Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,84

the lifeless, empty landscape, and the surrounding drifts of snow were so blindingly bright that they had to squint and shade their eyes. They were vastly relieved to reach the summit of the pass, only to realize that the worst still lay ahead of them. The men would have to dismount and lead their horses, the marons directed, and the queen and her ladies must be strapped into ox hides so they could be slid down the slope. None bridled at the marons’ assertiveness, for on the alpine heights of Montgenèvre, theirs was the command of kings. Seeing the dismay on so many faces, the marons tried to reassure these novice mountaineers that it could have been much worse. There had been journeys when the horses had to be lowered on ropes, their legs bound. This time they need only blindfold the more fearful of the animals, they said cheerfully. After an oppressive silence, Hawisa stirred nervous laughter when she said, as if ordering a cup of wine, “I’ll take a blindfold, too, if you please.”

Eleanor had crossed the Alps once before; she’d been much younger then, though. “I never expected to be sledding down a mountain at my age,” she muttered to Hawisa, but she was the first to allow herself to be wrapped in an ox hide, for queens led by example. It was a rough, bumpy ride, but she made only one concession to the brittle bones and physical frailties of a woman of sixty-six, closing her eyes during the most perilous part of the descent. She could hear horses whinnying in fright, could hear men’s muffled oaths as they edged along the trail, sometimes on their hands and knees, and then, hysterical sobbing. She was thankful when the cries were abruptly cut off, for they’d been warned that even loud talking could bring on an avalanche. She wondered if that terrified woman was one of her ladies or one of Berengaria’s. She wondered, too, if any queen had ever been swallowed up in an alpine crevice. Was Harry watching from Purgatory and laughing? And how in God’s Name had the Carthaginian general Hannibal ever gotten elephants across the Alps?

A hospice was nestled at the foot of the pass, its monks waiting to welcome the shaken, shivering travelers with mulled wine and the promise of food and beds for the night; they knew from experience that even highborn guests would not complain if the wine was weak, the blankets frayed, and the straw mattresses infested with fleas, so thankful would they be to have survived their pilgrimage through the Montgenèvre Pass. The women were escorted to safety first; it would be hours before the pack mules and the last of the bearers trudged into the hospice. They huddled in front of the open hearth, seeking to thaw frozen fingers and feet, expressing their heartfelt relief that the worst was over. Until they had to return in the spring, Hawisa reminded them darkly, and it would be almost as dangerous then, for the marons claimed avalanches were more common when the snows began to melt. “I may well start life anew in Sicily,” she declared, so dramatically that Eleanor could not help smiling, and held out her wine cup for Hawisa to share, a gesture of royal favor that caused some of the other women to look askance at the countess.

Hawisa drank deeply, sighing with pleasure as the wine’s warmth flowed into her veins. “Did you hear that Spanish girl, Uracca?” she asked the queen. “She was on the verge of panic, and it might well have spread. But Mercadier strode over and stopped her screams by clamping his hand over her mouth. She was quiet as a mouse after that!”

“I daresay she was,” Eleanor said dryly, for she’d noticed Mercadier’s unsettling affect upon women; they were either appalled or secretly attracted in spite of themselves. When she said as much to Hawisa, the countess laughed, saying she’d never confess which response was hers, and Eleanor laughed, too, for the younger woman’s blithe insouciance stirred echoes of a dearly missed friend, Maud, the Countess of Chester.

“Of course, once we were safe, Uracca went off in a fury to Berengaria, complaining that a ‘lowborn routier’ had dared to lay his hands upon her. But Berengaria surprised me. She gave the girl a right sharp talking to, saying that she’d put us all at risk. She then told her, more kindly, that it is only natural to be afraid, but