The Golden Horn (10 page)

Someone came to stand beside her. “There doesn’t
seem to be much he can’t do,” Bardas said.

The rough familiar voice called her back to herself. She smiled
and took his arm and walked with him out of the workroom. “It’s a
bit of a scandal, you know. How can we allow a Latin—a boy—to teach
our nubile young daughters? Are we positive that he’s only teaching them
Latin and tutoring them in Greek, with a little music on the side?”

“That sounds like my sister,” Bardas muttered.

“Well, yes. Theodora was here yesterday. We visited
the schoolroom.” Sophia’s eyes glinted. “Alfred, as usual,
was infallibly polite. Theodora, as usual, completely failed to captivate him
with those famous eyes of hers. And she suggested that maybe we weren’t
entirely wise to expose him to such temptation, with Irene growing so pretty,
and he so young and evidently a man entire.”

“‘Evidently,’” he said. “I
like that.”

They paused just past the door that led to the garden. Alf and
the children were out of sight around a corner of the house, but they heard Anna’s
tuneless treble and Irene’s sweet soprano rehearsing the song Alf had
sung.

“It’s obvious enough to me,” said Sophia, “but
I think I’d trust him with any woman living. Except perhaps for
one.”

He raised an eyebrow.

She raised both. “Well? Have you ever seen anyone look
at a woman the way he looks at Thea?”

“It seems to me,” mused Bardas, “that I
saw a boy or two mooning after you in your day. And you inveigled your father into
marrying you off to an old man from Constantinople, purely and simply for his
money.”

She glared at him. “Money, forsooth! I had enough of
my own. Good sense, that was what I admired in you. No fumbling, no
foolishness. You knew what you wanted, and that was that.”

“Two of a kind, weren’t we? Though as I recall,
the first time I saw you, you were flat on your behind in a dungheap, roundly
cursing the half-broken colt who’d thrown you there. I admired your
vocabulary. And,” he added after some consideration, “Your trim
ankle.”

“You saw more than that, that day.” Sophia
smiled, remembering. Bardas sat on a stone bench against the house wall where
the sun was warm, drawing a breath, of contentment perhaps, that caught and broke
into a spasm of coughing.

Sophia sprang toward him, but he waved her away. His breathing
had steadied; he leaned back. “Something in my throat,” he
muttered.

He said that every time. Often lately, since the fire. She looked
hard at him. He seemed as strong as ever. A little thinner, maybe. A little greyer.
He would be sixty on Saint Stephen’s Day.

“It’s true,” he said in almost his normal
voice, “those two children seem unduly interested in each other. Has
anyone caught them at it yet?”

She knew he was leading her away from himself, but she did not
resist him. “I can’t imagine Alfred doing anything of the sort. He’s
too…well…
young
.”

“Is he?” Bardas smoothed his beard. “How
old would you say he was?”

“Seventeen, maybe. Eighteen. But that’s not what
I mean.”

“I know. In some things he’s a complete
innocent. Blushes like a girl if he hears a coarse word. It’s the other
things that concern me. He can tell a rare tale when he has a mind. Ever stopped
to wonder how he could have been a monk and a priest, taught that great clever
ox from the camp, gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem—the last of which, by
his own account, took years, with a year at least in the holy places afterward—and
all before he’s even grown a beard?”

“Latins take vows almost blasphemously young,
sometimes.”

Bardas frowned. “There are times when I think he’s
about fifteen. Other times I’m sure he’s as old as the Delphic
Oracle. Those eyes of his—he’s no boy, Sophia. Whatever else he is,
he’s no boy.”

She shivered in the sunlight. “I know,” she said
very low. She remembered the doctor in Chalcedon and shivered again. “I
don’t think he means us harm. The children love him, and I think he
returns it. The servants quarrel over the privilege of waiting on him.”

“He’s bewitched us all, hasn’t he? You
should hear the tales they tell in and around Saint Basil’s. He’s
supposed to have walked unscathed through the fire, carried any number of people
out of it, and worked authentic miracles of healing, aided by a golden-eyed
angel in boy’s clothes and another disguised as a Frankish priest.”

“Jehan is no more uncanny than you are,” Sophia
said quickly.

“You think so?”

“Of course I think so. He’s a good deal brighter
than he looks, and he knows more about Alfred than he’s telling, but he’s
no more than he seems to be.”

“That still leaves the other two.”

Bardas shifted slightly; Sophia sat beside him. “You
aren’t going to send them away, are you?” she asked him.

He regarded her in honest surprise. “Why would I do
that?”

“The stories—”

“Are just stories until they’re proven otherwise.
I don’t deny that I’m highly suspicious, and I’m not at all
sure what we’re harboring here. But I agree with you. Neither of them
means us any harm. Whatever they are.”

“Maybe, after all, they’re only a pair of
pilgrims.”

Bardas snorted and stifled another cough. Before he could answer
her, a procession rounded the corner: Anna running ahead with Nikki, Irene
walking more sedately behind, and Alf in the rear most dignified of all.

Sophia could not quite suppress a guilty start. What if Alf had
heard them?

He showed no sign of it. The younger children paused only briefly
before vanishing in the direction of the stable; Irene excused herself to
attend to her studies— “A love poem,
I
bet,” Anna said, and was firmly ignored—and Bardas had business in
the City.

Which left Alf, and Sophia sitting in the sun. There was an awkward
pause. “I should see to the kitchen stores,” Sophia said to fill
it.

Alf sat where Bardas had been, with no show of self-consciousness.
Since he neither responded to her inanity nor looked at her except to smile his
quick luminous smile, she stole the chance to look at him. His face was smooth,
unlined, with no mark or blemish that she could see; the last scar of the burning
was gone wholly, without a trace.

It could have been a cold face, white and flawless as it
was. But the tilt of his brows warmed it, gave it a hint of the faun; and when
he smiled it could melt stone.

“Should you be in the sun?” she asked.

His eyes flicked to her. They seemed to change whenever she saw
him, sometimes grey, sometimes silver, sometimes colorless as water. Now they
were palest gold, with the same sunstruck sheen as his hair. “I’ll
go in in a little while.”

“Soon, then.” He was silent; she added, “I
liked your song. Was it Latin?”

He nodded. “A hymn for Rachel bereft of her children. ‘Why
are you weeping, maiden mother, lovely Rachel?’” he sang very
softly in that marvel of a voice: “‘
Quid
tu virgo mater ploras, Rachel formosa?’”

He sang no more than that, although she waited, expectant. After
a moment she spoke. “Do you miss your monastery?”

She could hear his breath as he caught it, see his fists
clench in his lap. For an instant his face was truly cold. Yet he spoke quietly,
without either pain or anger. “Yes. Yes, sometimes I do miss it. The
peace; the long round of days from prayer to prayer and from task to task, with
now and then a feast or a guest or a villager who needed healing or comfort. I
miss that. The Brothers whose faces I’d known all my life; my Abbot who
was my friend…there are times when I ache to take wing and fly back and
never leave again.”

“Why don’t you?”

He startled her with a flicker of laughter. “For one
thing,” he said, “I don’t have wings. For another, I don’t
belong there any more. My Abbot is dead; the world has claimed me.”

“Has it?”

“Do I look so much like a monk?”

“You look like a gentleman of the City.”

“Who longs for his cloister.” That had been her thought;
she stared at him, silenced. He smiled bitterly. “I suppose one can’t
repudiate one’s whole upbringing in a day or even a season. But I’m
going to have to do it.”

“Why?”

He paused. His eyes had darkened almost to grey. “Many
reasons,” he answered, speaking as quietly as ever. “I killed a man,
you know that.”

“Against your will and in defense of your Abbot.”

“No,” he said. “It started that way. But
when the stroke fell, I knew exactly what I was doing, and I wanted to do it. I
took a human life; for that I was truly repentant and atoned in every way I
knew how, even to Jerusalem. I shall never free myself from that guilt. Yet
that I killed when I did, whom I did—he was mad, and he wanted to destroy
three kingdoms, and he murdered my friend who had never raised a hand against
any living thing. I rid the world of him. I’ve not been able to regret
it.”

She took his hand. It was the left, his writing hand, its fingers
stained with ink. Black, not blood-scarlet. “You killed one man. How many
have you healed?”

“That’s what everyone says. I know about sin and
repentance and absolution; who better? But I can’t go back to Saint Ruan’s.
It’s more than the act of murder long since atoned for. It’s that I
could do it and feel as I do about it. I’ve changed too much. They raised
me to be a ringdove, Thea says; I grew into an eagle.”

“Thea has a clear eye.”

“Thea has a gift for irony. She also says that no one
can turn a leopard into a lapcat. By that, I suppose, she means that I’m innately
vicious.”

“She means that you were stifling in your abbey. Maybe
someday when you’ve had all the world has to offer, you’ll be ready
to go back and find peace.”

The bitterness had left his smile. It was gentle and a
little sad. “Maybe,” he said without conviction. He rose. “Master
Dionysios will be looking for me. Good day, my lady.”

When she found her voice again, he was gone, and she had asked
none of the questions she had meant to ask. She realized that she had crossed
herself; cursed her own folly, and turned her back on the garden.

Though the sun shone almost with summer’s brilliance,
the wind that scoured the City was icy cold. Alf drew his hat down lower and
huddled into his cloak.

“The worst thing about this city,” his companion
said, “is its climate. A furnace all summer; then before you can get your
breath it’s winter, with a wind howling right out of Scythia.”

Alf smiled. The other’s tone was as cheerful as his
words were glum, his round cheeks bright red with the cold; he grinned up at
Alf and clutched at the hat that threatened to take flight and leave his bald
crown bare. “There’s your turning. I suppose I’ll see you
tomorrow then?”

“Wait.” On impulse Alf said, “Let me walk
you home.”

The smaller man’s grin widened. “Are you being
protective, then? Eh, brother? They aren’t hunting doctors today, only Latins.”

“I want to walk,” Alf said, “and I’m
not expected home quite yet.”

“First time you’ve ever left Saint Basil’s
when you’re supposed to, isn’t it? Trust Master Dionysios to know
when you’re working too hard.”

“I’m not—”

“Oh, no. Thin as a lath and white as a ghost, and you’re
not overworking. Of course not. And half the people who come in insist that no one
but Master Theo tend them. If we weren’t so fond of your pretty face, my
friend, we’d all hate you with a passion.”

“I can’t understand why you don’t.”

“Didn’t I just tell you? It’s your face.
Besides the fact that you’re the best doctor we’ve got. And don’t
glower at me like that. Fat old Thomas is babbling on again as usual, but it’s
the truth and you know it. There are some who’d gladly see the last of
you, but most of us are happy enough; you do all the work, and we get to watch
and collect some credit.” Thomas grinned and patted Alf’s shoulder,
which was as high as he could reach, for he was a very small man. “Look,
I’ve talked us right up to my doorstep. Come in and warm up before you go
back.”

Somewhat later, Alf strode away from Thomas’ house
with a cup of wine warming his belly and a smile on his lips. Strange that in
this half-burned and crumbling city he should have found more and better
friends than he had in his own country.

What’s strange about it? I’ve always known you’re
a Greek at heart.

He looked about. In the throngs about him he could not see Thea’s
face. Though perhaps the striped cat in the doorway, or the pigeon that took
wing in front of him—

Close by him scarlet blazed, a pair of Varangians leaving an
alehouse. They were big men and young; he had seen faces like theirs on many a
villein in Anglia, long Saxon faces thatched with straw-fair hair.

As he paused, one stared full at him and grinned. The eyes
under the blond brows were startling, golden bronze.

He knew he was gaping like a fool. The Varangians parted almost
within his reach; the one whose eyes and mind were Thea’s stopped short
in front of him and swept him into a muscular embrace. “By all the
saints! Alfred! What are you doing abroad at this hour?”

Behind the strange male face, the deep voice, Thea laughed at
his discomfiture. Her mockery steadied him. “I’m walking home from
Saint Basil’s,” he answered her. He looked her over and laughed a
little. “No wonder you were angry when I read you my lecture on mingling
with guardsmen. What a pompous fool I was!”

“Weren’t you?” Thea drew him into a
passageway away from prying eyes. Almost at once she was herself again,
stripping off her bright gear and bundling it together, dressing in the gown she
had worn when he saw her that morning, drawn it seemed from air. The trappings
of the Guard vanished as the gown had appeared; she turned about with dancing
eyes. “How do I look?”