“Humphrey! You’re 15! You’re grown up! You don’t have to put up with this anymore!” Isabella argued furiously with her future husband.
“If I don’t do what
Oultrejourdain says, he’ll break my face in!” Humphrey countered, just as
angrily.
“He doesn’t have the right to do
that! You’re his peer!” Isabella insisted indignantly. “You’re the Lord of
Toron!”
“What does that have to do with
anything?” Humphrey wanted to know. “It’s all very well for you to talk about my
rights,” Humphrey sneered, “he’s
never laid his fists on you!”
“Because he wouldn’t dare! Don’t
you see, Humphrey? You have to make him respect you!”
“Why the hell should he respect
me when he’s so much stronger than I am?
I’m not even a knight!”
“The King has never been knighted
either,” Isabella pointed out. “But people respect him, don’t they? Even
Oultrejourdain respects him. And you can’t say he’s stronger than
Oultrejourdain either. They say he can’t even walk anymore.”
“But he’s the King,” Humphrey pointed out in
exasperation.
“And you are the Lord of Toron!
If you don’t remind Oultrejourdain of that and insist that he treat you
according to your rank, we’ll never get out of here!”
Humphrey stared at her. “What are
you talking about?”
“Do you want to stay here
forever?” Isabella demanded. “You are Lord of Toron! We should be living in
Toron as lord and lady, not imprisoned here!”
“Oultrejourdain says I’m not
ready,” Humphrey conceded, red with shame.
“Because he likes having your
income! He’s never going to willingly
give you your inheritance. You have to make
him give it to you!”
“You make it sound so easy!”
Humphrey protested. “If you think it’s so easy, you tell him!”
“Alright, I will!” Isabella
decided, and with clenched fists she turned and started striding toward the
Great Chamber where Oultrajourdain was consulting his household officials.
Humphrey ran after her.
“Isabella! Don’t!”
“Why not?”
“We don’t know what he’ll do to
you!”
Isabella could see real fear in
Humphrey’s flushed face and she knew he was genuinely afraid for her. She
appreciated that, but she was convinced that sometimes you had to be brave. She
had had enough of being a prisoner. She was not prepared to wait for her
freedom any longer. “I don’t care what he does to me,” she told Humphrey
stubbornly. “I’m going to confront him!”
“Isabella! I’ll tell him about
Dawit!” Humphrey used the threat that had worked before.
But Isabella was beyond being
blackmailed. Her step-father had reminded her that she was not a helpless
child, she was a Princess of Jerusalem and she had more right to the throne
than did Sibylla, the daughter of a bad woman. It was because people were afraid of her, that she was kept
imprisoned here.
Isabella swept into the Great Chamber
with Humphrey in her wake, but the adults paid no attention to her. Humphrey seized
the chance to try to pull her back, whispering loudly for her to come with
him. Isabella broke free of his clasp
angrily and burst out in a loud, demanding voice. “I want to speak to you, my
lord of Oultrejourdain!”
“I’m busy.” He retorted without
even looking up from the document he was reading. “Later.”
“No, now!”
Humphrey gasped and the men of
the household snorted.
“You’ll do as you’re told!”
Oultrajourdain growled, looking up and frowning threateningly.
Isabella stood her ground. “I’m
Isabella of Jerusalem and you can’t order me around!”
Oultrajourdain burst out laughing
and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest in
bemusement. The fact that a chit of a
girl, barely eleven years old, was willing to stand up to him like this amused
him. Of course, he could have brushed her aside with a single back-handed flick
of his wrist. He could have picked her up with one hand, and dumped her in the
deepest and vilest of his dungeons, and left her there without food and water
until she begged his forgiveness, or he could simply hit her until she was
broken and streaming tears. But what was the point of demonstrating his power
over someone so weak? He used his strength to keep strong men from challenging
him and to make weak men stronger, but he saw no point in employing brute force
against girl who would never be strong and never be a threat to him — at least
not physically.
“So Madame de Jerusalem,”
Oultrajourdain asked with an amused smirk, “just what is so important that we
have to discuss it now?”
“My husband — my future husband —
turned 15 last month.” Isabella told him, starting to feel afraid now that she
was face to face with Oultrejourdain and he was staring at her so intently. His
eyes seemed to communicate a mixture of malice and amusement.
“Did he?” Oultrajourdain asked
back, feigning surprise. Then he turned on Humphrey and asked as if he could
not believe it. “Is that true, boy? Did you turn fifteen?” Before Humphrey
could answer, Oultrejourdain continued in a tone of utter contempt, “I never
would have guessed. You act more like five
than fifteen!”
“But it’s true!” Isabella insisted.
“He’s fifteen and so he is an adult! He is now Lord of Toron.”
“A lord who needs an eleven year
old girl to speak for him!” Oultrajourdain countered sharply, shaking his head
in a mixture of disbelief and scorn. “When he’s man enough to argue his own
case, Isabella, I’ll hear him out. For now, go back to your nursery and take
the little boy with you!”
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