The Dagger and the Cross (36 page)

A good part of that was pregnancy, but some was what she
always felt when she thought of Aimery. He had been taken away from her when he
was a baby and sent to be fostered where his father saw an advantage. Ranulf
was young then; he never thought to ask his wife if she wanted to give up her
baby. That was why Ysabel was born. Joanna left her husband, hating him for
what he had done, and went first to her mother, then to her mother’s kin in
Aleppo.

Aidan went with her, because there was an Assassin on her
track, and he thought he could protect her. He did not do that very
well—Morgiana caught her in Aleppo, and almost killed her—but he fell in love
with Joanna, and Joanna with him. She chose Ranulf in the end, and Ranulf let
her have Aimery, but by then she was carrying Ysabel. It was all tangled up in
her, and Aimery most of all. He thought she did not love him. It was not that
at all. She loved him too much. It made her do and say all the wrong things, at
all the wrong times.

Ysabel left her to brood over the bit of parchment. Akiva
had proved himself a surprisingly good horseman; after a day on one of the
servants’ nags, he was given leave to ride Joanna’s own tempestuous mare. She
was one of Aidan’s beauties; she had the fire of her Arab kin, and the size and
strength of her Frankish sire. Akiva sat her easily, undaunted by her fits of
temper.

Ysabel came up beside him, her own mare dancing and playing
with the bit. Her eyes were on the ones who rode just ahead of him. Guillermo
Seco would not condescend to notice a horseboy in the coat and cap of a Jew,
still less a mere girl, but Messer Marco took time to be scornful.

“He shouldn’t turn up his nose so high,” Ysabel said,
precise and clear. “It makes him sit his horse even worse than he would to
begin with.”

Akiva knew what she was doing. His eye sparked on her. “To
be sure, my lady, we can’t all be born to the saddle. I wonder, did he learn by
riding camels in the caravans? They look just like that, rocking and swaying
and snapping their reins.”

“His poor horse,” said Ysabel. “Tell me, who taught
you
to
ride? Was it the King of Rhiyana?”

“His very own self,” Akiva answered her. They were both
gratified to see Marco’s shoulders stiffen. “I’m to be a secretary, of course,
and a scholar of the Torah, but my lord says that no man, even a scholar, ought
to live forever within four walls. He taught me to ride, for that, and to shoot
a little.”

“Not to use a sword?”

“I’ve no art in that, and no time to learn. I’ll have to
trust to him if it comes down to bared steel.”

“Or you can trust to his brother’s lady. She was an
Assassin, after all. She can hunt like a tigress in the night, and she never
loses her quarry.”

“Ah,” said Akiva. “Yes. Is she hunting still, do you think?
She wasn’t happy at all to be cheated of her wedding. I’d not like to be the
man who did it to her.”

“Nor I,” Ysabel said, and her shiver was real enough. If
Marco had been a dog, he would have been prick-eared and trembling and whining
with anxiety. “Maybe she’s found him, or is about to. He’d be distracted with
the war; thinking he’s safe. Ripe for her taking.”

“God help him then,” Akiva said.

Marco broke at that. He hauled his horse bodily out of the
line and said something to his father about seeing to the camels. He had to
ride past the children to do it. They were careful to be innocent, offering him
smiles and lifted hands. He ducked his head and dug heels into his gelding’s
sides.

“That was cruel.” Akiva spoke much softer now than he had a
moment ago.

“He deserved it,” said Ysabel. “He was worse than cruel to
Morgiana and my uncle.” She was careful to say it that way, here where people
could listen if they were minded. No one seemed to be. The merchant would not
stoop to, and the fat monk looked to be asleep on his mule.

She fixed her eyes on the monk’s broad back. He knew what
she needed to know. She was sure of it. But there was no getting into his mind.
There might be ways of tricking him into dropping the wards; she could not
think of any, though she tried. Her snare was still set, still waiting for the
stray thought that would catch him.

She could be patient, if that was what she needed. She could
hide herself down deep, be all human and all harmless, and let him betray
himself. Men had trouble enough paying attention to women. To monks, women were
not there at all, except as bodies to be preached against. And a small
girlchild on a horse that seemed a bit too much for her, however noble her
family, was the next thing to invisible.

Not if he paid any attention to what we were saying.

She glanced at Akiva. He was working a tangle out of his
horse’s mane.

He didn’t, she said. His ears aren’t as good as that. I don’t
think he has a guilty conscience, either.

I don’t think he has a conscience at all. Akiva frowned at
the worst of the knot. How can a horse get elflocks just walking on the road?

Think about what’s riding her.
Ysabel swatted a fly
on her mare’s neck. Akiva had stopped being aware of her. He was trying what
she had tried: to insinuate himself through a chink in the monk’s wards. He had
no more luck than she had, and came out rather less intact. His face was
bloodless; his eyes were holes in it, with all the fire gone out of them.

She snatched in sudden fear, with mind and hand both. He was
there to both, though he was cold and shaking. “No more,” she said.
“No
more.”

He nodded as if his head were too heavy, almost, to lift,
but it was more assent than exhaustion. His eyes closed.
They’re too strong
for us. We need the grownfolk.

We’ll have them, Ysabel said. Soon.

After the war.

Soon,
she said.

The arrival in Acre of the lady of Mortmain with her
children and her guardsmen and all her attendants took Elen somewhat by
surprise. She had expected it; there had been messages, and she had seen that
the house was in order for their coming. But there were so many of them, and
they made such noise after the quiet of her solitude. She almost resented them.
The queen was gone days since to Jerusalem and then to Nablus; she had not been
able to persuade Elen to follow her. Elen had been content to be alone, to
drift and to dream; to weep when her courses came in their due time, and she
could not have told whether it was relief or regret. She was hopelessly
besotted with a man who might be dead before the summer was out; and though she
could pray that he would be safe, she knew all too well that he could not come
back and be her lover.

All these noisy crowding people did their best to drive him
out of her mind. The children needed chasing after, the servants needed
watching over, the house needed these stores and that improvement in its
furnishings, and someone had to mend the tiles on the roof over the gate.
Joanna, grown enormous with the approach of her time, still seemed to be
everywhere at once, even when she did not leave her chair in the solar. She was
shameless in making Elen her hands and feet. “You can run,” she said, “and I
can’t. And you’re looking a little too pallid for my peace of mind. Your uncles
will never forgive you if you pine away for their sakes.”

“I’m not,” Elen said, but she went where she was bidden and
did as she was told. She felt as young as Ysabel, and fully as rebellious.

When she came back, Joanna let her sink into a chair. A
servant brought her sherbet cooled with snow from Mount Hermon. Somehow,
without her noticing it, high summer had come in: summer as high as the sun in
this country, with a heavy, clinging heat. Elen had been persuaded to forsake
western swathings for the thin silks of the east. She was all in eastern dress
today, except for the veil. She let her mantle fall over the back of her chair
and daringly enough, even with no one but Joanna and her maid and the single
servant to see, sat bare-armed and silken-trousered and blessedly cool in the
dim, airy room.

Joanna shifted in her chair, waving off the maid and the
servant. She was in pain, Elen knew: her back was always troublesome, and the
baby, growing large, kicked hard enough to bruise. But Joanna was never one to
bow to any will but her own, even when that will was her body’s, readying itself
to give birth.

“Not quite yet,” Joanna said, catching Elen’s eyes on her
mountainous middle. She sat up a little straighter, brushed a stray lock of
hair out of her face. “What I wouldn’t give for a good, hard gallop under an
open sky...” She grimaced, shook her head. “I’ll get one soon enough, once this
little monster has got itself born.”

“Maybe we’ll ride together,” said Elen.

Joanna’s glance was sharp. “You’ve been keeping yourself
mewed up like a nun. Why? Do you think the sacrifice will keep the army safe?”

“No.” Elen tried to keep her voice light, to keep her temper
out of it. “I haven’t wanted to go out, that’s all. There’s always enough to do
in the house or round about the market.”

“The day’s heat comes up fast, this time of year.”

Joanna seemed almost to be thinking aloud. She shrugged. “It’s
your folly. If I were young and thin, I’d ride in the mornings and bring back
meat for the pot.”

“Do you want me to?”

Elen’s sharpness ruffled Joanna not at all. “No. I’m just
feeling sorry for myself. This is going to be the last, you know. Ranulf and I,
we agreed. I’ve done my duty by him, and he’s pleased with me. He won’t ask me
to go through this again.”

Elen lowered her eyes, abashed. She had been too caught up
in her troubles to notice that Joanna had troubles of her own. Elen did not
think Joanna old, nor did she look it, even swollen with pregnancy; she had all
her teeth, her hair was nigh as fine and fully as thick as Ysabel’s, and the
lines that marked her face were lines of laughter. But she was close to thirty;
she had borne nine children. Even her husband could hardly fault her for
wanting to end it.

“I’m sorry,” Elen said, “that you have to—give up-”

“He’s not the greatest lover in the world,” Joanna said.

Elen blushed. It was like Joanna to go straight to the
point.

“He won’t suffer,” said Joanna. “No more than he has when I’ve
been pregnant and not wanting him. What we’ve had together, what’s been most
real, we’ll still have that. The children. The lands and the people on them.
The two of us working side by side. It took me a while and cost me a bit, but I’ve
learned to understand him. We do well together.”

“But,” Elen said. “How can you let him go to another woman’s
bed?”

For a moment Joanna looked like another woman altogether: a
woman of no age at all, wearing no expression. “How can I stop him? He takes
pleasure where he pleases, but I’m the one he comes back to. I’m the one he
calls lady and wife.”

“Have you ever wondered,” Elen said, “what it would be like
if a woman were as free to choose her dalliance as a man is?”

Joanna’s face did not change. “I’ve wondered. I’ve seen what
comes of it.” She spread her hands on the dome of her belly. “It’s how I know
that God is male. He would never have given His own sex so much of the burden.”

“You mind so much?”

Joanna laughed, and suddenly she was herself again. “Of
course I mind! I’m ready to kick this monster out the door. When I’m in my
right mind, I’m more sensible. I wouldn’t want to be a man. Poor half-baked
things, they’re terrified of us; of the power that’s in us.”

“Is that why they tell us we’re so much less than they?”

“Why, aren’t you feeling your feminine fragility these days?”

Elen’s laughter was rusty with disuse. “I’m feeling ready to
snatch up a sword and gallop off to join the army. That’s the worst of being a
woman. Having to sit at home and wait.”

“And hold the world together while the men do their best to
tear it apart. War,” said Joanna, “is pure idiocy.” She heaved herself up as if
she could not bear to sit still. “Come out to the garden with me.”

Elen went with her, offering an arm for her to take. She
ignored it. Her gait was ungainly but oddly graceful. Without the weight of the
child, she would walk like a lioness, in long powerful strides. Yet for all her
size and evident strength, there was nothing masculine about her; she was
strong and a woman and—yes—glad to be that, even at the worst of it.

They did not walk long in the garden. Even in the shade it
was hot.

As they turned back to the house, Elen could not hold in any
longer what she had heard in the market. “Tiberias has fallen,” she said. “The
army has left its camp at Cresson. They’re going to try to win back the city.”

Joanna stopped short. Her hands locked on Elen’s arm. “Why
didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I didn’t want to upset you.” Even as she said it, Elen
hardly believed it. She did not want to face it herself. She had been a coward;
she had let herself be distracted, away from fear, toward the little matters of
women.

Carefully Joanna unlocked her fingers. Drew a breath. Made
an effort to compose her face. “People always seem to think I’ll drop the baby
at a word. What else have you been keeping from me?”

“Nothing,” said Elen. “That’s the news that just came in. I
had it from one of the Lord Marshal’s servants, who heard it as he went out on
his errand. Saladin has Tiberias; the countess is barricaded in the citadel;
the army is going to win her free.”

“From Cresson to Tiberias? At this time of year? Have they
gone stark mad?”

Elen could not understand why she was so appalled. “It’s
only a few leagues, isn’t it?”

“Five,” said Joanna. “As the vulture flies. In July. In this
heat. With no water for an army, anywhere on the plain. Why didn’t they stay at
Cresson like sane human beings, and wait for the sultan to come to them?”