Roman (3 page)

She'd seen it before, after all.

And just like that, it all came back. Huda's small, broken body, her dusky skin covered in blood-smeared bruise points that would never fade. The bile on the side of her face, drying in her hair, the smell of sweaty men and spicy incense and fear.

They'd left her on the floor like rubbish.

Isra began to weep silently, the slight heaving of her chest enough to set off the bright starbursts of pain once more, but they paled in comparison to the misery she felt in her heart.

Perhaps a door opened; somewhere behind her there was a sound like wood against stone and, for a brief moment, a cacophony of squawking and growls. Isra didn't care enough to call out, to try to pull the now lukewarm cloth from her eyes to see who had come into the room. It didn't matter. Huda was still dead, and she had failed. Perhaps her mind had only been playing tricks on her on the hillside; she hadn't found Roman Berg and she never would. They would find her and kill her, if they hadn't done so already.

The woman must have lifted the cloth herself and was now wiping at her eyes. Isra could feel the crust taking many of her lashes as it was scraped free, slicing into the tender flesh of the corners. Isra tried to turn away.

Let me be
, she tried to say.
Just let me die
. But all that came out was a pathetic whine.

“Stop that, I said,” the woman snipped. “I'm nae accustomed to playing nursemaid, so if you wish any care at all, you'll be still.” The steely fingertips came back to the crown of her head as the rag was applied to her face more briskly.

And then, as if the woman was indeed speaking to someone who had entered the room, “She's only been awake for a few moments. I doona think she can speak verra well.”

“English or at all?” a man asked in a low, emotionless voice.

“It was nae language I've heard before.” The hands left Isra and she heard a splash, as if the rag had been tossed into the basin. “I've done all I'm willing for now. How is Roman?”

Isra's head swiveled at the mention of that name, and she strained to open her eyes, fought to raise the arm that wasn't pinned to her side.

“
Oh-man
,” she called out as the light again pierced the slivers allowed by her swollen lids. The attempt at his name was strangled and nasally, her nose was completely blocked, the syllables zinging in her bones.

“That enlivened her,” the man said. Isra heard the scrape of chair legs and fought to focus her eyes through the blinding light. “Can you hear me well enough?” he asked near her ear. She felt him take her hand in his, and the touch of his skin made her stomach roil again. “Squeeze my hand if you can understand me.”

Isra squeezed.

“Very well. Now try to tell me your name.”

“Roh-man.”

“No. I need to know who
you
are. What is your name?” The man repeated the question in Arabic.

She turned her head away from him in answer.

The man sighed and seemed to speak over Isra's body. “Could I trouble you for a cup of water?”

“Great gods. I may as well take off me shoes and don a cap while I'm about it.”

A moment later, Isra's head was raised and a cup pressed to her lips. The water just wet her tongue when it was withdrawn. She tried to open her mouth and follow the cup, but it was taken away. The man's voice was very close to her face now.

“What. Is. Your. Name?” he demanded.

Isra tried to lick her cracked lips. “Roman.”

He leaned so close now, Isra could feel his breath on her ear. If his proximity was not enough to set her insides to trembling, the dark sincerity of his next words nearly caused her to retreat once more into unconsciousness.

“Hear me now, woman: We have perhaps saved your life. But if you do not tell me now who you are and why you have come to this place with that name on your lips, come nightfall, I will carry your body to the river myself.” He paused, and the scant space between them was filled with only his breath in his nostrils. His whisper chilled her. “I will stand on the shore and watch you drown.”

Isra's heart trilled in her chest. She could tell by the lack of emotion in the man's voice that he was confident in what he said, and that he would not hesitate to follow through with his threat. That they knew of Roman Berg was clear; perhaps he was at this place even now.

But she could not determine if they knew him as trusted allies or as foes. Anything she told this stranger could put Roman in even greater danger.

If she said nothing, they were going to kill her.

Isra fought to open her eyes again, straining to focus until she could make out the shadowy image of a man's face. He had leaned slightly back from her and was now studying her—not with pity for her condition, but with a wariness that made Isra's skin crawl. She had no doubt that he would leave her to die; hadn't she seen that very look of apathy, that hard-heartedness dulling the eyes of so many men before?

She swallowed several times to work open her airway enough to speak. The man leaned forward, turning his ear toward her mouth as if he understood she was preparing to form words. It was clear he was used to having his commands obeyed. Isra tried to raise her head to bring her lips even closer to his ear. She wanted to make sure he heard her.

“As you wish.”

He exploded from his seated position, and Isra could see his shadowed arm as it raised. She closed her eyes.

But no blow fell, only the sounds of wood against stone again and a confused shuffle of footsteps and movement.

“Stan? What are you doing?”

“You shouldn't be up. And why didn't
you
tell me he had woken?”

“I was coming to tell you now, yes? As you can plainly see, he would no do as I asked. Who is she?”

Footsteps came close to her, and Isra tried to force her eyes open once more, hoping against hope as the conversation carried on in the room without her.

“I don't know,” her interrogator said. “But I've a feeling we're about to find out.”

Isra felt her hand being taken up once more, in a grasp that was rougher, larger than the palm of the man who had threatened her, and yet this touch was gentle, protective. At last she could make out bright blue eyes and the impossibly blond hair that now curled around chiseled cheekbones. She felt the painful welling of tears in her eyes.

“How are you feeling?” Roman Berg asked.

Her throat convulsed and she had to swallow down the overwhelming emotion as best she could. “Your hair is long.” Her words were garbled, broken whispers, and yet she saw that he had understood her by his look of surprise and then the half grin that came over his lips.

“It's been a while since last we met,” he conceded.

“Roman.” His name was spoken in warning by the man behind him who had threatened her.

His expression sobered. “I need to know your name. If I—we,” he corrected, “are to keep you safe, you must tell us how you found me, and why you are here.”

Isra tried to roll her eyes around the room and look at the two men and the red-haired woman who had come to stand behind Roman. It was not hard to determine that the man with the long auburn hair had been her inquisitor; his eyes were haunted, his face haggard even from several paces away. The dark-haired man could have been from her own country, and yet Isra surmised he was the infamous Spaniard of the group by the sound of his accent when he had spoken moments ago. All three men, including Roman, were wearing monk's robes.

“Your friends?” she rasped.

Roman hesitated a moment before nodding his head.

“From Damascus?”

He only stared at her, his lips in a line.

Isra understood. “My name,” she whispered, trying to command her swollen lips and tongue to enunciate clearly, “is Isra Tak'Ahn.” She paused to swallow. “I've come because you must return to Syria.”

R
oman sat at his spot at the large table in Melk's secret library, the silence so palpable it seemed to press against his throbbing arm. Someone—Valentine? he hadn't thought to ask—had stitched his wound, and now the muscles beneath it screamed and burned. He judged that he had lost quite a lot of blood by the way his head swam and his stomach roiled. But he had refused Stan's order to return to his cell and his bed.

Constantine sat in his usual chair, in his usual posture: forearms braced on the table, his hands linked, head down. He'd said nothing since he and Roman and Valentine had left Maisie Lindsey with Isra. Valentine sat to the right of Roman, attending his cuticles with a short blade while the three of them waited for Victor and Adrian to join them.

They entered through the door that led to the gatehouse, the skinny old abbot preceding Adrian, who carefully pushed the heavy door shut.

“My apologies for the delay, gentlemen,” Victor said, coming to take his seat on Roman's left side. “The brethren have been set astir by the goings-on this afternoon.”

Adrian came around the far side of the library to deliberately pass behind Roman. He stopped near his chair and squeezed Roman's left shoulder. “Doing well enough?”

Roman gave him a sideways nod but didn't meet his eyes.

Adrian clapped his shoulder a pair of times before continuing around the table to his own seat, something Roman was still not used to, after so many long evenings of Adrian sitting removed from the group near the window, preferring his own misery for company. The red-haired woman caring for Isra had changed Adrian Hailsworth deeply.

“I was certain Brother Hilbert was going to follow us all the way into the gatehouse,” Adrian commented, adjusting his seat as he settled in.

“As was I,” Victor muttered. “Hilbert is a capable servant, but at times too exacting.” Victor looked around the table at each man in turn before settling on Roman. “Where is she?”

Roman opened his mouth, but it was Valentine who answered. “Below. In one of Wynn's empty cells.”

Victor nodded. “And the . . . other?”

“Also below,” Valentine answered, holding forth his hand to examine his fingernails. “In one of the no empty cells.”

“There will be bones,” Adrian said. “The larger ones, any matter.”

The abbot inclined his head in acknowledgment. “They will be interred in the crypt for the indigent, God have mercy on his soul.” Victor crossed himself.

And then Roman knew what they were talking about. It seemed as though everything had been taken care of; he had been taken care of. Perhaps it was because he still felt so weak, but the idea of these men taking such pains for him this afternoon caused a lump in his throat.

He cleared it as quietly as possible before asking, “Has anyone seen Lou?”

Valentine was putting away his blade. “He had flown back to the mews and was crying to get in. I saw him as I was coming up from the river, so I pause a moment for him. You're welcome.”

All eyes turned to the Spaniard, but it was Constantine who spoke.

“You stopped to let a falcon in a cage while dragging a dead body?”

“He'd had a trying morning as well, yes? He was tired. And I was no so much dragging the body. It is no as heavy if you tie up the hands and feet just so and then wrap it—”

“
Did anyone see you
?” Victor interrupted, holding forth one palm with a pained expression across his kind face.

Valentine looked offended. “Of course no.”

“What's going on?” Adrian interjected.

All eyes in the room turned to Constantine. But when the general looked up again, it was to pin Roman with his gaze.

“Well? You are the only one she'd talk to.”

Roman shifted in his chair, adjusted his throbbing arm. His forehead prickled with sweat. “She is the woman who found me in Damascus. The one who led me to the prison.” He paused a moment. “Isra Tak'Ahn.”

“Egyptian surname.” Adrian's brow was creased in a frown. “Why is she here now looking for you? And how did she find you?”

“The how of it I don't yet know,” Roman said. “She is too weak to speak at any length. But she told me that we must return to the Holy Land. That King Baldwin's life is in danger. There is a plot to assassinate him.”

“Apparently the Christian king's life is no the only one in danger,” Valentine said, “if the package I dragged through the wood is any measure. Perhaps Saladin's men?”

“Perhaps,” Victor conceded. “But there has been a well-respected truce between Saladin and Baldwin for at least two years. I've had no word to indicate it's imperiled.”

Valentine sniffed. “A time of truce would seem to me to be the best time to attempt an assassination.”

“That is not Saladin's way,” Constantine argued.

“No,” Adrian said, a hint of his old bitterness creeping into his words. “He would rather torture his enemies slowly.”

The silence grew thick again for a moment.

Victor cleared his throat. “Why did she seek you, Roman?”

“I don't know.” Roman shook his head. “Perhaps she feels I owe her a debt and she has no one else she can trust. That night in Damascus, it almost seemed as though she was taking revenge against someone by helping me. Perhaps one of the higher-up generals?”

Adrian pulled a face but said nothing. Constantine regarded the table once more.

Valentine leaned forward, one arm along the edge of the table. “She wishes you to travel all the way back to Syria, you, who would be the most conspicuous of us all, in order to warn Baldwin that—in a time of war, mind you—someone at some time might try to kill him?”

Roman opened his mouth but then closed it again. His thoughts were tied up in knots. At last he said, “I don't know what she wants, Val.”

“It sounds like a trick to me,” Valentine said, relaxing back in his seat. “Though why should we care if it is true? Baldwin is a leper. His days are already numbered. Adrian is too well-known, as are you, Stan. I certainly will no leave my women to save the life of a rotting man who has done nothing for those who sought to preserve his fortress. In fact, he would likely try to kill any one of you himself at first sight. Let him die, I say, by whatever means befall him.”

Roman caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and when he turned to the left, he was shocked to see Constantine nodding.

“I agree, Valentine.”

Adrian's brows raised.
“What?”

“Baldwin would never believe any of us.” Constantine kept his eyes on the tabletop as he explained his reasoning. “He thinks us traitors, when in his heart, he should know the three of us would be the last men on earth to ever betray him.”

“To betray Chastellet,” Adrian added with a wistful tone in his voice that made Roman's heart flinch. He'd loved that fortress as much as Roman.

“Kind of you to exclude me.” Valentine sniffed and waved a hand toward Roman. “I have only been made a criminal by this business, when I had no part in it save to help a man out of the goodness of my heart.”

That at least made Adrian grin. “You were a criminal long before you met us.”

“And I had to give you a sack of gold in order for you to help me,” Roman added.

But Constantine was having no part of the attempt to lighten the mood. “I was to have already left Chastellet,” he said pensively. “The day of the siege, I should have been on the Mediterranean, en route to Benningsgate. But Baldwin beseeched me stay, look over Chastellet in his absence. Only a short journey. He said he trusted Glayer Felsteppe not, and would rather have him under his thumb.” He paused. “Had I died in the final battle, perhaps he would have thought otherwise. But instead, I am here, and my family are dead. My home lost.”

It was as if the room had been surrounded by a thick, dank cloud of despair, humid with sorrow and regret. No one spoke, for none of the men could refute what the general had said.

Then Constantine stood up from his chair and all the men looked at him: his rumpled clothing, his wild hair, his red-rimmed eyes.

“Let him die,” Stan repeated. “The woman, too. We cannot let her leave now that she has discovered our identities and our location.”

Constantine stepped away from the table and began walking toward the door, and Roman's head was spinning too much to form enough of a thought to stop him.

But Victor intervened, taking hold of Constantine's forearm as he passed and rising. “I cannot allow a murder in God's house, Constantine,” Victor warned. “In my house. Has the woman not suffered enough? What is her crime that she should be put to death?”

“What was Christian's crime?” Constantine said, shaking the abbot off. “What did my little boy do that warranted his burning to death in his home, along with his mother?”

Then Constantine leaned into Victor's face, his mouth pulled into a grimace, his posture threatening. Victor did not shrink away.

“If you let this woman go free, she will run to the first coin she can find to trade what she knows. The village and all the countryside around Melk will then be filled with criminals the like you've never even
imagined
. Think you they would bother determining identity once they discover we have been posing as monks? They will kill everyone here, including you.

“If we were to depart Melk after she betrayed us,” Constantine continued, leaning away from Victor and looking at all the men, “there would truly be no protection for the brethren. And where else in the world would we go? Wyldonna, to be devoured by beasts or drowned by creatures of the sea? I would not trade the life of even the basest beggar of yonder village for that woman's, let alone the lives of the men who reside within these walls.”

Now Constantine looked at Roman. “Get rid of her by morning or I will.”

He strode to the secret door that led to the larger library and was gone a moment later.

Valentine drummed his fingertips on the table. “It is nice that he is talking again, yes?”

“I don't understand,” Adrian said. “Constantine's attitude toward Baldwin is perhaps justified, but why should he hold such hateful feelings toward the woman who effectively saved our lives in Damascus?”

“Because,” Roman said in a low voice, the realization resting on him as heavy and real as a block of granite, “if he could return to that time in the past, knowing what would become of his family, his home, he would not wish to have his life saved. The three of you were only hours away from death in the prison, Constantine only hours away from avoiding a long life without his little son.”

Roman had felt the very same after Saladin's army had lain ruin to Chastellet and left him alone with nothing but corpses and carrion birds for companions.

“I do no doubt that you are right, my astute friend,” Valentine allowed with a tinge of admiration in his voice. “However, there is much to be said for Stan's reasoning. The woman has seen us and knows where we have hidden away. I have a wife and child now; Adrian his own woman. We can no risk discovery.”

Victor rejoined the discussion, sitting once more in his chair. “Roman, do you feel the woman would betray us?”

“I don't know,” Roman said. “She refused to tell Constantine anything before I entered the room. Not her name, not why she was asking after me. I can only surmise that is part of the reason the Saracen bothered to beat her so badly rather than just kill her outright once he'd caught up with her. Perhaps she has more to tell us, if only we give her the opportunity to heal—and to live,” he added.

“I agree,” Victor said.

Adrian nodded. “As do I.”

The men looked to Valentine, who was wobbling his head from side to side, contemplating the ceiling. Finally, he sighed. “Agree. For the time being.”

All four men stood, and Roman tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as he braced himself on the edge of the table. His head swam still, and the gentle candlelight in the library seemed to throb for a moment.

“Constantine will not like being overruled,” Victor said. “I don't know how he will take the news that she still lives on the morn. He is a man of his word.”

“I will sit with her,” Roman said. “I will not let him harm her, not only for her safety but for Stan's own good. Perhaps there might come a day when he would bitterly regret such an action.”

“Thank you.” Adrian nodded toward Roman, and he was again made aware of the change in the formerly snide and bitter man as the four of them made their way to the gatehouse passage.

Valentine struck Roman on his uninjured arm. “Yes, that is a good idea, my friend. He will have a most difficult time climbing over your large body when you faint. But you? You will no even feel it. Brilliant.”

Roman gave his friend a shove that nearly sent Valentine from his feet. “Then you'd best bring me something to eat, you sneaking Spaniard.”

“I'm certain Brother Wynn has sufficient provisions to sustain you. Plenty of hay and leaves; perhaps some delicious grubs, yes?”

“Won't you precede me down the stairs?”

Valentine grinned over his shoulder while he stepped into the black corridor. “So you can push me down them?”

“Don't worry; you won't even feel it.”

* * *

Isra could feel the redhead's eyes on her as if they were tethers holding her to the pallet. She couldn't have moved even if she'd wanted to, her body was so sore, but even had she been well, she doubted she was brave enough to test the woman's unspoken threat.