The Dagger and the Cross Read online

  Her eyes flashed up. “Even if I excoriate you for a heathen and a turncoat?”

  He straightened. His hand dropped to his swordhilt. But he said, “My lady may be the best judge of that.”

  “You are a perfect knight.” She meant it truly. He did not think so at first, but under her gaze the blue fire faded from his eyes. She smiled to see it. “I can see who trained you, sir mamluk.”

  “To be a heathen and a turncoat?”

  Her smile widened almost into laughter. “My knight may be the best judge of that.”

  “Your—” He blushed crimson. “My lady!”

  “So I am,” she said with rich contentment. “And so you certainly intended, or you would never have let yourself be made my nursemaid.”

  “Is that what you think I am?”

  “I think that you are my knight. I hear what the others say. They twit you, don’t they?”

  He turned away from her, which was rude, but she forgave it. His fingers fretted the hilt of his sword. After a moment his shoulders went back; he drew a deep breath and turned again to face her. “My brothers in the sword are jealous to a man.”

  “They are? What of their wives? What,” she asked with beating heart, “of yours?”

  “I have no wife,” he said.

  She looked at him in silence.

  “I do not,” he said, not to defend himself, simply to make it clear to her. “There never seemed to be time; and no one suitable presented herself.”

  “Not even someone unsuitable?”

  “I’m not an anchorite.”

  That was an unguarded utterance. Elen watched him regret it. She said, “I never thought you were.”

  He was like a cat in the way he kept recovering his balance, no matter how she upset it. “My lady can never be unsuitable,” he said. “I, however, am that a thousandfold.”

  “I made a suitable match,” she said. “Once, and he is dead. Perhaps now I may choose to please myself.”

  She kept her eyes on his face while she spoke. It was still, expressionless, but she could not mistake the spark that kindled in it. As she had hardly dared to hope. As she had feared not to see. She was bold beyond believing, and he would be well within his rights to rebuke her for it; or simply to refuse to understand.

  He did neither. He said, “Your kinsmen might have somewhat to say in the matter.”

  “A lady’s hand is her family’s to bestow to its best advantage. Her heart,” said Elen, “is her own.”

  “And her body?”

  She blushed. “My body is his who holds my heart in his hand. If I may hold his in my own.”

  “You are beautiful,” said Raihan, and it was not an answer, but then again it was. “You are the falcon stooping out of the sun; the moon descending upon the water. You are as far above a simple soldier-slave as that soldier-slave is above the beggar in the bazaar.”

  “Does it matter?”

  He bit his lip. She saw how young he was, after all, under the trappings of the warrior. “No,” he said. “Before God, it should. But it matters not at all.”

  16.

  Morgiana was gone.

  Aidan hunted her down all the ways of the mind, into all the places he knew, where she might be. A cavern in the desert of Persia. Masyaf of the Assassins, where the Old Man of the Mountain was lord. A swordsmith’s house in Damascus, where was the one woman in the world whom Morgiana would call friend. Even, desperately, in their own castle of Millefleurs. Empty, all empty. She was gone, cut off from him, in a world that was too wide for his little power, too empty for his soul to bear.

  He did not go mad, or run wild, or shatter into a million shards. He had already done all of that, and it had cost him Morgiana. He sat in his chamber in a dawn as bleak as his heart, and knew beyond hope of argument what he had done.

  She was older than he, and stronger in power, and better by far at holding a grudge. While she did not wish to be found, he would not find her. And that could be never.

  There were no tears in him. There was nothing at all but emptiness.

  He lay, first on his face, then on his back, and watched the light grow in the room. He heard the house rising about him: the cooks to their cooking, the mamluks to their prayers and then to their exercises in the practice-court, the Rhiyanans to prepare for Mass. He was on all their minds in greater or lesser degree. They did not know, yet, how utterly Morgiana was gone.

  “She is gone.” Saying it aloud lent it solidity. He covered his face with his hands. His fingers tensed to claw; with an effort he relaxed them. He made himself rise, put off his sorely rumpled garments, wrap himself in the robe which he always wore to bathe. It was silk, and scarlet, embroidered with dragons. She had given it to him.

  He flung it away from him. Everything in that room was her gift, or whispered of her presence. He snatched a cloak that reeked more of horses than of her, and went blindly where he had meant to go.

  o0o

  Gwydion was in the bath before him, alone without servants amid the sea-colored tiles, pouring his own water into the basin. Aidan almost turned on his heel and fled. He caught himself against the doorframe, clung to it as if without it he would fall.

  Gwydion glanced over his shoulder, a flash of cat-green in the light that was, Aidan realized, witchlight. “Your bath is almost ready,” he said.

  Aidan hated him with sudden passion. If not for him—if not for that he had warmed so fully to Morgiana—

  No. That was the madness speaking, and the devil behind the madness. Aidan was sane now, because Gwydion was here, with his calm, with his strength, with all that he was, that was the other half of Aidan.

  The water was exactly as he liked it: hot almost to burning, and scented with green herbs. Aidan sank slowly into it. Gwydion knelt by the basin and began to wash him. At first he only allowed it because he would not quarrel again while he could help it. But those fingers, of all there were in the world, knew where to find the knots, and how to loosen them.

  “She is gone,” Aidan said when the water began to cool, when he was clean but unable to move, to rise and face the world.

  “I felt her go,” said Gwydion.

  “Do you know why she went?”

  “I know what the king’s knights wanted with you yesterday.”

  “It’s not true. Is it?”

  “No.”

  Aidan sank down until the water covered him. He could breathe in it if he wished to. Or drown, if his will allowed it.

  He rose out of it. Gwydion was there with the cloth, wrapping it about him, rubbing away the wet and the tautness and perhaps something more than that. “I never thought that it was true,” Aidan said. “And I acted as if it were. She repaid me exactly as I deserved.”

  Gwydion did not offer empty comfort. He held out a clean shirt. Aidan struggled into it. “I won’t let them break me,” he said. “I won’t give them the satisfaction.”

  “I never thought you would.”

  Aidan stood, swaying a little. Half of him was an open wound. The other half stood in front of him. He laid hands on his brother’s shoulders, perhaps to embrace him, perhaps to fling him away. “But for you,” said Aidan, “they would have had no power against me. But for you I would be wholly in their power. You were the flaw in my armor. You are all that arms me now against the dark.”

  “So have you always been to me,” said the voice that was the echo of his own, out of the face that was the image of his own.

  Aidan drew a shuddering breath. He would not break. He would be strong, though half his strength was gone and half was not his own. And one day—one day soon, by God, he would win her back.

  He reached for braies and hose, pulled them on. With them he put on a semblance of his wonted self. The world had not ended because he had lost his lover. He tied the lacings with meticulous care, as if to bind the cords of mind and will, and found the words with which he must go on. “We’ve much to do if we’re to be ready for the muster.” He looked up. “You are fighting,
aren’t you?”

  Gwydion could not but see through Aidan’s seeming. His brow went up, but his voice was cool, light, accepting what his brother had chosen. “I shall fight,” he said. “How could I not?”

  Aidan shrugged. “It’s not your kingdom, and it’s not your quarrel.”

  Gwydion cuffed him, spilling him into the tangle of his discarded robe. “Don’t you start on me, too,” he said. “I’ll fight because I choose to fight. And,” he said, “because there’s no keeping you from it, and someone should be there to keep an eye on you.”

  Aidan struggled up on his elbows, glaring through a tangle of hair. “An eye, you say? And which of us is the known and notorious glutton for battles?”

  “That’s why,” said Gwydion, reaching to draw him up. Aidan got a solid grip on his brother’s hand, and pulled. Gwydion toppled as ignominiously as he had, but rather less painfully: he made certain to fall on top of Aidan.

  They rolled and tumbled like lion cubs, until they fetched up, abruptly, at someone’s feet.

  Aidan, on the bottom, recognized the captain of his mamluks. Arslan was properly appalled. Aidan bared his teeth at him. But a little longer, and it might have been an honest grin. “Am I wanted for something?” he asked.

  Arslan swallowed hard. He took a fair bit of time about it. “No,” he said, “my lord. Nothing. I heard—that is—”

  “You thought we were killing one another.” Gwydion rose with impressive dignity, shaking his hair out of his face. This time Aidan let him draw him up.

  Aidan laid his arm about his brother’s shoulders. “It was a massacre,” he said. “Go, we’ll clear away the bodies. I’ll be with you directly.”

  Arslan obeyed. He was, in spite of himself, amused. Just like a brace of wild boys, he thought indulgently as he went to his duties.

  The brothers heard the thought, as they were meant to. They looked at one another. Suddenly, out of nowhere that he could name, Aidan began to laugh.

  o0o

  Aidan made a tendril of power, divided it, set it like a snare in the places to which Morgiana would most likely return. He would not weep or rage. His pride would not allow it. He sent his call echoing through the mind-world, a great ringing cry that surely she must hear; that surely she would answer. Yet there was only silence. She might never have been. He was all hollow; all empty. All forsaken.

  People knew soon enough that she was gone. Why she had gone, they did not dare to ask. Most supposed that she had withdrawn to Millefleurs. A few suspected that she had returned to her own people. A fair faction hoped that Aidan himself had put her away. He did not speak to them nor they to him, nor did they venture to look on him with either pity or vindication.

  It mattered little to a kingdom readying for war. She was a woman, and women were only to be thought of when there were walls to guard.

  Ysabel was harder to deceive. She wanted explanations. Aidan gave her what he could, but lovers’ wars were as far beyond her as the moon. She understood only that Morgiana was gone, and that Aidan grieved, and that it should not be so. She decided that he needed her; that, in short, she must go with him to Acre.

  “I want to go,” she said. She had come to Lady Margaret’s house with one of her mother’s women scowling in her wake, ostensibly to see her grandmother, actually to catch Aidan as he settled matters that needed settling if his holdings were to be secure in the midst of the war. “Lady Elen is going. So is Aimery. They can take care of me.”

  Aidan regarded her narrowly. The little minx had it all plotted, that was clear to see. “I would rather that your mother looked after you,” he said, “here where it’s safest.”

  “Jerusalem isn’t safe,” said Ysabel. “Not if the sultan beats you on the field. This is the first place he’ll aim for, and the first place he’ll want to take.”

  “Who has been telling you that?” Aidan asked her with a touch of sharpness.

  “People are talking,” she said, “all over the city. The pilgrims are scared.”

  “The pilgrims are wise,” said Aidan. “But not as wise as they might be. Jerusalem won’t be the first to fall. It’s too deep in the kingdom, and too well defended, even if we strip every other place bare to make up the army. Acre is much more likely to be a target, because it faces on the sea, and the pilgrims’ ships are there, and the king’s winter palace, and the cream of the trade. What would you do there? There won’t be any children to play with. Simeon is staying here to look after the women; Akiva will stay with him.”

  He had scored a hit there, but she was well dug in and determined to fight. “If you mean Mother and Grandmother, it’s not Rabbi Simeon who will be doing the looking after, but the other way round. Akiva can’t even fight.” She did not say it with contempt, he was glad to notice. It was a fact, that was all. “Mother says she’s staying here because she’s so big with the baby, but it’s really because Grandmother is here and doesn’t want to leave. Mother will go to Acre later if she can, you wait and see. She hates to stay in one place when her men are out fighting wars.”

  “Your mother can wield a sword if she has to.”

  “So can I.” Ysabel took his hand. “Why can’t I go to Acre with Lady Elen? She’s coming back here afterward, isn’t she? She said she would. She doesn’t like the queen much; she thinks she’s too empty-headed. She’d rather be friends with Mother.”

  “What if you get killed trying to come back, or killed in the city’s fall? What do you think that will do to your mother?”

  “I’m a trial to her soul. She’ll be glad to get rid of me.”

  Aidan let her know the full force of his disapproval. She lowered her eyes, sullen. “You care more about my mother than you do about me,” she muttered.

  “She needs more caring,” Aidan said coldly. “And deserves more.”

  Ysabel looked up. She was hurt. He hardened his heart against her. “Don’t you love me?”

  “Not when you act like this.” He relented a little. “Yes, I love you. That’s why I want you to stay. And...you might be able to do something. Being what you are, and knowing what you know.”

  “You mean, witchery?”

  He set a finger to his lips. “Hush the word, catling. I mean the power you and Akiva share, that can be a defense, if it’s needed. But it should be the two of you together, learning from one another and making one another stronger. You can’t do that if you’re in Acre and he’s in Jerusalem.”

  She understood a fine manipulating hand when she saw one, but he tempted her sorely. Power was a greater adventure even than riding with the army.

  He waited, not pressing, lest he lose her. She frowned at him. “What will you do if I say no?”

  “Put a binding on you,” he answered. “I don’t want to. I’d rather you stayed of your own free will.”

  That he could bind her, she knew very well. He had done it to her once; she had hated it. She chewed her lip, remembering that, and hunting for an escape, and finding none. “If I stay here, will you let me stay in your house until you go?”

  “What do you think you can do there?”

  “Keep you company,” she said.

  “That’s for your mother to say.”

  She knew the taste of capitulation. She grinned at him. “May we have roast capon for dinner tonight?”

  He shook his head at her impudence, but he had to laugh. “Roast capon with dates and nuts and cinnamon? Is that what you’re asking for?”

  “And rice,” she said, “and honey sweets, and oranges from your tree.”

  “You shall have them. If,” he said, “your mother gives you leave.”

  She pulled him down to kiss him, and danced away. “She will. You’ll see. May I borrow Conrad to take me back? Mother likes Conrad. She’ll let me do anything if she knows he’ll be there.”

  “You may borrow Conrad,” Aidan said, resigned. “Tyrant.”

  Her grin was the last he saw of her, seeming to hang in the air after she was gone.

  o0o
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  She meant to work on Elen. Aidan wished her luck of it. Elen had the queen’s command behind her, and something else in train that was not as well hidden as she hoped it was. She would not be wanting a bright-eyed small witchling about while she pursued it.

  Elen and Raihan. They were a handsome pairing, whatever else was wrong with it. Aidan could not find it in himself to object, as long as nothing came of it but an exchange of glances and perhaps now and then a touching of hands. If it went beyond that, then Aidan would have to consider what he would do; unless Gwydion did it first.

  Gwydion, as a man, might be indulgent. As a king, and as her grandmother’s brother, he would have to disapprove. A princess of Rhiyana should not take as lover an infidel, still less an infidel who had been a slave.

  Aidan’s heart twisted. And what of a prince of Rhiyana?

  That was settled. He had done it himself, with his own flapping tongue.

  o0o

  When he came to his house by the Dome of the Rock, Ysabel was not there yet. She had her mother’s leave—she had made sure he knew it the instant it was given—but its price was an hour’s lesson in Latin, and after that the careful setting in order of her possessions. She was not happy to pay so high, but she did it, and well, as she could do when she was minded to.

  Ysabel was not in the house, but another guest was, and one far less welcome. Messire Amalric had just arrived, he gave Aidan to know; he was still paying his respects to Gwydion, whose face wore its royal expression: blandly unreadable. Gwydion had received him in the solar rather than in one of the gardens, a double-edged courtesy. It was cool within, but dim, and there was ample evidence of duties interrupted and preparations deferred.

  Aidan was glad of the sherbet that was waiting for him: it was hot in the city. He took a chair near his brother, but just far enough away that Amalric must turn his head in order to see both at once. Amalric, unperturbed, greeted Aidan with brusque courtesy, then returned his focus to Gwydion.

  Aidan minded not at all. It gave him time to settle in, to drink his sherbet, to test the currents that ran beneath the surface. It was a courtesy of his kin that they did not read thoughts unless invited, or unless there was need; but Amalric’s were not easy to make sense of even then. He thought around corners. Not as a Byzantine would, with serpentine subtlety. It was more that he could not, or would not, think in a straight line. He leaped from thought to thought even more than most humans did, and even within each single thought he buzzed and shifted like a fly on a carcass. It was easier to avoid him altogether, and to winnow truth and falsehood from his words and his body’s signals, as any mortal could do.