The King's Witch by Cecelia Holland

a while in Italy. He threw up then, and shivered.”
    She made an unfeminine grunt in her chest. She got up, raked her fingers through her hair and coiled it up in a knot at the nape of her neck, and went off out of the tent. In a few moments she was back, and she lay down on the floor by the bed and slept there. More than anything else that reassured him, that she went back to sleep. He settled down to wait out the night.

    In the morning, swarms of men had gathered outside the tent to attend on the King. Rumors swept through the camp: He was dead, he was raving, devils had issued from his throat. Johanna went out several times and ordered the crowd away, but they would not go. She was constantly on the edge of crying, but she dared not leak a single drop. Everybody was watching her. Whenever they saw her, men shouted questions at her.
    The King was well enough, she said, but sleeping. Now they should all go. They did not leave. Guy de Lusignan pushed through the crowd—or his men came first, pushing, to make way for him—and she had to let him in. Her page pulled the tent flap firmly closed on the gawkers outside.
    Guy went toward the bed, where Richard lay, his eyes closed and his mouth open. Rouquin was gone and Edythe was sleeping in Johanna’s bed; Lilia sat by the King’s shoulder. Guy crossed himself.
    “Is it the fever?”
    Johanna pressed her palms together. She had a confused feeling this was her fault, that talking to the King of France behind Richard’s back had sickened her brother, like the hole in the thatch that let in devils. “His doctor believes he will be well soon.” This was not exactly what Edythe had said. Guy, she remembered, had seen his wife and children die of a camp fever.
    “He will be well,” she said, again. Her voice rang harsh in her own ears. “He is getting well.”
    “This is not a good time for him to be sick.” Guy faced her. “Conrad is coming.”
    “The other King,” Johanna said, and wished she had put it more gracefully. She half-turned away from him. She did not want to heed anything outside this tent, but she had to. “Aren’t the Crusaders supposed to hold a council? To determine the true King of Jerusalem?”
    “The Leper King put that in his will, when he felt himself dying. He knew his only male heir probably would not live long. He decreed that the Kings of England and France and the Emperor of the Germans should meet to choose the rightful King of Jerusalem.” Guy said this as if he had said it often before. Clearly it was large in his mind. In this game his only counter was Richard. His gaze went to Richard again. “Will he live?”
    Her gorge rose. Her brother’s life, reduced to a pawn in this man’s little scheme to win a meaningless crown. Richard favored him, and she knew why: because he was Poitevin, and Conrad was from Montferrat. That seemed tenuous to her. But she knew her place in this, and she acted it. She put her hand on his arm.
    “We shall support you,” she said, quietly. “You need not fear for that.”
    The taut, handsome face before her altered slightly, easier. The damned man thought of nothing but himself. “When will he—get well?”
    “Soon, I hope.”
    “Does it still hold—the oath to take Acre by the next full moon?”
    “While Richard lives, his word lives,” she said. “And Richard surely lives.”
    Another page had appeared at the tent flap; Johanna’s hand still lay on Guy’s arm, and she nudged him that way. “Keep faith, my lord.” She drew her hand back and crossed herself.
    The coming of King Conrad was only another problem in the sea of problems. She saw King Guy out and let Humphrey de Toron in.
    He came with his usual flock of attendants, whom with a look she drove away to the far corner of the tent, among some boxes. Their lord went at once to Richard’s bedside and stood there and said some Latin under his breath and crossed himself. Johanna waited for him under the peak of the tent. He came back