Knights of the Black and White (38 page)

“Please come inside and close the door, if you will. I The Temptress

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have some questions for you, and would prefer to ask them without inhaling dust each time I open my mouth.”

“Questions, my lady? What kind of questions could you have for me? You do not know me at all.”

He really was delightful, standing there wide eyed with innocent surprise, and Alice’s mouth quirked in the beginnings of an ironic little smile. “That can be quickly remedied, believe me,” she murmured, making him bend farther forward to hear what she was saying. “But I know of your brothers. They once saved my mother’s life, and although that was several years ago, she still feels grateful to them and has much to do with them. But I would like to know, among other things, where you learned to fly through the air the way you do, wearing a full coat of chain mail and mailed leggings. So come, if you will, and tell me. Come, sit across from me and close the door against the dust and the bright light.”

St. Clair’s frown deepened, but then he nodded. He removed the broadsword from beneath his arm and reached into the carriage to prop it securely against the seat on his right before he grasped the pillars of the doorway in both hands to hoist himself inside. Before he could do so, however, a deep voice called out his name from behind him, and Alice saw his eyes widen in surprise as he stepped back, turning to face whoever had spoken.

Furious that anyone should dare to interfere or interrupt her, Alice pushed herself forward quickly and thrust her head angrily through the doorway, only to find herself face to face with Archbishop Warmund de Picquigny.

“Princess Alice,” he cried, in a voice greatly different 360

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from the one that had spoken St. Clair’s name. “What a delightful and unexpected pleasure to encounter you here, so far from your home. May I be permitted to ask what brings you out here, and might I be of any assistance?”

He had stepped forward to the edge of her door, and now he kicked down the small mounting steps with one foot while he reached out a hand to support her as the princess, with no choice but to comply, stepped carefully down from the carriage, keeping her eyes downcast as she placed her small feet with great care. She had seen the young knight’s jaw drop open when he heard de Picquigny address her by her title, and she was incensed, knowing that he would now be overwhelmed by her rank and station and would consequently be, in all probability, more difficult to seduce. She wanted to spit at the foolish old busybody, but forced herself to smile sweetly.

“Thank you, my lord Patriarch, but I have no need of assistance. I merely stopped to ask Sir Stephen how he was enjoying his stay among the brethren of your Patrol.”

“Ah, my Patrol … Forgive me, Princess, but it occurs to me only now that you may not remember my companion here, although I know you have met him. May I present Brother Hugh de Payens, the founding member of the brotherhood to which Brother Stephen belongs? You first met Brother Hugh on the day after your mother’s rescue from the Saracen brigands, several years ago.” As Alice raised her head to look at de Payens, the Archbishop reached inside her carriage and retrieved St.

Clair’s long sword.

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Alice had turned the full warmth of her smile on de Payens, who raised a mailed fist to his breast in salute, his mouth twisting slightly into the beginnings of a smile in return. “I remember the occasion very well, Brother Hugh, young as I was,” she said, demurely. “I had just mentioned the incident to Sir Stephen. Is that not so, Sir Stephen?”

“It is plain Brother Stephen, my lady.” St. Clair’s golden skin now bore a deep red flush, probably caused, Alice reflected, by his awareness of how blatantly she was lying and involving him.

“Brother Stephen.” She nodded. “Of course, you have renounced the world. I had forgotten.”

“Not quite true, Princess,” the Patriarch murmured, holding out St. Clair’s sword to the young man, who took it, blushing fiercely. “Brother Stephen is but a novice today, but in a short time he will take his full vows, undertaking to renounce the world, and more. He will, in fact, renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh in favor of dedicating his life to God. A wonderful destiny for any man.”

Alice managed to retain her smile, although she would wonder for months afterwards how she had been able to conceal the rage seething in her at the old hypocrite’s barely veiled insolence. But his disapproval mattered not a whit to her because, powerful as he was, with his Patriarchal Archbishopric and his direct access to her father’s ear, he had nothing concrete of which he could accuse her. Forewarned of his suspicions about her sexual conduct years earlier, she had taken great pains to make sure 362

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that he would have nothing, ever, to report to her father.

She had been very careful and even, latterly, very ab-stemious. She knew, too, that he had suspicions about her behavior in several other areas wherein their paths occasionally crossed. She resented his suspicions, irrespective of the validity underlying them, but she accepted, too, that there was nothing she could do about them.

Not yet, while she was still a powerless princess. Once she was Queen—and she had every intention of achieving that status—matters would be vastly different. Then she would be able to put the old catamite in his place, and with him everyone else who shared his opinions of her.

But for now, faced with a situation in which she could not win, Alice accepted the inevitable and bowed to it.

She inclined her head graciously to the senior monk, de Payens, and then to the young one, St. Clair, demurely wishing them both well, and then she turned a smile of purest love and admiration on the Patriarch himself, thanking him for his concern and assuring him that she would pass along his kind regards to her ailing mother.

That done, she turned back to her carriage and mounted the steps nimbly, her outstretched hand supported again by the Patriarch Archbishop.

As soon as she was safely inside, de Picquigny stepped back and raised a hand to the watching driver, waving him forward. The horses leaned into the traces, the carriage lurched and then rolled forward, and Stephen St.

Clair stood at attention, watching the retreating vehicle as though he could see directly through its walls to the young woman inside. He had never seen anyone so beau-

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tiful in his entire life, and he had a picture of her in his mind, bending towards him, one hand bunching a long gold chain that hung about her neck, allowing the heavy gold to slip slowly, link by link, down into the other hand she held cupped beneath it. He knew it was dangerous to allow himself to think of her beauty, and that he should pray for strength to resist temptation, but as he heard the disapproving tone of his superior’s voice recalling him to his duties, he knew too, beyond doubt, that her smiling face would be the last thing he would see in his mind before he fell asleep that night.

TWO

Alice, safe in the darkness of her carriage, called to her driver to take her home to the palace immediately, and she spent the entire journey weeping in frustrated fury, seething and burning with the humiliation of being thwarted and defeated and even chastised, albeit subtly, by the Archbishop. She wanted to scream and to throw things, but she contented herself with biting down savagely on a twisted skein of cloth wrung from the wrapping she had worn around her hair, knowing that to give in to her rage would be to entertain the servants and escort around her, who would take great glee in talking about her behavior later. Accordingly, she sat in silence, as taut as a drum skin, viciously twisting the cloth in her hand and imagining all the punishments she would love to inflict on the old Archbishop.

There were few things in her life, and even fewer peo-364

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ple, that Alice le Bourcq could not completely dominate and govern, but one of those people was Warmund de Picquigny, and it galled her that it should be so. She had sought to put him in his place once before, two years earlier, when his meddling had become intolerable, but the attempt had been a disaster, provoking a rare outbreak of fury from her father, who had excoriated her publicly, in front of an entire gathering of people. From that time forward, Alice had been extremely circumspect in her dealings with the Patriarch, electing to avoid him completely whenever possible and to ignore his existence as much as she could whenever circumstances placed them together.

Her father was another of the few whom she could not dominate, despite the fact that most of the time it might appear to others that Baldwin was too indulgent of her. Alice simply knew, and had known since infancy, that she dared not push her father too far and would never deliberately defy him. Baldwin was an autocrat, answerable to no one, and his rages, few and far between though they were, were unpredictable, violent, and highly dangerous. There was not the slightest doubt in Alice le Bourcq’s mind that her father was capable of murder when he was enraged, and so she trod very cautiously around him.

She knew when her carriage began to climb the slope to the main gates of the royal residence, because she heard and felt the difference when the iron-tired wheels clattered onto the cobblestones, and she quickly scrubbed the last of the tears from her face and swathed her head 366

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in the folds of the long silken shawl she had worn around her shoulders. When the captain of her escort opened the door, she sat silent and unmoving until he had kicked down the mounting step, and then she climbed down quickly, refusing the assistance of his arm and keeping her head tightly swathed in her shawl, holding a length of it across her face in the Muslim fashion. She went directly indoors, towards her own rooms, without saying a word to anyone, sweeping silently along the high-ceilinged passageways and up the main staircase to the upper floor and pausing only when she saw the open doors to her mother’s rooms ahead of her.

She hesitated there, debating whether to walk boldly by, hoping that there would be no one in the first room, or to turn tail and go back down to the floor beneath, then around to the rear passageway that would allow her to enter her own rooms from the other side. She chose the former option and stepped forward boldly, holding her head high, but her mother’s voice greeted her as soon as she reached the open doorway, almost as though she had been waiting for her.

“Alice? Alice, in Heaven’s name, child, what is the matter with you? You look as though you have been to war and assaulted by bandits. Come in here at once.”

Alice stopped dead, muttering words beneath her breath that would have astonished and angered her mother, then turned and looked into the room beyond the open doors, where Queen Morfia stood gazing at her imperiously, surrounded by her women.

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“Mother,” she said levelly, nodding her head in a tiny greeting, “I thought you were unwell, confined to bed.”

“I was.” Her mother’s tone was icy with disapproval.

“But I am restored, and now feel much better than you appear to be. Where have you been, child, and what have you been doing that makes you so disheveled?”

“I’ve been weeping, Mother. Tears of rage and humiliation.” Alice’s voice matched her mother’s in coolness, completely devoid of inflection.

“Tears? Occasioned by what, may I ask?”

“Occasioned by life, Mother, and no, you may not ask anything more.”

Morfia’s face smoothed out in anger and she held her head higher. “You are insolent, and although that is unsurprising in itself, nevertheless it ill becomes you. I suggest you go and bathe the puffiness from your eyes before your father sees you. You may return to us when you have overcome your silliness and can at least pretend to be sociable.”

Alice turned on her heel and stalked away to her own rooms, aware that none of her mother’s women had so much as glanced at her in the course of that exchange.

Not that she had expected any of them to do so. They would not dare, because they had to live in the same house as Alice and they knew better than to antagonize her.

They were her mother’s creatures, but they had learned that, ubiquitous and all-knowing as Morfia seemed at times to be, they could not always rely upon the Queen’s presence for protection from Alice’s vengeance if they 368

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presumed to be amused by Morfia’s treatment of her, even as a child.

Morfia of Melitene was her daughter’s nemesis, the bane of her life, although Alice held her mother, albeit grudgingly, in great respect. In truth, Alice considered her mother to be ten times the man her father was, for although it had always been incontestably clear that Baldwin ruled his County of Edessa with an iron hand when it was needed, Alice had known since infancy that her formidable mother ruled the Count with equal severity. For that achievement alone, Alice had respected Morfia ever since she was old enough to know what respect entailed. But respect was not the same as liking, and although Alice had long since stopped caring, there was no liking between mother and daughter.

She had gone through a period, around the age of ten and eleven, when she had examined everything she did, trying to identify what it might be about her—her appearance, her behavior, or her temperament—that unfailingly brought out her mother’s dislike and disapproval, but she had never been able to identify anything, and so she had finally decided that it must have something to do with her physical appearance, her resemblance to her father.

Alice had been born with her father’s coloring and features, with golden hair, fair skin, and hazel-colored eyes, and she was the only one of the four siblings who resembled him in any way. The other three all favored Morfia, who, even today, as the mother of four grown daughters, was exotically beautiful, her flawless face and delicately sculpted bones proclaiming her aristocratic Armenian The Temptress

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ancestry. From the outset, Alice discovered years later, Morfia had been besotted with her firstborn daughter, Melisende, fascinated with the child’s perfection and by the indisputable fact that the infant was her mother in miniature. By the time Alice had been born, eighteen months later, she was already too late even to think about competing with her sibling for their mother’s affections.