The King's Witch (11 page)

Guy was saying, “Everybody is lining up to take the four bezants. Even the Germans.” He drank from a cup and handed it off to a page. Rouquin, a few feet away, kept his back to him; watching from the back of the tent, Edythe had seen before that Rouquin hated Guy.

“Nonetheless,” said Guy’s brother Hugh. “One month. That’s close.”

Humphrey de Toron walked in among them, trailing three of his pages. He made his bow to Guy, his overlord, and Guy spoke and shook his hand, smiling. Guy played a perfect King; Edythe wondered, briefly, why that wasn’t good enough for a nonexistent kingdom. Her gaze lay on Humphrey, whose puzzling elegant manners fascinated her. If she had such a grace, she thought, she would have more than one to love her. Humphrey’s page brought him a cup of the wine. He said nothing, but Edythe saw his attention slide across the room, as if against his will, toward Richard. The look on his face reminded her suddenly of Lilia.

“What about the fleet?” Richard said. He was at the center of the flaming lamps, under the peak of the tent. When he spoke, all the rest of them fell silent and faced him, a ring of moons. The Templar stepped forward. He wore the silver medal of his order on a chain around his neck. The red cross was like a bloodstain on his snowy white surcoat.

“A lot of the shipmasters who brought us here want to go back to Sicily, but there’s a Genoese captain who came with the King of France who can take charge of that. Simon Doro.”

“No,” Richard said. “No Genoese. They’re all French under the skin.”

The Grand Master’s voice was measured. “We have to seal off the city completely, that’s the key to it. For that we need a fleet.”

Richard put his hand to his head. Maybe he had a headache. His voice was mild. The Grand Master might have no overlord but the Pope, but he only advised, and Richard disposed. “The Pisans will do it. The fleet that came with me. If we offer them enough. Rouq’, did you scout Saladin’s camp?” The Templar backed off, frowning.

“Mercadier and I did, this afternoon,” said his cousin. “It’s a clever setup, several rings deep; it would be hard to storm. Still, from all the signs, they used to have a lot more people, so they’re losing men. I think we outnumber them two to one, maybe. Mercadier has heard they send swimmers back and forth across the bay with messages, so we should have the fleet on the watch.”

Johanna walked up to her brother and put her hand on his arm. “If you must talk of war, get out of here. I want this for a place of peace, a woman’s place, so if you want to stay, talk more gently.”

Richard said, “Go, then. Humphrey—my lord de Toron, stay.” He sat down on a stool in the middle of the tent and asked for some wine. Humphrey de Toron lingered, waiting to be called on. Richard turned to Johanna, who was bustling around him, directing Lilia with the wine; Edythe came up quietly and put another stool beside the King’s.

Johanna’s brother said, “So where is the lady Berengaria?”

“At church,” Johanna said, and gave an imperious sniff. “Or what passes for a church here.”

“What’s wrong between you? I thought you women clung together like brambles and sheep.”

Johanna sat down on the stool. “She prefers the company of God. No, believe me, I am much happier without her. It’s men who are the brambles and the sheep; men can’t endure life without another man around to be better than, or in liege to.” Nearby, Humphrey de Toron smiled.

Richard took the cup of wine. This, Edythe knew, was an old game with them. She frowned; his eyes seemed unnaturally bright, and his face shone with sweat. “Women,” he said. “You’re just like Mother. You love circles, everything’s got to web together for you, which is why you can’t decide anything.”

Johanna began a sharp reply. Richard swayed, as if his head were suddenly heavy; the cup slipped out of his hands, and he pitched forward onto the floor.

Lilia screamed. Humphrey de Toron started toward him, and Edythe leaped up from her place by the bed. With a cry, Johanna had dropped to her knees beside her brother. She swung toward Humphrey.

“Please go, sir.” Her eyes came pleading to Edythe. “Help me.”

Humphrey left, with his pages. Edythe sank down beside the King. He was alive, still, she saw at once with a ridiculous gratitude, and struggling a little, as if to get up. Or just twitching. His eyes were only half-open. She laid her hands on him. He was shivering in long furious spasms, his muscles knotting under her touch.

“What is it?” Johanna said. She wrung her hands together, leaning over him. “Is it poison?”

Edythe said, “I don’t know.” She looked around them. “My lady—we must cover him. We could put him in your bed.”

“Yes,” Johanna said. “I’ll bring Rouquin.”

Edythe knelt by the King, struggling to understand this. He was breathing well enough. Now his eyes opened; he put one hand on the mat beneath him and tried to get up, but he was too weak even to lift his head off the ground, and he lay flat again. Sweat trickled down his cheek. Rouquin came in, swearing under his breath, and lifted Richard in his arms. Edythe, standing back, remembered how strong he was; he lifted his tall cousin like a child in his arms and took him to the Queen’s pallet.

Johanna said, “Let no one in.” She turned to Edythe. “You must help him. You must save him, Edythe.”

A plea. Or a command. Edythe licked her lips, trying to think what to do. She had lost Gracia.
Help me
, she thought.
Please help me.
But she could not think to whom she prayed.

Edythe got Lilia to heating wine, the last of the zingiber potion and a good dose of oxymel, and with Johanna she wrapped the King in the bedclothes; before they were done, he thrashed and retched and his knees jerked up and he spewed vomit. Johanna began to weep, her hands to her face, sobbing helplessly. Edythe mopped up the mess, pulling the dirty blankets into a heap on the floor. She unwrapped her coif and wiped his face with it and tossed the soiled cloth after the blankets. He was still shivering and he was unconscious. His clothes were filthy and she began to undress him; she pulled his belt out from under his body and cut the lacings of his shirt with a knife. Johanna brought more blankets and helped her peel his shirt off. They covered his chest with fresh blankets and pulled off his boots and hose. He had fouled himself. Johanna turned her eyes from his nakedness, put her hand on Edythe’s shoulder, and stared steadily away while Edythe cleaned him up and then covered him.

Edythe’s heart was pounding. She had never touched a naked man before. Of course she had seen them, and drawings and descriptions, but this was different. His efflorescence amazed her. He was beautiful; she could not let him die.

When he was clean and covered snugly, she got the potion from Lilia and pointed to the heap of filthy clothes and blankets on the floor.

“Take that. Have it burned. See to it yourself.” The cup in her hand, she turned to Johanna. “Help me.”

They could not budge Richard, lying cramped on his side with his knees drawn to his chest, shivering and sweating at the same time. Berengaria came back, saw her lord husband bundled on the bed, and fled away again to the makeshift church. Johanna sent again for Rouquin.

The big man came in. Edythe had thought him always a little angry, but there was no anger in him now. He went down on one knee beside the low pallet and put his hand on Richard’s cheek.

Johanna said, “We need to get him to drink. He has to be up—” She looked at Edythe.

“He must sit up,” Edythe said.

Rouquin went behind the pallet, squatted down, and laid his arm under the King’s shoulders. His voice sank almost to a whisper.

“Sit up, Richard. Sit up, boy.”

The King’s head moved, and his lips parted. Johanna gave a long sigh. Rouquin raised him effortlessly against his chest, supporting his head, and Edythe held the full cup to his lips. She stroked his throat, to make him swallow. Rouquin said, “Come on, sonny, drink it, drink,” in that same crooning, tender voice.

Richard’s eyes fluttered. His lips touched the wine, and he lifted his hands unsteadily, but he had no strength even for that. Under Edythe’s fingers his throat worked in a swallow, and then another.

His eyes closed. His head rolled back against Rouquin’s shoulder; the big man looked at Edythe.

“Let him down,” she said. “Let him sleep.” She could tell they had used all the strength Richard had left. The moon was old and weak, which was in his favor. She would have to see where Mars was. She hoped the potion warmed him; she could think of nothing else to do.

Rouquin stayed in the tent, near the door; Lilia came back, carrying a bundle of fresh blankets, and made another bed on the far side. At the prie-dieu in the back, Johanna was crying and praying.

Rouquin said, “Is it poison?”

Edythe sat on the side of the pallet, one hand on the King’s chest over the blankets. “I don’t think so.” She would look in her herbal, where there was a section on poisons and their effects. She slid her hand under the blankets, to the King’s bare chest, to feel his heart’s pulse.

Against her palm the pounding of his heart was another sign that his humors were swelling out of balance. Sweat covered his skin, his knotted muscles shivered; she imagined the black bile seething in his gut, the yellow pooling in his belly. She wondered if they were right about the poison, or if it could be magic, an evil spell.

By midnight Richard was scorching with fever. Maybe she had given him too much zingiber. Nonetheless, the fever proved that it was not a poison. She boiled some lemons with their cooling properties in a lot of wine and water, let this potion stand awhile, and then called Rouquin to help her; Johanna and Lilia were asleep, spooned together, on the pallet across the tent. Berengaria was still in the church.

Rouquin gathered the King in his arms, whispering to him, and sip by sip she fed Richard the new drink. As she did she looked him over for swelling, lumps, or bruises that would show where the rioting humors were collecting in dangerous masses. Foul stuff matted his hair and beard.

Rouquin said, “Will he die?”

“No,” she said, without thinking about it much. She would not let him die. He had drunk nearly all the potion, and she nodded that Rouquin could lay him down again on his back. She went and found a comb among Johanna’s things and came back and began to comb out Richard’s hair. Rouquin stayed where he was, hunkered down behind the pallet.

She groomed Richard’s beard and hair, stretching the long curls across the pillow; glinting clumps of hair clogged the comb, and she pulled them off into a little ball. She would have to burn that, lest someone plotting against him find it. Rouquin sat on his heels, watching, his hands together. He looked tired; she knew he had spent most of the day fighting.

She got a basin and a ewer of water, poured the water into the basin, and cast around for some cloth. There was nothing obvious to hand and she stood up, pulled up her skirt, and ripped off the front of her underskirt. She wrung this big sheet of cloth out in the basin of water and began to wash Richard’s face.

The King sighed, although he did not waken, and turned his face into the cool cloth. She washed his throat and behind his ears. She folded the blanket down to bathe his chest, and he murmured again at the touch. She said, “Will you roll him over?”

Rouquin got up and moved closer; he slipped his arms under Richard and effortlessly turned him. “The fever’s gone down,” he said, and sat back on his heels again.

“I think so. A little.” She would have to go look at the stars. Maybe the planets had shifted. She was very bad at the whole matter of stars. She began to wash Richard’s back. She glanced at the big man, sitting there beside him on his heels. Rouquin was watching Richard, his face slack; he looked a little lost.

The King had a lot of cousins, even some others here in Acre. Only Rouquin was so faithful, so useful. She wanted to reach across the space between them, somehow, and honor him for this. She said, “You grew up with them, didn’t you?”

His head bobbed. “In Poitiers. Winchester.” His head swayed, as if he were avoiding some memory, his gaze turning elsewhere. “Eleanor took me, when my mother died. I got there just after they lost William, their first. Henry was only a baby, so she paid a lot of attention to me for a while. But then she started setting them like a clutch.”

He shut his mouth tight, as if he had said too much. She said, “How old were you then?” She knew his mother had been Eleanor’s sister, and he looked much like her.

“Three, I think.”

Under her hands the King’s muscles were kinked and cramped, and as she came upon each knot she rubbed it with her fingers until it went away. His right arm was a great stack of muscle, his left arm much thinner. The groove down his back was two fingers deep, straight and clean.

She said, “Her children came late to her, and she loves them all.” She wanted to keep this bridge of words open between them. Also she was grateful that Eleanor’s passion for her children had spread somehow to her, Edythe.