Shield of Three Lions (57 page)

“Yes,” I agreed. Except that nothing had been revealed or changed except perception. I’d never
been
a boy, no matter what he’d thought. And, the silent sentence unwound in my head, he’d never been a man.

He kissed me again, more passionately, lips slightly apart. And I thought I caught the sparkling mote in his eye. “Alix, we don’t march for another day. After you get your writ from Ambroise, you’ll come back and bed with me again tonight.”

I nodded, frightened almost out of my wits.

If he saw, he pretended not to. He lifted me against his chest in the old way—only this time he deliberately crushed my tender breasts against him—and kissed me once more. Then he laughed. “I always knew you were a sweet damsel!” he said, almost as if he believed it.

He put me down, took his sword, and stepped out into the dim morning light. Instantly he was surrounded by clamoring voices.

I LONGED TO FLEE THAT ODIOUS tent, but nevertheless stayed long enough to be sure Enoch was not about. First I watched the king walk away with his bishops for a hurried Mass; then I went from one fenestration to another and gazed through the netting into the camp. I finally spotted Enoch’s leather tent to our rear and a concentrated study showed me the Scot was away from the tent, probably tending to his horses. I slipped out the front.

Fortunately my horse was tied under the king’s canopy with his many steeds, and I soon led Thistle behind the cover of scattered tents to a path parallel to the main road back into Acre. It was a little more dangerous because it was on higher ground and therefore open to the Saracens, but better screened from our own camp. When I thought I was safe, I mounted and rode as fast as I dared toward the city. I wanted to get that writ from Ambroise, signed and sealed by the king, and into my own treasure belt before Enoch could stop me.

The sun still had not risen by the time I passed the pile of dead emirs, now food for circling vultures. I spurred my nervous steed
around the corpses as quickly as I could and soon we were clopping through the quiet streets of Acre toward the Castellum where Ambroise lodged. We reached it without incident, but I didn’t ride directly into the courtyard. Instead I sought a hiding place for Thistle and finally tied him to a carob tree behind a mosque, across the way from the king’s former headquarters.

I waved to the few guards still on duty, entered the main court and walked silently along the arched corridor bordering the garden. No one was about, and I began to organize in my head exactly how I wanted my writ to be worded.

Suddenly I was grabbed from behind!

Instinctively I responded with the holds Roderick had taught me. Wound a foot around the ankle of my assailant. Raised my elbows sharply against his arms. Bent forward. And felt him slip. I twirled and saw a gross shadowy churl, was overwhelmed by his vomitous stench, but most of all saw his dagger. No time for observations. This was my life! Using every strategy I’d ever learned of wrestling and swordplay, I fought with the determination of Richard, the wildness of Enoch, and almost at once had felled my opponent who dropped to the ground like a ripe fig. I jumped on top of him before he could recover.

And looked down on the ravaged face of Sir Gilbert.

“
Benedicite!”
I gasped. “Are you still alive?”

“No thanks to you,” he snarled, and tried unsuccessfully to spit on me.

I stared in amazement as the saliva coursed down his boiled cheeks, so covered with sores that I could hardly find skin. And his smell! Worse than the stench in the hospital where Roderick had died. No wonder I’d been able to topple him with such ease. With a guilty pang, I started to rise. Instantly he reached for his dagger and we were at it again, only this time I sliced his earlobe before I controlled him.

He sobbed like a woman. “You’ve killed me—I’ll bleed to death. Oh, help me, help me!”

Soothly I thought he would die soon, but not from this measly wound. “If I let you go, will you promise not to harm me?”

“No one can hurt you, you iron-gulleted scorpion, or you would have died a dozen times over!”

“So you were the one who poisoned our food!” I cried.

He stopped sniveling long enough to peer up triumphantly from his mattered eyes. “Yes, either I or the Pisanos.”

“Pisanos?” I thought of Richard’s mercenary army.

“You know, Giorgio and Antonio, the pages we hired in Messina. They are masters at poison.” Then he whined plaintively. “But why didn’t you die?”

Again I let my attention drift at the revelation, almost disastrously, for the varlet was quicker than I recalled. After I’d knocked him back this third time, I took the precaution of tying him with my saddle rope and fastening him securely to a fountain nearby.

“Antonio and Giorgio.” I came back to the point grimly. “I hardly know them. Why do they want me dead?”

Again he tried to spit, and this time he hit my shoes. “Simpering idiot, fox-eyes, filled with sniveling pretense. Master Melon-brain, we don’t want you bedding with the king.”

I stared like an idiot. These pages were
jealous
, which meant …

“Not that we’re not willing to share,” he went on. “We’d accept even his former love, King Philip, if that was his desire.”

“
King Philip
! You’re lying! He would never …”

“Wouldn’t he?” he slavered at my shock. “His own father, King Henry, was dismayed when young Richard seduced the boy Philip. And with such indiscretion! Their affair was the talk of Paris.” He laughed at my sickened expression. “Now if you would share…. You want him all to yourself and you’ve done it too. Very clever. Or was it your
pimpreneau?
”

“
Pimpreneau?
” I repeated dully.

“Yes, your Scot. He must call your moves. You’re a fortunate fellow—the rest of us work without guidance.”

“What moves? What has Enoch to do with this?”

His yellow-red eyes bulged from their sockets. “Is it possible he doesn’t tell you? Being a Scot, he may want to hold all profits to himself.”

“What profits? What are you talking about?”

He leered in delight to see me so discomfited. “Why, my dear, the Scot arranged your contract and made a nice sum. Did he share it with you?”

I was dumb.

“Then he dangled you before the king, forbidden fruit till the price was forthcoming. Richard had never had to deal with such a bargainer before, hard as any Jew. Finally he made his deal: you for the bed, but only if the rest of us were discarded. As for the amount of gold, only your
pimpreneau
can tell.”

I turned and ran.

“Don’t try to return to the king!” he called. “Giorgio and Antonio are guarding him well. And they have enlisted a dozen henchmen to help. You haven’t a chance!”

I took his warning seriously, once away from the court, and sidled in deep shadows toward Ambroise’s apartment.

HE WAS HUNCHED OVER HIS WRITING table when I burst in.

Without preamble, I announced myself. “Ambroise, I’m a girl.”

He raised a sweet beatific smile from his work. “I know, dear. How lovely for you both.”

“You—you traitor!” I cried savagely, and swept his vellum pages to the floor. “Aye, now you’ll listen to me!”

I ripped at my laces, lifted my tunic and pushed my breasts into the troubadour’s recoiling face. “Girl! Girl! Female! Woman!” I shouted.

He tried to rise from his stool, weaved this way and that, fell back, missed his stool and crashed atop his scattered pages.

“Oh, oh, oh I don’t believe it.
Does the king know?”
His protruding watery eyes begged me to say no.

“Yes. He asked if
you
knew.” Grimly I watched him struggle with his bubble-body which was now heavy as lead, slippery as butter, then reached out my hand to help him rise.

He crossed himself. “I swear I didn’t—you must have said that I didn’t, Alex.”

“Lady Alix, if you please.”

“Lady Alix?” He still couldn’t comprehend. “God be merciful. What shall we do?”

I replied acidly, “I’m leaving this jackal-country this very day and you will arrange it.”

“What did the king say?” he asked, appalled as the truth filtered inward.

“Ask him.
Today
, Ambroise. I am not going to Ascalon, I will not stay here with Berengaria—is that clear?”

“What does the king prefer?” he begged piteously.

A most interesting query, but no longer relevant.

I crouched close so our noses touched. “Ambroise, forget the king for just one moment.
You
got me here under false pretenses; you cheated both your king and me. I know not what vengeance the king may take on you—though I promise that I tried to exonerate you—but I don’t plan to pay with the loss of my estate or my life. Is that clear?”

He shook his head, his eyes livening somewhat at my statement about exonerating him, but still confused withal. “I cannot believe the king would kill you, Lady Alix, or take your land. He’s most forgiving …” And then he must have recalled the emirs.

Without further palaver, I enlightened him about Sir Gilbert and the Pisanos, and about Enoch’s nefarious goals.

“I must get back to England
at once
,” I finished.

“You say the king promised you a writ?” He took up vellum and quill.

“Too late,” I concluded, after much painful twisting in my mind about the Pisanos. “I dare not go back for his signature or seal—mustn’t see him again—mustn’t show myself to
anyone.
My life is at stake.”

He leaned back, amazed. “You’re much more forceful as a female, Lady Alix.”

“I have more reason,” I said bitterly. And more knowledge, I added to myself. The innocent girl had been replaced by an innocent boy; now both gave way to the woman.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Get me away this very day, secretly and safely, so that I may return to Wanthwaite.”

“How?”

“That I leave to you. But, Ambroise”—and I leaned close
again—“if you don’t help me escape today, I will send word to the king tonight with a different tale about you than I told earlier. I’ll say I was confused and frightened the first time, that you knew I was female and hoped I could change him.”

He wiped his face with his sleeve, muttered a prayer and rose wheezing from his desk. “Here’s the key to the door,” he said. “Lock it after me, and I’ll see what I can do.”

HE BOUGHT ME PASSAGE ON KING Philip’s galley, sailing back to France the following morning.

“You were fortunate,” he said, “that one of Lord Coucy’s men sickened and died this very day so there was space.”

“I will be under Lord Coucy’s protection, then?”

No, Ambroise knew Rigord de St. Denis, King Philip’s historian of the Crusade, and had prevailed upon the writer to take me on ostensibly as a scribe, disguised in French colors of course. I would sleep topside, but my days would be spent below with the horses so I could be less visible.

“And my horse?”

“Naturally.”

I nodded, satisfied. “What was the cost?”

He waved a fat hand. “A gift—from the king.” He smiled, patted my head, almost as relieved as I was. “Oh, Lady Alix, you’ll be interested to know that Enoch tried to buy this same space.”

I pushed aside his hand and jumped up. “He isn’t on the ship!”

“No, dear, but you cannot be too sanguine. I hear that Richard is sending a second galley in the wake of Philip’s with his own spy aboard. After all, there seems little doubt that France will attack England, despite the pope’s injunction.”

What did I care about England and France? I leaped forward and grabbed Ambroise’s silk blouse. “Enoch is going on that ship?”

“It appears that he is.”

“
Deus juva me
,” I moaned.

“Where’s your horse, Alix? The sun has already set and it will soon be dark enough to leave.” He twisted his few hairs nervously. “Then I must report to the king.”

We stared at each other.

“This is our last chance to talk?” I whispered.

He nodded.

As Richard had said last night—it was all so sudden. After two years—to end like a flash of Greek fire. No, that wasn’t it. To end in a manner which negated the whole time. Sex revelations, contractual revelations, and finally no writ. Empires were coming asunder over my head and my own little world was splitting underneath, a lesser star.

“Ambroise, I must know about Enoch. Did he take money for my contract with Zizka and you?”

“I believe not at first in Paris, beyond perhaps stealing some from you. Zizka surmised that the Scot was too gullible to see our—purpose. Naturally Zizka encouraged ignorance.”

“The Scot is shrewd,” I objected.

“So he proved in Chinon, but he didn’t approach Zizka again. I believe he went directly to the king, getting his payment in the form of concessions along the Scottish border.”

“What did Richard concede?”

Ambroise’s pale eyes shifted away. “Some estate in the north.”

Wanthwaite!

He turned to the door.

“Wait! That’s not all he offered the Scot.” I stopped him. “When Enoch dug his mine to blow up the wall, something else was offered. Do you know what?”

Ambroise sighed with relief. “Yes, the earldom of Northumberland. Bishop Hugh of Durham is a very old man and the king plans to put Enoch in Hugh’s place as Northumberland when the time comes.”

My heart shriveled. Enoch had traded my body for a title! This was the “brother” devoted to protecting my “innocence”? No wonder he’d been dismayed at discovering my true sex—he’d been undermined in the most venal contract ever made. I wanted him dead.

Ambroise brought me back by a touch on my shoulder. “I, too, must say one thing, hurried though we are. Alix, think kindly upon the king.”

I was almost too angry to heed.

“List to me well, for I’ve been with Richard more years than I care to tell. He loves you. No, wait, don’t interrupt. I know what you think, but it’s not like that. Richard is a giant in every way: physically, spiritually, emotionally. But he’s never been able to find a vessel worthy of his emotions. Until you appeared, Alix. You have the mind, the character, the person—everything to delight him. I believe you’ve been a revelation to him.”