The Temptation (The Medieval Knights Series) (46 page)

"Did I lie about Elsbeth?" Gautier said, dropping his hand down to his dagger. "Did I not speak true of her? Did you not find her submissive, compliant, a dutiful wife in all ways? Do not say you did not note her devotion. I take much pride in her ardent devotion. She is most prayerful, my daughter. I taught her well the power of prayer and the delights of divine seclusion."

"My devotion and my prayers?" Elsbeth asked, her brow lowered in confusion. "My devotion is my own; my prayers are my solace. There is naught of you in it."

"Nay?" Gautier asked. "I would have said that it was all of me."

"Elsbeth," Hugh said, turning toward her, his hand out in entreaty, "leave. Do not listen to him. Raymond! Do as I say. Take Elsbeth and Denise away."

"Enough," she said sharply, casting off Raymond's hand. "I will not leave. This is of me, and I will be part of it. You decide my fate, do you not, when you speak of Sunnandune? I will not leave you to it."

"You see," Gautier said to Hugh, one man to another as Raymond lifted Denise in his arms and carried her from the chapel, "she begins to cast off your net of seduction even now. You tempted her for a time, but she has thrown free of you. Did you not say that this would never happen? Are all your vows so easily tossed?"

"Prick me not, old man, or I shall prick you in return," Hugh snarled, clenching his swordhilt.

"I would stand amazed if you could prick at all, Poulain," Gautier said. "You could not prove it on my daughter."

Elsbeth looked at Hugh and at her father. They were alike. They were. It was so plain to see when the scales of desire were fallen from her eyes. She felt newly sighted, so clearly did she now see.

Handsome men, smooth of speech, easy in their arrogance and pride, and with a knack for seduction. Had her mother not told her of this, of how she had fallen into Gautier's hands, soft and willing, captured by his flattery and his beauty until all the world grew dim in his arms? Until all dreams were shattered when arms betrayed and let a lover fall. Until Sunnandune was signed away. Until passion called elsewhere, to other arms and other beds. Until all illusion died.

They were alike, Gautier and Hugh, but Elsbeth would not be like her mother. Had she not sworn a thousand times to walk a different path, to hold herself secure against all invasion, against all threat, against all men? Aye, so she had, and she had stumbled badly in her vow, yet all was not lost, not completely.

It only felt that way.

The men battling over her looked into each other's eyes, reading each other, and Hugh could not ignore what he saw in Gautier's eyes. It was as if Elsbeth were laid open for him, all her fears and secrets lifted from shadow into light.

So this was the cause of her fear. This answered all, yet he would give Jerusalem itself to have stayed in ignorance. But what of Elsbeth, who had lived, and lived only to forget? How had she survived?

In devotion and in caution, as she did now, lessons learned in childhood and never to be forgotten.

"You fouled her, did you not?" he whispered hoarsely. "When she was a child, you took her and ruined her," he said over the sharp taste of his own bile. "As you attempted with Denise. How many girls have you ruined? How many girls have fought against your touch?"

"Ruined? Ruined Elsbeth?" Gautier answered high and proud. "I made her perfect, as I made them all. Elsbeth is all that a woman should be. A perfect wife, is she not? Compliant? Devout? Ever ready to do your will?"

"Nay—"

"Aye! Let us not lie, not to ourselves, brother knight," Gautier snarled, his dark eyes glittering in the light. "You have the wife you sought and found her perfect for your needs. This I did for you, long years past. You had only to ask and she gave you all you desired. Her wealth. Her body. Her will. All given unto you. Is that not so? Yet you mangled it somehow. She would have thrown all into your hands if only you had pushed past her blood and made her sing in sweet torment for you."

"Speak not to me! You foul the very air with the pestilence of your putrid soul."

"What fault did you find in her?" Gautier pressed, looking at Elsbeth over the rim of Hugh's shoulder. "None. None, because I had taught her better. I taught her what it was to be a woman."

"Nay," Hugh said, raising his sword again. "You taught her how to fear and how to live in the shadow of sin. That is no gift."

"You complain now? When you have won a wife men dream of?" Gautier said, softly laughing. "Aye, you would complain, having lost Sunnandune and the knights of your quest to clumsy handling. You are a man as I imagined them to be in the Levant. Soft. Womanish."

"Womanish?" Hugh said. "You have misjudged. I will kill you, Gautier, and by your blood, all sin will wash from Elsbeth and she will be healed."

"Will you?" Gautier asked. "You will lose your life in Warkham if you kill Warkham's lord, and you will lose the knights you came so far to find. Is Elsbeth worth all that? Is she worth your very life?"

It was true—he would lose all if he murdered Gautier. Was not Jerusalem worth more than a single girl?

"Lift your sword," Hugh commanded. "Let this be a battle of honor."

Gautier laughed. "Nay, I will not. I am no fool to give you a way out of this without a price to pay. Kill me and you pay with your blood. That is your choice. I know you have the skill to best me. You showed it to me so proudly, did you not? That was foolish, Hugh. I had thought better of you. I ask again, is Elsbeth worth your very life and the lives of all the souls who dwell in Jerusalem? Can a woman be worth all that?"

The answer should have come easily. Jerusalem was all he lived for.

Until Elsbeth.

Solemn dignity and quiet strength, that was Elsbeth. Stalwart beauty and devoted warrior. A tongue that scraped against his pride, honing him to brightness. A woman who resisted falling into the polished and practiced lure of him until he would fall with her.

"Elsbeth is worth all that and more to me," Hugh said slowly, the truth coming slow upon him, like an English dawn, heavy and soft.

"Ah, how ardent you are, yet did you not hesitate? There is more to this than Elsbeth. There is all of Jerusalem. Will you risk losing Jerusalem for the wavering shadow that is Elsbeth?"

"Elsbeth is no shadow," Hugh said softly.

Yet had he not thought much the same? Who was dark and shuttered Elsbeth when held against the golden light of the holy city of God? How long had he thought so little of her worth? From the very start, from the very first look and the very first word of shining flattery he had poured into her heart.

When had that ended? He did not know. He had not been looking for it, and it had stolen upon him like mist in shadow, soft and quiet like Elsbeth.

"When held against shining Jerusalem?" Gautier asked. "I think she must fade away completely when compared to such a citadel of holiness and light."

Hugh looked down the shining length of his sword into Gautier's face. He did not like what he saw.

Gautier spoke Hugh's very thoughts and with his very words as they had been. As he had been. They
were
much alike. When had he ever given thought to any but himself? When had he ever put Elsbeth and her needs above his own desires? In twenty years, would he be like Gautier was now, this man who used all for gain and who thought of no one but himself? Would he use his smiles and his power to achieve all he thought he deserved in this life, abandoning his soul to polish his pride?

What of Elsbeth?

Yet what of Jerusalem and of Baldwin? 'Twas no light matter to toss aside the kingdom of God's earthly Son.

"You are like enough to be my son, Hugh. Why else do you think I chose you for her?" Gautier said. "We do what we must in this life, to get what we must."

Nay, there was more to this life than that. There was Elsbeth.

Elsbeth and his ill-timed love for her was the temptation he faced and must surmount.

How long had he loved her?

It could not matter. He could not lose all for loving Elsbeth. He could not renounce his king, his vow, his quest for a mere woman. For a wife. For Elsbeth. Even Elsbeth would not ask it of him.

Of course she would not. She asked him for nothing.

She set him free to find Jerusalem, yet what was Jerusalem against the beauty of Elsbeth's heart?

She would not ask, yet he would ask it of himself and give no less than the heart of his dream for her. She deserved so much more than a city and a kingdom. She deserved the very world.

Would he be like Gautier twenty years hence? He had lied too easily and too often. The truth of it was, he was Gautier now, unless he shattered that mold, breaking free.

He had fallen very far, very far, since coming to England, but he was Hugh of Jerusalem still and he would fall no farther.

With a wry grin, he faced Elsbeth's father. With a soft smile, he answered him.

"Elsbeth is worth more to me than a thousand Jerusalems," he said softly, his voice a ringing that chimed against the stone.

And with those words, Gautier threw his dagger.

He aimed it true and he was quick. It hit the mail covering Hugh's shoulder, piercing the links before falling, spent, to the stone floor. Before the dagger had even fallen, Hugh sliced his way into Gautier, leaving a bright wet arc of blood across his belly. He bled all over the stone of the chapel, sinking down into the wet stink of his own urine, fouling the place. As he had always done.

"What have you done?" Elsbeth asked softly.

Hugh turned to face her, this fractured woman who bore so many silent scars. He loved her. There was no other truth than that.

"I have killed your father," he said. "Will you forgive the act?"

"Forgive?" she asked slowly. "Do not mock. I am so black with sin that I cannot forgive any man.'

"Elsbeth, you are as white as snow, washed clean by a thousand prayers," he said, Gautier's blood dripping from the tip of his sword. "No sin clings to you. All sin rested hard in Gautier's hands."

Elsbeth said nothing, only looked at her father's body, at the blood flowing out of him to find small paths between the stone. He was going white, his cheeks sunken, his jaw punching against the sky. He had died very quickly and very easily by Hugh's hand. Perhaps Hugh had been right; he was a man to match her father. Perhaps there was nothing more to fear. Yet without her fear, what was left of Elsbeth? Had she not been ruled by fear and the hunger for safety all her life? Where was God, the strong tower for the righteous? Nowhere she could find Him.

Prayer upon prayer she had cast upward in her longing for deliverance and there had been no deliverance from Gautier of Warkham. There had been only the long falling that had marked her life. The sparrow fell and God did mark the fall, yet He did not stop the falling and the sparrow died. He did not stop it. The sparrow fell and fell. Denise had the right of it. There was no safety to be found on earth.

"The sparrow falls," she said softly, her eyes filled with tears. "Is that not so? I am that sparrow," she said, her anger rising. "I fell and fell and God let me fall. God did not save me. Where was God when I needed saving?" she demanded, her tears hot on her cheeks, filing to the stone, shattering against the cold.

Hugh stood very still, a weight of soul and muscle bound into a man. Her accusation hung in the holy air of the chapel, weighing heavily upon the very stone.

"Elsbeth, into this temptation I will not let you fall," Hugh said, his voice deep and strong. "Gautier caught you up in his long falling. God did mark it and God did send a rescuer from His right hand; He sent Hugh from His own city of Jerusalem. God did not fail you."

"Denise was saved," she said. "I was not. God's rescue is slow, too slow for me."

"Elsbeth," Hugh said, his voice stern and heavy, "look up. What do you see?"

She looked and saw what she had seen a thousand upon a thousand times, in every prayer and at every mass. The rood of Christ rose above them both, arms outstretched, face turned to heaven, body broken upon the cross.

"I see Christ upon His cross," she said.

"Aye," Hugh said. "Christ upon His cross. So often we see and so seldom do we remember what it is we are seeing. He was beaten savagely, was he not? His own mother did not know His face. He was lifted up for us, taking the blows meant for us. Yet will His servants have an easier burden than their Master? Nay, Elsbeth, it cannot be so," Hugh said, his own eyes filling with tears. "The earth is a hard place, a hard and brutal place awash in sin. How can we escape this life into the promise of eternity without a few blows to mark our passage? I would take this from you if I could," he said. "I cannot. But does not Christ heal as He Himself was healed? All wounds are washed clean, Elsbeth. All things made perfect in His sight, as you are perfect."

"I only wanted to be safe," she said, crying softly, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "God could have saved me from this."

"I know," he said, "yet even Christ was not protected from the sins of the world. There is no refuge from sin, Elsbeth, not on this earth. His blood is the only safety we have and you have been given the gift of His blood in full. And another gift, besides, I think," Hugh said. "He took all memory of this from you, is that not so?"

"I remember nothing," she whispered, staring at the blood of her father. "Yet he touched me, did he not? He marked me, staining me, and felt no shame," she said in horror. "That is why there was no blood. I could not bleed for you. He had bled me long ago."

Her hands began to shake, and Hugh stepped near to take the torch from her, placing it in a bracket on the stone wall of the chapel.

The memories shifted in the dark, rising up, formed and bleak, until she pushed them back into shadow, commanding them into disremembered mist. This was her daily battle, this battle of mind and soul. Like worms crawling into her heart, like maggots in her flesh, like the very decay of death, she was hounded and hunted by memory, praying for memory to die and stay dead.

Praying for release from the world of men, as her mother had taught her. Praying to be strong against the temptation of desire. Praying to resist the lure of a man's beauty and the charm of his smile. Praying to survive, as Ardeth had taught her the means and methods of survival in a world ruled by men and their lusts.