The Dagger and the Cross (7 page)

It sounded silly, said aloud. Of course you don’t hate your
sister, his mother would say, impatient as she always was with foolishness. You’re
jealous, that’s all. Someone’s always jealous in a family. That’s the way the
devil tempts us.

Maybe he hated his mother, too. Maybe he hated everybody.

His mood was beautifully black. He was almost sad that it
had to lighten. He had duties, after all, and a king to wait on. That much,
even Ysabel could not take away from him.

o0o

It was cool in the garden, almost cold, with the sun barely
risen to warm it. Elen paused under a flowering tree. She would have to ask
someone what it was. Its scent was sweet and potent, more purely alien than
anything she had yet known: truly, at last, Outremer. She broke off a spray and
tucked it in her hair. Her veil had slipped to her shoulders; she left it
there. The sun lay on her like a warm hand.

The garden was larger than it looked, with paths and hedges
and bowers, and a fountain playing where roses bloomed. Sometimes she could not
even see the house, so clever were the contrivances of paths and hedges.

She saw the man long before he saw her. A gardener, she
supposed, clearing weeds from a fishpond. He wore a turban, which made him a
Saracen; he was not as small as most of them were, though he was dark enough.
His sleeves were rolled high, baring long strong arms the color of bronze. He
swept up a handful of weed and tossed it toward a goat which waited as if
expectant. The beast caught it neatly; he laughed and said something in what
must have been Arabic. She liked the sound of his voice. Warm and deep, with a
ripple of mirth.

She watched him feed the goat. It was a young one, and
seemed to be someone’s pet: its fawn coat was brushed to silk, its amber eyes
mild, for a goat’s. When he stopped feeding it, it blatted. He answered it in
tones both regretful and firm. The goat butted him peremptorily.

There was a moment of stunned astonishment; then, a
resounding splash.

She leaped. Too late by far for his dignity, but she got a
grip on his hand and pulled him, gasping and spluttering, out of the pond.

He had lost his turban. His hair was in braids, three of
them. His face was as bronze-dark as his arms. Water ran in streams from his
beard. A strand of weed was wound in it. She reached to pluck it loose.

His eyes opened, blinking through the wet, and froze her in
midmotion. They were blue. Blue as the Middle Sea; blue as a fire’s heart.

And utterly, devastatingly appalled, as he saw her clearly.

She finished what she had begun. It was her own kind of
defiance. He stiffened at her touch, as if he could not believe that she would
dare it; all at once he recoiled. She caught him before he fell in again.

His face went an astonishing shade of grey: bloodless under
the bronze. She wondered if he had hit his head. She was sure of it when he
staggered and, abruptly, went down.

Not in a faint. He was groveling. Or whatever Saracens
called it.

It made her angry. She dragged him up. He was taller than
she had thought, almost as tall as Gwydion. “Never,” she said, not stopping to
think if he would understand her, “never do that to me.”

He flushed. There was nothing subservient in his expression.
From the look of it, his temper bade fair to match hers. “My lady,” he said in
quite passable Frankish. “What would you have me do?”

“Face me like a man,” she said. “Did you hit your head?”

He turned it gingerly on his neck and explored it with long
supple fingers. “No,” he said, “my lady.” His black brows met. “May I ask what
my lady is doing here?”

“Saving your life, I rather thought.” She tossed her head. “I
still think so. Even if you do not.”

“I thank you for my life,” he said as if he recited a
lesson. “My lady.”

“Your life, but not your pride. As for your dignity...” She
offered him her veil, and when he would not take it, proceeded to dry him
herself.

He wriggled like a small child, though the words he
muttered—even in Arabic—did not sound like anything a child would know. “Would
you rather drip?” she snapped at him.

“Yes!”

She laughed. That stopped him. Even without those improbable
eyes, he was a handsome man. And young; but not a boy. He was more than
five-and-twenty, less than thirty: a good age for a man.

She dried him as much as she could, and enjoyed it rather
more than she should. He suffered it grimly. No doubt it was agony to be handled
so by a woman, and a Christian at that. That he was not a gardener nor a
menial, she was beginning to be sure of. That kind of touchy pride never lived
out of childhood, unless its owner ranked high enough to foster it.

“Are you one of Aidan’s Saracens?” she asked.

He drew himself up. “I am his mamluk,” he said.

And proud of it, too. This time he met her grin with one of
his own, though it was brief, a white flash in his dark face. “And I am his
sister’s granddaughter,” she said. “Elen.”

He inclined his head, gracious, if not quite ready to
forgive her. “Raman,” he said.

She accepted the gift as courteously as he had, and as
coolly. “You speak the
langue d’oeil
very well.”

“My lord taught me.” His tongue stumbled just perceptibly,
as if praise made it awkward. “Strangers are not to know. That we understand
them.”

“That’s wise. You hear more, that way.”

His eyes glittered. “Oh, we do, indeed.”

“Too much?”

“Never while it serves my lord. He is never sullied,
whatever men may call him.”

There was faith as pure as any saint’s. They gave it a
moment’s silence. Then, with a squawk, Raihan dived toward the goat. It
surrendered its great sodden mouthful and resumed its exploration of the pond.

Raihan looked in dismay at the tattered remnants of his
turban. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he laughed. It was amazing laughter, rich and
full and direly infectious. He was still laughing as he bowed to her—in western
fashion this time, with a prince’s grace—and walked away, with the goat
scampering at his heels.

o0o

Ysabel got her ride after all, with everyone in the house
who was minded to go, and that was most of them, except for Mother, who was too
big with the new baby, and Grandmother, who never rode if she could help it.
Gwydion was no better in cities than Aidan was, though he was quieter about it.
Once he had his bath and heard mass in St. Perpetua’s and ate as much as his
kind would ever eat, they all fetched their horses and went in search of clean
air.

Aimery was conspicuously not speaking to her. She refused to
pay attention. Her mare was new, a gift from her uncle and his lady, and fine:
Arab-bred, and fiery enough to make Joanna intensely nervous whenever Ysabel
rode her. Ysabel was inordinately proud of her. She could keep up easily with
Aidan’s gelding; she loved to arch her neck and flag her tail and dance. People
stared as she went by.

That was not all there was to stare at. They were all in
riding clothes, nothing splendid except for the odd idiot who thought one went
hunting in silk, but there was a small army of them, and Aidan’s mamluks with
them, and Morgiana playing the eunuch again. Ranulf had a brace of hounds; some
of the others had falcons. The Turks had their bows. There would be meat for
the pot tonight, and some pleasure in the getting of it.

It was almost impossible to tell Gwydion and Aidan apart
without looking inside. They were both in hunting green, and both riding tall
greys, and both sparking with delight in the ride and the company. Aidan smiled
more, that was all, and Gwydion almost never laughed, except with his eyes.
Most people gave up trying to decide which was which, and addressed them both
at once.

o0o

Morgiana knew, deeply and surely, which was her lover and
which his brother. It was strange, dizzying, to see Aidan whole. What she had
thought was all of him was only that part of him which was not Gwydion. And yet
he was not diminished, nor subsumed into that other self. He was brighter,
stronger, more truly himself than she had ever seen him.

She was not jealous, she decided, riding behind them,
watching them together. Whether she liked Gwydion, or disliked him, or was
indifferent to him...that needed time and reflection. That beloved face, that
body which she knew in every line and angle, though doubled, was only one to
her, the one with Aidan’s soul beneath it. The other was a stranger.

A courteous one, to be sure, and quite unperturbed by either
her faith or her history. Aidan had that gift, too, of accepting a creature for
itself, without heed for what the world might say of it.

“But of course,” Gwydion said, falling back beside her as
Aidan sprang in pursuit of a roebuck. “We aren’t human, to succumb to human
divisions. We have to make our own.”

The hunt passed them and left them behind. They slowed to a
walk, to the disgust of Morgiana’s stallion; but he eyed Gwydion’s mare and
decided that, all in all, he preferred to linger. She kept a light firm rein,
letting him dance as he pleased, but holding him well in hand.

“A fine horse,” Gwydion said.

“He comes from Egypt,” she said. “They breed good horses
there; though they prize mares over stallions. This one sires fine foals.
Ysabel’s mare is one of his.”

“I could see,” he said. “Both bays, with the star on the
forehead. And the head, it is distinctive.”

“That is the Arabian head. The large eye, see, set well down
from the poll, and the profile curved inward, and the nostril half a handspan
wide when it flares. They drink the wind, these horses.”

“They are beautiful. So light as they move; so fiery. Alas
that I’m too tall for their smallness.”

“They could carry you easily,” she said.

“If I didn’t mind trailing my feet behind me.” Gwydion was
laughing, though his face was quiet. He ran his hand down his mare’s neck,
smoothing her mane. “This lady will do for me. Such a gift she is, and half an Arab,
too, like her cousin who carries my brother. She would be greatly prized in our
country.”

“So she would,” said Morgiana. “Aidan talks of taking a
small herd back with him when he goes: a stallion or two and a few mares of
Arab breeding, to cross with your own horses. Your mare is one of his testings,
as his gelding was Gereint’s.”

Gwydion’s bright mood darkened at the name of his sister’s
son. Whom she had killed; for whose death she had paid, and would pay down all
the long years.

He did not say it. For that, he won her approbation, if not
yet her heart. He gazed ahead across the wide plain of Acre, with the hunt in
exuberant cry upon it and the ridge of Carmel blue beyond. The land was losing
the green of spring, going dun and brown where there were no people to till it.
The orchards, the fields of cane, the cattle in their pastures, were fenced and
bordered with desert. Rich land, but dry and forbidding, if one was born in the
west.

She, whose first memory was of the desert of Persia, would
never perfectly understand a country where rain fell, sometimes, every day.
Sometimes even for days on end.

“It’s very green,” said Gwydion, following her thoughts as
she allowed, “and often grey above it with clouds and mist. But the bones of
the land show through on the moors and the headlands. There’s strength enough
there, for all the water that runs over it.”

“Water can be as strong as any force that is.”

Gwydion’s mare slipped the rein and began to graze. The
stallion was not hungry, except for her. Morgiana persuaded him to halt. He
tossed his head and stamped, but surrendered abruptly and snatched mouthfuls of
grass between eye-rollings and yearnings toward the tall grey beauty.

“I am glad,” said Gwydion out of nowhere that she could
discern, “that you suit my brother so well.”

“Do I, then?”

“Perfectly.” He leaned on the pommel of his saddle, at ease,
so much like Aidan that she blinked. “I admit, I had my fears. You were the
hunter, after all; and he has a penchant for trapping himself in oaths which he
will not, or cannot, break.”

“Yes,” she said, amused. “I did trap him, didn’t I? In front
of the whole High Court, with King Baldwin himself called upon to make the
judgment. Whether a bargain we struck, that I should settle his account with
the Old Man of the Mountain, and he should give himself to me until he
satisfied me, was in fact fulfilled by a night of his...service; or whether
satisfaction should encompass more than a few hours’ pleasure. Whether he had
sworn to be my night’s lover, or my husband.” She smiled and shook her head. “It
was hardly wise of him to strike a bargain with a Muslim, and he a Frank and a
prince, and no merchant at all.”

“All Muslims are merchants, he tells me.” Gwydion ran his
fingers through his mare’s mane, idly, eyes lowered. “He should have known
better. He knows enough of kings and princes.”

“No king in the world can outmaneuver a good trader.” She
looked to see if he was offended. He was not; not at all. The corner of his
mouth curved just visibly upward. “He did well enough by the bargain. He’s a
wealthy man, as wealthy as any in Outremer; and much of that is Assassin gold.”

“And he has you.”

She shrugged, one-sided. “I’m no advantage in this kingdom.
I breed rumors, but no children.”

His compassion rocked her almost out of the saddle. “That
will come as God wills. My brother thought that he could sire no children, no
more than I; and there is Ysabel.”

“Her mother is human.”

“Even so,” said Gwydion. “Perhaps you are too young.”

She laughed, harsh and brief. “I am, at the very least,
sixscore years old. I think I may be much more than that. How old must I be
before I’m old enough?”

“When did your courses begin?”

“My—” She closed her mouth, mastered her shock. She was used
to indelicacy from Franks, and Allah knew, Muslim women could be blunt enough
among themselves. But this went beyond indelicate. It was indecent.