Lionheart (30 page)

While Berengaria was slightly embarrassed that Eleanor had seen her chagrin, it was the first time that Richard’s mother had spoken to her like this, woman to woman, and she reveled in the intimacy. “Is Richard like his father?”

Eleanor started to speak, then realized, somewhat to her surprise, that she did not know how her son was with a woman. She’d been cheated of so much during her years of captivity, losing time with her children that could never be gotten back. But one lesson she’d learned long ago was that regrets served for naught. And so she smiled at Berengaria, saying, “Yes, they were more alike than either one would admit. So I can speak from my own experience when I tell you that life with Richard will not always be peaceful. But it will never be dull.”

Berengaria returned Eleanor’s smile, remembering a dinner conversation they’d had in Rome with an Italian countess. She’d asked playfully what quality they most valued in a husband, offering wealth as her own criterion. Hawisa had quipped that the ideal husband was one who was absent, while Eleanor had chosen one with wit, a man who could make her laugh. Berengaria would have picked kindness, thinking of her father and the tenderness he’d always shown her mother. She’d not spoken her thoughts aloud, though, not wanting them to think her naïve. She wished now that she could ask Eleanor if her son was kind. But she would have to find that out for herself.

BERENGARIA DID NOT LIKE Hawisa’s new husband. William de Forz dominated the conversation at dinner the next day, not even letting the Count of Flanders get a word in edgewise. He dwelt upon his command of Richard’s fleet at interminable length, making ocean voyages sound so perilous that Berengaria shivered, thinking of the turbulent, untamed sea that lay between Italy and Outremer. But what followed was even worse, for he began to tell the women about the great perils awaiting their army in the Holy Land.

“Plague and famine haunt that unhappy kingdom,” he proclaimed theatrically, “posing far greater threats than the most bloodthirsty of Saracen infidels. During the winter when ships could not reach the camp at Acre, food became so scarce that a penny loaf of bread sold for as much as forty shillings, a single egg cost six deniers, and a sack of corn one hundred pieces of gold. Horses were worth more dead than alive, and men were reduced to eating grass to survive. If the bishops of Salisbury and Verona had not raised money to feed the poor, the Good Lord alone knows how many might have died.”

André and Morgan exchanged amused glances, for de Forz’s posturing made it sound as if he’d been present at the siege of Acre instead of getting the news secondhand from Guy de Lusignan’s letter to Richard. “The arrival of three supply ships eased the famine,” he continued, “but there was no protection against the plague. Death relentlessly stalks that bloody ground, and high birth is no defense. The Queen of Jerusalem and her young daughters died at Acre. So did the Count of Blois and his brother. The Archbishop of Canterbury. The Grand Master of the Templars. And your grandson, Madame, the young Count of Champagne. . . .”

When Eleanor gasped, de Forz belatedly hastened to reassure her. “Nay, he is not dead. But he was struck down by the same illness that killed his uncles, and for a time they despaired of his life. They say the very air of Outremer is noxious to newcomers, for how else to explain why so many are stricken so soon after their arrival?”

Morgan noticed Eleanor’s sudden pallor. Glancing over, he saw that Berengaria was looking distressed, too, and he frowned, marveling that de Forz could be such a lack-wit. Did he truly think Richard’s mother and betrothed wanted to hear of all those deaths, of all the dangers the king wald be facing in Outremer? “The king built a wooden castle on the hill above Messina,” he said abruptly, determined to banish the fearful images de Forz had been conjuring up, “and he had all the sections marked so it can be taken apart and packed up when he departs for Outremer. He has done the same for his siege engines, too, so they can be easily reassembled at Acre.”

The women seemed interested in that, but de Forz was not ready to relinquish control of the conversation. “Tell them what he calls the castle, Morgan,” he said with a grin. “Mate-Griffon, or Kill the Greeks!” He then launched into a melodramatic account of Richard’s seizure of Messina before returning to his favorite subject, the killing fields of the Holy Land.

By now André had also noticed the effect de Forz’s blustering was having upon Eleanor and Berengaria. Leaning forward, he interrupted smoothly, “I think the queen and the Lady Berengaria would rather hear about the king’s meeting with the prophet, Joachim of Corazzo.”

“Indeed I would.” Eleanor turned toward Berengaria, intending to explain that Joachim was a celebrated holy man, renowned for his knowledge of Scriptures and his interpretations of the Book of Revelations. But Berengaria needed no such tutoring.

“I’ve heard of him!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining. “He says that there are three ages, that of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and that the Last Days are nigh, which will precede the Last Judgment.”

“Exactly so, my lady,” André confirmed. “The king wanted to hear his prophesies for himself, as he’d heard that Joachim identifies Saladin as the sixth of the seven great enemies of the True Faith. We were much heartened by what he told us—that Saladin will be driven from the Kingdom of Jerusalem and slain, and it will be King Richard who brings this about.”

Berengaria felt a thrill of pride, greatly honored that her betrothed was the man chosen by God to fulfill these holy prophesies and vanquish such a deadly foe of the Church. She found it very encouraging, too, that Richard had sought the mystic out, for that showed his faith had deeper roots than his worldly demeanor might indicate.

“Joachim claimed that the Antichrist, the last of Holy Church’s seven tormentors, is already born,” André resumed, “and dwelling in Rome. According to Joachim, he will seize the apostolic throne and proclaim himself Pope ere being destroyed by the Coming of the Lord Christ.”

De Forz cut in again, chuckling. “The king disputed Joachim on that point, suggesting that the Antichrist was already on the apostolic throne, the current Pope, Clement III!”

That evoked laughter, for they all knew how much Richard disliked Clement. But to Berengaria, Richard’s sardonic gibe skirted uncomfortably close to blasphemy, and she could manage only a flicker of a smile. She forgot her discomfort, though, with de Forz’s next revelation.

“Soon thereafter, the king made a dramatic act of penance, summoning his bishops to the chapel where he knelt half naked at their feet and confessed to a sinful, shameful past in which he’d yielded to the prickings of lust. He abjured his sin and gladly accepted the penance imposed upon him by the bishops, who commended him for his repentance and bade him live henceforth as a man who feared God.”

Berengaria caught her breath and then smiled, suffused with such utter and pure joy that she seemed to glow and, for that moment, she looked radiantly beautiful. “How courageous of him,” she murmured, more impressed by that one act of devout contrition than by all the tales she’d heard of Richard’s battlefield heroics. “Scriptures say that ‘God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.’”

Eleanor murmured a conventional piety, but, unlike Berengaria, she was more puzzled than gratified by Richard’s spectacular atonement. She was convinced that her husband’s equally spectacular penance at the martyred Thomas Becket’s tomb in Canterbury had been more an act of desperation than one of contrition. She knew, though, that Richard was more emotional and impulsive than his father. Moreover, he had a flair for high drama that Henry had utterly lacked. Was that enough to explain his
mea culpa
in Messina? Were his sins so great that he felt the need for a public expiation?

Once the meal was over, a harpist was summoned to play and the guests broke into small groups. William de Forz withdrew to a window-seat with the Count of Flanders for a spirited discussion of recent political developments in Outremer. Morgan was flirting with Berengaria and several of her ladies. Eleanor could not help noting that Hawisa stayed as far away from de Forz as she could get, and she felt a flicker of sympathy, for she’d become fond of the outspoken countess and she knew what it was like to be yoked to an unwanted husband. She chatted for a time with the Navarrese envoys and then seized her chance to draw her kinsman aside for a private word.

“You know Richard as well as any man alive,” she said quietly, “for you’ve fought beside him for years. Tell me, André . . . what impelled him to make an act of atonement like that?”

“I think it was because of what Joachim told him, Madame. He said that the king is destined to fulfill those prophesies, that Almighty God will grant him victory over his enemies and glorify his name for all eternity. Naturally, such a prophesy gladdened the king’s heart, but I believe it caused him to search his soul, too. To be told that his deeds could bring about the salvation of mankind is both a great honor and a great burden. I think he wanted to be sure that he was worthy, and so he felt the need to cleanse himself of past sins.”

Eleanor was glad that she’d asked André, for his explanation made perfect sense to her. “Well,” she said with a smile, “he surely emerged as pure as one of the Almighty’s own lambs after such a public scourging of his soul.”

“Indeed, Madame.” André’s answering smile was bland, for not for the surety of his own soul would he have discussed Richard’s sins with his mother, even a mother as worldly as this one. Theirs was a friendship that went deeper than blood, for it had been forged on the battlefield, and he thought it likely that only Richard’s confessor knew more about his cousin’s vices than he did, for some he had witnessed, some he had shared, a few he had suspected, and others neither he nor Richard considered to be sins at all.

Turning away then to fetch Eleanor more wine, André found himself dwelling upon those questions that all true Christians must grapple with. He believed that he was a good son of the Church. But he did not understand why lust was so great a sin. Why must his faith be constantly at war with his flesh? He listened dutifully when priests warned that he must not lie with his wife in forbidden positions or on holy days or Sundays or during Lent, Advent, or Pentecost. He did not always follow those prohibitions, though, and this was a source of dissention in his marriage. But why was it a sin if Denise mounted him or if they made love in the daylight? Why was a man guilty of adultery if he burned with excessive love for his own wife?

It sometimes seemed to him that the Church Fathers knew little of the daily struggles of ordinary men and women. In his world, fornication was not a vice, at least not for men, and it was his secret belief that adultery ought to be a conditional sin, too. What of married men who’d taken the cross? Were they supposed to live as chastely as saints until they could be reunited with their wives? Even the worst sins, those held to be against nature, any sex act that was not procreative, seemed less wicked under certain circumstances. If a poor couple could not afford another child, was it truly so evil to try to avoid pregnancy? He thought the sin of sodomy was more understandable, more forgivable, when committed by soldiers, for what did clerics know of the solidarity of men at war or the sudden, burning urges that followed a battle, a narrow escape from death? All knew that was a vice of the monastery, and surely the Almighty would judge soldiers less harshly than easy-living, privileged monks? No, it seemed to him that there were greater sins than those of the flesh, and no sermons about the Devil’s wiles and eternal damnation had explained to his satisfaction why the Lord God would have made carnal intercourse so pleasurable if such pleasure was a pathway to Hell. Certain that celibacy was an unattainable goal for most men and women, he’d found himself a confessor who’d lay light penances and he took communion before battles so he’d die in a state of grace. More than that, he was convinced, a man could not do.

He’d just returned to Eleanor with a goblet of sweet red wine from Cyprus when his cousin Nicholas de Chauvigny hastened toward them. “Madame, the
compalatius
has just ridden in and is requesting to speak with you.”

As they awaited his entry, Eleanor commented to André that Aliernus Cottone had doubtless heard of their arrival and wanted to bid them welcome on King Tancred’s behalf. That seemed likely to André. But he changed his mind as soon as the
compalatius
was ushered into the hall, for his discomfort was obvious to all with eyes to see.

Eleanor noticed it, too, and she began to assess the man at Aliernus’s side. His costly garments proclaimed him to be a lord of rank, as did the sword at his hip, and unlike his companion, he seemed utterly at ease, with the smug complacency of one who enjoyed being the bearer of bad tidings.

The Count of Flanders had sauntered over to join them, his nonchalant smile belied by his narrowed gaze, for Philip read men as well as Eleanor did. After exchanging greetings, Aliernus introduced the stranger as Count Bernard Gentilis of Lesina, Captain and Master Justiciar of Terra de Lavoro, and then said, with the resolve of one determined to get an unpleasant task over with, “The count brings unwelcome news, Madame. I will let him speak for himself, though.”