The Dagger and the Cross Read online

  “As am I, to be here,” Margaret said, once Joanna let her go. Her smooth braids were unruffled under the veil, her dark plain gown uncreased. Joanna, who could never keep tidy when she had things to do, brushed half-heartedly at hair and gown, and gave it up.

  “It’s all in order,” she said, “though it doesn’t look it.”

  “To me it does.” Margaret sat, as serene as if she had not just ridden up from Jerusalem, and favored her daughter with a smile. “You have an art all your own. Order in chaos. One word, and all of it falls into place.”

  “It’s not that easy,” muttered Joanna; but it warmed her, that praise. Margaret never dispensed it lightly.

  “Now,” said Margaret. “What would you have me do?”

  “Sit here,” Joanna answered her promptly. “Rest. Keep me company while I untangle these accounts. They’d have been done days ago, but the bailiff had a fever, and he didn’t bring them till this morning, and of course they can’t wait.” While she talked, she readied book and ink and pens. “Will you have wine? Water? Sherbet?”

  “I’ve been seen to,” Margaret said.

  As Joanna beat her way through the thicket of figures, she glanced now and then at her mother. Margaret was a haven of quiet, sitting where the sun slanted through one of the high narrow windows, perhaps drowsing, perhaps telling the beads which glowed honey-gold between her fingers. She could have been of either world, of Christendom or the House of Islam; a peaceful, aging woman in somber black, nodding in the sun.

  She was not so terribly old, nor so very unlovely under the widow’s weeds. She was still sought after for her lands and her wealth, and not a little for her person. But that part of her duty, she had decided long since, was done. One husband to please her father: he gave her Joanna, and the son who had fallen to an Assassin’s dagger nigh eleven years ago. One husband to please herself: the young knight from Rhiyana, whom also the Assassin took. There would be no other. She ruled her demesne in her own right, and answered for it to no man, except the king in Jerusalem.

  Joanna stifled a sigh. Not for envy, not exactly. She had married to please her mother, and learned to please herself. Ranulf was a good husband. He respected his wife, and when he had other women he did not flaunt them where she could see. He was proud of his sons; he doted on his daughters. Even the odd one. Even—

  She did not let herself think of that. It was done. There was no mending it. Nor would she, could she, regret it. Ranulf loved the one he called his princess, never knowing how close he came to the truth. He did not need to know. The others since were proof enough, and surety.

  Joanna was all that a wife should be. She had given him sons to be his heirs, and daughters to trade in fine marriages. And one who was his in the ways that mattered, and called him father, and never knew the truth.

  The line of figures blurred. Joanna blinked fiercely. Eleven years. Seven children since. And it could still twist her vitals.

  He had never said a word. Once the bargain was made, the lines drawn, he never stepped outside of them. She was a baron’s lady of Acre. He was her proper, royal kinsman. The children called him uncle, though he was only that by courtesy: Margaret had wedded his sister’s son. Canon lawyers would reckon that close enough. For Joanna it was appallingly close, and deadly far away. The width of a child’s body, or a woman’s marriage vows.

  She bit her lip until it bled. The pain helped a little. She was a lady and a wife, and many times a mother. He was preparing for his wedding.

  More fool she, to offer her house and her hospitality, since his brother must come through Acre. It was both generous and proper. It was also a penance. She would see him happy, and not with her. She would, within the fortnight, see him wedded to another woman.

  It shocked her, how much it hurt. She had had ten years and more to learn to bear it; to see them together; to know that there was no parting them. But they had never properly been husband and wife. They had taken oaths, and being perfectly matched in stubbornness as in all else, had held to them. Prince Aidan was a Christian. The Lady Morgiana was a Muslim. She would not forsake her faith. He would not compel her. Neither would he take her to wife, except with the blessing of holy Church.

  Which it, in the person of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, would not grant while she remained an infidel. Lovers they might be, and a long joyous life of sin they had led in their castle of Millefleurs on the marches of Syria, but married, they were not. That needed the pope’s decree.

  And now it was won. Aidan’s brother brought it on the ship which Aidan had gone to meet. They would present it in Jerusalem on the wedding day; the Patriarch would perforce accept it; and the Church would bless the union. And Joanna would smile bravely, and pray that no one noticed her clenched teeth.

  o0o

  At least she need not dance at the wedding. Her condition was good for something besides an aching back.

  She straightened it and yawned. Her mother glanced at her. She bent over the ledger, glaring at it. From Hakim Ali the rais of al-Rabat, four ells of fine muslin cloth, two being white, two dyed with indigo...

  o0o

  Morgiana had no patience with the nigglings of a lady’s duties. In Millefleurs the bailiff did it, or more properly the bailiff’s wife, whose head for figures was nothing short of miraculous. What Morgiana did was keep those figures in a proper balance: high enough coming in and low enough going out to suit Rashida. Morgiana, as her Frank was fond of saying, was a true Muslim: a merchant to the marrow.

  Her Frank, as she was fond of telling him, had not the faintest notion of what a merchant was. Lady Margaret and her kin were merchants. Morgiana was a traveler and a haggler and a magpie for treasure. Booty was best, but he objected, and called it stealing. Buying at bone-pared prices was well enough, and sometimes better sport.

  The prices in Acre were ridiculous, on both sides of it. Franks had no conception of commerce; they were shockingly easy to cheat. The merchants from the Italies, who had studied in the markets of the east, took shameless advantage of such innocence. Time was when she would gleefully have abetted them, but she was of Outremer now, and in a fortnight she would be a baroness of the High Court of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

  She hugged herself and danced a step or two, not caring who stared. The Christians’ pope had commanded it. Allah knew, it had taken five of them, and two not even proper popes, and then the King of Rhiyana himself with all the power that he could bring to bear; but now at last it was done. She would be in name what she had been in fact since a night in the desert of Persia which could still warm her with the memory; and he would be happy, which mattered more than anything.

  She stopped. The crowds parted to pass her; she barely noticed. Maybe when the words were said, Allah would allow and the Christian God would listen, and she would have the child she wanted. That great Frankish cow in her house near the winter palace—she had a whole herd of them, and always another coming, and even, most unforgivable of all, one of his. And Morgiana had none. Not even a lost one, to show that she was not barren.

  The Frank never balked at sharing the cuckoo in her nest. Easy generosity. She had more than enough to spare.

  “She should have been mine,” Morgiana said aloud, unheard amid the clamor of Acre. “I should have borne and suckled her. She should have been my daughter!”

  Soon, Allah willing, there would be one who was. Morgiana began to walk again, her temper calming, her joy coming back. Joanna had Ysabel, but Morgiana had her prince; and he had no eyes, now, for any other woman.

  She looked about. She hardly knew what she was looking for. Aidan would have been glad to have her with him at the quay, but she was learning arts and courtesies. This was her gift to him: a reunion with his brother, without the distraction of her presence. She did not want to be where Joanna was, if there was anywhere else to be. Therefore she was here, wandering the markets of Acre.

  She had a trinket or two, bought on a whim, and her eye on a particularly fine ruby that might,
if the price went low enough, make a signet for a groom-gift. She already had the cottes made of Ch’in silk, three of them, and the cloak lined with sable, and the belt of gold, and...

  A ring would please him, and the ruby was his stone. She knew a jeweler who could carve it, and a goldsmith who could set it.

  She turned with sudden decision and went back the way she had come. No one jostled her or got in her way. That was part of what she was. Humans knew in their bones, even when they saw only another of themselves: a woman in dusty black with a veil over her face. Sometimes a pilgrim, raw with newness, would think of cursing her for an infidel. He never did it, nor need he ever know why.

  The merchant with the ruby was shrewder than most, but he was no match for her. The price she won was almost half the fair worth of the stone; and even at that, he made a kingly profit. She could hardly keep him from cheating poor feckless knights on their way back from Crusade, but she could take her own small revenge, and teach him a lesson besides. They grew soft, these robbers of pilgrims. It did them good to match wits with their betters.

  She left the shop, well pleased with herself. A little distance down the street, where a cloth merchant displayed his wares, she saw a face she knew. In part for good humor, in part for curiosity, she drew closer.

  Joanna’s eldest son was the image of both his parents: man-high even at twelve years old, with his father’s bright gold hair and his mother’s grey-blue eyes, and a face that, young though he was, was already waking sighs among the women. He made Morgiana think of a half-grown lion.

  Pure Norman though he seemed, he had sufficient in him of his Saracen kin. He bargained well and cannily, and he knew how to use both his youth and his size. The object of his labors, a fine damask cloth, made Morgiana smile behind her veil. She had wondered what would happen when the steward discovered the wreck of the children’s pavilion.

  When he came out with the cloth wrapped in muslin and then in a bit of sacking, Morgiana fell in beside him. His glance was nervous, with an edge of white; it eased hardly at all when she said, “Good morning, Messire Aimery.”

  He started slightly, and peered. “My lady? Morgiana?”

  “To the life,” she said.

  Born to this sunstruck country as he was, he was as deeply bronzed as any Saracen; but a blush was still perceptible. “M—my lady.”

  “What, did you think I was something less respectable?”

  His cheeks were crimson. His eyes were furious. He would not look at her. “Did my mother send you, my lady?”

  Morgiana stopped short. “Since when have I run errands for any dog of a Frank?”

  He spun, startled, turning angry. She watched him remember what she was. He did not crumble at once into terror. He never even thought of it. In that, he was his mother’s son. But he was a little more careful than he might have been, in saying what came into his head.

  “My lady, you are noble and a kinswoman, but my mother is my mother. I would thank you to speak of her with greater respect.”

  Morgiana inclined her head. “Well and wisely said, messire. They will make a courtier of you yet.”

  He shrugged uneasily and became a great gangling lad again, reduced to incoherence by the presence of a lady.

  She took pity on him. “Come, you must be hungry: young things always are. I know a place where the honeycakes are famed in Paradise.”

  It was beyond him to resist her, though he trembled like a colt in a new saddle. She led him to a street which even he, born in this city, hardly knew, and down an alley which she would have wagered gold he did not know, to an utterly unprepossessing doorway. He was in a fine state at the end of it: thinking that, after all, he had been waylaid by a bandit.

  It was a perfectly ordinary shop in which they found themselves, but the scents which filled it were not ordinary at all. Aimery drew a breath. His eyes went wide. He sat without a word on the bench to which Morgiana led him, and took a long moment simply to breathe.

  The shopkeeper was as vast as her wares were excellent. She greeted Morgiana with deep respect and Morgiana’s companion with restraint, and brought them the best of what she had. There were others in the shop, but most did not stay; they bought and left, often pausing to exchange gossip with their neighbors.

  “But,” said Aimery when he had a breath to spare from devouring Fatimah’s cakes. “This is an infidel place. How can it be here?”

  “Maybe it isn’t,” said Morgiana.

  His eyes went wild.

  She patted his hand. “Hush, child. It’s the best place I know. Does it matter where it is?”

  It did. Profoundly.

  “Think of it,” she said, “as an adventure.”

  He swallowed hard, trying not to choke. “You—this—you brought me here by witchcraft!”

  She lowered her eyes. Aidan would not be pleased. He would tell her, again, that she would never learn; that she must learn. And never mind that this mortal child knew what she was. Most of them did, sooner or later. She was not a good liar.

  She rose. “I’ll take you back,” she said.

  He caught her hand. He seemed surprised that he had done it; but he did not let go. “No. No, my lady. It was just...you never...I didn’t know you could do that.”

  He did. But he had never believed it. He was getting over his shock; he was beginning to enjoy himself. An adventure, he was thinking. A tale to widen eyes among his siblings, and among the pages and the squires when he went back to Tripoli. “Where are we, my lady?”

  “That,” she said, “is my secret.”

  He let her keep it, though he was burning with curiosity. A mystery, too. He was in bliss.

  She sat down again and watched him eat. He paused. “Lady. Won’t you have some, too?”

  She shook her head.

  “Is it because I’m a Christian?”

  “Hardly that,” she said, “when I break bread with unbelievers every day.”

  “I’m not—it’s you who—” He stopped, tangled in it. “Father Robert says you’re in—irre—unregenerate.”

  She laughed. “That’s not all he says I am! He tried to baptize me once, did you know? He reasoned that since a baby needn’t know or consent, a grown witch might not need to submit, either. I think he rather hoped that I’d sprout horns and a tail at the touch of the holy water, and fly screeching out the window.”

  “Did you?” Aimery went crimson again. “I mean, did he really do it?”

  “My lord talked him out of it. Not gently.”

  Aimery looked as if he would have laughed, if he had dared. “I can imagine. Uncle—his highness can be very persuasive. I saw him in the tournament last winter. Count Raymond says there’s never been a better man of his hands in Outremer.”

  “There hasn’t,” Morgiana said. “Bohemond was a great fighter in his day. King Amalric was notable; and his son, the leper king, would have been, if he had lived.”

  “You knew Bohemond?”

  Morgiana shook her head. “I heard of him. He was seven feet tall. Even for a Frank, that’s big.”

  Fatimah brought a cup of a sherbet cooled with snow. Aimery drank it blindly, fascinated. “They called him that, you know. Bohemond. Because he was like the giant in the story. The infidels must have thought he was a devil.”

  “A jinni. A spirit of earth, as my prince and I are spirits of air. That’s not a devil, exactly. We can accept Islam; we can win salvation, though it’s harder for us, and longer. Iblis—the Adversary—is our forefather, you see.”

  “You are children of Satan?” Aimery’s eyes were round.

  “No,” she said, willing herself to be patient. “We are our own creatures, less than angels, but sharing somewhat of their substance. So we never grow old, and we never sicken; but we have free will, like men. Except that men have pure souls apart from their flesh, and we are both spirit and flesh, and so it’s harder to divide the two. It’s in holy Koran.”

  “It’s false scripture. Though Mother tells us to be
polite to it, and to people who believe in it. So does Count Raymond.”

  “Your count is a wise man, for an infidel.” She did not say what she thought of Aimery’s mother. “I’m neither devil nor damned, and my prince is as good a Christian as any I’ve seen.”

  “But you’re witches,” said Aimery.

  “What, like old women muttering over their cauldrons? We are white enchanters. We work magic in Allah’s name. Or in God’s. You might say we are magic. We can no more help working it than you can help being almost as big as Bohemond.”

  “I’m hardly—” He looked down at himself. “I’ll never be as big as that.”

  “Close enough,” she said.

  His eyes measured her as she sat there in her veils and her smallness. Odd: she never felt small when she was among Muslims. She often wore men’s clothes, and passed for a man, or a eunuch at least; and not a little one, either. But a tall Muslim was merely a middling Frank, and she was a woman besides. This hulking boy made her remember that. He was beginning to understand what women were for, though he was young enough still to blush when he understood it.

  She let fall her veil, which was revenge for the names he had called her, and smiled, which was to soothe him. A woman should always know how she looked to a man. Morgiana knew that she was beautiful; she knew that it was not a common beauty, nor a comfortable one. Gentleness was no part of it. Perhaps that was why her smile did not have the effect she wanted. Aimery blanched and stammered. “Lady. Lady, I—”

  “Messire, I don’t bite.”

  “But,” he said, “you’re so beautiful.”

  Now it was her turn, at last, to blush. It made her furious, but it comforted him. He gulped what was left in his cup and set it down.

  “I’m glad you’re going to marry my uncle,” he said in a rush, as if he had to get it all done at once or never do it at all. “I’m sorry it took so long. I’d like—I’d like to be your squire. When I’m raised to it. If your grace will accept me.”