Queen of Swords

by Queen of Swords (retail) (epub)

  Arslan was not afraid. He was furious. He twisted his free hand in the neck of Baldwin’s mantle and pulled him in close. “Whose brilliant idea was this? Who told you how to get here?”

  “Galeran,” Baldwin said.

  Arslan growled under his breath. “Galeran! That witless fop. What does he know of whores and whoring?”

  “A lot,” Baldwin said, “from all he says. He knows about this place, doesn’t he?”

  “Aye, and how? Because he was born here?”

  “You know who his mother is,” Baldwin said impatiently. “She’s as noble as you – as I am.”

  “As I’m not,” Arslan said. “You were going to say that next, weren’t you? And say how odd it is that I’m being such a saintly sister, considering where I come from and what my mother is.”

  “I was not,” Baldwin said fiercely. “You can’t help it if Lady Helena won’t marry your father. Everybody knows she’s no whore, and hasn’t been a courtesan since before you were born.”

  “Everybody isn’t quite that kind about it,” Arslan muttered. “So why else did you bring me here, except that you thought I wouldn’t mind?”

  “Don’t you ever think about women?” Baldwin demanded of him.

  He felt his face go hot. “Not this kind of women.”

  “What other kind is there? Women are women.”

  “Then let’s go back to the Tower,” Arslan said. “Let’s see if one of the kitchenmaids would like a tumble. They’re all panting to have a go at you, I’ll wager.”

  Baldwin was blushing, too, and not becomingly: blotched with white and crimson, with a look that would have been murderous if it had not been so absurd. “They don’t want me.”

  “So you think you have to buy it?”

  “Buying’s better. They… know more. And they don’t – they don’t—”

  “Laugh?”

  “Laugh,” said Baldwin a little thickly.

  “You did it, then,” said Arslan. “You asked Fleur.”

  Fleur was one of the maids. She had a face remarkably like a rabbit’s, hair the color and texture of saffron wool, and the round lashless eyes of a fish. She also had breasts as big as a man’s head, and a reputation among the squires that was, as far as Arslan could determine, richly deserved.

  “I asked Fleur,” Baldwin said, too low almost to hear.

  “She laughed?”

  Baldwin’s eyes burned under his brows. “She didn’t laugh. She said, ‘King or no king, and I like you very well, mind, I don’t take tumbles with boys. Come back when your beard’s in.’”

  “So you think this will get your beard going?” Arslan’s hand took in the room they were in, the shielded lamps, the wavering draperies, the reek of unguents. “Believe me, if that were what did it, Jeannot would have a beard to his knees.”

  Since Jeannot was so fair as to be colorless, could grow exactly six pallid hairs on his fine white chin, and had by his own account tupped more women than a ram had ewes, Baldwin did understand the reference. He hissed at it. “Don’t be silly! She meant, stay away till I’ve made a man of myself. Doesn’t this make a man?”

  “Years make a man,” Arslan said.

  “I have enough,” Baldwin said. “What I lack… it’s here. Galeran said so. He said ring the bell and ask for the Rose of Sharon.”

  “Or the Lily of the Valley?” Arslan ducked a half-hearted blow. “Why not ask for Mary Magdalen, and see what comes to meet you?”

  “You are blasphemous,” Baldwin said.

  “What else should I be, in this place?”

  Baldwin bared teeth at him. The bell was hanging by the wall, with a heavy curtain next to it. Baldwin leaped as if he feared that Arslan would stop him, seized the cord, tugged hard enough almost to pull it down. It jangled unmusically, a sound that could carry, surely, no farther than the curtain beside it.

  Yet it seemed that someone heard, or was waiting for the signal. The curtain stirred. Arslan’s breath caught in his throat.

  The vision that appeared was nothing that he would call lovely. It was a woman, he supposed, or possibly a eunuch: a vast edifice of flesh, clad in garments that billowed like the hangings. A turban concealed its hair, if hair it had. Its voice was astonishing: pure as snow from the mountains of the Lebanon, sweet as honey from the comb.

  And that was poetry, and Arslan was maundering. “Yes, young gentleman?” the apparition inquired. “How may we serve you?”

  “The – I need to – I’m supposed to—” Baldwin stammered.

  Ah well, Arslan thought. No one would ever expect the king to manifest himself as a stumbletongued gawk of a boy. Arslan said it for him, since he was so clearly set on it: “If you would – we seek the Rose of Sharon.”

  “Do you indeed?” said the apparition. Arslan had nearly concluded that it was a eunuch. “And who may I say is inquiring?”

  “Two seekers after the truth that she imparts,” Arslan said, winning a glance of pure incredulity from Baldwin. He met it as blandly as he could. If this was a game, then he would play it and be damned. If it was not – then God help him.

  The eunuch seemed unperturbed by Arslan’s floridity. Perhaps he was accustomed to it. He paused as if to consider, then said, “She is not wont to give audience to every man who asks. But it might be… she may be persuaded.”

  Arslan was no stranger to the ways of the east. He searched in his purse till he found a bit of silver.

  The eunuch did not inspect it vulgarly, bite it to determine its purity, do as a vendor would in the bazaar; he simply slipped it into the recesses of his robes. His eye was keen and his expression sardonic as he bowed and said, “I shall do what I may to persuade her.”

  “I hope you paid him enough,” Baldwin muttered when the eunuch was gone. “That is a he, isn’t it?”

  “I think so,” Arslan said. “You owe me for this. I’d saved that bit of silver for a bridle I had an eye on.”

  “I’ll give you a bridle chased with gold,” Baldwin said, “if you help me get through this.”

  “Do I have any choice?” Arslan asked, more of the air than of his idiot king.

  * * *

  They waited long enough to be almost certain that they had been abandoned. While they waited, they heard sounds that might be others coming in, the soft laughter of women, whispers and sighs and a rhythmic grunting that made the slow heat crawl up Arslan’s cheeks. Oddly enough considering that the sight of a girl’s ankle could set his banner flying, he was as limp and juiceless as yonder eunuch. This place excited him not in the least. He only wanted to be out of it.

  But Baldwin refused to go. “Kings do such things,” he said, “to keep petitioners humble. Be patient.”

  Arslan rolled his eyes and sighed vastly and assumed the attitude he favored when he was on guard: relaxed, alert, but resting as he could. Baldwin, whose training had been as thorough as his, sat as a king sits, erect and still.

  They must have been a strange vision for the messenger who came to them: not the eunuch now but a reed-thin girlchild in a drift of lurid draperies. She regarded them in something like terror, but managed to beckon and say, “Come.”

  Baldwin shrank into a scared boy again. Arslan levered himself up.

  The child led them down a dim and whispering passage and up a stair and down another passage, this one lined with doorways. Near the end she stopped, lifted one of the curtains, dipped in a bow.

  Neither Baldwin nor Arslan allowed himself to hesitate. Arslan went first as a guard should, hand to the hilt of his meat-knife, which was all the weapon he was allowed to carry outside of arms-practice. He felt Baldwin behind him, pressing close, peering over his shoulder.

  No enemies leaped from behind the arras. No army waited to fall upon them. There was only a room so small it was no more than a cubicle, with a bed in it, not remarkably clean, and a chest for clothing, and a heap of rugs and carpets, and enough of the gaudy gauze to drape a hall for a feast. A tree of lamps lit it, stingy of oil: the wick
s were smoky, the flames low.

  On the bed, cross-legged like a storyteller in the bazaar, sat a woman. She was clothed in the eastern fashion, silken trousers and loose tunic. Her face was veiled.

  Arslan stopped just within the door. He had expected the room’s tawdriness; had been braced for any kind of naked debauchery. But this quiet, composed person took him aback.

  Her veil was thin enough to see through. She was not particularly beautiful, though she had fine eyes, large and dark. Her profile was pleasing, if somewhat sharp. Her figure, as far as he could see, was much the same.

  She did not look or act as one might expect of a whore. Her gaze was direct, assessing them as they assessed her. He could not tell what she thought. Their youth amused her, perhaps, but did not arouse her outright contempt.

  “Come in,” she said as the silence stretched. Her voice was rather ordinary, low and pleasant. When they hesitated, her brow rose. “You asked to see me, yes?”

  “We asked,” said Arslan, “to see the Rose of Sharon.”

  “And so you see her,” she said, bowing where she sat, with a flicker of a glance at both of them.

  “We heard,” Baldwin said behind Arslan, “that you are… unusual. That you choose your clients. That not everyone who comes to you is admitted to your presence.”

  “You heard part of the truth,” she said. “I do enjoy a certain degree of freedom. But I must also eat, and pay the keeper his fee.”

  Arslan thought he understood. He reached for Baldwin’s purse. Baldwin let him take it, rifle it, come out with enough assorted silver to, perhaps, begin to appease her.

  She did not even look at it. “Please. Keep your silver. If any of it is needed later, I’ll tell you.”

  Arslan, astonished, dropped the coins back into the purse and let it fall jingling to Baldwin’s side. “Does this mean you won’t—”

  “I don’t know yet what I will do,” she said. “Sit down.”

  They gaped at her. Baldwin mastered his wits first, looked about, discovered nothing better to sit on than the floor; unless he sat on the bed beside the woman. He seemed no more inclined than Arslan to take that liberty.

  The floor was comfortable enough with all its carpets. They sat side by side. Arslan made himself look directly at the woman on the bed. “What is your name?” he asked her. “Really?”

  “What is yours?” she shot back.

  “Arslan,” he answered before he thought.

  Her eyes widened slightly. “Such a name, to go with such a face. Are you a Turk in disguise?”

  “Turks had somewhat to do with raising me,” Arslan said. “They gave me the name I answer to.”

  She nodded as if that made sense, which to most people it would not. “And you?” she asked Baldwin. “Do you have a name, too?”

  “Yes,” Baldwin said. And no more.

  She waited till it was clear that he would not answer. Then she laughed. “O remarkable! I have names enough, with all that men choose to call me. I do like best, however, to be called Nahar.”

  “Nahar,” Arslan said.

  She inclined her head, gracious as a queen. “May I suppose that you came for the usual purpose?”

  Arslan did not blush. He was astonished. “I—” he began.

  Baldwin overrode him. “I was given to understand that you can provide such tutelage as few of your kind are capable of.”

  “Ah,” said Nahar, “you are eloquent. And educated. Are you a clerk, then? I’m not fond of breaking clerks’ vows for them.”

  “I am under no such vows,” Baldwin said.

  “I’ll trust you to be truthful,” said Nahar. She reached up to let fall her veil. She was no more beautiful than Arslan had thought. In fact she was rather plain, with her strong features and her forthright expression. “Tell me who told you of me,” she said.

  Baldwin frowned. “Does it matter?”

  “I think,” Arslan said, “it does.” He looked Nahar in the face. “It’s a joke, isn’t it? A callow fool told my – friend to look for the Rose of Sharon. Leading him to expect the usual run of woman in such a place as this, but knowing that he would find something quite different.”

  “It is possible,” Nahar said without sign of offense, “that this fool of yours had heard of me from another, but lacked the courage to discover what I might be. I am not to the taste of every man, or boy either.”

  “You remind me of my mother,” Arslan said without thinking. But when he did think, he decided to let it be. “She tells the truth, too. And she’s not in the common run of women.”

  “Your mother is a great lady,” Baldwin said with rather more heat than the occasion warranted.

  “My mother was a courtesan when she was young,” Arslan said levelly. “She only ever wanted one man at a time, and then one man at all. That would have served her worse if God had not given her my father.”

  Nahar listened in apparent fascination. “I’m very unlike her, then,” she said. “One man alone would never be enough for me.”

  “Have you ever tried it?” Arslan asked in honest curiosity.

  “Several times,” she said. “There was never enough of him, and always too much of me. The man is rare to vanishing, who will share a woman as women are forced to share a man. After the last one, who tried to beat me but I showed him how well I can wield a dagger, I gave it up. I came here. Here men know better than to be jealous – and if they are, Little Maimoun gets rid of them for me.”

  “Little Maimoun? Is that the person who met us down below?”

  “Oh, no,” said Nahar. “That was Constantius. Little Maimoun you would remember if you had seen him. He’s a whole ell taller than the tallest man you knew before him.”

  “I hope we won’t need to be got rid of,” Arslan said.

  “I hope we get what we came for,” Baldwin said crossly.

  “What did you come for?” asked Nahar.

  Baldwin went scarlet.

  She took no pity on him. “You should have known to ask for one of our preceptresses. They have great skill and practice in the art of transforming boys into men.”

  “May he ask for one now?” Arslan wanted to know.

  Her brow went up again, very like Arslan’s mother. “He? Not you?”

  “I didn’t ask to come here,” Arslan said.

  “Well then,” said Nahar. She clapped her hands. The girlchild appeared as if from the air. Nahar said to her, “This young gentleman would like to visit Petronilla or Lys, whichever of them has the night to spare.”

  “Lys,” said the child. “She’s bored tonight.”

  “Then by all means, we must relieve her,” Nahar said. She gestured to Baldwin. “Go with Ceci.”

  Baldwin looked ready to turn tail and run, but he was too proud for that. He followed the child with wobbling step, but steady enough to send him where he wanted to go.

  Arslan, left alone with the Rose of Sharon, said rather wryly, “You must think me a remarkably juiceless young thing.”

  “Not at all,” she said. She sounded as if she meant it. “I think you’re sensible, and not inclined to run away with your passions. That’s remarkable in a boy of – fifteen?”

  “Almost,” Arslan said.

  “You do look older,” she said as if she felt the need to reassure him. “Your friend betrays you – and, I confess, a certain air about you.”

  Arslan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Really. He cares, but I never could. I’m odd, I know. My mother’s a very self-contained person, too. We make people want to scream at us, just to see if we’ll crack.”

  “And do you ever?”

  “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Some things do put us out of patience.”

  “Yes,” said Nahar. She stretched out on her side, to be comfortable: meaning no seduction by it, he did not think. Nor was he seduced. She was too much like someone who could be his friend.

  The thought was hardly unthinkable, considering what he was and where he came from. Still he wondered at i
t. Of all places to find a person who thought like him, with whom he could converse in comfort and without pretense, a brothel was one of the most unlikely.

  He shrugged inside himself. Why not, after all? And such a tale he could tell when he went back to the Tower of David, if he chose to tell it: how he spent the greater part of a day with the Rose of Sharon, and gave and received great pleasure, and was invited to come back again.

  “But not too soon,” she said. “I have a living to make, after all. And no, I won’t take your silver, or your friend’s either. Some things are worth more than silver.”

  He did persuade her to take a little, to pay her reckoning to the brothelkeeper. “As a gift,” he said, “in friendship.”

  “In friendship,” she said, sounding as bemused as he was, and amused, too. It was a grand joke after all, though Galeran the callow would never in all his life understand it.

  Thirty-Eight

  Baldwin had done extraordinarily well with the enchanting Lys. He was so full of it and of himself that he never seemed to notice how quiet Arslan was, nor asked Arslan how he had fared with the Rose of Sharon.

  That was as well. Arslan was in no mood for explanations. He did venture a question. “Will you go back?”

  “I don’t think so,” Baldwin said without either hesitation or regret. “I have what I needed. Fleur will look at me now – or if not Fleur, then someone else.”

  Arslan hoped that Baldwin was right.

  “And you?” Baldwin asked him. “Will you go back?”

  Not so full of himself after all, and not so oblivious as to forget that he had gone with a companion. Arslan managed not to answer, assisted by their arrival at the Tower of David. A page was waiting there with something that the king must do, and do quickly. When that was dealt with, Arslan could hope, Baldwin would have forgotten that he had ever asked Arslan a question, or that Arslan had failed to answer it.

  * * *

  Arslan went as often as Nahar would let him, which was not often. She would never meet him elsewhere than in that cell of a room, nor seek him out. She knew who he was, of course, by the second time he saw her, and guessed who Baldwin was. She did not speak of it, not directly. She only said, in passing, a word or two that told him that she knew.