Standard of Honor

SIX

The morning dawned gray and heavy with solid clouds that filled the sky from horizon to horizon, but the two Queens were at the stables by the appointed hour, escorted only by a single huntsman apiece, and as Richard had promised, both were dressed appropriately for the day ahead and practically indistinguishable from the men surrounding them. They behaved as the men did, too, at that hour of the morning, moving in silence and without expression, guarding themselves against intrusion until they had fully banished the fuzziness of sleep and adjusted to the coming of the new day.

André watched them sourly as they moved about, each checking her own saddle gear and neither one making eye contact with him, and in spite of himself he found himself grudgingly admiring their absorption in their tasks and the competence with which they checked buckles and bindings, saddlery and stirrup leathers. Even Berengaria’s unmistakably feminine lushness was invisible this morning, banished with all the normal trappings of femininity and flirtation, the frills and flounces, veils and draped gowns that they wore when they were being mere women. This morning both were unmistakably aristocrats, their fathers’ daughters, imperious and self-confident, born to the hunt and entirely comfortable in heavily shod, knee-high boots, leather breeches and tunics, and plain, dull riding cloaks of thick, waxed wool that covered them completely. Each carried a quiver of arrows, with a short, heavy hunting bow slung crosswise over her cloaked shoulders, and was accompanied by a huntsman whose job it was to carry her spears and extra weapons, but neither woman appeared to be paying a whit of attention to the silent attendants.

The four-wheeled wagon that André had requisitioned the night before, on the King’s instructions, stood in the roadway outside the stables, harnessed to a pair of sturdy workhorses. Covered by an arched canopy of finely tanned leather stretched tautly over hoops set into the wagon’s sides, its bed was piled with tightly rolled tents made from leather and heavy, layered cloth, and with bulky bundles that André had not yet examined, although he presumed that many of them were the extra blankets he had ordered. There were several chests in the wagon, too, and although he knew nothing of what those might contain, he guessed they might hold personal possessions of the women, brought along in case of need. The wagon was manned by three of Joanna’s household staff, the senior of them her steward of many years, a lugubrious Sicilian known only as Ianni, and André somehow felt that it would have been Ianni who thought to bring along the chests. A second, larger wagon, this one with a team of four horses, stood beside it and was manned by a crew of butchers under the supervision of a senior cook. This vehicle and its crew would deal with whatever the hunt produced, cleaning, skinning, and butchering the meat, and even cooking some of it should the need arise to feed the assembly.

The hunting party would ride initially only as far as the entrance to the stretch of forest that was fenced and reserved for Isaac’s personal use, a distance of something less than three miles. Beyond that point they might either ride or walk, depending upon conditions and the prey available for hunting, which could range from small game like hares and roe deer to larger deer, wild boar, and even bear. André walked to where Sylvester, the master huntsman, stood alone making his final preparatory assessments, running his eyes over the entire party, one at a time and missing no single detail of the checklist that he carried engraved upon his memory after many years of supervising parties like this one.

“Ready?” André asked, and the huntsman nodded, feeling no need to speak. André nodded back. “So be it. Let’s move them out. Will it rain heavily, think you?”

Sylvester started walking towards the wide stable doorway, and André went with him, thinking that the man’s reputation for being taciturn was well deserved, but when they reached the open doorway Sylvester braced one hand against the wall on one side and leaned forward, looking up at the lead-gray skies.

“Trouble with clouds like this,” he said in a low voice, “is that you can’t always tell what they’re going to do. It’s solid cover, so there’s not much chance of the sun breaking through … not before noon, at least. But it’s high, too, so there’s no danger of getting rained on within the hour, either. It will all depend on what the wind gods do. If they decide to blow the right way, we could hunt all afternoon in sunshine. If they blow the other way, we could all drown trying to reach home again.” He glanced at André. “Your guess is as good as mine. But it’s your hunt.”

André grunted, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure no one had come up behind them to listen to what they were saying. “Well, there was never any option of not going. The King was adamant about wanting the ladies out from beneath his feet today, so let’s get them started.”

“Master St. Clair, do you intend to cancel our outing today?” The voice was Joanna’s and it rang out clearly from the depths of the stables, cool and imperious. André turned smoothly, forcing himself to smile widely as he did so.

“No, my lady, I was merely checking the weather with Master Sylvester. We are all ready, and the weather is in God’s hands as it should be, so mount up, if you please, and let’s be about it.” Moments later they clattered out onto the cobbled surface of the road leading to the city gates, the main party of Joanna, Berengaria, and their two huntsmen, accompanied by André and Sylvester. Behind them, and present more for the sake of protocol and appearances than for any need of protection, rode their military escort, a twelve-man squad of armored pikemen led by a sergeant and a standard-bearer carrying Richard’s personal lion rampant banner. And following those, bringing up the rear, came the two wagons with their attendant crews of butchers and laborers. André’s eyes darted about incessantly, searching for signs of military activity as they moved along from the stables towards the gates, but although he saw soldiers busying themselves here and there, he sensed none of the anticipation that would indicate large-scale preparations for war or even for battle, and he quickly decided that if any major developments were in the offing, they would not take place until later in the day. He stopped watching for alarums and turned his attention to the business in hand.

By mid-morning the hunt was well under way, and André had been impressed by the hunting prowess of both women. While stalking the woods mere minutes after starting the hunt and gliding slowly and silently through the misty, dew-wet stillness of a coppice of trees, Joanna had suddenly frozen, waving her companions to silence with a flick of her wrist. André, crouched behind her on her right, had turned his head gently to look at Sylvester, who had frozen in mid-step and was now looking at him, the expression on his face showing clearly that he had no idea what Joanna had sensed or found. But almost in that same instant, and in utter silence, a magnificent stag had surged to its feet from the low clump of bushes in which it had been browsing and stood listening, its head cocked towards the north, away from the hunters, and its body poised for flight. They were slightly behind and to one side of the animal, fewer than forty paces separating it from Joanna in the lead. André began to hear the beat of his own heart as he fought to keep still, and then he felt a tickle in his nostril, the earliest beginnings of an urge to sneeze.

Joanna, he now realized, had been advancing with an arrow nocked into the bow in her left hand, holding the shaft in place with her index finger, and now, with infinite slowness and patience, she began to raise the bow to the firing position. It seemed to take forever, and the stag stood where he was, looking away from her in three-quarters profile, his nose raised, sniffing at the air for anything resembling danger. André glanced at Sylvester again and noticed that the huntsman was frowning slightly and looking downward, towards Joanna’s feet. He swiveled his own eyes to see what the other man was looking at and realized that Joanna, too, had stopped in mid-step. She had the bow up by now, but she was off balance, her right foot where her left should be, so that she could exert no pull on the bowstring. But even as he realized that she could not make the shot, Joanna achieved what he would have said at that moment was impossible: she straightened smoothly and stepped forward onto her left foot, pushing against the straining bow stave with her straight left arm and pulling the string smoothly back to touch her cheek. The stag flinched and began to leap away from the sound that it had heard, but the arrow was already flying true. It smacked solidly into the beast’s chest behind the point of the shoulder and burst its heart, dropping the creature where it stood. André could not even gather himself to congratulate Joanna on what she had done. He simply stood there, staring at her, open mouthed, and she returned his look with one of her own, raising her eyebrows quizzically as though to say, “There, you see?”

An hour or so later, he witnessed another demonstration of the same kind of virtuosity, this time from Berengaria, when a large hare broke cover unexpectedly. They had not known it was there, for they had been tracking a boar at the time, but suddenly there was the hare, bounding on its powerful hind legs and leaping nimbly from side to side as it raced for safety across the far side of the clearing they had entered. The Princess had been the first to see it and she spun easily to follow it, bow already fully drawn as she led it and gauged the timing and direction of its leaps, and by the time he had realized what was happening, André had also accepted that she was too late. But she released smoothly and her arrow struck the hare in mid-bound, piercing it cleanly and sending it tumbling half a heartbeat before it would have been safely out of reach among the long grass at the edge of the trees.

Soon after that, close to noon, Sylvester suggested that they stop to eat. They had lost the boar trail on stony ground and they were glad to stop and eat from the baskets of bread, fruit, and cold meats that the cooks had prepared for them. The sky was still covered by high, dull cloud, and Sylvester asked the women if they wished to hunt on or if they had had enough and were ready to go home. There was no discussion. They would not be leaving here, Joanna said, until they had some good wild pig to take with them. She looked to Berengaria for confirmation, and the Princess nodded in assent, her attention focused on the cold roasted pheasant she was clutching in both hands. André watched and listened to all of this, content to say nothing, and greatly surprised at how much he was enjoying the outing.

It started to rain as they were preparing to resume the hunt, and at first it was light, a shower that everyone believed would soon pass over, but it did not, and as time went by, the downpour increased so that they were soon seriously inconvenienced. They were deep in the woods, in hilly terrain, and the roar of the downpour on the canopy above their heads was deafening, but the masses of leaves above merely intercepted the rain and deflected it so that instead of falling on the forest floor as normal raindrops, it tended to pool on the broad leaf surfaces and then spill from one leaf to another, gathering momentum and volume until it fell in solid streams, penetrating even the wax-scraped wiry wool of their foul-weather cloaks. André leaned close to Sylvester at one point and shouted into his ear.

“Were you the one who predicted heavy rain to Richard?”

The huntsman cupped his hand over his mouth to shout above the noise of the rain. “Aye, but I meant nothing like this. This is worse than I have seen in years. There’s a cavern about half a mile ahead of us, up on top of the scree slope, in the face of a cliff. Found it a few weeks ago, first time I came hunting here. It’s a struggle to get up there, but it’s big and dry inside and we can light a fire, if there are no bears in there.”

“A fire? Is there wood there?”

“Probably. Depends on who has been there recently. The locals have been using the place as a shelter for hundreds of years, and most of them stock the place with firewood before they leave. There was a pile there when I found the place.” He shrugged. “Of course, some people will use up every scrap of wood that’s there and won’t replace a stick. Do you want to try it?”

“Lead on! It’s big enough, think you?”

“Oh, it’s big, much larger than it looks to be from outside, because the entranceway is really very small, barely three paces across, compared to the space inside, which is about ten times that wide. And it’s deep, too, with high roofs. There are three big connected chambers, one behind the other like beads on a string. Front one’s the biggest, open to the outside. The back one has some light in it during the day—a kind of glow that comes down like a fading sunbeam from somewhere up above—and the middle one’s always dark.”

André smiled at the huntsman. “Like a fading sunbeam … I like that. Let’s hope there are no bears in there today.”

They approached the cave mouth with great caution, having picked their way carefully up the treacherous scree slope, and when they were all in readiness, with arrows nocked and ready to draw, Sylvester threw a succession of rocks into the darkened cavern, pausing each time to listen for sounds that would indicate that the cave held tenants. Nothing emerged, and no sound disturbed the silent darkness beyond the cave mouth. Eventually Sylvester himself, carrying a heavy, springwound arbalest primed and ready at the level of his waist, stepped slowly into the entrance and paused there, framed in the opening and lit from behind, inviting any animal inside to charge at him. He remained there for a count of ten, and then he straightened slightly and disappeared into the darkness.

Minutes later, having made sure that no animals were lurking in the farthest recesses of the three linked caverns that stretched backward for at least sixty paces into the cliff, the two men stood together again, this time looking out into the driving rain. Behind them in the first cave, they could hear one of the other hunters chopping dry wood into kindling, while another of their number worked patiently with flint, steel, and finely chopped and shredded bark and grass to start a fire. The two women had gone into the farthest of the caves, the dimly lit one, and there Sylvester had shown them a cleft in the floor over an underground stream that offered a natural and pleasant latrine. He had then left them together to do whatever they needed to do.

“How far are we from the wagons, do you know?” André asked him.

Sylvester pointed off to their right, down the scree slope. “Half a mile, if you go that way, straight through the brush and across a steep gully with a stream at the bottom, but it will be heavy going in this rain.” He flicked his hand towards the left, the way they had come. “If you go back that way, on the other hand, there’s an easy path—we crossed it at one point, you may recall—that swings back around to where they’ll be now. A mile and a half, perhaps two.”

“An easy path? Easy enough for the wagons to follow if we sent for them to come here?”

“Aye, to the bottom of the slope, at least, but if you wanted anything after that, you’d have to hump it up the slope on your back.”

“That’s what men-at-arms are for, when they’re not fighting. I think we should send for them.”

Sylvester turned slowly and looked at him. “Now why would you want to do that?”

André met his look squarely. “Because this rain shows no sign of slackening and we have two ladies with us. They may not look like ladies, dressed as they are, and they have not been behaving like ladies through all this, because neither one of them has made a single complaint, but sooner rather than later the discomfort of this weather is going to penetrate their calm, which has been admirable until now. The rain may ease soon—it certainly ought to, because it can’t continue this way forever—but in the event that it does not, then we ought to be prepared for whatever eventuality might arise. And one of those eventualities, I believe, is that the lady Joanna might not change her mind about remaining here until she kills a pig. If that happens, then we might end up spending the night here.”

“The King would not be happy with that,” Sylvester growled, but André shook his head.

“I don’t know, my friend. I think you might be wrong there. You yourself put the notion into Richard’s head yesterday when you told him it might rain heavily today, and that is why we brought a wagon filled with tents and blankets. It was the King’s idea that we might be stranded by the weather, and he bade me be certain that I brought the necessities to keep the ladies dry, warm, and comfortable. He trusts us both implicitly in this. We have sufficient men to guard them, and we brought the cook along to feed everyone. So oblige me by sending your best man to find the wagons and their escort and to bring them here as soon as may be. I will inform the Queens of what is happening.” He hesitated. “By the way, the third cave, at the back, with the latrine. Is there an updraft in there? Could you keep a fire burning in there without choking to death?”

Sylvester shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about that. I always use the fire pit in the front cave.”

“Hmm. Well, we’ll soon find out. There must be a chimney of some kind in the roof there. If light can get in, then air must be able to get out by the same route.”

THE DOWNPOUR HAD NOT ABATED by the middle of the afternoon, but the temperature had plummeted so deeply that it felt more like a winter’s day in England than anything one might ever expect to encounter in Cyprus. And then the wind came up, gradually at first, then strengthening to a gale and later still to a howling, lethal fury the like of which none of them had ever seen. In the forest below their cliff face, whole trees were uprooted and sent flying while others, older and more established, were shattered and sundered by the power of the winds, weak forks ripped apart and great limbs and branches torn away and transformed into flying weapons. Awe-stricken, but too wet and tired and miserable to really care about the reasons underlying the phenomenon, no one could explain it and no one tried. When they grew bored with watching the catastrophe, they concentrated all their energies upon drying themselves and their clothing, and staying warm.

The wagons had arrived and been unloaded long before the wind arose, every able-bodied man in the party turning to the task of carrying cargo up the treacherous slope of shifting shale and rocks beneath the cliff face and stowing it in the front cave, where a veritable bonfire now roared. When everything was safely moved, André sent them all out again, this time to find a sheltered spot in which to conceal the wagons and horses, and then to gather firewood to stave off the rapidly increasing cold. He had gone with them, as had Sylvester, leaving behind only a single elderly man from the cook’s crew to tend to the ladies, should they require anything. That, too, had been before the storm winds really asserted themselves, and they had still been gathering piles of wood when one savage, icy gust of swirling wind plucked one of their number up bodily and threw him down the rocky slope to land unconscious, one arm broken and his head bleeding against a stone. That caused them to cut short their fuel gathering and settle for transporting what they had gathered up into the safety of the caverns as quickly as they could move.

There had been no question of continuing the hunt in such weather, or even of making the journey homeward to Limassol, for they had all seen with their own eyes the power of that wind. Instead, St. Clair had set all hands to preparing for a night in the cave. The twelve men-at-arms had been put to work at once, building an angled wall of stones and rubble across the narrow entrance to the cavern in order to deflect the force of the gusts that howled through the opening. The top of it was still half the height of a man short of the entrance’s highest point, but it was high enough and strong enough to reduce the howling force of the wind to tolerable levels. Behind the wall, in a wide ring around the central fire pit—the floor of the main cavern was easily thirty paces long and almost the same in width—they had set up four leather tents as sleeping quarters, where they would be out of the wind gusts that still spilled into the cave from time to time. They could not drive pegs into the stone floor, but they were able to raise the tents solidly nonetheless by securing the guy ropes to heavy stones, and while all of that was happening, the cook and his crew were roasting a haunch of venison on a spit that they had placed over a second fire.

Sylvester had also ordered small fires lit in the central and rear caves, and the one in the rear chamber burned clean and well, as he had thought it would, whereas the one in the central chamber had to be extinguished immediately, before its smoke drove them all out into the storm. Having proved that the rear chamber could be kept warm and ventilated, he offered the two Queens the option of sleeping in the main cave with the rest of the party, in one of the four tents, or of sleeping by themselves in the rear chamber. He was unsurprised when they opted for the latter, for Ianni the steward had already been hard at work fashioning beds and seats by the fire from piles of tents and blankets, and generally converting the space for the women’s use, even to the extent of lighting fat candles in standing sconces against the walls and having portable tripods set up as washstands, with ewers of heated water for their ablutions.

André bowed to the Queens and told them that he would have some hot food sent in to them when it was ready, but as he turned to leave, Berengaria called him back and thanked him, although for what, he could not have said. Her courtesy surprised him, for they had barely exchanged ten words all day, but he bowed slightly in acknowledgment and thanked her in return, and then was truly surprised when Joanna asked him to be seated for a moment, since she had several things to say to him and to ask about.

Someone had moved four knee-high boulders close to the fire that Sylvester had built close by the back wall of the chamber, where the smoke rose swiftly and cleanly upward, disappearing into the heights without causing any discomfort, and two of them had been converted to seats by the simple addition of a wad of padding to each. André thought the padding might be folded leather tents, but even as he looked at them, one of Ianni’s men came by with a third pile of cushioning and set it atop another boulder, pressing it into shape. André nodded his thanks to the man and crossed to it, looking inquiringly at Queen Joanna, who stared back at him openly, then sat down across from him, crossing her booted, leather-clad legs and gripping her knee between interlaced fingers.

The effect of that simple movement hit André squarely beneath the rib cage, taking his breath away. He had been looking at both women all day and had, he thought, grown inured to the fact that they were women dressed as men, but they had been wearing heavy woolen cloaks all day, too, and all of them, himself included, had been concentrating on other things, and that had greatly dissipated the impact of their appearance. Now, however, they had laid aside their cloaks and the leather cuirasses they had worn for hunting, and both had found time to brush their hair, but they had not yet had any opportunity to change their clothing completely and they were now wearing only light, knee-length tunics, much like surcoats, over leather breeches that revealed, shockingly, the shapes of their legs and hips, so that by raising her armored knee and grasping it the way she had, Joanna Plantagenet had filled his mind and vision, instantly, with the awareness of her body. In looking away so quickly, he had undone himself further, because Queen Berengaria, similarly clad—although the word that came to him instantly was unclad—had been moving towards him, bending slightly forward so that the shape and fullness of her breasts were emphasized.

He closed his eyes instinctively, feeling the warm flush of redness creeping over his face, but when he opened them again, neither of the women appeared to have noticed anything amiss.

“I have been most impressed with you today, Master St. Clair,” Joanna said clearly. “The task you were given is an imposition that could easily have been placed upon someone else. I know that, because I am the one who asked that you be given it, for my own selfish reasons. But you have discharged it admirably, with great patience and without a single frown or complaint, albeit it has turned out to be a far more hazardous and lengthy task than any of us could have guessed at. You have performed your duty and fulfilled your obligations wondrously, and my brother shall hear of it directly. My sister here thinks the same and will add her voice to mine. And for all you have done for us today, we now thank you.”

“It was my duty, my lady, as you say, but it was also pleasurable. May I—may I ask why you asked for me?”

Joanna flicked a glance at Berengaria, then looked back at St. Clair, her head tipped slightly to one side and a tiny frown of annoyance, or it might have been perplexity, creasing the skin between her brows. “Because I thought you have a mind, sir, and might be capable of conversing sensibly, so why would you jeopardize that opinion by asking such a foolish question now?” When she saw the uncomprehending look that drew from him, her frown deepened. “I think—” She sat up straighter. “It cannot have escaped your attention, surely, Sir André, that the majority of your fellow knights can barely speak at all, once the topics of exercising, training, killing, and warfare have been exhausted. My brother tells me you can read and write with fluency. Is that correct?”

“It is, my lady.”

“Then that alone sets you apart from all your so-called equals. I have been aware for years of an appalling truth, but I heard it expressed again by Bishop Charles of Beaulieu, less than a month ago, and it shocked me afresh: not one knight in any two hundred chosen at random can either read or write. And they do not even care! In fact they sneer at people who can, and for reasons that are obvious most of those are clerics, who must read and write in order to fulfill their obligations. And thus the gulf between knights and clerics is deepened with bullish stupidity. The fact that you are literate, Master St. Clair, marks you as being different from the ruck of your fellows and raises the possibility that you might be able to talk of things other than war and warfare—topics that a woman like me, or my royal sister here, might enjoy listening to and talking about. That is why I asked for you by name.”

“I see.” André nodded. “And I see, too, why my question annoyed you. Forgive me, my lady, I was not thinking clearly. Quite honestly, it had never occurred to me that anyone might find the ability to read and write to be an admirable trait. I have taken abuse over it for so long that I try to keep the ability secret nowadays.” He paused. “You said you had some things to say to me and to ask about. I am at your disposal.”

“Ah, if only you were …” Her face betrayed nothing of what she was thinking, and for a moment André grappled with the meaning of her comment, so that he missed what she said next, becoming aware of it only when he realized that her voice had been raised in interrogation and she was now staring at him, clearly awaiting an answer to a question. He pulled himself back to attention quickly.

“Pardon me, my lady, but I was distracted for a moment, and I missed what you said last.”

“I was talking about whether or not Richard might be concerned by our failure to return to Limassol tonight. I asked you if you had thought to send a man back to tell them that we are well but will remain here until the storm abates.”

“Ah. No, I sent no one.” He picked a twig up off the floor and flicked it into the fire. “Your brother is clever enough to see that these conditions are foul and intolerable, and to deduce that we will find some place to wait out the storm.”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed, nodding. “Bu—”

“Besides”—André, staring into the fire, was not even aware that she had begun to speak again—“any man out alone in weather like this, and in territory as wild as this, would run a grave risk of being killed or injured—blown over a cliff somewhere or killed by a falling tree. Had I sent someone out, and he had been hurt or injured, then nothing would have been achieved except the loss of a valuable man, and we would be faced with coming back again to look for him or find his body. No one in Limassol may know where we are now, but by the time they can organize a search party tomorrow, we will be well on our way home again and we’ll meet them coming towards us.”

Joanna nodded her head at that, accepting his logic, and after that they made more small talk for a while, until one of the cook’s men cleared his throat from the entrance to the chamber and announced that the food was ready and would be served to them within moments. André rose quickly to his feet and left the women to prepare for their meal, then made his way back into the main cave to join Sylvester and the other huntsmen.

It had been a long and tiring day, and when their stomachs were full, no one appeared to want to move far from the fire, although a hardy few made their way outside to relieve themselves. Around the fireside the talk was desultory at best, and soon heads began to nod here and there and men began to make their way into the tents and out of the way of the occasional gusts of wind that still burst into the cave and whistled and buffeted around in the vaulted heights above their heads. Before long, the first long-drawn-out snores began to roll, and when André caught himself nodding in the fire’s warmth he struggled to his feet and helped himself to a double armful of bedding, then made his way back to the chamber where the women were.

He coughed to let them know he was outside their quarters, then told them he would keep guard there, sleeping across their doorway, just to ensure that no one from the outer cave would be tempted to go wandering in the middle of the night. The possibility of that, he knew, was minuscule, but he made his bed on the floor from a double layer of folded leather tents, laid his unsheathed sword, his helmet, and his mailed gloves alongside it, and wrapped himself warmly in blankets over his leather hunting clothes before he lay down. Moments later he heard the sounds of someone throwing wood onto the women’s fire, and then came a few brief whispers. Ianni emerged from the cave, carrying a candle, and stepped carefully over André, bidding him a whispered goodnight as he passed.

For some time after that, André lay listening to the sounds of the two Queens talking. He could not make out a word, although he did not really try, and he wondered what they were doing and what they looked like as they prepared for bed. But he soon fell asleep, despite his prurient imaginings.

HE CAME AWAKE in a surge of panic, surrounded by flickering yellow light and struggling to sit upright and to reach for his sword at the same time. He did not know where he was, only that someone’s hand had covered his mouth and nose while he slept. Before he could struggle upright or cry out, however, the hand tightened, pinching his nostrils and pulling him backward, and a sharp voice hissed in his ear, telling him to be quiet. It was a woman’s voice, and all at once he remembered where he was and his vision cleared, so that he saw the woman’s face close to his own and promptly froze. Joanna’s eyes were wide, as though with fright. He relaxed, and she immediately released him and moved back, placing her hand between her breasts and inhaling, a deep, quavering breath.

“My lady,” he said, sitting up quickly now but keeping his voice low and turning his head to scan the passageway behind him. “What is it? What’s amiss?”

She waved her hand at him and shook her head, and he became aware that she had knelt beside him to awaken him and was now sitting back on her heels, staring wide eyed at him, her hand still fluttering apprehensively over her breast. She was wearing proper feminine clothing, he noticed now, albeit night attire. Voluminous and concealing, it shrouded her body from his eyes, yet made him instantly aware that her body was there, soft and feminine and close enough for him to touch, were he to stretch out his hand. As he thought that, she stopped fluttering her fingers and held her hand still, the palm upraised towards him, and took another great breath.

“Lord, sir, you frightened me. I did not expect you to awaken so violently … or so noisily. For a moment I thought you would bring everyone running to see if we were being murdered in our sleep.”

St. Clair hitched himself higher, finding a more comfortable seat, aware of the night chill where the blankets had fallen from his shoulders. He was wide awake now, but he rubbed finger and thumb in the corners of his eyes, clearing them of the last vestiges of sleep as Joanna began to speak again.

“There is nothing amiss, Sir André. I merely found myself unable to sleep. I did not wish to disturb my sister Berengaria, so I thought I might see if you would be good enough to talk with me for a time. I have remade the fire …”

Puzzled, but flattered, St. Clair unwrapped himself from his blankets and moved towards the fire, where, for the next few minutes, they both worked hard at overcoming the awkwardness they felt over what had taken place. Berengaria had not stirred, so it seemed that they had not made too much noise, but St. Clair got up anyway and went quietly out to the middle chamber, carrying one of the candles. He met no one and heard nothing other than the wind beyond the front entrance, and soon made his way back to where Joanna sat by the fire.

They talked quietly together for more than an hour, and St. Clair enjoyed it thoroughly, for Joanna began by asking for his opinion of Guy de Lusignan, both as a ruler and as a man, and when he had obliged her, she responded by giving him her own opinion, and it was greatly different from anything he had ever heard anyone else say on the topic. As a woman, she said, she found herself attracted to the fellow, because he presented himself as a portrait of so many of the things women looked for in a man: tall and strongly built, yet proportionally pleasing, he was comparable to her own brother, if not quite so massively muscled. His teeth were excellent, she remarked, white and even, with no gaps, no obvious spaces, and no visible rot. He kept his dark hair and beard clean and neatly trimmed, too, she said, which was sufficiently uncommon to be noteworthy, and his skin was deeply tanned and pleasant to behold, the backs of his fingers, hands, and wrists covered in a noticeable scattering of fine dark curling hair that she and many of her sex found attractive and even alluring.

He had undergone severe hardship in the past few years, she told André, but even so his clothing, while faded and threadbare, had been well maintained and kept clean. Richard had, of course, provided him with new clothing, raiment befitting his regal status, but even so, the condition of the old garments spoke for itself. This was a man who was fastidious and painstaking over appearances. But all of that being said, she continued, her attraction to him, woman to man, had been purely superficial.

“Had he struck me as being more than surface-deep, had he really appealed to me, underneath, as a man, I would never have taken the time to examine him as closely as I did. But the more closely I observed him, the less I saw to like. He is weak. Having been raised with Richard as my brother and then spending years as wife to my dear husband William, I understand and recognize strength. I also recognize its absence, the lack of it, with great ease. Our noble King Guy is not reliable, at depth. Which is, of course, why he has earned the reputation that the German Montferrat, and now Philip Augustus, seek to use against him—” She broke off and inhaled a deep, sibilant breath. “But he is the rightful King, for the time being, and that is … inconvenient, to say the least, for my dear brother.”

She had been gazing into the fire as she talked, but now she turned her head to look André directly in the eye. “Do you understand why I say that? Have you spoken with anyone of the politics surrounding this entire affair?”

“The religious politics, you mean? Yes I have. But I cannot convince myself that it is as important as everyone else seems to think.”

“You—?” Joanna stared at him in amazement. “I cannot believe I heard you say that. You do not think it is important? Do you not, then, believe in God?”

St. Clair laughed, easily. “Of course I do, but what is at stake here, in this squabble between de Lusignan and de Montferrat, has nothing to do with God. It is a struggle between two groups of men—very large groups, be it said—all of whom purport to worship the same God. But one group calls itself the Eastern Orthodox Church and is ruled by a patriarch archbishop, while the other calls itself the Roman Catholic Church and is ruled by a pope. Each swears, calling upon the full authority of Heaven to attest to its righteousness, that it holds the one, correct, and inarguable means to achieve salvation. And both desire to govern the land where Jesus lived, because both believe it to be sacred, and both believe there is worldly treasure to be amassed by controlling it. Think you I am being cynical, my lady?”

She had been looking at him through narrowed eyes but now she laughed and shook her head in what looked like admiration. “No,” she drawled, “not cynical, not really. But I think you are a very dangerous man.”

“How so, my lady? I am but a simple knight.” “Aye, but a simple knight with his own ideas and his own way of looking at things most people never become aware of. That, sir knight, makes you highly dangerous, to people who would wish you to behave as they think fit. What do you think my brother should do in this instance?”

“I believe he is already committed, my lady. He has recognized Guy and given him sustenance and support. I cannot say he would have done so quite as willingly had Philip not thrown his support behind de Montferrat, but the die is cast now. Before that, I know the King was under ever-increasing pressure from Rome—he is surrounded by a plague of archbishops and bishops as you know—to safeguard its papal interests in Outremer, and most particularly in Jerusalem, should we ever win it back. But this turnabout by Philip, in support of Montferrat and the Orthodox camp, would seem to fly deliberately in the face of the Pope, and that mystifies me, for I would not have thought Philip brave enough or defiant enough to go directly counter to the Pope’s wishes and authority.”

Joanna merely nodded. “You may be right, or close to it. Perhaps he has reached an agreement of some kind with the Eastern Church in Constantinople. It would surprise me greatly were I to discover that there was less scheming among the followers of Orthodoxy than there is among the followers of Rome.” She sat silent for a moment, then added, “What are you smiling at? Did I say something amusing?”

St. Clair’s smile widened. “No, my lady, you said nothing amusing. What amuses me is that I have yet to hear a man say what you just said. They are all, by and large, far too afraid of the Church and its power ever to dare say such things. I agree with you completely, but hearing you express your opinion surprised me, that is all. I could not help but smile.”

“Hmm. Spend more time around me, Sir André. I will soon have you wheezing on the floor, clutching your ribs in pain from laughing. One of the saddest things about being a woman is that you are not supposed to think, or even to be capable of thought. Even my brother Richard subscribes to that belief— one of the few masculine perceptions of women he shares wholeheartedly with every other man. But the Churches, both of them, Eastern and Western, are run by and for men, so what can a mere woman do, other than hold her own opinions and express them when she can?”

André nodded in agreement. “Aye, well, whatever has caused Philip to side with Conrad, it has drawn a strong dividing line between the factions, so that Richard now stands squarely in Guy’s camp. Although I dare say he would declare that Guy stands in his …” Before Joanna could reply to that, they were interrupted by an explosive snort from the bed behind them, and both of them turned to see Berengaria, eyes tightly closed and her mouth making sleepy, sucking noises, turn over to face them and then subside back into sleep, her unbound hair obscuring much of her upper face and her bare neck clearly visible in the scoop beneath the edge of her blanket.

“Think you those lines will remain drawn once we arrive in Outremer?” Joanna was looking at him again, and St. Clair shrugged.

“I think, my lady, that much of that will depend on Saladin and on the situation that we find in force when we arrive there. If the Saracens come against us hard and fast, then they may achieve the effect of fusing our forces into one effective whole. But should Saladin even begin to suspect the kind of strife that besets us now— and the man did not become the Sultan of all Islam by being a blind, unseeing fool—he will hold back his armies and allow us to destroy ourselves. And we would do that, left to ourselves, Christian against Christian, Orthodox against Roman, through petty bickering and venal jealousies and greedy politicking. Pray he never does find out.”

“I will, because I will be there myself, so you need have no doubt of that. I might even pray for you, too. Not that I am much of a prayer. I am too much like you, I suppose, for I have a mind of my own and I prefer to think for myself, and that displeases a surprisingly large number of people.” She hesitated, then added, with a tiny smile, “For all I know, it might even displease God. In any case, I might pray for you.”

St. Clair smiled faintly. “I would be grateful for that, my lady.”

“Oh, do not say that, Sir André. For a while there, I was considering seducing you … and for that you truly would have been grateful to me. But I decided instead that I like you, and so chose to leave you to your destiny, which may be sufficiently complicated to confound you already, without any contributions to your debauchery from me.”

“I—” His mouth remained open and his eyes grew wide, and she smiled lazily at him, enjoying the play of emotions and reactions that he could neither control nor begin to understand. He became convinced for a few moments that he had misheard her, until his eyes on her face told him otherwise. She put a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh, and when he appeared to have mastered himself and overcome the urge to say anything, for fear of sounding stupid, she spoke again, her voice quiet and gentle.

“Will you not ask me then what I meant about leaving you to your complicated destiny?”

He was frowning at her now, and shook his head in a gesture that was almost unnoticeable. “No, my lady, I think not.”

“Are you aware, then, of having a destiny?”

“All men have destinies, my lady.”

“No, Sir André, that is not so. Emphatically not so. All men—most men—may have fates awaiting them, but very, very few have destinies. Destinies change the paths of peoples and of empires, André. I believe you have such a destiny. And so, I believe, does my beloved brother, in his own twisted way.”

“Forgive me, my lady, but I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“I know that. That is why I find you so attractive.”

Joanna’s stare was so direct, so challenging, that St. Clair found himself unable to hold it, and he turned his eyes away from her, thinking furiously and unaware that his own gaze had returned to Berengaria.

“You find her beautiful, do you not?”

It took several seconds for the import of what Joanna had said to penetrate his awareness, for he had been looking at Berengaria’s sleeping face, oblivious to what he was doing, but now he stiffened and straightened his shoulders.

“I think I misheard you, my lady.”

“I am not your lady, André. I might lie with you and enjoy you, and you me, but I could never be your lady. But Berengaria could, and probably will be, albeit secretly and very quietly.”

St. Clair could hear his heart pounding loudly in the pause that followed, and when Joanna spoke again it seemed to him he could hear a smile in her voice. “Would you like to bed a queen, Sir André?” She paused again, briefly this time. “Come, sir, it is time to grit your teeth and banish blushes. You may bed both of us, would you but say the word. Then we would all three be pleased enough with our lot, and life could go on with never a wrinkle to mar its smoothness.”

André did not even dare attempt to answer, for he was afraid, yet far from convinced, that the Queen of Sicily had lost her sanity, and the thunder of his own pulse was deafening in his ears. He sat motionless, making no attempt to look at her, and she bent forward and took him by the wrist, tugging at him.

“André, look at me. Look at me, and listen! Look at me!”

He turned his eyes with painful slowness to look at her and found her frowning at him.

“Sweet Jesus,” she said, more to herself than to him. “You are even more innocent than I suspected. You are unfit to be permitted out alone and unguarded. André, listen to me, and if you have never heard anything before in your life to do with women, hear this.” She squeezed his wrist with both hands now, this time hard enough to cause pain, and he flinched and looked directly at her.

“Are you listening to me? Good. Now hear this, from a woman with no wish to deceive you and a Queen with no need to lie. Berengaria is yours for the taking. I am, too, but there is naught in it for me but pleasure. For you and Berengaria, on the other hand, there is much more at stake. You are to beget a son on her, an heir for Richard.”

As he made to leap to his feet, she leapt ahead of him and pushed him back down. “Listen, you stupid man! Do you think I would jest with you on such a matter? It is a fact. Richard has planned for this, and arranged it with great care, and there is nothing you or anyone else may do to alter it. He will, if need be, use the full power of his liege right to your fealty and order you directly to the task of doing it as duty, and if you refuse his wishes he will deal with you accordingly. Believe me, I know whereof I speak, and you know my brother well enough to know that he will not be crossed in anything he sets his mind to as he has in this. Richard has no fear of popes or bishops or prating priests, and there is no other monarch alive who could force his hand and make him change his mind.”

She checked herself, seeing the look in his eyes, then flicked her hand sideways, as if to clear such thoughts away, and resumed in a more gentle voice. “But none of this is anywhere near as bleak as I have made it sound, believe me. Nor would it be unpleasant in any degree, especially with regard to my sister Berengaria.” She spread her fingers wide and drew a deep breath. “Richard took Berengaria to his bed on their wedding night, witnessed by all who were required to be there to stand witness, but he made no attempt to couple with her. She is no virgin, nor was she expected to be one, but she is virgin to her husband, because Richard is a man’s man and that means his Queen will be no man’s woman, officially at least, for the remainder of her life.”

“That is scandalous! She was brought to Sicily to wed him by his mother. How could Eleanor not know about her son and his vices?”

Joanna looked at him wide eyed. “Who said she does not? Did I?”

“No, but—”

“There are no ‘buts,’ Sir André. My mother is no man’s fool and there is nothing she does not know about her sons … nor her daughters, for that matter. She knew what she was doing.”

“Then how could she do such a thing to this young woman?”

The naivety of his question brought a hard edge of impatience to Joanna’s voice. “She could do it because this young woman is her father’s daughter, bound to obey his wishes in this as in all other things. Her father is King of Navarre, and Eleanor’s son is King of England and ruler of an empire that includes Gascony. My mother arranged the perfect alliance, matching Richard with Berengaria, one of those brilliant instances of logic and initiative in political reality that have made my mother renowned throughout her life for her political acumen.

“Richard has tribulations uncounted in Gascony and no time to deal with them. The entire region is a rats’ nest of treasonous bandits. They call themselves landowners and noblemen, but they are no more than brigands who have no love for Aquitaine, and even less for my brother or for his House, whether it be called Plantagenet or Poitiers. And to the east of Gascony lies Toulouse, a foe to both Gascony and Richard. That single fact, that enmity between Toulouse and Gascony, is the sole thing holding back open rebellion by both powers against Richard’s lands and authority. But our farsighted mother has contrived to liquidate that threat.” She paused, collecting her thoughts, then resumed in a stronger voice. “The day he married Berengaria, Richard endowed her with title to all his lands and holdings in Gascony.” She saw St. Clair stiffen slightly with shock. “Gascony’s southern border is the northern border of those territories ruled by Berengaria’s father, Sancho. He is a sound and solid man, a strong King with a powerful and experienced army, kept in the field for years campaigning against the Muslim Moors in Granada, to the south of him. And now that his daughter holds title over Gascony, Sancho will work to ensure that Gascony and Navarre stand united against Toulouse, thereby taming the Gascon bandits in his daughter’s name and forming a firm cushion between Angevin Aquitaine and any threat from its eastern neighbors. You must admit, that is all logical. Will you not agree?”

St. Clair nodded. “Aye, it is, admirably so, but it does not—”

“Of course it does, Sir André. Royal duty and responsibility excuses anything necessary to the well-being of the kingdom. Berengaria has always accepted that. Besides, she is … complacent. That was the word my mother used in describing Berengaria’s ability to absorb what Richard would do to her—or would not do to her might be more accurate. My mother has always known what few men ever know, that any woman, no matter how neglected or abused, can, if she has the will and the desire, find solace for herself almost anywhere.

“But even so, my brother is not wholly without conscience. He told the child what their life would be like, before they slept on their wedding night, and he told her that he would not object were she to satisfy her needs discreetly with some man who could be relied upon to keep his silence.” Joanna paused dramatically. “And then he went even further. He told her that, should she get herself with child, he would accept the infant and claim it as his own. And then he selected you for the task.”

“What? Selected me—? No! No, that is impossible. It’s unthinkable. I refuse to believe it.”

“Why, in the name of God? Why, André? You know my brother. You know who and what he is. Why would you find this difficult to believe? I knew it weeks ago, from the way he thrust you into prominence every time we turned around.”

“But … But—” André reeled back in his chair. “That is infamous, madam! To suggest that the King would ever consider having anyone else, let alone me, sire a son for him! How could you even hint at such a thing, you who know him better than I do, when all the world knows him to be entirely capable of doing his own duty? Need I remind you that your brother has already fathered a son?”

“Ah! The famous little Philip, of course!” Joanna pulled herself up until her spine was straight, and looked into the flames, her face unreadable. “The little bastard prince. The French King’s bane … No, sir, you need not remind me of that fable. That child exists, but he is no more the son of Richard Plantagenet than I am. He is an illusion, an artifact created for the common people to perceive. But I would have thought that, even with your unworldly eyes, you would see through such a simple subterfuge.”

“Explain that, if you will.”

“I will. You asked me but a moment ago how I, who know him better than you, could even hint that my brother might be capable of such a thing. Well, I can hint at it without hesitation because I do know my brother far better than you ever could. He has decided upon you, in this, because he has already done the same thing once before, successfully, in the matter of the child from Cognac, young Philip Plantagenet.” She held up a hand, palm forward, to keep him quiet. “I pray you, think about that for a moment, before you spit at me for saying it. Think for just a moment.”

She began picking off points on the fingers of one hand. “Think about the obligations of kingship, André. The first and greatest of them is to sire an heir, to carry on the line securely, thus guaranteeing the safety of the realm and its people. The people are the realm, any realm, and the king is dependent upon their goodwill. A king who fails to get an heir is intolerable, which is why so many royal marriages are brief. The queen bears the brunt of failure when the progeny are girls. When there are no progeny at all, she is declared barren and put aside. The king himself is never at fault—except when he can be proved sexually deviant to the extent that he cannot sire a child. Now that, I suggest to you, must be a chilling thought for a man of my brother’s nature and ambitions.”

Joanna allowed those words to hang in the air between them for several moments before she went on. “Richard, as I’m sure you already know, needs to be seen as a paragon—fearless and invincible in battle, ready to laugh and drink or wrestle and fight with anyone at the nod of a head or the wink of an eye. And he presents a hearty, smiling face to all the world when he plays the convivial King of England. But this is a King of England who shuns the company of women, who surrounds himself with comely and effete young men, and who has been rutting with the King of France since they were boys together, so that in France their dalliance and their constant, jealous squabbling long since became a matter of tired jest, and the knowledge of it threatened to spill out into the ken of the common folk of Aquitaine, Anjou, and other parts. It was the priests who put an end to that, of course. Richard might care nothing for what the common folk might think, but the Church knew better. And so a ruse was designed, to gull the people, not merely the people of Richard’s domains in France but the people of England, who would one day become Richard’s subjects.

“The yeomen of England, as they call themselves, require their kings to be heroic in bed as well as on the battlefield, and being heroic in bed, in that basic, low-born sense, involves the seduction of women and the coupling of breeding pairs. The lower classes, particularly in England, I am told, have no understanding of the true male brotherhood that Richard dreams of and espouses, or of the ineffable love between noble fighting men that was enjoyed by the likes of Alexander and Caesar. And so to set idle tongues at rest, certain advisers, shall we call them, deliberately planned an adventure for Richard with a young woman in Cognac—a region far enough removed from his usual haunts to serve the desired purpose admirably—with the resultant, widely remarked birth of a fine boy.”

“But he did it.”

Joanna almost smiled. “Did he? No, my dear André, I fear I must disappoint you there. Someone—I have no idea who—once said that a leopard cannot change its spots. My brother’s spots are equally unalterable. Why do you think this adventure was arranged so far away from home? Had Richard merely wished to bed a wench, he could have clicked his fingers, anywhere, and been surfeited with willing, panting women. But that was not the way it transpired. Certain people took great pains to find an eligible woman of good family, a young, impoverished widow, and made certain arrangements with her. The Duke would be seen with her in public, paying close and flattering attention to her for sufficient time to set tongues a-wagging. The gossips would grow busy, but the lady would be amply recompensed for any embarrassment she might suffer from that, and in the meantime, when the Duke was not around to disport himself with her in private, she would be notably entertained, albeit secretly, by a young knight of spotless blood and wondrously fine appearance and physique. When she became pregnant, as she surely would, the young knight would move on, content and more than amply paid for his services, and she would name Duke Richard as the father of her child. In return, Richard would reward her with gifts of buildings, lands, and money, and would happily acknowledge his paternity and name the child an heir to his estates. It worked out very well, for all concerned. The mother is now wealthy and independent, the smug matron of an acknowledged heir, and Richard has a living symbol of his virility, his sexuality, and his love of women, to parade before the crowds whenever he so wishes.”

“But what about the real father? Has Richard no fears that he might step forth one day and state his case?”

Joanna smiled again. “Would you, were you that man? What would he gain, other than to lose all he may hold at the time, including his head? Besides, the poor man died at the battle of Hattin.”

St. Clair sat deep in thought and gnawing gently on the inside of his lip. Eventually he looked up to face her. “I believe what you say, my lady. Your story has the ring of sound logic.” He fell silent again, gnawing and thinking, then straightened abruptly. “But even so, were all this proved true, I cannot yet see why the Duke—the King—would make me part of his design in repeating such a thing.”

“Come now, Sir André, you are too modest and it ill becomes you here. Think of it from my brother’s point of view. You are perfectly suited to his needs in this: young, dashing, dedicated, honorable, and bound to him by the laws of fealty and duty, besides which your bloodline is pure and your antecedents are flawless. Richard would be more than happy to see a son of the ancient house of St. Clair assuming his patrimony and his name with an unsullied bloodline. God knows he has professed himself sick beyond detestation with his own.”

St. Clair stared at her with wide, startled eyes. “What d’you mean by that?”

“Precisely what I said. Richard has said many times, and once in my own hearing, that his blood, the sacred, royal blood mixed from both our parents, has soured and befouled his entire life. What did he say, exactly? Let me think … Ah, yes, he said, ‘The blood flowing in my veins is a mixture brewed, stewed, and then spewed out in Hell, the same noxious, evil filth that animates my brother John, may he rot alive. Better that it should die out with me, wherever and whenever it does, and that fresh blood, uncurdled, should go on to rule in England after my death.’”

She waited a long time for his response. Something, a small stone or a resinous knot of wood, exploded in the heart of the fire, sending fragments leaping in several directions, but St. Clair seemed unaware of it. Finally, as though fearing he might never speak again, she prompted him. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think of that?”

He inhaled sharply and turned to look at her. “I find it unbelievable, yet all too credible. And … I find it frightening, above all else. But—” He stopped, and squeezed both hands tightly over his temples, his eyes clenched shut, and then he lowered his hands again. “I find all of this difficult to comprehend, my lady, in simplest truth. Am I truly to believe … Are you really saying that, if I choose to approach the Queen, she will lie with me, and neither she nor the King will be angered?”

“I am saying more than that, my friend. If you father a son upon her, he will be legitimized at birth and crowned King of England in due time. That I can promise you.”

St. Clair swallowed. “And if I … do this, this thing, as you suggest … will I then have access to you, too?”

The look she gave him then was open, wide eyed and serious, with no hint of amusement. “Of course you will. Did I not say so? It will fall to me to be your chaperone, the Queen’s senior companion, elder sister by marriage, and lady-in-waiting, present in her royal company at all times. I am a widow and a dowager, expected to be physically dried up and spent. But I am thirty-four years old and in the full flow of my womanhood. I have no need for undying love, nor for any bright-eyed, lovelorn eagerly panting young man to flatter me by pretending to swoon at my feet, but I have great need of straightforward carnal pleasure. Keep me smiling that way and I will be your dearest friend, my friend, for who would ever dream that you would rut with the Queen of England while she shared her bedchamber with the Queen of Sicily? You will live like the Sultan himself, in your own seraglio, with two crowned queens as your willing odalisques.”

“And … you say Berengaria knows of this?”

“She does. She has not quite decided to proceed, and she believes you know nothing yet, but she is … favorably inclined towards you already, and her eyes when she watches you are full of wondering.”

The silence grew and stretched again as André St. Clair fought to keep his face unreadable and to quell the sickness that was roiling in him, a sickness caused not by the prospect of having two royal mistresses but by the callow, callous, and absolute disregard for his honor that was being shown by Richard Plantagenet and his sister. Aware that he must speak and act with extreme caution in the time ahead, he sat silent again while counting his own heartbeats, and when his count reached twenty he sat up straight and cleared his throat.

“Well, lady,” he said. “I … I must think on this. I had … I had planned to do other, very different things with my life in the coming campaign. I am to join the Temple Knights … or I was, until this moment. Now I know not what I must do about that, other than sleeping on it and deciding what must first be done. For how will we achieve this … this condition you describe? It cannot begin to happen while I am yet a Temple novice. I will have to free myself—and fortunately I have not yet taken vows—and rededicate myself to your brother’s service. After that, I presume, things can be made to flow more smoothly.”

“Aye, that they can.” Joanna’s voice was barely louder than a breath as she leaned in towards him and pulled his face to her hungry mouth, covering his lips with hers. He shuddered and convulsed, suddenly quivering with a rampant lust he had been unaware of until that moment, and he had already begun moving over to her when someone coughed and snorted loudly in the middle cavern, startling them apart. André swung upright, drawing his sword and striding out into the other chamber, where he heard urine spattering against a wall as one of the men-at-arms, still more than half asleep, relieved himself. In the distance, beyond the outer chamber, the night was silent, the howling of the wind having finally abated.

He went back into the rear cave and bade the lady Joanna a good night, then moved back out to his own bed, raging at himself and wondering if he had been as big a fool as he imagined in not taking her there and then, when he had had the opportunity. But no sooner had he formulated the question in words than he realized that he had been shocked into doing the right thing, thereby safeguarding his own honor despite his worst intentions. Sick at heart, he lay down on his makeshift bed again and thought about the perfidy of princes, sure that he would be unable to sleep for the remainder of the night. Then, like a flash of light reflecting from a distant pool, a well-known face sprang to his mind, quickening his heartbeat, and all at once he smiled, amused in spite of everything by the way in which absurdity can often become reality. He knew where he must go next, and he smiled again. Moments later, he began to snore.