The Golden Horn (19 page)

Not all the Latins had gathered about Henry. A bold handful raged
among the Greeks. Jehan called out to them. “To me, my lads! To me!”

They came as the cubs to the lion, a shield for his back and
his sides. He raised his sword and sprang forward full upon the Patriarch.

The guard of Greek knights scattered. The Patriarch hauled
at the reins, but his mare jibbed, shying.

Jehan’s blade swept down. In the last instant it
flickered. The flat of it crashed upon the nasal of the Patriarch’s
helmet. The reins fell from nerveless fingers; the mare bolted, her rider
clinging blindly to her neck.

The icon swayed dangerously on its great ark of gold and jewels.
One of its four strong bearers had fallen, trampled under a charger’s
hooves. Another stumbled.

Jehan shouted something only half coherent and leaped from his
saddle into the very midst of the Greeks. They scattered before his sword. The
icon was falling. He thrust his shoulder under the ark and staggered, eye to
staring eye with a Greek well-nigh as tall as himself.

The Greek yawned and dropped. A burly man in tattered
surcoat and dented helm filled his place; and another, heaving up the mighty
weight, raising it again toward heaven. The Virgin smiled her secret smile; the
gems glittered about her, set in pure gold.

Henry saw the icon fall and rise again upon Latin shoulders.
The Franks lifted a shout; the Greeks faltered in dismay.

Now
, Henry thought. And
aloud: “Now!”

All his gathered men drew together with Henry at the head of
the spear. The enemy held before the charge; weakened; broke. Mourtzouphlos
himself, within a circle of chosen princes, saw all his guard felled or driven
in flight; and Henry’s sword smote past his shield to send him tumbling
over his horse’s neck, sprawling ignominiously upon the ground.

Sick, half stunned, he staggered to his feet. The charge had
swept past him. His mount was gone; his army was an army no longer but a
fleeing mob. Over the Latin helms swayed the icon that was the luck of his
City, and the bright banner of his empire.

No one paid him any heed, not even the crows that had gathered
to feast on the dead. His dead, save for the one reckless Provençal whose
laughter had roused the ambush.

He cast off his shield and his crowned helmet. Pain stabbed
his right arm, the mark of Henry’s sword. He set his face toward the
distant City and began to run.

Bardas slept as easily as he ever did now, freed for the moment
from the torment of coughing that racked his whole body, granted the release
from pain that was all the healing Alf could give. His face, though thinned to
the bone, wore a semblance of peace.

Sophia combed out her black braids. Freed, they tumbled to her
knees: her one beauty and her one vanity. This morning she had found a thread
of grey. Well; it was time. She was thirty-four.

Across the bed, Alf straightened. In lamplight and intent on
his task, he looked strangely old, an age that smoothed and fined rather than
withered and shrank, like the patina of ancient ivory.

She was obsessed with time tonight. As he began to gather the
packets and vials from which he had made Bardas’ medicine, she asked, “How
old are you, Alf?”

A bottle dropped from his fingers, mercifully falling only an
inch or two, striking the table with a sound that made them both start. Very
carefully Alf picked it up again and laid it in his box of medicines. His voice
was equally careful, his face completely without color. “How old would
you like me to be?”

“As old as you are.”

He tightened the knot on a bundle of herbs, head bent. His hair
hid his face, whiter in that light than Bardas’ yet thick and youthful. “That,”
he said, “could be embarrassing. Or frightening.”

“To you or to me?”

“Both.” He looked up. It was a boy’s face
with the barest hint of white-fair downy beard. But a man’s voice, well
settled, and eyes too unbearably ancient to meet.

He laughed as a strong man will, in pain. “I’m
not
that
old! If I were like anyone else, I
could conceivably be still alive.”

“Then—”

“I was seventeen when l took vows in Saint Ruan’s.
Bardas was a very young child. In too many ways, I’m still seventeen.”

“I’m neither embarrassed nor frightened.”

Wide-eyed, surprised, he looked younger than ever.

She smiled. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m
still seventeen, too. I just don’t look it, and I try not to act it. At
least not in public.”

“It doesn’t matter? That I—”

“Why should it? I only wanted to be sure. I hate
mysteries.”

She finished her combing and began to bind up the gleaming mass
again. “It’s reassuring, in its way. All that wisdom and experience,
and a body strong enough to last out any storm.”

“But also, all too often, at the mercy of its own
unnatural youth.”

“Unnatural, Alf? Did you buy it? Or induce it?”

“Saints, no!”

“Well then,” Sophia said, “for you it’s
natural. It certainly looks well on you.”

Alf closed the lid of the box and fastened it. He was
smiling wryly. “There are two kinds of people in the world. People who
want desperately to burn me at the stake, and people who take me easily in
their stride.”

“Not easily. Just…inevitably. What must it have
been like for you? Raised as you were, trained as you were, and being what you
were. Even with the monks’ acceptance, or tolerance at least, you still
had to face the Church. My poor little prejudices are nothing to that.”

“I’m trapped in this body. I have to endure it.
You have no need.”

“Don’t I? You’re so wise about the rest of
the world, and such a fool with yourself.”

He bowed his head. “I don’t think I understand
people very well.”

“You do. Perfectly. Except when your own person comes into
it. The monks triumphed with you, I think.”

That brought his head up, and won reluctant but genuine laughter.
“I begin to see what I missed in all that lifetime without women. A clear
eye, an acid tongue, and a wonderfully illogical logic.”

“Only a man would find it illogical. It makes perfect
sense to me.”

“Of course it does.” He came round the bed, took
her hand and kissed it. “You’re good for me, Sophia.”

“Like one of your medicines: bitter but bracing.”

He laughed again. She watched him go, smiling even after he
was gone. “Naturally,” she said to Bardas who slept on unheeding,
breathing almost easily, “I’m in love with him. Who isn’t?”

o0o

Alf’s laughter died beyond the door. He was grave and
almost sad when he stood in his own room, setting the box of medicines with his
blue mantle, running a fingertip over the fine wool. It was early still, hours
yet to midnight; he felt no desire to sleep. A bath he had had.

A book? He had a new one, given him by Master Dionysios when
he returned to Saint Basil’s. “Take it,” the Master had
growled, glaring at him as if he had committed some infraction. But behind the
glare lurked the joy no one else had even tried to hide.

He set the book beside his chair and undressed slowly. He glimpsed
himself in the silver mirror that lay upon the table; Diogenes had left it that
morning when he cut Alf’s hair.

Alf turned it face down and reached for the loose warm robe he
always wore for reading at night. Settling into the chair, he opened the book.

This was not Dionysios’ volume of Arabic medicine.

The moon and the Pleiades have set.
I lie in bed,
alone.

Irene’s love poems. He moved to close the book, found himself
turning the page instead.

Immortal Aphrodite of the elaborate throne,
Wile-weaving daughter of Zeus,
I beseech thee,
vanquish not my soul, O Lady,
with love’s sweet torment.

Bardas was dying. The Emperor had lost not merely a skirmish
but the fabled luck of the City. Jehan lay cold and sleepless in the camp,
rolling on his tongue the bitter dregs of his victory. And Alf could think of
nothing but the fire in his flesh. He set the book down with exaggerated care
and rose.

The house slept about him, even Sophia drowsing on the cot
she had had the servants set up near Bardas’ bed, with Corinna stretched
out at her feet in mountainous repose.

Softly on bare feet he ventured into the corridor. Something
stirred, startling him: Nikki’s kitten, mewing and weaving about his
ankles. He gathered it up, settled it purring in the curve of his arm. Its
thoughts were small feral cat-thoughts, warm now and comfortable.

The women’s quarters, though called that still, had
been given over to the children; beyond it at the top of House Akestas, Thea
had claimed a room of her own. Its door was unlocked. Alf opened it slowly,
fighting every instinct that cried out to him to flee.

Dim light met his eyes. A lantern hung on a chain from the ceiling,
shaped like a hawk in flight. It illumined a small room, simply and plainly
furnished, almost like a servant’s. The only extravagance was the bed’s
coverlet, a blaze of flame-red silk embroidered with the phoenix rising from
its pyre.

Thea sat cross-legged upon it in a woollen robe, her hair
free, mending a shield strap. That was so very like her that Alf smiled without
thinking and was in the room before his terror could master him.

She returned his smile, not at all disturbed to see him
there where he had never come before. “Welcome to my empire,” she
said. “Sit down and keep me company while I finish this.”

There was nowhere to sit but on the bed. Alf sat stiffly at
the very end of it.

She had returned to her mending, frowning with concentration.
Her hair had fallen forward; he wanted to stroke it back. But he did not move.

The kitten yawned hugely, stepped out of its nest,
negotiated the descent to the bed. After some thought, it curled in a hollow beyond
the crest of the phoenix and went complacently to sleep.

Thea took the last stitch and tugged at it. Satisfied, she
laid the shield down beside the bed, tossing back her hair. The lamp caught the
gold lights in it, deepened the shadows to black-bronze. “Inspection
tomorrow,” she explained. “His Majesty, having run home from battle
with his tail between his legs, wants to assure himself that he still has
enough power to make an army miserable.”

“Isn’t he claiming the victory? A few Greeks
fell, to be sure, and he lost his horse. But he routed the Franks and brought
the icon and the standard back to the treasury where they belong.”

“So he says.” She stretched like a cat; her
loose robe clung to breast and thigh. “A few people believe him. The rest
know he has to save his skin. Before he took the crown he promised his supporters
that he’d rid the City of the Latins in a week. A month, he’s
saying now. Soon it will be a season. And he may not last that long.”

He found that he had moved closer to her, close enough to touch.
His hands were icy cold. His heart beat hard.
Coward
,
it mocked him.
Coward, coward, coward
.

She stroked the kitten, rousing it to a drowsy purr. “Under
Mourtzouphlos,” she said, “for all that he’s had his
failures, the palace feels different. He may have lost a battle today, but he’s
won others; and he’s willing to act. The Angeloi never even began to try.”

Alf listened to her in growing despair. He had succeeded; he
had convinced her that he could not give her more than he ever had. Love, but
love of the mind only, that of the body twisted and made powerless by his lifetime
in the cloister. Companionship, friendship, even kinship he could give, for
after all he was the only being of her own kind in this part of the world. But
nothing more.

She had fallen silent. He could have wept to see her so beautiful,
and he too little of a man even to touch her except as a brother. He would have
been better as a eunuch, like Michael Doukas, who had never known how to desire
a woman and who could never know it.

No
, said a voice deep in
his mind.
Even this is worth the price
.

If he could live his life again, he would have her in it
just as she was now. Watching him, saying no word; ready to be hurt, more than
willing to be loved.

Even though I am no maid?

He stared blankly. He had never even thought of that. “For
me,” he said, “only one thing matters. That you are you. Thea. None
other.”

He heard himself speak and realized that it was the truth.
And that she too was afraid. Not of her body—that, she had mastered long
ago—but of that which had been between them since they met in Anglia, and
was like nothing she had ever known. Beside that, his own terror was a small
thing, a child’s whimpering in the dark.

It doesn’t frighten me.
He held her hands and met her wide eyes, and remembered as he so seldom did,
that she was younger than he.

“Do you know what it means?” she cried. “We’re
bound. One soul, the humans say. They don’t know the half of it. Wherever
you go, I must go; whatever you do, I must be with you. If you hurt, I hurt;
your joy is my joy. We can never be free again.”

“Free?” He kissed her palms and held them to his
cheeks. “What is freedom?”

Her fingers tensed; he felt the prick of nails. But she did
not try to pull away. “Bodies are simple. An hour’s play, a moment’s
pleasure, and there’s the end of it. But this is forever.
Forever
, Alf!”

“It’s not an easy thing to face. And yet…many
a time I’ve wished you far away, or regretted the day I met you; we’ve
quarreled and I’ve come close to hating you. But if you left and never
came back, I know that I could not live.”

“It’s a trap. A vicious, impenetrable, eternal
trap.”

“So,” he said, “is all this wonder of a
world. See what blessings we’re given to make it easier. Beauty and
agelessness and power, and the bond that has held us together from the moment
of our meeting. Although I’m not much of a blessing for a woman, nor
indeed much of a man at all.”