Rogue Sword (18 page)

And yet it had been an honest encounter between honest warriors. Muntaner had offered the man peace. Surely so brave a death was better than rotting with pox or leprosy.

Surely, whatever he might say about other deeds, Brother Hugh could only praise this day of knights.

Nonetheless--

Was the possession of certain bricks and roofs worth so much death?

What is it, thought Lucas, that forever dulls the color of my finest moments and draws gargoyles among all my lions?

The path ended at a sally port which someone had opened, now danger was past. Beyond lay a small plaza. The houses enclosing it stood shuttered, unpeopled, their walls flimmering in white noontide. The praise of God and the clamor of trumpets were everywhere, but no person was to be seen.

Until Violante appeared.

Her corselet seemed afire, so brightly did it shine under the hard sky. As she neared him, Lucas saw that it was scratched and dented. Her face was sooty, with paler streaks traced by sweat. The blue-black hair was rudely chopped off, hardly longer than his own. Her left hand was painted with dried blood. Yet she came to him more eagerly even than in yesterday’s dawn.

“What brings you here?” he exclaimed.

“I saw you from the wall.” She slurred out the reply and forgot it as insignificant. “Oh, Lucas, we are victorious!”

“So I’m told.”

She pressed close to him. “And I fought them,” she stammered. “I stood on the barbacana and threw stones. One of mine hit a man. I saw it happen! I swear so! But more, much more than that, Lucas. Last night my post was assaulted. They nearly took us. A few men got onto the battlement before we killed them. We! I had a spear and helped! Carlet struck him with a sword, but I put my lance in his belly!”

“What have you done with your hair?”

She tossed her head. “It was in the way. My helmet wouldn’t sit properly. I cut it off myself. If only it could have been made into bowstrings. . . . But Lucas, my darling, my darling, I stood face to face with that mariner on the wall. I stabbed him myself! Look here. When he was fallen I dipped my hand in his blood. Blood that I had called forth.

“I
felt
my lance go into him!”

“Well . . . well,” he mumbled, ill at ease, “you fought bravely. Now I think we may go home.”

She seized his arms so her nails bit through sleeves and skin. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You shall. I want you to. Riambaldo’s ghost is gone from me. I know not why. I only know, when I stood before that palomer and killed him--though he could have killed me--I ceased being a murderess. My father smiled on me again.”

“What?” He stepped back.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” she gibbered. “Not that I killed Riambaldo, myself. No. But I’d grown so weary of him, and of all the pretense . . . both before him and before Asberto ... I know not what happened within me that night when they drank together. I told Riambaldo to his face, to both their faces, Asberto was my lover. He may have suspected that--I think he did--but now I gave him no choice. They fought there in the house, up and down the room, into the hall. Asberto killed him under one of those saints’ images. Ugh, how that horrible Eastern saint stared out of his big eyes! Afterward Asberto killed a Greek servant who had witnessed the fight. Together we arranged things so it seemed the slave had stabbed Riambaldo and been hunted down by Asberto. What else could we do? What would it benefit Riambaldo, to have Asberto disgraced or ... or even beheaded? We bought many masses for his soul. But I could never forget what had happened--until now. Now I have also looked in the eyes of a man who wanted to kill me. It set me free.”

She dragged Lucas forward by the wrist. “This way,” she said. “In yonder alley. I want to be in armor when it happens.”

“When what?” he asked, stunned.

“Need I tell you? How often can you take me? I want it to be many times. Lucas, hurry!”

“Merciful angels!” He pulled free. She reached for him again. He backed up. One hand fell to his sword.

She stopped and stared at him. Finally she laughed aloud. “So you are too tired? Asberto would not be. You should have seen him after the revenge at Rhedestos.”

“Go seek Asberto, then!” He swallowed. “No. Forgive me. The battle, and now this heat, they were too much for you. You’re in a fever. You know not what you say.”

“For the first time, Lucas, I do know.”

“Then your case needs a priest, not a physician.”

She shrugged. “That’s for me to decide; I know you’d never denounce me to the Holy Office.” The scorn dropped from her. As if seeing a vision, she murmured, “But I think I must have been absolved last night, by my father among the saints. For I am no longer guilty. I can feel I am not. Oh, I’m free and I want you! “

Like a morning glory before him, there arose the cool image of Djansha. He had not known he was brave enough to dismiss it and tell Violante: “I shall believe this is only a fever talking. Come home with me and I’ll summon a leech.” Her gaze ran up and down him, from tangled hair and broad snub face to the feet which neared her with a cat’s gait. “Lucas,” she said, “if you won’t take me now I’ll find a hundred Almugavares who will. But I’d rather it was you.”

He caught her. For a moment such lust sprang up in her expression that he almost yielded. He mastered himself and began marching her forward. When she realized he was only taking her home to be cared for, she struggled. His cheek was raked by nails and his shins bloody from kicks before he lost his temper and clouted her. Thereafter she obeyed him as meekly as a little girl.

The next day word reached the Company, homeward bound from the north, that Muntaner was besieged. Eighty of the best-mounted men went more than three journeys in a day and a night. The following afternoon they entered Gallipoli.

“Aye, we made a great conquest of the Alans,” said En Jaime. “When their chief George was killed, En Roger avenged, God smote them with terror and they broke. Not three hundred horse and foot escaped.”

His gaunt, hooked face looked exultantly ahead: into the sky. The land stretched big and rough, wind murmurous in long grass, clouds piled in the east but heaven still bright above. At the road’s edge, a cliff tumbled down to waters gay with whitecaps. Asia lay hazed beyond them, only half-real.

“We had many wounded,” he continued, “but a mere forty-four killed. The Alans outnumbered us, and are accounted the best soldiers in the East. Yet we heaped their dead on that plain. For who can stand against the wrath of God?”

“Well,” said Lucas dryly, “the heathen Tartars are still very much alive.”

“Their punishment will come.”

Lucas shook his head. “I cannot believe that He Who gave His only begotten son to die, unavenged, would deliver the wives and children of those Alans into our slavers’ hands.”

Though sometimes I think God has turned His back on this world, his mind went on, because where is there left a happy people?

En Jaime looked hurt. Not wishing to annoy his friend--the only Catalan whose faith was not simple, blind fanaticism--Lucas said quickly, “Between Alans and Genoese, we seem to have defeated our last foes.”

“Just so,” nodded En Jaime, with evident relief at the diversion. “I hope now to enjoy my villa for a while, in peace. I am glad that you’re coming to stay with me. The first time since I bought the place. Why would you never come before?”

“There was always something to be done,” said Lucas. Such as carousing in waterfront taverns with outland merchants, he thought, or gaming with the sailors, or making love and prating learnedly to Violante. In short, anything which might blur the remembrance of how all that wealth was gotten.

“Eventually you’ll face an enemy you can’t conquer,” he warned. “Famine, when you’ve finished turning this country into a desert.”

“Then we’ll march elsewhere.”

Lucas made a face and fell silent. The procession of the knight, his guest, and his servants wound on across the cliffs. After an hour, they turned off the highroad and went down a graveled path. Screened by oaks and elms, a line of cottages stood near a walled enclosure. Inside was a colonnaded house, not large for a nobleman’s country retreat, but gracefully proportioned. At its rear, beyond the stables, an extensive garden--hedges and trees artificially clipped, flowerbeds now little colorful in autumn, lichened statues of nymph and faun--dropped in such steep terraces that from the upper ones a man could look across the top of the seaward wall, down the cliffs to a boat landing.

Lucas filled his lungs. “Yes,” he said, “you’ve chosen a pleasant site. Would it were mine.”

“Use it as yours, whensoever you desire.” As they dismounted in the flagged court surrounding the house, En Jaime rested his hand briefly on the younger man’s shoulder and smiled into his eyes. “My son,” he added.

He clapped down formality like a protective visor. “This is the hour of siesta. We both need rest, after so much war. Demetrios, show Maestre Lucas to his room.”

He was led to a chamber hung with silks and tapestries. Wine, water, oranges and cakes, stood on a table. Several books lay next the bed. Lucas examined them with interest. Sophocles and Aristotle from antiquity, Procopius and Psellus of Byzantine days, and most especially the Almagest, promised him happy hours. Unable to read, En Jaime must have gone to much trouble with some literate Greek prisoner, weeding out of a captured library what he thought Lucas might enjoy. The picture of the Catalan warrior, turning a volume over in sword-calloused fingers and barking questions at a terrified scholar, was both comical and touching.

The draperies rippled. Outside, a noisy wind chased clouds across the sun and away again. The heat of a few days past was dissipated, true autumn had come overnight. Lucas felt no desire for sleep, or even for study. He put his cloak back on and went outside.

House and grounds looked deserted, the staff taking an opportunity to rest while the master did. A man or two was surely on sentry-go, but beyond the walls. Lucas wandered among trees that tossed and soughed in the great streaming wind. Light and shadow fled across the world. In all that restlessness, even a marble nymph seemed to dance. A pergola roof lifted above a hedge, its copper ablaze. High overhead passed a spearpoint of geese, southward bound from Flanders. Dazzling white against a clear cold blue, clouds scudded in their path.

0 God, thought Lucas, to have wings and be up there--a mile above this swamp of blood!

“My lord.”

Afterward he was surprised that he heard so timid a voice through the gusty air. At the moment, it was the quick tightening of his gullet and galloping of his pulse which seemed unreasonable.

He turned about with an effort. Djansha stood in front of a rose bower. A few faded petals remained, fluttering off one by one as the wind snatched them loose. She wore the gown and wimple of decorum, so he could only see face and hands. The face was huge-eyed, lips parted, red and white chasing across like the cloud shadows. Her hands strained against each other.

Well, he thought, I knew I’d see her again. She was always one reason I cared not to visit this place . . . though why I should fear her is hard to understand.

“Good day,” he said, after clearing his throat.

She curtsied. As yet, he saw, the life within her had filled her breasts more than her belly. The cloth was drawn tight over her bosom. Skirts flapped in the wind, revealing ankles whose trimness had always been a delight to watch.

“I trust you are well,” he said.

“Oh, yes, thank you, my lord,” she gulped.

“En Jaime assured me you were well treated.”

She nodded, never looking away from him.

“That’s good,” he said. “Have you friends here?”

“They are kind to me, my lord. I can talk a little Greek, now.”

“That’s good. Er . . . yes.” Lucas regarded his shoe, which dug in the earth. “En Jaime said also he’d have you instructed in the Faith.”

“I learned a little,” she faltered. “A priest sometimes came out here. But he was angry when I asked so many questions. I have not seen him since.”

“Oh. Well, of course he went off with the army. Or, well, he and the others, even En Jaime, forgot about the matter. I’ll see to it myself, then . . . that you are taught the truth and baptized. Then I can manumit you and, um, make provision. For you and the child.”

“My lord is very kind.”

He looked away, beyond terraces and wall, down to the strait. A flock of dead leaves whirled and rattled at his feet, like a tiny yellow Tartar horde going hell-for-leather to conquer the lilybed. A shadow rushed along the Boca Daner, surrounded by sun-glitter. It was as if all the world were migrating today, it knew not whither, only desirous of escaping this land given over to rain and black nights. Somewhere westward, southward, there must lie a new horizon.

Lucas’ fingers twisted and untwisted behind his back. “I’ll do what I can for you,” he said. “You know I will. I rescued you from whoredom, and protected you, and, um, I’m concerned about your salvation and bodily welfare.” He had thought the list impressive, but as he recited it, the wind yanked the words from him and scattered them out to sea. In haste: “I wanted you to know I’ll find you a good steady husband after you’re christened. A mariner or sergeant, perhaps. Or a merchant’s journeyman. I know some good steady bachelors. Of course I’ll provide your dowry.” The gale alone answered him.

He stared at Asia until he thought she must have gone. No, when he looked back she still stood there, but she had turned away from him. The wind pressed her clothes against the curves of waist and thigh. How beautiful she was!

“Well?” he snapped, annoyed at his own awkwardness. “Have you no reply at all?”

“Y-y-you are kind--” She raised a sleeve to the eyes he could not see. “So kind, my lord. But--”

“Yes?” His heartbeat outshouted the wind. As if his legs belonged to another man, he took a step and one more step in her direction.

“You need not--need not marry me off.” Her voice came thin and wobbly.

“But I must get a protector for you.”

“I think En Jaime . . . would let me remain. As his servant.”