The King's Witch by Cecelia Holland Read Free Book Online Page B

lingered outside the doorway. She had expected Johanna to tell her brother about the sudden appearance of the Queen of Jerusalem, and it bothered her that she had not. The crowd was thinning, the men, still shouting, still angry, going off by twos and threes toward their camps. She looked toward Johanna’s tent; she should go back to Gracia. But the idea revolted her: the close, dirty, sweltering space, the moaning women, the helplessness. Her mind seethed, too full, and every thought a question. She wiped her hand over her face. She could not help Gracia; she needed to calm down. The long rolling of the surf drew her, and she went down toward the shore, drawn toward the sea, away from the other people, searching for some dark and quiet place where she could think.

    Rouquin walked down along the shore, past the curved prows of the galleys beached there, his back to the city on its rock. His gut was churning. The unruly council screaming to attack had heated his blood. He longed to storm the city that refused him. Richard had cut this idea off from the beginning. They were going to Acre. They were going to Acre in the morning. The other men roared and screeched about honor and respect and the small garrison at Tyre, and Richard stood there utterly unmoved.
    Rouquin had said nothing. On his own he would have seized Tyre, but he was Richard’s man and so he had to swallow the King’s decision. This tore at him and he walked past the high sterns of the galleys, along the white slop of the surf. The moon hung in the west like a sleepy old eye. The night air was cool on his face and his temper ebbed a little. Taking Tyre might not be so easy, anyway; the Saracens had failed.
    In the shadow of one of the ships, something moved.
    He wheeled, his hand on his sword hilt. “Who’s there?”
    The dark prow rose up over him; in the distance, they were shouting again. Someone was standing in the shadow under the prow. He went in closer, drawing his sword. “Come out! Let me see you!”
    “My lord.” Johanna’s woman came forward, the doctor, her hands at her sides. The moonlight washed over her. “It’s only me.”
    He relaxed, pushing the sword back into its sheath. “What are you doing here?” He remembered from Cyprus how she went around by herself, and he was minded to show her why that was a risk. He felt a stir of excitement in his gut. Richard did not allow whores with the army, and in Cyprus he had been fighting all the time.
    She did not seem frightened; she stood straight and high headed, her eyes direct. She said, “I wanted to think. It’s so loud. What happened in the council?”
    He said, “Nothing much.” The bad feeling it had given him came back to him and his temper seethed up, crowding out his other interest. “I don’t see how we can turn meekly away from this. This is an insult to everybody, to the whole Crusade.”
    She said, “Do you know that the Queen of Jerusalem came to see Johanna?”
    That jarred him. “Really. Isabella? Alone? What did she want?”
    “I didn’t hear.” The wind blew wisps of her hair loose round the edge of her coif.
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    “Because it bothers me.” She gave him a startled look. “If they won’t let us in, how could she get out? Could this be a trick?” She frowned a little. “Why should it be a secret? I have to go back; Johanna will miss me.”
    He grunted at her. She was quick, he thought, and probably right, or at least right to be suspicious. He felt the churning around them of cross purposes. He longed to get to Acre at last, where there would be honest fighting, where he would know who the enemy was, no more of all this boiling undercurrent. “Go back,” he said. “Probably it’s nothing. They’re women, they like to cluck together. She could know a lot of ways to get around Conrad.”
    She muttered something. Turning, she crossed the beach toward the Queens’ tent. As she went she poked the stray hairs back under her