Kingdom of the Grail Read online

  He held his tongue. He would have preferred the guardroom for himself, but he was a person of rank; he was given a small but airy room with a tiled floor, and a mute servant who made himself clear with signs and glances.

  There were baths in this house, in the Roman style: lamplit pools and a room filled with clouds of steam. The hot pool bubbled up out of the ground, a spring that gave this place its name, Agua Caliente.

  Turpin shared the baths with him. Musa had left them a message: they should take their leisure; then when they were done, they would dine with him, partake of bread and salt, and seal, if not alliance, then a truce while they remained in this holding.

  Roland lay in the hot pool till the flesh seemed ready to bake from his bones. Turpin, scarlet and sweating, had long since retreated to the cold pool. “You’re half salamander,” he said as he fled. “I’m but poor clay. I’ll crack if I stay longer.”

  The heat of the water made the heat of this country somehow more bearable. Roland emerged reluctantly, face to face with a sleek grey cat. It blinked, smiling at him. He smiled back. The puca followed him to the cold pool, sat on its rim and bathed itself in cat-fashion, with its tongue, while Roland plunged into water that seemed doubly icy after the heat before.

  Turpin floated on his back, beard jutting toward the vaulted ceiling, broad bear’s chest lapped with water. He seemed asleep. Roland considered the uses of wickedness. He was on the verge of resisting temptation when Turpin said, “Don’t even think about it.”

  Roland grinned, poised, leaped.

  Turpin won, just. He was heavier, and Roland was laughing too hard to breathe sensibly. He could barely gasp out his surrender, lying on the cool tiles by the pool, with Turpin sitting on him, dripping water in his face. They were both as slippery as eels.

  Roland got his breath back, as much as he could with that massive weight on his middle. Turpin shifted, preparing to rise. Roland pitched him back into the pool, rose with as much insouciance as he could muster, and went in search of cloths to dry them both.

  The emir Musa regarded their clean and freshly robed selves with evident pleasure. The bread and salt that he offered them had ample accompaniment: stewed lamb, roast fowl, a great bowl of golden rice with bits of fruit scattered in it, a sallet of greens and onions, and a sweet subtle wine to wash it all down.

  Turpin bowed to the quality of the wine. “And yet,” he said, “I thought men of your faith did not . . . ?”

  “I do not indulge,” Musa said, saluting with his cup of sherbet, “but my Christian servants do; and this holding has been a vineyard since Caesar’s day. Mostly now, of course, the grapes are eaten from the vine, or dried into raisins such as you see yonder in the rice. But a few still go into the vats for old times’ sake.”

  “I’m glad of that,” Turpin said, “for it’s as good as any wine I’ve drunk, and I’ve sampled the great Falernian.”

  “Ah! In Italy itself?”

  Turpin nodded. “Not a healthy country for our people—its fevers are infamous—but its wine and olive oil are the best we know of.”

  “That’s the memory of old Rome,” Musa said. “We all live in her shadow—all of us in these latter days.”

  “There is a saying in Francia,” said Turpin, “that while a dwarf may be little in himself, if he stands on the shoulders of giants, he can see farther than any of them.”

  Musa smiled. “Indeed? Now that is clever.”

  “And true,” Turpin said. “If we could restore Rome, we would have all that they had, and, one hopes, more. More wisdom. Clearer sight. A longer view, if you will.”

  “Is that what you aim to do? Bring back Rome’s empire?”

  “Not I,” said Turpin, “but my king dreams of it.”

  “A man may dream,” said Musa.

  “And you?” Turpin asked. “What does your Caliph dream of?”

  “Insofar as I may presume to guess at the dreams of God’s beloved,” Musa said, “I would say that he dreams of peace.”

  “The peace of Allah?”

  “Even so.”

  “Well,” said Turpin, “God is God. And peace is peace, one might suppose. My king is your Caliph’s ally, and some would say his friend. They do seem to be amazingly like-minded, when all is considered.”

  “So it’s said,” said Musa. “You will remain with us for a day or two, yes? I should like to see what manner of man the Defender of the Faith calls friend.”

  “For that,” Turpin said, “you would wish to meet the king himself.”

  “In time,” said Musa, “perhaps. One can tell much about a lord from his followers. Both those who choose him, and those whom he chooses to work his will.”

  Roland had been silent, listening. When Musa spoke of followers, Roland fancied for a moment that the dark glance had flickered toward him. If it had done so, it flicked away almost at once, returning to Turpin’s far more solidly human face.

  Muslims knew a great deal of magic, it was said. Perhaps they also knew enchanters.

  Roland sensed no danger here, not of that sort. This man was not an enemy, if not precisely an ally. If he felt himself betrayed, he would kill without compunction, but he would not kill for lack of cause, either. As long as they dealt with him honorably, they were safe enough.

  CHAPTER 16

  Sarissa knew that the men had met and begun conversations with the master of the house, but the ladies let her be until morning. She was taken to a room in the harem, waited on by maids with demure faces and downcast eyes, bathed and given a soft robe and fed a fine meal with wine, but with only herself for company.

  They were watching her. She could feel eyes on her, prickling her spine. She was careful therefore to do nothing that they might find odd. She ate and drank lightly, and went direct to the cool sweet-scented bed.

  Tarik joined her there, a small and ordinary-seeming grey cat. He curled in the curve of her knees and lulled her with his purr. He had found no evil thing in or about this house. Its spirit was clean, and the place itself empty of threat.

  “We brought nothing with us?” she asked him in the softest of whispers.

  Not a thing, his purr said. Not a single thing.

  “But that one—the Breton—”

  Tarik was asleep. Conspicuously so. Sarissa considered shaking him awake, but where was the use in that? She sought sleep herself. If there were dreams, she chose not to remember them.

  The emir Musa’s third wife was younger than Sarissa had expected. She was barely come to woman’s years, but had already given her husband a son, a beautiful child with limpid black eyes and an enchanting smile. But for the darkness of his skin, he looked very like his mother.

  In the morning she had Sarissa brought to her. She sat in an exquisite bit of garden, canopied by an arbor of roses, crimson and white. Her garments were chosen to match them: crimson gown, snow-white veil over her dark curling hair. A ruby hung between her wide black eyes, suspended from a golden fillet.

  She looked as regal as a queen, and yet as Sarissa approached, she rose and bowed to the ground. Her maids did the same, graceful as a field of flowers.

  Sarissa raised her, though she came up reluctantly. “Lady,” she said. “O great lady. That you should honor us with your presence—”

  “You know me?” Sarissa inquired.

  “Oh, yes, lady,” said Leila, whose father had named her Julia. “You come from—”

  Sarissa laid a finger on the trembling lips. “Let us not speak that name here,” she said.

  Leila nearly went down again, but Sarissa prevented her. “Lady, I am sorry! I—”

  “Lady!” Sarissa spoke sharply. “Stand up. Lift your head. Remember your rank. And mine—as anyone here may be permitted to know it.”

  Leila was not so overwhelmed that she had lost her wits altogether. She stiffened her spine and did as Sarissa bade her. “And here you are . . . ?” she asked with admirable steadiness.

  “I’m a Spanish woman of unknown but evidently noble r
ank,” Sarissa answered, “a healer and a sometime follower of the Frankish king.”

  “Kings should follow you, lady,” Leila said.

  “I may choose to serve a king,” said Sarissa.

  “That one?”

  “He is a great man, a great king, and will be greater as his years ripen. Time will make him an emperor.”

  “Not here,” Leila said. Her voice was gentle, but there was no yielding in it.

  “Yet you accept the infidels.”

  “God has willed that we do so,” said Leila. “Did you come to tell us that He also wills this?”

  Sarissa shook her head. “God I have not spoken to. Charles would be glad of your help against the rebels from Cordoba.”

  “Only against the rebels?”

  “That was why he came,” said Sarissa.

  “It is said that he came in order to conquer this country.”

  “Many things are said,” Sarissa said. “The Caliph in Baghdad begged him to do this. He is doing it as best he can, against the Caliph’s people as well as the rebels.”

  Leila coaxed Sarissa onto the bench she herself had vacated, and sat like a servant at her feet—nor would she be dissuaded. Sarissa sighed and endured it. Worship was not a thing she had ever grown accustomed to. For the most part she had avoided it, passing unknown through Spain and Francia. But this daughter of the Iulii of Saragossa, whose family had known Sarissa’s kin and kind since the Romans ruled in Spain, was not to be deceived.

  “Can you be sure,” Leila asked her, “that this Frank is honorable? That he will allow us our own rule and our own ways, and not force his Frankish ways upon us?”

  “This king is in command of his people,” Sarissa said. “If he gives his word, he will keep it.”

  Leila nodded slowly. “My husband thinks that this king is honorable, and open-minded for a Frank. Is he not the Caliph’s friend? But the rest of the Franks are another matter. They turned this war into a crusade; and that makes us uneasy. Holy war too quickly turns ugly.”

  “It was holy war that won Spain for Allah,” Sarissa pointed out.

  “Indeed, and one such war is enough. We’re not willing to endure another.”

  “King Charles understands,” said Sarissa.

  “I can hope he does, lady.” Leila paused, frowning, pondering some thought that did not entirely delight her. After a little while she said, “It’s coming, isn’t it? The other war. Is he the champion? Is that why you ride with him?”

  She was touching on matters that perhaps she had no right to. Still, she was what she was, and this place had no evil in it. Sarissa said, “The champion rides with him. Or rather . . . the one who was chosen. Whom the power chose.”

  “Not you?”

  “I serve the power,” Sarissa said. “It does as it wills.”

  “Ah,” said Leila with a child’s wisdom. “Is it someone very unexpected?”

  “Very,” said Sarissa. And perhaps not wisely at all: “Have you seen the king’s envoys?”

  “Oh, yes,” Leila said. “The archbishop is very large. The captain of his guard is very—”

  “Odd?”

  “Beautiful,” Leila said.

  “That is no guardsman,” said Sarissa. “That is a lord of the king’s court.”

  “And he is . . . ?”

  Sarissa nodded.

  “Oh,” said Leila. “Oh, my.”

  “All the women say that,” Sarissa said with more ill temper than strict good sense.

  Leila’s eyes danced. “I can imagine! He’s wonderful. Has he conversation?”

  “Do you intend to discover that for yourself? What would your husband say?”

  “My husband would say that I can look, but I can’t touch. He trusts me, lady.”

  Sarissa was unwontedly abashed. “I never meant—”

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” Leila said. “Well? Can he talk? Or is he no more than a pretty face?”

  “He’s very shy with women, they say. And quiet with men. But he can sing.”

  “Oh!” said Leila, clapping her hands. “That’s even better. I’ll have him sing to me.”

  “He’ll capture your heart and carry it away to Francia.”

  “He can’t do that. My husband already has it, safe in his hand. But I do love a sweet singer. Would he learn our songs, do you think? Could he?”

  “He has a very good ear,” said Sarissa, “and many languages.”

  “Good, then,” said the emir’s wife. “I shall do it. Only tell me one more thing.”

  Sarissa raised her brows and waited.

  “Does the Frankish king know? What you are, what you came for?”

  “No,” said Sarissa. “Not yet.”

  “And he, the champion. Does he?”

  “Not before his king,” Sarissa said.

  “You should tell him,” said Leila, “before too much time passes.”

  “He will be told when it is proper for him to know.”

  Leila looked as if she might have said more, perhaps protested, but her awe of Sarissa was too strong. Instead she said, “Lady, will you bathe with me? Then break our fast. And hear the singer from Francia.”

  Sarissa could decline; Leila would not dare be offended. But she nodded, and bowed slightly. She would put herself at this lady’s disposal. After all she was the Frankish king’s emissary, and she had a task to perform.

  The Breton Count seemed not too terribly abashed to be summoned to an audience with the emir’s third wife. She received him from behind an intricately carved screen, which let her see him, but of her he could see only a shadow. Sarissa, between them, had a clear view of both.

  Leila was delighted with him—both his beauty and his strangeness. It seemed he had ample conversation with wedded ladies; he was as gentle with this one as he had been with Charles’ queen. She did not speak to him of anything of consequence, or ask to see his sword. Nor, and that surprised Sarissa, did she command him to sing. She simply wanted to look at him, and hear his voice. It was a pleasant voice, Sarissa admitted, both deep and sweet.

  When after a while Leila let him go, Sarissa prepared to go with him. Leila called her back. Her maid was taking down the screen, and she had put aside her veil. Her eyes were sparkling. “He is marvelous,” she said. “Delightful. And the magic in him! He shimmers with it.”

  “You can see—?”

  Leila nodded. “I have none of my own, which used to be a great grief to me, but I’ve learned to accept it. But there is one thing I can do. I can see magic.”

  “He is brimming with it,” Sarissa said, a little flatly.

  Leila seemed not to hear the tone, only the words. “Yes! He’s a fire in the dark.”

  “And dark in the heart of him.”

  “No, lady,” Leila said. “No darkness. Not anywhere.”

  Sarissa did not know why that made her angry. “Do you know what he is? Can you begin to guess? He’s the enemy’s child. The hawk of the gods. Merlin’s get.”

  Leila neither blanched nor recoiled. “I always did wonder,” she said, “about that one. Remember who his pupils were, and what he taught them.”

  “Only to turn on them and betray them.”

  “Of course you would know that, lady,” said Leila, “since you are what you are. But there’s no evil in this child of his. It seems to me the sword chose wisely.”

  “It was supposed to do that,” Sarissa said.

  She left then, rather rudely maybe, but Leila did not seem to mind. Sarissa needed to think. And that was difficult, when it was Roland she must think of.

  The men were preparing to hunt. They carried swords and spears and bows for whatever quarry they might meet, man or beast, but they would hunt first and foremost with falcons. Musa was a great lover of the art, and Turpin had a little skill in it. Roland went, of course, as captain of the archbishop’s guard. Sarissa suspected that he knew falconry well—as both man and hawk.

  Today he rode as a man, as did Sarissa. A young soldier of th
e emir’s guard slept a sleep full of dreams while she rode his horse, carried his weapons, wore his clothes. The falcon on her fist had Tarik’s eyes. His wickedness delighted in such ruses as this.

  She was fonder of them herself than perhaps she should have been. She slipped through the ranks as they rode out through the vineyards, until she was close behind Roland. He was watching the emir and the archbishop, quietly, alertly, as a good captain of guards should. He had been offered a falcon, but he had refused. He was here to guard the archbishop, his manner said, and not to entertain himself.

  He was aware of her presence. Her skin felt the prickle of it. He would know where every man in this riding was, what he did there, what threat he posed to the man Roland guarded.

  She did her best to radiate harmlessness. She was a very young man of the Saracens, wide-eyed with curiosity, captivated by the Frankish strangers.

  It seemed he believed it. He did not turn to unmask her. He rode hunting as they all did, in innocence of her presence among them.

  It was a good hunt. The prey was plentiful: doves above the vineyard, rabbits running beneath the woven and terraced vines. Turpin and Musa waged a contest. Turpin won with two dozen doves, but Musa came within a dove of matching him. There would be a feast tonight.

  “I know,” said Musa as they came to the vineyard’s edge, “where a bull has run wild, menacing the villages. Are you bold enough for that, my lord?”

  “I’ve hunted the last of the aurochs in the forests of Germania,” Turpin said. “Are your bulls as great as that?”

  “They are smaller,” Musa admitted, “but they are deadly. As to how we hunt them—this you may be intrigued to see. Will you ride with us?”

  “Gladly,” Turpin said.

  The bull was alone, a rogue. He raided farmsteads and trampled the cattle-pens, stole cows and gutted the dogs sent after him—and, Musa said as they rode, he had acquired a taste for manflesh.

  “The young men of a village went hunting him with nothing but rakes and pruning-hooks, and met his horns. It’s said he gored six of them, gutting them as neatly as he had gutted the dogs. But when he came to the seventh, he tore out the boy’s throat.”