and father and son exchanged smiles and greetings in passing.
Moments later, Andre was alone again and growing ever more despondent as he attempted to analyze the welter of misgivings that was plaguing him, the first and most troubling of them stemming directly from the conflicting loyalties of his obligations to the King and to the Order of Sion. He had no difficulty at all concerning the Order of the Temple, for membership in that organization was merely a protective coat he would wear to make it easier for him to do what he must do on behalf of the Order of Sion. But he yet felt guilty over Richard, his liege lord, who could be permitted to suspect nothing, ever, about Andre’s true loyalties.
And then, he reflected, there was the matter of the King’s women, which, he had begun to think in recent days, filled him up inside with hollow, reverberating emptiness and stirrings of temptation and anticipation. He felt no real guilt over that, but somehow he believed that he
And yet whose trust would he be violating if, in fact, he went any farther in pursuit of the urgings, to this point mainly formless and unfocused, that had recently been swimming lazily at the deepest reaches of his mind? Were he to indulge his attraction to the Princess, now Queen, Berengaria, whose trust would he betray? Surely not Richard’s. He doubted that King Richard would care much, if at all. And would his admiration be a betrayal of trust to Berengaria, rebuffed and barely tolerated by an unnatural husband, and sneered at by the rest of the world? He had heard before he met her that she was less than beautiful, and he was prepared to admit, upon recollection, that when first he saw her he had thought that judgment accurate. But then, with astonishing speed, he had become aware of certain things about her—her smile, and the smoothness of her skin, and the absolute absence of flaws in her face—and he could not recall when she had changed within his mind to being beautiful, although it had all taken place in a matter of hours, not even days.
The same held true for Queen Joanna. He could find no betrayal of trust in the thought of holding her willingly within the circle of his arm, clothed or unclothed. This woman was a widow and a Queen, perhaps a little past her prime at thirty, he would have said days earlier, from what he understood of women, but certainly not yet old, and accountable to no man for her actions.
He suddenly realized he had become aroused by what he was allowing himself to think, and he straightened his back and squared his shoulders, shaking his head from side to side as though to repel his thoughts the way a dog will shake water from its coat. He was to be a Templar knight, and no matter how little import he might place on that distinction, there were considerations to be taken into account that he could not ignore. His honor was involved. If he were to become a Templar, then he would be required to take the vows. Two of these were variants of vows he had already taken when he joined the Order of Sion: the vow of total obedience to his Master and superiors, and the vow to hold no worldly goods in person, but to share all in common with his brethren in the Order. Only the third vow would be completely new to him, but that, a vow of chastity, was the one that caused him most concern. Left to his own choices, he would never have considered taking such a vow. But if he were forced to take the vow, then he would live by it, and that thought rendered his idle speculation over the King’s ladies unthinkable. Then, striving determinedly to empty his mind of all such thoughts, he struck out towards the harbor and his billet aboard ship.
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.
Andre 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 Andre 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 Andre 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 Andre 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. Andre 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?” Andre asked, and the huntsman nodded, feeling no need to speak. Andre 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 Andre 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 Andre. “Your guess is as good as mine. But it’s your hunt.”
Andre 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. Andre 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 Andre 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
