The Dagger and the Cross

by Judith Tarr

  That was not anything he cared to answer. He said instead, “I’ll forgive you. If you’ll forgive me.”

  “Even for Hattin?”

  Aidan willed his teeth to unclench. She never bought her truces cheaply, did Morgiana. “Hattin was none of your doing.”

  “I prevented you from preventing it.”

  “Out of hate for me?”

  “Out of love for my Faith.”

  The wall of it rose between them, higher than any she could raise with power. Too high by far to leap, too sheer to scale.

  But a gate—that, God willing, they could build. If she could learn to trust him again. If he could learn to rule his temper.

  He held out his hand. She looked at it. Her eyes were wary: wild-beast eyes, hunting-cat eyes. Just as his hand began to fall, she caught it. “I love you,” she said.

  “And forgive?”

  She did not answer that. But his hand was still in hers, and she had not vanished otherwhere. Forgiven, unforgiven, still he had her back. He could, for the moment, be content.

  PART FOUR

  ACRE

  June-July 1187

  23.

  Jerusalem was empty with its fighting men gone from it. There were pilgrims in plenty and townspeople as there always were, tradesmen and artisans, women and children, the old and the halt, and the lepers on the dunghills by the north gate. But there was almost no one to protect them. A few knights in the Tower of David, a company or two of guardsmen, and that was all. The rest had gone to war with the king.

  The Patriarch was still there, and the pope’s legate, and priests enough and to spare. The Holy City was still holy, even without swords to defend it.

  Ysabel would have been happier if Aidan had been there. She hated it when he was away fighting. He might be hurt. He might even die. Then what would she do?

  Akiva never admitted to worrying about his king. He spent most of his days studying, sometimes with his father to teach him, but mostly by himself. He and his father were living in the Mortmains’ house: Joanna had pointed out that otherwise they would be all alone by the Dome of the Rock, with only Aidan’s servants to look after them. That would not have swayed Simeon, but he looked at Joanna and decided that she needed protecting. Joanna, who knew very well what he was thinking, was careful to keep her smile behind her eyes. He took his son and moved into the room by the library and made himself useful with the accounts, when he was not studying or praying or talking to people in the city.

  Ysabel was supposed to let them be. She had lessons of her own, and duties, and more of both since her mother had decided that she needed reining in. But neither lessons nor duties could keep Ysabel occupied for every moment of every day.

  She liked to watch Akiva study. He would let her into his mind and take her with him where the words went. Strange places, sometimes. He had a secret, and a gift. He could think of something that he had read, make a picture of it, and it would grow out of air in front of him. It was like Ysabel’s mirror, but it was not solid. Hands passed clear through it.

  He made animals that way one day, out of a bestiary, and Ysabel found that she could make them move. The lion was a fine golden beast, but the unicorn had come out wrong: a great, lumbering, armored creature the color of a thundercloud, with a small mean eye and a fondness for charging blindly at anything that moved. Ysabel scowled at it where it grazed on the meadow that was really a tabletop. “It’s ugly,” she said.

  “It’s what it wants to be.” Akiva propped his elbows on the table and set his chin in his hands. “You should see the cameleopard. It’s preposterous. All those spots, and a neck as long as my king is tall, and the head on top like a flower on a stalk.”

  She eyed him dubiously. “You’re chaffing me.”

  “I’m not.”

  She was hardly convinced, but the picture was in his mind, and it was hard to argue with that. She thought of an animal she would much rather see; surely it was much more probable. “Do me a gryphon,” she said.

  But he would not. “All I ever get is eagles,” he said.

  She was disappointed. He flicked his power just so; beasts and meadow melted, and there was only the table with its heaps of books and parchments. He closed his eyes and sighed. “Do you know what I think? I think the only magic there is, is ours.”

  She could not say that she was shocked. She had had thoughts like that herself. But he said it, not she, and she was nothing if not contrary. “There’s the pope’s letter that was what it was, and then it wasn’t. What do you call that?”

  “Human trickery,” he said.

  “Then why can’t we find the humans who did it?”

  “They know how to hide.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Well? So how do they know?”

  He shrugged.

  It was a victory, but small. “We can find out,” she said. “We can hunt. People don’t know what we are. If the ones they do know are gone, maybe they’ll stop hiding and let us see them.”

  “What makes you think we can see them, when Morgiana couldn’t?”

  Ysabel hissed, just like Morgiana, and for much the same reason. “They knew Morgiana would hunt them. We’re nothing and nobody. All we have to do is make a snare and wait. Then if anyone thinks about the pope’s letter, he’ll be caught.”

  “Is that what Morgiana did?”

  “No,” said Ysabel. “She was too angry. She wanted to prowl and growl and flex her claws. But she’s done it before. I watched her; I know how.”

  Akiva was skeptical. His king had never done anything quite so underhanded.

  “Does he know how?” Ysabel wanted to know. Akiva had no answer for that.

  She was not about to waste time. She took a deep breath, and emptied her mind as she had been taught. It was getting easier; or maybe need made a better pupil of her than when she did it just to please her father. She put even that thought aside and paused for a moment, clean and empty and waiting, like a bit of fresh vellum before the scribe wrote on it. In that emptiness she gathered her power. It came as her breath had a moment before, and filled her in much the same fashion, but breath was cool, and this was fire.

  When she was as full as she needed to be, she made the snare. She saw it in her mind as a loop of fire-colored cord hidden in a thicket that was this part of the mind-world, marked and baited for the pope’s letter.

  Someone seemed to be standing behind her. Here she was eyes all round; she saw but did not say anything to Akiva. She felt his interest and his unwilling admiration. It stung him that she should be able to do something that he could not, and she a full three years younger.

  Girls learn better, she said, and grow up faster.

  That was nothing more than the truth, but the truth was not always what a person wanted to hear. Akiva nicked her with an edge of his temper, just hard enough to sting. She would have liked to sting him back, but she had already done that just by being herself. She laughed instead and set her snare solid, where it would stay until it was sprung, and opened her eyes on the world that humans called real.

  Akiva looked ready to hit her. It was interesting to watch him master himself. Obviously he had learned that from Gwydion; just as obviously he had somewhat more to learn. He did not mind an equal, but he hated to be bested.

  He was disgustingly glad that Nurse came just then and dragged Ysabel away to her hour of Latin. But, Ysabel said sweetly where only he could hear, I like Latin. It’s better than being pricked at by jealous little boys.

  “Little” was what did it. She left him speechless and simmering and threatening revenge.

  o0o

  He punished her by not speaking to her for three days, though she came every day and watched him study. His mind was shut tight. He was better at that than she was, which she knew already; she tried to find a chink in the wall, but mostly she sat still and watched him. She could read Greek or Hebrew over his shoulder or reflected in his eyes, or however she pleased. Her father had that gift: to know any language
once he saw it written or heard it spoken. She was not as good at it as he was, but days of sitting with Akiva had given her as much Greek and Hebrew as she was likely ever to need.

  Akiva did not know it. She was not about to tell him. He might stop reading interesting things and choose the dullest tomes he could find, just to spite her.

  On the third day, when she was just about to have mercy on him and go to her Latin, something stopped her. A tugging. A tickle on the edge of her thinking. A cord closing about the leg of a small startled creature: a thought of the pope’s letter.

  She must have said something aloud. That was a bad habit, Aidan said; it could be dangerous where humans were. But here was only Akiva, and he stopped punishing her and shouldered in beside her, standing over the trapped thought. It had a collar about its neck, and a cord as thin as a spider’s thread leading from it.

  Akiva was with her, his power like a hand clasping hers. Two together were a hundred times stronger than two apart: Aidan’s arithmetic, and he would know, being half of his brother. Ysabel was leader here, which was part courtesy and part necessity, since the snare was hers. She took time to firm her power, and set herself to follow the thread.

  It was very thin. It wavered, sometimes almost to vanishing. It was unsteady even for a human thought, as if it tried still to hide itself; but it kept deciding that hiding was too hard, and the witches were gone, and what harm could there be in letting down its guard?

  Ysabel had no name for it yet. But it had a scent, even a taste. A little too sour, a little too sweet, with a human reek on it, and the cloying stink that was greed. It hated Aidan. It wanted what he had, or what it thought he had. Riches, mostly. Power in the world. A beautiful woman. Beauty of its own, and a body that would never age or sicken or die.

  The fear of death was always there in human awarenesses, even humans who were saints. In this one it was chokingly strong. It filled Ysabel; it took her breath from her. She fled it blindly, sickened, gagging on its stench.

  Akiva was there, strong and clean. No fear in him. Only strength, and the scent and taste that were her own kind.

  “We have him,” Akiva said. “We marked him. We can find him now.”

  She forgot anger, fear, even disgust of the mind they had touched. “Why,” she said, wondering. “We can. Morgiana couldn’t do it, but we did.”

  “Only because Morgiana was gone,” Akiva reminded her. “We still don’t know who he is. Just where. What if he goes away?”

  “We’ll find him now, of course.”

  He knew she did not mean with her mind. He wavered transparently between grown prudence and young eagerness to do something solid. She settled it for herself by starting for the door. He was quick in her wake, still half minded to stop her, but she was not having any of that. What she did was her own business. He could follow or he could stay.

  He followed. It took a little stealth to get out of the house: Nurse was getting ready to come in pursuit of Ysabel, and Mother was somewhat too close to the gate for comfort, going over something tedious with the porter. But the garden was empty in the heat of noon, and the garden gate was no match for a pair of witch-children.

  Akiva had a hat: Jews never went anywhere without one. It was part of their religion. Ysabel did not even have a scarf to cover her hair. She would not have minded, but Akiva bought her a bit of veil in the market, that matched her dress. He would have put it on her, but she was having none of that.

  She put on the veil herself, and kept her grip on the thread they were following. They were going in the right direction, toward the scents and savors of the Herb Market. It was a little slow: Jerusalem was crowded, and there was a procession in honor of a saint. Ysabel would have given much to be able to go straight, as Morgiana did, or even to fly, as Ysabel could do but dared not in front of so many humans.

  While they were caught, the thread moved. Away from them; out of the Herb Market. Ysabel tried her tongue with a curse or two that she had heard from Aidan. She shocked a monk who was treading on her toes. She smiled cloyingly at him and eeled round him, back the way she had come.

  Her quarry could move faster than she: he was on a clearer street, and he was in a hurry. He had an appointment with someone. There was another with him, a young person whose mind leaked like a sieve.

  Ysabel almost whooped aloud. Here was just exactly what they had all been looking for. It was not the one who had stepped into her snare. It was better. Young. Disgruntled. No good at all at hiding what it was thinking.

  His name was Marco. He was seventeen years old; he was from Genoa in the Italies. He remembered it very clearly indeed, having been brought to Outremer a bare year before; he pined to go back. He hated the heat and the flies; he hated the dust; he hated the constant threat of war. But worse than any of them, he hated what he did here. He was a merchant’s son. He was supposed to be learning to be a merchant himself, and he loathed every part of it. He wanted to be a priest. That was all that made this country bearable: that it was so holy, and he was here, and every step was a prayer.

  He was glad that they were going where they were going. His mind gave Ysabel a picture of a house near the Patriarch’s, and a man in it, waiting. A monk with a thin and wizened face, grown old early even for a human man, but burning with a strong slow fire. Marco wanted that fire. He wanted the holiness he saw in this Brother Thomas, the purity of intent. He did not do what they all did for envy of a prince’s wealth. He wanted that prince cleansed from the earth, and all his sorceries with him.

  Marco was not so pure. He did not believe, quite, that those sorceries were as terrible as Brother Thomas thought them. That was Marco’s failing, and not Thomas’; he was trying to overcome it. He made a picture in his mind, in blurry human fashion, of someone whom he called Prince Aidan. It was not Ysabel’s father. It was too tall and too menacing and too much like a picture Ysabel had seen that came from Egypt, of a man with a falcon’s head. The picture blurred and shifted. It had a sword in its hand and fire coming from its eyes, and a terrible, booming voice. It looked like a devil out of a monk’s nightmare.

  What Marco was trying not to remember was how the real Aidan had seemed to him. Frightening, yes, but as a stallion is, or a leopard: because he was so dangerous and so unpredictable, and so beautiful. Marco wanted to hate him. Marco also wanted to fall down and worship him.

  They often hate what they long for most. Akiva was with her, watching as she watched, though keeping half of himself for walking through the human city.

  Humans are strange, Ysabel said. Marco made her head ache. She clung to him out of sheer stubbornness. He was not thinking about the pope’s letter, but even if he had been, he would not know where it was. No more would his father. He was very sure of that. But Brother Thomas knew. Brother Thomas was the one who had done it.

  Ysabel had to stop and gather in her power, or it would flame itself all over Jerusalem. She was almost caught up with the ones she followed. They had gone into the house.

  Into nothingness.

  She reeled. They were gone utterly between one step and the next. There was not even a hint of them left.

  “Wards,” Akiva said in her ear. He looked as white and shaken as she felt. The street was crowded; they moved out of the jostling and cursing into the lee of a doorway.

  “Wards,” Akiva said again. “As strong as I’ve ever seen. But I’ve never seen wards quite like these. Can you hear the buzzing behind them?”

  She could. It set her teeth on edge. She could almost have thought that the buzzing had words in it: a ceaseless, droning monotone, repeating nonsense over and over. Hic haec hoc haec hoc haec hie haec...

  She tore herself out of the trap. Her people’s wards were like glass, or like walls of light. They repelled, gently but inexorably. A touch slid off them. These sucked one in, tried to make one think as they thought, round and round and round.

  “I don’t think we should stay here,” Akiva said. His voice was faint. He was quite unabashedly afr
aid.

  She set her chin and her will. “We have to. How can we know, otherwise?”

  “We can tell Prince Aidan when he comes back. Or Lady Morgiana. They’ll know what to do.”

  Ysabel shook her head stubbornly. “That’s cowardice.”

  “You can call it that if you like. I don’t want my mind undone. I’m too young, Ysabel. I haven’t got all my strength yet.”

  He was talking about Ysabel, too; and not hiding it very well. That was how much these wards had shaken him: they had made him forget how to build the wall about his own mind. She was obstinate, he thought, just to be contrary.

  Which was true, and which stung. “All right then,” she said angrily. “Be a coward. I’m going into that house.”

  His breath caught. “You can’t.”

  “I can.”

  He seized her, which he had never done before, and shook her so hard that her teeth rattled. Then he let her go. “You can be stupid,” he said with temper to match hers, but bottled up, held down hard, until it was absolutely quiet. “You can be as much of an idiot as you could ever want to be. But not here. Not at your father’s expense.”

  She stared at him. There were words in her, but they were too many. She could not find one that would do.

  “Your father,” he said, striking at her with it. “Think of him for a moment, if you can. Suppose you go to that house. Suppose, by the devil’s luck, you get in. What do you do then? You won’t be able to use your power. You can’t hide for long. The one who raised the wards will catch you. He’ll know what you are. He’ll hold you just exactly the way he holds the pope’s letter, where your father will never be able to find you. What will it do to him to lose you as well as his lady? Have you even stopped to think of that?”

  She had not. “They’re priests. They won’t hurt me.”

  “Do they need to? They can hold you. They can snare you with their wards. Then they can use you against your father.”

  “They won’t know. How can they? I’m just a girlchild, sneaking about where I shouldn’t.”