Alamut (7 page)

No one tried to stop her. She took very little: only a single bundle and her chestnut mare, and mute Dura who never questioned her mistress' will. Ranulf was gone. He had women in the city, Joanna knew that. No doubt one of them was accepting with pleasure what Joanna had spurned.

Joanna wished her joy of it.

For Joanna there would be no more of it. Her refuge was waiting, and it welcomed her with unfeigned gladness, even in mourning. Her chamber was as she had left it, Cook had dainties for her, and Godefroi the house-steward gave her the word she hoped for. “Tomorrow,” he said, “they come.”

She did not try to think beyond the moment. She prayed for Gereint's soul, and then she wept for him, cleanly, in her own narrow bed. Then, cleansed, she slept.

oOo

She was ready when they came. She could do little for lank hair or shadowed eyes, but what she could do, she had done. Her gown was fresh; its somber blue suited her not too badly. She had found that she could eat, and drink a little wine. She was still sipping it as she sat on the roof, leaning on its ledge, shaded by the lemon tree that grew in a great basin in the angle of the wall. The street below was its narrow, quiet self. When she looked up she could see the great grey dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

They came from the other way, from the Tower of David. Her eyes leaped to their head: the small round figure on the grey horse. There was a young man just behind her: Thibaut, it had to be. He had grown. He had not lost his habit of riding with his hand on his hip, which he thought elegant. It suited him better now that he was almost old enough to carry it off.

There they all were, the servants, the soldiers, dour Brychant in his old scale armor that he had taken from a Saracen. And —

There was a knight in black on a blood-bay horse, and he was not Gereint. He could not be. That long lean body, so light in the saddle; that sharp hawk-face; that turn of the head as Gereint said something — it was not a dead man riding.

And if it was not, there was only one thing it could be.

Her fingers clamped on the balustrade. Grimly she pried them free. Her heart was beating hard.

He was not so like his kinsman as he came closer. A family resemblance, that was all. He was certainly much prettier; and yet she was disappointed. Handsome, yes. But where was the beauty that cut like a sword?

He looked up, and she gasped. Oh, indeed, a sword: straight to the heart.

oOo

Her mother asked no questions. Thibaut did, but only with his eyes. Prince Aidan, who could not have known that there was anything to ask, was courtesy purely. Warm fingers lifting her cold ones; the brush of a courtly kiss. She did not think that anyone saw how she trembled.

His voice was deeper than she had expected, yet clearer, its western lilt stronger even than Gereint's had been. It made her think of far green places, and of water falling.

It was witchery. She knew it, and she did not care. Thibaut was far gone in it, she could see. Margaret seemed impervious, but Margaret was Margaret. She wore her widowhood as she did all else, with quiet competence.

With greetings disposed of, Thibaut took the guest in hand. Joanna stayed with Margaret, which meant a detailed inspection of house and servants, and the overseeing of the baggage, and the disposal of a caller or two. Joanna fell into her old place a step or two behind her mother, like a young wolfhound in the wake of a small, rotund, and very busy lapdog.

But she was not the child she had been. She had to sit down, rather abruptly, in the middle of her mother's stillroom.

Margaret did not seem to hurry, but she was there very quickly, kneeling on the floor beside Joanna. Her hand was cool on Joanna's brow; her arm was firm. She took no notice of the flutter of servants, except to dismiss them. “Tell me,” she said.

Joanna shook her head hard. “You have grief enough.”

“Let me judge that,” said Margaret.

Joanna's teeth set. The dizziness was passing. She almost wished that it would not. To run away — that was as simple as taking her horse and riding to her mother's house. To tell her mother why... that was harder. Margaret would not have done it. She would have found a way to rise above it.

It came out tail first. “He took Aimery,” Joanna said. She surprised herself with how quietly she said it. “He never asked my leave. In the night, while I slept, they took him away. When I woke up he was gone.” Her hands were fists. She could not make them unclench. Her heart had been clenched since that bleak waking. “When I asked why — I tried to be calm; oh, God, I tried — Ranulf said, ‘Does it matter?' And when I asked why he had never consulted me, he said, ‘Why should I have consulted you? He's my son.' As if I had never carried him in my body; as if I had never nursed him at my breast. As if I were nothing at all.”

“It might have been better,” said Margaret coolly, “if you had not insisted on nursing him yourself.”

Joanna gasped as if she had been struck.

“But,” her mother went on, “to take him without your knowledge — that was ill done.”

“It was unspeakable.”

Margaret frowned slightly. “Perhaps he meant to spare you pain. A clean cut, all at once — a man would think so, if he were young and rough-mannered and unaccustomed to women.”

“He doesn't care enough to spare me anything. I'm no more to him than the mare in his stable. He doesn't consult her, either, when he takes her foal away from her.”

“He comes from Francia,” said Margaret, “and not from a wealthy house. He knows no better.”

“I hate him,” gritted Joanna.

Her mother's frown deepened. “What has he done to you, apart from this one misjudgment? Has he beaten you? Dishonored you?”

“He has women.”

“Men do,” Margaret said. “Islam at least admits the truth, and allows concubines: a great wisdom. But beyond that? Has he mistreated you? Has he shamed you before court or people?”

“He hardly knows I exist.”

“I doubt that,” said Margaret. She held Joanna's eyes with her level dark ones. “What do you want of me? I have no power to make you a child again.”

Joanna flushed. That was exactly what she had wanted. To unmake it all. To take refuge behind her mother's skirts, and forget that she had ever been a woman.

“I won't go back,” she said. “I've given him what he wanted. I owe him nothing.”

“Except honor.”

“What has he given me? He took my baby.”

Margaret sighed. “See how God has tested me. That child of mine who seems a very son of Islam, is as perfect in forgiveness as any Christian could wish to be. But that one who seems all Frank... she neither forgets nor, ever, forgives.”

Joanna's chin came up; her back stiffened. “Are you telling me to go?”

“No,” said Margaret. She rose, smoothing her skirts. “I am telling you to go to bed. You insisted, I suppose, on riding from Acre?”

“You know what a litter does to me.”

“I know what the saddle does to a woman new risen from childbed. Now, go.”

Joanna had wanted to be a child again, and to forget that she was a mother. It was not as blissful as she had thought, to have what she had wished for. But Margaret was not to be gainsaid. Joanna went where she was bidden, and did as she was told. There was an odd, rebellious pleasure in it. She was safe here. No one would lie to her, or betray her, or be indifferent to her. She had come home.

oOo

“Joanna is always angry at something,” said Thibaut.

Aidan opened an eye. The eastern habit of drowsing through the heat of midday had struck him at first as sheerest sloth, but he was learning to see the use in it. Here, in a cool tiled room, with a servant snoring softly as he swayed a great water-dampened fan, and a scent of roses drifting from the window on the courtyard, it was utter luxury. He who seldom slept had slid into a doze, until Thibaut's voice startled him awake.

The boy perched on the end of the couch, clasping his knees. His brows were knit. “She's run away from Ranulf, I can tell. I'm surprised she didn't do it sooner.”

“Your sister doesn't look to me like a coward,” Aidan said.

“Did I say she was? She doesn't run away because she's afraid. She runs away because she's angry. She'd kill, else.”

Aidan raised a brow.

“She would,” said Thibaut. “She should have been a man. She has too much temper for a woman.”

“Or too much spirit?”

Thibaut nodded. “Mother says she's the purest Norman in Outremer. She should have been born a hundred years ago; she'd have come on Crusade and carved herself a kingdom.”

Aidan could imagine it. She was nothing like her mother or her brother: head and shoulders taller than Thibaut, and robust with it, her brown hair doing its best to curl out of its braids, her eyes more grey than blue, a color that made him think of thunder. Or perhaps that was only their expression. Angry, yes, and hurt. The world was not going as she would have it; and she was not one to forgive.

“What is her husband like?” Aidan asked, giving up sleep for lost, and rising to prowl. He was aware of Thibaut's amusement; he flashed teeth, at which the boy laughed.

But Thibaut's answer was sober enough. “His name is Ranulf; he comes from Normandy. He's a younger son, as most of them are, but he's done well here. He holds a fief near Acre; he's rich in spoils from the wars. He's not bad to look at, either. Women like him.”

“Your sister doesn't.”

“She was happy enough when she married him. He's not much for airs and graces, but he's never minded that her blood isn't pure. She's strong, he says, and she'll give him strong sons; and her property is quite enough to satisfy him.”

“I see,” said Aidan. It was all very good sense. He doubted that that would matter to the sullen child who had greeted them with such a mingling of joy and defiance. Who was, he realized, ill in body as in mind. He was no healer; that was his brother's gift. But he could see a body gone awry. She had given her lord a son, it seemed, but she was not as strong as he had hoped. Or as she had expected to be. She would not forgive herself that, either.

“I think,” said Thibaut, not easily, but as if he could not keep from saying it, “I think it wasn't good for her — what Mother and Gereint had. That, and listening to songs, and dreaming about love. Love isn't something a woman should be thinking of when she marries.”

“Maybe not the first time,” Aidan said.

“That's what Mother always told her. She said she believed it. But Joanna always wants to have everything all at once.”

Aidan paused by the window. In the courtyard below, a fountain played, cooling the air. He breathed in roses, water, sunlight. If he willed it, he could stretch out more than hands, and see with more than eyes, hear with more than ears.

They were all here, the three whom Gereint had taken for wife and children. Whom the Master of the Assassins had marked, and whom he meant to have, whether in life or in death.

Therefore Aidan was here, and not on the road to Masyaf. Sinan would surely strike again, and surely it would be soon: too soon for Aidan to dare to leave the house unguarded. The High Court was gathering for the Feast of the Conquest, that high and holy day on which Jerusalem had fallen to the armies of Crusade. Margaret must come before it to proclaim formally the death of the lord of Aqua Bella, and to beg the king's favor in naming a new lord. It would, inevitably, be Thibaut, but he lacked a year and more of his majority. She would stand regent again as she had in his infancy. “And,” she had said, “it may keep him safer than if I named him lord. Sinan would kill him surely then.”

Aidan stretched his more-than-senses. The city beat upon them. He made of them a shield, and raised them, and set them on guard. They marked who should be in that house, who meant well and who meant ill, who passed and who tarried.

It was awkward at first, that warding, like new armor: stiff, unwieldy, flexing strangely against his skin. But slowly, with use, it fitted itself to him. Not even armor now, but another skin, a body that encompassed all within that house.

He leaned against the windowframe, battling the weakness that always struck in the wake of power. It passed slowly; he straightened.

Thibaut had neither noticed nor understood. He was intent on his own troubles. Yet those ran disconcertingly close to the currents of Aidan's own. “It's as well she's come, isn't it? Then if she's attacked, we'll be here to defend her.”

Aidan liked that
we
. He grinned at the boy and went in search of his cotte. “Well, sir. Shall we see if anyone else is awake?”

6.

Ranulf did not even care enough to send a man to fetch his wayward wife. Nor, at first, could she care that he did not. With her mother's presence, something in her gave way. Her body, drawn taut for so long in resistance, said of its own will,
Enough
.

She slept as she had not slept even when she was a child, and ate as she had not eaten since Aimery was conceived. She was let be, and let mend, as much as she might in the grief that was in that house. Even grief was part of her healing. It let her forget what she could not escape: that no word had come from her husband. No pursuit. Not even a rumor of his anger.

She had given him what he wanted. It seemed that he wanted no more of her.

For once, it seemed, they had agreed on something. She told herself that she was glad. She forced her mind away from him. He had refused her right to her own child. So would she refuse to be wife as well as mother. She was Hautecourt again, and Hautecourt only. She had forgotten his name.

She swore it to herself, alone, sitting on the fountain's rim in the inner court. It was early yet, barely past dawn; the air was cool, the spray cold on her cheek. The bright fish swirled under her hand, seeking the crumbs she cast for them.

Odd how one could feel a presence, even without sun to cast a shadow, even without the sound of step on stone. She stiffened, but she would not turn. In the three days since he came, she had not seen him. He had been elsewhere, riding out in the city; she had been in her bed or moving slowly about the house, taking her meals alone or, once, with her brother. Who had been full of him, and worthless for talking about anything else.