The Dagger and the Cross Read online

  It was not a question that any of them could answer. Joanna broke the silence, her voice as low as ever, determinedly calm. “I think,” she said, “that I can do more good elsewhere.”

  “Yes,” said Morgiana. “You can.”

  Joanna’s lips thinned, but she did not rise to the bait. “Ranulf may have heard something in the city while we’ve been sitting here being angry. Or I may be able to learn something useful myself.” She held out her hand. “Come, Ysabel.”

  Ysabel dug in her heels, but Joanna was having none of that. She said her farewells, even, pointedly, to Morgiana, and took her leave, with Ysabel mutely furious behind her.

  This silence was the longest of all. The garland smoldered into ashes; they watched it, transfixed. Aidan moved suddenly to quench the last of the flame, to swirl the ash into the air. “Damn them,” he said almost gently. “Oh, damn them.”

  o0o

  “Damn them to their own hell!” The King of Jerusalem was nearly as furious as Aidan, and much less quiet about it. What set the veins to bursting in his temples and heated his face to burning was hardly the scandal of the morning— that had been a profound and completely unexpected pleasure—but another outrage altogether, and one much closer to his kingship.

  Reynaud de Châtillon, younger son of the Count of Gien in Francia, lord of Kerak in Moab, Prince of Antioch that was second only to Jerusalem, had, like Guy himself, sailed out of obscurity to win a princess. Unlike Guy, he had wits and to spare: the mind of a fox and the heart of a bandit lord, people said of him, not without admiration. Though past sixty, he had the vigor of a man half his age, and a flair for treachery which put the Byzantines to shame. They loathed him: they could never stomach a foreigner who excelled in their native arts.

  Saladin more than loathed him; he despised him. Reynaud, gleefully aware of it, had let himself be bought, and been paid more than handsomely for a truce, so that the caravan from Cairo to Damascus might pass in safety by his castle of Kerak. The sight of so much wealth rocking and swaying under his gate and the sound of Muslim voices calling peacefully to one another in his very ear were more than he could bear. Like the bandit he was, he seized the caravan, stripped it of its treasures, and sent the merchants staggering, naked and afoot, back to their own lands.

  Saladin could be as ruthless as any king born, but his honor was inviolable. An oath to him was sacred; the breaking of a man’s given word, the most mortal of sins. When word of Reynaud’s oathbreaking came to him, the brittle thread of his forbearance snapped. He called up his armies. He laid siege to Kerak. He ravaged the lands about it, clear down to the Jordan. He raised the jihad.

  “If that were all,” Guy lamented, flinging himself about the solar, wreaking havoc with the more fragile of its furnishings. “If that were all anyone had done—”

  It would have been enough, Amalric finished for him, watching him rant. But of course God was not so merciful, and men were not so simple. Even as Reynaud succumbed to temptation, Count Raymond of Tripoli made a mistake. That was a rarity, Amalric granted him that. It was Raymond who should have been king, and not this poor distraught fool: Raymond the wise, Raymond the circumspect, Raymond who had been King Baldwin’s own favored choice to rule after he was dead. But even Raymond was mortal, and could on occasion choose awry. Like every great lord in Outremer, he had his own, sometimes contradictory net of agreements and alliances; and those could close to trap him if he let down his guard. As, a very little while ago, he had.

  Perhaps he had had no choice. It had seemed a reasonable request, in its way. Saladin requested leave to make a show of force across the Sea of Galilee; a show, no more, a promise of what was to come, a repudiation of Reynaud’s treachery. And Raymond granted it, with strict conditions. For one day only, from sunrise to sunset, Saladin’s men might ride in Frankish lands.

  That, they had done. Seven thousand of them, with the sultan’s son at their head.

  “I heard of it,” Guy said, biting off the words. “You know what I did. I sent my strongest lords to head them off. And what did they do? They dawdled. Someone’s horse lost a shoe. Someone else wanted to tup the serving wench, for all I know. They came too late, and there was the enemy, the whole heathen horde of them, taking their ease at the springs of Cresson, as cool as if they owned them.”

  “It would have been better,” Amalric said, bluntly enough since there were only the two of them, “if you had kept the Master of the Templars on his leash, and not sent him with the others.”

  “But it was you who said—” Guy broke off. He had learned through long and sometimes painful lessoning, when not to remind Amalric of a palpable truth. “Well then. What could I do? He insisted that I let him go. He promised to do what he judged was best. How was I supposed to know he’d think it was best to take twoscore Templars and ten Hospitallers and a hundred of my own knights, and fall on the Saracens?”

  “Gerard de Ridefort has no sense at all when it comes to infidels,” Amalric said. “One glimpse of a turban and he foams at the mouth. Seven thousand of them were more than his sanity could bear.”

  “Yes, he is mad. A hundred and fifty knights against seven thousand, three only escaped alive or untaken, the Grand Master of the Hospital dead on the field—O sweet Jesu, we can’t even spare one, let alone seven score!”

  “It will,” said Amalric, “teach Raymond not to swear pacts with the infidel behind our backs.”

  “There is that,” said Guy, but he was little comforted. His brows met over his fine straight nose. “Ridefort ran away, Amalric. As soon as he saw the tide turn against him, he turned tail and bolted.”

  “He can’t afford to be a hero,” Amalric said. “Not as high as he stands. He is Grand Master of the Templars, after all.”

  Guy nodded. His frown had faded slightly. “Still, that was a cowardly thing to do.”

  He would have gone on, but there was a page at the door, flushed with haste and full of news. “Sire! Sire, look who’s come!”

  Guy strode past him, oblivious to the impudence. Amalric made note of the child’s face for punishment later. These pullani; worthless, the lot of them. But pretty to look at. They were certainly that.

  There was indeed a guest. Even white with the dust of the road, even unsteady on his feet from riding straight, barely pausing even for remounts, he kept his regal bearing, his air of sublime superiority. But what he had come to do was all that Amalric could have wished and more.

  Count Raymond of Tripoli had made a mistake. And, being a wise man, he was able to see that it far outweighed his earlier error of refusing to accept Guy as king. The words came hard, as if round bile, but they were sweet to hear. “Sire,” he said, clear and proud in front of the court, “I have sinned. I cannot say in all truth that I repent. But I have opened my gate to the Saracen under a bond of truce, and he has ridden beneath it with the heads of Christian knights upon his spears.” His voice rose, ringing to the roof. “My lord, my king, I will serve you faithfully, if only you will grant this that I ask. Avenge your knights who have fallen so foully. Take up the banner of Crusade. Raise the chivalry of Outremer against the Saracen. God wills it, my lord, my king. Will you lead us to war?”

  Guy’s head came up. His eyes shone. His voice rang out, deeper than Raymond’s, clearer and stronger and immeasurably more potent. “Yes, my lord of Tripoli. I will lead you. Who else will follow me? Who will take arms against the infidel?”

  “I!” his knights and his barons roared back; and if not to the last man of them, then close enough. “God wills it! Deus lo volt! Deus lo volt!”

  o0o

  Deus lo volt!

  The cry of it rang through the evening, reaching even into the sanctuary of Margaret’s house, where Aidan still was, sunk from the first flush of rage into a bleak stillness. The others had gone about their business, even Morgiana. He sat alone in his forgotten splendor, staring at a smudge of soot on the floor.

  A light hand laid itself against his cheek. He did not start
, or even look up. Morgiana knelt in front of him. He had to look at her or turn away.

  She was dressed as a Muslim youth again, except for the turban. Her hair was plaited in a single braid, her face scrubbed clean. She looked small and young and rather forlorn, but her eyes were agate-hard. “You should put on something more comfortable. Or eat, at least. You haven’t touched a thing since morning.”

  “Later,” he said.

  She frowned, but she let it be, for the moment. “Aidan, beloved, we can’t let them conquer us. It’s bitter, this blow, and unconscionably cruel, but we are stronger. They can only slow us. They can’t stop us.”

  He stretched out a finger to trace the shape of her face: narrow oval, pointed chin. “It’s not that I’m weak,” he said. “It’s that they are so petty. What possible profit can anyone gain from striking us down at the church door?”

  “Of profit, little,” she said. “Of pleasure, much too much.”

  “Is that why they do it? For pleasure?”

  “Maybe they believe that they’re punishing treachery. Or witchcraft. Franks are given to that.”

  “I am a Frank,” he said, a little tightly. Not much, not yet.

  “You are yourself.” She leaned against his knees. He opened them; she came into his embrace. She was much more lightly clad than he was. He ran his hand down the sweet familiar line of her back, and up to her nape. She caught his free hand and held it to her cheek. “We’ll find the pope’s letter. We can go back to Millefleurs, recover our senses, set about a proper hunt.”

  “Millefleurs?” He was puzzled. “How can we go to Millefleurs?”

  “What can we do here? We only came for the wedding. We were going back home after. Or don’t you remember?”

  He remembered. But. “We can’t go back now.”

  “Now more than ever. You know how you hate cities; and this one has gone mad.”

  “This one is about to go to war. Can’t you hear them in the streets? Saladin has raised the jihad. Count Raymond is here and has sworn fealty to Guy—God help the man, he should have more sense than to pile an error on top of a mistake—and his price is Crusade. The king has called the arrière-ban. The muster is in Acre within the fortnight.”

  “You don’t have to go,” she said. “You owe Guy no service.”

  “Guy, no. But Raymond and the kingdom and the cross—yes, they bind me.”

  She pulled back, the better to see his face. “You only stayed after Baldwin died, because you had too many debts both owed and owing, and because you were stubborn; you wanted to marry me in Jerusalem. We were going back to Rhiyana with Gwydion after the wedding, when we’d settled all our affairs. As we will, and in as short order as we can: as soon as we find the dispensation.”

  Aidan shook his head. “It’s not that simple now. The war has come. Gwydion has seen Jerusalem fall; and I, on the wings of his prophecy. How can I just walk away from it?”

  “How can you stay? Baldwin kept you because he loved you. You made allies enough, even a friend or six. But you also made enemies; and this puppet king is one of them. They won’t hesitate to turn on you, simply because there’s a jihad in the way.”

  “Guy is an idiot, but he’s not mad. He needs me and he knows it. I swore to defend the Holy Sepulcher. I can’t break that oath.”

  “I find myself wishing,” she said through gritted teeth, “that you were a little less honorable, and a little more like a Frank. Look at Reynaud. What was an oath worth to him? He broke it, and he’s rich and he’s happy. Raymond kept his, and he’s had to crawl at Guy’s feet, because Guy’s dogs didn’t have the sense to stay out of a battle when they were outnumbered fifty to one.”

  “All the more need for a knight with some vestige of sense.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “I let you go before, dreading every moment of it, and even fighting beside you when I could, because you love a fight so much. But this isn’t errantry. This is holy war.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She seized a double fistful of his hair and pulled his head down. “Allah! Are you mad?”

  “I am a Christian and a knight of the cross.”

  “Mad,” she said. “Stark mad.”

  “You knew what I was when you set your chain on my neck.”

  “When did I ever—” Her breath hissed between her teeth. “I trapped you. Is that what you are saying?”

  “I am saying that we had a bargain. You initiated it, and you held me to it. It was never any part of it, that I should turn my back on this kingdom and let it fall.”

  “I started it? I held you to it? Did you have no say in it?”

  “Precious little,” his tongue said for him.

  Her lip curled. “How like a Frank. Lose a wager, get the worse of a bargain, and blame it all on the filthy Saracen.”

  “As I recall,” he said icily, “it was never I who insisted on calling us by those names. Or who used them to cut, when no other weapons were to hand.”

  “Frank!”

  “Assassin.”

  She caught her breath. Her face was bloodless. “There. There we have it. Maybe our enemies were wise, after all. What did they say, dispar—dispass—”

  “Disparitas cultus. Disparity indeed, and no hope of changing it. Do you know how I feel when you grovel at your prayers, five times a day, every blessed day? Do you know what it does to me when you fast in Ramadan, and read the Koran daylong, and snap my head off if I venture to touch you? I gave up eating pork for you, I gave up shaving my beard for you, I did everything I could to make myself as you would have me. And how did you ever repay me?”

  “By loving you.”

  That gave him pause. But his temper was up; it boiled out of him, all of it, years of it, and with it the bitterness of this day that should have been the best of his life, and had become the worst. “Loving me? Is that what you call it? Setting your mark on me, keeping me like a prize stallion, indulging such of my whims as suit your fancy. Now I have oaths to keep, and you bid me break them. Do you even care that that would break me?” She said nothing. Stunned; or afraid to speak. “Did you ever love me? Or was it never more than ownership?”

  “Is that what I have been to you?”

  He faltered. That made him angry. “It’s what I’ve been to you! I—fool that I am, I loved you.”

  “And now?”

  “And now.” His throat was tight. He forced the words through it. “I am still a fool. And I will ride in the Crusade.”

  “Even if I beg you?”

  “When have you ever begged?”

  Never, and she knew it. She backed away from him, slowly. “And I? What will I do?”

  “Whatever you please.”

  “Even if I please to fight in the jihad?”

  He snapped erect. “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—” Because she belonged to him, as much as he to her. Because she was a woman, and he was a man, and it was his part to fight, hers to wait at home and pray for his soul. Except that he did not know if he had a soul, and her prayers would not be Christian prayers, and she was never one to wait anywhere, for anything.

  “Because I don’t want you to,” he said.

  She laughed, sharp and deadly. “What I want is as nothing, is that not so? But what you want is ever to be obeyed.”

  “What does your Prophet say? Our Evangelist says, ‘Wives, obey your husbands.’”

  “How wise of him, and how convenient for you. It’s a pity that I’m not your wife, and not about to be, as Allah and our enemies have willed it.”

  That was more pain than he could bear to speak of. “If you fight in the jihad, we will be fighting against one another. Is that what you want? To kill me, and call it holy war, and go to Paradise?”

  She sprang to her feet, wild, so wild that her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Yes. That would be like heaven’s black humor, to make me kill you. But Paradise—no, if I took your life, I would not have that; for I wou
ld kill myself thereafter, and forfeit all right to salvation.” She held out her hands. Almost—almost beseeching. “My lord. We knew that this would come, in the way of this world. Yet there is a way to escape it. Millefleurs, first, to see that our people are taken care of; then Rhiyana. Let the humans wage their wars. We shall make our own peace, and live in it, for as long as Allah gives us.”

  Peace, yes, and quiet apart from men, and the love that was between them across all the walls of faith and pride and custom. She would give up her own war for him, leave this country that was hers, go away to Rhiyana where even the sky was strange.

  He shook his head, though it tore at his heart. “We can’t,” he said. “Not yet. When this war is settled, then, yes, we can go.”

  “But not now.”

  “Not now.” He tried to be gentle. “I promised to leave Outremer when we were wedded; but not before. And if I stay, then I must fight.”

  “And I,” she said, inexpressibly bitter, “am a stone about your neck. But for me, your heart would be whole. You would suffer no whisper of treachery; nor ever any scandal among your people.”

  “You are worth any pain.”

  “Yet there is pain,” she said. “You are torn. But not enough. I am but your lover. Your war is your war.”

  “Never mine.”

  “No?” She was out of his reach now, mind as well as body. Her voice sounded dim, as if it came from far away. “Go, then. I’ll not stop you.”

  “But what will you do?”

  “What does any woman do? I can hunt. I promise I’ll not kill until you’ve seen who did this to us.”

  “Morgiana—” he began, stretching out his hand.

  She departed, for once, as anyone else might: through the door, and not slowly. By the time he mustered his wits for pursuit, she was gone.

  10.

  The brightness had gone out of the world.