"You are quite right," she agreed. "Why not sleep with the little beggar? You can keep each other warm and, besides, he will want feeding again in a few hours."
"That's all right," the boy said stoutly. "I'm an owl, up all night usually." In moments, he and the baby were asleep.
And so it went for the next two days. On the third night, Liliane slipped four adults, Yasmin, and two infants across the wall with ship passage money. She also sent Habib, who was unpredictable and eager to go pilfering with the urchins. The infants had been given a little wine to keep them quiet.
The first expedition and the next the following night were successful. Then she ran into trouble. Not only did she not have enough money to secure aH the passages, some of the old people and one of the women were too panicky to attempt escape. The worst blow was the most unexpected. The urchins sent to the Gilded Leopard returned with no milk and ominous news.
"You had best not use the signet ring again," Raschid told her. "Its owner, the Comte de Brueil, has not been seen since the night before Acre fell. He is thought to be dead, and the French king is hot to find out how he met his end. Anybody flashing that ring is likely to be hanged. We would have been snagged, only my sister warned us off. A nobleman by name of Signe has been to the Leopard in the name of the king. He set men about the place to trail us back here in case we showed up again."
At the boy's last words, Liliane's terrible fear lifted a little. If Alexandre had been killed by the Signes, Louis would not be searching for the killer. He was trying to make sure that Alexandre was indeed dead, as well as clear himself of suspicion.
What could have happened to Alexandre? Had he somehow discovered that she had sought sanctuary with Saladin? Merciful God, what if he had gone to the Saracen camp? Her spirits plummeted again, but she was not given the luxury to worry about Alexandre. She had before her two babies past feeding time, eight intractable adults and seven children to get out of Acre. Xenobia must know the urchins were hiding somewhere, and she knew Acre well enough to make a sharp guess at their location if Louis were to press her.
They must leave the tunnels immediately, she thought. The sun would now be setting and dusk was brief. She could do little for the adults who refused to attempt escape, but she could persuade them to continue hiding in the tunnels until she and the others were sufficiently scattered to stand a chance of getting away. She rigged backslings for the babies and gave the two oldest children the last of her money and orders to board a coastal trading ship for Nahariya; hungry or not, the babies would survive a day's journey. She could only pray that the two wily urchins could be trusted to find them food and homes instead of ditching them.
The remaining five children solved their own housing problem. "The infidels are already becoming careless," Raschid told her. "We can stroll practically under their noses. We'll hang around another week or two and go back to business as usual."
Satisfied that everyone was organized, she sent them to gather up their small bundles of food and clothing. Predictably, when the older people saw that their mainstay was about to disappear, several of them changed their minds and decided to leave with the children headed for the ships. Liliane bit her lip as she waited for the laggards; thanks to Xenobia, time was running out. Finally, impatient with their arguing, she waved the children to divide and start down three different tunnels. "Your guides are leavings" she told the bickerers flatly and strode off after the first group. Hastily, dropping odds and ends, the dalliers shuffled after her.
A few minutes later, their small, unlikely parade came to a panicky halt. From up ahead came the occasional, dull knelling of armor and weaponry, a stealthy scrape of feet. The flicker of distant torches off the walls far ahead looked bright to their fearful eyes. Armed men were entering the mouth of their, tunnel. Louis must have discovered them; ironically, he had no ill will for a harmless lot of refugees, but would kill them all like errant field mice for the sake of discovering the one employing the Brueil signet ring. "Back!" hissed Liliane, then waved urgently to Raschid. "Take them through the small tunnel—the one you say leads to the back of the old mosque." She swatted him on the shoulder. "Quick! Be quick!"
He scampered off, the rest hurrying after him. Liliane followed, retreating as far as the big pit where the three tunnels met. Driven back from the other large tunnels as well, the other terrified groups were hovering there, uncertain of which way to go. She drew her scimitar, flicked it into the darkness. "The mosque, you! The bazaar, you!"
"But they're almost upon us!" a woman wailed.
"Hold your tongue and go!" Liliane snapped, her own nerves raw. She gave the woman's backside a whack with the flat of her blade that sent her full tilt down the small tunnel. The way would be longer and more treacherous than their original course. The old people would be stow; she must cover them for at least ten minutes to help them elude pursuit.
Although she had never pondered the precise moment of her death, she considered it now, With any luck, she might live another ten minutes; ten she was going to be eradicated like a cockroach and left in this dark hole to rot . . . unless Louis found her body. She only wished she could see his face when he discovered how she had fooled him and Jacques for so long. Unfortunately, he was going to have the last laugh. Her heart pounding in her ears, her hands slippery on the scimitar, Liliane turned to wait for the first attack.
The first unwary fellow rounded the corner to catch the length of her blade across his throat; before he saw her lethal shadow, the next stumbled across the body of the first and raised his broadsword across his face almost as a reflex. His counterstroke numbed her hand, but then she was alone as her opponent prudently retreated from the gloom. His torch had fallen into the mire and darkness had closed again like a blanket. A sound to her right from the second tunnel made her whirl. A pike slammed down toward her collarbone. Desperately, she countered and went to her knee with the force of her assailant's blow. Rolling, she spun and jabbed for his crotch. Not sporting, she reflected grimly, but then she was not built for fending off broadswords. Another hiss sounded in the dark by her ear. As she chopped wildly, she heard a shriek.
This was not going to last ten minutes, Liliane thought dismally, and she was not going to be the winner. Her only advantage was in being more accustomed to the dark than Louis's men. Nearly a week spent feeling her way about the pitchy cesspits had given her the sensitivity of a bat. What she did not see, she heard. A slight reverberation from a distant wall told her as much as if it were daylight in there. What matter? Once Louis knew his men were discovered, more torches would arrive. Once the third tunnel was penetrated, she could not possibly hold them all off. Should she retreat to a point where the interstice narrowed?
Liliane's deserate effort to think clearly was abruptly cut off by the clash of swords in the third tunnel which led from the central pit she defended. What the devil was going on? Wild ideas flew across her mind. Had the Saracens rejected the peace treaty and invaded the city? Did she have allies? But who would help her? Certainly not the Saracens. A sword sheared at her from the darkness and she leaped back. The dull glow of torchlights advanced. She scrambled back to evade another swipe that drew sparks from the stone. She caught a flare of torches down the second tunnel, a glimmer around thrashing silhouettes in the third. Her allies, whoever they were, would be quickly cut off and surrounded if she could not provide them room to retreat.
Bracing herself to block the men moving down the first two tunnels, she moved forward again, but slipped on crumbling rock and fell against the side of the pit. Hot steel entered her side. All her muscles burning in her arm and chest, she lifted her scimitar to ward off the next blow, but her wrist seemed to melt against it. The blackness became horribly complete.
Chapter 13
~
The Single Thread
Sewers below Acre
July 1191
If Alexandre had not fallen at that moment, Liliane would have vanished into memory. He came to this realization
almost as he tripped backward over her inert body and deflected the sword blow that would have decapitated her. As it was, the descending blade nearly severed his ear. Only his unkicking boot and his bouncing off the stone wall kept him temporarily in one piece. He slammed upward with his sword, heard a gurgling grunt and, with an effort, fended off the heavy falling body of Louis's man, who had struck down Liliane.
He might never have known that his convenient cushion was Liliane, but for the smoothness of her face against the back of his neck and a long strand of hair that had escaped her haik. Even then, she might only have been some strange female corpse. Jerking himself up, he looked down and caught a glimmer of red-gold reflected in the advancing light of the glittering torches. His heart seemed to stop suddenly, to have searched for her so long and fruitlessly, then find her so unexpectedly, so' horribly in this clammy hole, stunned him into shock.
Was she dead? he wondered in swift panic at her stillness. No! He had not known who defended the other tunnels, only that the defense had broken and that he must fall back. Figures loomed above him and he slashed mindlessly, as viciously as a cornered animal. For blind moments, he could think of nothing but driving them away from her, hacking at them, destroying them. The attackers faltered as if confronted by a demon, the torch-bearing rear guard scattered by thrashing elbows and crushed feet. Yelps sounded as clothing and hair were singed.
Then a howl, hideous, hollow and terrifying, filled the cisterns as Alexandre sounded his fury. Those accustomed to sapper fights might not have hesitated, but these men were not used to fighting underground. Dark, dank tunnels filled with hellish din and fire were most intimidating. They fell back to regroup.
In that brief moment, Alexandre swept up Liliane and ran blindly, with no idea of where he was going in the strange black place. The cistern maps he had examined in Philip's tent had not included this ancient system. Over and over, he slammed into walls and columns, and painfully scraped his head and shoulders on corners. He heard the pound of pursuing feet, the pulse of blood running from his ear down his neck, echoes everywhere. His heart was straining, bursting.
Then abruptly, he slammed into hard, rubble-scattered dirt and fell with Liliane to the ground. He had taken a wrong turn, come up against a cave-in. He forced himself to lie still, fight off the panic that shrieked in him, brought back the mind-melting horror of being strangled in black water with his face shoved bloodily against a mammoth mountain of stone, its grave slab inexorably crushing down on him. At this moment he was barely aware that he was lying against Liliane; he could only recall the terror he had known when trying to swim under the Acre wall in search of her. He must have gone mad for a time in that water-filled tunnel, for there had come a time when he remembered only black ghouls plucking at him; huge, black worms coiled about him, trying to cover his face, trying to drag him down into their watery hell. When he'd come to sanity again, starlight was dim on his face from a cistern opening. He was clutching a narrow ridge of stone in the crumbling mortar, and his lungs were choked with water. Nearly a half hour passed before he could clear his lungs and summon the strength to drag himself up to the surface.
The cistern well had opened into the bazaar, deserted after midnight except for a few prostitutes and ribalds. He'd crawled into the shelter of the shadows from the abandoned stalls, and huddled shivering and choking on blood and water. When he'd held his shaking hands a few inches from his eyes, he'd seen that most of his fingernails were either split to the base or torn away completely. His face was puffed raw from grinding against stone.
His cut, swollen lips tasted of blood. He felt like butcher's meat, a naked, vulnerable child. If someone had touched him, he was sure he would have flown into fragments like a shattered crock.
With the gratitude of a blind man restored to sight, he'd gaped fixedly at the stars' pinpricks of light. He could breathe boundless air, smell the stench of refuse and fellow humans. A wildly affectionate sense of brotherhood enveloped him like a warm cloak. After a time, he'd realized that he was perspiring from shock. The image of Liliane danced elusively before his eyes, then faded. He'd fallen asleep.
He'd awakened to find a bony dog sniffing and licking the raw flesh of his face. Dazedly, he shoved away the dog, who snarled then slunk away. He had not thought any dogs would be left in Acre; this one must have been tough, ready to make breakfast of his corpse. He grimaced at the thought of his wrecked face, then winced. It was the morning of the surrender, a few refugees, wanting to stay ahead of the crowds and see the ceremonies at the gate, were beginning to filter through the bazaar.
He painfully got to his feet, every muscle screaming. His brain beginning to function again, he felt for his sword; it was still strapped across his back. He was faintly surprised it had not been filched by a ribald; but since his body had hidden the weapon, the bazaar riffraff must have thought he was a beggar. Strings of passersby were staring at him. If he'd had a shred of humor left, he would have given them a ghastly, mocking smirk. Stiffly, he fell in with the group, which edged away. He ignored them. Sooner or later, Liliane must appear at the gate if she placed any value on her life. Bleakly, he wondered if she did care what happened to her.
For hours, Alexandre had lurked by the gates, but saw no sign of Liliane in the heavy crowds. The crowds thinned and, under the high sun, the gates closed ominously. Sick with dread, he retreated into the city where he mounted an abandoned dwelling overlooking the wall adjoining the right side of the gate. The ditch where a band of Acre's wailing inhabitants had been massed was beginning to fill with bodies as Richard's executioners slit throats, turning the living into sprawled dead, fodder for flies. Desperately, he sought a glimpse of Liliane, but at this height, could recognize no one with certainty. His raw fingers locked in the geometric screen, Alexandre watched the chivalry of England, France and Jerusalem butcher nearly two thousand men, women and children.
Screams and dull red blood trickling in the dusty streets told the fate of hundreds more who had not wanted to leave their homes for the scorching desert. Bitter tears of hatred seared his face. Let Liliane be mercifully dead, he thought fiercely, that she may not see what she fought for. . . . His head slammed against the screen. No . . . God be merciful and keep her alive! Let not her beauty be sunk in this obscenity!
Finally, the mass in the ditch was still. Alexandre was not quite sure how long he'd clung to the screen; perhaps his mind had retreated into blackness again, this time as a refuge. His private, lonely hell was better than the one that multiplied like the facets of a fly's eye. In his hell he heard a hollow, primal wail as if the very desert beneath the city screamed in horrid, anguished warning. The building' beneath his feet heaved and trembled, as did the screening beneath his fingers; but perhaps the shaking was only his mind, for when he braced to be swallowed by some cataclysmic upheaval, he found all was still. The air was still. His mind was still. Nothing was going to happen.
Perfumed death rose through the sunlight with a nauseous pervasiveness, like a slow caress across his face. Once, not far from here, he thought bitterly, men like this had raised a stench like this in Jerusalem. Part of the guilt is mine, his mind added miserably, for I helped make possible the destruction of these helpless wretches of Acre.
Alexandre's black despair was broken by the sound of feet moving quickly. The gates had opened to the victors, who were now taking possession of their spoils. He unlatched the screen; being found now would require him to answer too many difficult questions. Besides, he might kill the first European he met.
He left the tower and went far enough into the city to elude the first invaders. Upon reaching the Street of Clouds, a narrow byway of rich villas rising high above the wall that blocked out the sea, he took up a position in a house on one corner of the street's entrance. There, he awaited his steward, Yves.
Before attempting the city walls, he had given Yves instructions to take a house for him on this street. Yves and his retainers were not long in coming, for the best houses wou
ld fall to the first arrivals. When Alexandre stepped into the street, Yves blanched. "Mother of God!" he exclaimed, raising his spear. "What foul spirit are you!"
As the rest of the retainers took aggressive stances, Alexandre gave a hollow laugh. "Have I so changed in a space of hours that you do not scent one of your own wolf pack?"
"My God!" Yves gasped in mingled relief and horror. Behind the steward, bows were hastily scraped, but the retainer's eyes, found and uncertain, never left Alexandre. "My lord, we feared you dead."
"And why not?" Alexandre's voice was cold and light. "Make ready the small villa at the street's end. Steal whatever is lacking from the other houses. Take any weapons." His orders were given tonelessly, absently. Almost as an afterthought, he added, "Go look in the ditch of Acre dead for Jefar el din. If you find him, bring his body here." Then he walked up the street toward the house he had chosen.
The steward and retainers stared at one another, still not completely convinced that they had found their master. This stranger spoke good French, but his face was bloody clay; it might have belonged to anyone, and yet . . . who but Alexandre de Brueil would have wanted the heathen remains of Jefar el din? Upon this evidence, they finally managed to accept the ravaged figure as their own.
For the rest of the afternoon, Alexandre sat upon the awning-covered roof of his new villa, looking out to sea. Occasionally, he answered a query from Yves, but never did he look at anyone. He waited for a scrape of the villa gates, the return of a litter bearing what remained of Liliane. He had not the courage to confirm her death himself. He knew with great certainty that if he descended into that carrion, his wits would desert him forever, to find her there would be an end as final as an arrow through his skull. At sunset, he sensed.Yves behind him. "Well?" he murmured.
A Flame Run Wild Page 32
