Adam of Albion (17 page)

King
Richard’s mood had mellowed to the point where he started to doze off, still
lying there in the tub. He dismissed Adam with a languid wave of his hand and a
mumble that Cristof wanted to talk to him—he’d be able to recognize Cristof’s
private tent by its white Hospitaller cross.

Adam
stepped warily outside, squinting into the glaring sunlight. He didn’t see the
tent anywhere nearby, and he wasn’t about to ask directions—if the Templars
spotted him, they might grab him and deliver him to the vengeful Gerard de
Chavirage. He started hurrying along in widening circles, hunched over and
flitting from the shadows of one tent to the next.

“So
why are you sneaking around like a rat,
Sir
Adam?” Orpheus sneered from
behind him. “The Templars won’t bother you now, they know the King and Cristof
are protecting you.”

“Easy
for you to say,” Adam shot back. “That Chavirage is a
mean
S.O.B., and
he’s crazy enough to do just about anything.” Besides, Richard and Cristof were
nowhere in sight just now. He could still feel the sting of that slap to his
face, and he shivered at how close he’d come to getting his feet burnt to a
crisp. He was going to have nightmares about that, he could count on it.

Still,
in his mind he was floating ten feet above the ground. Made a knight—by King
Richard the Lionheart! He could hardly believe it, and of course nobody else
ever would either, so he could forget about bragging even if he wanted to,
which he kind of did. But it had really happened, and nothing could take that
away.

And
he remembered something else eerie. Back in England, when he and Artemis had
talked to the eccentric older lady called Rainy Jane, she’d called him “young
voyager from the land of mountains and ice.” He’d been surprised that she knew
that much about him. But Richard had zeroed in on exactly the same thing—and
he’d given Adam the knightly emblem of an ice-covered mountaintop.

Well,
it didn’t really mean anything—it must just be coincidence. He ducked behind a
tent, spent a few seconds scouting the area to make sure it was clear of
marauding Templars, and took off for the next one.

But
he’d only gone a couple of steps, just starting to gain speed, when something
caught his left ankle like a set-snare. His own momentum jerked him right off
his feet, and he hit the ground flat on his belly with a whump that brought a
flicker of stars in front of his eyes. Electrified by surprise and fear, he
tried to keep rolling, intending to scramble up and disappear without even
looking back. But the grip on his ankle stayed firm.

“Oh,
I
am
sorry—I didn’t see you,” a voice said behind him—and this time, it
wasn’t Orpheus. “I dropped my prayer book, and I was trying to pull it closer.
My back is bad, from an old war wound, you see—very hard for me to bend down or
lift anything. Would you be so kind as to get it for me?”

Adam
twisted sideways. The thing holding his ankle was a long wooden staff with a
hook at the end—an old-fashioned shepherd’s crook, he realized. Beside it, a
small leather-bound book was lying on the ground.

Although
he was pretty sure it hadn’t been there as he’d started away from the tent.

“You’ll
stay and chat a minute, won’t you?” the man said. “I’m a friend, I assure you.
A friend to
all
—a poor and humble shepherd of souls.” The hook slipped
away from Adam’s ankle. He nodded agreement, mainly because he was sure it
could trip him again before he could take a step. He picked up the book and got
shakily to his feet, handing it to its owner.

This
man didn’t seem to be a Crusader—he was wearing a plain ivory colored robe,
although it looked like fine fabric and carefully sewn, unlike the rough tunics
of the soldiers. He was handsome, with blue eyes and wavy dark blond hair that
seemed remarkably well cared for in the harsh desert conditions, and he seemed
suntanned rather than weathered. He could have been thirty or fifty—his face
didn’t have the hard edges of the other people in this land. In fact, he looked
somehow generic, stamped from a mold, like soap actors or the models in
magazine ads.

“Where
are you off to in such a rush, my lad?” he asked.

“I’m—looking
for Cristof. He’s waiting for me,” Adam stammered, hoping that would help to
protect him. There was a tiny pause, and Adam thought he saw a flash of
coldness in those blue eyes before their smooth friendliness returned.

“Ah,
yes, Cristof—I’ve heard the name, he’s well spoken of. I’m Nicodemus, by the
way—Nicodemus of Edessa, as I’m known, although my travels have taken me far
and wide. I’ve only just arrived here from the mysterious land of the Emperor
Prester John, a long and dangerous journey to the east.”

“I’m
afraid I haven’t heard of it.”

“You
will, I assure you,” Nicodemus said, a little curtly, as if he was annoyed that
Adam wasn’t as impressed as he should be. “The Emperor has raised a great army
that will change the tide of events in the Holy Land—and with all modesty, I
can say that I played a rather crucial part in that.” Then his face turned
inquiring. “Now, I couldn’t help noticing that you brought a gift for the King.
How did his majesty receive it?”

Adam
hesitated. Nicodemus didn’t seem outright scary, like the Templars. But if
anything, he was working too hard at coming across as a good guy, and Adam’s
alarm bells were clanging. He didn’t seem to be
truly
humble, or for
that matter, poor. Adam was also pretty sure that Nicodemus had tripped him on
purpose and he was fishing for information, but deviously circling around
whatever he was really after. Even Orpheus was staying as quiet as a gopher
with a coyote snuffling around—no more snide whispers or head butts.

“Actually,
I don’t think I should talk about it, sir,” Adam said. “I’m just a delivery
boy.”

“Indeed,
 indeed, very commendable. Let me stress that my interest in this isn’t on
my own account—far from it. No, I serve a greater good.” Nicodemus exhaled, a
sigh that suggested deep spiritual suffering. “The Crusades have taken a
terrible toll of life and ruin—no one feels that more keenly than I. But you do
understand that it’s all for the best, don’t you?”

“Well—not
really,” Adam admitted.

“Hm.
Your grasp of it will deepen as you get older.” Then Nicodemus’s voice took on
an oratorical tone. “The glory of God comes above all else, of course. But
beyond that, the countries of Europe were mired in poverty and stagnation—and
the Crusades have opened wide the doors of prosperity! Commerce, trade, and
industry are thriving—ships arriving with provisions, weapons, and armor for
the soldiers, produced by common folk whose squalid lives now serve a higher
purpose. The more their labor enriches their masters, the more luxuries those masters
can buy, which ensures still more employment to produce those goods.”

Adam
had a feeling he’d heard the same kinds of ideas before, but it took him a
second to think of where. Politicians and pundits talking on TV—
that
was
it.

“You
mean, like, creating jobs and growing the world economy?” he said.

Nicodemus
glanced at him in surprise. “What a curious way to put it. But yes, that does
describe it nicely. ‘Creating jobs and growing the world economy’—I’ll have to
remember that.”

Adam
noticed that Nicodemus hadn’t said anything about the common folk getting
richer, or buying luxuries, or even getting paid at all for their
ever-increasing labor.

“If
you don’t mind, sir, I really do have to find Cristof,” he said.

The
hint of coldness showed in Nicodemus’s eyes again, but his bland reply was
quick.

“Forgive
me for detaining you—I was so entranced with our talk, I forgot. But keep in
mind what I said about serving a greater good, won’t you? Sometimes we have to
set aside our petty loyalties to that end. Oh, and—”

Nicodemus
opened his hand, with a gold coin in it that seemed to have simply appeared
there.

“I
suspect that a delivery boy earns little more than his keep,” he said, offering
the coin to Adam with a sly wink. “I can always use another set of eyes and
ears, and I think yours would suit me well.”

Adam
shook his head, trying his best to look polite. “Thank you, but I can’t accept
that.”

“Very
well—for now. But do reconsider. Think about the pleasures it will buy you.”
The coin disappeared. “Let’s chat again soon.”

Nicodemus
strolled away, limping slightly and planting his shepherd’s staff with each
step. Adam went back into sneak mode, scurrying along on the lookout for
Cristof, but he kept an eye on Nicodemus, who was heading to the outskirts of
the camp—toward an unmarked tent that was set up all alone and a good distance
apart from the others. Adam started toward a closer tent that must be
Cristof’s—plain but neat looking,with a large white cross.

Then,
as he hurried toward it, he heard a faint, high-pitched sound coming from the
direction where Nicodemus had gone. It was kind of a wail, probably just cats
squalling over some garbage.

Still,
there was something about it that was as creepy as Nicodemus himself.

The
inside of Cristof’s tent was a different world from anything else in the camp.
It was very clean and comparatively cool, with a system of flaps opened here
and there to make the most of the breeze, and it smelled wonderful, a blend of
herbs, spices, and other mysterious stuff in the dozens of vials and casks
neatly arranged on rough tables.

Cristof
was bent over the chest of herbs that Saladin had sent him, examining the
contents like a kid with a big box of Christmas presents.

“Is
that stuff going to do you any good?” Adam asked.

“Very
definitely. Here’s a nice batch of fresh aloe—” Cristof held up a spiky plant
that looked something like an artichoke— “which is excellent for soothing skin
ailments. Belladonna to induce sleep, foxglove to stimulate the heart, even a
canister of sulfur, for poultices on wounds. If I can apply it quickly enough,
it reduces the spread of rotting flesh. I can’t fathom why, about that or much
of anything else—only that some things seem to help, some of the time. But I
keep experimenting, and recording the results—perhaps someday I’ll start to
make sense of them.

“Meantime,
I do occasionally stumble across something interesting, like this.” He stepped
to a smaller metal box and opened it for Adam to see. Inside were what looked
like several chunks of ordinary bread, thickly covered with mold. “A—friend, a
woman who’s well versed in healing arts—suggested this possibility to me, and
I’ve been working on it ever since, trying to refine it. An extract of the mold
seems to have a similar effect to the sulfur, and also to reduce fever. Whoever
would have thought that something you’d throw to the goats might be useful as a
medicine?”

Adam
had a dim recollection that bread mold had something to do with the discovery
of penicillin. It was wild to think that Cristof was nosing around that,
several hundred years before it happened.

“Now,
Adam,” Cristof said, closing the chests. “Saladin added a private note to me in
his letter—that he promised to help you find a young lady you came here with.
We both think she probably met up with the Assassins you saw yesterday—who are
really the Sisters of Isis.”

Those
must be the women King Richard had mentioned, Adam realized, who’d saved
Cristof’s life.

“They
have a fortress a day’s ride away,” the knight went on. “I’ll draw you a map of
how to get there. The Sultan wants you to ride Zuleika, and take Mustafa with
you—he knows the general lay of the land.”

Adam
almost jumped off the ground with joy, and Orpheus joined in with a staccato of
sharp little taps against his spine, like a woodpecker. But Cristof held up his
forefinger in a gesture that said,
Don’t get too excited just yet.

“The
Sultan also advised me of a complication, and I need to talk to you about it,”
he said. “The Grand Vizier managed to obtain an object he believed is
magical—he had someone killed for it, apparently.”

Adam
tensed, caught in a familiar dilemma—he felt certain he could trust Christof,
but how much to tell, where to start?

Then
that high-pitched wailing sound rose again, coming from the isolated tent outside
the main camp. It was louder now, a long howl that rose to a peak, then faded
to a moan. This time, he was just about certain that it wasn’t any cat. He
turned his frightened gaze to Cristof, who grimaced.

“It’s
the Vizier,” Cristof said quietly. “The Templars are questioning
him—persuasively. I don’t like cruelty, even towards someone who’s been cruel
himself, and God knows the Vizier has plenty of that to answer for. But it’s
not my battle.”

So
that was what had happened to the Grand Vizier.

“Saladin
said he’d disappeared, but he didn’t seem to know where,” Adam said, with a
tremor in his voice—this was more nightmare material.

“Oh,
I expect he has quite a clear idea about it. But like all of us who’ve survived
for long in this land, he rarely speaks much of what’s in his mind. At any
rate, I’m trying to fit together the pieces of a puzzle—and it’s further
complicated by the arrival of a man who calls himself Nicodemus of Edessa.”

“I
just met him, on the way here.”

Cristof’s
gaze sharpened. “Really? Tell me about it.”

“He
tripped me with his staff and pretended it was an accident. He mostly just
talked, like he was trying to confuse me. But he asked a couple of questions
about the King, and I think he was trying to weasel something out of me—he even
offered me money. But I didn’t take it and I didn’t tell him anything.”

 Cristof
nodded approvingly. “Your true money is your life itself, Adam. Spend it
wisely, and beware of bartering it for the kind that’s only silver and gold.

“As
for Nicodemus, I’ve only heard his reputation, and no one seems to know
anything about him that can be verified. He claims to have been a soldier, but
it’s vague as to when and where, and with all the men I’ve known who’ve been on
all the campaigns of these times, I’ve yet to meet one who remembers him.

“He
presents himself now as a humble servant of God, but it really seems more that
God serves
his
purposes. I’ve personally always felt that God—who is,
after all, Creator of the universe, all-knowing and all-powerful—should be capable
of managing His own affairs. But apparently, He needs Nicodemus to explain His
will—which, oddly enough, tends to coincide with Nicodemus’s own. Odder still,
many other men also claim to speak for God, but with very different
messages—and they’re often quite prepared to kill anyone who disagrees.

“It’s
hard for me to believe that God is that confused, or that He deliberately sows
discord because He doesn’t have anything better to do. I suspect the answer
lies more with the kinds of charlatans who traffick in the essence of serpents,
claiming it’s a restorative that will cure all ills.”

Wow!
Adam thought. Almost a thousand years ago, they already had political
double-speak, phony preachers, even snake oil salesmen—maybe things weren’t all
that different between then and modern times, after all.

“The
one factor that does come clear is that he’s up to his neck in intrigue
wherever he goes,” Cristof went on, “and it’s the kind of intrigue that causes
bloodshed. I’m sure that he and Gerard de Chavirage are in league—and both have
their own reasons for wanting to prolong this war.”

“He
gave me a lecture about how it’s actually good for everybody, and it’s okay if
some people get killed because the really important people are getting rich,”
Adam agreed. Then, anxiously, he added, “He said there’s an Emperor named
Prester John with a huge army that’s coming here.”

“Prester
John, is it?” Cristof said acerbically. “How perfect—Richard will roar with
laughter when I tell him. That rumor’s been flying around for years, Adam. But
Prester John is rather like Nicodemus—nobody really knows anything about him,
or where his kingdom lies, or even if he exists.

“Supposedly,
his invincible army already marched to the Holy Land once, to join forces with
the Crusaders and ensure a Christian conquest—but they were turned back by the
Red Sea. It seems never to have occurred to them that if they were coming from
the east, they didn’t
need
to cross the sea, and if from the south or
west, they only had to follow the coastline and walk over dry land at the
Sinai.”

The
point wasn’t hard to get. No army would be that dumb, let alone an invincible
army from a great Emperor.

“Cristof,
I think—I’m pretty sure—that Nicodemus went into that tent where the Vizier
is,” Adam said. And judging from the howling, Nicodemus—shepherd of souls and
friend to all—wasn’t doing anything to stop the frightful proceedings.

Cristof
was looking grimly thoughtful now, rubbing his knuckles against his jaw with a
sound like a half-round file grinding burrs off an iron pipe.

“That
doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “I’ve suspected that Nicodemus had a deeper
reason for coming here than just to stir the pot—there’s no shortage of other
places where he can do that, in much greater safety. But now I think I see
another link in what’s going on.

“Suppose
Nicodemus somehow learned about the magical object the Vizier had stolen, and
he came here intending to steal it for himself. Then the Sisters got to it
first—although, strangely, they gave it right back to the Templars. And
something has gone wrong—at a guess, they can’t get the magic to work. They
think the Vizier knows the secret, and they’re trying to drag it out of him.
But judging from how long his interrogation has gone on, he doesn’t know
it—he’d have told them by now.”

The
truth was that
that
Orpheus—OToo—was stonewalling the Templars, Adam
remembered—and he was also in shock from losing Eurydice.

“What
do you think they’ll do?” Adam asked.

“That’s
what I’m worried about. Nicodemus will look for every possible answer, and he
won’t take long to target the Sisters of Isis. He’ll realize that they must
have had a good reason for what they did—and he’ll suspect that they know the
secret of the magical workings. So next, he’ll go after them—attack their
fortress, which Gerard de Chavirage will be happy to do. The Vizier knows where
it is, and they’ll get
that
secret out of him.”

Cristof
was moving now, striding to a stack of linen bandages and grabbing one. He spread
it out and bent over it with a quill pen, scratching out a map.

“Your
journey to find your friend has taken on new urgency, Adam,” he said. “You must
warn the Sisters and give them time to prepare.”

“Aren’t
you coming?” Adam said anxiously.

Cristof
shook his head. “Better if I stay back and stall Gerard and his men.”  His
face creased in one of his craggy grins. “I’ll remind him that he and I are due
for a private talk.”

“But
they’ll gang up on you!”

Cristof
glanced at Adam, obviously touched by his concern, and gave his shoulder an
affectionate clasp.

“Don’t
worry. They won’t attack me
en masse,
here in the camp with witnesses to
see—their honor would be shamed. No, Gerard will find a way to put me off, but
he’ll have to do it without publicly sacrificing his pride. He’s not a quick
thinker—one of the few qualities I find useful in him—so it will take him a
while.”

Adam
wasn’t so sure about that honor thing—they’d ambushed Cristof once before,
hadn’t they? Plus, there was Nicodemus, who didn’t seem to have any honor to
shame. But there was no point in arguing about it. Nobody knew that better than
Cristof.

He
went over the map with Adam, pointing out landmarks to look for and the
distances between them. The fortress was in a remote mountain called the Mother
of Life—it was hard to spot because it looked like the other mountains around
it unless you got very close, which was usually a bad idea. The Sisters didn’t
welcome uninvited company.

“The
front of it is a sheer cliff face,” Cristof said. “Ride up to its base in plain
sight, and call out to them that you’ve come from me—tell them I send a message
for Theodora. But if you have trouble—if you find you’re being followed, and
you’re hard pressed—there’s a hidden entrance here.” He touched a point on the
map and told Adam how to get into it. “This is a jealously guarded secret, and
the Sisters won’t be happy about it, so be prepared to explain yourself fast
and well.”

Adam
had a thousand questions, and his emotions had raced from elated back to
terrified in record time. But Cristof’s face had taken on a different look,
like he’d completely forgotten that he was about to go challenge a Templar to a
duel, with the guy’s pissed off buddies hanging around just itching to pounce.
He seemed curious, and a little hesitant—like he was about to lift the lid off
another chest, and whatever was inside might be a huge thrill or a huge
disappointment.

“Adam—the
Sultan did mention one more thing in his letter,” Cristof said. “That sack on
your back—he said you never seem to take it off, and he fears it must weigh
very heavily. If you’d like to set it down and rest a moment before you go, you
can be sure that no one but me will ever know.”

Once
again, Adam’s first instinct was to freeze up—but immediately, he was relieved
and even grateful. The sack
was
heavy, he realized, not from actual
weight, but because of what he had to hide—which was exactly what Saladin and
Cristof meant.

There
was nothing like sharing a secret with someone you trusted to lighten that kind
of burden.

Adam
put the sack on a table, lifted out Orpheus, and set him beside it.

Orph
wasn’t putting on any dumb rock act this time. “Top of the morning to you,” he
said to Cristof. “Always a pleasure to meet another man of sophistication. Not
much of that around, where I’ve been lately.” He shot Adam a disdainful glare.

Cristof
stared incredulously. “So you really do exist,” he said quietly. “I’ve heard
legends about you for many years, but I never knew whether to believe them.”

“Truth
is stranger than fiction,” Orpheus pointed out, somewhat pompously. “And the
real
truth, the legends can’t even touch. Like the time I was crossing the Alps with
Hannibal, and his favorite bull elephant—how can I put this delicately?—took a
shine to a lady wild boar. Well, the bull refused to move another step, and the
whole army was stopped dead with a raging blizzard moving in, until I—”