Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,192

lord king?” He turned his gaze back to Philippe, his expression hopeful, his eyes gleaming.

Philippe reached for his wine cup and drank, not for courage, but to help him swallow the bile rising in his throat. “I have no choice,” he said, very evenly, determined not to let Richard bait him into losing his temper. “My health has been dangerously impaired by my recent illness and my doctors tell me that if I do not return to my own realm for treatment, it might well cost my life.”

“Indeed?” Richard’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “I was told that your illness was not as serious as my own bout with Arnaldia.” He left it for their audience to draw the obvious conclusion—that he’d nearly died and all knew it, yet he was not renouncing their holy cause.

Philippe realized how lame his health excuse would sound. But what else could he offer? He could not very well admit that his concern over securing possession of Artois mattered more than the liberation of Jerusalem or that he’d loathed every moment of every day since his arrival in Outremer and could not abide the prospect of months, even years, in the English king’s company. “My doctors insist that I have no choice but to return to France. Lest you forget, my lord Richard, my heir is a young child, often ailing. If I die in the Holy Land, my realm would be thrown into turmoil.”

Richard was thoroughly enjoying himself by now. “Your worries about your heir are understandable,” he said sympathetically, one king to another. “I have concerns about mine, too.” Looking around the hall, he saw that Philippe was utterly isolated; even his own men were staring at him in stunned disbelief. Dropping the pretense of commiseration, then, he went in for the kill, his tone challenging, blade-sharp. “It is no easy thing to take the cross, nor is it meant to be. It is a burden that all true Christians willingly accept, even if they must make the ultimate sacrifice for Our Lord Christ. You took a holy vow to recover Jerusalem from Saladin, not to assist in Acre’s fall and then go home once you lost interest. How will you explain your failure to your subjects? To God?”

Philippe’s eyes had narrowed to slits, hot color staining his face and throat. “You are not the one to lecture others about holy oaths!” he spat, unable to contain himself any longer. “Time and time again you swore to wed my sister, lying to my face whilst you were conniving behind my back to marry Sancho of Navarre’s daughter!”

For the moment, all the others were forgotten, and it was as if they were the only two men in the hall, in the world, so intense was the hostility that scorched between them. “If you want to discuss the reason why I refused to marry your sister, I am quite willing to do so,” Richard warned. “But do you truly want to go down that road, Philippe?”

The French king did not, regretting the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. But memories of the bitter confrontation in Messina had come flooding back, memories of that humiliating defeat at this man’s hands. He felt like that now, well aware that Richard had their audience on his side, just as he had in that wretched Sicilian chapel. “You want me to stay in Outremer?” he said, his voice thickening, throbbing with fury. “I will disregard my doctors’ advice and do so—provided that you honor the agreement we made in Messina. We swore that we would divide equally all that we won, did we not? Yet you have not done so.”

“What are you talking about? I even gave you a share of my sister’s dower and you had no right whatsoever to that!”

“But not Cyprus!” Philippe was on his feet now, sure that he’d found a way to put Richard in the wrong. “I am entitled to half of Cyprus by the terms of our Messina pact. Dare you deny it?”

“Damned right I do! I took Cyprus only because I was forced to it, because Isaac Comnenus—the Duke of Austria’s illustrious kinsman—threatened my sister, my betrothed, and my men. It was never part of our pact, which was to share what we conquered in the Holy Land.” Richard paused for breath, and then smiled, the way he did on the battlefield when he saw a foe’s vulnerability. “If you want to expand the terms of our