Crusader Captive (17 page)
Authors: Merline Lovelace
Chapter Seventeen
J
ocelyn didn’t recognize the knight who was shown into the great hall that stormy winter’s afternoon. She rose to greet him, but the pregnancy she’d announced so joyously just weeks before stirred an irritating swell of nausea in her belly. She had to stop and take several deep breaths to settle her rebellious stomach.
Simon caught her arm. His blue eyes raked her face. “Are you well, wife?”
“Well enough,” she said with a rueful smile. “It’s just your babe, making himself known. Go, greet our guest.”
He strode the length of the hall with his long, sure stride and hooted with glee when the stranger threw back his rain-soaked hood.
“Robert de Burgh! You diseased son of a rag merchant.”
It turned out Simon had once bested the man in the lists. Or he’d bested Simon, Jocelyn wasn’t sure which, as they clasped hands and hammered each other’s backs in the incomprehensible way of men.
“When did you arrive in the Holy Land?”
“Three days ago. I intended to go directly to Jerusalem, but when I heard that a certain Simon de Rhys had taken himself a lady to wife, I knew I must needs see for myself who would wed such a great lout as you.”
Grinning, he turned to Jocelyn and made an extravagant bow.
“You’ll understand my disbelief, lady, when I tell you of the many times this muscle-bound oaf and I stumbled back to our beds after a tourney or spent our last groat on—”
Simon growled a warning. “Robert.”
“Very well. I won’t disclose your many failings. Your lady has no doubt already discovered them herself.”
Jocelyn couldn’t help but laugh. “Indeed I have. I told Simon when first we met that he was not suited for the Church.”
As soon as the words were out, she wished them back. She’d found joy and more happiness in these past months than she’d ever dreamed possible. The last thing she wished to do was remind her husband of the pledge that had caused them both such suffering and turmoil.
Other than a flicker of his eyes, Simon gave no sign that her words had struck home. His friend, however, looked utterly astonished.
“The Church? Never say you were thinking of becoming a monk!”
“I was, at one point.”
“By all the saints,” de Burgh exclaimed. “Why?”
Simon hesitated only briefly before replying. “My sire pledged me to the Knights Templar.”
“Did he?” Still stupefied, de Burgh shook his head. “And to think Gervase said nothing of it when I asked about you. Only that you’d taken ship for the Holy Land.”
“You spoke with him? Where? When?”
“Some two months ago, just before I departed. We competed against each other in a tourney hosted by the Count of Lille. Your sire took no prizes, by the way. He blamed it on the illness that had laid him low for some months before the tourney, but I think it due more to the fact that he spent his nights in Lille wenching and swilling ale with—”
He broke off, his eyes widening at Simon’s fierce oath.
“Do you tell me my sire was wenching and swilling ale but two months ago?”
“Didn’t I just say so?”
“By all the—!”
Simon spun on a heel and stalked away. Clearly confounded, de Burgh looked from his rigid back to Jocelyn.
“I apologize most sincerely if I offended with my careless chatter. Let me assure you, Simon de Rhys is ten, nay, a hundred times the man his sire is.”
“You didn’t offend, sir. In fact, you have given us a gift more precious than you can know. Now I must attend to my lord.”
She left the knight gaping at her in confusion and went in search of her husband. It took her some moments to find him. He was on the tower stairs that led to their chamber, staring through a window slit at the sea beyond. His shoulders were rigid and his jaw locked. Jocelyn said nothing as she came to stand beside him. She knew he must needs sift through his turbulent thoughts before he shared them with her.
If he shared them. She’d begun to wonder, when at last he blew out a breath and faced her. Outside the window slit, storm clouds shrouded the sea in shades of angry gray. Within the tower, the air carried a dank chill. Jocelyn didn’t so much as feel its bite but Simon removed his fur-trimmed cloak and bundled it around her before he spoke.
“My father must have risen from his deathbed soon after I took ship for the Holy Land.”
“So it would appear.”
“Yet he sent no word.”
“None that you know of,” she agreed.
“Nor did he respond to the letter that my conscience dictated I send, informing him that I had not joined the Templars.”
“You know how long it takes for a missive to reach the West, if it gets there at all.”
Although she spoke calmly, wrath burned in Jocelyn’s breast. How like his thrice-damned father, she thought. To lay the burden of his sins on his son, then never bother to inform him that his most dire circumstances had changed. Gervase de Rhys had best hope he never came face-to-face with the woman his son had taken to wife!
But that was for some future day. Right now, the fact that the man had survived filled Jocelyn with nothing but relief.
“From the sound of it,” she said cheerfully, “your sire’s not yet done accumulating sins or penances.”
Her light tone seemed to take her husband aback. Smiling at his startled expression, she laid her palms against his bristly cheeks.
“He will rot in hell or not. That’s his choice. But you’re free of him, Simon, now and forever more.”
For the space of a heartbeat, mayhap two, she saw the merest hint in his eyes of all he’d endured because of his father’s accursed pledge. Then the crooked grin she’d come to value as much as his strength of arm and heart put those dark memories away.
“You’re right, wife. The only oath that binds me now is the one I made to you.”
“And that, husband, you will never be free of.”
She rose on her toes and brushed her mouth over his. Once, twice, as soft as a feather yet filled with a promise of more to come. They would have the life she’d dreamed of. They would have tall sons and laughing daughters. Here, in the land she’d been bred to and he’d come to love as much as she. That was all either of them could ask.
“Now,” she told him, her voice and her heart brimming with love, “we’d best go back to the great hall. I would have this Robert de Burgh tell me more tales of the great lout I’ve taken to husband.”
Author Note
W
hile Jocelyn of Fortemur and Simon de Rhys are figments of my admittedly overactive imagination, many of the other characters in this book lived and breathed during the turbulent times of the Crusades.
Melisande reigned as Queen of Jerusalem from 1131 to 1152, when she relinquished authority to her son. She continued to serve as Baldwin’s regent while he was on campaign until her death in 1161. The noted historian William of Tyre paid this remarkable queen the ultimate compliment of his times when he wrote that “she was a very wise woman, fully experienced in almost all affairs of state business, who completely triumphed over the handicap of her sex so she could take charge of important affairs…”
Her son, Baldwin III, proved a competent, if not brilliant, ruler. He recaptured several major cities and sought strategic alliances with powerful Christian supporters. To that end, he married Theodora, daughter of the Emperor of Byzantium. The marriage took place in 1158, when Baldwin was twenty-eight and Theodora thirteen years old. Baldwin died without heir in 1162, just a year after his mother’s demise, and was succeeded by his younger brother, Almaric I.
Bernard de Tremelay was elected Grand Master of the Knights Templar in 1151. Two years later he and his knights participated in the siege of Ascalon. De Tremelay and about forty Templars were killed during the final battle and their heads sent to the sultan. When the Holy Land fell to the Saracens some years later, the Templars reestablished their order in Cyprus. However, their wealth and power had grown so great that they were resented both within the Church and without. In 1307, Philip IV of France—greatly in debt to the Templars—used charges of corruption and idolatry to arrest, torture and burn the warrior monks at the stake. He urged other Christian leaders to do the same, and in 1312 the Pope officially dissolved the order. Their mystique as some of the world’s greatest warriors—and the persistent myth that they alone knew the whereabouts of the lost Ark of the Covenant—have persisted down through the ages.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0820-9
CRUSADER CAPTIVE
Copyright © 2011 by Merline Lovelace
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