Devil's Bargain (10 page)

Sioned considered the number of things that she could do. The most sensible of them was to return to the citadel and join in the daymeal. The most dutiful would be to seek out Master Judah and place herself at his disposal. That in the end was her
choice, not because she was a saint or a loyal servant, but because it would engage her mind. Grinding herbs, mixing potions, seeing to the odd soldier or servant who came wandering in with a sore eye or a cut hand or a toothache, absorbed her completely.

Darkness took her by surprise. Her sight had been dimming for some time; someone had lit lamps, but they were not near as bright as daylight. She squinted as she wrote out the label for the last pot of salve. When that was done, she set the pot on the shelf with the rest of its fellows, cleaned the pen and put away the ink and straightened, stretching out the kinks in her neck and back.

Her stomach growled. She had completely forgotten dinner; there would be nothing but leavings now, but one or two of the cooks had been known to set a dish aside for her.

She had been working in the portion of Master Judah’s tent that was closed off from the rest but open to the air, and she had been alone since she began. When she came through the back of it into the larger space, there was a lone physician making the rounds of the sick—dysentery, mostly, and recurrent fevers—and a cowled monk praying over one who was dying. She drew no notice to herself, but slipped out softly into the scented night.

It was no longer summer, though a westerner would hardly have called it autumn. The days were still breathlessly hot, but the nights had begun to cool perceptibly. She shivered a little, less with cold than with the pleasure of air that did not sear the skin like heated bronze.

Any camp of soldiers was a redolent thing, but the physicians tents’ were upwind of the privies, not far from the sea. The fragrance here partook of earth and greenery, ripening fruit, and sea salt, and only a little of overcrowded humanity. Master Judah taught cleanliness by example; soldiers who came here, drawn as much by the absence of stench as by the need for a physician’s services, often went back to their companies with a somewhat less jaundiced attitude toward the necessity of
bathing. Some even ventured the eastern luxury called soap, and found it remarkably pleasant.

Sioned found the cooks still up and about. Master Jehan, who was an artist with a stewpot, had saved a bowl of his latest creation for her. With the last of the day’s bread and a lump of pungent cheese, it was thoroughly satisfying. “New spices?” she asked as she savored it.

“New undercook,” Master Jehan said. “He’s half a Saracen. He claims they eat like this in Africa, where the king’s black-eyed boy comes from.”

“Mustafa?” she asked. “I should ask him. This is lovely.”

Master Jehan shrugged. “It’s not bad. It could use a little more savory and a little less sweet.”

She forbore to argue. He was the master, after all. With a full belly and a reasonably contented mind, she turned toward her solitary bed.

He was waiting for her. That was altogether unexpected—so much so that when she saw the lamp lit in the smaller tent that she had so lately left, and the turbaned figure sitting by it, she wondered what had brought Mustafa there at so late an hour.

But it was not Mustafa. This was a taller man, somewhat, and considerably older, and although she had no complaints of his looks, he was not the hawk-faced desert beauty that Mustafa was. He had a book in his lap, one that she had borrowed from Safiyah, but he was not reading it. He was gazing into the lamp’s flame.

When he raised his eyes to her, the flame burned in them, clear and steady. His smile was a part of it; it warmed her immeasurably.

She had all but forgotten that she had been hunting for him earlier. The urgency was gone; it seemed vain and faintly foolish now to take him to task for giving Eleanor a gift that would arouse her suspicions and possibly turn her magic against him or his brother. Even his wife’s absence—need that
signify anything but that Safiyah had other concerns than the teaching of a single thickheaded pupil?

Sioned needed sleep. Tomorrow she would be passionate again, and indulge in indignation. Her tent beyond this one, the bed that waited, lured her irresistibly. But he had drawn her, too, back among the shelves of salves and the boxes of bandages.

She greeted him politely, bowed to the dignity of his rank, and said, “My lord. Are you indisposed? Is there some medicine that you need?”

“I’m well, lady,” he said, “and I ask your pardon for keeping you from your rest. It is only . . . I have a thing to say, and it seemed best to say it soon, and not wait for a more proper time.”

“About Eleanor?”

He lifted a shoulder in the suggestion of a shrug. “I know I don’t need to warn you against her. But are you wary enough?”

“I would hope so,” said Sioned a little stiffly.

“I’ve insulted you,” he said with what seemed to be honest regret. “I didn’t mean to do that. It’s only . . .”

“She is subtle,” Sioned said, “and I’m terribly young yet. I know that. She’s dangerous. But she doesn’t know what I am—I’ve kept my head down where she is, always, and let her pass over me. It seems safer somehow.”

He nodded with perceptible relief. “Yes, it is safer. I . . . should greatly dislike to see you harmed.”

Her cheeks were warm, but her heart was cold. There was something she should say—but she could not. She could not tell this man what bargain Eleanor had made.

This was an outlander, an enemy. And yet it was a sensation close to pain, to keep silent; to let him go away in ignorance of the plot against his brother.

Magic drew its own lines, created its own bonds of nation and kinship. The magic in her did not want to see this man as an enemy. He was of her own kind—her heart’s, her magic’s kin.

Still she did not speak. She protected her true enemy and concealed the truth from her true friend. She would pay for that.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

T
ime was when Mustafa without a war to fight would have been a lost and useless thing. But since he came to Richard, his gift for languages had served him remarkably well. Richard trusted him, Allah knew why, and kept him close through all his interactions with the folk of Islam. He was notably more preoccupied now than he had been on the march, kept at his translating from dawn until long after dusk. When he was done, he had no thought for anything but to fall asleep—it hardly mattered where.

Richard’s servants looked after him, kept him clean, saw that he had fresh linen in the mornings and a bath every evening. They were all handsome boys, big and fair as the king was said to like them. Sometimes Mustafa wondered where that left him: dark, slight, dwarfed among all these foreigners. The deserts of Morocco bred beauty, but seldom endowed it with size.

Not, to be sure, that he wanted to be a great hulking creature like these nobles of the Franks. He was more than content with himself. And so, it seemed, was Richard. He used his servant ruthlessly, but Mustafa never felt that he was a mere and
mindless instrument. Richard would add a phrase or two, or a glance or a smile, to the speeches that Mustafa rendered into the languages of the east: Arabic of course, Greek, Turkish, Armenian, and the odd dialect of Egypt or Syria or the Arabian desert. Richard knew what he had in Mustafa, and was visibly glad of it.

A day or two after the lord al-Adil came back from his prudent retreat, Richard went hawking in the hills above the sea. It was a very early morning, up and out before dawn, and he took only a few hardy souls for escort, reckoning to be back in Jaffa by full morning. He did not need Mustafa for that, but Mustafa had been unable to sleep.

So, it seemed, had the singer Blondel. Richard did not raise a brow at either of them, but Mustafa was aware of the chill in the air, which was more than early autumn in this part of Syria could account for.

It did not matter to him. He had a favorite hawk, a desert falcon, small but swift, which the king’s chief falconer was so kind as to look after for him. It was good to see the fierce little creature again, to feel the grip of claws on his gauntleted fist before he bade it shift to the padded perch on his saddlebow. He took a place not too far from the king, but not too presumptuously near. Blondel, with his lute in its case but no falcon to hunt for him, rode just behind Richard, defying anyone else to displace him.

No one did. Newcomers would cross him, but anyone who had been with Richard through the Crusade had learned to let the singer be. He was Richard’s and only Richard’s. He cared for nothing and no one else.

The hunting was good—so much so that they had gone rather farther than they had intended, out of sight of the city and into a stretch of tumbled hills. They dismounted there to drink from a spring that bubbled up from the rock, to eat such provisions as they had brought in their saddlebags, and to share a brag or six. No one troubled to post a guard. Mustafa thought of it, but fast riding and fresh morning air and the rising of warmth with the day made him lazy.

Richard, having eaten and drunk with good appetite, spread his cloak on a flat stretch of ground and lay on it. Blondel tuned his lute. The others gathered to listen, or were already snoring in the sun. The horses, hobbled, nosed about for what grazing they could find. Only the falconers were honestly awake, tending the birds in a curve of rocky hillside, sheltered from the wind.

Blondel’s voice was sweet, whatever one might think of his disposition. Richard smiled as he drowsed. Mustafa took note of the words of the song, which were in the language of the south of France, swift and liquid, with a hint about it of strong sunlight and thyme-scented hillsides. Someday he would see those hills, he thought sleepily. Someday he would—

Sleep broke asunder in a thunder of hooves, a chorus of shrilling howls, and the clash of steel on steel.

Turks. Seljuks, shrieking out the titles of the Almighty in barbarous Arabic. Mustafa bit his tongue before he sang them back. The Franks would never understand. He leaped up, whirling his sword about his head, eyes darting until they found Richard. The Lionheart was on his feet, laying about him with his great sword and bellowing like a bull.

None of them was in armor; they were only armed with swords and knives and here and there a hunting spear. Those who could get to the horses at least had the advantage of weight and speed—even the Franks’ palfreys were heavier than the eastern horses, though never as fast on their feet.

Mustafa hacked two-handed at a shrilling Turk, hauled him down off his horse and vaulted into the saddle. The horse wheeled, shaking its head, ears flat back. It snapped at his knee; he dealt it a vicious kick in the jaw, which subdued it handsomely. It was still a hard-mouthed, dead-sided, evil-tempered ravenbait, but it had one sterling quality: it had no fear at all.

The way was open—all the Turks had fallen on the Franks, leaving Mustafa alone and seemingly forgotten. He could make a run for it and maybe reach the outskirts of Jaffa in time to fetch reinforcements.

And maybe not. There were a good half-hundred Turks and fewer than a score of Franks. The Turks were in full battle gear. The Franks were dressed and armed for a hunt. And—

They knew Richard was here. They called back and forth in Mustafa’s hearing: “One of them has to be the king. Which one? The biggest? The one with the reddest face?”

“The one with horns and fangs!”

One of them spat a curse. “Bloody Franks all look alike. How in Iblis’ name—”

Richard, thank Allah, could not understand them. Mustafa’s heart ached to fight at his back, to defend him, but if these Turks had in mind to take prisoner the dreaded King of the English, then he must not be singled out. He was dressed in plain hunting garb, with no coronet on his light helmet, and nothing about him to mark him as any higher in rank than the rest of the knights in his company.

They were all beset. Mustafa seized the advantage of his Muslim face and turban, and rode through unresisting crowds of Turks. He caught such of the king’s men as were less preoccupied at the moment, and to each said the same: “They’re out to capture the king, but they can’t tell which of you he is. Don’t let them guess!”

These were seasoned fighting men, and deeply loyal to Richard. They wasted no time in argument. Those that had been gathering about the king stopped their advance and stood in place, letting the Turks come to them.

Blondel had been cut off from the king and driven back toward the falcons. Of them all except for Mustafa, he was least likely to be mistaken for Richard. His white-fair hair marked him as a different breed of Frank than the famously ruddy king. He had a sword, which he wielded well enough, but chiefly in defense of his lute; there could be little doubt as to what he was.

Mustafa could hope that he would have sense enough not to betray his king, but it was all too clear that he had only one thought: to fight his way back to Richard. As ill luck would have it, one or two of the Turks had realized that Mustafa was not one of them; they began to turn on him, and all the more
fiercely for that he was obviously a Muslim.
Traitor
was the least of the words they laid on him.

He could not come to Blondel, could not beat sense into him. He saw Blondel’s mouth open, knew with sinking heart that the fool would call the king’s name. And Richard would turn, would hear, because Blondel’s voice was trained; it could carry across a battlefield.

Just as Mustafa struggled to hold off a grimly determined Turk and to muster himself for a shriek that might, if Allah was merciful, overwhelm whatever Blondel could say, a great voice lifted up above the clamor of the fight. “Let them be! I’m the king. I’m Malik Ric!”

That was not Richard’s voice, even if Richard had known enough Arabic to say such a thing. It was one of the knights—William, his name was; he was holding his own against half a dozen shrilling horsemen, as far from Richard as the battlefield would go. He did look rather like the king, not quite so big and not quite so broad in the shoulder, but massive enough, and the bristle of his beard was more red than gold.

The Turks abandoned the rest and fell on him with howls of glee. He laughed as he fought them off, even as they overwhelmed him, bound him and carried him away.

He was gone before Richard understood what had happened. The Turks barely paused to take up their wounded and their dead; they rode off as swiftly as they had come, and left the hunters in stunned silence, bereft of a battle.

Of fifteen men, half were down. Five of those were dead, and one was lost, taken prisoner in Richard’s name. Richard stood leaning on his sword, blood dripping from it. His boots, his hose and tunic, were spattered with scarlet.

He lurched into motion. The horses were still tethered in their line, the falcons still on their perches. The Turks had found a greater prize, or so they thought. “Mount!” Richard commanded his men who survived. “After them! We’ll get him back.”

None of them moved except to take up the dead and bind them to their horses’ saddles. It was nothing so blatant as disobedience.
They simply failed to hear him. When the hale and the wounded were mounted, they turned not toward the departing Turks but toward Jaffa.

If Richard had galloped off to rescue William singlehanded, Mustafa would have followed him. For a long moment Mustafa expected him to do just that. Then his face stiffened, paling from the crimson of rage to stark white. He stooped and wiped his sword on the trousers of a dead Turk, and thrust it into its sheath with just a fraction more force than was strictly necessary.

When he turned, Mustafa offered him the rein of his horse Fauvel. He offered no gratitude, snatched the rein and sprang astride. The stallion squealed at the unaccustomed outrage of spurs dug viciously into his sides, reared, bucked, and bolted in pursuit of his fellows.

Mustafa held his tongue. He had let go his conquered Turkish horse and retrieved his mare. She fussed, objecting to being kept behind while the rest of the horses ran for home. But something was troubling him. Someone was missing from both the count of the dead and the number of the living.

Mustafa found him under the body of a huge Turk, a mountain of a man who had died with a dagger in his throat. Blondel’s fingers were locked about the hilt.

He was breathing, if shallowly. Mustafa found no wound on him. His lute was crushed by the Turk’s weight, but the giant in falling had done no more than knock him senseless.

Mustafa bade his mare kneel. She was skittish, snorting at the stink of death, but at heart she was a sensible beast. She lowered herself to the ground and held steady while he heaved the singer onto her back. Blondel hindered him by waking and beginning to struggle. Coldly and quite without compunction, he sent the idiot back into the darkness with a well-placed blow to the head.

When Blondel roused again, he was tied to the saddle and Mustafa was walking beside him. It was a long way back to Jaffa on foot, but Mustafa sighed and endured and tried not to regret the horse that, too hastily, he had let go.

“Why?”

Mustafa looked up, mildly startled. It was rather impressive that Blondel could speak while lying head down across a saddle. He creaked as Mustafa untied him, and groaned when he sat upright, then sagged suddenly and relieved himself of everything he had eaten since the day before.

He straightened painfully, still gagging on emptiness. Mustafa handed him the water bottle. He drank in sips as a wise man should, and did not gorge himself. His cheeks were still more green than white, but he no longer looked half-dead. He repeated his question. “Why?”

“I should have left you for dead?”

“Why not? Everyone else did.”

Mustafa shrugged. “They had their own friends and kin to fret over.”

“We are neither.”

“That’s why,” Mustafa said.

Blondel stared at him with eyes as pale as a corpse’s, set deep in bruised skin. “
He
forgot that I existed.”

There was pain. Mustafa was not the one to ease it.

“Don’t expect gratitude,” Blondel said in his silence, “or a reward, either. It would have been better if you’d left me to die.”

“Probably,” Mustafa said, “but he would miss you sooner or later, and I rather like your songs.”

Blondel’s expression was pure outrage—at Mustafa, and after an instant at his own rebellious stomach. It was some while before he could speak again. “You,” he gasped. “You—”