The Dagger and the Cross (12 page)

Or at least for Aidan’s. The prince did not know yet that
his bride had decided, late as it was, to be properly chaste. When he learned it,
he might need his brother’s steadying hand.

Gwydion knew duty when it beckoned. He put on shirt and
cotte, and followed where it led.

By the morning of his wedding, Aidan had reached a fine
pitch of temper. Morgiana was taken away from him, walled up in Lady Margaret’s
house. He should have had diversions enough, with all the mischief the young
bloods of court and city could devise for a new bridegroom, but he did not want
mischief. He wanted Morgiana.

He had at least got rid of most of the army that had haled
him out of bed. There were enough still to make a princely number, first in the
bath, then to cut his hair and beard and to be growled at when they would have
curled and scented one or both, and to stand over him while he resisted a sop
of fine white bread in wine and spices.

“Eat it,” said Gwydion, sitting by him and taking his own
advice. “You may not want it now, but your stomach is sure to object, loudly,
when you most need it to be still.”

“What, do you think I’ve never been out in public before?”
But Aidan took the bowl, regarded its contents without favor, choked down a
bite or two. His stomach clenched.

Gwydion came round behind him and worked deft, merciless
fingers into the knots of neck and shoulders and back. His stomach settled,
only a little, but enough to accept what he fed it. There was cheese with the
bread, and an orange from his own trees. He found that he had an appetite after
all.

Gwydion’s approval flowed warm and tingling through Aidan’s
skin. “You were always more sensible than I,” he said.

Aidan slanted a glance over his shoulder.

“Truly,” said Gwydion. “Do you remember the morning of my
wedding?”

Aidan snorted. “Remember it? How could I forget? You drank
enough wine at dinner the night before to sink the fleet, and never mind that
it was no more to you than a moment’s dizziness; then you refused to sleep,
because, you said, if you did you might wake and find it all a dream; and when
we came to dress you, you had decided that Christian marriage was not what you
wanted at all, and you tried to convince me that I should take the crown and
you should elope with the lady. I proposed an exchange—you keep the crown, I
take the lady—and you did your best to throttle me. You wouldn’t eat, either.
Or sit still. Or let anyone near enough to you to dress you. You were almost
late to the wedding.”

“You see? Now, you have sense. You drank no more than you
should, you roistered only halfway till cockcrow, then you actually slept. And
here you sit as calmly as you ever can, with breakfast in you.”

“It would serve you right,” Aidan muttered, “if I lost it
all over you.” He swallowed. “Gwydion, do you think we need all this? Muslim
marriage is so much simpler. One calls the
qadi,
he approves the
contract, one says the words, it’s over.”

“That’s no more than Christian marriage is,” Gwydion said. “As
this is, under the pageantry. Come, brother, would you disappoint all the
people who have come to see you wedded?”

“You above all,” Aidan said. “No, I can’t turn coward now,
can I? The Patriarch would be too purely delighted.” His smile was ripe with
malice. “That’s one pleasure I shouldn’t forgo: to make Heraclius say the words
he least likes to say, with the Holy Father’s bidding on him, binding him to
it. And knowing all the while that I know what he is; how he intrigued to
dispose of my lord Baldwin and set Guy in his place. He failed then; it took
Baldwin’s death to give him his victory. But I don’t forget.”

“You are not the most charitable of men,” Gwydion said.

“Why should I be? I’m not a man.” Aidan stood, stretched.
His back had tensed again, but the knots were out of it. It was a pleasurable
tension, an edge of excitement. “It’s time,” he said in dawning delight. “It’s
really time. I’m going to have her as I wanted her, for all the world to see.”

o0o

Morgiana knew no barrier to her own gladness. She could even
endure the flutter of women about her, because soon it would be over, and she
would be as beautiful as she could be. The maids shared her mood. They loved to
be in on the secret; not one had betrayed it, though it was a sore temptation.
The Rhiyanan, the princess, who never needed to remind herself not to be afraid
of the infamous lady of the Assassins, caught Morgiana’s eye in the mirror and
grinned, as wide and white and irrepressible as Aidan himself.

“He is going to fall in love with you all over again,” Elen
said.

One of the others giggled. “As if he needed to! My husband
tells me he was pawing the ground last night like a stag in rut, and
threatening to storm the house and snatch you away. I wish he had,” she said
wistfully. “It would have been a sight to see.”

“So would he, when I was finished with him.” Morgiana turned
her head from side to side, frowning. “Are you sure I should have my hair in
all these braids?”

Elen smoothed the last one into its coil and beckoned. Two
of the deftest maids came with the veil, a drift of the finest cobweb silk, and
settled it over the woven intricacy of Morgiana’s hair. “You look like a queen,”
Elen said. Her grey eyes glinted, wicked. “Only think. How delighted he will
be, to take it all down.”

Morgiana blushed. The others laughed. They all knew what a
wedding was in aid of; and they all, even those who had husbands with whom they
were well content, were a little in love with her prince.
The young moon in
Ramadan,
the Muslims said of him. The fairest knight in the world, the
Franks decreed. Even beautiful, hollow King Guy was no threat to his
sovereignty.

By the noon prayer it would be done. He would belong to her
and she to him, before God and man. God knew it already. Man, being slower to
understand, needed proof: this rite and this panoply.

The veil was settled to the maids’ satisfaction. Morgiana
met her own eyes in the silver mirror as if they had been a stranger’s. They
had decided not to paint her face, after some discussion: it was too pure an
ivory, paint would only sully it. There was paint about her eyes, a shimmer
only, a whisper of kohl.

She looked like a queen. She, the nameless spirit out of
Persia, the Assassin’s servant, the Slave of Alamut. She shivered, cold in her
splendor. What was she doing? How had she let it come to this? He was Frank,
prince, infidel. He had hated her before she taught him to love her; before he
learned to forgive her the murder of his kin. Did he love her now? Or did he
only bow to the inevitable?

“There,” said Elen. “There now, it’s perfectly proper to be
afraid; and better now than in front of the priest. Cry, even, if you need to.
There’s time yet.”

“I can’t cry. I’ll smear the paint.”

“Then we’ll simply put it back on again.”

“No,” said Morgiana, stiffening her back. “I’m no quaking
virgin. He will still be he, when we speak the words; and I will still be I.
This was decided the first time I saw him. There’s no changing it.”

“Nor do you want to,” said Elen as if she had power and
could know. She set a kiss on Morgiana’s cheek, light and warm. “For luck, and
for kinship. I’m pleased to have you in our family.”

Morgiana almost broke then. But her temper was stronger than
tears. She quelled them with a formidable scowl, and then with the shaky
beginning of a smile. “I’m pleased to be in it,” she said.

o0o

No one, seeing the Prince of Caer Gwent ride in procession
to his wedding, would have suspected the depth of his morning terrors. They
were still there, but buried deep, with his foot set firmly on them. He was all
royal, and he knew what beauty he had, he in scarlet silk and cloth of gold,
crowned not with gold but with flowers. His mount was a wedding gift from the
Sultan of Egypt and Syria, from Saladin himself, a blood-bay mare of the Arab
blood, rare for both her height and her quality; she danced beneath him,
tossing her head, so that the bells on her caparisons sang silver-sweet. The
canopy over him was gold, the bearers his mamluks in scarlet and gold, the rest
before him to open his way, and behind him the riding of his friends and his
allies and his kinsfolk. He had been astonished to see how many they were.
Conrad was up to his tricks again: he had found the best voices among them, men
and boys both, and prevailed upon those to ride together, singing. A moment ago
it had been a song to set his ears to burning. Now they were chanting as slow
and sweet and solemn as monks, and it was good Scripture, but it was hardly
meant to cool his blood.

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. Because of the savour of
thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the
virgins love thee...

And that was only the beginning of it. Someone had got at
Conrad; he knew nothing of Scripture, only holy Koran. Someone was going to
pay, and dearly.

Even, he said in his mind, if that someone is my brother.

Gwydion’s laughter, as silent as the words, was all the
answer Aidan won.

And after all it was a wedding procession, with all of
Jerusalem come to see it pass, and beggars and pilgrims scrambling for the
largesse which the pages cast. Copper only, for the ride to the Holy Sepulcher.
When he came back with his lady beside him, it would be silver, and at the
wedding feast, gold.

Even copper was something to be glad of, if one were a
penniless pilgrim. That gladness warmed him; and the blessings that came with
it. Simple folk were not as given to cursing him, or to calling him witch and
infidel, as were their alleged betters.

He was marveled at, exclaimed over, even loved. It startled
him, how many of them had more than liking for him. He did no more for them
than a prince should, if certainly no less.

They came down the Street of the Temple and through the
market that paused to see them pass, and into David’s Street, and turned right
on the Street of the Patriarch, with the dome of Holy Sepulcher high on its
hill before them. Another company advanced toward them, singing as they sang,
but in the high sweet voices of women.

Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women?
whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee.

My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of
spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.

I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth
among the lilies.

Aidan’s heart leaped. She was there under a canopy which was
the mate of his, on her blood-bay stallion that for looks could have been the
brother of his mare: a shimmer of green in the bright field of her women,
wrapped in veils as she always was, and closed away from his mind. She wanted
to come to him all new, as a maiden would; as she had come that first night,
and come through fear to lasting joy.

It was all Aidan could do not to spur toward her, scatter
all their attendants, sweep her away. His mare would have been glad to do it.
She had no more love than he did for this crawling pace.

There was only a little more of it. The hill of Calvary
waited, and a path opened for them, cleared of pilgrims; though there were
throngs enough of them about, gluttonous for spectacle. He reached it first, as
was proper, and left his horse there, and mounted up to the most holy precinct
in Christendom.

He hardly saw it, or the great ones crowded into it. His
mind, and then his eyes, were all for the figure which guarded the inner gate:
the Patriarch of Jerusalem in splendor to rival his own, in a phalanx of
acolytes. He was not, despite appearances, forbidding entry to the church.
Those who would wed must wed before the door, since what they would do was
reckoned both sin and sacrament. Once they had spoken their vows and received
the blessing, then they were permitted within. Aidan had insisted on that.
There could be no nuptial mass for a bride who was an infidel, but she could
hear the day’s mass, and share as much of it with him as her faith would allow.

Heraclius was making the best of it. He was not smiling, but
neither was he scowling as blackly as he usually did on sight of Aidan. Aidan
loathed him cordially, but today he almost—almost—could love him, because he
was going to say the words which Aidan had done ten years’ battle to hear.

Aidan paused in front of him and bowed, and kissed his ring.
Heraclius endured it with rigid composure. He did not give Aidan the blessing.
Aidan, for the moment, forgave him.

Morgiana had mounted the steep hill and passed through the
outer gate between the pillars from Byzantium. Her women fell in about her, but
she walked as if she were alone, very small and very erect in that most
Christian of holy places, wrapped in her veils. Even her hands and her eyes
were hidden. The women’s voices wove through the heavy air, chanting softly
now, but clearly.

A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut
up, a fountain sealed...

A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and
streams from Lebanon...

It was not Aidan who came to take her hand, but Aidan’s
brother, acting for the family which she had never had. Aidan, seeing them, was
briefly dizzy. This was what folk would see when he stood beside her: that tall
young man with his eagle’s face, towering over her, bending his head to murmur
a word. Within the shrouding veils, she nodded. Two of her women came behind
her—one of them was Elen; Aidan had not even seen her—and lifted the veils.

A gasp ran through the court and up to heaven. One veil was
left, fragile as a spider’s weaving, floating atop her hair. The sun turned the
woven coils the color of wine in crystal, with a shimmer of copper and gold.
Her face shone beneath it, an image carved in ivory. Her gown was a Frankish
gown, as her bared face was a Frankish custom, but it was made of golden silk
and of cloth of gold, and all her jewels were gold and emerald.