Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,213

am not welcome here, Madame,” he said forthrightly. “I’ve grown weary of fending off the de Lusignans’ insults and malice. And your lord brother made his own feelings clear by not inviting me to that council yesterday. I doubt that I could have changed their minds, but I would have liked the opportunity to try.”

“You do not approve of the killing of the garrison?”

She bristled, so obviously ready to charge into battle on her brother’s behalf that he fought back a smile. “I think it was a mistake, my lady.”

“Why?” she asked warily. “My brother felt that it was necessary and I trust his judgment, am sure he was right.”

“Yes . . . but you are still not happy about it, are you?”

Her mouth dropped open. How could this man, a stranger, know what she’d confided to no one? “Why do you say that?” she demanded. “You do not know me, after all!”

“I know you came to womanhood in Sicily.”

Joanna stared at him. “Why does that matter?”

“It means you grew up with Saracens. You got to know them as people, not just as infidels or enemies. You are not like so many who come here after taking the cross, horrified to find that we have adopted some Saracen customs, that we cooperate with them at times. From what I’ve heard of Sicily, it is more like Outremer than France or England. So your background practically makes you an honorary poulaine, my lady,” he said with a smile.

“I’d never thought of it in that light,” she admitted. “We had palace servants who were supposedly Christian, though all knew their hearts and souls were still Muslim. My husband looked the other way, saying a good man was a good man, whatever his faith. But few at Acre could understand such a view; they’d have seen his tolerance as the rankest heresy.”

“May I?” he asked, gesturing toward the bench. She nodded, for he was very tall and she was getting a crick in her neck, having to look up at him. Sitting down beside her, he said, “We’ve often encountered this problem with men arriving from the western kingdoms, as eager to kill infidels as they were to visit the holy sites. They took as gospel the words of St Bernard of Clairvaux, who preached that Christians should glory in the death of a pagan, for it glorifies Christ himself. When they discovered that we sometimes lived in peace with Saracens, that friendships were not unknown, that one of our kings consulted physicians in Damascus for his ailing son, they were convinced that we were false Christians, even apostates.”

“What you said about St Bernard . . . Richard does not believe that,” she insisted and was pleased when he did not dispute her.

“I know, and I confess I was surprised. I’d heard he was the first Christian prince to take the cross, so I’d assumed he was afire with holy zeal. I’d not expected him to be so interested in the Saracens, so genuinely curious. No, I do not doubt that his decision yesterday was a military one. I still regret it.”

“What else could Richard have done?” she asked, but without her earlier hostility ; she truly wanted to know what he thought.

“He could not stay much longer at Acre; I agree with that. And he was justified to act when Saladin did not pay the ransom. But I think he ought to have sold the men as slaves instead of putting them to death.”

Joanna was startled. “That would not have occurred to Richard, for slavery is no longer known in western kingdoms. I remember being shocked by the slave markets in Palermo, for I’d never encountered anything like that before.”

“But it is known in the east. The Saracens sell captives into slavery all the time, and that is what they expected Richard to do if it came to that. I am not saying they’d have been happy about it. They’d have understood, though.”

Joanna felt a fleeting regret, wondering if things might have been different had Balian taken part in yesterday’s council. The sun had shifted and they were losing the shade, but she was not ready to go, for this poulain lord was a very interesting man, not at all what she’d expected. What a pity he was so closely allied to Conrad of Montferrat, for he’d have made a much more valuable ally for Richard than those infernal de Lusignans. At least now she understood why she’d been so uncomfortable about