The other thing, the man-wolf, padded over and sank down at her feet. It whined, put its nose down between its paws, then raised it and howled once more. The desolation in that cry brought tears to Asherah's eyes. Poor monster, poor thing, to know itself a monster ...
“Don't let it touch you, child!” To her horror, the voice belonged to Tzipporah, who had come panting up with one of the manservants. He was at her side in an instant, holding another sword—where had her father secured these weapons, forbidden, as she had always thought, to Jews? Along the trade routes, she was certain, but where? She must learn before much longer.
“Why aren't you safe?” she demanded of her maidservant.
“Leaving your mother's child in danger? May my right hand wither first!” Tzipporah's right hand shook, but it held a knife, and she contemplated the creature lying nearby as if she planned to use it.
The wards still shimmered about her. “We will not harm you,” she spoke to the creature as if to an enormous dog. It whined again.
“Did they hurt you?” she asked.
Behind her, she heard Joachim's low-voiced laughter. She knew she would hear later, “Daughter, one does not treat a man-wolf as a dog.” She would tell him that she saw no reason why this creature might not serve as just such a guardian. After all, he clearly had set himself as protector to the Ducas.
But she would have to see that he lived, and that her own servants did not hack him to death as they clearly had a mind to.
Time to change that. Asherah raised her hands and eyes, invoking Gabriel and swift healing. Moonlight washed over the creature. Its shape shifted again, into the body of a scarred man. A much-scarred, naked man, she noticed and quickly looked away.
“Throw a cloak over him,” Joachim ordered the servants who had ridden up. His hands, far more expert yet in knowledge than hers, though hers would be the deeper gift when it matured, prodded at the two men for breaks and wounds.
He nodded, satisfied. “Lay them across the horses and take them home. I ask you as your friend, not as your master: let none of you speak of this to anyone. If you cannot remain in my service because of it, I will see you safely away. But I will implore your silence. And may the Shield of Abraham ward us all.”
Low-voiced mutters of assent rumbled from the men. Asherah found herself able to breathe freely again. She had not realized until that moment just what her impulse to save these two men might have cost. And yet, to pass by on the other side—the Christians had one story, just one of a Jew who had done just that, and they never let her people forget it. Perhaps she had lived too long among the Christians, but passing by upon the other side shocked her to the core.
Carefully, Asherah helped her father roll Leo over and examine him for wounds. His eyes opened as they moved him. At first, they searched about wildly.
“Nordbriht,” he muttered. “Don't hurt him. Don't tell. He hates this.”
Under his cloak, Nordbriht flattened himself into the dust of the road, rather like a dog caught stealing food, as if he were still the beast who had hunted down would-be murderers.
“Be easy, stranger.” Joachim laid a hand on the man's massive shoulder. He wrapped himself more fully in the cloak and turned, pale eyes watching as Asherah's father turned back to the other man. His hand opened, and something dark and bloodstained dropped from it. Joachim wrapped his hand in a fold of his ample robe and picked up the object: a tiny knife, wrought of the shining black stone one found here even in the roadbeds.
“Your friend is safe,” Asherah said. “He has"—how could she put this?—"returned to himself.”
Her voice brought Leo's head around, and she flushed: recognition shone in them, recognition and, despite his ordeal, delight.
“And are you still so sure, lady,” he whispered, “that they would not harm you?”
He caught at her hand and pressed it against his face in a way she was certain her father would not approve and that made the air chill where Tzipporah was standing.
Never mind that. His eyes demanded an answer.
“I was afraid then, too,” she whispered.
She found herself smiling. And then she shook with fear—shook again at her confession.
From her bath, Asherah contemplated tasks yet undone. Here she was, guests in her house, the house in an uproar from the very nature of those guests, and Tzipporah had imprisoned her in hot, scented water and was turning out the finest contents of her clothes chests and jewelry coffer. In addition to the daily obligations of her father's accounts, the house, and her own studies (examination of the clay tablets her father had brought her would have to be postponed), she faced sacred obligations of hospitality and healing. Meanwhile, her maids enjoyed a flurry of excitement right out of the stories of the Gentiles that, frankly, she was surprised they had even heard of.
A son of the Ducas line always turned out to be the hero of such stories, she remembered. At least, the women would attribute her blush to the hot water.
She rose from it and reached for her robes before she could be surrounded and enveloped in the richest of them with what she privately considered to be far more flutter than necessary.
She shook her head. No, not the purple. The Empire's laws forbade that she own anything finer than purple of the second class; and this was a City man of the highest family, used to the finest of dyes. Purple was for Empire. It was not, however, as if Asherah had objections to splendor, though she rarely resorted to it before Christians: judicious display was a weapon in any merchant's trading arsenal. And fine fabrics and rich colors gladdened the eyes and could lift the mood. She nodded approval at the Persian brocade, indigo with a peacock sheen, held out next for her approval. (She remembered how much she had bargained—in gold—from its initial price and smiled private satisfaction.)
The silk was cool even against the sheer cotton her maids drew quickly over her scented skin; and she shivered with pleasure. But enough finery! She was mistress of this house and she need not jangle with all her bracelets, necklaces, and rings when she had tasks to perform. For modesty, she draped a veil over her dark hair, but she took pains to untangle hair and veil from the long earrings, studded with sapphires, that she did consent to wear.
“You look like a princess,” Tzipporah murmured.
“No, a bride!” her youngest and newest servingwoman said, as the others laughed and clapped their hands. Then they hushed, no doubt at a glare from Tzipporah.
Caring for them, Asherah could not tell them that their dreams of what a real life should be were not hers, and could never be. Not when her childhood fears of madness had yielded to knowledge that made the moonlight itself hers to weave; not when the visions that had cooled suitors’ pleas could be channeled to coax the archangels to aid her.
I would give anything to be as you are, she thought at the women as she studied her reflection in her mirror. Except what I already am.
They loved her. They wished her every happiness, except the ones that she knew.
Were they still thinking of those imbecile songs? Send the young lord back to his people; go with him as hostage and as prize herself, just in time for the next story? They were different, the Ducas and her family. Centuries of Imperial law and the threat of death made that all too clear. Rescue the prince, yes. Send him back, yes. Above all, send him on his way and forget, except to pray that punishment would not come again—and that, if it came, it would not be more than she and those she loved could bear.
She fretted through an application of kohl to her eyelids, then reclaimed her freedom to race to the kitchens, then into the room in which her father received his most honored guests. Despite her preparations, she was gratified: she was the first to arrive, Tzipporah following in her indigo brocade wake. A servant laid down the last dish of heavy silver, then vanished.
Asherah inspected the dishes, the cushions, the goblets. It was not often that her father ate in company with outsiders, especially Christians, or whatever the tall fair man was. Perhaps, as an u
nwed girl, she should efface herself, seeing to her father's and her father's guests’ comfort from a discreet position between this room and the kitchens.
But she was Asherah, her father's heir and keeper of his house and secrets. And she would serve her guests herself.
They knew him, Leo thought, and gave him more honor than his own family. Why else would they have dressed him, after treatment by a skilled surgeon and a bath that made him think he had returned to Constantinople, in heavy silks, rich with purple and embroidery in the Persian fashion?
“All you need is your axe,” he told Nordbriht, who marched along behind him, splendid in crimson silk that, for a wonder, did not strain over chest and shoulders.
The Varangian shook his head. Lights from highly polished polycandela struck highlights from his braids and beard. “I should go back and tend to those bodies,” he muttered. “Small enough price to pay: these people spared my life. They saw me as I am and they spared my life.” It had become his litany.
A servant beckoned them toward a door. He nodded respect at the doorway, then knocked. The carved door opened from within ... into a room Leo might have envisioned in Samarkand or Susa, but never in Hagios Prokopios, so far from the center of Empire.
He had lain a prisoner in the Turks’ hands, yet had entered Alp Arslan's tents to be stunned with the richness of rugs and cushions strewn about instead of the squalor he had expected after a night spent dazed on the field of Manzikert.
What had he expected of the merchant Joachim's home? Some garish combination of tavern and blasphemy?
No mosaic tiles winked up at him from the floor, as he would have expected in a great house in Byzantium. Instead, the rugs piled one on top of another on the floor were even finer than those deemed fit for the sultan Alp Arslan to walk upon. Cushions lay atop them. Some were also made of squares of carpet, wool or silk. And some were brocaded silk that seemed to shift color in the light from the lamps fastened to the walls. Overhead, casting a glitter of light and shadow, hung a great bronze lamp, cunningly pierced in a thousand places.
Against the walls stood ancient, broken columns, each smoothed off into a flat surface on which rested some treasure: beasts of lapis, malachite, and jade; a fluted bowl of rainbow glass; a chipped dish incised with butterflies like those Leo had seen in Meletios’ cave; the head of a young hero, his nose smashed, his eyes looking into forever; the statue of what looked like a woman with tiny head and feet, but with the belly and breasts of a mother of many children.
Aside from the lack of icons, they might have been in the home of any aristocrat Leo might have visited, if the aristocrat had been a man—or woman—of sufficient wealth and vision to amass treasures from the caravan routes and all the ages. How much of this was the father's choosing, and how much that of the woman, scarcely more than a girl, sitting so demurely near her father's feet?
Nordbriht drew in his breath. Leo agreed: the smells of cooking in the room were distinctly tempting, far more so than silks or cushions or the most prized wares of what, clearly, was a highly unusual merchant. Low tables stood by each pile of cushions. On a longer table rested covered dishes, heavy plates bright with patterned glazes, and massive breads, wrapped in immaculate cloth. Beads of moisture trembled on a silver pitcher with a neck curved as gracefully as a dancer's arm.
Joachim the merchant allowed them to get their bearings, then rose to greet them. “You are welcome to my home,” he said. “Our clothes become you. My daughter chose well.”
“You would honor us,” she said softly, “if you kept them as our gift.”
Leo found himself smiling at her voice. In this island of wealth and peace, it had finally lost the strained courage he had always heard in it. Asherah. The woman he had been told not to endanger by seeking. I know you, Lady, he thought.
As if she could hear him, she glanced away. When he and Nordbriht had come in, she had not risen, choosing to remain curled on a cushion somewhat to the side and behind her father's chair. Trying to fade into the background? This room's splendor made it impossible for any of it to fade into the shadows. Asherah had dressed to match it in a flow of iridescent blue and green, matched by the gems she wore, and outshone by her eyes.
Now she rose and gestured at a door half draped in silk. Servants emerged with soft towels and basins. The water for washing was scented with lemon: father and daughter washed too.
Joachim beckoned them further into the room, to the waiting cushions. Leo sank down well enough, despite his soreness from the fight that had almost killed him ... that these people had saved him from. Nordbriht proved more of a problem. Asherah laughed and gestured a servant to bring him more cushions.
Going over to the table, Joachim broke apart a loaf, murmured words over it, and handed pieces to his guests and to his daughter. Dishes were brought and passed, far richer and more plentiful than in his father's house, rivaling the feasts at which Alp Arslan had treated his emperor like a guest, not a captive. Joachim refused thanks, refused talk of the night's ... excitement, as his daughter watched lest dishes or cups become empty. From time to time, Leo heard laughter from the cushions on which Nordbriht sprawled attentively. Apparently, his ability and his willingness to devour as much food as they wanted to press upon him delighted everyone involved. Even Asherah laughed before gesturing for more food to be brought and insisting that he must take the last of the roast kid or Tzipporah and she would both be desolate.
Leo caught Joachim's eye and found himself laughing ruefully. He too had seen how easily Varangians, one step removed, perhaps, from barbaroi, could charm the cultured ladies of Constantinople when they had a mind to. This time, however, his heart rejoiced. At least, Nordbriht showed no signs of trying to hurl himself into the nearest lake.
At length, Nordbriht polished his plate with the last of the bread, wiped his hands and handed the towel to a waiting servant, then sagged against his cushions. Replete, for a wonder; and, for a greater wonder, sober. He looked about, briefly abashed that he was the last to finish.
“Sir,” he turned to Joachim. “You saw...”
“I saw men attacked by wild beasts,” Joachim said firmly. “Including you and your friend.”
Oh, they were all very civilized, very careful in this room, pretending not to know one another's pasts and shadows; but they were there: they overhung each person seated in this splendid, discreet place like the shadows cast by the glittering bronze lamp overhead.
“Accept my thanks,” Nordbriht said in a rush of words, as if he had gathered up his courage and must now charge ahead, “for your hospitality and for saving my friend's life. Mine, too. And give me leave to tend to the men lying in the road.”
At that, even Asherah quirked up an eyebrow.
“What?” Leo murmured. “And are you now become as tenderhearted as that kid you wolfed down?”
Nordbriht brought his massive fist down on his silk-clad knee. “What if we were seen?”
Father and daughter shook their heads. Remembering the thrum of magic shrewdly used, Leo was inclined to agree: no, they had not been seen. His would-be assassins had planned carefully for everything, but a young woman's being met by her father and servant and escorted home from—where had Asherah been?
“Even so,” said Nordbriht. “The bodies will be found. Those fools were of some name, I gather, in the town. Their families will be looking to cut somebody's throat.”
One of the servants uttered a faint moan of protest.
“Tzipporah,” Asherah's voice was level, “this is not a song we have strayed into. If you are going to dine with warriors, you must accept that their after-dinner conversation may not be what you would hope.”
“Your pardon, noble ladies.” Nordbriht flushed the color of his tunic. He looked down and shifted uncomfortably on cushions that suddenly appeared too small and tumbled to hold him. “But, after all, they call me barbaros.”
Joachim nodded, assuring Nordbriht he understood the term.
“You, however,
you...”
“I am hardly barbaros,” Joachim cut in. “What you mean, I think, is that I am not of the fellowship of Christ. Are you?”
Nordbriht barked out a laugh. “I have, in any case, had the water sprinkled over me and the priest's mutterings. I would not have your throat cut for my ... my trouble. And I don't know if the countryfolk or the nobles roundabouts here are stupid enough to believe the Turks could do—apart from knifework—what, what I did to those men.”
“What would you suggest?” asked Joachim calmly. “My workmen have bows. Shall we shoot arrows into the dead? Let us be at peace, here, while yet we may.” His tone became a command. “People will believe an enemy to be capable of any violence, any vileness at all.”
“Just look at the stories they believe of us,” Asherah cut in.
Leo met her eyes and found himself laughing without mirth.
“I tell you, the villagers expect the Turks to invade. I have seen load after load of food, of bedding, cheese, and skins, carried down into the caves. The people prepare for attack. This will only make them work the faster.” She turned to her father. “About that last shipment...”
“In the morning, daughter. Not now.”
“Lady,” Leo said, “I have been a guest in your house and it desolates me to speak against anything you say. But I have guested as well in the tents of Alp Arslan, who treated me and my Emperor...” The words came hard, even to one who had witnessed it. “...Better than my own kin.”
Asherah inclined her head. “We are not talking about reason here, but terror. And hate.” She rose and poured wine for all of them.
“Lady, against those, there is no argument.” Leo drank, then reconsidered. “Except knowledge. And I gather that you are as expert in that as you are at welcoming a guest.”
Shards of Empire Page 23
