She thanked him with haste and fled, to meet Piers and her father advancing to take her in charge at the head of the whole party. She threw herself at Landry. “The witness—the last witness! I have found him! The hermit of Carmel! He lived near Rionart twenty years ago, and he recognised Piers—I saw he did!”
Landry heard her out, and pronounced a curse upon his own futile researches among long-winded elderly clerics and knights with their achievements all behind them which excelled even his own high standards in such matters. Then he flung a heavy arm about her and planted an exuberant kiss on her cheek.
“I will ride after the hermit at once and bring him back!” exclaimed Piers, afire with eagerness.
“With all the city to see you go? Softly, lad! Time enough. Canderoc is within a cock’s stride of Rionart; he will know you. It is King Richard we must convince, and keep the secret until the moment. Boy, it is time your own lord came into this affair with us. Go and fetch him to supper—yes, now! He can probably help us gain an audience with the King.”
That privilege was nearer than he guessed. Piers set off in hot haste, and they followed more slowly, accommodating their pace to Landry’s limp. They came by way of the inner harbour, and most of the folk they encountered were French, since King Philip and his Court had taken up residence in the Templars’ headquarters nearby.
Ships were moored all along the quay, and the emergence of a little party of richly dressed knights from behind the wall of hulls took them by surprise. A red-gold head towered above the rest. Landry’s face lighted with hope, and then clouded again. Out of the corner of his mouth he observed that by the sour look on the King’s face he had doubtless been paying a visit on his feudal overlord, with whom he notoriously accorded ill. The moment was not propitious for asking an audience.
The choice was not given him. “Here, you, Enterprise! A word with you!” the King shouted. He did not wait for Landry to limp towards him, but detached himself from his companions and strode to meet him. His bright blue eyes fairly sparked wrath at sight of Marco.
“At your command, my lord,” said Landry carefully, and bowed.
“When I showed you favour and offered you a place in my household, by God’s Teeth, I did so because I believed you an honest man and a true knight!”
“And so I count myself, my lord.”
“You count it honest or knightly to hire murder?” the King accused him scornfully.
“I count it the deed of a cowardly recreant, my lord.”
“You dare say that, when you have openly hired the most infamous killer in Acre? God’s Throat, here you walk through the city in company with a renegade half-bred Saracen that no honest man would touch save with a hempen halter, and expect me to believe you aught but false to your knightly honour and Christian faith?”
Rodriga, her stomach curdling with anger and dread, glanced quickly aside at Marco, impassive as a carven image under that furious denunciation. His black eyes were fixed gravely on the King’s angry face.
“Marco is a guest in my household, under my protection for great service to me and mine,” stated Landry flatly. “He is a true man, a Christian, as any priest in Acre will testify, and no murderer. On my knightly oath that is the truth, my lord!”
“By God’s Precious Blood, I have heard far otherwise, and from one whose word there is no doubting!”
“I could tell you his name, fair sire,” Landry replied dryly. The rising storm of Plantagenet fury stilled abruptly as the meaning of that came to King Richard, who was not the son of the greatest jurist in Christendom for nothing. He looked down into Landry’s shrewd humorous eyes, and his own were all at once alert and interested.
“So?” he said quietly.
“And it is customary, my lord, to permit an accused man to speak in his own defence.”
“It is.”
“If it would please you to grant me an audience, I would lay the whole before you, my lord.”
“Tomorrow after Prime,” the King said promptly, his eye kindling with curiosity. “But by God’s Throat, you will have some ado to convince me that this man is honest!”
Landry, slightly taken aback by such promptitude, said, “I am grateful indeed, my lord. Tomorrow you shall hear all, and I hope to convince you.” He winced and shifted his weight to his sound leg, and Rodriga moved closer to offer her slim shoulder as a prop.
“Come, we can talk as we go!” said Richard in rough sympathy. “You are not long out of a sickbed, and we are all in need of supper!” He jerked his head at his companions, who closed up. Rodriga knew most of them by sight, and a gathering of notables they were: Garnier de Nablus, the Grand Master of the Hospital; Earl Robert of Leicester; Guy de Lusignan and his brother Geoffrey; James d’Avennes, and young Humphrey de Toron. The Catalans withdrew their lowly persons from their way, and Marco was unobtrusively falling back with them when the King beckoned him imperatively.
“Here, vermin! By right I should swing you from the nearest gallows, but I have promised Enterprise a hearing, so you may live until tomorrow. You kill for hire?”
“I have done.”
“God’s Life, you have the brazen insolence to admit it?”
“But not in Acre, nor since you set foot in this land, Melek Ric.” That was outright denial that the King had any jurisdiction in the matter, which was exactly the case, and for a moment he was so dumbfounded that he stood and gaped, the colour mounting duskily to his brow. The company held its collective breath, and only Marco seemed coolly at ease. Richard controlled himself with a visible effort, recognising right when he heard it. “Keep your neck until tomorrow, when I reckon it will be required of you!” he said grimly. “You whoreson renegade, you have damned yourself and your paymaster too. If he pledges his knightly word on your honesty, I know its worth!”
“In what have I been dishonest, Melek Ric?”
Again the King stared astounded, halting in his stride. Then he nodded. “A hireling killer, but not a liar,” he admitted harshly. “But I have repented my sins and reformed my way of life.”
“Your way of life?” snorted Richard. “What in the Devil’s Name is your way of life, if you dare utter it in Christian company?”
“I have bought a ship and intend to enter the carrying trade. Tomorrow I shall ask your patronage for the rest of this year’s campaign, Melek Ric.”
The King glared at him, and then uttered a sudden bark of unwilling laughter. “God’s Throat, you have the most perfect insolence ever I encountered, and if you are still unhanged by tomorrow’s sunset I shall doubtless end by granting what you ask!” he declared between amusement and exasperation. “And what is this title you give me?”
“It is the Saracens’ name for King Richard,” said Humphrey de Toron’s amused young voice from the rear, where half a dozen of the greatest lords in Acre were listening with vast enjoyment.
“You are not my King, Melek Ric,” Marco explained pleasantly. He added, with his sudden transforming grin, “Unless I enter your service.”
For a moment it was a tug of war between Plantagenet wrath and sense of humour. Perhaps Marco’s utter fearlessness decided the issue; Richard, who admired courage above all other qualities, spluttered into laughter. “Enterprise, you took this scoundrel into your household for the entertainment he provides!” he charged Landry. “The Saints bear me witness, one ends by admiring his insolence!” He looked Marco up and down, and demanded abruptly, “How did you learn to speak the Langue d’oc like a gentleman, when you were bred in a dockside brothel?”
Marco’s face stiffened, as it always did when his early life was mentioned, but he answered unfalteringly, his eyes steady. “Its proprietor was an unfrocked priest of good birth. It was his pleasure to enforce it.”
Richard had the grace to look disconcerted and to ask no more. They had come to an intersection of streets, and Landry halted to let the King’s party continue their way before he turned off to the right. “Our roads part here?” asked the King. “Until t
omorrow, then—and a gallows or employment for you!”
Their laughter diminished as Landry limped more briskly along the narrow street, eager to reach his supper. They were almost at their door when Piers met them, leading a little troop; his own lord, a couple of Turcoples and four men-at-arms. He presented them on the doorstep.
Sir Gilbert de Cherberay was a plump and amiable man with a round pink self-indulgent face redeemed by intelligent brown eyes and a determined mouth. He obviously thought highly of Piers and was very fond of him. He thanked Landry for his endeavours on the squire’s behalf and paid him a smooth compliment on his perspicacity, condoled with him on his illness and talked his way through the doorway into the house. As Rodriga would have followed, Piers caught her arm and drew her aside.
“Rodriga, I never have a chance to speak to you alone!” he muttered urgently. “And I have not thanked you—”
“Not now!” she said hastily, for both Marco and Ramiro were waiting for her just inside the door.
“The Devil blind their prying eyes!” he growled. “I must talk with you alone, Rodriga, without—”
“Oh, enough, Piers! Can you not hear someone coming?” She had no wish to be seen disputing with him in the public street, and the dull tramp of feet in the deep dust and the hum of talk were approaching the corner. She evaded his hand and moved decisively towards the door, just as Robert de Veragny, his seneschal and four arbalesters came round the bend.
The cripple’s mouth dropped open, and then snapped shut. Mortal hatred darkened his bitter face, and as sparks fly when flint and steel strike, so did that hatred leap between them and flare in Piers’s face. He thrust past Rodriga and stared savagely at his step-brother.
“Bid your men hold their hands, recreant, if you would keep your guts in your paunch!” he advised, at a slight movement among the crossbowmen.
“Touch me, and I shall see you hang!” snarled Robert. “King Richard will hear me—”
“King Richard is the last man whose justice you dare invoke, and well you know it!”
“What worth has my father’s bastard’s word beside mine?”
“I am no bastard, and I thank God there is no blood of yours in me!” cried Piers. Rodriga stiffened in dismay as comprehension leaped into both faces. Piers, too furious to care what he had done, stormed on. “You will answer to King Richard soon enough for Rionart that you stole from me, thieving recreant! And that slimy serpent that you made seneschal to keep his tongue still, six years ago when you thought you had murdered me, how long will he hold by you when he has nothing to gain by it? He will have to testify! And give thanks to God Who in His wisdom crippled you, or by now your carcase would be poisoning the jackals!”
Robert’s face was a glistening tallow-grey, and his lips writhed soundlessly for a moment. He turned his vicious gaze to probe suspiciously into his seneschal’s face, and then addressed Piers in a shaking whisper. “God’s Justice I have suffered, but by His Head you shall not rob my son! I repent nothing!”
Piers snorted contemptuously, and the cripple struck as suddenly as a snake. He heaved all his weight on his sound leg, balanced there and swung the head of his crutch round in a wide hissing arc at the lad’s head. He ducked, but it was Marco, thrusting him aside so that he almost fell, who saved his skull from being cracked like a filbert. The force of his own wasted blow overthrew its deliverer, who lay writhing in the dust and filth of the narrow street. Marco stood over him, one foot on the crutch and his knife in his hand. Lothaire de Gallenard was checked by Ramiro’s javelin, and the men-at-arms looked uneasily at their masters and at the weapons which menaced them.
“Wrath must have deprived you of your proper wits,” said Marco mockingly. His black eyes lifted from the embodiment of hatred at his feet to the rigid seneschal and the hovering men-at-arms. “Back, if you value your master’s entrails—or rather, his pay.”
They backed before that deadly stare, and Rodriga, drawing free breath, grabbed Piers and shoved him towards the door. Marco covered their withdrawal, backing to the door. They saw Robert de Veragny heave himself up to a sitting position, raise clenched fists and foaming mouth and screech after them.
“Satan fork you into Hell! Oh God, why do You deny me this one boon?”
The door slammed on his anguish, and Marco dropped the heavy bar into place and regarded the angry lad sardonically. If he had expected thanks for his timely intervention he was disappointed, for Piers was starting a furious denunciation of his interfering ways when Rodriga thrust between them. “My father must hear of this!” she cried, and bore them all up the stair.
“Lord Above, boy, could you not have kept your mouth shut one more day?” Landry expostulated at the end of the sorry tale.
“He called me a bastard!”
Sir Gilbert de Cherberay said mildly, “That was great folly.”
“I suppose we are lucky you did not also tell him that the reckoning was due tomorrow! Fortunately he knows nothing of the hermit, or how close he is to answering for his crimes, but we have little time. Girl! Helga! Wine and cups, at once! We must make our arrangements.”
Sir Gilbert regarded the company with a bland but remarkably alert brown eye, and courteously made it plain that he did not admit to his confidence either tender maidens or notorious renegades. Rodriga and Marco exchanged eloquent glances, and at a signal from Landry withdrew together to the roof.
Her foster-brothers had rigged in one corner an awning made from one of the old tents, and her sewing lay there. The white and pink and green gown was nearly finished, and it was her private opinion that it would become her very well, with its big lozenges of gay colour clinging softly to her slight breasts and spreading in wide folds about her feet. She glanced down into the empty street and then settled to her work on the last few sections. It would probably be her wedding-gown, and the thought made her grimace. His latest performance had put her entirely out of charity with her prospective bridegroom. She turned her thoughts to the emerald brooch she would wear on it, now safely hidden with the rest of the Saracen loot in a crevice between the roof-beam and the mud-plaster above her bed, a place known to none other beside her father.
Marco prowled round the roof, looking down into the courtyard, the alley and the street. Then he sat at the corner where he could watch both the latter. Neither spoke. Marco was the most comfortable of companions, the least demanding man she had encountered. She went on with her work as the sun dipped to the housetops, and he sat watchful and ready at his corner.
The silk gown was finished but for a few inches of hem when the door below thudded, and they looked over to see the lord of Cherberay strolling away with his four men-at-arms but without his squire or Turcoples. Then they heard Piers below in the courtyard, his voice raised a little in excitement, and the padding of soft shoes up the stair. Rodriga held her needle suspended and lifted her head.
Piers clenched his hands and glared at them, breathing hard. Landry’s shock-head showed above the parapet as he followed more slowly up the stair, but the young man had neither eyes nor ears for anything but the pair before him. He stalked forward, the personification of righteous indignation.
“Rodriga, have you no more sense of what conduct befits your station, that you make a habit of consorting alone with this renegade cur?”
She dropped her work and leaped angrily to her feet. “What are you saying—a habit—”
“Do you deny that you spend hours alone with this jackal? Just now I asked the wench Helga where you were, and she said, ‘I do not know, but most likely on the roof with Marco.’ If even your servant-maid knows full well—”
“Bridle your tongue, pup, before you say something beyond forgiveness!” Landry interrupted. “Any blame is mine, since I sent Marco to guard my girl.”
“You entrusted your daughter to him, alone?” he asked blankly.
“Lord Above, why not?”
“Are you blind not to see that that bastard of Mahound is over ears in love with her?�
�� he expostulated.
“God’s Life, of course I know it!”
Rodriga stared incredulously at Marco, who was listening to the dispute with a sardonic smile. “No!” she said softly, her hands lifting to her breast.
“Yes, my lady.” His smile softened to the rueful gentleness he had shown her before. “I have loved you since I woke with my head on your knees.” She made a little gesture of distress and denial at what she had unwittingly done to him, and he shook his head slightly. “It is not a matter for regret, my lady.”
“You hear him admit it, and still reckon him a fit guardian for your daughter?” Piers charged Landry.
“Our conceptions of love seem totally dissimilar,” Marco observed dryly.
“I would remind you,” Landry said grimly, “that Rodriga is under no man’s authority but mine. And this dispute does not endear you to her.”
That quenched Piers. He muttered some sort of an apology, which Landry dismissed with an impatient grunt. He limped across the roof and perched on the parapet.
“Piers is riding tonight to fetch the hermit,” he announced.
“Piers?” Rodriga repeated, for that office was surely better entrusted to Marco. The thought of the lad’s blundering through unknown, Saracen-infested country to Mount Carmel appalled her. Then she read the truth in Landry’s scowl before she was enlightened.
“Neither my lord nor I will entrust it to that renegade knave you favour! I must be there to learn whether he knows me, and that jackal would cut our throats or betray us to the Saracens!” Piers flared. “The Turcoples know the country and the cave as well as he does!”
“We have already argued that and decided,” said Landry wearily. He limped to the stair-head, and Marco overtook him in three long strides. He spoke earnestly in a voice too low for Rodriga to catch his words. They went down the stair together. Rodriga stayed to fold her sewing, and Piers came up beside her.
“I must leave at dusk,” he muttered, and she nodded. He watched her for a moment. “You will look pretty in it,” he said awkwardly, and then blurted, “Rodriga, have I offended you?”
No Man's Son Page 30
