The Falcons of Montabard (45 page)

'Walking!' Annais laughed through her tears. 'And learning words so swiftly that already he chatters like a magpie!'

Strongfist swiped his hand across his eyes. 'It will heal me to see him,' he said. 'Already I feel closer to being whole than I have in an age.' He held her away and pushed her gently back towards Sabin. 'Your place is first at your husband's side,' he said. A look passed between him and Sabin, of acknowledgement and acceptance, which was intercepted by Queen

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Morphia, a flush mantling her high cheekbones, and a certain tautness to her jaw.

Belatedly Sabin and Strongfist knelt and bowed their heads.

'Get up,' Morphia said. 'A lapse is understandable in the circumstances.' Her tone forgave them, while reminding them that she was Queen and expected respect. 'Now tell us what you are doing here. Are you alone as it seems? Do you have news of the King?'

It was very late. In the guest chamber, the scented oil lamps had burned down and been replenished, the wine flagons emptied and refilled. Queen Morphia had been given a full accounting of what had happened between Joscelin's flight from Kharpurt and Sabin and Strongf ist's escape from the detail sent to Harran, and had retired to her own apartment to digest the news and decide how next to proceed.

Strongfist drained his cup, wiped his beard and eased to his feet. 'I'm for my bed,' he said, 'before the dawn catches me out of it. Do not expect to see me early on the morrow.' Standing up, he stretched, and smiled at Sabin as the young man rose to acknowledge the farewell. 'Not that I expect you and my daughter will be rising early yourselves.'

'Queens and small children will not wait,' Annais said, rising too and kissing her father's cheek. Her complexion was flushed, partly with wine, partly from the path the conversation was taking.

'Well then, make the most of the time you have remaining.'

A smile set tired creases in Sabin's cheeks and lit in his eyes. 'I remember the days when you warned me against such occupation.'

'I remember the days when your reputation was different to that you hold today. Besides, the advice was for my daughter, not you.' He saluted them both and passed quietly beyond the archway curtain, his tread heavy with weariness.

Sabin sat down on the bench, adjusted the cushions and poured the last of the wine into their goblets. He was heavy-

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eyed and very tired, but reluctant to yield the sweetness of these moments for slumber. Annais sat down beside him and cuddled into the embrace of his arm.

'He took Mariamne's death hard,' Sabin murmured. 'I think that he was prepared to hate her for what she had done, but when it came to the crux he could not. Then he began to think that there might be a chance for them if they could survive Kharpurt.'

'Do you think there was?' There was doubt in Annais's voice, perhaps even a hint of antipathy.

Sabin sighed. 'If the truth be known, no,' he said, 'but I would never say as much to your father. At least since she is truly dead, he can mourn her in a proper fashion now. Before, his mourning was tainted.'

Annais digested his words and nodded agreement. Then she twisted to look up at him.

'What?' he asked.

'I cannot believe that you are here,' she said. 'I have to pinch myself to make sure you are real.'

Sabin grinned. 'I can pinch you if you want . . . although I am sure there are better ways of convincing you how real I am . . .'

Her gaze narrowed, but her eyes were melting. 'I'm sure there are,' she murmured, 'if only I could remember them. It has been so long.'

'Is that an invitation to be reminded?'

She gave a slumberous murmur and twined her arms around his neck. 'What do you think?'

'I think it is well that I have a better memory than you,' he said and, taking her hand, led her to the bed with its feather mattress and scented linen sheets.

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Chapter 28

now.' Fergus rubbed his hands and held them out to the of the charcoa! brazier. 'It puts me in mind o' the hills where I used tae ride when I was a lad. I mind many folk didna like it, but it does me fine.'

Sabin and Strongfist exchanged grins. Fergus's Scots accent was always more pronounced when he was reminiscing. A bellyful of spiced wine had made him loquacious and expansive. Indeed, the strong brew seemed to have gone straight to the tips of his hair, for it bushed out from his scalp like a dandelion seedhead.

Always used to give me chilblains,' Strongfist said. 'I never felt the ground I was walking in the harshest winters because my boots were so stuffed with fleece. Some years I lived in my gambeson too.'

'I remember some good snow brawls at court . . . and at my father's keep at Fotheringay.' Rising to his feet, Sabin took his cup of spiced wine and moved to the window embrasure. Outside the dusk was filled with a mass of whirling white flakes. The sky was darkening into nightfall, but it had been dull all day, with a burden of snow, and the accompanying wind was bitter enough to freeze the features off a man's face. Yet he welcomed the weather. It was an excuse for coddling oneself over a hearth, mending weapons, taking stock, and talking companionably with friends and lovers. After the parched, burning summer, it was pleasant, too, to see the ground clothed in white.

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He hadn't thought of his father in a while, or if he had, only in the course of ordinary remembering. The sharpness of the pain had dulled to the ache of an old scar. In his mind's eye he saw himself, a child forming the powdery snow into balls in sheepskin-mittened hands and hurling them at the slender, laughing man with bright brown hair and fox-gold eyes.

'Good thing you arrived when you did,' Strongfist said to Fergus, 'otherwise you'd be a corpse in a drift by now.'

'I'd ha' stopped in the monastery down the pass if I'd thought the snow was going tae outrun me,' Fergus retorted. 'Credit me wi' some sense.'

'If you had sense you would still be in Jerusalem,' Strongfist said. 'Not that it isn't a pleasure to see you.'

'Ach, Jerusalem's so full of officials and diplomats that the streets almost run with slime,' Fergus said.

'I thought it was full of Venetians ... or so we heard.' Sabin turned from the embrasure, caught Annais's eye and winked. She was kneeling on a gazelle skin rug that had been placed atop the floor rushes, a sleepy Guillaume cuddled in her lap.

'Aye, them too, the blood-sucking weasels.' Fergus made to spit on the floor, belatedly recalled his manners and swallowed instead. 'Do you know what they demanded as the price for helping us besiege Tyre?'

Sabin shook his head. 'No, but doubtless you are going to tell us.' Although Montabard was a frontier fortress, they received the news often enough from Jerusalem via Antioch. Venice and the kingdom of Jerusalem had been locked in negotiations for some considerable time. The maritime power of the Venetians was second to none, and their demands in return for the borrowing of that power were also second to none. There was a plan to snatch the lucrative port of Tyre from its Muslim rulers, but it couldn't be done without help from the sea.

Aye, I'll tell ye,' Fergus growled. 'They're to get a street with a church, and a bakery and a bathhouse, free of all obligation

'That's not so bad,' Strongfist settled himself more

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comfortably in the curule chair. He contemplated his cup. Sabin signalled and a servant moved to refill it from the flagon mulling near the hearth.

'. . .in every town of the kingdom,' Fergus added with a ferocious frown. 'If that's no' greedy, I don't know what is. And they're to be allowed to use their own weights and measures for all transactions - amongst us all, not just themselves.' He spread his free hand and counted off his fingers. 'They're to be given houses in Acre, and if they help capture Tyre and Ascalon, they're to receive a third of the cities, and they're to be paid a yearly sum of three hundred Saracen bezants from revenues at Acre ... tcha!' He gulped down the rest of his wine and the servant crossed over to him.

Sabin smiled. 'I think I want to be a Venetian,' he said.

'If you were, laddie, I'd nae be supping wine sae freely at your board. The bastards also want a say in what the kingdom charges other nations in customs dues. The Patriarch has agreed for now, but King Baldwin won't wear it. It'll make his crown worthless.'

'Merchants are always avaricious because they know their value,' Sabin murmured. 'But you are right. The King will not be happy with that last clause.'

'If he ever wins free of captivity,' Strongfist said morosely. 'Balak shows no signs of being open to negotiation.'

'Why should he when just by holding on to Baldwin he keeps the upper hand?' Sabin answered. He pressed the knuckle of his index finger to his forehead. They had discussed this point repeatedly like a serpent swallowing its own tail. They were due back in the field in a fortnight's time. Joscelin and the northern army were planning a series of raids on the area around Aleppo where Balak's rule was weak and disputed. The intention was to harry the spider, force him out onto the strands of his web and persuade him to yield his parcelled treasure.

Fergus turned to Strongfist. 'So where gang ye?' he asked Strongfist. 'North with the laddie, or to Tyre with me?'

'I thought you did not like Venetians,' Sabin said mischievously.

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Fergus glowered. 'I don't, but needs must when the devil drives and if the bastards are at sea, I dinna have to share their campfires, do I?'

Sabin smothered a grin. 'I suppose not.'

Strongfist shook his head. 'I've sat on my arse at enough sieges to know that I'd be bored out of my skull by the first nightfall. No, give me a warrior's work, not an engineer's. Besides, I have a score to settle with Balak.' His expression grew bleak. 'I will never forget what happened at Kharpurt, but if I take the field against Balak, I can perhaps put it behind me.'

'Suit yoursel'.' Fergus stooped to look at Guillaume who was now asleep in Annais's lap. 'He's a fine wee lad and the spit o' his father. I mind that I mun say a prayer for Gerbert before I leave.'

'I say one for him every day,' Annais said quietly. 'I honour his memory, as Guillaume will do as he grows.'

'I know that, lass.' Fergus's voice was gruff.

The door opened and Letice entered. She had been across to the kitchens to have a word with the cook and the cloak she had donned for the short walk was starred with snowflakes. They sparkled and melted on her veil, and her cheeks were flushed with the brightness of the cold. Her braids shone below her veil, bright as new copper and barely stranded with silver. Strongfist's gaze dwelt on her briefly before sliding away to the middle distance. She glanced at him, and then walked past to hang her cloak on one of the pegs hammered into the wall.

Sabin eyed the interchange thoughtfully and raised his brow at Annais. She returned him an eloquent look.

Later that evening, when they were in bed, she turned on her side to face him. 'Letice and my father,' she said.

'I noticed.'

'What do you think?'

'You can bring a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink. It has to be thirsty of its own accord.' By the light of the night candle her hair shone like black water. He reached out to

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take a tendril between his fingers. 'But it might be good for both of them.'

'Yes,' she murmured. 'And I have an idea.'

Sabin gave a theatrical groan and received a kick. He yelped and complained of Annais's cold feet.

'I shall not tell you,' she sniffed.

'I promise I am all ears now.' He pulled her closer and drew the fur coverlet up around their heads. 'You know I was but teasing.'

'Then perhaps I should tease you too and say nothing.'

He kissed her in the tender spot behind her earlobe and cupped her breast. 'Tell me,' he said. 'I promise to listen.'

'I'm not sure ..." She stretched her throat to give him better access. 'Perhaps I prefer the persuasion to the telling.'

'Do you? So do I.' He moved over her and for a while was so persuasive that by the time she was convinced, she was exhausted and glowing and there was not an inch of her that was cold.

Lying against him, regaining her pleasure-scattered wits, she smiled. 'All I was going to say is that when we leave for the court at Turbessel, I will bring Letice with me as my senior lady and leave Soraya here. Soraya is uncomfortable with the outside world, but she is capable of performing the duties of a chatelaine. It is not as if I will need her to play nurse to Guillaume. Usually I am nearby, and when I am not, the Queen and Countess Maria keep nurses for the children. Princess Joveta is only just four years old, and Maria's daughter Stephanie but a babe in arms. Letice will enjoy the change and if anything is to develop between her and my father, it can do so in its own good time rather than being forced.'

'It seems a fair suggestion,' Sabin said huskily. He was still recovering his breath. 'I did wonder if your father might go with Fergus to besiege Tyre, but the wounds inflicted at Kharpurt run deep. I think he is right when he says that they will not begin to heal until he can bandage them with battle.'