Rogue Sword (11 page)

He walked stiff-legged from the chamber.

Of course, he thought as he went down the hallway beyond, she had good reason to fear his death. Into whose hands would she pass? He should make some provision--Later, later. Why did these women never leave a man in peace? And why could she not have spoken her fear honestly, instead of pretending it was his life which mattered to her? He was nothing but a master more easy-going than she had expected. Too easy-going, no doubt. What else could he be?

Why did it make any difference what she felt, a slave?

He wished he had some work to occupy him, but the main body of the Company was still on the road with their plunder. The leading knights had exercised privilege of rank to ride ahead of the oxcarts, thus gaining an idle day or two in Gallipoli. Their immediate attendants had accompanied them.

Djansha was right, Lucas admitted, about those graveyard streets. He himself had no wish to enter them. New inhabitants must be recruited, he thought. This could become a great port--crowded, busy, happy, given a wiser government than the Emperor’s. A hundred years hence, Gallipoli would be thankful the Catalans had taken her. Nonetheless, he did not want to leave the house.

He came out on a portico and went down the steps. The house surrounded three sides of a garden, with an ivy-covered wall to close the fourth. The flowerbeds had been ruined by soldiers going in and out the gate; horses had been stabled in one wing, outside which the grooms squatted, dicing and speaking obscenely. But a row of willows blocked them from view. The weeds that had sprung up were a brave green under heaven. Though dry, the stone fountain in the center was graceful to look at. Lucas paused to soothe himself with the sculpture of the basin, young Perseus unchaining Andromeda.

“Good morning, Maestre.”

He wheeled about with a jerkiness that told him how on edge he still was. Na Violante de Lebia Tari smiled at him. He bowed. “Good morning, my lady. Your servant.”

“Would that were true,” she said. “You would be an admirable servant: quick, clever, and amusing. But--” she cocked her head--”a better master, I think.”

Bewildered, for this carried their flirtation well beyond the bounds proper to a lady addressing a man, he felt his skin go hot. He looked around. No one else was to be seen. “You are up early,” he said clumsily.

“Like yourself. The rest are still snoring.” Her fan fluttered along the low crimson bodice, which seemed delightfully in peril of bursting asunder. One ankle peeped from beneath sweeping skirts. As usual, she ignored decorum and covered her blue-black hair with no more than a mantilla. “I had nothing to do except walk in the garden. My maidservants dressed me. I told them to stay behind, though. An hour alone is too precious a thing.”

“I beg your pardon, Na Violante. I’ll depart at once.”

“No, no!” She caught his hand, then let it go, her fingers slipping across his knuckles. “You didn’t let me finish, Maestre. True, I often wish to be alone with my thoughts. But good company is the rarest pleasure of all. I shall be very angry if you leave.”

His tongue began to find its accustomed glibness. “Then, since my lady’s anger would also provoke that of great Jove and any other god with eyes in his head, I must stay.”

“La! Are you French, Maestre Lucas? They say the Provencals are the world’s most shameless flatterers.”

“No, my lady. I am--” Lucas stopped. What was he, indeed? he wondered with a returning emptiness.

“Oh, yes, Venetian. I know. So I have met at least one Venetian who can outflatter any minstrel from Provence. You know not how refreshing that is, after a lifetime of dour Hispanics, cringing Sicilians, and Easterners who can hardly talk at all.”

“I do not flatter, bella Donna,” said Lucas. “In the presence of such splendor I am stricken nearly dumb. At best, any words are a poor, pale tribute.”

She sat down on a stone bench. “Come, join me,” she said, and drew her skirt aside. After a moment, he did so. There were still some inches between them, but he had a sense of being enveloped, as if in the odor of jasmine. Since it drowned out that certain desolation in him, he prolonged things with chatter.

“Is not that fountain a beautiful work? Ancient Grecian, beyond doubt. The pagans could make stone come almost alive. And yet, if Na Violante had posed for a Venus, I think the sculptor would never have dared pick up his chisel. On the one hand, his finest efforts would still have done you the grossest injustice. On the other, he might fear a divine power would suffuse him and make him actually reveal the truth, actually portray my lady--in which case, envious Queen Venus would strike him blind.”

They had jested like this before, from time to time over the wine cups. Half the amusement for Lucas had been to make Asberto Cornel glower; for he could never forget the peasant who fled. But today, suddenly, she laid a hand on his knee. He stopped talking and looked at her, stupefied.

“My thanks,” she said, low and hurried. “But I’ve somewhat else to ask of you.”

“Why . . . anything.” His Adam’s apple seemed large enough to stumble on.

“Tell me about the battle, and its aftermath, and what we can await in the future.”

Words abandoned him utterly. She withdrew her hand and said in rising anger: “No one else will do so. The
richs homens
are far too grand to speak reasonably with a mere woman. They’re shocked enough that I won’t stay in my mousehole and creep forth only when called. As for Asberto, I might as well ask his horse for information. It would understand more, and explain better. At least it would show more courtesy!”

“But--”

The red faded in her skin, leaving it again like ivory, finely blue-veined at the temples. Her nostrils still flared a little, and the eyes glowed. But she smiled, however strained it was, leaned back and said straight to his face: “You are God’s gift to my solitude, Maestre Lucas. The few people I’ve met in my life who had any learning, any skill with words, any concept of a world beyond their own snotty noses--ah, forgive my vulgarity, I am a soldier’s daughter--the few such have been clerics or sycophants or otherwise hardly men. You, though, you have wrought like ancient Hercules, and pondered what you saw and did, and found words to clothe your thoughts as if for a festival. Will you not stop this meaningless sugaring of me, and speak to me in such a way that for a while I can cease cursing the fate that made me a woman?”

He prepared a deft answer. Then, watching her, he decided against it. If nothing else, impersonal talk was safest when both of them were so taut. “Na Violante’s wish is mine,” he said. “But I pray you, stop me when I grow tedious. Well, you know we marched up the peninsula--” As his narrative progressed, he lost the feeling of imminent explosion. Instead, he found himself almost back in the war, so vividly did it come back to him. This was not like the few blunt sentences he could offer Djansha, who did not know a mangonel from a supply train and to whom a map was a sorcerer’s tool. Violante was transformed, scarcely female at all, blood-eager and vengeful but not the termagant she often was. Rather, she could have been a high-born Catalan boy who had never seen war and was wild to do so. She interrupted with many questions, but they were keen ones, asking knowledgeably why this was done and that was omitted. He was often embarrassed at being unable to tell her. In such cases, she became the woman again, briefly and with quicksilver ease, leading him on toward things he had witnessed himself. She made him describe his own part in the battle, blow by blow. There his tale became a romance. A man in combat seldom knew what he did. He struck out at strange faces, uncertain most times if he even bit flesh; afterward he remembered only a huge confusion. Before such an audience, however, Lucas felt obliged to paint the truth in brighter colors.

“Ah,” she said at last, “royal, royal! Would my father had been there!”

“He was a knight?”

She nodded. Her gaze went beyond him. As she spoke, the fierceness drained from body and voice, until nothing remained except love.

“Yes. A captain among men. Do you know, my earliest memory is of him about to ride forth? He was all in armor, it shone like the sun. His helmet was on his saddlebow. The plumes tickled my legs as my mother handed me up to him. He raised me high, laughing. ... I remember too when he came back. That was between sext and nones. He had not stopped for siesta. I heard the clatter at the gates, through the courtyard. I left my bed and drew the curtains from the window. And there was my father. That time he wore a pourpoint merely, but he had thrown a gallant cloak over it, all blue and gold. He saw me in the upper window, and waved his bonnet and cried, ‘Hallo, there, my darling, I’ve brought you home a victory!’”

She fell silent. Lucas heard the stablehands guffaw beyond the willows, and was angry at them. Na Violante did not appear to notice. She regarded the hands folded in her lap. They grew tense again. One tear, caught in her lashes, flung back a tiny point of sunlight.

“After he died,” she whispered, “the castle was so empty.”

“I have gathered my lady was wedded young,” ventured Lucas, hoping to turn her from so disconcertingly swift a sorrow.

“Anything to escape!” she burst out. “You know not what it is to be a well-born girl in Aragon . . . not unless you’ve spent a few years in an oubliette.”

After awhile, she drew a long breath and said calmly--coldly, almost, and looking straight ahead--”En Riambaldo Tari was not a bad man. He was brave. Dull, perhaps, but who could match my father? Since God has not seen fit to give me children, I persuaded my husband to take, me with him when he went off to the Sicilian War. Thence we came to Constantinople with the Grand Company.”

“A pity he was slain,” said Lucas.

“Last year.” Her tone was flat. She did not stir. “Late last year. A Greek who drew a knife. Asberto Cornel was there, too. He avenged my husband at once. He had long been a good friend to us. Do you understand that? I want you to understand it. I know I’ve shocked many, by putting myself under his--his protection. So soon after Riambaldo’s death, too. But Riambaldo--Asberto was his friend, his avenger. Now he is my protector. We cannot wed. Asberto has a wife in Aragon. But together we’ve bought masses for Riambaldo’s repose, burned candles, said prayers. What more can we do? He’s dead. He’s with God. I am not wanton, Lucas. I call my father in St. Michael’s host to witness I am not wanton!”

“I never believed that, my lady,” said Lucas.

He lied. It was common knowledge that she had had several lovers, including Asberto, while her husband still lived. And yet he saw how white she had gone. Her nails dug deep into her palms. She was not speaking of light matters.

She rose. “I thank you for your courtesy, Maestre,” she said, a little unevenly. “I must go now. Asberto will be awakening.”

She hurried back into the house.

After their second victory, the Catalans were in full control of the Thracian shore of the Propontis. The Imperial armies garrisoned Adrianople and the capital, but did not venture beyond sight of those walls. The invaders harried elsewhere and up to the very gates. One Almugavare even entered Constantinople afoot, with no more following than his two sons. They found a pair of Genoese merchants shooting quail in a garden of the Emperor’s, brought them back to Gallipoli and got three thousand gold hyperpera as ransom. When that exploit was announced to the Grand Company, the chortlings reached heaven.

“I must go out myself, before all the booty has been taken,” declared En Jaime.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Lucas answered. “You said a few days ago, you’d not put burning splints under the nails of peasants to learn where they’ve hidden a few coins.”

En Jaime’s features darkened. “True,” he said.

Both of them skirted the fact that this was happening daily. Lucas hastened on: “I’ve inquired among prisoners, and even more among Greeks disgusted with their own government and thus willing to help us. I believe a few bold men might carry out a deed worthy of themselves, and win a reward in proportion.” He smiled. “Also, it would make a merry tale afterward.”

“Let me hear.” En Jaime tugged his beard. At first he said, “You’ve gone mad!” Lucas talked further. Then he said, “A good idea in principle, but the odds are so much against us--” Lucas resorted to oratory. At last he said, “Well, let me sleep on it.” And in the morning he said, “Yes, by the sword of St. George!”

Lucas went down to the harbor. There were still only a few craft at the docks, but he found a good-sized boat, a leny whose lugsail could drive it at a fair clip. He had no trouble recruiting some mariners to help, even though he proposed to go up the whole Sea of Marmora with a skeletal force. They would not embark until the wind favored them, he promised, and would thus not have to row very much.

On the day chosen, En Jaime led a small band of horsemen out of Gallipoli toward Constantinople. Lucas was so favored by the weather that he reached the rendezvous agreed on in little more than two days and a night. It was a fishing hamlet some miles from New Rome. He cast anchor. A boat rowed out to see what he was. He waved his sword. “Franks!” he shouted. The fishermen backed water and fled. Presently the whole population of the settlement streamed inland.

“Will they not bring the Emperor’s men down on us?” worried a sailor.

“They would in any honorable country,” snorted Lucas. “But Andronicus and his soldiers aren’t about to risk their precious hides fighting on behalf of mere subjects. Come, we may as well make ourselves comfortable under a roof.” When the knights arrived, they found the crew taking their ease in the fisher cottages. “Well,” laughed Lucas, “you dawdled enough, my friends. Did you find a tavern on the way?”

Asberto Cornel bridled. “I’ve had enough of your insolence!”

“Be calm,” said En Jaime. “He’s only jesting.” To Lucas: “Ah, this was as easy a ride as I’ve ever had. Good roads, and no sooner were we spied than all ran away from us. Saints have mercy, we were so few that two score peasants with flails could have destroyed us. And yet they ran, even those who bore proper weapons. Are they men at all?”