Eleanor the Queen, page 6
“There is nobody here,” Eleanor said again; and this time the words were ominous.
Then, as they stared uncertainly, one of the shadows changed shape; one of the flat dark patches on the black-and-white board rose up, humped itself into solidity, and began to move slowly towards them. Eleanor’s skin crawled with unwonted, superstitious terror, for this moving thing was like nothing she had ever seen before; low on the ground, humped like a tortoise, and with one long horn erect.
“God between us and all evil,” she murmured quickly. And the next second she was brave again; for the crawling thing was a man after all, a dreadfully wounded man with a long arrow completely through his head, the point protruding below his jaw on one side, the shaft bristling from his temple on the other.
De Rancon, with a wordless cry, thrust his horse’s bridle into her hand, slipped from the saddle, and began to run towards the crawling man. His horse sighed as his weight lifted, and dropped its head so that the bridle rein moved in her fingers. Her own horse was still quivering and moving restively, ready to run wildly when he had decided which was the least distasteful direction to choose. But De Rancon’s horse, she knew, was so tired that he would stand forever; so she knotted the two reins securely and got down and ran towards De Rancon, who had by this time reached the man and was kneeling, holding him in his arms. Unable to speak, the man lifted one hand and laid it for a moment on his lord’s; then he moved it and pointed, this way, that way; he made a choking bubbling sound deep in his throat; his uninjured eye screamed out its dumb message of pain.
“Gaspard, can you hear me? Move your hand if you can?”
The hand moved.
“Move it again to answer me ‘Yes,’ good man. You were set upon? Many Turks? Much slaughter of our men? The main army killed? Retreated then? Along the road we came? The King? Safe? Dead? You do not know. I’ll trouble you no more.”
De Rancon drew away his arms and eased the man to the ground again. He and the Queen stood for a moment looking down upon the dreadful mangled mass of broken teeth and bones, smashed tongue, and cheek-flesh of what had been a handsome cheerful face. Shocked past tears and sickened, Eleanor said, “He is doomed, Geoffrey, and in torment . . . ”
De Rancon nodded, knelt by the man again, and said,
“My good Gaspard, you have done your duty faithfully and well, and die in defense of Holy Cross. Heaven has opened its gates for you.” Without fumbling, he drew his dagger and administered the coup de grâce, cutting the man’s throat as he would have done a deer’s. “Christ in His mercy and God in His glory receive you,” he said, and stood up. “Now, my lady, will you ride back and rouse the camp? I must go on.”
“Alone, you can do nothing. The Turks may be lurking still.”
She looked out across the place of shadows where anything might lie concealed.
“I pray to God,” De Rancon said vehemently, “that one at least is lurking and will kill me. Only death now can save me from everlasting disgrace.”
She knew what he meant. At his command, the advance had, for very good reasons, disobeyed orders and passed on to a more favorable camping ground. That decision had coincided with a Turkish ambush and “great slaughter” of the Crusaders and, although the one might not be directly the result of the other, in the eyes of the world it would seem so. To the end of time men would say that the advance guard had moved on and left the main army to be cut to pieces. And it would be made worse by the fact that it was the Aquitainian force which had moved on. Eleanor wished, for a moment, that she too might ride on with De Rancon and by death escape the reproaches, the shame, the unending calumny. But someone must rouse that sleeping camp . . .
“I am equally to blame, remember that,” she said as they walked back to where the horses were standing.
“Generous, but untrue. But for me you would have camped here.”
“And, if I had held to my point, so would you. We share the guilt . . . or the appearance of guilt. Take my horse, my lord; your own is only fit to stumble downhill. I can manage with him.”
“And you, dear my lady,” said De Rancon, his face ghastly in the moonlight, “take this . . . ” He held out the dagger, his only weapon, for he had ridden unarmed, merely pandering, he thought, to a woman’s whim. “I think the road back is safe . . . if not, if they have circled behind us, even if I rode with you there would be nothing for me to do but kill you . . . ”
“And that I can do for myself,” she said, and took the dagger.
She bore him no resentment for leaving her to go back alone; his knight honor demanded that he should pay for his mistake by riding on into the direction of greatest danger; in his place she would have done exactly the same. She realized that there was a point of desperation where courtesy to ladies, consideration of sex, did not matter anymore. And they had reached it. She had no right to be here, or, being here of her own choice, no right to demand preferential treatment. Mounting the tired horse, which sighed again as she settled into the saddle, she spoke to De Rancon as though she were one of his squires.
“If you reach them, my lord, know that we shall be with you at the earliest possible moment. God go with you.”
Her horse had had time to feel, through the menace of the smell of blood and death on the tableland, the call of his own green meadow again, and, as soon as De Rancon mounted, he set off most willingly. At the gap, when Eleanor turned for a last look, there was only a shadow, moving swiftly through a world of shadows. She never expected to see De Rancon again.
But the Turks, having made their lightning attack, killed between two and three thousand of the Christians, and captured a number of valuable horses, had dashed away by the mountain tracks which only they knew. The Crusaders, attacked just as they emerged wearily onto the tableland and were engrossed with the difficult business of hauling the baggage trains over the edge, had been taken by surprise and thrown into confusion. For they had been advancing carelessly, with full trust in their advance guard, the Aquitainians, who should have been camped on the tableland, awaiting them.
After the first few moments when they were slaughtered like sheep, they rallied and began to fight back; and then the Turks had withdrawn. Dusk was falling, there were hundreds of wounded to be attended, and a hasty camp had been made just below the edge of the plateau. In the heat of the fight, no one had had time to think about the Aquitainians, except to notice despairingly that they were not where they should have been, but in the after-calm the question became urgent. The Queen, De Rancon, the whole advance force . . . where were they? Had they also been ambushed with such success that not one man was left to ride back and bring warning?
It seemed possible; it seemed indeed the only explanation. The King, who had acquitted himself very valiantly in the sudden attack and sustained several bruises and cuts, though no serious wound, fell into a frenzy of despair in which remorse had no small part. He was sure that Eleanor was dead, his lovely, gay, gallant Eleanor whom he had held at arm’s length all these years in order to please Bernard and Odo.
To Odo he said, weeping, “I blame myself, and shall do so till I die. I was angry with her and jealous . . . yes, jealous, Odo, because the men who had held back when I called for Crusaders rallied to her. So I let her ride with them. Go with your Aquitainians, I thought to myself, they follow you, you lead them, and take your turn with the rest. I should have kept her safe by my side. I was never just to her, Odo, and, in the end, my jealousy sent her to her death.”
“But we have no proof of her death, Sire. The first men to step upon the open ground at the top of the pass saw no sign of anything amiss, no sign of struggle. And, amongst the dead and wounded; there was not a single Aquitainian picked up.”
“Is it likely that the Turks would attack them at the spot where later they intended to lie in wait for us, where even one body would have given us warning? No, the advance guard was allowed to cross the plateau . . . and then . . . ” He rose and pushed away the wet cloths which the physician had applied to his cuts and bruises. “I must go and find out for myself what happened.”
“My lord, you are in no fit state . . . ” Odo began.
“I have listened to you and your like too long,” said Louis in a voice he had never used before to any man in holy orders. “Fetch Thibault to me; he is a man, and will understand how I feel.”
Thibault, when he came, said, “Our dear lady’s fate has fretted me since the first of those damned Turkish arrows struck. I have had a force standing by this last hour, waiting for the moon to rise. We are just off. At least we can avenge . . . ”
“I will come with you,” Louis said.
Thibault showed no surprise and, when Odo renewed his protests, turned and said offhandedly, “Tush man, what harm can it do? He has no wound. And anxiety for the Queen would hurt him more than the ride could.” Thibault was Louis’ man in life and limb, utterly loyal, but he had never before felt the sympathy and unity with his lord which he felt then.
They rode out over what a few hours before had been the scene of the attack, the first battlefield of this crusade. In the moonlight, with the help of a few torches, men were searching among the dead and wounded, carrying in the ones for whom there was hope, and dispatching with swift mercy those for whom there was none—men who might otherwise linger in pain and thirst after the army had gone on next day. They passed through the ring of Turkish dead and wounded who had fallen after the Crusaders had rallied and begun to fight back; and here, for a moment, Thibault dismounted and walked about, turning over body after body with his mailed foot until he had found what he sought—a Turk with a disabling leg wound, but otherwise uninjured.
“Simon,” he said to one of his men, “mount this vermin on your saddle and take him back to camp. Guard him carefully and let the leeches do what they can for his wound. Keep him alive at all costs. We may need him tomorrow.”
“Why?” asked Louis as Thibault mounted and rode on.
“Sire—in case we find the Queen neither alive nor dead. Then we shall need to know in what direction the Turks went and where their headquarters are, and that fellow, with the help of a little torture, will tell us. It would do De Rancon and some of his gay knights no harm to cool their heels in a Turkish prison until their ransom was arranged—but I fear for the Queen. Even the Infidels, who prefer women fat, would see that she is a lady of extraordinary beauty.”
“Don’t speak of it, Thibault. My thoughts are already more than I can bear.”
In this mood they rode on, staring ahead into the black and white of the snowdrifts and the rocks, the moonshine and the shadows; presently a shadow moved and took shape and became De Rancon; he was making good speed on his horse, who thought he was going home to a green meadow, which, in fact, he was never to see again.
De Rancon, seeing the chain mail glint in the light, shouted as soon as he was within earshot,
“The King? What news of the King?”
Louis would have answered, but his voice choked with emotion. Thibault shouted back,
“Safe and sound. The Queen?”
“Safe and sound.”
Then there was a moment when Louis and Thibault and De Rancon spurring forward met, and, in the overwhelming relief of the most urgent anxieties on both sides, were all talking and laughing and almost crying at once. At that moment the Frenchmen believed that the Aquitainian advance force had been attacked and scattered (why else were they not encamped in the ordered place?) but had survived, at least in sufficient numbers to save the Queen. The belief continued while De Rancon kissed Louis’ hand and Louis patted his shoulder, and Thibault clasped De Rancon’s hand and said jubilantly to the King, “God send all your fears should be equally groundless, my lord.” But when Thibault asked the natural fellow-soldier question, “Were your losses heavy?” and De Rancon said, “We had no losses. We were not attacked,” then the chill fell.
“Not attacked? Why then were you not camped in the place arranged?” Louis asked in a tone of astonishment.
“Aye, by Christ’s five wounds, why weren’t you there? You could have saved the day for us!” Thibault gasped.
“More than two thousand good men dead, a thousand precious horses gone,” Louis said.
Knowing the utter futility, the apparent senselessness of his excuse, De Rancon began his explanation.
It was to be given again and again; it was never to be accepted. Forty, fifty years afterwards, wherever Frenchmen and Aquitainians met, the quarrel would break out anew. Goaded by the question, “Who played that dirty trick in Phrygia?” the Aquitainians invented an insulting explanation of the whole affair.
“Old Turk, he laid there behind the rocks and, when we marched through, not many of us, just advance guard but in good order, mark you, he laid low. He dussent tackle us. But when you poor fellows come along, all in a muddle . . . ”
The taunt was the bitterer because one of the complaints brought by the main army was that, trusting to the advance guard, they had been marching without much caution.
The King, quite naturally, jumped in one moment from agonizing anxiety about Eleanor to fury against her. Like a mother whose child has just escaped death through running out under a horse’s hoofs, and who proceeds to shake and slap it, he hurt her in the only way open to him, scalding words and then silence. De Rancon he sent home in disgrace, and when Eleanor pleaded for him, “It was as much my fault. I agreed to seek a better place to camp,” Louis said, “That is all the more reason for sending him home. A man who heeds women’s whims is no good on crusade.”
Odo seized the opportunity which might never come again. He remembered his orders; he also remembered Louis’ behavior when he believed the Queen to be dead or in danger. That had been a very revealing moment. To Louis, at the first chance he said,
“Sire, you must not blame the Queen too harshly. She is but a woman; she does not understand the sanctity of military orders. Nor must De Rancon be too hardly judged. He is a man, and the Queen can wheedle very sweetly; he wished her to camp in comfort and in pleasant surroundings and so forgot his duty, as better men have done for less reason.”
He paused to let that sink in and then added thoughtfully:
“But the real culprit in this case is neither man nor woman; it is the Aquitainian temperament. Pleasure first, that is their motto, and they should have it embroidered on their banners so that men might be warned. For them all things must be pleasant. In this case the valley looked more pleasant than the plateau. So they bought their pleasure and their comfort at the price of . . . I forget the exact number of men and horses, Sire.”
Louis knew; knew to the last man, the last horse; and Odo, without mentioning the numbers, had graved them on the King’s mind even more deeply: two thousand, six hundred and eighty-one men, including many good knights, one thousand and twenty-six horses . . . all lost to the crusade because the Aquitainians valued comfort above all else. And Eleanor was Aquitainian . . . not to be blamed, but not to be trusted, a wheedling woman who lured men from their duty.
Odo had made his point with great skill. He had also made certain the failure of the crusade—but that he did not know.
FIVE
THE PRIVATE APARTMENT OF THE Duke of Antioch had been temporarily transformed into a silk merchant’s booth. Heaped on the benches and tables and spilling over onto the tiled floor were samples of all the rarest and loveliest fabrics of the East. The four grave turbaned men who had carried the bundles to the palace and opened them reverently for the Duke’s inspection now tucked their hands into their billowing sleeves and stood back to wait while he made his choice. The Duke, accompanied by his favorite friend, Gervase, moved busily and happily about, touching the gleaming velvets, the lustrous damasked silk from Damascus, the gossamer gauzes which only the weavers of Gaza knew how to produce, the snowy crisp muslin that had come by camel back from India, and the heavy brocaded stuff which had made an even longer journey from the secret, hidden country called Cathay. The Duke loved color, loved anything rich and strange, and now, pausing by the bale from which the gauze spilled out, he said,
“It’s as though we had netted a rainbow. That purple . . . did you ever see such a color?”
“That,” Gervase said, “is the genuine Tyrian purple; the royal color, the one the Gospels speak of, ‘purple and fine linen’; it is rare for the simple reason that, taken all in all, two men have to die to produce an ounce of the stuff.”
“Why? What is it then? Pounded dead men’s liver?” asked Raymond, slightly shocked, but as always concealing his genuine feelings by mockery.
“No,” Gervase said idly. “It’s obtained from some sea snail, down on the coast, near Tyre. Slaves dredge the creatures up, and it’s a dangerous business; even the whip won’t make the poor wretches face the tide, so they’re staked out and only taken in when they’ve filled . . . ”
“How revolting,” Raymond said. “You may put this back into the bundle, my good man. We will have no Tyrian purple today!” Then he laughed and said, “Now tell me something equally nasty about this delicious turquoise blue!”
“That I can’t do; it’s a purely vegetable dye, some brew from a herb that only grows in Samarkand.”
“Thank God for that. It’s the color I want for Eleanor. It’s almost the color of her eyes, not green, not blue, both, with a tinge of grey.”
“That is a color even rarer than the purple and will cost you more.”
“That is as it should be. She is the Queen, not to mention being my niece. Now, the Lady Sybille is a dark beauty; I think this ruby red for her, don’t you? And there’s a redhead. I shall have amethyst for her, it’s the color redheads should, but seldom do, wear. Oh and there’s one little mouse called Amaria, such a drab timid-looking little creature, you’d never believe she could have survived the journey; still, here she is and . . . what color does most for a mouse, Gervase?”
“Rose pink,” said the young man firmly. “Besides, nine men out of ten men prefer rose pink to any other color, often without knowing it, so they look at it and make a compliment, then the mouse blushes and is transformed, and is no more a mouse. See?”
