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Her brother is beautiful, they say. A golden prince belonging to a most noble house, a beautiful boy who one day, if God intends it, will reign over the kingdom of Jerusalem and safeguard it for Christendom.

Sibylla can’t remember him with any clarity, this little brother of hers. Snatches of memory come to her while she’s about her tasks in the convent. When she’s gathering herbs, sweet-scented in her hands, she remembers the smell of childhood and the flurrying of maidservants’ skirts. When she’s busy with her needlework, she remembers sunlight, brilliant and sharp, flashed upon shadowed tiles as she was chased around and around a courtyard, squeals of boyish laughter echoing after her.

When she’s reading, she recalls he had a pet bird in a cage. Not a bird native to the Holy Land but one from Boulogne, a place so far distant and incomprehensible as to seem exotic, though the bird itself was a poor, drab thing. Its song was a burble. She remembers that. She pulled the dark cloth from its cage once to see it, to make it sing, and it had just sat there and looked at her.

When she makes her ablutions in the morning, Sibylla pours cold water from an earthenware jug into a stone bowl. She angles it to the window so the sun strikes the surface of the water, and she studies her reflection and wonders if she, too, is beautiful.

*

Baldwin is crowned king at the age of thirteen. He writes to her soon after. Not a brief note dictated to a scribe but a personal letter written in his own hand. Sibylla sits in the garden and looks at the sweep and curl of her brother’s calligraphy. It’s elegant, but also hesitant. She finds that interesting, and compares it to her own scribbling hand. Her great-aunt Ioventa, abbess of the convent, declares that Sibylla’s galloping sentences are proof of her impetuous, unpredictable nature.

“Grandmother Melisende was impetuous and unpredictable,” Sibylla says.

Ioventa sniffs. “She was a queen.”

When next he writes, her brother sends a string of pearls. Sibylla twines them around her wrist and hand and holds them up to the light, admiring the lustre against her skin. Though she dwells within the convent walls and her great-aunt constantly reminds her to veil her face, Sibylla has freckles from smiling too often at the sun and her arms are tanned. The pearls, like her, are not white but a mix of cream and gold.

“Vanity,” declares Ioventa when Sibylla shows her the pearls. “While you remain in this house, you have no need for such fripperies.”

Sibylla holds onto the necklace. “I am a princess.”

“That does not make you deserving.”

“My brother sends them as a gift.”

Ioventa’s mouth thins into a line. “He wants your acquiescence.”

“I don’t think so.” Sibylla touches a finger to the pearls and lets them roll over her wrist. “I believe he thinks the pearls will suit me.”

Muttering about pride, Ioventa turns away.

It’s not about pride or acquiescence, Sibylla knows that. Baldwin has asked for nothing in his letters. He makes no demands that she prepare herself for betrothal. His letters are instead warm, simple things, fragments of memory and discussions of poetry or boasts of fine hawks. He is a king, but he is also a boy, and she is his elder sister. He writes to her not to command her life and loyalty but from affection. She remembers now that they were close when they were still infants, before duty separated them. She remembers, and she is glad that they can be close again.

*

She wears the pearls around her wrist beneath her sleeves until she decides what to do with them. One evening she burns through the silken thread and unstrings the pearls. They scatter across the floor and she crawls after them, laughing.

Two days later she accompanies her great-aunt on a visit outside of the convent. They travel most of the way by curtained litter, and Sibylla catches only glimpses of the town—buildings of mud-brick and stone, the flutter of colourful awnings, heaps of spices and fruits and bolts of cloth in the marketplace, the smell of men and horses and dust and heat. There are beggars, some maimed by war, others sick and diseased. When the litter halts for a moment, Sibylla takes one of the unstrung pearls and tosses it towards a beggar whose ruined body is at odds with his open, attractive face.

The beggar stares, then moves swiftly to snatch up the pearl, expression alight.

Sibylla smiles and lets the curtain drop.

Over the weeks and months, she disposes of several more pearls this way, choosing the recipients with care. She listens to the gossip of the lay servants and the gatekeeper at the convent, and sends pearls to those she judges as most deserving or most in need of hope—a young mother recently widowed, for example, or a carpenter whose workshop burned down.

She documents her gifts only in her heart and with prayer. Baldwin sends many more letters, but never again does he send a gift. He doesn’t ask if she liked the pearls, and so she doesn’t mention them either.

*

When she’s sixteen, Sibylla is told she will marry. Her time of obscurity in the convent is over, and she travels to Jerusalem under heavy guard. Naturally she wonders about her husband-to-be, but mainly she’s curious about meeting her brother again.

Baldwin is as beautiful as they say. As beautiful as the sun, dressed in white silk and cloth-of-gold, jewels ornamenting his brow in a dazzling arc, but when she approaches to give him the kiss of peace, she sees the whiteness strewn through his skin like veins through marble, and she sees the deadness of his top lip.

His speech is slow and measured when he addresses her. After a few pleasantries, he says, “Some time ago, I gave you a gift, sister.”

She puts a hand to her chest, armoured with gold and gems. “You have given me many gifts, Your Highness.”

He frowns, gesturing with a hand that bears similar marks to his face. His little finger is wizened, seeming to shrink in on itself. “Not these baubles. These are our mother’s choice. I speak of another gift.”

Sibylla meets his gaze. “The pearls.”

“I chose them myself in the hope that you would like them.” Baldwin tilts his head a little. The jewels on his headdress clash and chime. They’re not as bright as the expression in his eyes, rich with patient humour. “I know little of what pleases a woman, but since you are more than that—since you are my sister...”

She laughs. “I was delighted with your gift, Highness.”

He smiles as best he can. “Then perhaps you will wear it sometime.”

*

She wears the pearls to wed William Longsword.

Her mother fusses at her to discard them and wear something more befitting the Princess of Jerusalem, but Sibylla refuses.

“Such a simple necklace makes me look modest,” she says.

Her mother raises her eyebrows. “It makes you look convent-bred.”

Sibylla bites the inside of her cheek. “Perhaps it will remind my husband that marriage has a holy purpose in addition to earthly objectives.”

William doesn’t look at the pearls even once during the ceremony. It seems her youth and beauty is lure enough for now.

Baldwin looks, though. He looks pointedly. She re-strung the necklace herself, spacing the remaining pearls at wide intervals. She refuses to apologise for what she’s done, so she displays it against her skin.

Her brother’s mouth cannot twitch, but she sees the humour in his eyes.

*

The disease devours him. Baldwin shrivels and wastes away even as Sibylla swells with child.

“I will name him for you,” she tells him, knowing she will be Queen some day, knowing that she carries the heir to the kingdom of Jerusalem.

“Your husband has no say in the matter?” Baldwin asks, amused.

Sibylla tosses her head and gives an unladylike snort. “None.”

She has more pearls now, headdresses and necklaces and earrings smothered in pearls, gifts from her disinterested husband and suitors of one kind or another, but still she wears Baldwin’s gift at her throat beneath a rich flame-coloured silk scarf.

He chuckles and reaches for the silver goblet placed nearby. The sickness makes him clumsy, and he knocks over the cup. Wine spills, a deep splash of red draining across the table and onto the tiles of the courtyard. Servants hurry forward, but Sibylla waves them away. She mops up, pours more wine, then sets the goblet in his hand, curling his dead white fingers about the stem.

Baldwin studies her. “I do not disgust you?”

She returns to her seat. “The disease makes me uncomfortable. You do not.”

“A politic answer.”

“The truth.” Sibylla gnaws her lip, then says, “I fear that it hurts you. Not physically—I know you can’t feel pain in the afflicted areas—but... I fear the numbness may turn inwards and harm your soul.”

“A king is responsible for more than one soul.” Baldwin cannot smile now, but the look in his eyes is gentle. “Even if I should lose mine, there are others that need my care and attention.”

She puts a hand over the slight curve of her belly. “How do you do it? How do you bear the weight of that responsibility?”

He chuckles, a low, raspy sound like dried leaves blown through dust. “With great patience. And that is what this disease has taught me, if nothing else. Patience—and perhaps forgiveness.”

“What of hope?”

Baldwin shakes his head. “Not for myself. But for other souls, yes.”

They lapse into silence and listen to the birdsong.

*

Her husband dies, her brother goes to war against Saladin, and Sibylla is delivered of a son. As promised, she names him Baldwin after his uncle. She looks into her child’s face and wonders if he will be beautiful and golden, or if he will resemble her late husband.

She unstrings the pearls again and has one set on a tiny gold chain, and suspends it from the cradle. Her son watches it glimmer in the light and waves his tiny fists. She can’t decide if he’s reaching for the pearl or trying to push it away.

*

When Baldwin returns to Jerusalem, he comes back shrouded. He won’t even permit her to come near and sit with him, but hides behind gauzy drapes and wears a mask of linen with holes cut in for eyes and mouth and nose, a travesty of a human face.

The court reacts with sympathy and pity and scorn. Sibylla refuses to mourn just yet. Though she has riches aplenty, she takes the rest of the pearls and goes in disguise to a metalsmith near the Fish Gate and asks him to cast a mask in the likeness of Apollo.

The smith puts aside his other tasks to do her bidding, and within days she has a mask wrought of silver. She wraps it in sackcloth and takes it to her brother, pushing aside his curtains when he tells her to come no closer.

She’d rehearsed a dozen things to say in this moment, but now she’s here, her tongue is still and her wits scattered. Sibylla takes the mask from the bag and offers it out.

“Apollo, god of the sun, forever young and beautiful,” Baldwin says, and there’s a smile in his voice.

“He loved his sister pure and true.” Sibylla keeps her own voice steady as she steps nearer. “Come, brother. Let me help you.”

Baldwin removes the linen mask. His mouth is twisted and his skin mottled, cheeks sunken, but his eyes still shine with affection.

“You’re beautiful,” Sibylla tells him.

Baldwin puts a gloved hand over hers as she fits the silver mask to his face. Once it’s in place, he touches it. His eyes smile at her. “Now I am beautiful.”