by Judith Tarr
“Barbaric, too, of course.” Jehan returned Chanteuse to its sheath and relaxed a little, though ready at a word to cut the eunuch down.
Michael Doukas sighed, relieved. “Ah. Now I can breathe again. Father, will you hear my confession?”
That caught Jehan completely off guard. “But you’re a Greek!”
“So I am. Will you, Father?”
“You know I can’t.”
The eunuch shook his head sadly. “Such injustice. And all for a word or two in an ancient prayer. Where can I go with such a burden as my soul carries?”
“This place is swarming with priests of your persuasion.” Jehan’s eyes narrowed. “All right. Out with it. What did you come here to tell me?”
Michael Doukas inspected him in detail, turning then to examine Anna, who ate hungrily but watchfully. One of Jehan’s daggers had found its way into her belt. “Your boy, Father? Or—no.” He snatched, too quick even for Anna’s quick hands, and brandished her cap, meeting her glare with laughter. He was, Jehan realized, much younger than he looked, hardly more than a boy himself. “Indeed, my lord, you take them up young! and out of hospitals, too, it seems.”
“Saint Basil’s,” she snapped. “Who are you?”
“My name is Michael Doukas. And yours, noble lady?”
She chose not to answer him. “Michael Doukas? Did you smuggle Alf out of the palace?”
“Indeed, lady,” he replied, “and how do you know of that?”
“He’s my brother. We’re looking for him.” Her eyes glittered with eagerness, her anger forgotten. “Do you know where he is?”
“Your brother?” mused Michael Doukas. “Ah, then you are an Akestas.”
“Of course I’m an Akestas! They took him away with Thea, and Nikki too though they didn’t know he was following till it was too late. Now we can’t find him. Where is he?”
“How strange,” Michael Doukas said. “I have a friend, you see. He has a friend who knows a man, who knows a woman who plies a very old trade near the All-seer’s hill. She likes to talk while she works, and her clients, it seems, like to talk to her.”
“Why?” asked Anna. “What does she do?”
“Never mind,” Jehan said quickly, glowering at the eunuch. “Go on. What rumor did she hear?”
Michael Doukas sighed and shook his head sadly. “Business, she asserts, is better than ever before, but the clientele leaves something to be desired. But she has a little Frankish, learned in the trade, and, as I’ve said, she likes to use her tongue. Last night she had a client of somewhat higher rank than usual, a sergeant-at-arms who served one of the Flemish knights. A very handsome man he was, for a Frank, and very proud of it. Our good dame took due note of this. Ah so, quoth he, but he had a rival in beauty. Indeed? said she. Impossible! And he sighed, languishing, and averred that alas, it was so, but certainly she would never see this paragon, seeing that he lay in prison awaiting the hangman’s pleasure.”
Jehan’s fingers locked around the eunuch’s throat. “Where, damn you? Where?”
Michael Doukas swallowed painfully. “My lord—might you—?” Jehan relaxed his grip by a degree. “My lord, if I may continue, our keen-witted woman of affairs, having some liking for her trade and a certain desire to improve its quality, continued to question her client. He was pleased to tell her what he knew, for her persuasions were quite irresistible. Yes, he had seen the man he spoke of; yes, it was certain: he was destined for the gallows, for he, Latin-born, had fought as a Greek; and there was a whisper of darker things, witchery perhaps—certainly he had a familiar, a small fierce cat that had followed him into his prison. And truly he had enemies. Not the least of whom was my lord the Count of Flanders.”
“Baudouin!” Jehan muttered. “I knew he had a hand in this.”
His fingers tightened till the eunuch gasped. “If you don’t tell me now where Alfred is, I’ll choke it out of you.”
Michael Doukas licked his dry lips. He was not precisely afraid, but he was very much concerned for the safety of his skin. “Very well, my lord. He lies not in any proper prison but in a guarded chamber, very close indeed to Madame’s place of business. She, it seems, knows the place well; it was a tavern once before the fires swept past it. Its cellars are intact, and well and strongly bolted.”
Jehan loosed his grip but did not set the eunuch free. “Take me there,” he said. But then, abruptly, “No. Not quite yet. Where is my lord Henry?”
o0o
The City was deathly quiet under the stars, lying stripped and torn upon her hills, her people cowering still in terror of the conquerors. Yet the Latins were quenched at last, exhausted with their three days’ debauch; their lords moved now to rule the realm that they had taken, and to repair the ravages of war and plundering.
Along the shore of the Horn, Saint Mark’s fleet rode at anchor. One galley glowed vermilion in the light of its many lamps; the lion banner of the Republic caught the light with a glimmer of gold.
Enrico Dandolo received his late guests in a cabin as rich as any emperor’s. Weary though he surely was, no less weary than the young men who faced him, he betrayed no sign of it. He listened quietly to the tale Michael Doukas told, lids lowered over the fierce blind eyes, his face revealing no hint of the thoughts behind. The eunuch, for his part, seemed not at all alarmed to be here, face to face with the man who had ordered the conquest of his city.
“What,” asked the Doge when he was done, “have I to do with this market tale?”
“An innocent man is like to die,” Henry answered him. “I know better than to confront my brother in one of these moods of his. You on the other hand, my lord, he plainly respects. If you pleaded Master Alfred’s case, he would be likely to listen.”
“Is he innocent?” asked Dandolo.
Michael Doukas smiled. “As to that, my lord, I know he was no creature of ours. Indeed I would have wagered that he was yours, if anyone’s.”
Anna shook herself awake in Jehan’s lap. “He wasn’t anybody’s! He worked in Saint Basil’s and mended the hurts their fighters made. He only actually hurt anybody when they hurt one of the family. They—they killed Mother, and Irene, and Corinna. And then they shot Thea. He loved Thea better than anything else in the world. If he killed people after that, can you blame him?”
“Of blame,” said the Doge, “I can say nothing. He is a Latin. He slew Latins.”
“Hasn’t there been enough killing?” She was close to tears. “He told you you’d win. I know—he said so.”
“So he told the Emperor Isaac,” said Michael Doukas.
Anna slid out of Jehan’s lap and stood in front of the Doge. “You can save Alf’s life if you want to. Why don’t you?”
“Child,” Dandolo said to her, “I am not all-powerful. Count Baudouin is a great prince, at least as great as I. If he chooses to dispose of a man for whom he has no love to spare, there is nothing I can do.”
“You can try!”
It was a strange sight, the small girl in ill-fitting boy’s clothes and the ancient and terrible Doge of Saint Mark. He, who could not see, yet felt it; a spark kindled deep in his eye.
“Very well, then. If I set your Alfred free, what will you give me?”
“My thanks,” she answered.
The young men and the eunuch exchanged glances, half in alarm, half in laughter.
The Doge nodded gravely. “A fair price, when all is considered. I suppose you expect prompt service?”
“Immediate, sir.”
“So.” He raised his voice slightly. “Paolo! My cloak!”
o0o
With great care and with Nikki’s help, Alf eased Thea out of her armor. The wound in her side seemed a small thing to have brought her so close to death, a circle of scarlet beneath her breast, no wider than her finger. Gently, with water from the jar and a strip torn from his tunic, he washed away the last of the blood.
She sighed a little under his hands. “So much metal,” she said. “It weighed on my soul
as much as on my body.”
“You regret your bravery?”
“Of course not!” She had moved too quickly; she winced. “I regret that I didn’t give Edmund a better escort into Hell. He was a fine lad. A fool, but... a fine one.”
Alf touched her cheek. She blinked fiercely. “I’m not crying!” she snapped, although he had not spoken. “I’m giving the dead their due. That’s all. It’s over; we survive, as usual; life goes on. That, dear pilgrim, is the wisdom you came all this way to find.”
He touched his lips to the center of her body’s pain. Let me heal you, he said silently.
No. Her fingers tangled in his hair. I want to do my own mending.
Why?
Because, she said, I want to.
Monk that he had been, he understood. But he was a monk no longer, and he loved her. Let me!
No, she repeated. Aloud she said, “I don’t suppose there’s anything to eat in here?”
It distracted him, as she had meant. Yet he paused. She thought hunger at him; he yielded at last, with reluctance in every movement.
o0o
Jehan’s torch, raised as high as the ceiling would allow, illuminated very little. Other senses than sight told him that the space below was bare of furnishings though not of life.
A pool of scarlet caught the light. For an instant his heart stopped. He all but fell to the stone floor; the torch flared wildly as he fought to keep his feet.
The toe of his sandal nudged dry softness. A cloak the color of blood; and under it, curled together for warmth, three larger bodies and a much smaller one. They opened eyes blurred with sleep; Thea smiled and yawned.
“Good—morning, is it?”
“It’s just after midnight.” Jehan was suddenly and blindingly angry. “Aren’t you even surprised to see me?”
“Not surprised,” Alf said. “Glad, yes. Very, very glad.”
Very carefully Jehan unclenched his fists, then his teeth. “I should have known better. You being what you are, and Thea being what she is... you’ve made a fool of me, do you know that?”
“Of course we haven’t,” Thea said.
Alf was on his feet, hale and calm, embracing Jehan with a quiet joy that slew all his anger.
Light flooded the cell. Henry stepped away from the stair, and after him what seemed to be a great number of men. Some bore torches; others supported a bent figure in rich vermilion, easing his passage down the steep narrow way. Yet, once on the level, he stood alone with but his sheathed sword for a prop.
Alf bowed low. He had barely straightened before a small whirlwind overtook him. “Alf! Is Thea all right? Why didn’t you witch yourself out as soon as you got here? They said Jehan had to go down first, and not me—I don’t know why. I’m angry. Alf!”
He gathered her up. She buried her face in his tunic and babbled into silence.
“Thea,” said that lady, “is quite well. But not, yet, quite up to any greater magic than the healing of her own body. Jehan, help me up.”
He approached her almost fearfully. She looked pale even for one of her kind, and thin, almost transparent; but her eyes were bright. Under the cloak she was all but naked; he draped it around her carefully and helped her to her feet.
She drew a cautious breath. “My lords will have to pardon me if I neither bow nor curtsey. I’m... slightly... indisposed.”
“Please, my lady,” the Doge said, “spare your courtesy and lie down again for your body’s sake.”
She made no objection. By that, Jehan knew truly how ill she was. But she insisted on sitting up and speaking as clearly as ever. “My thanks for my lords’ indulgence. To what do we owe the honor of your presence?”
Jehan eyed her suspiciously. She did not seem to be mocking them. But with Thea, one never knew. “It’s just a little thing,” he said. “A mere rescue. I don’t suppose you either wanted or needed to be rescued?”
“Surely they wanted it,” said Michael Doukas, moving out of the shadow by the stair. He met Alf’s eyes with a smile and a slight bow. “Indeed, master seer, we meet again at Armageddon.”
Alf smiled in response. “And now I owe you my life twice.”
“Oh, no,” said the eunuch, “you owe nothing. You permit us to flatter ourselves that we can aid you. But I owe you all that I am. Had you not foretold this war’s ending, I might not have had the good fortune to serve my new and most noble lord.” He bowed low to Henry. “Surely that was worth my telling a friend of yours where to find you.”
“Just in time, too,” Jehan said. “I was going mad. When I found out that, with your usual talent for putting yourself in your enemies’ power, you were in Count Baudouin’s hands, I was somewhat less than delighted. I went straight to my lord Henry; he took me to the one man who could set you free. And that, Messer Enrico did.”
“Easily,” the Doge said. “Ridiculously so. My lord would not even see me; informed of my errand, he granted what I asked without a word of protest.”
“Not quite, my lord,” Jehan said. “We all heard him shouting. “Take him and be damned! Take them all! Only let me never see or hear of them again!”
Thea smiled. Jehan scowled. “If I’d known you were alive and conscious, I never would have bothered.”
“You would have,” she said calmly, “and we owe you thanks for it.”
Anna snorted, a small defiant sound. “Thank him? What for? He just did the work. Saint Helena did all the rest of it.”
“Then,” said Alf, “when we’ve rendered all proper thanks to her earthly instruments, we’ll sing a Mass of Thanksgiving in her honor. Meanwhile, demoiselle, shall we leave this place?”
“The sooner, the better,” she said.
33.
The altar stood in the garden of Saint Basil’s, hung all with white and gold for the great festival of Easter. The Latin wounded had been brought out to hear the Mass; some few of the Greeks, Alf knew, listened but would not show their faces.
Save for Thea, seated beside him, and the Akestas children. They had insisted on being there, for it was Jehan who served upon the altar, moving smoothly and surely through the rite.
And Master Dionysios. The Master had made the best of a great evil, and he had prospered. Many of his people had crept out of hiding after the orgy of plundering and returned to their work; with the Latin surgeons, Saint Basil’s boasted a full complement of healers. They would do well, whatever became of the City.
We’ll always need doctors, Thea said, laying her hand lightly in his.
He laced his fingers with hers. A week’s rest and tending, with her own witch-born strength, had done much to restore her to herself. Only a slight thinning of her cheeks, a hint of transparency under her skin, remained to tell the eye of her wounding; and to the mind a slight but persistent pain and a weakness that would not fade.
You’d be weak too if you’d been tied to your bed for a week. Without, she added with a sidelong glance, any of the usual compensations.
Such thoughts, he said, priestly stern, are not fitting in this place. But she had caught the flicker of guilty laughter beneath.
Jehan left his acolytes to clear away the vessels of the Mass and sought the four who sat on one stone bench, basking in the sun. Doctors and servants had taken most of the others away; they were all but alone.
Anna gave him her place on the end of the bench and climbed into his lap. “You sang beautifully, Father Jehan,” she said.
“I tried my best.” He frowned a very little. “Do you think your mother and Irene would have minded that I sang a Latin Mass for them?”
“Oh, no,” she answered. “We had a proper priest sing their Requiem. They’re buried with Father now. I’m sure they’re happy to know that you remember them.”
“How could I ever forget?” Jehan’s blue eyes looked gravely into her black ones. “What are you going to do now?”
She shrugged. “We’re still rich, you know. Mother put all our best things in a box and buried it; we dug it up yesterday
. It’s in our room now, with a witchery on it to keep anybody from touching it. Alf wants to take it and us to Grandmother and Uncle Philotas in Nicaea. A lot of our people went there; there’s even a man who calls himself our new Emperor. Though everyone says it’s Count Baudouin who’s got the crown.”
“The lords elected him, that’s true enough.”
“He didn’t hang Alf. That proved his clem—clemency. And his troops like him. So they crowned him and gave the other man a palace and a kingdom and one of the old empresses. The most beautiful one, of course. I think the other man came out a lot better than he did.”
Jehan laughed. “So do I! But His new Majesty doesn’t think so. He’s succeeded in hearing Mass today in Hagia Sophia, and from the throne besides, with everyone bowing and calling him Emperor. There’s not much more he could wish for.”
“Except,” Alf murmured, “an empire worthy of the name.”
“Prophecies again, little Brother?” asked Thea.
“No. Plain observation.”
Anna ignored them. “So with the Count and the Marquis taken care of and the Count on the throne, Alf wants to take us to Nicaea.”
And leave us.
Jehan blinked. The voice was silent, but it was not either Alf’s or Thea’s. It was softer, with an odd, blurred, toneless quality.
He looked down at Nikki, who sat on the ground playing with a handful of pebbles. The child returned his stare.
He wants to take us and leave us there and go away with Thea.
Jehan swallowed. “He—is he—”
“No,” Thea said, “he’s as human as you are. Or was. That’s a matter Alf is going to have to resolve for himself. For our monk that was, out of purest Christian charity, opened his mind to one doubly sealed by deafness and by humanity. The deafness hasn’t changed. The other, it seems, has. Our Nikephoros, through constant proximity to power, has found it in his own mind.”
Jehan shivered involuntarily. Alf, he saw, was pale and still, rebuking himself bitterly for what he had done.
Nikki’s brows knit. With a shock Jehan realized that the child had read his thoughts. If you want me to stop, I will. But you’ll have to stop thinking so hard at me.
