Alamut (56 page)

He stiffened as if she had struck him.

It was only the fraction of an instant, but she was a woman, and she had a share of his magic. She looked at him and knew. “You have. Haven't you?”

He saw the utter absurdity of it. They could not be lovers again. She had her husband, her son, her whole world. He had one night, little more than a whore's bargain. And he could not say a word.

She leaped into his silence. “Who is she? Couldn't you even wait for — how could you —
who is she
?”

“Morgiana.”

That stopped her cold. She could not have expected the truth, even from him. Not so soon. “Morgiana?”

“The Assassin.”

She laughed. “You're joking.”

“No.”

“How in the world...” She trailed off. “She's like you. She's... like... you.”

“Yes.”

“God,” said Joanna. “That hurts.” She pressed her hand to her side, below the heart. “That hurts like fire.”

“It does, doesn't it?”

She did not flinch. She even tried to laugh. “No wonder you've been so magnanimous.”

“I might have managed that by myself.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. And, after a little: “It's true, then. What people are saying. She turned on her master. She did it for you, didn't she?”

“She said not.”

Joanna shook her head. “Of course she would. She'd have her pride. I'd have said the same; and done the same.” Again, she paused. “Is she as beautiful as they say?”

“More.”

Joanna smiled painfully: almost a grimace. “I never saw her. She was jealous, wasn't she? Or she'd never have missed.”

“One would think you knew her.”

“I know myself.”

“It doesn't change anything,” he said.

“No. No, it doesn't, does it? Will you marry her?”

“I left her.”

Joanna's teeth clicked together. “You did what?”

“She is a devout Muslim. She loathes everything I stand for.”

“I doubt that,” Joanna said.

“I can't forgive her for what she did to Gereint and Thihaut. And to you.”

“There is that,” she said. “If you'd done the killing, it might have been easier. Women learn to live with such things.”

He looked narrowly at her. She did not seem to be mocking him. Certainly she had no love for the Assassin; and her heart still stung, that he could have turned to anyone else, so soon, before he could have known that she was leaving him.

He wondered how Muslims did it. Morgiana, who was one, was as fiercely jealous as any creature he had ever heard of. Joanna was less murderous, but she was not inclined to share him.

Maybe the men did not know, and took care not to ask. Keeping their women in harems would be useful for that; and raising them to be submissive.

What would Sayyida do if Maimoun took another wife?

Questions, again. Maybe he should become a Hospitaller and forswear women altogether.

He had said it aloud. Joanna leaped to protest. “Don't do that! You know how you are about your given word.”

He shivered. She had too much sense; she knew him too well. To bind himself to monk's vows, for as long as he had to live — he could not do it. He could hardly endure to think of it.

She touched him again, but differently, as a sister would: clasping his shoulder, shaking him lightly. He knew what it cost her. “It won't stay as hard as this. We won't let it.”

“Both of us.”

“All of us,” she said. “God, too. I've given Him a talking to.”

“It's time that someone did.”

For a moment she wavered. She looked ready to cry. “Oh, God! I wish we didn't have to lie.”

“We could tell the truth and take what comes.”

She folded her arms about her middle. “No. I won't chance it. What I would pay — I don't care. But not my baby. God witness it: not my baby.”

He bent his head. He could not judge it a sin, either, to protect his own child. But —

“We're going to have to be seen together,” he said. “Often, if I'm to do the little one any good. We'll never be able to tell the truth; we'll never dare to hint at it. We'll have to pretend, perfectly, that we are no more to one another than kin and, betimes, friends. Have you stopped to think how hard that will be?”

“Constantly,” she said. She drew a deep breath, as if to gather her forces, and clasped him in an embrace as chaste as it was defiant. “You see? It's possible. Give us time, and it will be easy.”

He slipped out of her arms before either of them could break, and made himself smile. “Possible,” he said, “yes. Easy . . God grant it.”

“He doesn't have a choice,” Joanna said.

39.

Joanna did not want an escort to her husband's house, but she had one, and a mount into the bargain: Aidan's own grey gelding. It was revenge, of a sort, for the choices which she had forced upon them both. It was the sign of how they meant to go on.

Aidan left her standing in the gate, the hand which he had kissed in farewell clenched at her side, and Aimery raising a new wail. He wanted the horses back again, and the men with their scarlet coats, and the jangle and clatter of their passage through the city. He was his mother's son, that one.

For all that it had done to Aidan's peace of mind, the diversion had cost him a scarce hour. It was still somewhat short of noon. He was hardly farther from his destination than when he began, and by rather less difficult a way. It could almost have been good fortune which sent Joanna in flight from her mother's house at the news of his return, and cast her full in his path.

Almost.

He turned his face away from the gate and the woman in it, toward the Tower of David.

oOo

The High Court of the Kingdom of Jerusalem had barely begun to disperse after the princess' wedding. The barons lingered still, pondering new intrigues now that there was a new lord in the realm, watching their king narrowly for signs of either enmity or excessive amity toward his sister's husband. There was little enough to see, as yet: the wedded couple were gone to their new demesne of Jaffa and Ascalon, and Baldwin kept his place in Jerusalem, ruling his realm in what quiet the court would allow.

Aidan gave them something new to talk of: riding in at the head of his troop of Saracens, in his Saracen robe, with his Saracen sword, making truth of all the tales and rumors that had run before him. Even as a lad came to take his horse, the tide broke upon him. His mamluks bristled; he called them to heel, meeting the flurry of questions with a grin and a flourish. “Come now, won't you let me pass the door before I sing for my supper?”

“Pass it, then,” someone cried, “and be swift, before we die of curiosity!”

He laughed and strode forward. A way opened for him; his hellions fell into step behind him. He would not, for dignity, glance back, but he knew how they swaggered, hands on hilts, heads held high under their turbans.

The hall was splendid with the new hangings which had graced Sybilla's wedding, thronged with the great ones of the kingdom. They paused for his coming. The murmur of voices quieted. The thud of his feet was distinct, and the clink of his mamluks' finery, and the breath that ran with them, drawn long and slow.

The High Court had seen such a spectacle before, in embassies from the infidel. But never with one of their own at its head. Aidan was that, visibly enough. His robe was Saracen, but he wore it as a Frankish cone, with the air of one who deigns to set a fashion. His hair was cut in the western manner, but he had kept his beard. He wore no turban, but a cap that could have been of either west or east.

He knew how he looked. He made the most of it as he crossed the field of many battles that was the High Court. They were all here, all who mattered in the kingdom, not only Baldwin's vassals but the great lords of Antioch and Tripoli, and embassies from both east and west, and the papal legate with his train, and a gathering of knights from over the sea: a portion of those who had sailed with the new count of Jaffa and Ascalon.

He took little notice of them, beyond the most essential courtesies. Lady Margaret was there, with her daughter's husband for escort. Ranulf greeted Aidan with honest pleasure. There was less pain in the sight of him than Aidan had expected, and after all, no hate. He was a good enough man, no great marvel of intellect, but wise enough in his way. He knew what his wife was worth; he loved her. He had the look of a happy man.

Margaret, beside him, was no more beautiful than Aidan remembered, and no less. Perhaps he could see a little more clearly through her serenity to the woman within. He had seen the Lady Khadijah: he knew what she endeavored to be. Would be, he was certain. She was of that quality.

She was glad to see him. That warmed him. When he would have bowed to her, she turned it into an embrace and the kiss of close kin. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome home.”

He brushed a tear from her cheek. “As glad as that, my lady?”

She smiled and shook her head. “You were a part of us before we ever saw you. How could I not be glad to see you safe and whole?”

“And I look like him.”

“And you look like him,” she said. “And I find that I can I forgive you. How many men will endure in living memory, for as long as Gereint will?”

Aidan could not answer her.

She gathered herself, firmly, and regarded him with a clear cold eye. “Tell me,” she said.

He told her all of it, except what was not wholly his to tell: Joanna; that last night with Morgiana. That he had had a bargain with the ifritah, he did not conceal. He did not judge it proper, in this place, to explain how he had paid it. Nor did Margaret judge it proper to ask. Perhaps she guessed. Perhaps she reckoned that remorse, and atonement for murder, and escape from slavery, had been enough.

When he was finished, there was a long sigh. The great circle of courtiers drew back, as if he had not known very well that they were listening, and pretended interest in one another.

Margaret was silent for a long while. As she pondered, she paced slowly. Aidan and his mamluks followed. Ranulf did not.

Her pacing led them with apparent aimlessness, yet it ended where surely she must have meant: in a broad bay behind a pair of pillars, where they could converse in privacy. “You did well,” she said at last. She said it slowly, with her eyes on her clasped hands, where the ring of her betrothal to Gereint glittered still. “You did most well. Not to kill Sinan, after all; to demand a price which would win his respect but not, beyond reasonable measure, his enmity. And that his slave is free — I am glad for her. Such servitude can never have been less than cruel.”

It was like Margaret, to forgive even the one who had wielded the dagger. “She is free now,” Aidan said, “but no danger to you or yours.”

“I never feared that she would be.” Margaret looked up. “What will you do now?”

“Keep the last of my promises,” Aidan said. “Offer the king my fealty.”

“I had thought that you might be weary of us all, and eager to return to your own country.”

“Not quite yet,” said Aidan.

She smiled faintly. “And I have insulted your fortitude by implying it. Please, pardon me.”

“There's nothing to pardon.” Aidan forgot for a moment where he was, started to prowl, stopped. Margaret's amusement won from him the flicker of a smile. “I've been too long in desert places. I've forgotten how to be a prince.”

“You can never be other than what you are.”

He stilled. She was calm, meaning no more than she said, and no less.

“The Hospital speaks for you,” she said after a pause.

“Do they?” He did not know why he should be surprised.

Maybe she did. She was amused. “They know the difference between a fortune hunter and an honest soldier of God.”

“Ah, but am I God's? Methinks I'd be the devil's minion.”

“I would hardly call you a saint. But a devil, no. You are too wretchedly poor a liar.”

“Have I lied to you?”

“Never. Nor concealed yourself well from any but the blind and the foolish. There is no doubt that you are what you are. Jerusalem can endure it, I think. It needs you badly.”

“For my sword-arm? Or for that else I can bring?”

“There is a parable of lamps and bushels. Though your lamp may be too rare a splendor for common eyes to see.”

“I do tempt fate, don't I?”

“I call it dicing with death. Since you are not his by right, you gamble. Would you have offered yourself in Gereint's place, if you could?”

His heart was cold, but he smiled. “Yes. I would.”

“So,” she said, “would I.” She lifted her chin. “We master it as we may. I shall not marry again, I think. A woman twice widowed is allowed somewhat of the freedom of a man. The power that goes with it, I have the wherewithal to claim.”

His glance took in the court beyond the bay, the eddy and swirl of great powers about no certain center. “You'll be sought after,” he said. “You're still young; you have both wealth and lands.”

“And I could still bear an heir or three.” There was steel in her voice. “No, my lord. I am done with the burdens of my sex. God be thanked, I need not bear those of yours; except as I deem them necessary.”

Aidan bowed low, conceding the stroke. He knew what he was doing; as did she. She regarded him with pleasure which was not entirely devoid of desire. He smiled back. “Your grandmother would approve of you,” he said.

Margaret laughed. It was a startlingly beautiful sound. “I gather that she approved of you.”

“Insofar as she could, of anything both young and male.” And so indiscreet as to get Joanna with child.

Margaret did not know of that. He kept his smile and his air of lightness as she said, “You are an ally worth having. I, in return, can aid you in quelling the whispers against you.”