Free The King's Witch by Cecelia Holland

important lands north of Normandy and France. He was in fact a close counselor of the King of France, which was probably what was going on here: a challenge to Richard. Everybody in the place was watching, intent.
    “Have I asked you to bow down to me?” Richard said. “We own the same liege lord.” His head moved a little, toward Philip Augustus, as much acknowledgment as he would ever give the little French King.
    Baldwin said, “Yet you dare come in among us with banners and trumpets and a grand display, as if Acre is yours now, and we should step aside.”
    Rouquin saw a smile tilt the French King’s mouth. This, then, was going his way. Richard got up from his stool and came forward to face Baldwin.
    “My lord Baldwin, as a Crusader, I should bow down to no one but Christ, and I expect that you would agree; this is not the matter. I am not here to disparage any man, but to take this city. You have been here two years, true, some of you”—he looked around for Guy de Lusignan, who had begun the siege, and tilted his head slightly toward Philip Augustus, who had arrived only weeks before—“but you are still on the outside.”
    The crowd let out a howl of wrath. Rouquin grinned; he stepped back into the open tent door, where the air was better.
    Baldwin cried, “We have suffered—”
    Richard thrust his hand up, pointing, as if he could see the sky through the canvas. “You can suffer, or you can win. Which is it? Listen to me. In twelve days the moon is full. Mark that. I want forty days. In forty days, that moon will be full again, and I will have this city. Are you going to be with me or not?”
    A roar went up from them all. The scraggly Baldwin, who did look as if he had been sick, flung a glance from side to side. “Who made you lord here?”
    Richard had stopped talking to him. He lifted his gaze and took them all in, and under his gaze the whole place gradually fell still. Richard spoke to them all. “I am not lord. Christ is lord. I serve Christ. Do you?” He looked from side to side, meeting all their eyes, one at a time. “I need every man with me. I promise you Acre, but you must follow me, and give me everything you have.”
    The crowd’s mutter rose steadily, for and against. Somebody yelled, “We don’t need him—” Someone else called, “Lead us, Lionheart!” On his stool Philip Augustus was hunched over in a coil of bad temper.
    Richard’s voice rang out over all the others. “And to every man who follows me I will pay four bezants a month as long as the war goes on.”
    For an instant the tent was utterly still, as if the whole crowd had lost its breath. Then they bellowed, full-throated, beating each other on the shoulders. Suddenly they all agreed. The wordless yell became a score of voices screaming Richard’s name. Two men dashed out the tent flap with the news, and outside the cheering began also.
    Philip Augustus stood. Rouquin could just see him through the weaving bodies between them. The King of France was talking, his voice lost in the yelling, but the meaning was written on his face: Richard had done it again, Richard had undercut him again. He got up and rushed out of the tent by a back way. Rouquin laughed. The German was still sitting there as if somebody soon would tell him what had just happened. Richard stood in the middle, looking nowhere, silent in the uproar. He looked tired suddenly. Rouquin turned back to the city of Acre, which he would begin to attack in the morning.

    Edythe thought: This is why she promised me a husband.
    They had not come far, she and Johanna, only two doors along the hilltop ring of tents that housed the great men of the Crusade, to the one where the French King’s banner hung. Johanna had sent a page ahead, so they got in with no fuss. Now Edythe kept to the shadows at the back of the tent, stacked with crates and gear; up in the lighted part, Johanna walked restlessly around. The floor was spread with a carpet, but there wasn’t