Eighteen
JAFFA
A Jew was almost worse than a Saracen.
He thought to himself: Everything is a lie.
He was going to get drunk and find a whore. But he did not; he
walked around the town until he was exhausted enough to
sleep.
In the afternoon, the court gathered, to watch
Richard eat, and then to eat themselves. Waiting, they all milled
around, chattering. Everybody went to Henry of Champagne, who was
now to marry Queen Isabella, and shook his hand and kissed it. The
new King of Jerusalem. He was laughing, delighted, drinking to his
wife-to-be with every cup. It was rumored she was pregnant, that he
was getting more, or less, than he might have.
When Edythe came in, she saw Rouquin standing
behind Richard, and he turned his face away.
She lingered by the wall, her head so flooded with
memories, with pleas and excuses, that she saw nothing. No one
spoke to her, although she saw the sideways glances. She should
leave, and make them serve her in her room, which had been
Johanna’s room. Then suddenly, behind her, a bellow of rage went
up.
It was Rouquin. He shouted, “Do you tell me you’re
giving him Cyprus?”
She jolted back to the moment. Up there in front of
the throne, Richard and Rouquin stood face-to-face. Richard said,
“Guy was a king. I will not let him be disparaged—”
Rouquin shouted, “He’s a fool. He’s incapable.”
They were so close they almost touched. The whole hall had fallen
still, breathless, watching.
Richard’s voice cut, almost a sneer. “ Did you want
it? What’s the matter with you?”
Rouquin was still shouting. “ What about the
Crusade? Everything we did—the marches, the wounds, the men who
died—so you could give it all to a pretty face?”
A general gasp went up. Richard’s lips pulled back
in a snarl, and he lifted his right hand and struck Rouquin across
the mouth. No one in the watching crowd moved. Rouquin was flushed
dark as raw meat and his hair bristled. Edythe gripped her hands
together. He clenched his fist, and she held her breath; she could
not move, it seemed even her heart was stopped.
He said, “You hit like a woman. You’re still
half-sick. I don’t fight invalids.” Then he wheeled and strode
away, headed for the door.
“ Rouquin!” Richard took a step after him. “ Turn
and draw your sword!” Rouquin burst out through the door and was
gone.
The crowd murmured, people bending together, their
hands moving, and their voices rose to a general racket. She drew a
deep breath, and another, dizzy. Richard had gone back up to his
throne. In a moment he would send them all away. She turned toward
the door.
De Sablé stood there, watching her. She made
herself walk by him without a word.
Later, in the evening, when she heard he was in
the hall, she went to Richard and said, “My lord, I need to talk to
you.”
He was sitting on a bench at a table, two men
beside him with a handful of papers, and a paper on the table
between his hands. An inkwell and a quill lay on the table before
him, and he picked up the quill and signed the bottom of the paper,
handed it to the man on his left, and sent them both away. He gave
her a surly look.
“What is it? I’m busy.”
“The Grand Master of the Templars came to me; he
wanted me for a spy, and when I refused, he threatened me.”
His face altered, the temper smoothing away.
Leaning back, his hands behind his head, he studied her up and
down. “You are loyal enough. How could he get you to spy?”
“ He knows about me. What you know.”
“And you refused, even so. You have more honor than
a Templar.”
She said, “ I would not have come to you, except he
threatened to kill me. I will not ask a Christian king to defend me
against a Christian knight, but if he kills me, I want you to know
that he did it.”
Richard said, “You know, in this, for once, I can
do as I please. I don’t want you to die, and he’s done me in, time
on time, as you know. I’ll send him to Cyprus. The Templars managed
it very ill while they had it, and they have accounts to put in
order so Guy can pay me for it.”
She said, “Thank you, my lord.”
“No, you’re my good little monster, I’ll protect
you.” He looked down at her from a great height of understanding. “
I cannot help you, though, with Rouq’, who won’t talk to me
either.”
The days passed, the heat of the summer on them,
the nights so hot the whole court often slept out on the balcony.
She went down to work in the hospital, but it was as if her mind
had jammed; she did everything wrong. She forgot what she was doing
in the middle of a treatment, sorted medicines into the wrong jars
and spilled bedpans, and when Besac squeaked at her in front of
everybody she raged back like a fishwife. She was alone. There was
no one to talk to. She felt thinned out, faint, and useless. Some
plague had struck the town and many children were sick and she went
from house to house, dosing them with lemon and oxymel, but a lot
of them died anyway.
Rouquin had kept the long plume of her hair, tied
with a thong, under the cushion of his bed; he burned it. He
gathered whatever else he had of hers—a coif, a letter, a bit of
linen—and burned them also. He went to church. Usually he could not
endure even half a Mass, but he knelt and prayed and stood and
knelt again with everybody else, all Sunday, until the final Missa
Est.
None of this worked. He could not stop thinking of
her. How she moved, how her mouth tasted, how she laughed. A
Jewess, forever damned, Christ-denier. Creature of magic and
devilish powers. No wonder she was a good doctor. She had enspelled
him, polluted him. That was why he couldn’t stop thinking about
her. She had made him soft. He struggled himself back into the
hard, cold man he had been, who cared only about overcoming other
men.
He could not remember how to be like that. Maybe he
had never been that way, just an empty coat of mail with a bad
temper. He needed his temper. When he was riding, when he was
fighting, then he moved fast and sure, without thinking, without
maddening himself with thinking. He rode out every day, to get away
from Richard.
Richard had known, all along, damn him, the devil’s
trueborn son.
He could not get away from Edythe, clinging there
always in the back of his mind. She had sunk her claws into him
like the monster Richard called her. He needed a woman, any woman,
any other woman, to drive her out. But when he found a whore, the
thought of touching what so many other men had touched made him
sick.
She was his, he had broached her, virgin sweet, she
belonged to him alone. He would kill her before anyone else had
her.
He rode at the head of his column up the flank of a
ridge, and across the way he saw the flash of a white robe.
He reined the roan horse back and cut along quick
below the spine of the ridge, but he thought they had probably seen
him. The roan bolted over the low brush, sure-footed on the slope.
Where the dry wash cut the ridge, he slid down and bunched his men
together and led them fast around the foot of the hill toward where
he had seen the Saracens.
They were gone. The obvious trail led off down a
seam through the lumpy sandy hills, where they would have to ride
single file. He divided his men, sent Mercadier with half down the
gully, and took the other half in the same direction, but up and
over the ridge.
He was in the middle of the Saracen ambush almost
before he saw them. Their backs to him, squatting in the brush,
they were strung out along the lip of the gully looking down, their
bows ready. He charged along the top of the bank, his men pouring
after him; they pounded through the brush and across the sandy
slope, the horses scrabbling for footing on the dry ground.
The Saracens fired a wild flock of arrows, bounded
to their horses, and raced on ahead of them. He saw the sock-footed
bay mare ahead of him and yelled, hot.
To the left the slope pitched off suddenly. The
narrowing crest of the ridge was funneling the Saracens toward the
plain with Rouquin on their heels and Mercadier coming out of the
gully to their right. He spurred the roan to a flat run. For a
moment, as the big horses bounded and slid down the slope and
bolted out onto the open ground, his front ranks and the last of
the Saracens galloped side by side.
He slashed out with his sword at a rider; the
Saracen flung up a bow to fend off the strike and the sword cut it
in two. Then the bay mare galloped up on his other side.
He saw Safadin’s dark face over the round target of
his shield and lashed out with all his strength, blow on blow. The
Saracen’s blade smashed his shield until his arm was numb. The
swords rang together with a shower of sparks. Then the mare was
pulling away. The roan horse, his neck lathered, faltered, and
Rouquin reined him up.
All the knights slowed with him; they had learned
that much anyway. The gap between them and the Saracens widened.
The white-robed riders disappeared into a crack in the hills. The
last to go whirled his bay mare and looked back.
Rouquin was still panting, soaked with sweat, his
blood racing. He raised his sword over his head. He thought,
This is our one true faith, the House of War. Across the
plain, Safadin lifted his scimitar in answer, spun his mare on her
hocks, and rode away.
Rouquin gathered up his men. They were scratched
and banged up, a few wounded, and he turned back toward Jaffa. The
fighting rage left him, and he rode along remembering what had
happened, making a story of it. He liked Safadin a lot better than
he liked some of the Crusader lords. That was heresy, but he
believed it. She had said that to him. He remembered how lightly he
had answered her. Bragged of being born half out of the church. To
one wholly outcast. She must have thought him a fool.
He had lied to her, from the beginning, the devil’s
bastard brat. She had not understood that, or how lost he was
himself. And he wanted her, with a longing like hunger, to love, to
be one with. To tell his truth to. Yet she had lied to him; how
could he trust her?
He had to see her one more time. If there was
nothing to her but a lie, then he would kill her, and put an end to
this. He would know when he saw her again. He spurred his horse
back toward the city.
Late in the day a Syrian woman brought a child to
the hospital. Drawn by the child’s screams, Edythe met her at the
door; when she saw the blood all over the side of the little boy’s
face she gasped, and took them in to the nearest bed.
The mother babbled at her in the local tongue,
which she understood very little, but she heard “ear” over and
over. She made her sit with the child on her lap and brought
vinegar and a cloth, but the howling baby would not let her touch
him.
She went into the back and found a piece of
honeycomb and brought that to him, and his mother sang to him and
Edythe made faces and he settled and let her touch the bloody mess
around his ear. She was afraid to use the vinegar, for fear of
hurting him again. Drawing his hair aside, she uncovered his
ear.
She snorted, relieved. The blood was all from
shallow cuts around the outside of his ear; something pale and
bulbous filled the canal. She looked at the mother.
“Earache?” She pulled her own ear. “His ear hurt,
so you put garlic into it?”
The mother smiled and spread her hands. Edythe
stroked the boy’s head with one hand, and groped for her pincers
with the other, and in a single stroke she drew out the garlic. The
gashes on his ear were knife cuts. The mother, failing other ways,
had tried to dig out the garlic with a knife. Edythe pressed her
lips together to keep from saying anything. She cleaned up the
dried blood, tended the cuts on his ear, kissed him, and sent them
away. She heard them singing off down the street.
Everything, she supposed, seemed reasonable at the
time. She wiped her hands on her apron, looking around.
Besac had already left. She went to the people in
the beds, making sure they would rest. There weren’t many: an old
woman dying, a man with no other place to go who was pretending he
had a headache. Night came while she was doing this. She stood in
the doorway looking into the dark and thought of staying the night
in the hospital, rather than going alone through the rough streets
of Jaffa.
Whatever Richard did, she could not trust in it;
there were Templars all over Jaffa.
She went out, and just as she stepped out the gate
someone seized her from behind. She jabbed back with her elbows and
kicked, but he held her effortlessly fast. She thrashed, afraid,
feeling the knife coming, but then suddenly she knew who it was, by
that touch, that strength.
“ Rouquin.”
He lifted her quickly up and set her sideways on
his saddle. She grabbed the cantle to stay on. The light from the
lantern above the hospital door shone on his upturned face. She
said, again, joyful, “ Rouquin.” He leaned forward, his arms around
her, and buried his face in her skirts.
Later, they lay side by side, in the little room
in the middle house where his men were quartered. He said, “I have
something to tell you.”
She stretched herself against the warmth of his
body. “ Tell me, then.”
“ I’ve never said this before,” he said. “Not to
anybody. That—you know they say my mother was the queen’s
sister.”
“Yes,” she said. She had heard this for years. “The
lady Petronilla—”
“No. Eleanor was my mother. My father was the king.
But I was born before they married, when they were not queen nor
king.”
That jolted her; she said, “ How do you know?” She
touched the star-shaped scar on his shoulder, where he had taken
the arrow. In her mind bits and pieces joined together and now made
more sense.
“I just figured it out. Little by little, it seems,
I understood it, growing up.”
“Are you sure?” she said. She was sure. She laid
her palm flat against him, her head on his arm.
“Even my name is a lie. My aunt christened me
Philip, but nobody calls me that. De Rançun was not my father.
My—my aunt—Eleanor called me Rouquin. She said when I was angry I
looked like a little redheaded hedgehog.” His voice stopped.
She waited, thinking he would say more. His mother
had given him away. She had taken him back—in act, at least, if not
in name—but she had sacrificed him, the eldest son, on the rock of
her ambition, and he could not forget it.
He said, “ I’ve never told anybody before. It feels
different now, saying it.”
The pallet was too narrow for both of them; she had
to lie half on top of him, her leg between his. It was too hot to
be so close, but she loved to lie so, touching him all the way. Her
clothes were strewn everywhere. The men out in the main hall must
be watching the door for any sign they were coming out. They would
get a jeering then, whistles and whoops; there would be no chance
to lie. Richard had said, once, “My brother.”
“Then you should be King,” she said.
“No, I am baseborn. I could not be such a king as
Richard, anyway. But I am their true brother, his and Jo’s, and
Mattie’s and Nora’s and John’s. They all know it. No one says
anything. We all lie.” He burst out, “You can’t trust any of
us.”
“They love you.”
“Oh, we love each other. We hate each other,
too.”
Her cheek against his shoulder, she nodded, having
noticed this.
“It’s like everything else in this family,” he
said; “it’s doubletongued. It was twisted from the start, when the
first one murdered his way into the first title. So not even
Richard could make the Kingdom come.” He put his hands over his
face. “ I am sick of lies. I will live the truth or nothing.”
She thought of Yeshua ben Yafo and what he had said
to her. “People think in one world and live in another.” But it
is the dream that saves us, she thought. Isn’t it? Which is
the lie, and which the truth?
He said, “ What’s your real name?”
“ What?”
“I want to know. You didn’t escape from a nunnery,
and you weren’t named Edythe, were you?”
“No,” she said. “No.” She had not heard her own
name in more than twelve years. She said, “My name is Deborah.” She
went hot all over, her skin tingling, as if she woke up.
She felt him smile, his face against her face.
“Deborah,” he said. “My Deborah.” He kissed her again. “My
truth.”
She lay against him as he slept; she wanted him
again, right away. There was still so little time. They were still
doomed. Richard was talking things over with Saladin; and when he
did, even if it took a year, they would go back to the west.
Let it take a year. In the dark she touched his
chest, the broad muscle covered with curly hair, and tried not to
think past the time they would go to France. He woke enough to put
his arm around her and went back to sleep.
What would happen, back in Poitiers? Would he love
her there? How could they be together? What he said—about the
truth—that would not work in France. Truth did not carry well from
one place to another. In France it would be impossible for them.
Unless she went back to being Edythe. Which would not be the truth
anymore.
It was near the full moon, and Richard had begun
nagging her to bleed him. She saw the Saracen horsemen in the
courtyard and came up to the hall as Safadin was leaving. She drew
back out of the Saracen’s way; he ignored her, although she knew he
saw her. Richard called her into his little room.
She looked Richard over, felt his pulses, and
listened to his back. He was strong as ever, his long body lean and
white. Maybe bleeding him was a good idea, to keep his humors
active. The lance slash under his right arm had healed well, in
rows of little dots where the needle had pierced his skin, a narrow
white scar between, no puckers or proud flesh. He had a bruise on
his shield arm, another argument for bleeding him. He was putting
his shirt back on.
“You saw the Saracen there. We have agreed on a
treaty, Saladin and I. I have now officially failed.”
He paused a moment, as if she might argue, or burst
into applause. She knew nothing to say and kept still. He said, “
We are monsters, you and I. God has one idea, and we are not it.”
He pulled his shirt straight.
She said, “ What is the treaty?”
“Three years with no war. And unarmed Christian
pilgrims can go to Jerusalem. That’s what I have won, a handful of
days.”
“ What does your treaty say of Jews?”
“There is nothing about Jews. The Jews have nothing
to do with this.”
“Then I can go to Jerusalem,” she said.
He flipped his belt around his middle. “No, dear
little fool, it is still too dangerous. You’re a woman. The place
is full of bandits. You wouldn’t last a day alone. You’d have to
find company, and pay for that somehow, and even then . . . You’d
be dead, or in a slave market, too old for anybody to want you. I
am leaving, very soon, for the west, and you’re coming with
me.”
“ I am going to Jerusalem,” she said.
He looked puzzled. “I command you. What about
Johanna? And my mother surely wants you back.”
She paced around before him, so that he had to turn
to watch her. “ But I am outside your Christian realm, my lord.
Your treaty has nothing to do with me.”
“ Edythe,” he said. “You’re mad. I’m the only one
who can protect you.”
“That’s not my name anymore. I have to go. Besac
has the tincture,” she said. “Find the Jew Yeshua ben Yafo and he
will tell you how to take it.” And she went.
She walked in quietly through the barracks, to the
room where Rouquin was asleep; the door was open a hand’s breadth.
She stood there awhile and looked through the crack at him. In the
morning when she left the whole pallet to him, he had stretched out
and his head was cradled in his arms. She could not bear to wake
him. If she told him what she was doing, and he wanted her to go
with him instead, she would, even to the farthest reaches of the
world. She would be Edythe again to keep him.
She went out again to take the road. She had to go
through the gate before Richard decided to stop her. She went by
the hospital first, and put her books and the pouch of medicines
and some food she had packed in a big bag to carry on her
shoulder.
At the gate no one challenged her. Maybe she had
given herself an excess of importance. She walked out through the
new gatehouse, to the beginning of the long road east. A wave of
uncertainty rose around her. She started out, one foot in front of
the other, the bag already heavy.
Mercadier said, “Your woman, she was here, and
then she left.” He filled the narrow doorway.
Rouquin washed his face in the basin. “Where did
she go?”
“ How would I know? She is like a wild mare, that
one; she goes where she will. It’s all over the city that the King
has made a deal with the Sultan.”
“ Really. And what do you think this means?” He
reached for his swordbelt, hanging on the wall.
“ I think we are going home, my lord.” Mercadier
shrugged, but one hand rose, palm up. “ Whatever happens, there
will be some war. I am your man, whatever comes.”
Rouquin bopped him with his fist. “ I think from
now on you will be Richard’s man.”
“The King!” The Brabanter’s eyes widened, awed.
Then, loyal, he said, “No other, though. No lesser would I ever
follow.”
Rouquin laughed and went out of the house to the
yard. A squire brought him the roan horse, and he rode up to the
palace and found Richard pacing around the hall, eating a chicken
and giving orders. Rouquin had not seen him in days, since Richard
hit him. The King chased everybody else out of the hall and turned
on him.
“So you finally show up, do you? Over your sulk?
What, do you want me to apologize? After what you said?”
Rouquin said, “ I don’t want much of anything from
you, actually. I hear you sorted it out with the Sultan.”
Richard flung down the carcass in his hands. His
eyes blazed; his voice snapped like ice cracking. “ What has come
over you all, some plague of defiance? I should have whacked your
damned head off. We are leaving. Philip and that damned German are
apparently waiting for me, but they won’t be looking for you. I
want you to go straight back to France and start raising an
army.”
Rouquin sat down, folding his arms over his chest,
enjoying this. “Actually, I am not going back. There’s nothing for
me back there, and I’m done with following you.”
Richard flung his arms up. He gave Rouquin another
furious look and stalked away. Rouquin sat where he was. Someone
came in the door, saw the two of them there, and went away. Finally
Richard had to walk back toward him.
“So, you’re deserting me too? You can’t do that. I
need you.”
Rouquin said, “ I can do exactly that. I’m your
brother, but it’s not my kingdom. I’ve given you everything due
you. You have no power over me.”
Richard stopped, silent. He put his head to one
side, and said, in another voice, “So that’s what this is.”
“Yes. I’m done lying. I’m done with the whole
family. I am not going back to France. Take Mercadier, pay him and
my men, and they’ll never leave you. But I’m going to find my
woman, and then go to Jerusalem, which I swore to do.”
Richard walked away again, and came back. “You
can’t carry a sword. The treaty says, unarmed pilgrims. What are
you without your sword?”
“Let them find out,” Rouquin said, “who try to stop
me.” He stood up.
The King faced him, and their eyes met. There was a
long silence. Richard said, “Well, you’d better start soon, she’s
already left. She’s on the road now.” He put his hand out. “This
was no choice of mine. I always loved you. You were always my true
brother to me.”
“ I know that.” Rouquin gripped the King’s
hand.
“Better than a brother. God forgive me for the
times I failed you.” Richard pulled him into an embrace. “Go find
her. With you some of me goes to Jerusalem.” He stood back. “Go.
With my blessing.”
Rouquin said, “Maybe we will come back.” But if she
had already left he had to hurry. He went out the door, down to his
horse.
At first the road was full of people, going in
both directions, donkeys and carts and barefoot porters carrying
loads in and out of Jaffa. Along the side of the road eight monks
were creeping along on their knees, chanting as they went. She
thought of Rouquin and put him firmly out of her mind. A few
moments later she was putting him out of her mind again. By noon
there were fewer people, the land broad and flat still, the hills
beginning to rise before her, gullied and seamed. On the slope
above her she saw two Saracens on horses. She remembered the road
from the winter march, although now it was dry and hot and the
brown grass tall. A group of pilgrims, with their hats and staffs,
walked along ahead of her singing, and she tried to stay within
range of them. The bag on her shoulder felt full of rocks.
Other people passed her, and she saw a few heads
turn, taking notice of her, a woman alone. She ran to get closer to
the pilgrims. They might not defend her anyway. She had her knife
in her belt. She found a big stone and carried it in her free fist.
But night was coming; she wondered how she would do that. She would
ask the pilgrims if she could sleep in their camp. She had enough
food, she could even barter some for room by a fire.
She heard the jingle of harness and the jogging
hoofbeats and moved off to one side, to let the horse pass. It
dropped to a walk up beside her, and she wheeled, warned of the
attention.
“ Deborah.”
The name rocked her; she looked up, astonished. He
smiled down at her from the height of the roan stallion’s back. He
wore mail, but no sword, only a long dagger in his belt, and
instead of his helmet he had wrapped a white cloth around his head
like a Saracen. His eyes were startlingly bright.
He reached his arm down to her. They needed to say
nothing. She dropped the stone and held up the bag of her things,
which he hung on his saddlebows. He reached down again and she
grasped his arm, and he swung her up behind him. She sat astride,
her legs spread wide on the broad back, and put her arms around his
waist.
“ Tighter,” he said.
She leaned against him, her cheek against his back,
and clasped her arms tight as she could around him. They jogged off
up the road to Jerusalem.