Alamut (10 page)

They understood one another. Aidan moved a little, away from the lady. The archdeacon cast eyes on a man with whom he needed to speak. But paused, first, as if at last he had made up his mind to it, and said, “I heard you sing in Carcassonne, twenty years agone. I saw your temper then. I see it now.”

“Headstrong, and willful, and not excessively inclined to reflection.”

“So you would have us think. Be gentle with the child, prince. She's no match for you.”

“May I sing for her?”

“At her wedding,” said the archdeacon, “with my blessing.”

“Then, if I can, I shall.”

The archdeacon bowed and sketched a sign of the cross. Aidan bent his head. Their eyes met briefly, before the archdeacon turned away.

Aidan shivered a little. It was not so terrible, to be known here. This one neither hated nor, unduly, feared him. And in that last glance had been a bargain. For the princess' safety, the archdeacon's silence. Not from Archdeacon William of Tyre would Outremer discover that the prince had been a troubadour in Carcassonne, somewhat before he could, from the evidence of his face, been old enough to sing.

A thread of melody wound through his head.
Domna, pouois ne me no.us chal...
“Lady, since you care not for me, and cast me away...” His own, that one. Someone else was claiming it of late; he was welcome to it. Aidan did not cling to his mind's children, once they had grown and gone away.

The lady was unhappy, now that he seemed to have forgotten her. The faithful would suffer for her pique. But Aidan had struck a bargain. He let himself be drawn toward the safer harbor of a circle of young knights. One had been at Acre, and one or two were new in Outremer. Those looked rough and raw and sun-scorched, and slightly stunned by the wonder of it all. “Here,” they greeted him, eyeing his elegance. “How do you do it? You look like a
pullani
born.”

If it was an insult, he did not intend to notice. “First,” he replied, “a bath.” They looked appalled. “Do you know what they have here? Soap! Scented, by Our Lady's sweet white breast, and soft as her kiss. With a dusky maiden to administer it, and another to wield the sponge, and...”

oOo

“His majesty, Baldwin, fourth of that exalted name, King of Jerusalem, Heir to the Throne of David, Defender of the Holy Sepulcher!”

The herald's voice had gone rough with crying the name of every lord and lady and lordly scion of the High Court. But now it rang forth with its fullest vigor, in spreading silence.

Aidan, taller than many and somewhat nearer the door than most, saw clearly the one who stood framed there. He did not like it, to be singled out so: that was as clear to Aidan's senses as if he had uttered it aloud. To human senses...

He was a little older than Thibaut, just at his majority. He was tall already, but slender, reed-frail in his richness of silk, robes that seemed less Frankish than Saracen. He wore the long cotte of the older fashion, and jeweled gloves such as a king might choose to wear; but it was the headdress that gave him that air of foreignness. Aidan had seen it on tribesmen in the desert east of Jaffa: the
kaffiyah
, the headcloth with the coronet behind it about the brows, drawn like a veil over the face, baring only a glitter of eyes. This one was silk, and royal purple; its circlet was gold. The eyes were dark within it, yet clear, with a shadow on them, of weariness, of long suffering.

Only the rawest newcomers stared. The rest went down in obeisance.

The king gestured without speaking. They straightened; they began again, slowly, their dance of power and favor. He paused, scanning their faces. Aidan felt the touch of his eyes as if a flame had passed, too swift to burn.

The king stirred, descending. His walk was slow, not lame, not quite, but careful, as if he did not trust his feet. The sickness was in them, as in his hands: the left that seemed strong enough in its glove, the right that was withered, held or bound close against his side. And his face, veiled, that no one had seen in a year and more. It had been handsome, the whispers said, like his father's, with a fine arch of nose, and a strong clean line of brow and cheek and chin. What it was now, only rumor knew.

And yet he did not invite pity. He held himself erect, his head at a high and kingly angle. His voice was soft and low, with a hint of a stammer; he did not use it overmuch as he circled the hall, but listened to those who approached him, his clear eyes fixed on their faces. Most of them, Aidan noticed, found ways to avoid kissing his hand. Some were rather ingenious. The king was aware of it: Aidan saw it in the flicker of his glance. The wound was an old one. He had taught himself to be amused by it, and to admire the more clever expedients, ranking them like knights in a joust.

Margaret neither shrank nor evaded. The king's eyes smiled at her, but saddened quickly, filling with tears. “I... regret...” he said, his stammer deepening for a little, until he mastered it. “I'm sorry. He was a good man.”

“Yes, highness,” said Margaret steadily. “My thanks to you.”

The king shook his head, a quick gesture, almost sharp. “If there is anything — if you need aid, comfort — ”

“I shall remember, majesty,” Margaret said.

“Do that,” said the king. “I order it. Now, or later, after the court has met on the matter — ask, and you shall have whatever you need.”

She bowed low.

There was a silence. She was not inclined to fill it. The king was reluctant to go, although others waited with veiled impatience: in that much, he betrayed his youth. His glance found Aidan, who had come up while they spoke, cat-quiet as he could be when he wanted to be. The fair brows went up under the
kaffiyah
. “Why — why, sir! You look just like him.”

Aidan bowed over the gloved hand: the leather dyed crimson, the jewels sewn with gold wire, the foul-sweet scent of sickness beneath. He was being ranked high, for setting lips to it, for neither trembling nor radiating saintliness. But it was nothing to be proud of. He was not a mortal man. He could not fall prey to mortal sickness.

“My lord's kinsman,” Margaret was saying. “Aidan, Prince Royal of Rhiyana, new come from the west.”

Baldwin knew him, as Thibaut knew, as Gereint had known: in wonder and in high delight. His eyes shone. “My lord! Well met. Oh, well met!”

“Even without an army?” Aidan asked him wryly.

“Oh,” said Baldwin, dismissing it. “Have they been at you, then, for coming alone? More fools they. You are quite enough in yourself.” He held up his hand. A ring glowed there, gold set with a great emerald. “I had your king's gifts, when I was crowned — isn't it a wonder that he knew, all the way from the west of Francia? See, I wear the ring, and I read the book whenever I may, and it comforts me. Is he a kinsman of yours, that great scholar who wrote it and called it the
Gloria Dei?”

“Not that I know, sire,” said Aidan, taking note that the boy spoke readily enough, once he was into it. “Most likely not. He's a monk in Anglia, very saintly they say, and quite shut away from the world. But it's a remarkable book, isn't it?”

“Wonderful,” Baldwin said. “We'll read it together soon, you and I.” He paused. “You are here for that? To be my knight?”

Such surety: only a king could know it, and only a young one could carry it off. Aidan smiled into the wide brown eyes. “To serve you, my lord, as best I may. Only — ”

“Only?” Baldwin asked, when Aidan did not go on.

Aidan dropped to one knee, taking the king's hand in his. It was bone-thin beneath the leather. “My lord, I will pledge to you, but first there is a thing which I must do. When it is done, I will come, and if you will have me, I will be your liege man until death shall part us.”

Listeners were awed, or fascinated, or shocked at his temerity. The king met his eyes, and nodded slowly. No child, this, however brief his count of years. “What will you do, prince?”

“My sister's son is dead,” Aidan said. “I have sworn to take revenge on him who ordered that death.”

Baldwin nodded again: bowed his head, raised it. “I... see.”

He did. For that, Aidan would never regret what he had said, or the impulse that had made him say it. “I'll come back, my lord. Even if my body fails. I'll serve you with all my power.”

Baldwin's hand trembled. That was no small promise, and no little gift. But Aidan sensed no fear in him, no horror of what had come to serve him. “Come back whole,” he said, “and come back strong. We need you, we of Jerusalem.”

7.

Joanna would not, adamantly would not, ask. And for a maddening while, no one would tell her. They were all full of what the king had said to the prince, and what the prince had said to the king. It was burgeoning into a legend already.

“All they
did
was put off swearing the oath of fealty!”

Thibaut blinked at her vehemence. “But that's not what matters. It's how they did it. Like something out of a song. They looked at one another, and we could all see: they belonged together.”

“You make them sound like a pair of lovers.”

Her voice caught on that. Thibaut did not notice. “Of course they're not. They're a king and a man whom God meant to stand beside him.”

“Why not? Witchkind can't get sick.”

Thibaut went away in disgust, and there was no one else whom Joanna could ask. Except, of course, that she would not. It was nothing to her whether Ranulf had been in the High Court, or whether he had spoken to anyone of his wife.

“He didn't.”

She jumped. Aidan sat beside her on the roof. He had a frosted cup, which he gave her. She took it blindly, sipped. Sherbet.

He sat back at his ease, stretching out his long legs. “He wasn't there,” he said. “No one seemed perturbed. It wasn't a formal session, after all.”

Her cheeks burned. She gulped cold sour-sweetness, lemon and sugar iced with snow from Mount Hermon.

When she choked, he pounded her back, forbearing mightily to laugh at her. She cursed him, but silently, glaring under her brows. He went back to his panther-sprawl. He was out of his finery, in a shirt as plain as a commoner's, and plain rough hose. The shirt was unlaced. She refused to look.

“I don't think he's going to denounce you,” said that damnable, lilting voice, “or repudiate you in public. As far as anyone knows, you've come to be with your mother in her grief, and he's allowing it.”

“How magnanimous of him.”

“Isn't it?”

Her eyes blazed on him. He smiled, lazy, yawning like a cat in the sun. “Your face,” he observed, “is a remarkable shade of crimson.”

She hit him.

He was not there; and then, unstruck, he was. His hand had caught her wrist. She barely felt it, but all her strength did not suffice to break her free.

She swung left-handed. Again she struck only air. Again he caught her, and held her with effortless ease. She kicked him, hard. His eyes widened. He was still laughing, but she had made a mark. Her knee came up, threatening. “Let me go,” she said.

He obeyed. He did not move off to a prudent distance, or try to protect his jewels.

Her flare of rage had faded. She sank down in a huddle of skirts. All at once, she began to cry.

He folded his arms about her and held her. At first she shrank within herself. He neither moved nor spoke. Little by little she uncoiled. Her arms crept up, circling his neck. She buried her face in his shoulder and wept herself dry.

She lay against him at last, spent. Somewhere in the long siege, he had begun to stroke her hair, slowly, steadily. Now his hand moved down her back, seeking the knots, loosening them one by one. His heart beat slow and strong, slower than a man's. It was — she stiffened. It was on the wrong side. His fingers kneaded the stiffness, softening it, smoothing it away.

It was no worse than the rest of him. His scent, or the lack of it. Even the cleanest man still smelled of man. He smelled of nothing but the salt of her tears and the linen of his shirt and the faint rose-sweetness of the bath. But he was solid against her, beast-warm, a flow and slide of muscles under her hands, the surprising softness of his hair. Even his beard — it barely pricked, soft and downy-thick against her palm.

With sudden violence she pulled away. He did not try to hold her. His eyes had gone dark, the color of rain. He was old enough to be her grandfather. He was her kin in forbidden degree. He was not even human.

If he mocked her, she knew that she would die.

He touched her, the barest whisper of a touch, tracing the line of her cheek.

She recoiled. His hand fell. He half turned, half shrugged. It was her salvation, that shrug. She hated him for it.

She scrambled herself up. “I have to go,” she said.

If he heard her, he gave no sign.

Yes,
she said in her head.
Be like that. See if I care.

He did not hear that, either. She spun on her heel and stalked away from him.

oOo

He drew up his knees, laid his head on them, sighed from the bottom of his lungs.
Dear God,
he thought.
Dear unmerciful God.

The first woman in twenty years whom he had even wanted to look at, and of course it must be this one. A child. With a temper. And a husband. And an Assassin on her track.

She wanted him. They usually did. Sometimes they hardly knew it. She knew; but she had not named it, yet. She had not seen its echo in his eyes.

God willing, she would not. She had pain enough. Her idiot of a husband, her son, the shadow of death over this house. She was wise when her youth and her spirit would let her be. She would see that she was only falling to his accursed, alien seduction, and she would resist it. He would be as cold as he could ever be, oblivious, neither man nor mortal to care that a mortal woman yearned for him.

He laughed, sharp and bitter. He would pretend that she was the Princess Sybilla. That one, he could stalk for plain cat-pleasure, if he had not made his bargain with her brother's tutor — chancellor as the man was, in truth, and a power in the realm. She was nothing to him. She was prey.