The Falcons of Montabard (59 page)

'I ... I am often afraid,' Joscelin confessed, 'but I would never dare say so. If my father heard me, he would have me whipped.'

Sabin stopped and turned. 'You have nothing of which to be ashamed,' he said. 'Your father will be proud of you, I promise.'

Joscelin looked wry.

'You think your father fears nothing?' Sabin laid his hand on the boy's shoulder and gave it a small shake for emphasis. 'He fears for you, his flesh and blood, and because he is a great lord and all eyes are upon him, he fears to show it. There will be no talk of whipping when you return.'

Sabin entered the chamber and was immediately assaulted by Guillaume, who dashed up to him, struck his thighs and bounced off. Sabin swung him up into the air and tossed him until the toddler squealed with delight. Finally, tucking him under his arm like a bundled-up saddle blanket, Sabin carried him over to the corner where Annais sat cradling the baby.

Joscelin went to prop the shield in a corner, facing inwards, but not before Annais caught sight of the blazon.

'Dear Jesu, what have you been doing?'

Sabin shrugged and flicked Joscelin a warning glance. 'Nothing,' he said. 'The hide is flawed and fragile. I will ask Usamah for some new skins and varnish to recover it.'

'Even so, a wooden sword would not do that kind of damage.' Her gaze nailed him. 'I did not spend my entire life in a nunnery. I know the difference between a scrape in practice and what I see there. No,' she said to Joscelin. 'Don't try to hide it.'

'It is nothing,' Sabin repeated quietly. 'One of the guards wanted to show off his prowess and, as I said, the hide is of poor quality.'

Annais studied him through narrowed lids. Sabin returned her look with one of bland innocence.

She drew breath, not prepared to let it pass so easily, but the

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baby came to Sabin's aid by screwing up his face and letting out a high-pitched wail of pain. Immediately her attention diverted. 'It's the colic,' she said and, putting him over her shoulder, gently patted his back. The wails continued. 'And, I suspect, a conspiracy of males,' she added darkly.

'The counterpart to a suspicion of women,' Sabin answered with a smile. 'Here, give him to me.' He took little Edmund from her arms and carried him around the room. Ostensibly, it was to soothe the infant, but it literally got Sabin out of a tight corner.

Dusk was approaching and a servant arrived to kindle the oil lamps. He glanced swiftly at Sabin, and looked astonished to see him bouncing a squalling baby against his chest. He had been one of the bystanders in the courtyard and Sabin could tell that he was trying to reconcile the notion that a brutal Frankish warrior could perform a woman's task with equanimity.

Clucking his tongue, the man turned to the door, but stopped in consternation at the sounds echoing down the corridor. Had they been closer they would have drowned out the baby's wails. As it was, they formed an eerie back song, rising and falling, rising and falling in a swollen ululation. The hostages exchanged glances. They had been here long enough now to know the manner in which Saracen women gave vent to agitation and grief, and to realise that something terrible must have happened.

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Chapter 39

Under a flag of truce, the Frankish delegation brought the ransom payment to Aleppo, there to receive the hostages that il Bursuqi had taken into his custody.

'It's a grand jest, is it not?' Fergus said as he and Strongfist waited with the horses.

'What is?' The barrels of money had been removed from the covered cart that was now being prepared to house the hostages. Chattering, silk-swathed women were piling the interior with cushions, bolsters and brightly coloured rugs.

'That the ransom money comes from il Bursuqi's defeat. We might have been years raising it otherwise. Now he has to use the hostages to "buy" back his losses.'

'Mayhap it is a jest, and fortunate for us, but I do not feel much like laughing,' Strongfist growled.

Ach, you will do soon.' Fergus unfastened a small flask from his pouch, took a quick swallow and passed it over. 'Burn some o' that down your gullet. It'll do you good.'

Strongfist eyed the flask dubiously. Fergus's usquebaugh was notorious and he was not sure that his need was yet that dire. He shook his head. 'I want a clear head,' he said, 'and I'd rather not greet my wife with a kiss tasting of drink . . . My daughter either.'

'Suit yourself.' Fergus shrugged. 'They'll not care what you smell of, just that you're here for them.'

More provisions were piled into the cart: boxes of sweetmeats;

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rush baskets filled with dates and pomegranates; flasks of sherbet, lemon-scented water for refreshing the hands and face in the heat of the day. Strongfist marvelled at the way that the Saracens made such implacable enemies but could be the most generous of hosts.

'If they've been treated to all this luxury then they won't want to come home,' Fergus said. 'Maybe they've developed a taste for harem life.'

Strongfist gave him a withering look and deigned not to answer. It was the same as in church. When confined to inactivity, Fergus had to fidget. His sons, who had formed part of the escort, had thankfully inherited some of their mother's tranquillity and were leaning in the shade of a wall, talking in a desultory fashion and slapping at the numerous flies with horse-hair switches.

It seemed an eternity since Baldwin's deputation had entered the Atabeg's residence, although Strongfist knew that his anxiety was making the time drag. Negotiations had to be conducted in a courtly and delicate style - more than half the reason that he and Fergus were waiting outside. Their role was to act as tough, Frankish knights, not diplomats. A group of olive-skinned small boys had gathered to study them and their weaponry with avid curiosity and not a little bravado. One of them had picked up a stone and was rotating in his hand. Strongfist could almost see his mind rotating too. Yes, no, yes no. Setting his hand to the hilt of his sword, he cast the boy the kind of glower intended to help him make the right decision in short order.

Two women emerged with more bundles for the cart. One threw a glance over the situation and rounded on the boys with a torrent of Arabic and some expressive arm-waving. They fled in noisy, chaotic unison, like a flock of sparrows. The woman turned her attention to Strongfist. He removed his hand from his sword hilt and returned to leaning against his horse. She presented him with a jug of sherbet, the expression in her eyes carefully neutral, for no Muslim woman was permitted to smile

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at a Christian man. He thanked her and avoided looking at her. Unfastening his drinking horn from his belt, he filled it and passed the jug to Fergus.

More people emerged from the tower. Strongfist raised the horn to his lips and lowered it again, the sherbet untasted. There were men and women, Saracens and Franks. His gaze sped over them with greedy anticipation and more than a little fear. Wordlessly he murmured his wife's name. At first he was unsure, and then he saw Princess Joveta clinging tightly to a sturdy woman clad in a dark-coloured gown complemented by a headdress of shimmering blue silk, fringed with tiny gold beads. For an instant, his gaze skimmed the woman, thinking 'Saracen' because of the headdress, but almost immediately, he cut back to her. The name he had spoken without sound now emerged on a husky whisper, then again as a breaking croak. Dear God, almost a whole year. Months and months of wasted time.

He thrust his cup into Fergus's startled free left hand and strode towards the party. Some Saracens reached for their scimitars but he saw them not, his concentration fixed on Letice. Her eyes were brimming. As he reached her, she threw her left arm around his neck and let out a single sob. Uncaring of the shocked and censorious stares of the witnesses, he set his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, feverishly kissing her temple, her cheek, her mouth.

'Thank Christ you are safe . . .'

'And you,' she gasped. Her hand gripped his hair and she clung to him as hard as he was clinging to her. Then she stepped back and composed herself. 'There is time later,' she said shakily. 'For now, the Princess has to be my first concern. It has been very hard on her.'

Strongfist looked down into the anxious, pinched little face of Princess Joveta. The child had been thin before, but now she was skin and bone. She clung to Letice even more fiercely than Strongfist had done in the moment of greeting, hers a fear of being parted rather than the joy of reunion. A feeling of unease

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stirred within him. His eyes had lit on his wife and he had gone to her, now he sought other reassurance and found it missing.

'They are not here,' Letice said quickly and touched his arm. 'But they are safe - still at Shaizar.'

'They separated the Princess from Annais?' He looked at her incredulously. 'I do not understand.'

'They had no choice. We should take Joveta to the cart. You are holding up the procession.'

Strongfist moved to her left and paced beside her in the customary position for a knight protecting a lady.

'I am,' he said distractedly. 'And glad of it. What do you mean they had no choice? What has happened?'

'Annais was great with child; she will have borne it by now. You will have another grandson, or mayhap a granddaughter.'

Strongfist almost stopped in his tracks, but Letice nudged him and he managed to put one foot in front of the other.

'I said I would go with the Princess, since she was used to me.'

He shook his head. 'A child? What was Sabin thinking . . . ?'

'Men seldom think with their heads when tempted,' Letice said drily. 'But, to be fair, neither she nor Sabin knew she was with child when they entered Shaizar.'

Strongfist caught his underlip in his teeth.

She gave his arm a gentle shake. 'Once the last part of the ransom is paid they can go free.'

'I cannot help but be concerned. I was expecting you all to be together, or you, Annais and Guillaume at least.'

'That time will be soon,' she said, striving to reassure him at the same time as she reassured herself. Stooping, she lifted Joveta into the travelling wain. 'For now, let us count the blessings we have.'

'I am counting,' he said, with a smile that was both genuine and preoccupied and turned from the conversation as Baldwin's steward claimed his attention with a question about arrangements for the road.

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A contingent of il Bursuqi's guards were to accompany them on the first part of their journey, which was still in Muslim-held land.

'We saw no trouble on the way,' Strongfist said, eyeing the Saracens who had clattered into the courtyard on their tough Arab mares and geldings. There were as many of them as there were Frankish guards. Unconsciously he fingered the hilt of his sword and wondered if there was treachery afoot.

'Perhaps not, but there is word that the Emir of Horns is smarting from the defeat at Azaz, and he has neither hostages nor money to compensate his losses. He may consider a rash move. Atabeg il Bursuqi deems it honourable to offer an escort - at least until we leave his territory.'

Strongfist grunted, acceding but less than overjoyed. After the recent hard and bitter fighting, he did not relish the prospect of riding with Saracens at his back. Somewhat reluctantly, he mounted his horse and shouldered his shield with exaggerated movements. He also made a great show of adjusting his sword. The Saracens responded in a similar wise.

'Ach, you're worrying too much, man,' Fergus said cheerfully as he mounted his own grey. 'It's a matter of honour that they protect us. If they don't, they'll be skinned alive.'

'If they don't, so will we,' Strongfist said grimly.

They rode out in the direction of Antioch and the safety of Christian-held territory. Once, from a distance, Strongfist saw warriors watching them from a sunburned hillside, but they swiftly vanished into the shadows of some ancient columns built by a civilisation long gone and forgotten. The Saracen guards posted outriders and one of them sent several arrows winging into the ruins, but he killed nothing save a goat, which he brought back across his saddle.

After that, there was no more trouble. The goat was roasted over the evening fire with herbs and spices. Although Strongfist received a strong impression that they were being watched and marked, the danger came no closer than an unpleasant prickling at the back of his neck. Their escort remained with them

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until they reached the Frankish-held fortress of Harenc and then turned back.

Strongfist delivered his charges to the Patriarch in Antioch, spent one luxurious night in the arms of his wife, and set out again for Shaizar to redeem the rest of the hostages, including one of whose tender existence he had not known until now.

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Chapter 40

"¥" have news for you,' Usamah said. He did not sit down at

I the chessboard, but leaned against the table on which it JL stood, his arms folded.

Sabin had been expecting it. When the cries of grief had sounded through Shaizar, he had known that something momentous had happened. Several days had passed and the hostages had been told nothing, but he had known that Usamah would eventually speak. 'I am glad of it,' he said. 'We have speculated until we have run out of notions . . . and many of them have not been pleasant.'

Usamah regarded him with a brooding stare, the hazel in his eyes quenched to dull brown. 'And you would be right. There has been a great battle before the walls of Azaz, between your King and Atabeg il Bursuqi.'

Sabin remembered the ululations of grief and knew who had lost. 'What implications does that have for the hostages? Are we to be set free, or made to pay?' He kept his expression neutral, his voice even.

Usamah ceased to lean. 'Have a care,' he warned.

'I intend no insult,' Sabin said steadily, although his heart was thundering, 'but I cannot easily forget what happened to Waleran of Birejek and Ernoul of Rethel.'