The Golden Horn

by Judith Tarr

  She knew he was leading her away from himself, but she did not resist him. “I can’t imagine Alfred doing anything of the sort. He’s too…well…young.”

  “Is he?” Bardas smoothed his beard. “How old would you say he was?”

  “Seventeen, maybe. Eighteen. But that’s not what I mean.”

  “I know. In some things he’s a complete innocent. Blushes like a girl if he hears a coarse word. It’s the other things that concern me. He can tell a rare tale when he has a mind. Ever stopped to wonder how he could have been a monk and a priest, taught that great clever ox from the camp, gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem—the last of which, by his own account, took years, with a year at least in the holy places afterward—and all before he’s even grown a beard?”

  “Latins take vows almost blasphemously young, sometimes.”

  Bardas frowned. “There are times when I think he’s about fifteen. Other times I’m sure he’s as old as the Delphic Oracle. Those eyes of his—he’s no boy, Sophia. Whatever else he is, he’s no boy.”

  She shivered in the sunlight. “I know,” she said very low. She remembered the doctor in Chalcedon and shivered again. “I don’t think he means us harm. The children love him, and I think he returns it. The servants quarrel over the privilege of waiting on him.”

  “He’s bewitched us all, hasn’t he? You should hear the tales they tell in and around Saint Basil’s. He’s supposed to have walked unscathed through the fire, carried any number of people out of it, and worked authentic miracles of healing, aided by a golden-eyed angel in boy’s clothes and another disguised as a Frankish priest.”

  “Jehan is no more uncanny than you are,” Sophia said quickly.

  “You think so?”

  “Of course I think so. He’s a good deal brighter than he looks, and he knows more about Alfred than he’s telling, but he’s no more than he seems to be.”

  “That still leaves the other two.”

  Bardas shifted slightly; Sophia sat beside him. “You aren’t going to send them away, are you?” she asked him.

  He regarded her in honest surprise. “Why would I do that?”

  “The stories—”

  “Are just stories until they’re proven otherwise. I don’t deny that I’m highly suspicious, and I’m not at all sure what we’re harboring here. But I agree with you. Neither of them means us any harm. Whatever they are.”

  “Maybe, after all, they’re only a pair of pilgrims.”

  Bardas snorted and stifled another cough. Before he could answer her, a procession rounded the corner: Anna running ahead with Nikki, Irene walking more sedately behind, and Alf in the rear most dignified of all.

  Sophia could not quite suppress a guilty start. What if Alf had heard them?

  He showed no sign of it. The younger children paused only briefly before vanishing in the direction of the stable; Irene excused herself to attend to her studies— “A love poem, I bet,” Anna said, and was firmly ignored—and Bardas had business in the City.

  Which left Alf, and Sophia sitting in the sun. There was an awkward pause. “I should see to the kitchen stores,” Sophia said to fill it.

  Alf sat where Bardas had been, with no show of self-consciousness. Since he neither responded to her inanity nor looked at her except to smile his quick luminous smile, she stole the chance to look at him. His face was smooth, unlined, with no mark or blemish that she could see; the last scar of the burning was gone wholly, without a trace.

  It could have been a cold face, white and flawless as it was. But the tilt of his brows warmed it, gave it a hint of the faun; and when he smiled it could melt stone.

  “Should you be in the sun?” she asked.

  His eyes flicked to her. They seemed to change whenever she saw him, sometimes grey, sometimes silver, sometimes colorless as water. Now they were palest gold, with the same sunstruck sheen as his hair. “I’ll go in in a little while.”

  “Soon, then.” He was silent; she added, “I liked your song. Was it Latin?”

  He nodded. “A hymn for Rachel bereft of her children. ‘Why are you weeping, maiden mother, lovely Rachel?’” he sang very softly in that marvel of a voice: “‘Quid tu virgo mater ploras, Rachel formosa?’”

  He sang no more than that, although she waited, expectant. After a moment she spoke. “Do you miss your monastery?”

  She could hear his breath as he caught it, see his fists clench in his lap. For an instant his face was truly cold. Yet he spoke quietly, without either pain or anger. “Yes. Yes, sometimes I do miss it. The peace; the long round of days from prayer to prayer and from task to task, with now and then a feast or a guest or a villager who needed healing or comfort. I miss that. The Brothers whose faces I’d known all my life; my Abbot who was my friend…there are times when I ache to take wing and fly back and never leave again.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  He startled her with a flicker of laughter. “For one thing,” he said, “I don’t have wings. For another, I don’t belong there any more. My Abbot is dead; the world has claimed me.”

  “Has it?”

  “Do I look so much like a monk?”

  “You look like a gentleman of the City.”

  “Who longs for his cloister.” That had been her thought; she stared at him, silenced. He smiled bitterly. “I suppose one can’t repudiate one’s whole upbringing in a day or even a season. But I’m going to have to do it.”

  “Why?”

  He paused. His eyes had darkened almost to grey. “Many reasons,” he answered, speaking as quietly as ever. “I killed a man, you know that.”

  “Against your will and in defense of your Abbot.”

  “No,” he said. “It started that way. But when the stroke fell, I knew exactly what I was doing, and I wanted to do it. I took a human life; for that I was truly repentant and atoned in every way I knew how, even to Jerusalem. I shall never free myself from that guilt. Yet that I killed when I did, whom I did—he was mad, and he wanted to destroy three kingdoms, and he murdered my friend who had never raised a hand against any living thing. I rid the world of him. I’ve not been able to regret it.”

  She took his hand. It was the left, his writing hand, its fingers stained with ink. Black, not blood-scarlet. “You killed one man. How many have you healed?”

  “That’s what everyone says. I know about sin and repentance and absolution; who better? But I can’t go back to Saint Ruan’s. It’s more than the act of murder long since atoned for. It’s that I could do it and feel as I do about it. I’ve changed too much. They raised me to be a ringdove, Thea says; I grew into an eagle.”

  “Thea has a clear eye.”

  “Thea has a gift for irony. She also says that no one can turn a leopard into a lapcat. By that, I suppose, she means that I’m innately vicious.”

  “She means that you were stifling in your abbey. Maybe someday when you’ve had all the world has to offer, you’ll be ready to go back and find peace.”

  The bitterness had left his smile. It was gentle and a little sad. “Maybe,” he said without conviction. He rose. “Master Dionysios will be looking for me. Good day, my lady.”

  When she found her voice again, he was gone, and she had asked none of the questions she had meant to ask. She realized that she had crossed herself; cursed her own folly, and turned her back on the garden.

  13.

  Though the sun shone almost with summer’s brilliance, the wind that scoured the City was icy cold. Alf drew his hat down lower and huddled into his cloak.

  “The worst thing about this city,” his companion said, “is its climate. A furnace all summer; then before you can get your breath it’s winter, with a wind howling right out of Scythia.”

  Alf smiled. The other’s tone was as cheerful as his words were glum, his round cheeks bright red with the cold; he grinned up at Alf and clutched at the hat that threatened to take flight and leave his bald crown bare. “There’s your turning. I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow then?”
<
br />   “Wait.” On impulse Alf said, “Let me walk you home.”

  The smaller man’s grin widened. “Are you being protective, then? Eh, brother? They aren’t hunting doctors today, only Latins.”

  “I want to walk,” Alf said, “and I’m not expected home quite yet.”

  “First time you’ve ever left Saint Basil’s when you’re supposed to, isn’t it? Trust Master Dionysios to know when you’re working too hard.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Oh, no. Thin as a lath and white as a ghost, and you’re not overworking. Of course not. And half the people who come in insist that no one but Master Theo tend them. If we weren’t so fond of your pretty face, my friend, we’d all hate you with a passion.”

  “I can’t understand why you don’t.”

  “Didn’t I just tell you? It’s your face. Besides the fact that you’re the best doctor we’ve got. And don’t glower at me like that. Fat old Thomas is babbling on again as usual, but it’s the truth and you know it. There are some who’d gladly see the last of you, but most of us are happy enough; you do all the work, and we get to watch and collect some credit.” Thomas grinned and patted Alf’s shoulder, which was as high as he could reach, for he was a very small man. “Look, I’ve talked us right up to my doorstep. Come in and warm up before you go back.”

  Somewhat later, Alf strode away from Thomas’ house with a cup of wine warming his belly and a smile on his lips. Strange that in this half-burned and crumbling city he should have found more and better friends than he had in his own country.

  What’s strange about it? I’ve always known you’re a Greek at heart.

  He looked about. In the throngs about him he could not see Thea’s face. Though perhaps the striped cat in the doorway, or the pigeon that took wing in front of him—

  Close by him scarlet blazed, a pair of Varangians leaving an alehouse. They were big men and young; he had seen faces like theirs on many a villein in Anglia, long Saxon faces thatched with straw-fair hair.

  As he paused, one stared full at him and grinned. The eyes under the blond brows were startling, golden bronze.

  He knew he was gaping like a fool. The Varangians parted almost within his reach; the one whose eyes and mind were Thea’s stopped short in front of him and swept him into a muscular embrace. “By all the saints! Alfred! What are you doing abroad at this hour?”

  Behind the strange male face, the deep voice, Thea laughed at his discomfiture. Her mockery steadied him. “I’m walking home from Saint Basil’s,” he answered her. He looked her over and laughed a little. “No wonder you were angry when I read you my lecture on mingling with guardsmen. What a pompous fool I was!”

  “Weren’t you?” Thea drew him into a passageway away from prying eyes. Almost at once she was herself again, stripping off her bright gear and bundling it together, dressing in the gown she had worn when he saw her that morning, drawn it seemed from air. The trappings of the Guard vanished as the gown had appeared; she turned about with dancing eyes. “How do I look?”

  “Beautiful, of course,” he said. “You’ll have to show me how you do that.”

  She paused in adjusting cloak and veil. “What? Shape-change?”

  “No. Make things vanish.”

  “It’s easy enough.” She took his arm and entered the throng again. “Tonight after everyone’s abed, I’ll show you.”

  He smiled.

  “You’re cheerful today,” she said.

  He shrugged slightly. “There’s a man at Saint Basil’s who seems to have decided that I’m worth troubling with.”

  “Don’t tell me you honestly doubted it.” He did not respond; she added, “He can make you smile. That’s a power to equal any of mine.”

  “Am I always so morose, then?”

  “Not morose. Preoccupied, mostly. It’s a game in House Akestas to get a smile out of you; the day someone tricks you into an honest-to-God grin, we’ll have a festival.”

  He stared at her in dismay, until he caught the mirth behind her eyes. “On me,” he said, “a grin would be a disgrace.”

  “You’re vain.”

  “Surely.” A vendor passed them, balancing a tray laden with hot and fragrant cakes. Alf tossed him a coin and gained a napkinful that warmed his hands and set his mouth to watering.

  “Here,” he said to Thea, “aren’t you hungry?”

  They ate as they walked, Alf more than usual but still very little. The rest of his share he wrapped and secreted in his robe.

  “Nikki will have a feast tonight,” Thea said.

  “And Anna, and Irene if her dignity will allow it.”

  “You should have had a dozen brothers and sisters and an army of cousins.”

  “I had hundreds. Fellow novices when I was a child, and pupils for years thereafter.”

  They paused on the steps of Holy Apostles. Over the roar and reek of the City, they heard chanting and caught the sweet strong scent of incense. “Novices and pupils aren’t the same,” she said.

  “Close enough.”

  “Did you ever know any girls? Or teach any?”

  “A few,” he said. “Enough to learn that girls need be no less intelligent than boys. Though most change when womanhood comes, forget logic and philosophy and think only on husbands and children.”

  “Or at least on young men and on what gets children.” Thea stood a little apart from him with a cold space between. “I have been rebuked.”

  “I said most. Not all.”

  “There is Sophia,” she agreed.

  “And there is you.”

  “I don’t know any philosophy. And as for logic, Aristotle would be appalled. All I know is the pleasure of the body.”

  A sigh escaped him. “You know a great deal more than that. But if you think you have any need at all for what l can teach, I’ll be glad to be your master. If you will teach me—”

  She leaned forward, breathless.

  “If you will teach me the ways of power.”

  There was a silence in the midst of the City. Suddenly Thea laughed. “It’s a bargain. Power for philosophy, and we’ll see who makes the better student.” She linked arms with him again and plunged into the crowd.

  o0o

  “Filthy Latins!”

  With an effort of will Jehan kept his hand away from his sword. It was as much as any Frank’s life was worth to walk unconcealed in the City, but both he and his companion were well cloaked and hooded. The cry of hatred had not been meant for them.

  He stopped to get his bearings. Left here around the bulk of the church. The wind was cruel. He shivered and wrapped his cloak a little tighter; turned to speak to the man beside him, and caught too late at his hood.

  “Barbarians! Murderers!”

  Something whistled past his ear. He whipped about, sword half drawn. An iron grip stayed his hand. “No!” hissed the other.

  Jehan fought free. The crowd had thickened around him, the murmur of their passing turned to a snarl. In the instant before he let go the hilt, they had seen naked steel.

  He drew up the deep hood and made himself advance. Left past Holy Apostles. Left—

  o0o

  Alf stopped short as if he had struck a wall. Thea whirled, every muscle taut. Behind them the crowd eddied, drawing in those who paused on its edges, rumbling ominously.

  A shout won free. “Frankish bastards!”

  Without a word, both sprang toward the uproar.

  Two men filled its center. One lay in a pool of black and blood-red. The other stood astride him, holding off blows and missiles with the flat of his sword.

  “Hold!” bellowed a deep voice. “What goes on here?”

  A giant in scarlet shouldered through the mob, ignoring blows and curses, wrenching a stone from a man’s hand, roaring for silence. His uniform and his rage and the axe which he carried lightly in his great hands cowed all but the boldest.

  Those he faced, bulking before the Frank with the sword; his beard bristled and his tawny eyes blaz
ed. A stone flew; he caught it with his axehead, shattering it.

  “One more,” he growled. “Just one more. Who fancies a year or six with the Emperor’s jailers?”

  For a long moment the balance wavered. Teeth bared; hands drew back to throw. The Varangian shifted his grip on his axe and braced his feet.

  Slowly the mob melted away. A figure in healer’s blue slipped a round the Guardsman and dropped beside the fallen man. Blood stained the tonsured crown, pouring from a deep gash there.

  Alf looked up into the eyes of the Lord Henry of Flanders. “Sheathe your sword,” he said, “my lord.”

  As Henry obeyed, Alf explored Jehan’s wound with light skilled fingers. The young priest stirred under his hands and groaned.

  His touch stilled both voice and movement; he probed the gash again. It was deep though not mortal, and bloody. He wiped the blood away with a corner of his mantle, drew up his outer robe and tore ruthlessly at the fine linen of his undertunic.

  Without his willing it, his power gathered and focused. He could only slow it, turn it aside from full healing as he bound up the wound.

  He slid one arm beneath Jehan’s shoulders. “Help me,” he said, breathing hard for Henry’s benefit. Together they raised the great inert body, supporting it on either side, its arms about their necks. But Henry hesitated, glancing about. “The Guardsman. Where did he go?”

  “Back to his barracks, I suppose, my lord.” Alf bent his head and stepped forward. The young lord followed perforce.

  o0o

  Jehan swam up out of darkness to a raging headache and Alf’s calm face hovering over him. “What did you keep me under for?” he demanded of it, fretfully.

  “Convenience,” Alf answered.

  Jehan glared and winced. “Did someone hit me over the head with a mace?”

  “A stone with sharp edges.” Alf laid a cool hand on his brow.

  The pain faded; his sight cleared. He could see other faces: Thea’s, Sophia’s, Henry’s. He reached out to the last. “You’re all right? You’re not hurt?”

  Henry smiled. “Scarcely a bruise,” he said. “They tell me you’ll live.”

  “Maybe,” Jehan muttered. He sat up dizzily, saw that they had stripped him down to his shirt. His head was bandaged, his hair damp from a washing. “How long was I out?”