I nodded with empathy. Jean laughed for some reason and then grew serious again. “Emperor Frederick could have been a wonderful king,” he went on, looking back at the treetops. “If only he really governed here himself. But that will never happen. In three years, his son Conrad will come of age and reign in Jerusalem. And ifheshould marry a daughter of the land and produce offspring, then the Holy Kingdom of Jerusalem will shine like a pearl in the crown of Christendom, as it deserves.”
I couldn’t help but smile, and Jean smiled with me. He poured wine for us both.
“You wanted to tell me why you hate de Brienne so much,” I said when his silence grew long.
“Indeed, my lady.” He sipped from the wine and continued. “Thibaut arrived last September with a large corps and good intentions. He lingered in Acre longer than he might have—if mostly because he wanted to properly understand the complexity of the kingdom’s arrayed forces. At the start of winter, we began to move south, with the aim of strengthening the fortifications of Jaffa and Ashkelon.
“When we camped in Jaffa, two of the barons who came with Thibaut made a fortuitous assault on a caravan of Saracens and returned with a haul of looted treasure. De Brienne was deeply jealous. He pressured some other foreign barons to embark on a hasty and irresponsible attack, fattening their inflated heads with promises of treasure and glory. Bar and Burgundy, Thibaut’s longtime rivals, joined forces with Gautier.
“My brother and I tried to dissuade them from the foolish adventure, and Thibaut refused to join his knights in the attack, but de Brienne and his group did not listen. They left Jaffa, where we were camped, in the dead of night, and we went with them so as to try to prevent a crushing defeat. But we failed—many of our best men were killed, and even more were captured, and we were forced to return north in disgrace.” He paused and then added in a raspy voice, “The Saracens were full of fighting zeal and gathered their forces, and a month later we lost Jerusalem.” He turned his face away.
I could not imagine what that city, my birthplace, meant to him. I was already totally disconnected from it, but its streets and buildings and walls and stairways were building blocks in many of my dreams, and sometimes I even had flashes of it during the day, as if it were branded on my nervous system. Jean took a deep breath and went on. “De Brienne, a fat peacock like him, doesn’t even understand wherehe went wrong. He was raised on the exaggerated legends of his uncle, our poor King Jean de Brienne, who showed so much promise at the start of his reign and was so pitiful at its end.” Jean’s eyes blurred. “He was the greatest failure of a king in the history of our kingdom, apart from Guy de Lusignan.” Here, Jean spat with an expression of disgust, and I jumped a little in surprise. “This overgrown baby, Gautier, thinks that all that is needed to be successful is a strong attack. He does not understand that the attack is just the head of the spear of calculated and meticulous planning, which takes into account all possibilities, resources, and consequences.
“Now, we have a golden opportunity that will not repeat itself,” Jean said animatedly, running his hand over his beard. “The internal conflict between Damascus and Egypt could give us an advantage in our diplomatic efforts, and if Thibaut plays his cards right, he may recover many of our possessions, perhaps even control of Jerusalem, and all this without shedding a drop of blood, perhaps.
“But de Brienne continues to drip poison in his ear and in those of the other barons in the council of nobles, instigating fighting and disputes,” said Jean with disgust. I almost thought he might spit again. “All he desires is to charge at the head of a company of armored knights with his family’s flag flying over him. I pray he will find himself weltering in his own blood.” Jean shook his head and turned to me, smiling.
“I must have bored you to death, my lady,” he said with a look of self-criticism. “When I should be reading you the poem I wrote for you or kissing your neck,” he said, taking up my hand and kissing it lightly.
“It’s actually really interesting, but you did not tell me much new information,” I said with the raised eyebrows of a know-it-all. “I read everything I could about you and the conflicts between the Ayyubid emirs.”
“What do you mean?” Jean asked, shaken, and pulled away from me. “Where did you read that? How?”
“I … I … read about it in an encyclopedia,” I said, embarrassed, frightened by his suspicious eyes. I could not remember when exactly they had started compiling encyclopedias.
“I do not understand what you are saying,” said Jean, still tense. His eyes, wandering with concern, landed on the spring. He returned his gaze to me, calmer now. “You’re from … from the future,” he said, as if reassuring himself that everything was all right.
“In my time, there are many books about the history of the kingdom,” I tried to explain in a way that would sound reasonable to him. “Quite a lot of books. I read some of them to better understand what was going on here. They describe Thibaut’s crusade—”
“Really?” said Jean, a sparkle of pleasure in his eyes, like a child. “Eight hundred years from now, they still remember our deeds of glory?”
“Your name is recalled more than once in the story of the days of the kingdom.” That was the truth; here and there, I had managed to find references, if rather laconic, about Jean d’Ibelin, Count of Arsur. I tried not to think about the fact that Jean’s near future was in fact my distant past.
“I do not dare ask in what way my name is remembered,” said Jean. He shivered. Brunette came back under the canopy of the tree and pressed her nose against his.
“Rightly so,” I replied, squirming a little. “I think it’s forbidden for me to tell you anything. It could make for terrible problems in the time-space continuum,” I added. Jean looked at me as if I had just vomited up a frog.
“Never mind,” I sighed and scratched Brunette behind the ears. “Do you know what time it is?” It must have been several hours since I had left the house, but it was hard for me to guess how many. Three, five, or seven? Time passed differently here, without the steady beat of clocks to measure it.
“That is a question that you ask again and again,” said Jean, his pretty eyebrows knit together in wonder. “I do not understand your meaning. Do you want to know if it is already the hour for prayer?”
“No, no…,” I laughed. “I want to know if I am late getting home. They’re waiting for me there,” I added sheepishly.
“Why do you not look at the sun?” Jean asked, still looking at me as if at a slow child.
I coughed in embarrassment. Should I tell him about the Industrial Revolution and the structure and importance of hours in the modern day? I decided to put that off until another opportunity. “Never mind,” I said. He smiled at me, cupped my face in his hands, and said, “Never mind, really.” We kissed for a few moments, but after several seconds, he pulled away from me and gestured with his head to the place where Hugh was stationed, still and inert as a statue, with his back to us.
“Is spouse breach really acceptable in your time?” Jean then asked, with just a tiny dastardly twinkle in his eye. “Does your husband know that you are spending time with another man?” The question seemed to genuinely interest him. I tried to answer him honestly.
“It’s much more acceptable but still considered a sin,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “And my husband … he is no small ‘spouse-breacher’ himself. But he does not exactly know about this, no. Not just now, anyway.” I did not know how Jean would accept my dubious ideas regarding sexual freedom, and I did not wish to put that to the test right now. I went on before he managed to respond. “And does your wife know that you are a spouse-breacher, my lord?” I allowed myself a tiny glimmer of mischief in my expression too.
Jean looked at me for some time without answering, and a smile slowly spread across his face. It seemed to me that he was considering this question for the first time. “I will take your example, my witty lady, and answer as you do: ‘Not at this moment,’” he said. I wanted to ask if his wife might be committing adultery herself, perhaps at this precise moment, but I stopped myself. I had the feeling that this would amuse him much less.
I tried to think of an excuse to somehow send that damned Hugh away, but I could not think of anything. I looked up between the branches of the treetop—the sun was already closer to the sea than to the middle of the sky, and I shifted uncomfortably. My thoughts returned to the factory clock.
“I brought you something,” I remembered happily and started rummaging in my bag for the Renault car plans I had printed. So as not to wrinkle them, I had put the pages into plastic page protectors. Jean’s eyes opened wide when I pulled them out, and he nearly grabbed the plastic from me.
“What is this wondrous thing?” he asked in amazement as he examined the page protector from every angle.
