Eight
ACRE
Johanna stood in the middle of the tent and
directed the packing. After the battle, Berengaria had not left
them; nor had she said much. She had changed, somehow, a quizzical
look on her face, a kind of deference, although not to any of them.
She sat by herself most of the time, her forehead creased. Now she
perched on a stool beside Johanna while her women and her pages
packed her goods.
Edythe had been folding bedding and shaking out
gowns and shifts; she bent and pulled out one of the chests from
beneath the pallet to store them in. Behind the chest, she saw
another little box, hidden away there. Lilia had slept in this bed;
it was surely hers.
“What shall I do with Lilia’s things?”
Johanna glanced over. “What things?”
“Her clothes.” Edythe laid the dead girl’s second
gown on the pallet, remembering Lilia wearing it, how she had loved
the fine silky cloth. Johanna came up beside her. At once she saw
the little box.
“What’s that?”
Edythe busied herself with stowing the bedding in
the chest, putting Lilia’s gown on top. The Queen stooped for the
little box. She called over the pages to break up the pallet and
take it away, turned slightly into the light, and tipped back the
lid.
The box was two hands long and one wide, and not
deep. Johanna picked with her finger at the few baubles and ribbons
and combs. “Not much. Poor girl. What’s this?” She took out a
little bundle wrapped in silk.
Invited, Edythe went over and looked. “What are
they?”
Johanna had peeled back the silk. She twitched, and
her voice went thin. “Just some reeds. There are a lot of them.”
She thrust the bundle back into the box and dropped it all into the
brazier. “I told her not to be so free with men.” She walked off,
brisk, her back stiff.
Edythe watched her go, puzzled. The Queen had been
much on edge of late. She wondered what the reeds had to do with
it. Her mind went back to the day on the beach, when she had seen
Lilia take a secret summons; that might have been such a reed. So
they did have to do with a man. Still she wondered at Johanna’s
anger. She looked down at the brazier, where the box was flaming,
the reeds already burned.
The Crusaders had been pouring into Acre from the
moment they knew they had won it; the surrendered garrison had
withdrawn behind a line of pikes into a little walled quarter with
a gate, to wait until their ransom was paid. King Philip, by
demand, took charge of guarding them, but Richard had arranged to
feed them. The rest of the Crusaders streamed into the city and
took over what they willed.
The Queens and their little households came in near
the end of the day, when the camp was all but deserted and the city
streets not so full. They entered through the main gate, where now
only the French King’s banner and Richard’s flew. Rumor had it the
Duke of Austria, whose banner there Rouquin had torn down, had
immediately left for the West.
The army was very short of horses. Richard had sent
mounts only for his sister and his wife, so Johanna rode first,
with Berengaria beside her. The rest of the women walked after them
in a little parade.
The gate was smashed, still, although already
Christians were working on the wall on either side, hauling the
great stones back into place. The pavement of the narrow street was
broken and dusty. The way took them by the first blasted houses of
the city, where the war had reached in, crushed walls and roofs to
rubble, and turned the gardens to dust.
Nonetheless, Acre was theirs; they had brought the
city back to Christ. Edythe, walking behind Berengaria, felt her
spirits lift, and she looked around her eagerly. They went through
the momentary cold darkness beneath an archway. Beyond a gate, the
street widened suddenly into a square.
They were deep inside Acre now. The houses here
still had roofs and walls, although all the gates were broken in,
the doors beyond were gone, and the gardens in between only dirt
and stones. What had been a scaly feather-topped palm tree on a
corner was only a rotting six-foot stump.
Yet it had been beautiful. Here and there on the
tops of the walls some decoration still stood, six continuous feet
of a filigree of stone, a single carved trefoil. The shapes of the
houses invited her. Blank walls sealed them off, but through the
open gates and doors she could see the buildings within, painted
bright colors, with tiled floors, designs and pictures painted on
the outside walls. On some were dark brown handprints that seemed
stamped in old blood.
The place seemed still abandoned. The Crusader army
had moved into the city, but it was so big it had swallowed them;
she heard a shout, somewhere far off, and a couple of pages ran
through a cross street, but the houses they rode by all seemed
empty. They rode along a crooked street, past the high blank yellow
stone of a wall; balconies jutted above like jaws under the edge of
the roof, covered with lattices like strange teeth.
Her nose picked up the tang of the shore, but none
of the teeming odors of life. This place was dead. No birds flew,
no pigeons, not even vultures in the pale sky overhead, not a cat
sunned itself on a high wall, no dog prowled.
They came into another paved square, where at the
gates of the walled houses guards stood. In the center of the
square was a ruined fountain, a stone angel in the middle, his head
and one wing broken off. He spilled invisible water from a shell
into an empty basin, crusty with dried weed.
At the foot of the fountain lay a bundle of rags,
which the horses shied from. Johanna had ridden past it before a
hand reached out from the ragged heap and a feeble voice croaked,
“For the love of God. For the love of God.”
Ahead of Edythe, Berengaria’s horse shied, and one
of their escort dropped back to catch its bridle. Edythe’s steps
lagged. As they passed, her gaze stayed on the ragged beggar,
wondering if this was a man or a woman, Saracen or Christian. It
had spoken French. In the shreds of its hood a few gray strands of
hair showed.
No one else was paying any heed to it. Johanna was
riding on, Berengaria on her heels. Edythe followed, her head
turned to look back at the fountain. The street bent around a
corner and they came to a gate, with a square tower beyond, three
levels high.
Guards stood by the gate, and when they went into
the courtyard they found it jammed with knights and pages. Johanna
said, humorously, “I sense my brother is here somewhere.” Grooms
came for the horses, and they all went through the massive front
door.
Into a house. Edythe followed the two Queens in
through the door and stopped, overwhelmed. The square stone walls
around her were bare and scarred and there was no furniture, but
this was a house. For the first time in months she stood under a
roof, the walls around her solid and straight and permanent. The
pleasure washed over her, as real as food, spiced with simple
gratitude. Johanna exclaimed, and Berengaria clapped her hands, her
face lifted; they felt the same.
Edythe drew back, thinking of the beggar. Johanna
could manage all this without her, and she went back to the
courtyard. If Richard was here, then there was food, and she
skirted the main hall, where she heard the glad cries of Eleanor’s
children meeting, and down a stairwell to the back.
Behind this tower the wall closed in on both sides,
to a point above the sea. A ruined garden filled the space, but
when she went around the corner of the citadel tower, she found
wagons, and men lined up to get bread. She could not wait, and she
moved around the people, peering over the sides of the crowded
wagons. In one, she found a basket of dates, and took a
handful.
She went out again, through the courtyard, to the
street, and along it to the square where she had seen the
beggar.
The ragged bundle had shifted, sat up, pressed
against the bowl of the fountain, bracing itself on one fleshless
arm. Edythe sank down beside it.
“Alms.” The other hand jerked out toward her.
Edythe knew the word, but it was in Greek, not French. She put two
of the dates into the withered palm.
“Unh.” The creature lifted its hand to its nose and
sniffed. “Aaaaaah.”
It was a woman, either really old or really sick.
Mad, certainly. Most of her hair was gone. Her face was sunken to
the bone, her eyes gummy, the hand with the dates a bone cage. She
blinked at Edythe.
She spoke again, this time, Edythe thought, in
Arabic, and put the dates to her mouth. Her lips moved on the food;
a fierce shiver went through her. Staring into nothing, she mouthed
the dates with toothless gums. The long narrow seeds slipped out
between her lips as if by their own power.
More Crusaders were coming up the street. Edythe
said, “Old woman, come to the citadel, I will care for you.”
The bleary pale eyes groped toward her. Maybe she
was blind. How had she lived? She swallowed, but her mouth was
still working over the dates. “Go in there?” Date juice trickled
down the side of her mouth, and she licked at it. “Do you know what
happens in there?” She thrust her hand out. “More.”
Edythe gave her the rest of the dates. “When did
you come here?”
The old woman made no hurry with the food. She felt
over the plump sticky fruits with her fingers, murmuring, almost
smiling, chose one, and put it in her mouth. She said, “I have
never left here.” Brown date juice collected in the corners of her
mouth.
“You were here during the siege?”
“I hid.”
“How did you eat?”
The old woman put another date into her mouth. The
boatshaped stone of the previous one slid down her chin.
“You were here then when the Christians were here.
We’re here again. You’re safe, now.”
The clouded eyes turned toward her. “Safe. From
what? They will lose, too. Everybody loses here.”
“No,” Edythe said. “This changes everything.
Richard will throw down Saladin and take Jerusalem, and the new
kingdom will rise up.”
The old woman gave a sound like a laugh. Her hand
reached out again. “More—More—”
Edythe had no more; she got up and backed away,
wary, now, shaken. “Come to the citadel,” she said. “Tell them the
Lady Edythe summoned you.” Richard would win. Then the old woman
would understand. Another pack of Crusaders was coming up the
street and she ran toward the archway, to get back before Johanna
decided to look for her.
She was almost to the citadel gate when the bells
began to ring. All around her, everyone stopped and turned; the
porters put down their bales, the guards tipped their lances
against the walls, the grooms hitched the horses to the walls.
Heavy in the air the great brazen voices boomed, slow, demanding,
and all started toward the sound. In the street before the citadel
the mass of people all walking together was so thick Edythe could
not but join them. They went on a few blocks as more and more
people pressed in among them and went in under an arched doorway,
and were inside a church.
The space around them packed them still closer
together. Edythe moved steadily forward, pushed on by folk behind
her. As she went, she raised her eyes to the old church. It had
been looted, the walls stripped and scarred with burns and scrawled
Arabic signs. Ahead, before the altar, the wall that had borne the
icons was torn apart, the pulpit broken, the sanctuary laid open.
One of thousands, packed together, she stood almost against the
altar, in the middle of the great hall, and now, suddenly, from
hundreds of throats, a great shout rose.
GLORIA
Her hair prickled up. The song swelled, a
thundering joy, a massive wall of sound, so loud her ears
rang.
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO
A Templar walked up into the narrow strip of
cracked pavement, carrying a bundle; he climbed up a step and fixed
his burden there. The crowd fell to a rapt, emphatic hush. Edythe
stood on her toes to see. The Templar stood down, gripped the
wrapping on the bundle, and pulled it off.
At the sight such a cry went up from the packed
crowd that Edythe sobbed, utterly taken out of herself. There hung
a crucifix, the Sacrificed Christ, their Savior.
They were kneeling around her, and she knelt, her
hands together, her heart pounding, lost in their midst. Their
voices rose again, in praise, in a savage, exalting joy.
LAUDAMUS
Tears spilled down her cheeks. Around her they were
crying out to God in gladness, certain they were heard, children
running to a happy Father.
LAUDAMUS TE—
She clutched her fists to her breast, shaken. She
knew no such certainty as this. Christ had died to save them, not
her. This victory proved, again, that their God loved them, that
they were worthy. But not her. Alone among them she could not stir
this faith to life.
Please, she thought. Something for me,
please, let there be something for me, too. She lowered her
head on her hands, sobbing. Please.
The sun had gone down; in the western sky the
evening star shone bright as a lamp. Johanna went quietly along the
top of the sea wall, looking out to the murmuring dark water. She
had told no one she was coming. She knew that was part of this, to
tell no one.
Where the sea wall met the beach, a stair went down
into a narrow square behind the blank backs of houses. She waited
there a moment, her hands at her sides; the way was steep and went
down into darkness. Then from the foot of the stair a man appeared,
walking backward, to show her he was there, and she went slowly
down the stair to the street.
He at once came to her and steered her to one side,
where the angle of the wall and the stair hid them from all eyes.
As he did so the church bells began to ring again, this time for
Vespers.
“You came as bidden,” he said. “Indeed, well
behaved, for a Plantagenet.” It was Robert de Sablé, Grand Master
of the Templars.
Johanna said tautly, “I got your message.” She
threw the reed down on the ground at his feet. It landed with the
bell and star showing. “What do you want?”
“My lady,” he said, “surely you know what I know of
you, or you would not have come at all.”
Her heart churned like a mill of ice. “I did
nothing.”
He said, “You betrayed your brother to Philip
Augustus, his enemy. Do you deny it? What secrets you gave him, the
enemy?”
She said nothing. She remembered the bundle of
reeds in Lilia’s box; she knew how he had learned of this, and
likely he knew more.
He said, “How would the King receive this news, do
you suppose?”
“Don’t tell him,” she said. She turned away. Like a
gray web her guilt covered her; she could not bear to imagine the
look on Richard’s face, even if he forgave her. He might never
forgive her. It had seemed right, at first.
“Then for my silence I shall require some favors,”
he said.
She gritted her teeth. She saw how what she had
done had led her to this; it was truth that a woman found a
twisting path to everything. She lowered her head.
“You must stop trying to turn Philip from the
Crusade. Already he talks of going home.”
“Then he is unlikely to change,” she said, looking
at the stone wall.
The man behind her was only a voice. “And you must
bend your brother the King toward supporting Conrad for the crown
of Jerusalem. Guy has no gift for it. Lionheart must stay, and take
back a few more cities, rebuild the kingdom, and then Conrad will
fill all our coffers.”
That was it, she saw; he needed the war, because
through it the Templars throve. The price of his silence was that
she betray herself. There was a ruthless order in the world, she
knew, and she saw it here again, and despised him all the
more.
She said, “Richard prefers Guy.”
“Change his mind.” The voice was farther away. She
turned. He had gone. Her hands were clammy. She put them to her
cheeks, terrified.
The court settled quickly into the citadel. The
tower stood three floors high; the great hall filled the ground
floor, the women took over the center level, and the King the
highest. The Christians driven out when the Muslims came were
returning to Acre in streams. They looked more like the Saracens
than the Crusaders, the men in long gowns and turbans, the veiled
women in black. They chattered in some other language, but most of
them spoke good enough French, although with many odd words.
Palestino, some of the Crusaders called it.
Richard had given Guy de Lusignan lordship of the
city because he had led the first assault. Guy rushed around
judging various claims, allotting this house to that one, and
stopping the fights. Richard and the other lords held endless
councils on the top floor. Everybody, even the knights, worked to
rebuild the city wall and the ruined houses. One morning soon after
they came in, Johanna heard a rooster crow. A few days later
pigeons fluttered through the market square.
The weather was baking hot, the sea so blue it hurt
the eyes. There was no sign of the Saracen ransom. The captive
garrison stayed behind its wall, and every day Richard sent in a
ration of bread.
Johanna had been living in a tent for six weeks,
but now swiftly she gathered around her cooks and kitchen knaves,
pages, porters, grooms, washerwomen, and seamstresses making them
all new gowns of the local cloth. Every day merchants came to her
door with the meats and fruits of the whole area, with traded goods
and local. She hired several cooks and a Turk to haggle for her.
After the camp food anything would be better, and now they ate for
hours: shaved meats and cheese, sauces, breads and nuts and fruit,
beans, mashes, compotes.
As hard as Johanna worked, yet the Grand Master’s
threat hung heavy over her. She woke up thinking of it and could
not sleep at night because of it. But a new secret message from
Isabella lightened her heart. This at least was a work with only
good in it, and she could make right many wrongs. As soon as she
could, she found her cousin Rouquin where they could talk without
being overheard.
“The Queen Isabella has asked me to help her get an
annulment of her marriage,” she said. “And she has excellent
grounds. She believes Conrad is still married to a woman he met at
the Imperial court. He’s her sister’s first husband’s brother,
making him well within the forbidden bonds of kinship, and she was
wed against her will, no matter what her mother says.”
She had met Rouquin in the courtyard, which was
still crowded with donkeys and wagons; he had been out of the city
for two days, on some work for Richard. His men were leading their
horses off, and she had guided him back into the shade of the wall,
overhung with a flowering vine.
He said, “So what? All this was true a year ago,
and he married her then.” He looked tired. There was blood on his
surcoat and he had his helmet in one hand.
Johanna leaned toward him, breathless with this
scheme that did so many things so well. She had the secret letter,
and she held it out to him. “We will get her marriage annulled, and
then you, you marry her—you will be King of Jerusalem.”
His jaw fell. Unaccountably he was angry. She had
not seen him this angry at her since they were children. She had
forgotten the red rage that took him. His eyes glinted. He
bristled. He said, “Apparently, anybody can be King of Jerusalem.
Is this your way of buying me? Am I a slut you can pay off?” He
slapped at the paper in her hand. “Forget this, Johanna. This is
trouble.” He walked off, shouting for Mercadier, his officer.
She told Edythe what had happened, because she had
to tell someone. “I don’t know what he meant. It was wicked of him
to be angry. I only meant to advance him.”
“Do you think he would want to stay out here?”
Edythe said.
“No,” Johanna said, reluctantly. She was beginning
to see it differently and that meant thinking about things she
preferred to forget, and she gave up the idea.
But the one good thing she could do was gone, now.
She felt heavy with ill feeling. At any moment de Sablé could
expose her to Richard, a worthless, two-faced sister who had
betrayed his Crusade.
She was putting her whole will into the work of
making the household, and yet it did not please her. The food was
too little, not good enough, not hot when it reached the table. The
new gowns were ill-fitting. She was sharp and scowling, and nothing
anybody did served her. More than ever, she longed to go
home.
Almost at once a market appeared in the main
square, where also the fountain began to flow again, although the
broken angel disappeared. Edythe went there, to get away from
Johanna’s viperous tongue and constant whining, and in among the
jostling of the other market wives she found some very fine
mushrooms, and more zingiber, and short hollow sticks full of a
sweet juice. Honey cost more, and she bought several of the sweet
canes to make Johanna’s oxymel. Sending the page back to the
citadel with the full basket, she went on alone, ignoring the
screams and pleas of the vendors, looking at the lace, the pots,
the plucked chickens, and the strings of dried peppers. Few of the
voices around her spoke French. The vendors rushed out at her from
their stalls, shouting as if they were old friends. Among the
crowds of women swathed in their shawls she felt out of place. Then
suddenly, someone was plucking at her skirt.
“Lady! Lady!”
It was the old beggar. She turned, startled. The
crone’s hand went out. “Alms. Alms.”
“I have nothing.” She backed up.
The beggar lunged at her. “Alms.” Her hands like
talons plucked at Edythe’s skirt, at her belt, felt along her hands
for rings. Edythe wheeled and ducked away into the crowd.
She went quickly down a lane, turning corners every
few yards, and then across another square; when she looked back,
the beggar was gone. She stood, panting, at the corner. She had no
idea where she was. The beggar still made her scalp tingle. The old
woman was horrible, a walking corpse, who should be dead but
wasn’t. She crossed the square and walked down the opposite street.
Nothing seemed familiar. On either side blank stone walls rose from
the edge of the street, higher than her head, topped with tiles or
cutwork; behind them, she knew, were houses, yards, orchards. But
she was lost. She passed a gate. The little niche set into the wall
had been stripped to one last row of glazed brown tiles. Someone
would put an icon there again. She turned right, and then at the
end of the next lane, through a broken archway, she came into
another market.
On either side baskets and hemp sacks offered nuts,
spices, heaps of bright green powder; cages packed with live
chickens hung from the roof poles. A vendor rushed at her
fluttering a length of cloth. “Lady! Lady!” In a stall a man was
hacking up a hanging headless carcass, its body a hunk of red
muscle and white muscle sheath and bone.
“No,” she said, “No,” and shook her head, dodging
people waving bowls and boxes at her, screaming, “Lady!” She passed
a huge tawny beast squatting on the ground; on its long, narrow
moth-eaten neck, its head was eye level with hers. As she went by,
it let out a horrible aggrieved moan. She stepped around a heap of
dung. “Lady!” Someone dangled a silver chain in her face. A hammer
clanged. A small boy was beating a donkey with a stick. Then, at
the end of the square, she saw a fountain, where several horses
were drinking, and she recognized the big gray horse in the
middle.
“No.” She pushed her hands at the chains, the
lengths of cloth, a woman with a double handful of eggs, and went
gladly to the gray horse, looking for Rouquin.
He stood by the horse’s head. He wore his mail, but
not his helmet, his long surcoat filthy. When he saw her, he said,
“Alone again,” as if he had caught her stealing sweets, and came up
between the horses to her.
“I was lost,” she said. She had not seen him much
since they came into Acre. She remembered the times he had helped
her with Richard, when the King was sick, his tenderness then, but
now, disappointed, she saw only the angry sullen brute he had been
at first. He snorted at her.
“What you deserve,” he said. “I guess I ought to
take you back.” With no more courtesy than that, he set his hands
on her waist and hoisted her up sideways on his great saddle, led
the horse away from the others, and vaulted up behind her.
She held to the saddle, her feet high above the
stirrup. His arm with the reins came lightly along her waist, and
his other hand rested on the pommel of the saddle, encircling her.
She was trapped; perhaps he didn’t mean this. Perhaps he did. She
had to keep him talking.
She said, “Thank you.”
“You shouldn’t be out here by yourself. You should
realize that by now.”
She was silent a moment, in no position to argue.
She searched for a safer line of talk. “Where will the Crusade go
next?”
“First Richard has to get this money. The ransom
for the prisoners. Philip is threatening to leave. A lot of people
want to go straight to Jerusalem.”
He was riding down a narrow way, past a donkey and
two shoemakers, a wall seamed with the dry crusty roots of vines,
not the usual way to the citadel.
“How close are we to Jerusalem?” she said.
They came up to a gate, and now, beyond the wall,
she saw the tower of the citadel: This was a back way in. “Not
really close enough,” he said. “For my liking.” He slid from the
horse and lifted her down, and, stepping back, opened the
gate.
She went through the wall into the ruins of a
garden. The little trees were brown, and many had broken branches
like dead dangling arms. The plants in the herb beds looked like
thorny black claws. “I didn’t know this way was here,” she
said.
He had left the horse and come after her down the
measured little path. There was nobody else around; they were far
behind the citadel’s kitchen, the closest building, with a line of
spindling trees between. She could hear the sea dashing up against
the far wall. The garden was laid out in quarters, each framed in a
waist-high course of stone. Even the stones were chipped and broken
and fallen out of place. She said, a little breathless, “What a
hell war is.”
Rouquin said, “Yes. But then life is hell, isn’t
it?” They had come to the end of the path, where she had to turn,
and he sat on the wall there so when she turned she faced
him.
“But why make it worse?” she said.
“I’m not sure it is worse,” he said. “I know what
I’m doing when I’m fighting.” He took hold of her hand.
“Fighting for God?” She drew her hand away, and he
let her go easily enough, his fingers rough with calluses.
“This isn’t about God, whatever Richard says. This
is about power.” He took her hand again.
“Please,” she said.
He lifted her hand to his mouth, kissed the inside
of her wrist, his tongue against her pulse, his eyes on her to see
how she took this. She trembled. Some wild urge woke in her. She
remembered again that night when he helped her with Richard, his
gentleness, the hidden sweetness under his harsh temper. He said,
“What, are you afraid of me? You’re not afraid of anything.” He
drew her closer. She put her hands on his chest, meaning to push
him away, and felt the hard body under the mail, and suddenly she
leaned forward and kissed him.
He murmured. Their mouths pressed together,
tentative, tremulous, soft. She felt suddenly that they were
surrounded; where before they had been too much alone, now anybody
might come on them at any moment. She shut her eyes, all her body
quickening. His lips parted. He slid his tongue into her mouth, his
hands on her hips. He pulled her against him, one hand stroking her
hip, the other smoothing down over her backside.
She broke the kiss; she stepped away, her mouth
dry, and her heart thundering. “This is not honorable,” she said,
and ran toward the back of the citadel.
Rouquin went to the end of the garden, where it
overlooked the sea; a slop of white foam showed momentarily above
the top of the wall. He thought: honorable.
She had kissed him first. She had given him her
mouth, she should give him the rest. He had heard the story about
her. Some man had abducted her from a nunnery, or she had gone
willingly, and Eleanor had rescued her. Either way, she had surely
lost her honor then.
He thought, uneasily, she must have been very young
then.
It had nothing to do with honor, anyway. It had to
do with her. Her touch had saved Richard. Johanna depended on her.
And her kiss . . . She had kissed him first. He wanted more than
just to have her. He needed something of her.
He did not know exactly what. He stood looking out
at the sea, his mind clogged, stuck on some thought he could not
pick apart into words.
At least his bone had wilted. He wondered, briefly,
if the Templars’ lambskin drawers ever let them stand tall. He
raised his hands to his face and smelled her body on them; his
chest felt the pressure of her leaning against him. His mouth
remembered the shape of her mouth. The touch of her tongue against
his tongue. The bone was coming back. He walked swiftly to the
gate, where he had left his horse.
Edythe watched him go from behind the pistachio
trees. She had almost yielded to him. Even now part of her longed
to go after him. She thought of his lips on her wrist, and her
knees weakened.
She could not love him. She had no rank, and he was
high-born, far above her. She remembered what Johanna had said: He
could be King of Jerusalem. If he married Isabella. He would marry
an heiress.
He would never marry Edythe. Even if she were a
Christian. He wanted only one thing. All she could do was refuse
him.
She shut her eyes; she imagined the house in
Troyes, the people in the house, burning. She carried them along,
somehow, a burning only she could feel, at the center of
everything. She went into the citadel, toward somewhere dark and
alone.