his helmet hung crooked on the upright. He himself sat on the pallet in his shirt, and Rouquin stood behind him. Half a dozen other men took up the room around her: his cousin Henry of Champagne, and Guy and Hugh de Lusignan, and some Hospitallers.

She said, “I crave your pardon, my lord; I came to see how you did. I will come back.”

She could see that he was shivering, and his shirt stuck to his body, soaked with sweat. He had a cup of wine in his hand. He said, “Oh, excellently well. Well. Well.” He took a deep drink of the wine. He turned his gaze at the other men. “Everybody get out, now. My physician is here.”

They all filed out. Rouquin started to go, and Richard turned his head. “Stay.” He smiled at her. His teeth chattered. “Be our duenno.” Rouquin, behind him, rolled his eyes.

She said, “My lord, you should lie down. Change your clothes.” Going up beside him she put her finger to his throat, where a deep narrow artery let her feel the pulse of his brain. He shut his eyes. The pulse beat evenly: a good sign. Half his ill now was exhaustion, his humors balanced again, but very low, easily disturbed. He shivered under her touch.

He said, “What did the letter from my mother say?”

She backed up. She had to serve God again. She glanced at Rouquin, behind him. But this was fairly harmless; Johanna would show him the letter.

“I didn’t read it. Only chatter, I think. Your brother John was plotting and got caught and Eleanor made him cry over it.” She could imagine this; John gushed tears when he was in a rage, and Eleanor knew how to work it out of him. “Please, my lord, you need to sleep.”

“What did she say to Conrad?” he said.

She was still a moment. This was not exactly spying, but close. She licked her lips. She said, “She never called him King. But he was announced as the King. She said that he should have let you into Tyre, when we were up there. He said that it was a misunderstanding. You need to lie down.”

“Yes, yes.” He glanced at Rouquin. “You’re ready, then—tomorrow, in the forenoon, we can try this?”

“I will—”

Then there was a scuffle at the door, and Guy de Lusignan burst in. Edythe went out of the way. The King of Jerusalem hurried toward Richard, his hands out, beseeching. “It’s all over the camp that you have received Conrad—You swore to me you would support me.”

Richard hunched on the pallet. Edythe went quickly up and put a blanket around him; Rouquin had gotten Guy by the arm and was shoving him out the door. Richard lay down on the pallet and she tucked the blanket close around him, and rubbed his arms to warm him as he shivered.

He said, under his breath, “Good little monster.”

Rouquin came up. “What’s going to happen with that? Does that mean Conrad is the King?”

Edythe stood; she remembered what Johanna had said, that everybody spied on her, and knew it was true. She told herself she could not have done otherwise. That seemed shaky. She looked around the room. They had brought in wine in casks, and she took Richard another cup. She would find him some broth. She set the cup beside him; he was talking to Rouquin, his voice a labored whisper.

“It doesn’t make any difference. The announcement doesn’t matter, and she’s only my sister in any case. Guy’s safe, he has no choice but me. Go away, I’m tired.” She went out across the circle of the tents again, wondering whom she served.

The sun was near the peak of the sky. Rouquin looked over his tired, dispirited men and sent them to their own fires, to eat whatever they had. With Mercadier at his heels he trudged up the slope toward Richard, who had been watching all of this from his litter. Beside him, under a canopy made of a cloak draped on lances, was King Philip.

Guy de Lusignan got there before Rouquin, chattering like a squirrel.

“You see how it is, my lord—I cannot turn my back—”

Richard snarled at him, and he quieted. Rouquin came up nearby; Richard was scowling down at Acre, the lines deeply graven into his face. His pale hair was damp with sweat. The rest of the army had dispersed and the Templars had gone to their prayers, but Henry of Champagne was coming this way, everybody’s fair young cousin, always smiling. Rouquin wiped his face on a rag. He felt a gouge over his eye and looked at the rag and saw new blood.

Philip said, “I say try the gate instead.” He sat twisted on his cushioned stool, his hands in his sleeves. A white hood covered his head and his eyes looked rheumy. Rouquin turned his gaze down on the city.

In the noon light Acre looked like a lumpy mass of gold, with the citadel poking up out of it and the sweep of the seawall cradling it against the blue water. It was hard to see what else they could knock down. The rubble from the bombardments got in their way now as much as the wall might have.

“Hold,” he said. “What’s this?”

Beside him, Richard turned, and Rouquin pointed: The gate was pushing outward, and a man with a white flag came through.

“Hunh,” Richard said. “They want to talk.” He sat up and swung his legs off the litter and made himself stand. “Get this thing out of here.” The bearers hurried the litter off.

Philip squirmed on his stool, but he did not rise. He blinked rapidly, his gaze directed at the little group of men plodding up the road toward the Crusader Kings.

“My lord, look there,” said Mercadier.

Rouquin lifted his head. Off to the east, just beyond the edge of the Crusader camp, a troop of horsemen rode up over the spine of the ridge.

“God’s blood,” Richard said, “they know everything that goes on. He’s miles away and I’m in between, but everything that happens is by Saladin’s direction.” He sent a page for Humphrey de Toron.

Rouquin blurted, “They are great soldiers.”

Richard said, “Who else is worth fighting?” He was standing strong enough, and he moved away from Philip, hunched on his stool like a schoolboy. “But we’ll beat them.”

Several others of the Crusader camp were fast approaching, seeing what was up: Conrad of Montferrat strode in between Richard and the stool. On his heels was the German duke. Conrad thrust his chest out. “You won’t want to conduct any talks without me, since I speak most excellent Arabic.” Seeing Guy, he sneered, and Guy sprang hotly forward, his face flushed, his mouth open to yap.

“Stop,” Richard said, and they fell silent. Guy looked down at his feet. The Saracen horsemen were almost there, and the group from the city was creeping up the road. All around, the Crusaders on the slope were standing, drawing closer, quiet and heedful. Even some of the women had come out of their tents. Humphrey de Toron slipped in among them, bowing.

Conrad said, “What is he doing here? He doesn’t even fight.” His lip curled. “Along with what else he doesn’t do.”

Richard said, “He will translate for us.” He glanced at Philip, who was tugging on his lower lip, frowning.

Conrad veered toward him. “You need no—”

“If he makes a mistake, tell me,” Richard said. “I see no fault in this.”

Humphrey gave Conrad the briefest of glances. The Saracens drew rein a few yards from them, and several of them dismounted and came forward. Humphrey spoke to the one with the fanciest headgear, who was obviously the leader, and that man gave him a slight bow and replied. It was clear they knew each other.

Humphrey said, “My lords, I present to you al-Malik al-Adil Saif ad-Din, the brother of the servant of God Yusuf ibn Ayyub, Salah ad-Din, Sultan of Egypt and Syria.”

“Yes, yes,” Rouquin said, under his breath. He had heard of this man already, several times; the Crusaders called him Safadin. “Get on with it.”

In fact Humphrey said a deal more, and Richard bowed, and Philip, finally, got to his feet and bowed, and the Saracen bowed back. Humphrey turned and spoke Arabic to the Saracen, taking just as long to present each of the Kings to him. Finally they all bowed again. Conrad stood the whole time with his arms folded over his chest and his mouth crimped shut. Rouquin glanced at the people from Acre, leaning on their flagstaff in the hot sun. One of them abruptly sat down in the road.

Richard said, “What is their purpose here?” He spoke to Humphrey, but he was looking with an intent curiosity at all of the Saracens, especially the men from the city. Philip lowered himself back onto his stool.

The man with the flagstaff spoke to Safadin, who said something short in reply, and then faced Humphrey and spoke. Humphrey said, “They want terms.”

Philip sighed. The men around them began to murmur and quickly hushed, solemn. Richard said, “They’ll surrender the city.”

“Yes. They want to know the price, if they yield, to spare them all.”

Through the crowd a crinkling, half-hushed excitement leaped. All across the whole slope, no one spoke. The Saracen Safadin stood straight as a pike, his head back and his eyes sharp.

“How many men are we talking about?” Richard said.

Humphrey and the man by the flagstaff spoke back and forth, and Humphrey said, “He doesn’t really know. Maybe three thousand.”

Richard said, “We will take the city. The garrison is free to go, under this ransom.”

He held up one finger at each demand. “Two hundred thousand dinars. Saladin will free all of his Crusader prisoners. And he will return the True Cross to us. Then every man in Acre walks free.”

Safadin burst out at once, barely letting Humphrey get through the change of words. Clearly the Saracen himself understood French; his dark, furious look showed his mind even before Humphrey was done. “Such an enormous sum! It is not possible.”

Richard spoke straight to the Saracen; one hand swept toward the defenders by their white flag. “These are valiant men. They have fought like devils, or angels; they have given you their heart’s blood, and you with the coffers of half the world say a little money is too much to redeem them.”

The two Kings of Jerusalem stirred and nodded. On the stool, Philip muttered, “For once I think we agree.” He glanced at the man beside him, who went off and came back with a cup. The crowd packed around them all craned forward, breathless.

The black-haired German Duke Leopold began, “Maybe if we—”

Richard spoke to Safadin. “Do you argue for the honor of Acre? Or for the convenience of the Sultan?”

The Saracen again barely let Humphrey get the words out. His voice was edged, emphatic. “There is not so much money in the whole of Syria. I would give my hope of heaven to free these men, but I cannot do that either.”

Leopold said, “Maybe—”

The King of France tilted forward. “Then they decline the terms.”

The man by the flagstaff was talking to the others with him. The man sitting on the road struggled to his feet. They all spoke at once, leaning together, as if they propped each other up, their hands lifted toward Safadin as if they prayed. Behind Richard, Humphrey whispered, “He says they have had no supplies and can get no more, they’ve had nothing fit to eat for months, even the rats are gone, they cannot keep on.”

Richard grunted. Rouquin had been through a few sieges and knew what rat tasted like; he said, again, under his breath, “They are great soldiers.” Richard glanced at him and moved off a step, away from everybody.

Philip said, “You have our terms.” He shot a pointed look at Richard. “I say we have them by the balls. Make them pay.”

Richard was looking toward Acre, the broken golden city below him. He said, “What’s the moon?”

Rouquin said, “Fat, but not full yet.”

“Then I have a few days more.” He turned to the Saracen and spoke directly to him. “Those are the terms. Accept them or no peace.”

The Saracen lifted his reins. “You are a hard man, Malik Rik. Let the contest continue.” He gave a long look at the man by the flagstaff, mounted his horse, and galloped off. His men followed him. The defenders dragged their truce flag back down to the gate.

“Well, now,” Richard said.

Philip gave a dry chuckle. His red-rimmed eyes darted toward Richard, and he turned and let his servants half-carry him back to his tent. The rest of the crowd was turning away, too, disappointed. Rouquin let out his breath, and went to see to his armor.