Antichrist Read online

  “Lady,” he said. “Attend me.” He held out his hand. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out, and finally she put her fingertips on his arm and followed him away. Her cheek paled, and he saw her take a deep breath.

  “What’s wrong today?” He steered her into an alcove under the indoor balcony and stood, his shoulders blocking the way out.

  She turned to face him, her hands lost in the heavy folds of her skirt. “Your Majesty, I—Nothing’s wrong.” She blushed again. He leaned one shoulder against the column.

  “You’re so shy.” The night before, they’d spoken for over an hour, and he’d begun to think she’d grown less wary.

  “I’m afraid of you,” she said firmly.

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. She wore no jewels, only a pearl hairnet over the heavy coils of her black hair. He wanted to find a jewel the color of her eyes and have it made into a necklace for her; he stared at her eyes. Her surcoat slipped off one shoulder and she snatched at it and arranged it again.

  “Why are you scared of me?”

  “I don’t know. I’m silly. You know how girls are.”

  He grinned, and she blushed again, vividly. She didn’t look away even for an instant. She said, “Has there—has there been any news of the Empress?”

  He blinked. By the look on her face this was something bold; for a long moment he thought she meant his mother, and he frowned, bewildered. “Oh. My wife. She’s in Andria, the baby isn’t due for a month. If you think that will curdle me with shame, I’m beyond it. I’m not even touching you, see?” He raised his hands. “I’m harmless.”

  “No,” she said defiantly, and shook her head.

  “Are you afraid of me, or just of men?”

  Abruptly she smiled. “Of you, Sire. Have I your leave to go?”

  “Look over my shoulder. Is anyone watching us?”

  “Naturally,” she said. “The whole court.” Her smile deepened, and in a quick movement she dashed, by him, out into the hall. He whirled to watch her go. She was wild, this one. Ezzo, who was married to her sister, had said he’d kissed her once, but she’d refused him ever after. She looked back over her shoulder, and he caught a glimpse of her white face, the intense blue of her eyes, before she spun and lost herself in the crowd. The people watching them turned their avid faces quickly away. After sundown all the unmarried girls waited under the trees in the garden for the boys to come along, but Bianca dreamed up crazy plots, escaped over the wall at night with her friends and held midnight picnics by the sea, ambushed the overeager squires and young knights and tied them up with their belts and left them helpless in the dark. His throat tightened, thinking with longing of how the young ones played. He moved out slowly into the midst of the court.

  Ezzo, Fulk, Rinaldo and two other knights stood in a knot directly in his path, talking, and didn’t notice him; Ezzo threw his head up and roared with laughter.

  “Sweet Christ, it’s like screwing a bucket. She’s had every man from here to Etna.”

  Frederick glared at him, and Rinaldo noticed it and jarred Ezzo’s elbow. Ezzo’s face glowed from the wine he was drinking. He saw Frederick, flung out one arm to point at him, and bellowed, “Including you.”

  The men around him bowed, and Frederick laughed, wondering whom Ezzo meant. He shook his head. When he started forward he saw Adelaide, standing beside the banquet tables. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes flat, like a hawk’s—all iris.

  “I hope you sent Enzio to bed,” he said. “Such excitement.”

  “You were talking to Bianca again.”

  “She asked after Yolande.” He took a handful of almonds from a cloisonné bowl. “I have to act married on some occasions.”

  She reared back her head, snorting. Michael Scot rushed up, bubbling. “They’re all talking about Boethius again. Come help me destroy them.” Frederick gobbled half the almonds, tossed the rest down the front of Adelaide’s dress, and laughing, flew off with Scot to the argument.

  “A large number that, unfortunately, means nothing,” Brother Emil said in his slurred Latin. He pointed to the bottom figure of the column. “Most of the gross revenues are swallowed up by expenses.”

  “Brother Frederick knows that well enough,” Klaus said. “The revenues of San Germano are at any rate unimportant. Brother Frederick—”

  Frederick had been writing down names on a scrap of light paper; he looked over at the numbers and nodded. “It doesn’t justify, Klaus. Check it.” The names on the parchment had already reached above fifty. He’d have to cut them down—it was a list of his personal suite for the Crusade. He’d sent five hundred knights to Outremer in March with Filangieri; since he didn’t mean to fight a war—

  “An error of a few pence out of thousands of ducats,” Klaus said.

  “Justify it.”

  “The revenues are his, after all,” Brother Emil said. He took a quill from the case and totted up one column. While the two monks bent and clucked over the addition, Frederick crossed out the names of ten of his gentlemen. Corso could take care of everything, anyway. He looked off down the gallery toward the far end, where Enzio sat with his tutors. One of Piero’s men came out with a handful of papers, bowed, and laid them on the edge of the desk. Frederick nodded toward a list of accountings and the page took them away.

  “Brother Frederick—”

  Frederick took the sheet. “Good. My God, we’ve made money. It will ruin the name Hohenstaufen. You think we can adjust the milling rate?”

  “Yes, Sire. You’ll note they’ve finally brought their production up above the minimum we set, so the special rate is no longer necessary.”

  “Yes.” He leaned back, staring at the sheet. If he ordered the milling rate for the district raised all at once, few of the farmers would have prepared for it; they wouldn’t adjust, they’d all go into debt. If he raised it half this year and the rest the next, they’d bellow. Let them—at least they’d be able to cope with it. Limited peasant minds. He scribbled across the top of the sheet and handed it to Klaus. “Take care of it.”

  While Brother Emil read off the revenues of another of the Cistercian fiefs, he skimmed through a note from Piero on special taxes and approved a tentative schedule. Doing revenues was fun sometimes, when the algebra got complicated, but most of the time it was a crying bore. He initialed the report Emil had read and sent the monks away, drew a pile of letters over the desk to him, and studied them. Except for the superscriptions, they were identical; he signed them and hit the gong beside him for a page. Leaning back, he stared over the gallery wall into the bright sunshine.

  The Archbishop would enter Barletta tomorrow, and with him a cavalcade of messengers and presents from al-Kamil and Tommaso d’Aquino, Frederick’s agent in Syria and Cyprus. Cockatoos, the advance reports said, and hounds and hawks and, God above, that elephant. The first elephant in Italy since Hannibal’s fleet landed a herd at Reggio, unless the story was true that Harun al-Rashid had sent one to Carolus Magnus. Enzio was wild to ride on it. Gold and silver, diamonds from the African mines, sugar, pepper, myrrh, and a letter saying . . .

  What? Before the death of al-Kamil’s brother, al-Mu’azzam of Damascus, al-Kamil had been hot as a bridegroom to woo Frederick over, but now al-Mu’azzam was dead, his son too young to rule, and al-Kamil was unafraid and needed no infidel to help him.

  On the other hand, with al-Mu’azzam dead, al-Ashraf, al-Kamil’s other brother, would make a try at taking over Damascus, and al-Kamil would be wrapped up in that. And there was the inevitable pressure from Khwaresm, from the strange people east of Khwaresm, whom al-Kamil was afraid of in a way that impressed Frederick deeply. In a quarrel with his own brother, al-Kamil would not be madly willing to play friends with a Christian; it would cause too much dissension among the devout of Islam.

  Frederick chewed his thumbnail. If he played friends with al-Kamil, the devout of his own religion would scream like pigs. They’d never seen the immediate benefits of cooperati
on, much less the long-range effects. Stupid, bull-headed—everything in the East was delicately balanced and weighted, counterweighted, poised—the problem was to disturb the balance just enough to gain him what he wanted but not enough to throw the whole area into a state of flux too rapid to control.

  Crusade. He wrinkled up his nose. My grandfather went on crusade and all it got him was drowned.

  The Pope wanted him on crusade to get him out of Italy, so that all Frederick’s craven enemies could come out of their holes, band together, and tear down his kingdom; they were always there, waiting just below the sight, like some species of glum water monster, for his mistakes and over-risky ventures that would let them bite him one more time.

  But if I can deliver Jerusalem, now, if I can rescue Jerusalem—

  Barbarossa couldn’t save the Holy City, the magic Emperor, his grandfather, the greatest of the heroes. I am no hero. He fisted one hand against his chest. Jerusalem—

  Amazing. As. soon as he started thinking of Jerusalem he got caught up in the words. Deliver, save, rescue, hero, magic—It was just a city, like—like Palermo. And if he could seize it back from the Moslims, he’d raise a bulwark against the Popes no new Innocent could scale. Al-Kamil had offered twice to give it to him, which was generous of al-Kamil, since he didn’t own it.

  He wondered how long he could afford to be away from Sicily. One year, maybe fourteen months; more than that and he’d come home to find nuns in La Favara and people singing Masses in the apricot-scented hall of Troia. He pulled a clean sheet of paper toward him, dipped a pen into ink, and wrote across the top in big letters UNDER SEAL. Two swallows streaked through the gallery, dove out an archway, and flashed in again through another. Enzio shouted at them, his voice echoing dimly against the stone. Frederick drew a swallow at the top of his page.

  I must be crowned in Jerusalem.

  The thought came into his mind like a swallow. If he were crowned in Jerusalem, his kingship would have a sanctity no mere man could debate: He drew a little crown above the swallow’s head. The difficulty was that he was King of Jerusalem only because he was Yolande’s husband, and if the child she was carrying turned out to be a boy, he would be King no more. If it were a boy, he meant to call it Conrad, but he hadn’t made up his mind about a name for a girl. He didn’t like having girl children. Maria, perhaps, after Yolande’s mother. Or Constantia, after his. Girl children made difficulties in the inheritance and were a waste of time. He wrote beneath the swallow and the tall letters: Cyprus.

  Cyprus was the ideal base for any attack on Syria; it would be the ideal base as well from any attack on a Christian pilgrim seeking only to worship at the shrines of the faith and to perform his Christian responsibilities in the Holy Land. Therefore he had to control Cyprus. Gervais de What’s-his-name had arrived sometime before from Cyprus, the agent of Amalric Barlais, who had once tried to get himself elected bailli there; Frederick had ignored him because Gervais was a bore and a liar. Besides, he had his own agents in Cyprus; the first King of Cyprus had gotten his title and paraphernalia from the Emperor Henry VI. Papa. Frederick grinned, staring at the vellum, Between you and me, Dad, we have them sewn into a sack. I must get my sunny disposition from his side of the family.

  “Sire.”

  Ezzo and Fulk of Ancerra came out onto the gallery and bowed. He looked up, surprised; he hadn’t realized it was already noon. “Oh, good.” He socked the gong again, rose, and went to the gallery railing. “I need military advice.”

  Ezzo moved up alongside him, spat over the railing, and said, “Then you don’t need Fulk. He can’t—”

  “Shut Up: Command me, Sire.”

  “Yes, well, it’s delicate.” Frederick stared out toward the cherry orchard, trying not to grin. “A certain fortress, which I don’t wish damaged, holds out against me. Another fortress, in the vicinity and already mine, will rebel if its lord discovers I’m besieging the first.”

  “Why?” Ezzo said.

  “People are strange.” Frederick pinned his lips tight to hide laughter.

  “I thought we were going to go mess around with the hawks.”

  “Threaten to destroy it all,” Fulk said.

  “I can’t—the fort would defy me out of principle. I think it believes I’ll value it more if I have to work to win it.”

  “Better you destroy it than anybody else have it against your will,” Ezzo said.

  “Maybe. But there are certain interesting art works in it that I want to add to my collection.”

  Fulk said, “I didn’t know you had such a collection.” He leaned his back against the railing, on the opposite side of Frederick from Ezzo, and frowned.

  “I’m starting one. A sustained siege, without using heavy offensive weapons, would certainly win me the fort, but in doing so I run the risk of the other finding out and causing trouble.”

  “Let’s go mess with the hawks,” Ezzo said.

  “Gull the other fort in some way. A diversion.” Fulk shook his head slightly amazed.

  “Do you know what he’s talking about?” Ezzo said.

  “I . . . might.” Fulk’s long brown face settled into an impassive stare. “Sire, command me more specifically.”

  “I accept your advice, Fulk. I want a diversion conducted against the fort already in my favor while I lay siege to the one I want.”

  Ezzo grumbled something. “What are you talking about?”

  “Bianca Lancia,” Fulk murmured.

  Frederick laughed.

  “Oho.” Ezzo slapped his hands on the railing. “Art works, hunh? Collection? You already have one. Why don’t you just order her?”

  Frederick looked up at, the swallows’ nest in the arch. “Ezzo, it’s more complex than that.”

  “Adelaide,” Fulk said. “Didn’t I hear that Adelaide is taking Bianca around with her, to keep the child from the paths of wickedness?”

  “Yes.” Frederick’s eyes remained on the swallows’ nest.

  Ezzo guffawed. “Look. Bianca is my ward. Let me talk to her.”

  “Jesus,” Fulk said. “You’d turn it into a parley of arms. This is a question of love, Ezzo, you ass.”

  Frederick said, “Fulk, you’re a widower, why don’t—”

  “Oh, no,” Fulk said. “Not either. If I married Bianca, I’d insist on rights, and Adelaide’s too bitchy.”

  “Fulk. After all I’ve done for you.”

  “No, Sire.”

  “Let’s go mess with the hawks,” Ezzo said.

  “Not until we settle this.”

  Fulk said, “Let Ezzo woo Adelaide. Not obviously, but enough to keep her diverted while you sweet-talk Bianca.”

  Frederick glanced doubtfully at Ezzo. “Well?”

  “Fine with me. Ippolita has been after me to get another mistress anyway, ever since Elena left. She says when I’m home so much I’m a nuisance.”

  “Be circumspect. If she thinks I know about it she’ll figure everything out.”

  Ezzo laughed.

  “Is His Majesty planning to return to Barletta today?” Simone asked Hasan. Looking across the mews to the door, Frederick saw Hasan shrug, glance out the window, and make a mild face. Frederick laughed, looking back at the hawk on the high perch, and pulled his glove tight.

  “She’s going to be beautiful. Dark-brown peregrines are better than gerfalcons. See to the jesses.” He held out his fist to the young hawk. “Come along, pretty baby, come to your old man.”

  Behind him Hasan muffled a laugh.

  The young hawk stepped onto his fist, her talons hooked like scimitars; her dark plumage shone even in the uncertain light of the mews. Reddish bars marked her tail. Frederick took a scrap of meat from the Saracen falconer standing beside him and rubbed it quickly and lightly over the hawk’s feet, breast, and beak, and she snapped the meat out of his fingers.

  “You’re not supposed to feed them in the afternoon,” the Saracen muttered.

  “I want her to love me.”

  The pe
regrine filled him with pleasure—even with her eyes seeled she was alert and fierce on his fist, but calm. Grave, he thought, and right away knew that was wrong, but he couldn’t find the right word and gave up immediately. “What am I going to call you, pretty baby?”

  “Lord,” Hasan said, “it’s going to rain, probably. If you want to return to the palace—”

  Frederick turned and glared at him and went back to talking to the peregrine, getting her used to his voice. Her head turned toward his face, and he murmured, “You’re going to be a beauty, and a good hunter too.”

  “Do you want to try for cranes before the season’s over?” Simone said.

  “No.” Frederick put the peregrine back on her perch, and the Saracen hooked up her jesses again. “The season’s too short; if one of the hawks got hurt we’d have to mew her again and she’d stay out of action too long. Hasan, let’s go.”

  Hasan sighed and pushed himself away from the wall he’d been leaning on—his arms came unfolded. “We’re going to get caught in the wet.”

  “Maybe.” Frederick went ahead of him out of the mews and ran down the circling staircase; the falconers thundered after him like a small avalanche. The guard on the door yanked it open, and he walked out into the courtyard. The raw wind struck his face. Over the far keep the clouds shoved up across the sky, dark gray and mountainous. Hasan was right: they were going to get rained on. A groom trotted out, leading Dragon by the bridle.

  “Someday—whoa, you—” He grabbed the reins and stepped up into his saddle. “Someday I’m going to build a hunting, lodge that—whoa, Dragon.” The black horse half reared and wheeled to the right, snorting. Clattering on the wide stones of the courtyard, the Saracens’ white mares surrounded him in a loose circle. Frederick looked up at the walls around him. He’d been sketching plans for a hunting lodge for nearly a year—octagonal, with an enclosed courtyard. Beyond the dark red stone of the walls around him the clouds looked nearly blue. The gate rose with a long squeal of the winch.