by Judith Tarr
He came up from the kiss, dizzy and dazzled. She laughed and drew him to the fountain’s rim, set him down by his brother, sat on his other side with her arm about him. There between the two of them, he should have rested.
But he could not. He tried to hide it; to hear what they said. Nothing of great consequence. Gwydion had been in the city, had gone to the Temple and spoken with the knights who ruled it, and then, to be courteous, had spoken also with the Knights of the Hospital in their great house and hospital near the Holy Sepulcher, where they had gathered to mourn their Grand Master. “The Hospitallers speak well of you,” he said.
“The Templars less well, I’m sure,” said Aidan somewhat dryly.
“Well enough,” said Gwydion, amused, “though you have been known to refer to them as ‘those hotheads in bloody crosses.’”
“They are,” Morgiana said. “That Master of theirs, and that idiot who calls himself king—they are a pair, and no mistake. Allah could hardly have done a greater favor to my lord Salah al-Din than He has done in giving him such a pair of enemies.”
“Fortunately they are not all he has to face.” Gwydion leaned lightly against his brother, comfortably, as one who knows where his proper place is. “I told the knights of both Temple and Hospital that I would be fighting in the army of Outremer, if its king will have me.”
“You know he wants you,” said Morgiana.
“He does,” Gwydion said, “when he’s not being persuaded that I’m after his crown. If he requires an oath to that effect, then he shall receive one. I can hardly refuse to defend the Holy Sepulcher while I am here and it is in danger, even if my knights would allow it. But I will never undertake to be made its chief Defender.”
She regarded him past Aidan’s silence, not surprised, never that, but somewhat awed. “You are as zealous in the Crusade as any mortal fool.”
“How can I not be? It’s my Crusade as much as theirs; my holy places which are about to be overrun.”
She frowned, troubled. “That is the heart of it, isn’t it? Whose holy places, and how they shall be taken or held. I thought better of you. I thought you would see sense, and leave while you could.”
“Why? Because I never in my life began a war, and never sought one out that did not come to me?”
“I never called you a coward.”
“I never thought you did. But this is a war which has come to me, above all that I have ever fought. How can I turn my back on it?”
“It’s a mortal war.”
“It is holy war.”
That silenced her. In the silence, Aidan rose from between them. Her body against his, Gwydion’s body bracing it on the other side, were a white pain. They never noticed. He hid it too well; they cared too little to see. He said something of going to look in on his mamluks. They nodded, already dismissing him, moving back together to continue their colloquy.
o0o
His mamluks were in order as they always were, lodging cheerfully on top of one another in the guardroom. Some were at drill in the courtyard where, earlier, Aidan had crossed swords with Gwydion. The rest tended their arms and armor, or played at backgammon in a slant of sunlight. Arslan was winning, as usual. Timur, who was losing hopelessly, grinned at his master. “I’ll win the next,” he said.
“Optimist,” said Ilkhan.
Timur rolled his eyes. “Such loyalty. Such confidence in one’s own blood kin.”
Aidan turned on his heel, not even thinking. He was in his own chamber before he knew what he had done.
He lay on the great bed, on his face, shoulders shaking. Not with sobbing. Not precisely with laughter. He knew it was a lie. He knew. Yet it poisoned every word they spoke, every move they made. It could have been true. It could, so very easily, have been so.
He should get up, ready himself to preside at dinner. It was his duty as lord of the house. He would go, face them both, be an innocent. Then when they could be alone together, he would tell them what nonsense had beset them. They would laugh, all three of them, at the lies and follies of human men.
A light hand smoothed his hair, ran down his back. He tensed against it. Morgiana stretched beside him, kissed his ear, nipped it lightly. It was all he could do not to fling himself away from her.
“We’ll find the pope’s letter,” she said. “We’ll exact the price for it. We only need time.”
He thrust himself up on his hands. “Time? How much time will it take to seduce my brother as you seduced me?”
She was not even angry. She was too shocked. “What in the world—My beloved idiot, what ever put that in your head?”
“It’s true, isn’t it? While you were denying me, telling me that it was to keep yourself pure for the wedding, you were assuaging your lust with him.”
He could not believe that he was saying it. No more, yet, could she. “Why would I want to bed him when I can have you?”
“For the difference. For the likeness. Because it takes your fancy.”
“I am hardly as wanton as that.”
“No? Tell that to the people who’ve seen you with him.”
“You’ve gone mad,” she said.
“What’s mad? The instant I leave you, you’re in his lap.”
She drew her breath in sharply. “What are you trying to do?”
“Maybe I want to hear the truth.”
“The truth,” she said with careful, icy precision, “is that I am yours and yours alone. I like your brother very much, I can’t lie about that. But not for my bed.”
He shook his aching, throbbing head. “I know that! I know—but—I can’t—I saw you there, just exactly where they said you were, just as close as they said you had been, and I wasn’t—I couldn’t—”
She reached out and pulled him to her, cradling his head on her breast. “Hush, love. They’ve done something to you; broken you. Iblis torment them with scorpions!”
He pulled away with violence enough to overset her. He rose above her. She was stark with shock; her eyes were more like a cat’s than ever, stretched wide, rimmed with white. “Swear it,” he said. “Swear that you have done nothing to shame me.”
“I have not.”
“Swear!”
His voice lashed her to the bone. She had held her temper in check, between shock and startlement; but she was no gentle creature, and, beyond a certain limit, no forgiving one. He had gone well past that limit.
It was what he wanted. He was almost glad to see the anger kindle in her eyes; to see how her nostrils thinned, her lips tightened. “What oath can I swear to you, that this mood you will accept? Why should I swear it at all?”
“Because I ask it.”
“If you asked,” she said. “If you did that, yes, I would swear. But this—I will not be forced. Not even by you, my lord.”
“Why? Because you can’t honestly swear that you have been faithful to me?”
“Faithful?” She laughed, high and light and merciless. “That you should demand that. You, of all men. You with your bastard, with your doxy in her husband’s house, with all the lies that blacken your soul.”
“I have not—”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said. “Don’t even try. I know where you were today. You reek of her.”
“I did nothing,” he said through clenched teeth. “No more than—”
“No more than I with Gwydion? Is that what you would say, my lord? And if that is true, then was it any mortal man who sired yon witchling?”
“That was eleven years ago.”
“Surely,” she said. “And again not three hours since. While I was—purportedly—disporting myself with your image and likeness.”
“I have not touched her carnally since I became your lover.”
“No? And have you not desired her?”
The devil that was in him made him lift his chin and say, “And what if I have?”
“Then you admit it?”
“I do not. No more do I suffer you to speak so of her. I hear what you think of
her. Cow, you think. Whore. She is neither. She is a lady and a gentlewoman.”
“And what am I?”
“You know what you are.”
“I know what I am not.”
“Faithful.”
She bared her white sharp teeth. “Don’t you wish that I were as she is. Wanton and wicked. Wedded to a horn-browed fool. Mother of your whelp.”
He struck her. As he had Ysabel. Just exactly as had struck Ysabel.
Morgiana did not raise her hand to her cheek as Ysabel had. The bruise was already beginning on the ivory skin. Her eyes above it were as pale as beryls, and as hard. “You should not have done that,” she said.
“Morgiana—”
“No,” she said. She spoke slowly, as if to measure each word. “I understand now. This is not the old battle over your Frankish woman, or the new one over your brother. They are but pretexts. This is the oldest of all our battles. You are a Frank. I am a Saracen. If I will not yield to your world and your ways, if I will not fight with you in your war, then you will drive me away. It must be I who go: I who am the alien in this country, the infidel, the interloper. Less pain to you then that I remove myself from your heart and your presence. Less division in your soul, that you must go to war against my people.”
She was calm, quiet, utterly reasonable. It seemed perfect sense, as she said it. And yet—dear God—
She rose to her knees in the billowing feather-softness of the bed, and went down in Muslim obeisance. “I swear by Allah and by His Prophet, by the words of holy Koran and by the black stone of the Qaabah: I have never been aught but faithful to you in thought and in deed, in body and in heart. I have never been aught but yours.”
It was what he had asked of her; what he had thought he wanted. It blew black in him, like a wind off the northern sea. He wanted to weep; he wanted to howl aloud. He reached for her, to draw her to him, to break down the wall that his madness had raised between them.
She was not there. She stood on the floor in her Muslim garb with the turban wound about her head: all alien, and all apart. “You have your oath. I shall not again trouble your peace. Not while this kingdom stands. Not while you do battle for it and for the mother of your daughter.”
“I have not touched her!” he cried in pain.
“So? And now you may. I promised you that I would never harm her again. I keep my promises.”
“Morgiana,” he said. “Sweet saints in heaven, I never meant—”
“Didn’t you?” She stood in front of him, and there was no reaching her. No warming; no touching.
He fought his way out of bed and coverlets. He opened his mind wide, all defenseless. “Morgiana. It was a devil in me; it was a madness. Whatever price you ask, whatever atonement you seek—”
“And you call us merchants.” There was no contempt in it. Only weariness, and implacable will. “I am not to be bought, sir Frank. Not with anything you can pay.”
“Morgiana—”
He clutched at air. She was gone. Truly, utterly gone. Where she had been in the heart of him was only emptiness, and four stark words.
I keep my promises.
15.
It was like her fortune, Elen reflected, that in others’ joy she should be grieving, and now that their joy was broken, her grief escaped and would not come back. It started before the outrage at the gate of Holy Sepulcher, but like a candle it needed the dark to be seen for what it was.
The day the forged letter was read, when the wedding was disbanded and its principals led away to vent their outrage in privacy, Elen took it on herself to see to the ordering of Aidan’s house. He was in no condition to think of it, and Morgiana was nowhere to be found; Gwydion was needed where his brother was. She would have been content with her maid for escort, but the king would not have that. Because she had no wish to darken the air with further contention, she acquiesced.
The guard who fell in beside her was one whom she knew. His blue eyes were less obvious under the shadow of his turban-wrapped helmet. He looked all Saracen, and all business, in his scarlet coat with mail sewn in it, and his high soft boots with the chased silver spurs, and his weapons hung about his saddle and his person. Her maid found him deliciously frightening. “So exotic,” Gwenneth said. “So wild.”
Elen slanted her eyes at him, and found him doing the same. His glance was bright with mirth. Clearly he liked the way people, and especially women, reacted to his foreignness; quite as much as he liked it when they thought him one of them. He was like Aidan, that way. He moved easily between the worlds, and made himself a part of both.
She said so, to see what he would say. He obliged her handsomely. “Better a part of both than a part of neither,” he said in his accented Frankish. “My lord taught me that.”
“I should think you’d have learned it when you were young,” she said. “Islam being as it is, accepting of any who accepts its faith.”
“So it is, and so it does. But Franks dwell outside of that pale. I could have forgotten what half of me is, and so I would have, if any other master had been granted me.”
“Do you wish he hadn’t?”
He faced her fully, not easy in that narrow crowded street, with his horse jostling hers, shouldering its way ahead. “Never,” he said.
Their eyes held for an instant before movement and shyness drew them apart. She was purely amazed by what she saw there, under the Saracen helmet, in the Saracen face.
Amazed, but not displeased. Oh, no. Not at all.
o0o
She never knew precisely who named Raihan her guardsman. He stayed with her after that, accompanied her where she chose to go, stood guard at her door when she was in Aidan’s house. At night he kept to his own place, which she told herself she was glad of. Certainly there was no need of him then, as well watched as that house was, and by more than human senses.
By daylight he was her shadow. He was impeccably trained. He could be invisible if she needed him to be, and visible likewise, and when she wanted to talk, he was ready and willing. He should not have surprised her, knowing what she knew of Aidan and the knights he trained, but he did that: he read widely and deeply, whenever he could, and he knew Latin and Greek as well as Arabic and the dialects of Francia. He was a fair hand at field surgery, a skilled hunter and falconer, a master archer with the Turkish bow, as well as a soldier and captain.
“We all are that,” he said the second day after the wedding, as Elen rode to the palace to answer the queen’s summons. “My lord knighted us all in a pack, and a fine scandal it was, but after all, he said, we’d done squire service to the best of our several abilities; shouldn’t we reap the reward? We’ve all got holdings round about Millefleurs, and for a knighting gift he gave each of us sufficient funds to equip us and to have some over for our own pleasure. I put some of mine on a trading venture to Ch’in, which prospered well, and put the rest into my holding. I’m his horsemaster, you see; and I’ve got a herd of my own growing.” He ran a loving hand down the neck of his mare. “This is one of my queens.”
“She’s beautiful,” Elen said. It was true, but it was meant mostly to make him smile. His pleasure was as open as a child’s. She wished sometimes that she could know what was under the heavy curling beard. What she could see of his face was very good to look at; it would be a bitter disappointment if he proved to be rabbit-chinned.
Not for the first time, she was glad that he was no enchanter, to know what she was thinking. She fixed her eyes on the lovely, haughty mare, and did her best to listen to him sing the beast’s praises. When she undressed now, or when she slept and dreamed, it was not Riquier’s body she longed for.
Queen Sybilla did nothing and everything to put Elen’s heart at rest. She was full of half-truthful regrets for Prince Aidan’s misfortune, and not averse to saying what Elen had heard elsewhere: “But then, perhaps it’s as well that he is forbidden to consort with her. Infidel that she is, and Saracen; this is no time to nurture such a viper at our breast. When the w
ar is won, we shall have to find him a lady to console him.”
Elen kept her thoughts to herself, said what courtesy bade her say, escaped before she could be subjected to the same voracious matchmaking. That Sybilla had just that in mind was readily apparent. As Elen left, the queen said, “You will of course accompany your kinsmen to Acre. I shall be going to aid my lord husband as he musters his army; I would welcome your company.”
A queen’s request was a lady’s command. Elen could only bow to it.
And, as she rode home, fight to keep the grin off her face. She knew what her kinsmen wanted her to do: stay in Jerusalem as Lady Joanna was doing, and Lady Margaret, looking after their households and their children, and keeping safe, well away from the war. She would have been pleased enough to do that, as fond as she was becoming of the Mortmains and their kin, but none of the knights who stayed behind to guard the women would be Raihan.
“You’ll fight your own people?” she asked him when they were back under Aidan’s roof, or rather on it, where there was a garden and a spectacle to rival any in the world: the great court of the Templum Domini under the Dome of the Rock. Her maid was near, sweet-natured Gwenneth who was half deaf and all discreet, engrossed in a bit of needlework.
Raihan leaned at ease against the parapet, but his eyes were narrowed slightly, fixed on the great golden dome. “I am my lord’s man. Whom he chooses to fight, is mine to fight also.”
“Even in the name of Christ and the Holy Sepulcher?”
“I fight in my lord’s name.”
She did not know what was in her that she should press him so, but she could not help herself. “You haven’t thought of converting to Christianity?”
“No.”
He said it quietly, but there was a snap in it.
“Not for any reason?” she asked him.
“What reason can there ever be for apostasy?”
She looked down abashed. “I—pardon me, I beg you. I shouldn’t have addressed you so.”
“My lady may address me in any way she pleases.”
