The Falcons of Montabard (53 page)

Grooms and stable lads came running to take the horses, and a detachment of Shaizar's guards arrived to join the newcomers. A rapid conversation ensued with much gesticulating. At the end of the talk, both sets of soldiers turned towards the women and children, and the man who had been fingering his scimitar now unsheathed it in a silver hiss of steel. Guillaume was too young to appreciate the danger and toddled to grab the ball that Joscelin of Edessa's eleven-year-old son had dropped in his fear. The boy was as pale as a winding sheet beneath his sun-bleached hair and his blue eyes had widened until there was a ring of white around the iris. Another, younger, boy began to whimper and, at the sound, Joveta ran to Annais and pressed her face into the security of her skirts.

Hakim, one of the Shaizar guards who spoke a little French, came to them and raised his voice. 'You are all to go inside now,' he said harshly. As he shouted, Guillaume too headed for his mother's skirts, but made sure that he kept tight hold of the ball.

'Why, what has happened?' Letice asked.

The Saracen with the drawn scimitar raised it so that a line of light shimmered along the blade.

'No questions,' Hakim barked, and - in the same tone of voice so that the newcomers would think he was still haranguing

389

the women - added, 'You are considered disrespectful. If you would keep your tongues, hide them behind your teeth for my friend needs little encouragement to cut them out. For your very lives, do as you are told.'

They were herded together and jostled from the courtyard to their chamber. As the oldest male and the heir to Edessa, young Joscelin was singled out for particularly rough handling and by the time they were thrust inside their room and the door locked, he had a bloody lip and was shuddering violently with the effort of not weeping before the enemy. Thrusting comforting hands away, he huddled into a corner and stood against the wall, his face pressed into his upraised arms, blood smearing his sleeve. Guillaume had no such restraint set on his behaviour and roared his indignation and fright fit to bring down the painted ceiling. Joveta joined him and they screamed in unison. Annais set aside her own panic to deal with theirs, cuddling and rocking until the howls subsided to hiccups.

'I don't like the man with the sword,' Joveta said in a quavery little voice and, knuckling her eyes, stared apprehensively at the door.

'Nor I,' Annais admitted, 'but he's gone now.'

'Will he come back?'

'Not at the moment. Hush, you're safe. I won't let anything happen to you . . .' Empty words. How could she prevent it? But it would be over her dead body. Guillaume still had the ball clutched tightly in his hand. It was made of numerous coloured leather strips stitched together and stuffed with fleece. He had been absently gnawing on it, but now he handed it to Joveta. She took it solemnly as if it were a royal orb.

Leaving her and Guillaume with Letice, Annais went quietly over to Joscelin and touched his shoulder. It was rigid beneath her hand and he twitched as if he would shrug her off. 'I know that you have your pride,' Annais murmured, 'and I will not intrude on it. But should you wish for comfort, you have only to ask.'

390

He nodded without raising his buried head. At the other end of the room a key grated in the door lock and for an instant everyone recoiled. Joscelin's head now jerked up with the swiftness of a hunted gazelle's, the dried blood flaking on his smooth child's skin, his eyes wide with fear. When the door opened to reveal nothing more sinister than Aiesha, one of the Emir's senior concubines, with two of her women bearing fruit and sherbet, the boy slumped with relief. So did Annais, although not as visibly. Leaving him, she hurried back to the others.

Aiesha had expressive eyes, liquid-brown and almond-shaped, enhanced with kohl. Now, she hid them beneath lowered lids; when she looked up, her gaze darted like a swallow and would not settle on any of the hostages. The other women hung back and they too kept their eyes and heads down.

'What is wrong?' Annais asked Aiesha in the halting Arabic she had learned from Sabin and Soraya. 'Who are these men?'

Aiesha shook her head. 'I can say nothing,' she whispered with a frightened look over her shoulder as if she suspected that the guards could hear through the door. 'It is more than my life is worth.'

'Please, we are all afraid.'

Again, Aiesha shook her head.

'Do they belong to Timurtash? Has King Baldwin gone back on his word?'

The dark eyes flickered and filled with panic. 'I know nothing,' Aiesha said, but that brief gaze had told a different, frightening story.

Her task completed, Aiesha backed towards the door with the other women. 'You should pray to your God,' she said, 'and hope that He is merciful.'

They were left alone for the rest of the day and their fears grew like baker's dough left to prove. Dusk approached and they lit the lamps. No one came and the sense of impending disaster increased until it was darker than the shadows in the corners of the room. Annais passed her prayer beads through her fingers, counting them off, murmuring paternosters and

391

aves until they lost their meaning, but there was vague comfort in the rhythmic pattern of the words. She played her harp; she sang to the children. Guillaume fell asleep in her lap, Joveta against her side.

A sickle moon had risen in the arch of the unshuttered window and it was almost full dark outside when they heard the sound of the hunt returning, and, beyond and above it, a sudden clamour in the courtyard. The door burst open, armed guards strode into the room, swords drawn, and the children woke and began screaming.

Two guards placed themselves by the window and drew the shutters fast. The clamour outside diminished and ceased and, for an instant, there was absolute silence, even down to a lull in the children's sobs.

Footsteps approached, some striding hard, others stumbling. Harsh curses flowed in the Saracen tongue and she heard Sabin's voice raised and breaking in answer. There came the sound of a blow followed by a grunt of exhaled air. Six more guards shouldered into the room, manhandling between them Sabin and two of the knights who had gone hunting that morning. A vicious red graze deepening at one end as if gouged by a ring lay high along Sabin's left cheekbone and the flesh beneath his left eye was rapidly swelling shut. Except for the brightness of the wound, his complexion was ashen and his legs would scarcely hold him up. The guards flung him down on the floor and the other knights with him. Then, with a final flurry of kicks and blows, they left, and the key turned in the lock.

'Papa!' Before Annais could prevent him, Guillaume had abandoned her skirts and launched himself at his stepfather like a missile from a stone thrower. Sabin took the child's flying weight with a painful exhalation of breath. It took an obvious effort of will to lift his head from the ground and sit up. Blood was threading down his cheek from the wound. He curled his left arm around Guillaume and used his right cuff to soak up the trickle. The guards at the shutters said nothing, but stood

392

with scimitars drawn and eyes as narrow as blades.

'Sweet Jesu, what is happening?' Giving Joveta to Letice, Annais crawled across the floor to Sabin. 'Why have they turned on us?' She had to stop herself from leaping upon him in the same way that Guillaume had done, but she could see from his hunched posture that he was hurting from more than just a cut cheek.

'What do you think?' he croaked. 'King Baldwin has gone back on his word yet again.'

'He has denied the ransom?'

'If he had done that, we would all be dead by now,' he said with the irritation of pain. 'No, instead of aiding Timurtash to defeat Dubais, he has made an alliance with Dubais and together they are besieging Aleppo. It may yet be the end of us all and not just—' He broke off with a hiss as Guillaume inadvertently kicked him in the ribs.

Annais took Guillaume back into her own lap and looked at him anxiously. 'What have they done to you?'

'Enough to make me suffer, not enough to die,' he gasped. 'One of Timurtash's goblins jabbed me with a spear haft. If Usamah had not intervened then he'd have used the pointed end - and he still might.' He looked around at the women and the children. 'They have not harmed you?'

'No, but they were rough with young Joscelin.' She glanced along her shoulder at the boy, sitting palely quiet and a little aloof from the others, his upper lip purple and swollen. Then she looked back at Sabin. 'You said "the end of us all and not just—" What else were you going to say?'

Sabin's expression was grim. 'I do not want to tell you, yet I must because it cannot be hidden. When we returned from the hunt, a detachment of Timurtash's guards was waiting for us. Usamah argued with them, but to no avail. The Emir has the last word in matters of authority at Shaizar . . .' His throat worked and she saw his anguish. He had to force the words out and they came like blood from a squeezed wound. 'Waleran and Ernoul. . . they are to be shriven by a priest and then they

393

are to be executed . . . and word sent to Baldwin that more deaths will follow unless he complies with the treaty.'

'Jesu!' Her hand flew not to her mouth but to her belly and his gaze followed it, before slowly lifting to her face.

'I already know,' he said quietly. 'I may be ignorant, but I am quick to learn.'

She bit her lip. 'I was going to tell you ... I just ..."

'Perhaps you thought I would not be strong enough to shoulder the burden?' His tone was gentle but wounded.

Annais swallowed. 'I did not know how you would respond. It is my fault that we are in this coil. If I had listened, if I had refused the Queen as you wanted . . .'

'And you thought I would rail at you now, because of that?'

'No, but I wondered.'

'Christ,' he said under his breath, covering his face with his hand.

Annais swallowed, feeling utterly wretched. 'I was hoping that we would be free long before this ... so I took the coward's way out and waited.'

He took his hand away and looked at her. She saw pain through pain, but at least he was meeting her eyes. 'You are no coward,' he said. 'If you had refused the Queen your guilt would have been a millstone around your neck and you would still have had no freedom. You would not have been denying Morphia, but a child. I would have carried that burden of guilt too, no matter that I sought to prevent you at the time.' He laid his hand at her waist. 'But I wish that you had found it in you to tell me earlier.'

'I wish it too . . . but I did not know what to do. I wanted to give you joy — not trouble.'

He pulled her to him. 'It is our joy and our trouble.' His voice had a ragged edge. 'You did not conceive this child alone, did you?'

Feeling weak with relief, she pressed against him, but, mindful of his shallow breathing, composed herself after a moment and pulled back. 'In truth,' she whispered, 'I did not

394

know whether to feel hope or despair.' She gripped his hand where it still lay against her waist.

Although the shutters were latched, they did not deaden all sound and now they heard the muffled notes of a priest's voice raised in a Kyrie eleison and two other voices wavering with it, off-key and raw with terror. The song died away to silence. Then rose again, but only one voice. They heard scuffling and then a heavy, dull sound, of the kind swords made when they struck the straw-stuffed dummy on the practice post at Montabard. But there were no straw dummies in Shaizar's courtyard, only men.

Annais caught the scream in her throat and locked it there. Sabin bowed his head and she felt a shudder ripple through him. The priest's voice continued to sing with steady strength, but Ernoul's rose to howl Waleran's name in horror. Annais stuck her fingers in her ears. Ignoring the pain from his kicked ribs, Sabin pulled her against him and she buried her face against his breast. Over her head, he gazed towards the shutters and the grim guards standing either side. He listened while they pinned Ernoul down, heard the shrieks, the blow, a gurgle, another blow and then silence. The voice of the priest rose again, clean and bright as the edge of a blade, one side hope, the other despair.

395

Chapter 34

Winter arrived with heavy rain, wind and snow. The waters surrounding Shaizar became a marsh that attracted hordes of wildfowl. Although hunting parties went out most days, there were never Franks among them and the relaxed atmosphere of the early months was replaced by one of taut vigilance. Usamah still came to talk with Sabin and match wits over a chessboard, but the visits were less frequent and although they were cordial on one level, the deeper camaraderie had been strained by the deaths of Waleran and Ernoul.

'I am sorry,' Usamah had said in those first days when there were still dark stains on the courtyard floor. 'But it is a fact of war. Hostages are a surety for the word of the giver. If that word is broken, then all must suffer the consequences. Be thankful that they were not worse.'

As yet they still might be?'

'You know the risks as much as I.'

They had not discussed the matter since, had been at pains to skirt around it like dancers encircling a fire. But the heat remained and to step too close was to risk being burned. Occasionally Usamah would bring him news of the outside world, but in general he was circumspect. Aleppo remained under siege from Baldwin and Dubais. The execution of Waleran and Ernoul had made no difference to Baldwin's resolve. After his outburst of rage, Timurtash had backed down

396

for he had troubles beyond those posed by Franks and Bedouins. His brother was dying and Timurtash wanted to be certain of his inheritance. Therefore he remained at home in Mardin and refused to commit himself to Aleppo's defence. All this Sabin was told piecemeal over the gaming board, but he was never sure how old the news was and how complete.

They celebrated the Christmas feast in a subdued fashion, and prayed for the relief of a ransom payment. None came. The winter days lightened towards spring and the rains ceased to fall quite so hard. The feast of the Virgin arrived - Candlemas — and they were permitted tapers of beeswax to celebrate the occasion. Annais was becoming unwieldy as she began the eighth month of her pregnancy. She had resigned herself to giving birth in Shaizar, not Montabard. Even if the ransom were to arrive immediately, she was beyond the stage where she could risk travelling any distance.