Rogue Sword (22 page)

Perhaps the hardest task of the whole voyage had come on shore, when he made himself ignore the wistfulness in Xenia’s eyes and left the convent which had given her shelter.

“Where was your landfall?” inquired Petros.

“On the north coast, near Kyrenia,” said Lucas. “I sold my boat to a fisher for enough money to buy a clean outfit and get me to Limasol.” He spat. “The vessel was worth a good deal more, but he could see I dared not offer it openly, lest I attract the notice of the damned Frankish baron.”

“What hope brought you walking all the way across the island, then?”

“I think I can find employment which would not be too onerous with the knightly Order.”

“What? Great stinking horse apples!” Petros gestured violently. “You’ve no idea what you speak of. Go to Famagusta. There’s work on the docks, however ill-paid. But bind yourself not to those friars of Satan.”

Lucas stopped in his tracks. Understanding came. “No, wait, what I meant was--”

Petros growled on, red-faced, too angry to have heard. “Listen. When the knights came here, the king gave ’em right to buy broad lands. They’d wealth enough, and they soon showed us Cypriotes how they got it. Usury, rack-renting, fines, taxes, extortion! Oh, they’ll hire you with scant questioning, my friend, but you’ll soon find why they only keep their serfs. Blows, curses, a pittance of wage--gouged back into their coffers on any pretext--wretched huts to live in, sour Romish rantings: that’s all you’ll get from the Knights Templar!”

“But I meant the Hospitallers. Everyone has told me they’re honest.”

Petros fell silent. Only the crunch of feet and hoofs, a breeze that made sunflecks dance on the brown forest floor, a starling far off across the dale which the path overlooked, were heard. Then the muleteer slapped an animal’s rump with a shattering noise, and laughed.

“Name of a blue-bellied hog! I’ll wager my mucking manhood against a clipped Venetian quattrino you’ve heard only good of them. But how could I tell you meant the Knights of St. John? No use hunting employment there. Too many others have grabbed the chance to work for such masters. They’ll give you a doss and a meal, aye, without asking you to do more in return than chop some wood or hoe some furrows. If you’re sick, they’ll nurse you to health, and send you off with a Godspeed so hearty you’ll forget its Popish. They’ll even try to get a decent master for you. But hire you themselves? Where’d they find the room?”

“No harm in asking.”

“Well--” Petros gave Lucas a shrewd look. “Perhaps. I’ve begun to think there’s more to you than you admit. No simple fisherman walks so swingingly, with head so high . . . yes, and your hands aren’t misshapen from drudgery. So be it. I can keep a closed mouth. I’ve scars of the lash to remind me.”

He paused, hesitant. “If you should find favor, Lucas--if you should see a place for one more--would you tell them my name? I’d work my butt off! “

They trudged on. Recalling Hugh de Tourneville, Lucas had guessed the Hospitallers would be less odious than others. But when he started his leisured ramble and cautious inquiries, from Kyrenia across the mountains, down through the royal city, Nicosia, and on over the plain to the Troodos range, he had not expected the Cypriotes would with one voice praise the gentleness, open-handedness, justice, tolerance, and wisdom of these warrior friars of the hated Roman Church. The news was immensely cheering.

If only they were not mere tenants in a misruled kingdom--

If only Djansha were here!

Brother Hugh tugged his beard and limped up and down the room for what seemed a long while. Finally he stopped, but his squinting gaze pinned Lucas before he spoke.

“What did you hope of me?” he asked.

The tone was no less friendly than that with which he had first welcomed his acquaintance, when, after endless arguing, the impoverished unknown was brought inside to see the Knight Companion of the Grand Master. But he had lost effusiveness. The calculations of a leader were again running through that narrow skull. And the most generous chieftain in the world, Lucas thought, must learn how to make harsh decisions.

As if reading Lucas’ thoughts, Hugh said with care: “I hope you realize I’m no longer in the position of an English noble. Once I could grant you anything within my means, simply because we spent a few hours in comradeship. Now I am an instrument of the Order.”

Lucas leaned his elbow on the windowsill and looked past a thick mass of wall toward daylight. The Commandery stood outside Limasol, which raised its battlements in the east above an argent gleam of sea. Down below, a pair of brothers, mere sergeants, but bearing the same black mantel and white cross as his exalted friend, crossed a paved courtyard. A native workman bowed to them and was answered with a grave nod: neither servility on the one side nor haughtiness on the other. A horseman on patrol duty rode by. His armor was unadorned, but burnished to brilliance; the surcoat made a brave red splash. He was the only warlike token in all that landscape.

“I didn’t come to beg,” said Lucas, abashed. “I offer my services.”

“Ah . . . judging from your narrative, I doubt if you have a call.” Hugh’s dryness removed the sting. “Do you really wish to vow poverty, chastity, and obedience?”

“Faith, no!” Lucas wheeled about. The plain whitewashed room echoed with his loudness. The two men regarded each other and broke out laughing.

“Well-a-day, that was nothing but a tease,” said Hugh. “We do indeed have use for a variety of skills, and often hire them outside the brotherhood.” An enigmatic expression came over him, which Lucas remembered from Constantinople. “Within the next few years, God willing, there’ll be places for many.”

“What do you mean?” Lucas’ heart thumped.

Hugh waved the question aside. “But then is not now,” he said. “At the moment--Well. Look you.” He began to pace again, hands behind his back, eyes to the floor.

“When Acre fell,” he said, slowly and with a pain that grew as he spoke, “an age ended. You’re too young to understand. No one who was not there can understand. Did you ever lose a much-beloved child? No? In all events, you’ve worked and failed. So it was with us. Those who were not blind knew that the end of the Christian dominion in the Holy Land was upon us . . . even before the last day had come. We knew it had been a cruel reign. The final assault on Acre was provoked by wanton Christian persecution of peaceful Moslem subjects. God took away from us what we had ceased to merit. And yet we fought. We fought like demons. Even after the final retreat, we strove to come back, by that grotesque alliance with Ghazan of Persia . . . and God in His mercy vouchsafed an instant more. But no matter. For us as men, a lifetime of losing struggle was brought to a close. For the Order, for our sister Order of the Temple, nearly two centuries of hope and prayer and bloody toil ended in failure. In my own heart I think it almost blasphemous that the King of Cyprus also claims the crown of Jerusalem. No Christian banner will fly above those walls, ever again. Unless, long after you and I are dust--

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “I digress. I ask you only to imagine the weariness, more of soul than of body, which came to us when we had escaped to Cyprus. This is a strange land. ‘The luxury of France, the softness of Syria, the subtlety and guile of Greece,’ as has been written. We still had riches, not only brought with us from Acre but in broad estates throughout Europe. The care of them inevitably entangled us in worldly concerns. The Lusignan court made us welcome. Oh, very welcome, in a thousand brightly colored ways. Can you imagine the temptation? Can you forgive those brothers who strayed from their vows?”

Lucas grinned. “I find it harder to understand those who did not.” Seriously: “That must be why the Templars are so abhorred.”

“Peace!” commanded Hugh. “Speak no evil of others.” But he shook his head. “They have surely provoked much hostility,” he said unwillingly. “Now the Pope has summoned their Grand Master to reply to certain grave charges--But no matter. I can say for the Hospitallers that we also fell into softness and luxury. Not entirely, I trust. We never forgot . . . ahem! We did maintain our prime purpose, to guard and care for Christian folk. From this island base, we built up a war fleet which escorts travelers and is slowly rooting out the corsairs. And in recent years, under a younger and more vigorous Grand Master, the vice within the Order has been (God grant) eradicated.”

He contemplated Lucas more somberly than before. “D’you take my meaning?” he asked.

“Why--no. I fear not.”

“To be blunt, we’ve no place for you as a laborer. Even if we had not a superfluity of natives who need such posts more than you, I hope we’d be wiser than to hitch a warhorse to the plow. You could only be used for your subtler abilities. As swordsman, of course, where needful; as ancillary ship’s officer; as a man who can read and write and calculate; as an interpreter; as a far-traveled advisor in our dealings with alien peoples. In short, a position of importance.”

At any other time, Lucas would have felt pleased. Now he said, low and afraid, “Why can I not serve?”

“Perhaps you can. Perhaps you can.” Brother Hugh struck the trestle table with his fist. “And yet . . . can’t you see, we who are so close to temptation--which many of us succumbed to in the near past--we dare not make a confidant of someone who has, well, has lived by those very vices. The upshot would harm us and destroy you.”

Lucas felt himself flush. “That charge of witchcraft--”

“Oh, that!” Hugh brushed it away like an unclean insect. “Have no fear. Plainly enough, false witness was borne against you. The Aragonese Inquisition knows better than to meddle with our people!” Quickly curbing himself: “No, I mean this whole wild adventuring you’ve related. No doubt you softened it much for my ears.”

“Frankly,” said Lucas, “yes.”

Hugh struggled with a smile and lost. After getting back his gravity, he said, almost pleading, “In large part you were the victim of circumstance. But not an unwilling victim . . . most of the time . . . were you? Interrupt me not! I know very well how many fanatical sophistries the Hispanic mind can produce to justify its own darkest wishes.

I realize no one can say anything but that you aided the cause of Holy Church, with a few minor fallings from grace as respects women and the like. And yet--”

He laid both hands on Lucas’ shoulders, captured his glance and would not release it. “And yet, my friend,” he said, “do you believe in your soul that Our Lord is pleased with you?”

Lucas fumbled after words. None came. He shook his head.

“You see,” said Hugh, “I want to give you my recommendation for a post with us. My superiors will accept it without question. But therefore can you see how hard it is for me to do?”

Lucas had no answer.

Hugh released him. In a crisp, detached way, the knight said, “You mentioned having come here with a woman. Where is she?”

“I left her and her child in care of the nuns at Kyrenia.”

“Your child, too?”

“Oh, no. Not that one.” Lucas blinked hard, for his eyes had begun to smart.

“You can’t leave her there forever.”

“I know not what to do.”

“Wed her.”

“No!” Lucas added in haste, “She has a husband. He was taken as a slave. If he’s still alive, he must be somewhere in the Turkish lands.”

“Then without a miracle she’ll never see him again. Under the circumstances, her marriage could be dissolved, if a special dispensation seems warranted. Think you she might agree? So she could have a protector and her child a stepfather?”

Lucas bit his lip, remembering nights and words whispered. “Yes. I believe so.”

“Well, then?” Lucas hesitated. Hugh pressed his point: “I’m not only thinking of her welfare. Celibacy seems impossible for you, but as a wedded man you would be reasonably chaste, I hope. I could more readily accept you as a servant of the Order.”

Lucas made his decision. “No. Forgive me, but no.”

“Why? She can hardly be loathsome to you, if--”

“She isn’t,” he blurted. “But do you recall the Circassian slave girl? I hope to get her back. Somehow.”

“Ah, so.” Hugh stood quiet. Lucas tried to place his expression. It came to him: En Jaime de Caza had gazed that way across many years, at a lady who was dead.

“I wouldn’t set that hope high,” the knight mumbled.

“While the chance remains,” Lucas answered, “I cannot take anyone else to wife.”

“Well-a-day,” capitulated Hugh, “we must do what we can for the other, then. There’s a charitable sisterhood attached to this Order. I think I could find a place for her with them. Not as a novice, but as an indwelling helper. And perhaps, in the end, who knows? She might meet a worthy man. Of course, she’d have to embrace the true Church.”

“That’s no obstacle,” said Lucas with relief. He forbore to explain that anybody prepared to leave Christendom altogether would find it a small step from one sect to another.

“This slave girl,” Hugh said roughly. “Use your wits. She most likely was sold the day after you fled.”

“I trust not. I left her with that grandee I spoke of, who was my one true friend. If I could only get back--”

“You’d hazard your life. The Order will not be sending ships to Gallipoli, and who else would protect you?” Lucas shrugged.

“In no case could you depart before spring,” said Hugh. “The equinoctial gales are here. You were fortunate to survive your own passage. No skippers I know of plan to leave harbor.”

“Then I must wait till they do.”

Hugh examined his fingertips as if seeing their loops and whorls for the first time. “I’ve sought out your old foe, the merchant Gasparo Reni,” he said. “He has a leading part in the Venetian factory. When I first came back here and heard the tale of your arrest and escape, I thought you most likely dead. I urged him for the sake of Our Redeemer and his own soul, as well as yours, to forgive and pray for you. He would not. He’s wintering at Famagusta.”

“Well?” said Lucas.

“Quite apart from seemliness,” Hugh told him, “a factotum of the Order would have his usefulness impaired--would even be a detriment--if he was outlaw in Venice and at feud with a powerful man who’s well thought of by the Cyprian nobles. Now I think I can, ah, arrange certain pressures. Reni might find it more convenient to swear peace with you and withdraw his charges, than not. Yet this would be a corrupt act of mine did it not work toward a genuine reconciliation. You have wronged him, Lucas. You must make amends. Are you willing?”