Kingdom of the Grail

by Judith Tarr

  PART TWO

  SARAGOSSA

  CHAPTER 13

  Siege-engines crashed against the walls of Saragossa. The thundering boom had become a part of the world, so that one barely heard it, except when it stopped. It even went on during the singing of the Mass. The priests had learned to modulate their voices in time with it, a sinuous rise and fall that was strangely beautiful and oddly terrible.

  On the feast of Peter and Paul, King Charles heard Mass in the bitter-bright morning. The heat was already rising. Any man with sense went about stripped to his tunic. But no fighting man had any sense. This was war; and in war, one wore mail. Even in the blazing sun of Spain.

  As with the pounding of the engines, one grew inured to it, after a fashion. The army of the Franks had been in Spain since the early spring; they had grown into the heat, more or less. They would never come to love it, or to love this country, either.

  “God-cursed Spaniards,” Olivier muttered after the Mass had ended.

  The king had withdrawn to his usual vantage in the siege, a rise of ground within sight of the locked and guarded city. A canopy shaded him. He had learned on this campaign to cultivate a luxury of the infidels: a servant with a fan, which cooled him as best it could in the heat of the day. If there was a wind, that same servant would wet a blanket in water from the great slow river that flowed past the city, and hang it to catch the breeze. That cooled him, too, and rather remarkably well.

  People found excuses to call on the king, to catch a breath of that coolness. Some of the men in the lines had found ways to mimic it with spears and cloaks, so that sometimes the whole windward side of a line would be a wall of woolen mantles.

  This morning Olivier and Roland were attending the king. Turpin had come up from the field where he had been singing the Mass, clad in a mail-coat over a linen habit—as practical an expedient as Roland could imagine, and probably more comfortable than linen tunic under leather coat under mail. Turpin took his wonted place on Roland’s left hand, as Olivier stood on the right; they rode so, hunted so, fought so. It was a deeply comfortable place to be, Roland thought, in war or anywhere else.

  Olivier went on cursing the whole race of Spain, while the king busied himself with matters of the siege. Roland listened to each with half an ear.

  “Curse them all, Christian, Muslim, or pagan. Lying, deceitful, treacherous, slippery, contentious, perfidious—”

  “One would think,” observed Turpin, “that you didn’t like the Spaniards.”

  Olivier growled under his breath. “What, you love them? They seduced us. They lured us here with promises. Lies! Not even the Christians want us. The cities we were promised, the wealth, the oaths of allegiance—look where that has brought us.” His hand slashed toward Saragossa. “This was supposed to be the crown of our kingdom. And what did we find when we came here? Gates shut and barred. Promises broken. Oaths cast in our faces. We’ve fought our way across Spain, and every man here, Christian, rebel, or Caliph’s servant, has turned against us. We came because they asked us. Now that we’ve come, not only do they not want us, they’re doing their best to drive us out with fire and sword.”

  “Well,” said Turpin, “you did liken Spain to a woman. A woman changes her mind.”

  “She could have done it before we mustered the greatest army that ever marched out of Francia.”

  “What, and deprive us of that glory?”

  “Glorious heat. Glorious dust. Glorious flies. Glorious plagues of Spain. Who’d want to rule it even if we won it? If there’s a more pestilential pit of a country, I’ve never heard tell of it.”

  “I do like a cooler air myself,” Turpin admitted, “and a friendlier populace.”

  “At least with the Saxons, we knew from the beginning that they hated us. That was an honest war. This is rank confusion.”

  “Then victory will be all the sweeter,” Turpin said, “once we win it. They say Saragossa is beautiful within those walls.”

  “Francia is beautiful. Saragossa is loot.” Olivier looked ready to spit, but the king’s presence forestalled him. “God, I hate this country.”

  Truly, thought Roland, it was not going well, if even Olivier’s sunny disposition was so clouded. Few of the Franks were in the least surprised by the Saracens’ perfidy. That was the way of infidels, they told one another. But the Christians of Spain should have welcomed them with open arms, hailed them as saviors, and rallied to their banners. Instead, every Christian man, without fail, had taken arms with his infidel conquerors. Every one.

  One of them, captured in the fall of his recalcitrant little town, had explained for them all. “You would make us into Franks, and make us bow to Frankish lords. The infidels let us be.”

  “You bow to Saracen lords,” Charles had said to the man, as baffled as the rest of them.

  The man shrugged. “They’re not Franks.”

  That was the essence of it. The Caliph’s people had grown frightened when they saw the size of the army raised in their cause, protesting that it was too large, too unwieldy, and far too likely to turn on them and destroy them. The rebels had never been in any doubt as their own enmity. And the Christians fought on both sides, but never on that of the Franks.

  Now Charles besieged Saragossa, which should have given itself to him when he rode up to its gates. He had a grim look about him these days, a deep and abiding anger that sat strangely on his open face and equable disposition. Charles was a fair man, and kind as kings went, but of all things he could not abide, treachery was the worst.

  He still would not believe that his son’s tutor wished him ill. He persisted in seeing only the harmless and holy priest. Therefore Pepin continued under Ganelon’s tutelage. Roland could find no proof, nothing to tie the man to any ill thing. It was still no more than a feeling in his bones.

  A stir caught Roland’s attention. Something was coming through the ranks. Nothing evil, not at all; men were smiling, moods were lightening. Good news? Roland wondered. God knew, they had had little enough of that, of late.

  She came riding as she had come into Paderborn a year past: mounted on her white Spanish stallion and dressed for riding in the Saracen mode, in light flowing robes. But she was not concealing her sex now, or her name either. They all knew her. “The queen’s healer! The queen’s healer has come from Francia!”

  She rode up to the king’s pavilion. Charles by then had left his maps and charts and plots of war and stood just out of the sun, frowning as she approached—the only man in Roland’s sight who was not smiling or laughing.

  His frown deepened as she slipped from the saddle. Her knees buckled as they could if one had been riding overlong. Roland had moved with no thought at all, to catch and steady her before she fell. He barely touched her, but his hand felt as if it had clasped a fistful of fire.

  She did not acknowledge him even with a glance. She was smiling a beautiful, a marvelous smile, full into the king’s eyes. Charles blinked, dazzled. “My lord,” she said in her clear voice, “you are the father of sons.”

  “I should hope so,” Charles said, evidently without thinking. Then it struck him, what she must mean. “Are you telling me—has she—is it—?”

  Sarissa laughed. “Oh, yes, my lord! Queen Hildegarde was brought to bed of twin sons. They were born early, but they thrive. All the omens promise, my lord: one of them at least will be a king.”

  Charles smote his hands together in joy. But he was not ready yet to let go of his temper. “You left her alone?”

  “She is safe,” Sarissa assured him, “with the good sisters in Chelles. She bids you win a great victory, then come swiftly back to her.”

  “It seems she has won a victory of her own,” Charles said. “But you—”

  “It was time I left Francia,” Sarissa said. “My task there was done. I am a healer, after all, and armies have great need of such. Or would it discomfit you to set a woman in that office?”

  “Not at all,” Charles said with better humor than he
had shown since he found the gates closed at Saragossa. “You are very welcome here. Roland, of your courtesy, look after her. Find her a place in the camp, and see that she has all she needs for her comfort.”

  Roland opened his mouth to protest. But Charles had already turned away, summoned by a messenger with word from the siege-engines. He was, after all, waging a war. He did concede to the joy of the news with a swift command as he went, to turn the daymeal into a feast of celebration for the birth of princes.

  Roland, meanwhile, had no choice but to obey his king’s command. It was rather bleak consolation that Sarissa seemed less happy than he, and even less able to object. Her dislike of him, it seemed, had lessened not at all with time or distance.

  He set himself to be a courtier: coolly cordial, undismayed by enmity. He found a place for her tent and baggage among the few women whom the king had brought with him on this march: a mistress or two and their maidservants, and a small company of nuns whose duty and occupation was to pray for the king’s soul. Sarissa fit somewhere between the two, though Roland suspected that she would have been happier as a nun than as a royal paramour. Her escort was much simpler to place: a small company of queen’s guards, and a pair of wide-eyed and very young nuns from Chelles.

  Those two, unlike Sarissa, seemed delighted with the guide whom the king had inflicted upon them. Their names, they made sure he discovered, were Rotruda and Emma. Sister Emma was taller and thinner. Sister Rotruda was smaller, rounder, and fairer, with a look about her that said she might have chosen another life if anyone had thought to ask her. She drank in the Spanish air, heat, dust, flies, and all, as if it had been fine wine. “Oh!” she said. “Oh, it’s a marvel to be free about the world!”

  Sister Emma hissed at her to be quiet, but she took not the slightest notice. “My lord, have you fought bravely? Has your sword drunk rivers of pagan blood? Is that it, that you carry? Is that really Durandal?”

  After a year, such eagerness had grown rare. Roland had passed from shyness through annoyance to wry acceptance. Now he found it rather amusing. “Yes, Sister. That is Durandal.”

  “Does it sing when you fight? Is that true?”

  “Every sword has its song,” Roland said. “Hers is sweeter than most.”

  “Hers? Durandal is a woman?”

  “She does seem to be,” said Roland. He smiled impartially at the little round woman, still wearing the courtier’s face. With some dismay, he realized the effect of that simple attempt at courtesy: the flush on the plump white cheeks, the hint of a swoon. If she had been some lady’s wanton maidservant, that would have been a prelude to delight. But this was a nun from Chelles, however unwilling she might be to accept the vocation her family had forced on her.

  A moment more and she would make an excuse to droop toward him and cling. He eluded her, deftly he thought, and let Sister Emma interpose her taller, stiffer, and visibly disapproving self. “Sisters,” he said, “if you will look yonder, that tent belongs to the king’s holy ladies. They’ll be delighted to welcome you among them.”

  “Oh, no,” said Sister Rotruda, “we’d crowd them out. We’ll stay with Lady Sarissa, will we not?”

  “You will not,” Sarissa said, clear, amiable, but unshakably firm. “Now, Sisters, go where my lord bids you.”

  “But—” Rotruda began.

  Sister Emma cut her off with a sharp word and a sharper tug on her arm. She yelped indecorously and scrambled to keep her feet as Emma dragged her toward the nuns’ tent.

  Roland would have fallen back against a wall if there had been one. He did manage a sigh of relief. From the midst of it, his eye caught Sarissa’s. Her expression astonished him. There was no disapproval in it, and no dislike, either. It was full of laughter.

  Her mirth was infectious. It blew like a clean cold wind through his spirit and left him standing in the harsh sunlight, grinning like a fool. “Oh, lady!” he said. “God and the saints be thanked for Sister Emma.”

  “Amen,” Sarissa said, still laughing. She shook her head. “That child. Abbess Gisela thought the journey might teach her the beginnings of discipline.”

  “Did it?” Roland asked.

  “Indeed,” said Sarissa, “I believe it did. But very, very small beginnings. Now she’s here, and a whole army to yearn after . . . Ai!”

  “There now,” Roland said. “Put your heart at rest. I sent her exactly where the good abbess knew she would go. She’s in Sister Dhuoda’s hands now. Sister Dhuoda,” he said with no little relish, “is the sword of the Lord. Strong men quail before her.”

  Sarissa eyed him warily. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “By God and His holy Mother,” Roland assured her, “I am not. Your headstrong little Sister will find she’s met her match.”

  “I do hope so,” Sarissa said with the fervor of a long journey made even longer by that difficult companion.

  Roland should go. Her tent was up; the servants had pitched it while they contended with Sister Rotruda. Her belongings were in it. There was a basin coming at the king’s order, a bath and rest for her travel-weary bones. But he could not seem to tear himself away.

  The last he had seen of her, she was standing with the rest of the queens’ women before the gates of Chelles, watching the king ride off to the muster. He had put her resolutely out of his mind. She was nothing to him, nor he to her. She was no part of his world.

  And yet she had come all unlooked for to this untidy tangle of a war, and for no reason at all, he was glad. It was as if—how odd; as if, now she had come, this land of Spain had become less hateful. He had never cursed it as Olivier had, but he did not love it, either. Now she was here, and he was somewhat less inclined to despise it.

  Poor lady, she was swaying on her feet. She had traveled far and fast to bring Charles the first good news he had had since he marched into Spain. With as little thought as when he had steadied her before the king, he swept her up and carried her into the tent.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sarissa was dizzy, as if she had been drinking a great deal of unwatered wine. But she had drunk nothing but the king’s cup of welcome. Nor, despite what this arrogant creature seemed to think, had she taxed her strength unduly on the journey. Sister Rotruda had been a constant irritation, to be sure, but Sarissa had endured worse.

  She tried to tell Roland that. He, of course, was not listening. He carried her into the tent as if she had been an invalid, laid her on the cot that the king’s marvelously efficient servants had set up for her, and stood over her until she had eaten a sop of bread in watered wine and honey. He even, curse him, greeted Tarik, who sauntered in with grey cat-tail at its most insouciant angle, and said to that spirit of mischief, “Look after your lady, sir, and keep her safe.”

  Insufferable. The Spanish war had done nothing to teach him humility. Nor—and that was maddening—had it in any way marred or faded his striking, half-inhuman beauty. She had let herself forget just how odd he was, and how strongly he could shake her composure.

  As soon as he took himself away, her strength remembered itself. She settled her belongings to her satisfaction under Tarik’s ironic yellow eye. She ascertained that her two young charges were indeed welcomed by the nuns, and that Sister Dhuoda was if anything more formidable than Roland had foretold. Rotruda was already looking somewhat quenched—and that was a holy miracle.

  The war was going poorly. She had known that since she ascended the wall of the Pyrenees and came down past Pamplona. The Frankish king’s great triumphant crusade had shrunk and weakened till it was hardly more than the surrender of a few towns and a siege mounted against a city that had promised in the beginning to submit to him.

  Neither Franks nor Spaniards were at all enamored of one another. The Franks had not the art the infidels had of conquering gracefully. Even Charles, for all his charm and easy manner, was more at ease with a sword than with the soft words of diplomacy.

  It was still an impressive army. It maintained discipline in the face
of a land and a climate that were altogether alien to it. The camp was remarkably clean as siege-camps went—the king’s influence, that—and the men were not permitted to languish in boredom. Companies that did not man the engines or maintain the camp were detailed to supply duty, or else to keep the land clear of rebels, whether Christian or Muslim.

  Sarissa traced the borders of the army, walking wide of the siege-lines and the recalcitrant walls. There were banners from all over the kingdom of the Franks—even half-pagan Saxons, rebel Lombards and Bavarians, and companies of men from Italy, quite like in their dark wiry smallness to the people of Spain. It was marvelous to see so many nations brought together under one king. Small wonder that he dreamed of adding Spain to it—and had leaped at the chance when it was offered.

  As she walked the borders of the camp, she took the measure of the spirits within. There was anger in plenty, frustration, outrage. And a dark thing in the heart of it, that fed on ill will.

  There was darkness enough in the world, but this was the one she had come to find. Twice now the spirit in her had led her to the royal court of the Franks. Durandal had taken substance there—and so, it seemed, had the power against which it had been made. Both the light and the dark were in this place, in the circle of souls about Charles the king.

  Both light and dark could be incarnated in the same man—the man whom Durandal had chosen to wield it. The nagging of doubt had lessened not at all since the army left Francia. The long quiet months with the queen had nurtured it. There was no threat to that lady or the new lives she had conceived as soon as might be after the loss of her daughter. That shadow had marched away with the king.

  As Sarissa circled the camp, she laid down wards. If any dark thing passed them, coming or going, she would know. She would find the master, the enemy. And the second war, the greater war, would begin.