by Judith Tarr
Aidan’s laughter now was full and free. “You’re trying to tell me that she’s been accused of taking another lover? Evrard, Evrard! You were always a pleasant enough booby, but this is ridiculous.”
Evrard bridled. He had expected anger, even physical attack, but this mockery was uncalled for.
The prince shook his head, still smiling. “Evrard, who put you up to this? Are you trying to make me feel better by telling me she isn’t worth the trouble?”
“No one ‘put me up to this,’” Evrard said stiffly, and not entirely truthfully. “I am not attempting to comfort you in so backhanded a fashion. I am telling you the truth as I have been made to see it. God knows, any perfidy is possible with a Saracen, and this was an Assassin. Is still, for all any of us knows. But what she has been observed in the act of—my lord, even if the pope’s letter is a forgery as you claim, and the marriage is not annulled by the disparity of your religions, have you received any dispensation for consanguinity?”
Aidan regarded him blankly. “Con—Evrard, whatever she is, she is not related to me in any of the forbidden degrees.”
“I was not thinking of her. I was thinking of the one with whom she has been seen in circumstances which admit of no ambiguity. Which would forbid her to marry you, since she has shared carnal relations with one of your close kin.”
“What?”
He was visibly stunned. Evrard had no pity to spare for him. Not since he laughed, and made clear exactly what he thought of Evrard. “She has been seen,” Evrard said—to his credit, not with any great relish, even now—”and more than once, in more than one place, in close and intimate embrace with the lord your brother.”
Aidan’s head shook. “That’s nonsense. We look exactly alike. Is this the worst you can do? Accuse her of consorting with me, and call me my twin?”
Evrard hesitated. It might be true. He rather hoped that it was. “Was it you, then, in the court of the fountain in this house, three days before your wedding? You were in blue,” Evrard said. “And wearing a ring with a sapphire.”
The prince frowned. “I never wear blue. It’s my brother’s color. His ring—his signet, the king’s signet, with the seabird carved on it—” He stopped. “Someone has been lying to you, Evrard.”
“He swore to it on holy relics.”
“No,” said Aidan.
It was sinking in slowly, as such shocks did.
“She wouldn’t,” he said. “Not with my brother. She couldn’t. He couldn’t. He told me—”
“I’m sorry, my lord,” Evrard said, meaning it. Hating what he had been persuaded to do, and hating himself for being even so briefly glad of it. Prince Aidan had a rough tongue, everyone knew that. It was no cause to cut him to the bone.
But was there any gentle way to do it?
Evrard tried to find one. “My lord, it may be for the best. If she would betray you with your own brother, what would she not do? He is not at fault, I’m sure; she bewitched him. Our witness swore to that, as to the rest.”
Aidan rose slowly. He seemed calm; undangerous. But Evrard’s belly knotted. “Get out,” the prince said.
“My lord—”
“Please.” Aidan’s voice was soft. “If you value your life. Go. Now.”
The other two were already edging toward the door. Evrard stood, but he could not make himself walk. “My lord, I am sorry. I wish I had not had to bring you such news on top of the rest. But we felt that you should know; that you should consider it in the light of what has happened.”
“Out,” said Aidan. The softness shredded. There was edged steel beneath. “Out, damn you to hell. Out!”
o0o
The king’s pi-dog fled. And none too soon for his skinny neck. Aidan’s hand found a goblet. It shattered most satisfyingly. The shards, alas, flew wide; none came close enough to touch him. He would have welcomed the sting, and the blood that would follow it.
Morgiana and Gwydion. Preposterous. Another woman—maybe. One had, once, and none of them had seen fit to tell the priests that she who wedded Gwydion had once shared Aidan’s bed. But that was before any betrothal, when a village witch loved two princes and could not choose between them, and all three knew, and loved one another, and never stained it with jealousy. Not even—not excessively—when she chose the gentler of them and consented to be his lady, and afterward his queen. Aidan had not touched her since; not in that way.
As Gwydion would not have touched Morgiana. As he had said that he would not, lest it be discovered, and the marriage be forbidden for yet another cause. Gwydion never lied; not to his brother, the half of his self.
Nor would Morgiana have seduced him. She wanted Aidan, and only Aidan. She never lied to him.
Did she?
He turned in the room, seeing none of it. He was half mad with the wreck of his wedding. This was but another sleight, a new and clumsy blow, delivered by a wide-eyed innocent. Evrard honestly believed that he had done it for Aidan’s own good. Those who had sent him...not so honest, they, and never so benign. What they wanted was clear enough. To weaken him; to confuse him; to sunder him from his Saracen, whom they had good reason to fear, and from his brother, who might raise himself up as rival to the upstart king.
Except that Morgiana would never betray her lover, and Gwydion would never claim any kingdom but his own. They were not ambitious in any way a mortal would understand; these mortals least of all.
All the good that the bout in the courtyard had done him was gone. His mood was more foul than ever. He could not even venture another bout. He would kill the one who fought with him, even if it was Gwydion. Especially if it was Gwydion.
He could not face his brother in this state. He thought of going out. Yes. He would go afoot, alone, and let the city take him where it would. For once its numbing clamor of minds and voices, its seethe and stench of humanity, its agelong burden of holiness, seemed truly welcome. It would hammer away his black mood; make him anew.
o0o
In his plain clothes, with a hood to draw up if he saw anyone he knew, and no weapon but the dagger he always carried, he was no more notable than any other knight or squire in a city full of them. That would change in a week’s time when they were all gone to Acre, but today they were much in evidence, going about errands for their lords or for themselves, readying for war.
He wandered not quite aimlessly. The blunt grey dome of Holy Sepulcher drew him, ugly after the perfection of the Dome of the Rock, ugly and holy. Pilgrims called it beautiful because it was what it was; not through any distinction of its own.
He was like a ghost returning to the scene of its death, probing again and again into the mortal wound. At the foot of Calvary he hesitated. Almost he went up, riding the current of pilgrims. But he could not. He turned instead, and took a way he knew well.
The Mortmains lived their lives in a state of happy chaos. Today it was chaos tenfold, but happy, it was not. It had nothing to do with Aidan, except indirectly, in that he had begotten the object of it.
Ysabel, it seemed, had taken it into her head to run away. Again, and rather more successfully than she had before. Now she was found. She had Simeon’s whelp with her, and Simeon adding his voice to the din, and Ranulf looking bone-weary and saying nothing. “You could have been killed!” her mother screamed at her, not for the first time from the looks of it. “You could have been kidnapped, taken by slavers, dragged away in chains. Anything at all could have happened to you!”
“But it didn’t,” Ysabel said with that perfect confidence in her own righteousness which could drive any self-respecting adult wild. “I was with Akiva. We prayed at the Wailing Wall, and then we went to the Temple, and then we went to the Mount of Olives. They shut the gates while we were there. We found a place to sleep, and stayed there till Aimery found us. No one ever laid a hand on us.”
“I’ll lay a hand on you,” her mother said grimly. “Right where it will do the most good.”
Simeon’s agreement was palpable. He ha
d Akiva by the ear. The boy wore an expression of resignation, and even a glimmer of repentance. “Father, you did give me leave.”
“I gave you leave? To stay out all night and make me tear my hair with worry, I gave you leave?” Simeon shook him till he yelped. “And you almost a man. A girlchild, nine summers old, running away like a whipped puppy, I can see that. But a boy almost a man—”
“I made him do it,” Ysabel said staunchly, if not wisely. “He only went to look after me, because I wouldn’t go back.”
“All the worse,” said Simeon. “A man should know when to disregard a child’s whim.”
“A child,” gritted Joanna, “even a girlchild, ought to know better than to do such a thing to begin with.”
“Just so,” said Simeon. “And for that shall you be punished. Come, sir. We have presumed on these people’s kindness long enough.”
Akiva came with a fair semblance of meekness, but Aidan, unnoticed in the doorway, marked the flash of his eyes. There would be trouble later. Witchfolk trouble.
Oh, no, there won’t.
Akiva went green. Aidan smiled amiably at him and went on in his mind, Yes, I’m here, and I’ve heard as much as I need to hear. Shall we discuss it with my brother, or would you prefer to suffer your punishment—your well-earned punishment—in silence?
That cowed him, though there was spirit enough in him to make him grin when his father, dragging him through the door, saw who moved aside to let him pass. Simeon was quite as startled as Akiva had been. Aidan laid a finger on his lips. Simeon ducked his head, muttered a reverence, and departed, with his son half running to keep pace.
Joanna had started on Ysabel again. Ranulf sat in a chair and lowered his head into his hands. Aidan knew the look of a night’s hard hunting and a morning’s hard fretting. And none of them had sent word to him.
Of course not. They were like everyone else: careful of his grief, sparing his temper.
That was cooling at last in this blessed human uproar. Aidan left the concealment of the doorway and came into the solar. Joanna’s tirade wound down. Ysabel stared wide-eyed, with the first sign of apprehension which she had deigned to show. She had not heard what he said to Akiva, because he did not wish her to; nor known that he was there. Ranulf raised his head and put on a smile of welcome. It was not too ill done, all things considered. “My lord. Aidan?”
“Aidan,” he said. He looked from one to another of them. “She did it again, did she? You should have told me. I could have found her for you.”
Joanna shook her head. It was more tiredness than negation. “I suppose I should have. It didn’t seem wise at the time. And, as you see, we found her. Or Aimery did. He kept his head when all the rest of us lost ours, and tracked her down.”
Ysabel opened her mouth, but shut it again. Aidan looked her up and down. “What did I tell you the last time you did this to your mother?”
She hung her head. She did it, he well knew, to hide the rebellion in her eyes.
“Well?” he prompted her.
She mumbled something.
“Louder,” he said, relentless.
“You said you’d give me a hiding I’d never forget!”
He winced at the volume of it. “So I did. So I shall. If you wanted to stay the night with me, you should have asked.”
“I couldn’t. They would have said no. You would, too. I had to get away from all of you.”
Just as he had fled his own house, not two hours before. She saw that; she put edges in it and turned it to stab.
He caught her power’s hand, lightly but inescapably.
“I am grown,” he said, soft, for her and her alone to hear, “and I have gone where any of my kin may know to find me. Nor do I grieve my mother for doing it.”
“It’s not fair!”
“Life isn’t,” he said, still softly, still holding her power at bay. “Come here, Ysabel.”
She did not want to, but there was no escaping the bond he set on her. She dragged her feet, she would not look at him, she came at last within his arm’s reach. His hand flicked out. She gasped at the sting on her cheek. “That,” he said, “is the merest prick of nothing next to the pain you gave your mother. And it is to remember by.”
He had never struck her before, though she had had her share of spankings at home. She was as appalled as if he had taken a whip to her. He would not let her know that he was almost as shocked. His temper was never as cool as he had thought.
She stood with her hand to her cheek, too stunned even for tears. He quelled the stab of pity. He pitied her too often, indulged her too shamelessly. And this was how she paid him.
“Remember,” he said. “Any wound you deal for failing to think, or for thinking only of yourself, harms far more than you alone. If you cannot think of others when you act, then you should not act at all.”
She shrank under his words. When he stopped, she asked faintly, “Are you going to tan my hide?”
“Do I need to?”
She drew a shuddering breath, choking on the tears she would not shed. “It wouldn’t hurt as much as this.”
“Then this should be sufficient, shouldn’t it?”
She sniffed loudly, but she nodded. There was no deception in it. Ysabel was a canny little witch, but she was honest.
“Now,” Aidan said. “Apologize to your mother and your father, and promise us all that you’ll behave yourself hereafter. Beginning by doing whatever your mother tells you to do, and not arguing.”
o0o
Ysabel went to take a bath and put on a clean kirtle, and to be obedient to her nurse. Ranulf had fallen asleep with his head on the table, pillowed on his folded arms. Joanna regarded him with slightly exasperated affection. “He’ll be the very devil to rouse,” she said, “and worse if I let him sleep there and get a crick in his neck.”
“I’ll carry him to bed,” Aidan said.
Her incredulity only lasted for an instant, before she remembered. Even then she widened her eyes at the sight of Aidan, barely taller than Ranulf and half as broad, taking him up as easily as if he had been a child.
“Almost,” Aidan grunted, steadying that solid bulk, adding a touch of power to make it light. Then indeed he was easy to carry, hardly heavier than Ysabel. Aidan laid him in his bed, and with Joanna helping, eased him out of boots and cotte. He never stirred except to bury his face in the pillow and sink deeper into sleep.
Joanna drew the coverlet over him and smoothed his hair as if he had been one of her sons. “Poor man, he tramped the city all night, worried sick and doing his best to pretend he wasn’t. I thought he was going to cry when Aimery brought the little beast back.”
“She won’t do it again,” Aidan said, “for a day or three.”
“Haven’t I heard you say that before?” Joanna herded him out of the bedchamber and eased the door shut, leaning against it, pushing her hair out of her face. “God. Six of them. Seven now. Why haven’t I gone insane?”
“You ask me?”
She met his smile with a weary grin. “That one is the worst, I have to confess. When the others get into trouble, it’s journeyman-class trouble. She is a master.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? It’s not your fault.”
But it was. Her eyes met his. Human eyes, but otherwise exactly like her daughter’s. The same bright impulsive spirit. The same suggestion of summer thunder.
He was not supposed to love her. He was Morgiana’s now, and that bond would endure past the world’s end. But before Morgiana won him, there was Joanna. She had borne the only child he had yet begotten, the only one he might ever beget. That she was well and contentedly married, that she had borne numerous children since, mattered not at all. Age and childbearing and the duties of a baroness in Outremer had not changed her. She was still Joanna; still the sullen-sweet, impetuous, headstrong child who ran away from her husband and loved a witchborn prince.
She shook her head, reading him as effortlessly as if she had power.
“We can’t,” she said. “It’s too long past. There’s too much world between.”
“And time.”
She smiled, half sad, half tender. “I suppose I’ll envy you someday. When I feel the years creeping up on me. When I see the dark at the end of them.”
“Don’t,” he said.
She reached as if to touch him, but let her hand fall short. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know.”
“But I did.” She pulled herself up, bracing her sorely taxed back. He did not even think. He set his hand on it. He took the pain, as much of it as his poor talent could take.
She was warm, human-warm, cooler than he, both more solid and more fragile. His fingers flexed against the solidity of her.
She eased away from him, carefully, with rigid control. “Thank you,” she said.
That was not what he wanted to hear. What he wanted, she could not say, nor should he try to make her. It was past, as she said. Cruel to linger; cruel to force her to remember.
Cruel also to run away as her daughter had, because he could not bear it. She wanted him there, for all the pain it cost her. He wanted to be there. He stayed for that, longer than he should; taking strength from her, and giving it, in equal measure. Even yet, with all that was between them, they could heal one another.
14.
It was late when Aidan came back to his own house, later than he had intended. His people went about their business with laudable industry. The message had gone to Millefleurs to summon the levies from the demesne and bid them meet their lord in Acre. Those who were in Jerusalem did what they might to prepare for the march. It was all in perfect and impeccable order.
Gwydion’s doing, and Morgiana’s. Aidan found them in the court of the fountain, sitting together, doing nothing that was not proper between brother and sister. And yet at the sight of them his heart twisted.
Gwydion reached out with more than hands, enfolding him in a warm, invisible embrace. Morgiana came more tangibly, as if they had never parted in a quarrel and then spent the night and the day apart. Her mouth was sweet; sweeter than he remembered.
