The Golden Horn (21 page)

“Not any more.”

“I don’t feel like it.” Yet she clambered
onto the pony’s back, tethered as he was, and sat there stroking his
neck.

Alf left the mare and brought out a crust or two for the
pony.

“All he cares about is food,” Anna said almost
angrily.

“He likes his ease, too. And you, when you spoil
him.”

“When I feed him.” Carefully she unraveled a
knot in the thick mane. Her brows were knit; her mouth was tight. She looked
very much like her mother.

“Alf,” she said abruptly, “what happens
when somebody dies?”

He sat on the grain bin while the pony nosed his hands, searching
for another tidbit. “Many things,” he answered. “The body
doesn’t work any more. The heart stops; the flesh grows cold. The soul—the
self—goes away.”

“Where?”

Under her hard stare, he raised his shoulders in a shrug. “I
don’t know. I’ve never been allowed to follow the whole way. After
a while, the light is too bright. I have to turn back.”

“Is that a story?” she demanded.

“No. I don’t tell stories.”

“Except true ones.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why
do people die?”

“The world is made so. Man lives his life as he wills,
and if he is good, as God wills, too. When the time comes, God takes him. Life,
you see, is both a gift and a test. A gift because it’s sweet, and there’s
only one of it for every man. A test because it can be very bitter, and a man’s
worth is judged by how well he faces the bitterness. At the end of it he gains
Heaven, which is all sweet and no bitter, and wholly free from death.”

“Father died.” She said it as if she were
telling him a new thing. “He went to Heaven.”

“Yes. He went to the light.”

“Everyone dies. Everyone goes to Heaven if he’s
good. Mother will die. Irene will die, and Nikki, and Corinna. I’ll die.
When I get old, I’ll die.” She studied her hands. Small narrow
child-hands, sorely in need of a washing. “I’m not old yet. Father
was old. Mother’s not quite old. I don’t want her to die, too. She
won’t die. Will she, Alf? Will she?”

Despite the stable’s warmth, Alf was suddenly cold. He
spoke with an effort, keeping his voice quiet. “That is in God’s hands.”

Anna slid from the pony’s back and stood in front of
him. She was very pale. “Father died and went away. That’s not him back
there on the bed. Mother will go away, too. I’ll be alone.”

“No.” He took her cold hands in his warm ones. “Your
mother will take care of you. If ever she can’t, I’ll be there. I promised
your father that. And I keep my promises.”

She shook her head slowly. “Everybody dies. You’ll
die, too.”

His fingers tightened. He relaxed them carefully and drew a deep
breath. “Anna, I’m not like other people.”

“I know that,” she snapped impatiently. “You
and Thea. You can talk to Nikki. You can make sick people well. But not Father.
Why not Father?”

“God wouldn’t let me.”

“Then God is bad.”

She glared at him in defiance, heart thudding, half
expecting to be struck dead for the blasphemy. He regarded her with a quiet
level stare. “God cannot be bad,” he said, “but He can let
bad things happen for His own reasons. Death is only evil for those who love
the dead. For the dead themselves, it’s a joy beyond our conceiving.
Imagine, Anna. No more sorrow and no more pain. No more sickness and no more
fear. Only joy.”

“You were crying, too. I saw you.”

“Of course I was. I loved him, and I’ll miss him
sorely. It was myself I cried for. Not your father.”

She freed her hands and buried them in the skirts of her gown.
He was silent. She wanted to hit him, to make him angry, to rid him of that
maddening calm.

“I’m not calm,” he said. “I’m
only pretending. What good would it do if I screamed and cried and upset the
horses?”

“I’d feel better.”

“Would you?”

“Yes!” she lied stubbornly. But she added, “You’re
always pretending?

“Most of the time. Monks learn how to do that.”

“Monks are horrid. You’re horrid. I hate you!’

“Why?” he asked.

She stared openmouthed. He stared back with wide pale-grey eyes.
She plunged toward him, hands fisted to strike him; but her fingers laced
behind his waist and her face buried itself in his lap, and all the dammed-up
tears burst forth.

He gathered her up and rocked her, not speaking. It was a
long while before she stopped.

She lay against him. He was warm and strong and more solid
than he looked. “I’ve got your coat wet,” she said in a
muffled voice.

“It will dry.” He set a handkerchief in her
hand; she wiped her face with it, sniffing loudly.

Her hair was in a tangle. He smoothed it with a light hand. She
blinked up at him, her eyes wet still, but her mouth set in its old firm line.
“If you go away,” she said, “or die, after what you promised
Father, I really will hate you.”

“I swear to you, I’ll neither die nor leave you.
Not while you need me.” .

“You had better not.” She slid from his lap and
stood a moment. The likeness to her mother was stronger than ever. “I
think I’ll ride after all. Will you come?”

He nodded. “For a little while.” He reached for
the mare’s bridle and turned toward her stall as Anna began to saddle the
pony.

o0o

Bardas lay in his tomb beyond the City’s walls. The
long rite of grief was ended, the funeral feast consumed; the guests and the
mourners had gone back to their houses. There remained only the Akestas, family
and servants, in a house gone strangely empty.

Alf was the last to go up to bed. He had spent a long
evening with Sophia, most of it in silence. There had been no need of words.

He bathed slowly, weary to the bone. They crowded him, all these
humans, clinging to him, barely letting him out of their sight. He had not even
been able to sleep in peace; Nikki had shared his bed every night since Bardas
died.

But it was not Nikki he found there tonight. Thea sat in his
usual place, combing her long free hair. She looked up as Alf hesitated in the
doorway, but did not smile.

His heart thudded against his ribs. He quelled an urge to turn
and bolt. “Where is Nikephoros?”

“I sent him to keep his mother company. She needs him.
You,” said Thea, “have me.”

He tried to swallow. His mouth was dry.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve left you
alone too long. You’ve had time to think.”

Carefully he closed the door behind him.

She laughed a shade too shrilly. “Poor little Brother.
Has guilt struck at last? Thou shalt not look on a woman with lust in thine
eye; thou shalt not know her carnally; and most of all, thou shalt not enjoy
it.”

“Particularly,” he said, “when thine host
is dying in thine absence.”

“He would have died no matter where you were. He
should have died months ago. But you kept him alive. In the end, God lost
patience and came to claim His own.”

Alf left the door to stand near the bed, but not close
enough to touch. Her eyes upon him were bright and bitter. “When I was
most off guard,” he agreed, “God struck. It was His right.”

“And now, in atonement, you’ve vowed to cast me
off.”

He advanced a step. She tilted her head back, the better to see
his face. He spoke with care. “The nights have been long and dark. I
haven’t slept much. Mostly, I’ve been thinking. I’ve pondered
sin and guilt and repentance. I’ve considered all that I am and all that
I’ve taught and all that I’ve been taught.”

Her lip curled; her eyes mocked him.

He continued quietly, weighing each word. “Yes, it is
a lot of thinking, even for a scholar. I can’t help it; it’s the
way I’m made. Just as you were made with mind and body in balance, thought
and action proceeding almost as one. But even I can come in time to a decision.”

“This time,” she said, “when I leave, I
won’t come back. Ever.”

He looked long at her. She could not hold his gaze; she glared
fiercely at her hands, turning the ivory comb in her lap.

She was all defiance over a hurt and a fear which she would
not let herself acknowledge. So well she fancied she knew him.

“Thea.” She would not raise her eyes. His voice
firmed. “Althea, look at me.”

She obeyed, a flash of gold-rimmed green.

He met it with cool silver and ember-red. “You know me
very well, Thea. Yet you don’t know me at all. What makes you think, now
I’ve had all of you, that I’ll ever let you go?”

She drew her breath in sharply, a gasp, almost a sob.

“Beloved.” His voice was gentle. “Oh, I
had all the thoughts you blame me for, and others besides. After all, I was
sworn to chastity for a man’s whole lifetime. But I was also trained in logic.
And logic told me that nothing so sweet, indeed so blessed, could truly be a
sin. I found light in it, but no darkness. Not where there was love.”

She searched his face and the mind behind it, open wide for her
to see. Suddenly, almost painfully, she laughed. “See, even I can be a
fool! I knew how you would be. I
knew
.”

“I was. I flogged myself with guilt. But I must have
imbibed a drop or two of your good sense. In the end, early this morning when
you stood night watch with the Guard, it won. I was going to make Nikki sleep
tonight and come to you.” He kissed her lightly, with a touch of shyness,
for he was a novice still. “It’s been a long while.”

“Too long.” She laughed again, more freely, as
he dropped his robe and lay beside her. “How could I have forgotten? You were
not only a monk; you were a theologian.”

“And the theologian, though late in emerging, always
gains the victory. An agile mind in a willing body, and the fairest lady in all
the world. So much has God blessed me.” He loosed the lacing of her gown.
“I love you, Thea.”

Her answer had no words, and needed none.

At Candlemas, as you know, Your Holiness, our forces took
two great and holy trophies: the standard of the Roman Empire and the blessed
icon of the Virgin which bears with it the luck of Constantinople. Shortly
thereafter we received word that the usurping Doukas had disposed of his
rivals, the young Emperor strangled in his prison cell, his father slain soon
after by age, sickness, and grief.

No bond of honor or treaty now compels us to keep peace. As
Lent draws to its end in fasting and abstinence no less devout for that our circumstances
force it upon us, we advance inexorably toward the conclusion of this conflict.
Count Baudouin has sworn to celebrate Easter in Hagia Sophia. That, he will do,
by God’s will and the will of our army.

Jehan set down his pen and flexed his fingers. A few
sentences more, and that would be the end of His Excellency the Cardinal Legate’s
latest epistle to the Pope; and His Excellency’s secretary would be free
for an hour to do as he pleased. The sun was gloriously warm, as if the past bitter
winter had never been; he gazed longingly at it from the stifling prison of the
Cardinal’s tent, and swallowed a sigh.

Soon, he promised himself. Grimly he took up the pen again.
Its tip was beginning to splay already after only a line.

He needed a new quill. And none in his writing case; he had been
meaning to replenish his supply and had kept forgetting.

A shadow blocked the sunlight in the tent’s opening.
That would be Brother Willibrord returning most opportunely from one of his
endless Benedictine Offices. He had little love to spare for a sword-bearing Jeromite
priest with pretensions to scholarship, but he carried an exceedingly well-stocked
writing case.

“Good day, Brother,” Jehan said, squinting at
the robed shadow against the sun. “Could you spare a new quill for God’s
charity, or at least for the Pope’s letter?”

Brother Willibrord said nothing. That was one of his few virtues:
silence. Even as Jehan turned back to his letter, the monk set the pen in his
hand, a fresh one, well and newly sharpened.

“Deo gratias,”
Jehan said sincerely but rather absently, eyes on the parchment. Now, where was
he? …
The will of our army.
Yes.
After much deliberation, the captains have determined to
assault the City with all the forces they can muster. The attack will commence before—

He stopped. Brother Willibrord stood over him still, a silent
and hopeless distraction. He looked up, barely concealing his irritation. “Yes,
Brother?”

Alf smiled down at him, a smile that turned to laughter as Jehan’s
jaw dropped. “Indeed, Brother! Has all your labor made you blind?”

“Alf,” Jehan said. He leaped up, scattering pen
and parchment. “Alf! What are you doing here?”

“Fetching my hat,” Alf answered. “Didn’t
I say I would?”

“That was months ago.
Months!
With every rumor imaginable coming out of the City, and some of them declaring
you dead.”

“You knew I wasn’t.”

“I did,” Jehan admitted grudgingly. He pulled
Alf into a tight embrace. “By all the saints! Next time you commit imaginary
suicide, mind that you do it where I can get at you.”

“If I can,” said Alf, “I will.”

“That’s no promise.” Jehan held him at arm’s
length and inspected him critically. “You look magnificent. A little
tired, maybe. But magnificent.”

Alf returned his scrutiny with a keen eye, running a hand down
his side. Under the brown habit there were ribs to count. “You, on the
other hand, could use a month or two of good feeding.”

“It’s Lent. I’m fasting.” Jehan
dismissed himself with a shrug. “All’s well in the City?”

“As well as it may be,” Alf answered soberly. And
after a pause: “Bardas died just after Candlemas.”

Jehan’s jaw tightened. “I…couldn’t
have known. He was a good man. His family—are they—”

“The Akestas refuse to be daunted by so feeble a power
as death. I’m the weak one. Do you know what Bardas did, keeping it
secret even from me? Adopted me as his son and made me the guardian of his
estate, to hold it in trust for his lady and his children. Not,” Alf
added, “that Sophia needs my help. She has a better head for business
than I’ll ever have.”