The Dagger and the Cross (2 page)

The others, the knights and nobles from Rhiyana, were
nobodies. Some had handsome faces; some had pleasant voices. They were not as
rough as the usual lot of newcomers. They were a little shocked by Aidan’s
guards, but never as shocked as the raw recruits who came in with every ship
from Normandy or Anjou or Anglia. Those were always appalled, and always trying
to a pick a fight over the presence of turbaned infidels in good Christian
company. They were even more outraged when they were told that those infidels
had been mamluks of the Syrian sultan: soldier-slaves of Saladin himself, and
now of a Christian prince, who never made the least effort to convert them to
the one true faith. Aidan was always defending his honor in passages of arms,
and always winning. He was the best knight in Outremer; Ysabel knew that he was
the best knight in the world.

The Rhiyanans were not exactly comfortable in front of so
many turbans. But they had practice in accepting the unacceptable. Their king
was something even worse, in some minds, than a Saracen, and he kept odd
company. The man who was closest to his right hand, backing him in everything
he said to the king’s officers, was no more a Christian than Arslan or Raihan,
though he was no Muslim, either. Simeon bar-Daniel could not be his majesty’s
chancellor—that was not allowed a Jew—but he could be his majesty’s advisor,
and his privy secretary. Ysabel could see that the king was his friend; they
were easy with one another, even preserving appearances in front of strangers.

No; they were all pleasant enough. It was Elen whom Ysabel
could not warm to. Aidan called her
catling;
and that was Ysabel’s name,
never mind that she flew into a rage whenever he called her by it. And he
talked to her the way he talked to Ysabel, as if he had known her from a baby,
and loved her, and thought of her as his favorite niece.

“She is his favorite niece,” said the boy who had been
standing next to Ysabel for rather longer than she had deigned to notice.

He was hard to ignore, once he had spoken. He was some
inches taller than herself, and some few years older, and the cap on his head
and the riot of curly hair under it, with the striped gown, marked him another
Jew. And—

“You weren’t supposed to hear that!”

He did not even have the sense to blush. “You were shouting
it for the deaf to hear.”

“You
aren’t—” She stopped. Stared. Peered close. He
stared back. His eyes were as big and liquid-dark as a fawn’s, but never as
gentle. There was a spark in them; it kindled green. “Who are you?”

He swept a bow. “Akiva bar-Simeon, at my lady’s service.”

She was bursting with questions; she could tell that he
would be all too pleased to answer. Therefore, she asked none of them. “Do you
mean that?”

“I always mean what I say.”

She snorted, not delicately. “So, then. Promise you won’t do
it again.”

“What if you want me to?”

“Then I’ll tell you.”

“That’s fair,” said Akiva. He must have been studying the
king, to be so flawlessly calm. “Elen
is
his favorite niece. Also his
only one.”

“Not here, she isn’t,” Ysabel said darkly.

Akiva started to say something, thought better of it. Which
was very wise of him.

“He is my uncle,” said Ysabel. “He loves me best. He belongs
to me.”

“Have you asked him what he thinks of that?”

“He knows,” she said, as loftily as she could.

Akiva had sense. He did not argue with her.

o0o

The house was, as always, in an uproar. Joanna had, as
always, made a valiant effort to settle it, then given in to it. It always
managed to find its own peace, whatever she did. Even today, at the height of
the pilgrim season, with the King of Rhiyana expected at any moment.

Ranulf had fled, pleading business that could not wait.
Lucky man. He would come back in his own good time, and expect to find
everything in perfect order.

As, she vowed grimly, it would be. The kitchen was well
employed in preparing the banquet. The hall would be ready as soon as the
steward finished howling dirges over the cloth for the high table, which had been
abducted to serve as a pavilion when the children played at Franks and
Saracens. It was hardly their fault that Ranulf’s wolfhound had chosen to
pursue the kitchen cat straight through the makeshift tent, right after the dog
had had a long and thorough roll in the midden. But now they were one cloth
short, and Aimery had been sent to the market for another, and knowing that
lad, he would be most of the morning about it.

The younger children, at least, were safe in the nursery,
with ample occupation. She could hear them now and then, when one of them
struck a high note in the chorus. Once she heard a crash and a bellow. That
would be Conrad, in his office of concertmaster. Sour notes appalled him; an
excess thereof induced him to throw tilings, preferably at the offender’s head.
Since he was a mamluk when he was not a music master, he seldom missed.

She caught a page flying doorward, and deflected him
hallward. “My lord’s best cups,” she said. “Fetch. Polish. Now!”

The imp vanished. He would do as he was told, or his
backside would remember it.

She continued her march on the solar. Her back was aching
already. She set her fist against the pain and willed it away. Six children
living, two more dead in infancy, a ninth big enough now to kick: one should
expect to pay a price for such singular good fortune. One did not have to be
happy with it.

There was someone waiting in the wide cool chamber with its
tiles from Isfahan. Joanna forgot the aches in back and head, and remembered
only joy. “Mother!”

Lady Margaret de Hautecourt rose for her daughter’s embrace.
Joanna laughed as always to find her so small and herself so large, a little
round dumpling of a woman beside her great Norman tower of a daughter. Margaret
was half a Saracen. Joanna was all of her father’s kin, as tall as a man and
broad to match, broader now with the baby in her belly. She kissed her mother
soundly on both cheeks, and embraced her again for good measure. “Oh, Mother! I’m
so glad you’ve come.”

“As am I, to be here,” Margaret said, once Joanna let her
go. Her smooth braids were unruffled under the veil, her dark plain gown
uncreased. Joanna, who could never keep tidy when she had things to do, brushed
half-heartedly at hair and gown, and gave it up.

“It’s all in order,” she said, “though it doesn’t look it.”

“To me it does.” Margaret sat, as serene as if she had not
just ridden up from Jerusalem, and favored her daughter with a smile. “You have
an art all your own. Order in chaos. One word, and all of it falls into place.”

“It’s not that easy,” muttered Joanna; but it warmed her,
that praise. Margaret never dispensed it lightly.

“Now,” said Margaret. “What would you have me do?”

“Sit here,” Joanna answered her promptly. “Rest. Keep me
company while I untangle these accounts. They’d have been done days ago, but
the bailiff had a fever, and he didn’t bring them till this morning, and of
course they can’t wait.” While she talked, she readied book and ink and pens. “Will
you have wine? Water? Sherbet?”

“I’ve been seen to,” Margaret said.

As Joanna beat her way through the thicket of figures, she
glanced now and then at her mother. Margaret was a haven of quiet, sitting
where the sun slanted through one of the high narrow windows, perhaps drowsing,
perhaps telling the beads which glowed honey-gold between her fingers. She
could have been of either world, of Christendom or the House of Islam; a
peaceful, aging woman in somber black, nodding in the sun.

She was not so terribly old, nor so very unlovely under the
widow’s weeds. She was still sought after for her lands and her wealth, and not
a little for her person. But that part of her duty, she had decided long since,
was done. One husband to please her father: he gave her Joanna, and the son who
had fallen to an Assassin’s dagger nigh eleven years ago. One husband to please
herself: the young knight from Rhiyana, whom also the Assassin took. There
would be no other. She ruled her demesne in her own right, and answered for it
to no man, except the king in Jerusalem.

Joanna stifled a sigh. Not for envy, not exactly. She had
married to please her mother, and learned to please herself. Ranulf was a good
husband. He respected his wife, and when he had other women he did not flaunt
them where she could see. He was proud of his sons; he doted on his daughters. Even
the odd one. Even—

She did not let herself think of that. It was done. There
was no mending it. Nor would she, could she, regret it. Ranulf loved the one he
called his princess, never knowing how close he came to the truth. He did not
need to know. The others since were proof enough, and surety.

Joanna was all that a wife should be. She had given him sons
to be his heirs, and daughters to trade in fine marriages. And one who was his
in the ways that mattered, and called him father, and never knew the truth.

The line of figures blurred. Joanna blinked fiercely. Eleven
years. Seven children since. And it could still twist her vitals.

He
had never said a word. Once the bargain was made,
the lines drawn, he never stepped outside of them. She was a baron’s lady of
Acre. He was her proper, royal kinsman. The children called him
uncle,
though
he was only that by courtesy: Margaret had wedded his sister’s son. Canon
lawyers would reckon that close enough. For Joanna it was appallingly close,
and deadly far away. The width of a child’s body, or a woman’s marriage vows.

She bit her lip until it bled. The pain helped a little. She
was a lady and a wife, and many times a mother. He was preparing for his
wedding.

More fool she, to offer her house and her hospitality, since
his brother must come through Acre. It was both generous and proper. It was
also a penance. She would see him happy, and not with her. She would, within
the fortnight, see him wedded to another woman.

It shocked her, how much it hurt. She had had ten years and
more to learn to bear it; to see them together; to know that there was no
parting them. But they had never properly been husband and wife. They had taken
oaths, and being perfectly matched in stubbornness as in all else, had held to
them. Prince Aidan was a Christian. The Lady Morgiana was a Muslim. She would
not forsake her faith. He would not compel her. Neither would he take her to
wife, except with the blessing of holy Church.

Which it, in the person of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, would
not grant while she remained an infidel. Lovers they might be, and a long
joyous life of sin they had led in their castle of Millefleurs on the marches
of Syria, but married, they were not. That needed the pope’s decree.

And now it was won. Aidan’s brother brought it on the ship
which Aidan had gone to meet. They would present it in Jerusalem on the wedding
day; the Patriarch would perforce accept it; and the Church would bless the
union. And Joanna would smile bravely, and pray that no one noticed her clenched
teeth.

o0o

At least she need not dance at the wedding. Her condition
was good for something besides an aching back.

She straightened it and yawned. Her mother glanced at her.
She bent over the ledger, glaring at it. From Hakim Ali the rais of al-Rabat,
four ells of fine muslin cloth, two being white, two dyed with indigo...

o0o

Morgiana had no patience with the nigglings of a lady’s
duties. In Millefleurs the bailiff did it, or more properly the bailiff’s wife,
whose head for figures was nothing short of miraculous. What Morgiana did was
keep those figures in a proper balance: high enough coming in and low enough
going out to suit Rashida. Morgiana, as her Frank was fond of saying, was a
true Muslim: a merchant to the marrow.

Her Frank, as she was fond of telling him, had not the
faintest notion of what a merchant was. Lady Margaret and her kin were
merchants. Morgiana was a traveler and a haggler and a magpie for treasure.
Booty was best, but he objected, and called it stealing. Buying at bone-pared
prices was well enough, and sometimes better sport.

The prices in Acre were ridiculous, on both sides of it.
Franks had no conception of commerce; they were shockingly easy to cheat. The
merchants from the Italies, who had studied in the markets of the east, took shameless
advantage of such innocence. Time was when she would gleefully have abetted
them, but she was of Outremer now, and in a fortnight she would be a baroness
of the High Court of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

She hugged herself and danced a step or two, not caring who
stared. The Christians’ pope had commanded it. Allah knew, it had taken five of
them, and two not even proper popes, and then the King of Rhiyana himself with
all the power that he could bring to bear; but now at last it was done. She
would be in name what she had been in fact since a night in the desert of
Persia which could still warm her with the memory; and he would be happy, which
mattered more than anything.

She stopped. The crowds parted to pass her; she barely
noticed. Maybe when the words were said, Allah would allow and the Christian
God would listen, and she would have the child she wanted. That great Frankish
cow in her house near the winter palace—she had a whole herd of them, and
always another coming, and even, most unforgivable of all, one of his. And
Morgiana had none. Not even a lost one, to show that she was not barren.

The Frank never balked at sharing the cuckoo in her nest.
Easy generosity. She had more than enough to spare.

“She should have been mine,” Morgiana said aloud, unheard
amid the clamor of Acre. “
I
should have borne and suckled her. She
should have been my daughter!”

Soon, Allah willing, there would be one who was. Morgiana
began to walk again, her temper calming, her joy coming back. Joanna had
Ysabel, but Morgiana had her prince; and he had no eyes, now, for any other
woman.