Edythe said, “I can do some good.” She kissed Johanna’s hand. “My lady. Pray for me.”

“I will,” Johanna said. “And pray for me also, I will think of you every hour.”

Edythe went down the plank to the galley; the captain met her, short and lively, with bright blue eyes in a dark face. His name was Ayberk and he spoke strange but fluent French. He said, “Welcome, lady, welcome. Richard the Basileus has placed you in my care.” He crossed himself, Greek-wise. “I will watch you close, and you will have fear of nothing.” He took her to the foredeck, where a little tent was rigged.

Almost at once the galley set its huge triangular sails. One of half a hundred ships, they went south across the long shallow bay, turned the hilly cape at the far end, and anchored in the shallows just off a white beach.

Night fell. They fed her excellently, stewed meat and yogurt and bread. She slept in the tent; Ayberk himself slept on the deck just outside. In the morning, the army still had not appeared on the shore. Ayberk seemed unconcerned. And in fact by midday groups of horsemen were straggling down over the hill toward them. There was no sign of any Saracens. They made a camp, and Edythe spent another night there on the ship.

The next day they sailed south again, going close along the coast, the army marching just beyond the sand of the beach. The heat and the idleness had her half-asleep; she pushed the little tent open, to get some breeze. She missed Johanna, and she was wishing she had something to do, when Ayberk came up.

“Saraceno.”

She jerked upright. Shaded her eyes with her hand. Ahead of them, under their great sails, the galleys stretched in a line into the south, hardly a length apart and only a hundred yards off the beach. Just above the white sand the Crusader army rode, studded with upright lances and little pennons. Beyond, on the hills, a white dust cloud was rising.

Her scalp prickled up. She could hear them, even over the relentless sawing of the oars: a faint warbling scream, and then the low rumble of their drums.

Ayberk was calling, motioning with his hand, and the ship slid in closer toward the beach. “Rocks,” he said. “Rocks all everywhere here. Look.” One hand on the mast stay, he leaped onto the gunwale of the galley and stared to the east. She went to the rail and looked down; through the clear blue-green water she could see the sand, far below, pale between shoals of flat mossy rocks like the ones at Acre. The ship glided above as if through the stumps of teeth.

Out on the land the dust cloud swirled closer. On all the galleys in their wavering line ahead of her, men with bows were climbing up onto the wooden frames around the mainmasts. Ayberk turned to her.

“You see, the Basileus Richard good on this.” He tapped the side of his head. “The flank we cover. See?”

She leaned on the rail, breathless. They were near the tail end of the line of galleys, and most of the army was ahead of them. She wondered if she imagined the main body moving faster than the rear guard, this disorderly crowd of horsemen and men on foot on the shore directly opposite her.

They were close enough that she could see the men turning toward the cloud of dust approaching from the east. Then, out of that oncoming dust, a flight of arrows rose and pelted down.

Ayberk yelled to his helmsman again, and their ship slowed. On the wooden castle at the mast, ten men stood with crossbows. Edythe clutched the railing. Ayberk maneuvered his ship closer to the beach and kept them at the flank of the Crusader army there; if the white wave of horsemen tried to sweep down the beach and surround the Christians, they would come within range of the crossbows. She saw that this was well done and looked on him with more admiration. The Saracens, their arrows loosed, veered and rode off.

Moments later they came back from another angle, loosing another storm of arrows, their shrieks thin in the distance. They were striking with all their force at this rear guard, she saw, but she saw also that they could not overwhelm the Crusaders. Armored in their mail, their shields up, the Christians rode along unscathed through the waves of arrows. The bolts hit and stuck, in shields, in mail, but they did not kill. Arrows poking out of them, men went on as if nothing had touched them. On the edge of the pack of knights, the men-at-arms with crossbows and javelins kept the Saracens from coming too close, and the crossbows of the fleet held the other flank.

She saw a horse go down, and the rider leap from it and begin to walk, still carrying his lance. Someone quickly brought him a fresh horse, and other men ran to the dead one and stripped off its harness. The Crusader army paced on steadily, and the Saracens, wailing, fled away again.

This time they came from the rear, and the last few ranks of the Crusaders wheeled and lunged to meet them.

Ayberk said, “Bad. See. They stop. Bad.”

She looked down to the south, to the front of the army, which had pulled away. And now the whole rear guard had stopped marching, was bunching together and turning to face the Saracens.

The gap widened between them and the main army. The highpitched screaming of the Saracens took a keener edge, and the waves of arrows came closer and faster. Then, from the south, a horn blew.

She turned, looking that way. A line of horsemen was galloping up the beach. As they rode, more and more men peeled away from the army, until hundreds of knights pounded up along the sand toward the embattled rear guard. They came in a thundering pack, their surcoats fluttering, their lances upright. They reached the end of the main army, where there was more room, and without a signal that she could see, the pack stretched out, the men behind galloping up to the front, so that they formed into a single rank. The horses at full stride, the men riding long-stirruped and tall, they flowed over the land like a great sword. She caught her breath, her heart pounding, caught by the power and beauty of this charge.

“The Basileus Richard,” Ayberk cried, and pointed.

The first of them all, she saw, wore a crown over his helmet. Then Rouquin was there somewhere. She beat her fists on the rail. They streaked down past the bedeviled rear guard, and in a ragged pattern the lances swung to level, and stirrup to stirrup and head to head the charge hurtled into the lighter Saracen horsemen.

The white-robed archers went down as if a wave of iron had broken over them. Ayberk whooped, delighted. The rest of the Saracens were whirling, fleeing, but on the sand behind the charge lay trampled bodies, a crippled horse trying to stand. The Crusader charge took them straight in among the rear guard, and every Saracen was running.

“No,” Ayberk cried. “Stop.”

She glanced at him, turned back to see what he meant. The inland few men of the charging Crusader line had veered off to chase the Saracens back toward the hills. This seemed a daring move to her, and she wondered they did not all follow it. Then halfway to the hills the fleeing Saracens turned, circled, and engulfed the men chasing them.

“Oh, no,” she said. Cut off from their own, and scattered apart as they rode, the handful of Crusaders were caught in the midst of hundreds of horse archers. Now the lighter, faster Saracens had the edge. She gasped; her hands beat the railing. The trapped Crusaders were struggling to get back to the others, but steadily they were surrounded; their horses stumbled; a knight staggered on the ground, trying to fight, and then fell. The Saracens raised their tremulous cry of triumph. The rising dust hid them. Nearer, by the beach, the rear guard had begun moving again, faster, she thought, as if flogged, the men-at-arms running.

Ayberk said, “Ahead is camp.”

She licked her lips. She could see the first ships of the fleet turning in to the beach. Up above the sand were ruins, archways, piles of bricks. She craned her neck, looking back the way they had come; the rear guard was catching up with the rest of the army again, and she could scarcely see the fine film of dust, toward the hills. No Christian knight came back from there. She thought, If I stay here, I will never find out.

Then, she thought, I won’t stay here.

But it was twilight before she managed to wade ashore, carrying her sack of potions and balms and jars. The army had begun laying out its camp in the meadow by the ruins, putting stones in rings for fires and marking out spaces with saddles and lances. She had no trouble finding Richard. He alone had a tent, a great sway-backed sprawl of cloth draped over poles and rope, the edges held down under bales and casks. A sledge heaped with wood was drawn up before it, and as she drew near, a man was building a fire out in front. A groom led around a weary horse, stripped to a halter. In the midst of a swarm of squires and pages, Richard stood giving orders and drinking a cup of wine. He already had his mail off.

When the last man had gone, he turned to her. “What are you doing here?” he said. “I was just about to send for you. Come on, then, here he comes.”

Her heart turned to an icy rock. Someone had been hurt. Three horsemen were trudging up toward the King’s campfire, and she recognized Rouquin’s gray horse.

But Rouquin was hale and in the saddle. He swung down into the firelight; three arrows stuck out of the shoulder of his mail. She caught her breath. Then he was helping the man behind him dismount, and that man leaned hard on him and sobbed in pain.

Richard said, “You stupid ass, Mercadier, you should have died out there. Get over here.” He turned to her. “Fix him.” He drank from his cup.

She stood, heart pounding, while Rouquin and the two others brought the injured man up into the firelight and sat him down.

She squatted in front of him and looked him over. Mercadier had no arrows in him; his helmet was off, his short black hair plastered to his head, his eyes open. His round brown cheeks were drawn hollow, but in spite of the pain creasing his face he did not seem to be wounded. She said, “Mercadier. Where does it hurt?” Then she saw his right arm, hanging by his side, the forearm twisted out.

“His horse went down,” Rouquin said, behind her.

She stood up. “Can you get out of the mail?”

Mercadier struggled left-handed with his mail, and then another man bent and helped him. Still he was gasping and soaked with sweat when they got it off. The other man unlaced the Brabanter’s padded jack and pulled that off, too. She glanced at Rouquin; Richard had given him the cup of wine and stood behind him worrying the arrows one at a time out of his mail.

She turned back to Mercadier. Even without touching him, she could see by the way the arm hung that the bones had come apart at the shoulder. She had seen this relocation done once, a long time ago. Then it had seemed wonderful to her, the way the body wanted to be whole. Now she hoped she remembered it that well. “Somebody sit back to back with him.”

The other man sat down, and Mercadier leaned against him. Edythe squatted before him again.

“This will hurt,” she said.

“Hurts now.” Sweat lay in droplets on his forehead and his black beard.

She took his injured arm by the wrist and elbow and laid the forearm over his belly so that his upper arm hung straight against his side. With her left hand she held that elbow fast, and with her right on his wrist she began turning his forearm out away from his body.

He gasped and gulped, his eyes popping, and the man behind him gripped his other arm to hold him. She felt the bones turn, the joint snagged briefly, and then the top of his arm rolled over the rim of the socket and dropped into place. She sat back, her hands empty.

He shut his eyes, breathing hard, but his face was suddenly smooth. The man behind him let him go. Mercadier lifted his other hand to his shoulder and opened his eyes toward her. “Thanks.”

“Be careful with it.” She said. “I’ ll bind it up for you.”

Richard said, “If my own men won’t heed me, what good is this? We have to keep the march. Don’t break after them. When they attack, they can do nothing if we stay together. The mail stops the arrows, see?” He flung down the two arrows in his hand, which he had just tugged out of Rouquin’s mail. “Just stay in the march, damn you; I thought you were a good soldier.” He was yanking on the last arrow. “This one is deep.”

Rouquin grunted at him. Edythe got up, her gaze on him; he looked well enough, although he was breathing hard as Richard wiggled the last arrow loose. She had not let herself look at him since the kiss. Now she had an excuse, and she took it.

She said, “Let me see that.”

He said, shortly, “It’s nothing.” He kept his eyes down. He gave Richard the wine cup, and Richard tossed it to a waiting page.

“Let her look. I need you, and a few of those felt as if they bit.” He swung toward Mercadier. “You damned near got your lord killed, see.”

“Sire—”

“Shut up.”

Rouquin stripped off his mail and the padded jack under it. His chest was soaked with sweat, the red hair plastered to the skin. She glanced at the arrows; the long heads were bent and nicked from the mail. Two of the three had penetrated far enough to make small nasty wounds.

“Sit,” she said. She took the flask of vinegar and a pair of pincers from her pouch. He sat on a barrel. The arrows had carried shreds of cloth and fiber from the jack into the star-shaped holes, and she picked those carefully out with the pincers. She washed each cut with the vinegar and smeared it with yarrow balm. He looked bigger with his clothes off. His chest was massive and hard-muscled under the great arches of his shoulders. Touching him, she remembered kissing him and wanted to kiss him again, everywhere.

Remember, she thought. Remember why you are going to Jaffa. Don’t be distracted by a man beyond your reach anyway. He didn’t care; he wasn’t looking at her.

Richard was saying, “Hugh of Burgundy is a complete fool.” He nodded at a page offering him a cup of wine. “Give it to him.”

“You put him in the rear guard,” Rouquin said. The page brought him the cup. She was standing by his knee working on the deep wound in the front of his shoulder, and for an instant as he reached for the wine their eyes caught.

His look was so intense she gave a shiver. She tore her gaze away, hot down to her heels. Her fingers pressed on the heavy muscle of his arm. She rubbed the yarrow over the slit in his shoulder, her knees trembling.

“I’ll send the Hospitallers to the rear guard,” Richard was saying. “At least they obey orders.” He gave a deep, humorless laugh. “That was a nice charge. We’ll teach the Saracens not to try to stand up to us.”

The other men growled agreement. They were turning chunks of meat over the fire, and slowly they all fell to eating. She backed away; a serving man brought her a piece of bread with a bit of meat on it. Richard said, “Make her a place in the tent. I’ll be her dragon.” He laughed. Rouquin was by the fire with the rest of the men, eating. She went back into the tent and sat down; by the door a torch already burned.

The meat was almost raw. The juice dripped down her chin. She remembered how Mercadier’s arm bone had moved under her hand, how it had slipped back where it belonged, and a deep satisfaction flooded through her.

She thought of Rouquin, and shut her eyes. Remembered why she was going to Jaffa. But she wanted him, and now she saw that he still wanted her. She ate the bread soaked in blood and wiped her hands on her kirtle.

When the Crusade left Acre to go south, he had come north, up to this little monastery on top of the white rocks called the Ladder of Tyre. In the sea-washed caves below there once had been hermits, but now the monastery favored a more comfortable way of life. He watched the sun sinking, wondering what to do next.

“Freo.”

He wheeled around. Isabella came out the door, alone.

“Oh, my God,” he said, and she came to him and they embraced. Married as children, they had had only each other all through the bad times of stepfathers and stepmothers and wars and hostage, and he would always love her best of all. And she was adorable. He stepped back, looking into her eyes.

“You are the most beautiful Queen in the Holy Land.” He laughed. “Believe me. I’ve seen a few.” He leaned on the wall again. “Including she of Sicily, who is keeping Conrad in Acre, so that we could meet. But she won’t be able to hold him there for very long, now that Richard’s gone.”

“The dog,” Isabella said, with force. The end of her coif fluttered in the wind. She was supposed to be in common dress, which for her meant a long dark gown with thin gold trim, gold slippers, gold on her fingers and in her ears. She went on, “How could he disdain the Crusade? Call himself King and yet not go to the rescue of Jerusalem?”

Humphrey said, “There, actually, I agree with him. We cannot hold Jerusalem.”

“Oh, Freo.” She came up into the wind. “Then it is all gone, isn’t it, what so many have died for, gone.” She turned on him, her cheeks ruddy in the wind. The sun was going down and spilled its light all over her, so that even her tears were golden.

“Why did you not fight for me? Why did you let me go like that?”

“He would only have killed me, Bella. He wanted to kill me. And then he’d still have taken you. God, if I could have saved you that way, I would have, I swear it, but it would have been for nothing.”

She put out her hands to him, and he took them. “Freo, he does every night what you said. Every night. It’s like having a grunting dog lying on me. Worse.”

“I’ll help you. Johanna is in Acre now, and she will help you. If you can get out of Tyre, we can help you fly beyond his reach—Antioch, even Constantinople.”

“If we could find a priest to give me an annulment—”

She chattered on awhile about the annulment, which was highest in her mind, as if she could erase Conrad utterly from her life with a priest’s few spoken words. Humphrey knew there would never be an annulment. If Conrad had been grunting on her, he knew very well that Humphrey never had. Conrad had already sneered at him about that. He hated Conrad for a lengthening string of insults, the forced marriage, the challenge Conrad knew he would not accept, the gossip behind his back, the sneers and sideways smiles to his face. As if by making out Humphrey less, Conrad himself would be more.

“Bella,” he said. “If we get an annulment, you would have to marry again.”

“Anyone but him. If I can’t have you again, anyone.”

“We’ll find someone good.” They embraced again. With their arms around each other, he remembered how it had felt, before, when the world was whole, changeless as adamantine, and made for them. Before Guy lost the kingdom and it all came down like a tower of glass. Before Sybilla died and Isabella suddenly was the blood knot.

“I have to go,” she said. “I must be there by Compline.”

“Trust Johanna; she’ll help you get out of Tyre.” He would deal with Conrad. The trick was to find some way that would not lead back to him, since Conrad had many allies who would be quick to avenge him, and Humphrey anyway wanted nothing against his name.

He had no wish to be King. He had seen what became of Kings, sacrificed on the altar of a sword. He thought that Richard would get enough of the kingdom back to give the title some flesh, but it would not be his flesh. He wished Richard himself could be cajoled into staying here and being King. Maybe then even Jerusalem would be within reach.

But the Lionheart had brought back Acre already, and soon he would have Jaffa, and then maybe even Ascalon, and the whole coast between, a fit kingdom of merchant cities, thriving with the trade of both sides. Richard was rebuilding the glass tower, if not the same, yet good enough. Humphrey thought he had never met a man before like him. He watched her go away, slim and beautiful, Isabella, whom every man wanted, but he only wanted Richard.

He said, “I can make some arrangements with the merchants there to bring their ships to Tyre, and to Acre also. Thus we will all get rich.” He smiled at her. He was always trying to take her hand; his palms were sweaty, his fingers creased and ugly in their coiled rings.

She said, “My lord, I should be glad of a few traders in.” When he kissed her hand, she wiped it on her sleeve. He left with many bows, and she sent at once for paper and ink and a quill pen to write to Isabella, in Tyre, that her husband would be gone to Cyprus and she should escape at once. This she managed to send that same morning to Tyre.

In fact, more ships were coming to Acre’s harbor, and the markets were growing. A few days after Conrad sailed away to Cyprus, she got another packet of letters, and went out into the garden to read them. Berengaria had gone to Mass and would likely be there all day, bobbing and praying. Johanna sat on the bench with the letters in her lap.

Both were from her mother, the first fretting about Prince John and his endless inept scheming, and the second announcing her alarm that Philip Augustus was reportedly on his way back to France. Apparently he had stopped in Rome and tried to get the Pope to release him from the Crusaders’ peace with Richard. The Pope had not relented.

Johanna said, under her breath, “The damned Gnome.” But Philip was looking for another wife, and Eleanor took several mean and funny turns on this theme, so Johanna was laughing by the end.

She crumpled the letters quickly in her hand, lest anyone even see them, and looked around for a brazier. If she burned them, she could not then give them to anyone else. She had realized too late what a mistake that was; now de Sablé had proof that she was loose with the family secrets. She wished she had thought more about that. She wished she had asked Edythe. A page came up the garden walk, and said, “My lord Humphrey de Toron.”

She folded her hands around the wad of paper in her lap. The slender young lord came up the walk and bowed to her; she was always taken by his elegance at this. All the local lords had this kind of sleek address, as if they lived in a more delicate world than the common Western oaf. In most it was artifice, but Humphrey made it look very fine.

She said, “God be with you, my lord. Come sit by me.” And when he did, she said, “I have good news. I believe Isabella will be free of Tyre within the week. I have sent to her that Conrad has gone to Cyprus, and she can flee away.”

The lean young face before her did not smile, as she expected. He said, “My lady, Conrad is going to Tyre.”

Her heart clenched. She said, “He told me he was going to Cyprus. To make arrangements with merchants.”

“He lied. He sailed to Tyre.”

She gripped her fists together. “The dirty swine. Does he know, then? About me and Isabella.”

“Maybe not. More likely he found out I saw her at the Ladder of Tyre.” Humphrey gave a shake of his head. “Conrad has no use for truth; he lies just to keep his edge. But it’s possible—he could know. He could be managing everything between you and Isabella for his own ends.”

She closed her hands over her mother’s letters. She thought of what Edythe had said about de Sablé, that he trained her like a dog. Suddenly she hated de Sablé the more for what King Conrad had done. “What a snake he is.”

Humphrey shrugged.

“Maybe she can still escape.”

He sat perched on the bench, rocking slightly back and forth, ready to take flight. “Maybe. Ladymas is soon; there is much celebration in the city then, crowds, processions and Masses, people in the street late into the night. If she cannot, she has the wit to know, and not to try.”

“Well,” she said. “Then we will have to try again.”

“Anything is possible.” He bowed his head toward her, and his voice fell, soft, intimate. “My lady, you have my constant gratitude for this. I am in your debt forever.”

Berengaria’s maids were coming down the walk, and the little Queen after them, with a veil over her face in the Byzantine fashion. Humphrey greeted her with a bent knee and a flourish, and for a moment the three talked of the weather, the quiet of the city with the army gone, the lovely music to be had. Johanna was not staying in the garden while Berengaria was there, and she started up the walk to the citadel, still carrying the letters.

To her surprise Humphrey followed her. She took this for a compliment, that he attended her rather than the Queen of England. A few of his pages followed. They went across the courtyard and into the bottom of the citadel.

There in the empty corridor a brazier burned, and she paused long enough to throw the letters into it. Humphrey saw her; he gave her a sharp look but said nothing.

She said, “Oh, I was just tired of carrying around all that paper.” The letters blazed up. He made no comment, and they went up to her hall and sat there and drank wine and gossiped.