The Dagger and the Cross (44 page)

Someone else ran past her. Akiva. He had been asleep. How
had he roused so soon? How could he move so fast?

Even he was not quick enough to catch Ysabel. Elen saw her
climb out onto a crenel, not even troubling to hold on. And saw her leap.

o0o

How Elen came down from the wall to the gate, she never
remembered. One moment she was by the gatehouse, watching a child fall to her
certain death. The next, she was past the great echoing arch on the white sand
of the road, and Akiva was beside her, and the riders were milling to a halt
before her.

Ysabel was not dead and broken at her uncle’s feet. She was
in his arms, where she had flown—flown! Her arms were locked about his neck; he
held her with his horse patiently still beneath them both, and rocked her and
murmured words which Elen had no ears to hear.

Guards and hangers-on had run even as Elen had. They halted
as she had, staring, and some crossed themselves. A miracle, they said. That
the rider should be there, precisely where the child fell; that he had caught
her. No one said what most must have seen too clearly: that she should have
come down a good horselength from where she clung and trembled and wept. And
that she had come down as lightly as a bird landing, not even rocking the
prince in his saddle. She wept because he had come back, and he was whole, and
she was, when she drew up straight on the saddlebow, furious. “Don’t you ever,”
she said clearly. “Don’t you ever go away and leave me again.”

Elen, caught between shock and dawning anger, saw more
keenly than she had ever known she could. Aidan’s face as he looked down at
Joanna’s eldest daughter. Ysabel as she clung there, hands fisted in his coat,
glaring through tears. Ysabel was her mother’s daughter, indisputably.

She was also her father’s.

It did not, on reflection, come as a surprise. Once one
knew, one could see; and not only that the child was witchborn. She would grow
to his length and lightness, and she would have his profile, though fined and
softened by her sex.

She knew whose child she was. Elen remembered how Saladin
had looked at her, and how she had spoken to him. Yes, the sultan had seen it
with his clear eye for witchfolk. God’s grace that no one else ever had.

Elen glanced at Morgiana, who had halted beside Gwydion. Her
face was unreadable. Not angry, it seemed, and not visibly jealous. That she
was fond of the child, Elen knew. Fond enough to forgive her for being Aidan’s
daughter?

The tableau shifted. One of the mares squealed; a camel
grunted; the world began to move again. In a flurry of greetings and gladness,
with the guards bidding them
Move on, move on,
Elen took Gwydion’s hand
and swung lightly up to ride pillion behind him. Akiva was with Morgiana on her
devil of a stallion, wide-eyed and white-cheeked but loving it, laughing at
something she said.

Elen folded her arms about Gwydion’s narrow waist and hugged
tightly. She could feel his pleasure and his welcome, even without the hand he
laid on hers. “Thank God and all the saints,” she said, “that you’ve come back
to us.”

o0o

In all the confusion of riding to the caravanserai, fetching
Joanna and the rest of the family, meeting and greeting and settling the beasts
and the baggage, Elen did not speak to Raihan, or even look at him except for
stolen glances. They had ridden back from Damascus by the long way through
Aidan’s castle of Millefleurs; besides the horses, they had stores of food and
wine, and camel-loads of belongings, and coin and gems enough to pay their
share many times over. It all took an eternity to settle; and then there had to
be a feast, and more uproar.

The joy of the riders’ coming was muted by the news they
brought, that at last must be accepted: the lord of Mortmain was dead. The lord
of Mortmain, now, was the boy who greeted his mother with such dignity, whom
war had honed and tempered into the strong beginning of a man.

Neither son nor mother wept. They sat side by side at the
table under the canopy of Mortmain crimson, and showed their people how it must
be. Grief, yes, but there was a war to fight; later would be time enough to
indulge in wailing and gnashing of teeth.

“We buried him on the field of Hattin,” Gwydion said. “He
can be brought back if you will it, and set among his own people.”

Joanna shook her head. “His own people are in Normandy. His lands
are overrun. Let him lie where he fell. There’s honor in that, and glory
enough.”

“He hated fuss,” said Ysabel. Her voice was suspiciously
husky. She would not leave Aidan’s side for anything; it had taken main force
to pry her loose so that he could bathe and rest. He laid his arm about her
now, and murmured in her ear. Whatever he said, it seemed to comfort her. She
stopped picking at her dinner, even ate a little.

It was Salima who put an end to the ordeal. Joanna had a
wetnurse for her, like any sensible lady, but preferred to nurse the child
herself. That she chose to do so now was patently an escape, and for Elen at
least, a reprieve. Most of the newcomers went to rest from their traveling; the
household scattered to their tasks, the children to the ministrations of their
nurse.

The house that had been so large for the number of them was
hard put now to hold them all. Elen surrendered her solitude willingly enough,
to share a chamber with Lady Margaret and their maids and, on her own
recognizance, Ysabel. “My uncle thinks I ought to be your maid,” the child
said. “I know you have Gwenneth, but doesn’t she get tired sometimes?”

“Your uncle,” said Elen, very careful indeed not to set any
burden of irony in the title, “is very kind. What does your mother say?”

Ysabel shrugged. “She’ll be happy. She thinks I need reining
in.”

Elen remembered a leap from the wall of Tyre, and stifled an
urge to laugh. “I think you need jesses and a hood. And a creance, for when you
decide to fly.”

“I forgot,” Ysabel said with gratifying contrition. “I saw
him, and all I wanted was to be with him.”

“You should remember,” Elen said severely. “Yes, you may
stay with me, but you must promise to do as I tell you, and you must do your
utmost to remember what humans can and cannot do.”

“I promise,” said Ysabel, barely pausing to consider. Elen
nodded, unsmiling. “You may begin by helping me with my dress.”

o0o

The others were asleep: Lady Margaret in the bed with Elen,
and Ysabel; the maids on pallets on the floor. The air in the room, even with
the shutters wide, was hot and close. Flies buzzed beyond the bed-curtains.

Elen lay stiff and still. Her mind would not stop circling.
One word only; that was all.
Alive, alive, alive.

He had never glanced at her. Not once. He kept to his own
kind, more apart than ever: the alien, the enemy, the Saracen. In the hall they
had sat alone, the five of them, and eaten only what their own servant brought
them. They were not shut out, not precisely, but they were not wholly welcome,
either; the less so now, since the debacle of Hattin.

She told herself that his indifference was prudence purely.
Her uncles were wise, and she loved them, but they would not look kindly on a
commoner who dared aspire to her favor. If they knew that there had been more
than aspiration, they would be outraged.

So she told herself. It did not keep her from lying awake,
hating herself for cowardice. She should have gone to him at the gate and
embraced him as she had longed to do, and told the truth without subterfuge.
She could protect him from harm. If Aidan sent him away, that would be grief,
but it would bring him joy. He could go back to his own people, reclaim the
honor he had lost, win wives and wealth, sire sons as a soldier of Allah
should.

She rose quietly, found her chemise, put it on. Light though
it was, little more than gauze, it weighed on her. But she could hardly walk
naked through the house. Barefoot and bareheaded was scandalous enough.

There was a nightingale in the garden: pure gift of God, and
perhaps an omen. Its song made her eyes sting, so sweet as it was, and so sad.

She wandered aimlessly. The nightingale fell silent. The
wind was blowing enough to keep the flies at bay; she could hear the hiss of
waves on the shore, the creak and wash of ships riding at anchor beyond the
wall. Tomorrow one would go out to Cyprus to summon Gwydion’s fleet. He meant
to offer passage to as many as his ships could hold: pilgrims put to flight by
the Saracens’ war, wives and children of knights slain at Hattin, and more than
they, messengers to the courts of the west.

He had paid a price for his freedom, he and his brother.
Elen wondered that Aidan had not come to hate his lady of the Assassins for
buying him with such an oath as she had made him take. Never again to bear arms
against Saladin: that was a bitter bargain. It robbed him of revenge; it made
him seem a coward. It left him with no honor, and no recourse but to flee.

“It’s not as bitter as that,” he said out of the darkness.

She saw him then, a shadow within a shadow, a gleam of eyes.
A white blur was his hand, offered to lift her up to the pavilion in which he
sat.

The pavilion was small, an airy folly on a pedestal, with
slender columns holding up the roof, and a ledge running round the rail at
sitting-height. Elen perched beside Aidan, straining to see him in the thin
moonlight.

“I’m not bitter,” he said. “Unhappy, yes; I’d give much to
deal Saladin such a defeat as he dealt us. But the price was fair.”

“Do you ever regret it?” she asked him. “Loving Morgiana. Being
loved by her.”

“Neither of us had much choice in the matter,” he said.

She looked at him, knowing that he could see her clearly.

“No,” he said under her blind, bland stare. “No, I never
regret Morgiana. Quarrel with her, yes; long to throttle her, all too often.
But regret, no.”

“Even with all she’s cost you in honor and reputation and in
battle with the Church?”

“Even with that.”

She thought about it, unhastily, sheltered in his silence.
After a little she reached out and took his hand. It was warm, warmer than a
man’s, and strong. She wanted suddenly to tell him her secret. He of all
people—he would understand.

But she did not. It was Raihan’s secret, too, and she did
not have his leave. Bad enough that Aidan could know it if he chose, simply by
walking in her mind.

She leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” she
said.

He did not ask her what for. She was glad of that. If he had
asked, she would have had to answer, and that answer might have had to be a
lie.

o0o

It was easier to corner Raihan than she had expected. She
waited a day or two, until the house had fallen into its new rhythm. She saw
how its patterns flowed and where everyone was likely to be, and where one
might go to find solitude. Raihan spent most of his time in the stable with his
horses; she suspected that he slept there rather than in the warren of the
house.

She found him there, and alone, at an hour when everyone was
either sleeping through the heat of midday or doing something quiet that could
be done in the shade. Raihan was with one of his mares, who was in foal and
approaching her time.

He glanced at Elen as she approached, but kept most of his
attention on the mare. “I knew I should have left her at Millefleurs,” he said
as easily as if they had never been apart. “The journey troubled her little
enough, but now she’ll foal on shipboard, and that’s no way for a horse to come
into the world.”

“She’s one of your best,” Elen said. “How could you leave
her behind?”

“That’s what I tell myself. And the lord king, he knows how to
heal beasts as well as men. But I’m human. I fret.”

She came to stand beside him. All the mares were in this one
stable, with its broad passage and its louvered roof and its stalls divided by
thin walls, and each with a round window at horsehead-height to look out of.
There were no doors on the stalls; one could, and Raihan did, leave the horses
loose to wander as they would, although he tethered them at night and when he
fed them. Or when, as now, he wished to examine one.

The mare was mettlesome and given to fretting, but under his
hand she was calm. He smoothed her long mane. She lipped his shirt; he smiled
and gave her the bit of apple she was asking for.

“You are going, then,” she said. “With your prince. To
Rhiyana.”

He nodded. He looked neither happy nor sad.

“Why? How can you leave your own country?”

“My country is where my lord is.” He ran his hand along the
mare’s back and round her barrel, probing for the shape of the foal.

“If you had a choice,” she asked, “would you stay?”

His hand paused. He did not look up. “I don’t have one.”

“What if you did?”

He straightened. The mare flattened her ears. He caught her
halter and held it, stroking her out of her temper. “Are you offering me one?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”

His face was unreadable under the beard, with his eyes in
shadow. “Do you have that right, my lady?”

“I love you.”

The words fell in silence. His voice came soft and slow, but
there was iron in it. “Has it occurred to my lady that if I remain here, we
will never meet again?”

“Yes,” she said. “But you would be free. You would have your
own people. You would not be a foreigner in a land of infidels. I see how they
treat you here, where your people are known and familiar, and a few even
understand your faith. What will it be like in the west, where there are no
Muslims?”

“How would you go about setting me free?”

Her heart thudded. He was listening. He had not cut her off.
He wanted this, then. He wanted to be free.

Free of her.

She crushed that thought before it could sink claws in her. “All
you need,” she said, “is to be caught with me. I promise you, you won’t be
hurt. My uncles will not be pleased, but they’ll listen to me. They’ll leave
you alive and unmaimed. They’ll send you away, and you’ll be free.”