The Golden Horn (30 page)

Anna shook her head. “Hell isn’t here. It’s
underneath us. You know that, Father Jehan.”

“And belike I’m going there.” He mastered
himself with an effort. “You’re safe, God be thanked. Is—is—Anna,
is Nikki here?”

Her face twisted. “No. N—no.”

‘“Dead?”

“No.” She was crying again.

“For God’s sake, you great lout, stop tormenting
the child.”

Jehan met Master Dionysios’ cold eye. “I’m
tormenting myself,” he said levelly. And at last: “Where is Alfred?”

The Master glared. “What is that to you?”

Suddenly Jehan could not bear it. “Everything!”
he shouted. “Everything, damn you!”

“We are not deaf.” Dionysios’ expression
had not softened, but his eyes had, a very little. “Nor do we know where
he is.”

“They took him,” Anna said. “He fought.
Thea—Thea was somebody else, and then they shot her, and she was herself.
He tried to kill everybody. They tied him up and took him away. Thea, too.
Nikki and his cat went after. Nobody could stop him. They were too busy holding
me down.”

Dionysios nodded shortly. “That in essence is the
truth. The woman had a bolt in her lung below the heart. She could not have
survived the hour under such handling as they gave her. But mercy is not a
virtue you barbarians are guilty of. Your friend was taken with her; where, no
one seems able to tell. Some vile prison, no doubt, reserved for those who had
the temerity to defend their city.”

If Jehan had not been sitting, he would have fallen.
“Alf—wasn’t—hurt?”

“Not that any of` us could see, though he fought like
a madman once the woman had Fallen.”

“It didn’t matter,” Anna said, “if
he wasn’t hurt, if Thea was.”

No. It did not. And if Thea was dead—

Jehan rose unsteadily, setting Anna on her feet. She held to
the cincture of his habit. “Take me with you,” she said.

“Child, I can’t. You’re safe here. There’s
the Master, and Thomas, and—”

“Take me!”

“What would l do with you?”

“Take me,” she persisted.

He hardened his will. She tightened her grip on his belt.

“It’s death out there!” he cried in
desperation.

“Not any more,” she said. “The riots are
over. Everyone says so. All the Latins are sick and sorry and very, very rich. Besides,”
she added, “you’re big enough to take care of six of me.”

But not to withstand the pleadings of even one of her. He tarried,
hoping that she would weary of waiting and abandon him. Vain hope. He
questioned every Latin in Saint Basil’s, of every rank, and she never
took her eyes from him.

No one knew where Alf had been taken. Lord Bertrand had commanded
it; Lord Bertrand was gone, and his men with him. He could be anywhere in the
City.

When Jehan left Saint Basil’s, he had a small
companion. A boy, it might have been, dressed as a healer’s apprentice,
with a cap on his head and a small, satisfied smile on his face.

o0o

Nikki huddled miserably in a corner with his kitten in his
lap. It was dark where they were, and damp, and cold. Things scuttled in the
darkness, fleeing when the cat sprang at them, creeping back boldly when it
paused to make a meal of one of their kin. Once, when men brought food and
water, the light of their torches caught the brown-furred bodies and the pink naked
tails and the redly gleaming eyes.

Alf did not notice. Alf noticed nothing except Thea. His robe
lay under her body, shielding her from the crawling dampness; for himself he
had only his thin undertunic.

The men had had things to say of that; Nikki had felt their
minds when they came, and seen their faces. Not good faces, but not bad ones,
either. One had tried to touch Alf where a person was not supposed to touch,
but the other had stopped him, angry and a little disgusted, thinking words
Nikki was not sure he understood.

Alf had not even known they were there. Thea lay very still on
his robe. He had eased the bolt out of her side with hands and power, and
stopped the bleeding.

Strange bleeding, bubbling like water out of a fountain. It
frightened Alf, a fear that made Nikki cower in his corner. She was dying the
way Father had died. She would die, and there would be no world left for Alf.

Hour after hour she lay there in the darkness and the cold and
the pale glimmer of Alf’s power. Close to death, hovering, on the very
edge of it, yet she held firm against his healing.

Her will and her consciousness had no part in it; those were
long gone. But her body clung grimly to life, and her power kept doggedly to
its resistance: two instincts, each powerful, each implacable, each striving
blindly to thwart the other.

Alf drove his power to the farthest limits of its strength
and even beyond. His body, abandoned, sprawled beside hers; his mind cupped
like a hand about the wound that drained her life away, but could not move to
mend it. Her shield was like adamant.

He spun back into his body. For a long while he lay motionless.

Her face was white and still and achingly beautiful. Already
it had the marble pallor of death. Drop by drop, blood trickled into her lungs,
crowding out the precious air. Her heart strained; her limbs grew cold as all
her forces gathered at her center.

Slowly Nikki crept from his corner. Alf seemed as close to
death as she, willing it, longing for it.

There was a small space between them. Nikki wriggled into it.
Thea was hard and cold in her armor, Alf cold and rigid, no warmer or softer
than the stones on which he lay. They were gone; they would never come back.
They had left him alone. He began to cry, deep racking sobs without help or
hope.

Alf’s power, all but spent, sent forth a last, feeble
tendril. Thea’s barrier wavered and melted.

Nikki, between them, wept as if his heart would break. Through
the perfection of his grief, Alf’s healing flowed.

It was very little. He had no more left to give. Yet Thea’s
life, balancing on the edge of dissolution, seized the thread and clung. Inch
by tortured inch he drew her back. Cell by cell her body began to mend.

At last, exhausted by his weeping, Nikki slept.

o0o

Alf woke by degrees. His mind ached at least as much as his body.
There was a grinding pain in his stomach; only after a long while did he
recognize it as hunger.

His nose twitched. There was food somewhere within range. Blindly
he groped for it. Something warm and furred moved against his hand; he started,
half sitting up, to meet the bright eyes of Nikki’s kitten.

Thea lay on her side, pale and ill to look on but sleeping peacefully.
Nikki coiled in the hollow of her body. All around them was a room of stone,
bare of furnishings, with a steep ladder of a stair leading up to a heavy door.

Not a prison, Alf thought as his mind began to clear. It had
not that aura which prisons have, of hate and fear and pain. This place spoke
rather of ancient wine and of long-gone cheeses.

Close by him lay a plate and a bowl and a lidded jar. The plate
held bread, dry and rather hard but of decent quality; a stew filled the bowl,
now cold and congealed, and in the jar was thin sour wine.

He raised the jar with trembling hands. He was as weak as if
he had roused from a fever. He drank a sip, two. The wine burned his parched
throat, but it warmed his belly. Carefully he set the jar down and reached for
the bread. A little only; a spoonful from the bowl. His stomach growled for
more; his mind, trained to fasting, refrained.

With his body’s needs attended, he sat clasping his
knees, chin upon them, gazing at the two who continued to sleep. Perhaps he
prayed. Perhaps he dozed. His mind was empty of thought, utterly serene.

He started awake. The kitten crouched at his feet, every
hair erect.

Iron grated on iron. Bolts thudded back; the door swung
open. Light stabbed Alf’s dark-accustomed eyes. He threw up a hand to
shield them.

The stair groaned under the weight of several men. They were
armed, he saw from the shape of their shadows; mailed though not helmed, and
cloaked over it. One carried the torch that still made Alf’s eyes flinch.
Two others stood with drawn swords.

The fourth stood over him. The little cat struck fiercely
with distended claws; met mail; spat and yowled, defying the intruder to
advance.

Alf rose unsteadily with the furious cat in his arms, and bowed
as best he might. “My lord,” he said, neither surprised nor afraid.

Count Baudouin looked him up and down; folded his arms and
cocked his head a little to one side. “So, Master Alfred,” he said,
“even your familiar will fight for you. Have you anything to say for
yourself ?”

“You judged me when first you saw me,” Alf
responded coolly. “What could I say that would change it?”

Baudouin’s jaw tensed. “My judgment has proved
correct.”

“In your eyes, perhaps.”

“Four of my men died at your hands.”

“How many innocent women and children died at theirs?”

“Greek women and children,” said Baudouin. “You,
sir, are not a Greek.”

“No. I am merely a man who saw half his family cruelly
murdered and his lady wounded unto death by men gone mad with wine and
plundering.”

“You took arms against your own people.”

Alf’s eyes glittered; his voice was deadly soft. “My
people, my lord? The only one of my people in this city lies yonder with the
wound of a Flemish quarrel in her side. She lives, and will live, but she owes
her life to no act of your army.”

Baudouin looked from him to Thea. She was little more than a
shadow and a gleam, her slender body lost in the Varangian armor, her face
hidden by the fall of her hair.

He approached her slowly. Alf, with no appearance of haste,
moved to stand in his path.

There was a pause. Baudouin glared; Alf met him with a cold quiet
stare. His eyes dropped.

“My lord,” All said very gently, “with me
you may do as you like. But I advise you not to touch my lady.”

Baudouin laughed, high and strained. “That? Your lady?
A fine lusty wench she must be, from the tales I’ve heard. But then,”
he added with a flash of malice, “you seem to be a man after all, now I
see you without your silken skirts. Do you keep her satisfied?”

“What can it matter to you, my lord, whether I do or
not?”

Baudouin’s hand flashed up. Alf seemed hardly to move;
but the heavy gauntlet never touched his skin, only ruffled his hair slightly
with the wind of its passing.

The Count clenched his fists and spoke through gritted teeth.
“Lord Bertrand would like to make an example of you.”

“What sort of example, my lord?”

Baudouin bared his teeth. It was meant to be a smile. “We’ve
hanged a number of our own for keeping back more than their fair share of the
plunder. It’s quieted the men down, to be sure. But it’s time we
gave them a genuine criminal or two. What could be better than a Latin witch
who has thrown in his lot with the Greeks?”

“What indeed?” Alf asked as quietly as ever. “I
ask only one concession.”

“I grant you none,” said Baudouin. “I gave
you enough in coming here at all and in letting you fray my temper with your insolence.
Lord Bertrand may let you live; you can pray for that, if either God or your
black master will listen to you. Or he may rid the world of you.”

“That is his right. But let him set my lady free. She is
a Greek, and fought loyally for her Emperor; she does not deserve a traitor’s
fate.”

“That’s for Lord Bertrand to decide. I wash my
hands of you.”

“And Pilate spoke, and having spoken, turned away.”

Thea’s voice spun them both about. She lay as she had
lain for this long while, but open-eyed, weak yet alert; Nikki’s great eyes
stared up from the curve of her side.

Carefully, shakily, she raised herself on her elbow. She regarded
Baudouin with a bright mocking stare, for he was gaping like a fool. He had not
thought to find her beautiful.

“Yes, Count,” she said, “you’re wise
to let someone else do your dirty work. You can’t have brother Henry
guess what you’ve done, now can you? He might even begin to suspect the
truth, that most of your hatred of Alf is simple, sea-green jealousy.”

“Jealousy?” cried Baudouin. “Of
that
?”

“Of a man for whom, on a few moments’
acquaintance, your much beloved brother conceived a great and lasting
friendship. A friendship which he was rash enough to declare in your presence,
with considerable and glowing praise of its object.”

“Henry is a trusting fool. He saw a handsome face,
heard handsome words, and let himself believe in them.”

“And you were like to die of envy. He never praises you,
except on rare occasions when he thinks you might deserve it. If you want to be
Emperor, lordling, you’re going to have to learn to be more like your
brother.”

Baudouin had begun to recover from the shock of her beauty in
the bitterness of her words. He opened his mouth to denounce her.

She laughed, sweet and maddening, with a catch at the end of
it. “Oh, certainly! I’m at least as bad as my paramour. You’ll
have to hang us both, your lordship, or you’ll never have peace.”

“Thea,” Alf began, setting the cat on the floor,
sinking to one knee beside her.

She kissed the finger he laid to her lips, and shook it
away. “Go on, my brave lord, my Emperor-to-be. Condemn us both to death.
Then you’ll have no rival for your brother’s affections, and no one
to take vengeance on you for murdering her lover.”

Baudouin’s sword hissed from its sheath. She laughed
at it.

He gritted out a curse and whirled away, half running up the
steep stair. His men scrambled after him.

Jehan prowled the room Henry had given him in Blachernae. It
was a chaplain’s cell, with a chapel close by it; in comparison with the
rest of the palace it was very small and sternly ascetic. But by the standards
of a priest from Anglia, it was almost sinfully opulent.