“The horses—we must get back to the horses!” Piers reiterated angrily.
“Abandon them! I have roused Cayphas! Listen!”
Gongs and cymbals were making mad clamour down in the town, and war cries mingled with the neighing of horses came thinly on the wind. Around the cave Robert de Veragny’s men were scrambling and cursing and shouting threats as they searched, beating about them with more fury than judgment, oblivious of danger from below.
“The Saracens will finish the good work,” said Marco coolly, and tugged the lad forward.
“You renegade bastard—they are not having my lord’s horses!” Piers spluttered, trying to free his sword-arm. “God’s Life, let go, or I will split your head—”
Marco closed with him. One wrench, and the sword was in his hand. He tossed it to the seaman, who phlegmatically thrust it under his belt. Piers lunged at him, and they wrestled in the moonlight, straining bodies locked together. A swift flurry of movement, a stifled grunt of anguish, and Marco had Piers by his right arm, twisting it round behind his back in a merciless grip.
“For once, you unbroken whelp, you will obey!” he said, in a voice of such icy rage that goose-flesh tingled over Rodriga’s skin. The contemptuous tolerance he had so far accorded Piers was for ever forfeit. “Must I break your arm?” He thrust, and Piers stifled a cry of pain and surprise to a gasp; then, as the pressure was maintained, he stumbled meekly forward as he was impelled, to the path and then along it. The shouting and clattering followed them for a little while, and then someone raised a howl of alarm and their foes pelted headlong towards the horses, yelling raucously and sliding and scrambling amid a noisy rattle of skipping stones. Hooves were drumming along the road below, and the sound of Saracen war cries mounting rapidly up the hillside sent them into a wild flight for their lives.
“You may commit suicide with my good will when I have no further use for you,” said Marco in the same cold fury, “but here I command!”
The first screech and clash below emphasised his grim words. He himself emphasised his ultimatum with a wrench that drew a smothered yelp from his victim, and then contemptuously released him. Piers stumbled forward a few steps and then turned on him, but one look at the dangerous face pale in the moonlight sufficed him. He backed sullenly.
“You disarmed me by a trick!” he declared petulantly. “If I had my sword—”
“You would have the flat of it across your backside to teach you manners! Make an end of bleating and come!”
He swung past him into the lead, offering his back as a plain target to Piers’s dagger, and the angry boy, his self-esteem raw and smarting, scowled and muttered but fell tamely behind him like a beaten dog. Rodriga, lending the hermit a steadying arm, found an un-Christian satisfaction in his humiliation, that was many years overdue.
The noise of flight and pursuit faded into silence, and they returned through the forest unmolested as they had come. The hermit presently regained his full senses and then sternly repudiated Rodriga’s aid, stalking along with his ungainly camel’s stride that covered the ground surprisingly fast. They came round the spur of Carmel and down the long scramble to the sea. Rodriga’s soft shoes were worn through, and her feet bruised and sore, when at last she saw below her the little bay, the waves hissing gently up the sand in a silver glitter of foam, and the black boat drawn up at their edge. She stumbled thankfully over the sand, and two figures leaped over the bows and ran to greet them.
With the two sailors at the sweeps they pulled out of the mountain’s lee and beyond the point. The wind was foul for their return, and they must row all the way back to Acre. Rodriga saw the hermit settled comfortably on a pile of nets, and offered to wash and bind up his cracked head, which won her no thanks. Leaving the old misogynist to his preferred isolation, she went to join Marco at the tiller. Piers was standing near the bows, gazing sourly at the black water streaked and silvered by the moon as it chuckled past. She ignored him. Piers was now no more to her than an undesired acquaintance. But the young man himself had yet no inkling of her opinion, and when she went aft without even looking at him he stared in affronted astonishment and followed her.
“Get back!” Marco ordered quietly.
“Who bade you stand between us? And what villainy put her into this boat with you? Even Sir Landry would never trust a renegade so far!”
“Sir Landry has been murdered in your quarrel with all his household, because you bleated too soon,” Marco told him flatly.
The lad stood like stone while one might repeat a Paternoster. “No!” he whispered at last. “It is a lie! You are lying to me, whoreson Saracen! It cannot be! Rodriga—”
“It is true.”
“Rodriga!” he exclaimed. “Oh, my poor Rodriga—my own love! But I will care for you and cherish you always, I swear to you!”
“It makes me no more willing to crawl into your bed!” she answered bleakly.
“But what else is there for you, Rodriga?” he protested.
She made a little silencing gesture to Marco with the hand Piers could not see; if any inkling of the enormity they contemplated should reach King Richard, she would be bundled to the nearest convent and he most likely to the nearest gallows. “I will not be your concubine, and that is all you need know!” she declared.
He started forward again; he could not accept denial of his desires. “Rodriga, I love you!”
“Get forward!” Marco ordered.
“Devils in Hell, a gentleman is not to be commanded by carrion such as you! If you had not stolen my sword—”
“Nicolo! Give the gentleman his sword!”
The men had stopped rowing and were looking uneasy; the prospect of hand-to-hand conflict in the flimsy fishing-boat did not commend itself to any there. Nicolo drew the sword from his belt and extended it at arm’s length, but as Piers grabbed it he felt with the other hand for his club. Rodriga made ready to leap to the tiller, but Marco never moved. The sword swung part-way up like a bar of silver light, and then wavered. Piers lowered it and stood irresolute. Perhaps he realised the danger to all there, more likely he remembered his earlier defeat, but he resorted to bluster whose value everyone knew.
“Knightly steel is not for vermin; a halter is your desert!” he growled.
“The lady has no more to say to you. Go forward or overside!” He went forward. Rodriga sat down beside Marco, and their hands joined in the darkness.
CHAPTER XX
Bright morning was gilding the lion-tawny walls and white buildings of the old city when the Magdalena's skiff nosed alongside the quay, and Nicolo steadied it while Rodriga, Marco, Diego, Piers and the hermit stepped ashore. Curious eyes followed the odd group all the way along the waterfront and through the streets, remarking its conspicuous disarray and unusual composition, but they paid no heed to comments or questions and pushed swiftly through the throngs to the Palace near the north wall.
The guards eyed their dirt, torn clothing and extensive bloodstains dubiously, and were reluctant to admit them, but a pungent statement by Marco, an urgent plea by Rodriga and a forceful harangue by the hermit persuaded them to invoke superior authority, and after a very brief colloquy with a startled knight they were hurried through a guardroom, across a courtyard and along a passage to a hall crowded with courtiers, soldiers and attendants and buzzing with conjecture and argument over litigants who failed to keep their appointed time with the King. The noise died bit by bit as their guide forced a way to the clear space before the dais and the King’s great chair, and as they halted there the last voices failed to silence and men craned and tiptoed to see them.
The King, his bright eyes angry and suspicious, leaned forward in his chair, and as they met Rodriga’s shadowed dark ones their first astonishment changed to tense expectancy. He looked from her to Robert de Veragny, leaning on his crutch at the foot of the dais, without a word. Gilbert de Cherberay, opposite him, started forward and then stood frozen. All men waited on Richard in deadly silence, watchin
g suspicion grow to furious certainty in his sunburnt face. The cripple was grey and ghastly with shock and bitter disappointment, and he sagged over his crutch like an old man bowing with years to the grave.
“Demoiselle, where is your father, that he fails to keep his day?” asked the King at last, his voice harsh.
Rodriga stepped forward; it was for her alone to answer in Landry’s place. “Ask this man who murdered him where he is buried, fair sire!” she said clearly, and gestured to that vision of guilt.
“Murdered? Why?”
“Because Robert de Veragny falsely stole Rionart from his stepbrother here, and my father would have proved it in open court!”
“Rionart!” Richard exclaimed, and sprang to his feet, staring at Piers.
“It is a lie! A plot between my father’s bastard and the old knave to steal my son’s inheritance!” croaked Robert de Veragny.
“Rionart!” said the King again. “That is it! You have Simon’s face! Simon’s son!”
“Simon de Rionart never had a son!” snarled the cripple, hobbling forward. “That is my father’s bastard!”
The King threw up his head. “God’s Throat, do you call me liar?” he roared, his voice ringing through the still room. “I knew Simon twenty years ago, before ever I was made Duke of Aquitaine, and he had a son! I saw—here, boy! Simon’s son was mauled by a hawk in his cradle, and would bear a scar by his right eye!”
Piers moved nearer, and dumbly put up his hand to thrust back his fair hair. The ragged white scar was plain against his tanned skin. Richard nodded in satisfaction. “The only time I saw you, the wound was raw and Simon full of the tale. You are his son, sure enough.” His piercing blue eyes moved inimically to the cripple’s grey face, which suddenly flared crimson to the hair-line.
“God’s Death, you shall never live to rob my son!” he screeched, and flung himself forward on his sound leg at a grotesque touch and hop, his crutch whirling round above his head like an enormous mallet at Piers’s skull. Too late he tried to dodge aside from the tremendous sweep of it.
Marco had already launched himself between them, his right hand flung up to catch the flailing shaft. Jostled from the side by Piers, he missed his grip, and the crutch struck him with frightful force on his upper arm, snapped it like a twig, flung him backwards upon Piers and clattered across the tiled floor to Rodriga’s feet. The cripple lurched forward and fell upon them, his dagger-hand leaping upward, tipped with a glittering streak of light. The three men went down together in a writhing heap, and a gout of bright blood slanted across the tiles as the blade drove in between them.
Rodriga in wild anguish had seized the crutch and darted forward as Marco fell with Robert de Veragny upon him. She saw the cripple’s elbow jerk back for a second thrust into his body, and swung the crutch underarm with all her strength at his lifted head. It crunched home with a jar that reached her heels, hurling him half-over onto his back in a sprawl of slack limbs, and as Piers heaved furiously from underneath he rolled completely clear and lay with face upturned. Piers flung Marco aside and scrambled gasping and angry to his feet as Rodriga dropped to her knees, catching Marco just in time to save him from being tumbled upon his broken arm. His breast was one stain of wet crimson, but he grinned wryly at her as she lifted his shoulders to her knees.
Men were shouting alarm and rushing from all sides, but the King beat Garnier de Nablus to Rodriga by a narrow margin. She was already tearing Marco’s tunic from him, cold and sick with fear of what she would find. The Grand Master knelt beside her and joined his own dagger to the work, while the King held back the staring crowd and shouted for linen.
“An incompetent botcher,” Marco observed coolly. “Raked across my ribs and through my arm.”
The Grand Master mopped away streaming blood and grunted agreement, and Rodriga drew a hard breath and fought back a hysterical urge to weep and laugh and pray together. The knife had torn a rib-deep gash from breastbone to left shoulder and transfixed the muscle of his upper arm; an ugly wound and bleeding fast, but so much less than it might have been that she was light-headed with relief and thankfulness. Marco tried to lift his head, and she pulled her wits together and pressed him back.
“God’s Throat!” said King Richard, standing over him. “You had your dagger; why did you not kill the vermin?”
“Spill noble blood in the King’s own presence? I have more regard for my neck!” Marco stated mordantly.
“He is under a vow not to kill!” Rodriga defended him, lifting her eyes briefly to the King’s face. “Even vermin! Is—is he—?”
“Burning in Hell, no doubt, demoiselle. You cracked his skull.” He watched Garnier de Nablus, trying to stanch Marco’s blood with the rags of his tunic, glanced back at the cripple’s corpse surrounded by a gaping circle, and then down at Rodriga, his grim face softening. “Old Enterprise murdered. I am heartily sorry, girl. I would gladly have taken him into my household; Can you tell me what happened?”
She nodded. Then and there, while Marco lay with his head in her lap and the Grand Master and two strange Hospitallers worked over him, she told Richard the whole story, briefly and without adornment, and the hall hushed to listen. Her own attention was all for Marco; for his tight-mouthed pallor, his strength running from him in the blood that soaked through the cloths they pressed upon his wound, and his bent and twisted arm lying useless at his side. His brows were drawn together in a frown, and he held himself rigidly still, but his eyes were on her face and his shut lips twisted into a parody of his rueful smile.
The bleeding was stayed at last, and the wound tightly bandaged to close it. His broken arm was set, bound to splints and strapped to his side. Rodriga saw the muscles ridge along jaws and temples as he clamped his teeth together, and the sweat start upon his brow. Tears gathered in her eyes, blurring her sight of his black ones fixed steadily on her.
Garnier de Nablus stood up, wiping his hands. The King lifted inquiring brows, and he nodded. “He has lost a deal of blood, but he should be on his feet in ten days, God willing, and fortunate to have his entrails in his belly.”
“Count your employment from this day, and at your own terms,” King Richard said to Marco. “You deserve well, both for your faithful service to Sir Landry and his daughter, and this last gallant act for the lad here.”
“For him!” said Marco with scalding contempt. “I did it to fulfil my dead friend’s dearest design, not for his sake!”
The King looked from Marco to Piers, standing uselessly nearby with Gilbert de Cherberay. Rodriga’s dispassionate recital had done Piers less than justice, and Marco’s avowal with its suggestion of unrevealed rancours set his eyebrows climbing his forehead. It was not, however, a matter into which he needed to probe, and he wisely asked no further questions.
The Grand Master had been speaking aside to one of his aides, who parted the interested ring of spectators and disappeared. “I have sent for a litter and bearers to take him to the Hospital, fair sire,” he announced.
“No!” Rodriga objected fiercely. “He shall come home with me for tending!”
“Demoiselle,” said the King kindly, “I intend to deliver you to my Queen and my sister to be cared for in your sorrow and distress, until I can make provision for you. That will be best for you, will it not?”
“You are very kind, fair sire,” said Rodriga doggedly, “but I would rather go back and take Marco with me. There are my father and all his household to bury—”
“My child, you cannot see to that! It would not be fitting for a young maid alone to return where he was killed and deal with burials!”
“It is the last thing I can do for him, and I will not shirk it,” she answered flatly. “And I owe this to Marco too.”
“If you feel bound to it, have your way. But the man will do better in the Hospital.”
He looked to the Grand Master for confirmation, but Sir Garnier shook his head. “The Hospital is full of pestilence; fever and flux and gangrene. He will recover
more surely outside.”
“Then you shall have a knight and twenty men at your service,” the King decided, giving way gracefully at that conclusive argument.
“Now, this matter of Rionart.” He turned aside to Piers and Sir Gilbert and drew them away for a few paces. The crowds pressed back, and he curtly dismissed all but his immediate companions so that the great hall was speedily emptied. Rodriga could hear his voice quietly questioning Piers, the hermit and Sir Gilbert, but she did not attend. Neither Piers nor Rionart any longer concerned her. She held Marco’s head in the crook of her arm, his heavy shoulders across her knees, and watched his face anxiously, hoping that the litter might not be long delayed. He was breathing fast, and his deeply tanned skin was the colour of old parchment. He shivered slightly, and she touched his bare arm and found it cold.
The litter was borne in by half a dozen serving-brothers of the Order in charge of her old acquaintance Sir Jehan de Jornec. Marco roused to protest that with a little aid he could walk, but the Grand Master had a short way with argument.
“Start that gash bleeding again, fool, and it will be a grave they carry you to! Stay flat on your back for a week or you will waste my work!”
So Rodriga returned to the desolate house near the harbour beside the litter, with a formidable escort about her; the King’s promised score of spearmen and arbalesters commanded by a young knight of his household, and a dozen and more of his friends and squires joined to them for love of justice, desire to meddle, or sheer admiration for a skinny dark girl who had cracked a man’s skull before King Richard in open court. One party went to secure the stable gate, another beat at the door, while half a score battered in the entrance to Robert de Veragny’s lodging in the King’s name. There was scarcely a scuffle. When she was admitted, the soldiers were herding an apprehensive huddle of disarmed prisoners into a corner of the courtyard and binding their arms.
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