by Judith Tarr
“All they have to do is look at your eyes.”
That was brutal, and it stopped her cold. She looked at Akiva. His eyes were so dark that the difference did not show at all. Until he shifted, and they flared.
She could not hide even as well as that. Not without power to help her. They would see, no matter what she did, and know. Then they would have everything they needed to break the prince and his kin.
“But we have to do something!” she cried.
“We wait,” Akiva said. “We watch. We know who they are now; we can tell our kin.”
“No,” she said. “Not them. Not yet. It’s too much explaining, for nothing. When my father comes back...”
Akiva did not agree at first, but then he thought about it. “We can’t do anything until he comes, after all,” he said. “Our human kin will only fret, and want to know how we did it, and probably punish us.” He nodded, deciding. “We wait and we watch, and we keep quiet.”
“And if it turns out that we can do anything, we do it.”
Akiva opened his mouth, closed it. “If it’s sensible, and unavoidable. Only that.”
“Of course,” Ysabel said. She meant it. Mostly.
He looked hard at her. After a moment he shrugged and sighed. He was learning, was Akiva.
24.
Joanna had had enough of Jerusalem. She liked it not too badly when everyone was there and court was in session and there was more to do than go over and over the same fruitless maunderings. Now there was not even a caravan to lighten the monotony. Every intelligent caravan master was avoiding the Kingdom of Jerusalem since Saladin had raised the jihad.
A woman as pregnant as she was should properly be so deep in herself and her baby that she hardly noticed the world at all. Joanna had never been a very proper woman. She was losing sleep, she was losing her desire to eat, she was losing her temper at anything and everything.
“Acre,” she said in mid-pace, turning ponderously to face Simeon. “I’m going to Acre. Elen is there; there’s still a bit of trade in and out; and I have Ranulf’s estates to look after.”
Simeon regarded her calmly. “Acre is rather less well defended than Jerusalem; and it’s a surer target. The Saracen will strike for it if he breaks through the army.”
“How can he? Saladin can’t come any closer than Tiberias. They’ll hold him there, or harry him up and down the border.”
“One should allow for contingencies,” Simeon said.
“So I shall. Acre has one escape that Jerusalem can never have: it faces on the sea.”
Simeon sighed. “You will do what you will do. But if you go to Acre, the rest of us go with you.”
“What if the Saracen attacks?”
“As you say. We turn to the sea.”
Joanna was trapped in her own net. “So,” she said. “Come with me. Show me how much trouble you’ll all be. Delay me till I’m like to scream. It won’t matter. I’m going to Acre.”
Simeon said nothing. He had no need. Prudence was no part of Joanna’s intention. All she wanted was escape.
At least it would be a different sky. And preparing for the exodus preoccupied her wonderfully. It even made her forget for whole minutes at a time that she was too heavy with pregnancy to be traveling. Not even her mother had reminded her of that. As Margaret knew all too well, Joanna would only have been the more determined to prove them wrong.
She would not try to ride. That much sense at least she had. She hated riding in a litter, but for the baby’s sake she would suffer it. Lady Margaret had hired a midwife and named her Joanna’s maid. Joanna, undeceived, let the woman be. It could not hurt to have her there, and it would keep people quiet. For herself, she intended to have her baby in her own house in Acre as she had had every one of the others, and at the hands of the one who had been with her for every child but Aimery: Zoe the Byzantine, whom she first met in Aleppo, and who had come back to Outremer with her and become friend as well as physician.
Zoe would have plenty to say to a woman who tramped the roads in the middle of a war, at eight months pregnant. She would have had more to say to one who trusted to any other power than her own, to bring that baby into the world.
o0o
Joanna would have reckoned that her own company of men-at-arms was enough to protect them even in as unsettled a country as this had become. Lady Margaret did not agree. She would not go; Jerusalem was her city, and she was not about to leave it. But neither would she leave her daughter to her folly. “I have found companions for you,” she said the day before Joanna was to go—a good week later already than Joanna would have liked. “A small caravan from Jerusalem to Acre, with troops to guard it. Its master owes me a favor. This will be part payment of it.”
Joanna could not find anything to say. Margaret was a daughter and an heir of the House of Ibrahim in Aleppo, although her father had been a baron of Jerusalem; that, in the world of trade, made her a princess of a house of queens. She could outmaneuver and outbargain Joanna at every step of the way. That she had not offered more than token resistance to Joanna’s idiocy, meant that she did not choose to; this doubled escort was small enough price to pay for her acquiescence.
o0o
Ysabel, having found her father’s enemies, was hardly minded to leave them now. Who knew what they would do without anyone to watch them? But her mother was set on going to Acre. There was no budging her.
Ysabel did not learn what her grandmother was up to until the very last moment. Until, in fact, they were all together in their caravan, with Joanna in her hated litter in the middle of it and all their goodbyes said. As they began to move, a second, slightly larger caravan came up behind them. At first Ysabel knew simply that the two companies had decided to travel together as their like often did, for safety and for company. It was Akiva who pointed out the one who led the second caravan.
She did not know his face. An ordinary enough face, fleshy with prosperity, with a grizzled beard to give it authority. But his mind—she almost shouted aloud. No need after all to wish she had remained behind. Their enemy was riding with them to Acre.
She found his son near enough to him, dangling at the heel of a portly monk. Young Marco was not ill to look at, if somewhat weedy and awkward. His mind was as blurry as ever, and as weak in hiding what it thought. He was half excited, half afraid. He knew very well whose kin they were riding with. He shared his father’s confidence that they could not know what part the Secos, father and son, had had in their kinsfolk’s discomfiture, but he went in imminent, delicious dread of their finding it out.
Brother Thomas would be furious. He did not know. Neither of the Secos had told him, and Brother Richard said that he had not seen fit to.
Brother Richard warded himself better than either of the others, but it was not the wall Ysabel had run afoul of when she first found the conspiracy. That was still in Jerusalem. Maybe Brother Thomas; maybe someone else she had not learned of yet. Morgiana would be interested to know how many humans had escaped her hunt. She would want to kill them all,
Ysabel might be willing to let her. The merchant was a sly, smug, horrible creature. He actually smirked when he came to pay his respects to the ladies, though he did it where he thought no one could see. Guillermo, his name was. Guillermo Seco. Ysabel committed it and his face to memory beside her remembrance of his mind. It was shielding now, but haphazardly, and—that thought was as clear as if he had said it aloud—only because the damned fools of monks had made him swear to do it. He was ignorant. He thought Brother Richard might be able somehow to tell if he slacked off too badly.
Brother Richard could no more read another man’s mind than he could fly. He could shield his own mind, to be sure, and do it well. There was no profit in trying to break the wall. It was not as strong as the one in Jerusalem, but it was quite as dangerous. Even being near it taxed her will to stay away from it.
o0o
It was not so far to Acre, if one had a falcon’s wings, or relays of fast hor
ses. In a caravan, in summer’s heat, with wagons, and women in litters, it took the better part of a week. They dawdled, for a fact. Every day they had news from here or there. Saladin was massing on the eastern borders. Guy was mustering his army near Nazareth. Castles and cities that had been scant enough on fighting men already, now stripped themselves to the bone. The whole country held its breath and waited for word to come that there had been a battle.
There was even, once, a message from their own kin, brought up from Jerusalem by a servant who had been left behind. No news in it to speak of. Just that they were well, and there had been no fighting, apart from a skirmish or two.
Joanna was not fit for human company for hours after that, between missing her husband and missing Aidan and fretting over the letter she had had from Aimery. There were no secrets in it; she read it to Ysabel. Aimery de Mortmain to the Lady Joanna de Hautecourt Lady mother, I am well I hope you are well and the baby is well and the children are staying out of trouble. I am with Count Raymond every day, but he lets me ride sometimes with Father or Prince Aidan. They are well Prince Aidan hasn’t yelled at the king even once. He says that I shoot well. I shot a gazelle yesterday. We had it for dinner. Tomorrow, maybe, we hunt Saracens.
That was all there was room for on the parchment. Aimery had written it with his own hand: it wobbled in places, and the spelling was, as Joanna thought and Ysabel heard, inventive. Joanna was proud that he could write at all. Most young lords could not, still less in decipherable Latin. Something of his lessons had stayed with him. Joanna glared at the letter, furious, because it made her want to weep.
A good part of that was pregnancy, but some was what she always felt when she thought of Aimery. He had been taken away from her when he was a baby and sent to be fostered where his father saw an advantage. Ranulf was young then; he never thought to ask his wife if she wanted to give up her baby. That was why Ysabel was born. Joanna left her husband, hating him for what he had done, and went first to her mother, then to her mother’s kin in Aleppo.
Aidan went with her, because there was an Assassin on her track, and he thought he could protect her. He did not do that very well—Morgiana caught her in Aleppo, and almost killed her—but he fell in love with Joanna, and Joanna with him. She chose Ranulf in the end, and Ranulf let her have Aimery, but by then she was carrying Ysabel. It was all tangled up in her, and Aimery most of all. He thought she did not love him. It was not that at all. She loved him too much. It made her do and say all the wrong things, at all the wrong times.
Ysabel left her to brood over the bit of parchment. Akiva had proved himself a surprisingly good horseman; after a day on one of the servants’ nags, he was given leave to ride Joanna’s own tempestuous mare. She was one of Aidan’s beauties; she had the fire of her Arab kin, and the size and strength of her Frankish sire. Akiva sat her easily, undaunted by her fits of temper.
Ysabel came up beside him, her own mare dancing and playing with the bit. Her eyes were on the ones who rode just ahead of him. Guillermo Seco would not condescend to notice a horseboy in the coat and cap of a Jew, still less a mere girl, but Messer Marco took time to be scornful.
“He shouldn’t turn up his nose so high,” Ysabel said, precise and clear. “It makes him sit his horse even worse than he would to begin with.”
Akiva knew what she was doing. His eye sparked on her. “To be sure, my lady, we can’t all be born to the saddle. I wonder, did he learn by riding camels in the caravans? They look just like that, rocking and swaying and snapping their reins.”
“His poor horse,” said Ysabel. “Tell me, who taught you to ride? Was it the King of Rhiyana?”
“His very own self,” Akiva answered her. They were both gratified to see Marco’s shoulders stiffen. “I’m to be a secretary, of course, and a scholar of the Torah, but my lord says that no man, even a scholar, ought to live forever within four walls. He taught me to ride, for that, and to shoot a little.”
“Not to use a sword?”
“I’ve no art in that, and no time to learn. I’ll have to trust to him if it comes down to bared steel.”
“Or you can trust to his brother’s lady. She was an Assassin, after all. She can hunt like a tigress in the night, and she never loses her quarry.”
“Ah,” said Akiva. “Yes. Is she hunting still, do you think? She wasn’t happy at all to be cheated of her wedding. I’d not like to be the man who did it to her.”
“Nor I,” Ysabel said, and her shiver was real enough. If Marco had been a dog, he would have been prick-eared and trembling and whining with anxiety. “Maybe she’s found him, or is about to. He’d be distracted with the war; thinking he’s safe. Ripe for her taking.”
“God help him then,” Akiva said.
Marco broke at that. He hauled his horse bodily out of the line and said something to his father about seeing to the camels. He had to ride past the children to do it. They were careful to be innocent, offering him smiles and lifted hands. He ducked his head and dug heels into his gelding’s sides.
“That was cruel.” Akiva spoke much softer now than he had a moment ago.
“He deserved it,” said Ysabel. “He was worse than cruel to Morgiana and my uncle.” She was careful to say it that way, here where people could listen if they were minded. No one seemed to be. The merchant would not stoop to, and the fat monk looked to be asleep on his mule.
She fixed her eyes on the monk’s broad back. He knew what she needed to know. She was sure of it. But there was no getting into his mind. There might be ways of tricking him into dropping the wards; she could not think of any, though she tried. Her snare was still set, still waiting for the stray thought that would catch him.
She could be patient, if that was what she needed. She could hide herself down deep, be all human and all harmless, and let him betray himself. Men had trouble enough paying attention to women. To monks, women were not there at all, except as bodies to be preached against. And a small girlchild on a horse that seemed a bit too much for her, however noble her family, was the next thing to invisible.
Not if he paid any attention to what we were saying.
She glanced at Akiva. He was working a tangle out of his horse’s mane.
He didn’t, she said. His ears aren’t as good as that. I don’t think he has a guilty conscience, either.
I don’t think he has a conscience at all. Akiva frowned at the worst of the knot. How can a horse get elflocks just walking on the road?
Think about what’s riding her. Ysabel swatted a fly on her mare’s neck. Akiva had stopped being aware of her. He was trying what she had tried: to insinuate himself through a chink in the monk’s wards. He had no more luck than she had, and came out rather less intact. His face was bloodless; his eyes were holes in it, with all the fire gone out of them.
She snatched in sudden fear, with mind and hand both. He was there to both, though he was cold and shaking. “No more,” she said. “No more.”
He nodded as if his head were too heavy, almost, to lift, but it was more assent than exhaustion. His eyes closed. They’re too strong for us. We need the grownfolk.
We’ll have them, Ysabel said. Soon.
After the war.
Soon, she said.
25.
The arrival in Acre of the lady of Mortmain with her children and her guardsmen and all her attendants took Elen somewhat by surprise. She had expected it; there had been messages, and she had seen that the house was in order for their coming. But there were so many of them, and they made such noise after the quiet of her solitude. She almost resented them. The queen was gone days since to Jerusalem and then to Nablus; she had not been able to persuade Elen to follow her. Elen had been content to be alone, to drift and to dream; to weep when her courses came in their due time, and she could not have told whether it was relief or regret. She was hopelessly besotted with a man who might be dead before the summer was out; and though she could pray that he would be safe, she knew all too well that he could not come b
ack and be her lover.
All these noisy crowding people did their best to drive him out of her mind. The children needed chasing after, the servants needed watching over, the house needed these stores and that improvement in its furnishings, and someone had to mend the tiles on the roof over the gate. Joanna, grown enormous with the approach of her time, still seemed to be everywhere at once, even when she did not leave her chair in the solar. She was shameless in making Elen her hands and feet. “You can run,” she said, “and I can’t. And you’re looking a little too pallid for my peace of mind. Your uncles will never forgive you if you pine away for their sakes.”
“I’m not,” Elen said, but she went where she was bidden and did as she was told. She felt as young as Ysabel, and fully as rebellious.
When she came back, Joanna let her sink into a chair. A servant brought her sherbet cooled with snow from Mount Hermon. Somehow, without her noticing it, high summer had come in: summer as high as the sun in this country, with a heavy, clinging heat. Elen had been persuaded to forsake western swathings for the thin silks of the east. She was all in eastern dress today, except for the veil. She let her mantle fall over the back of her chair and daringly enough, even with no one but Joanna and her maid and the single servant to see, sat bare-armed and silken-trousered and blessedly cool in the dim, airy room.
Joanna shifted in her chair, waving off the maid and the servant. She was in pain, Elen knew: her back was always troublesome, and the baby, growing large, kicked hard enough to bruise. But Joanna was never one to bow to any will but her own, even when that will was her body’s, readying itself to give birth.
“Not quite yet,” Joanna said, catching Elen’s eyes on her mountainous middle. She sat up a little straighter, brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face. “What I wouldn’t give for a good, hard gallop under an open sky...” She grimaced, shook her head. “I’ll get one soon enough, once this little monster has got itself born.”
