Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,183

their patient as if they and not God had brought Richard back from the brink of death. Horrified to realize that Joanna did not yet know, Berengaria hastily sent a man to fetch her; one of Joanna’s ladies, her beloved Dame Beatrix, was grievously ill, too, now, and Joanna had begun dividing her time between Beatrix’s sickbed and her brother’s. After dispatching the knight to Joanna’s tent, Berengaria hurried back to her husband. She saw, though, that Richard had not noticed her absence. He was sitting up in bed, looking gaunt and pale, but his eyes were shining, and he was peppering Henri and André with questions about the siege, wanting to know if they thought the Accursed Tower could soon be brought down, if there’d been any messages from Saladin’s brother, if the French had suffered many casualties when their assault was repulsed.

Berengaria watched him for a while and then backed away from the bed. Catching the eye of one of the doctors as she moved around the screen, she beckoned him over. “If the king asks for me,” she said quietly, “tell him I have gone to ask the Bishop of Salisbury to say a special Mass tonight in celebration of this miracle.”

WHEN BERENGARIA ENTERED Joanna’s tent, she was met with so many smiles that she knew Beatrix’s crisis must have passed. This was confirmed by her first glimpse of the older woman, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully for the first time in almost a week. Joanna looked exhausted but happy, rising to greet her sister-in-law with a quick hug. “God has indeed been kind to us,” she murmured, “sparing Richard and now Beatrix.”

As they crossed the camp toward Richard’s pavilion, Joanna confided that the best proof of Beatrix’s improvement was that she was now fretting about losing her hair and nails. “I told her she need not worry about hair loss yet, for Henri said it did not occur till weeks after he’d been stricken with Arnaldia. Has Richard been fretting about that, too? He is very vain, you know,” she said with a fond smile, “for he well knows how much he has benefited from looking like a king out of some minstrel’s tale.”

“I do not think he has room in his head for nary a thought but the siege,” Berengaria said honestly. “He is remarkably single-minded, and now that he is on the mend, he wants only to take part in the fighting. I am hoping that you’ll be able to help me keep him occupied this afternoon.”

“That is why I brought this along,” Joanna said, brandishing a book richly bound in red leather. “Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, the Knight of the Lion. When Richard starts to get restless, I’ll insist upon reading it to him.” Glancing at Berengaria’s serene profile, she sighed softly, for a newlywed wife ought to be able to hold her husband’s attention without aid from his sister. They were mismatched, her brother and his Spanish bride, a falcon mated to a dove. But that would not matter as long as she could give him fledglings. Most wives found their joy in their children, not their husbands. She bit her lip, thinking of a small tomb in Monreale Cathedral, and then, shaking off her sadness with a determined effort, she began to tell Berengaria that two of her Sicilian male servants, missing for more than a fortnight, had apparently surfaced in Saladin’s camp. “At least that is what Henri heard. So I suppose their conversion to Christianity was not as sincere as I was led to believe,” she said ruefully.

By now they’d reached Richard’s tent. Their knights were delighted when the women said their services would not be required for the rest of the afternoon, for the Accursed Tower was said to be close to collapse. As they hurried off, Berengaria and Joanna entered the pavilion, only to halt in surprise, for it was deserted except for several men dozing in the July heat. Since solitude was not an attribute of kingship, they exchanged puzzled looks; why would Richard have been left alone like this? Struck by the same premonition, they hastened around the screen, where they found a rumpled, empty bed.

“My ladies?” Spinning around, they saw one of the soldiers, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “May I be of assistance?”

“Where is my lord husband, the king?”

“Last night more of the wall adjoining the Accursed Tower was brought down by our sappers, and the king wanted to be there today when