Alamut (6 page)

“Would they take me?”

“The Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon will take any who hungers after Saracen blood.”

He did not, Aidan noticed, say any man. “You of the Hospital, no doubt, are more discriminating.”

“Less zealous, perhaps. Our concern is not only with war but with its aftermath. We tend the sick and the wounded; we do what we may to bring the infidels to the light of the true faith.”

Aidan began to pace again. The Hospitaller followed, shorter by a little but long-legged enough, though he walked lame.

“A wound?” Aidan asked him.

He shrugged, deprecating it. “A small one, inconveniently placed. I mend.”

“There's been fighting, then?”

“There's always fighting. Syria has a new sultan. We pacted with him for a truce, but — ”

“You pacted with a Saracen sultan?”

Gilles laughed, not quite in mockery. “So shocked, prince? Did you think it was all holy war without respite? The kings of Jerusalem themselves have done more than swear truce with their enemies; they've been known to enter into active alliances, pitting Saracen against Saracen and taking the side of the stronger.”

Aidan shook it off, enormity though it should have seemed to an innocent from the farthest west. “Kings, yes. Kings do whatever they must. But the Church is the Church, and Saracens are unbelievers.”

“They are also men, and they surround us. We do as we must. We hold the Holy Sepulcher. We will do anything — anything at all, short of mortal sin — to continue to hold it.”

Aidan nodded slowly. That, he could understand.

“And you,” said the Hospitaller. “Have you come for holiness, or for the fighting?”

“Both,” Aidan said. “And for my kinsman who went before me.”

“You loved him.”

That was presumptuous, from a stranger. “He was my kin.”

There was a silence. Aidan paced in it, but slower now, calmer.

“Masyaf,” said Gilles, “abuts, and some would say is part of, a fief of the Hospitallers.”

Aidan whipped about.

Gilles backed a step, but he went on steadily enough. “It stands near the demesne of our fortress of Krak. Its master has, on occasion, been persuaded to acknowledge our dominion.”

“What are you telling me?”

The Hospitaller had paled, as well he might. “The Sheikh al-Jabal is not a vassal of our Order. He pays us no tribute, as the Templars have forced him to do, and thereby won his enmity. Yet there may be somewhat that we may do, to win reparation for this murder.”

“Why? Are you responsible for it?”

“God knows,” said Gilles, “that we are not. Our way is the clean way, in battle, against proven enemies. And Lord Gereint was in all ways a friend of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.”

Aidan eased by an effort of will: not the feat some might have taken it for, who knew him only by reputation. He could understand goodwill, however much it might owe to expedience. He could not smile, but he could nod, bowing his head to courtesy. “I shall remember,” he said.

Gilles looked like a man granted reprieve from hanging. He knew it; he laughed at himself, though his words were somber. “Yes; remember us.” He paused. His tone had changed. “And you, sir? What will you be doing in our country beyond the sea?”

Avenging Gereint.
Aidan did not say it. He answered as he had answered every other inquirer, though more warmly to this one than to some. “I came to fight the infidel. It has been in my mind to journey to Jerusalem, to look on its king, and if he will have me” —
and if I will have him
— ”to be his liege man. What higher lord can there be, than the holder of the throne of David?”

“A worthy ambition,” said the Hospitaller. “You've never considered any other of our princes?”

Aidan knew a test when he scented one. He shook it from his shoulders. “Raymond of Tripoli, perhaps: there is a great lord and gentleman. But he is a count, and I am royal born. I should look first to a king.”

“Such a king,” said Gilles, sighing. There was no irony in it. “Young, little more than a child, and yet a great warrior, a gifted general, a scholar of no small accomplishment, a paragon of grace and courtesy. And for all of that — ” His voice caught. “For all of that, God has exacted a price of surpassing cruelty. He has seen fit to make our lord a leper.”

“Yet he is king,” said Aidan. “No one has ever contested his right to the crown.”

“No one is so great a fool. He
is
king. He was meant for it from his birth. Even when he was grown to boyhood and his malady was known, he was our king who would be.”

“He inspires remarkable devotion.”

Gilles shook his head and smiled wryly. “Am I so transparent? So, then: you will go to Jerusalem. I think you will find our lord worthy of your service. He will be most glad of you. Every knight is precious here on the sword's edge between Christendom and the House of Islam. A knight of your proven skill is thrice and four times welcome.”

Aidan shrugged. He was not modest; he had never seen the use in it. But he had other purposes that this man could not see. They came clear as he stood there: a bitter clarity.

Its embodiment came toward him across the sunstruck courtyard, slight and dark and fixed on him as a moth on a candle's flame. Thibaut had proper reverence for the soldier of God, but for the Prince of Caer Gwent he had his whole heart and soul.

It was not in Aidan to refuse such a gift. The pain was its price. He held out his hand to the boy and smiled, and that smile was the beginning of acceptance.

5.

No city had ever been more holy. Holiness breathed through the very stones; quivered in the air; dizzied Aidan's senses that were keener than a man's. The hand of God was on this place, this loom of walls and towers by the mount of Sion, this City of Peace.

It did not matter what the eyes saw. Bare stony plain rolling into the hills of Judea; bleak dun rock, a grey wall, and towers in it, and their king above them all, David's great square Tower frowning westward. Grey-green to the north: outriders of the Mount of Olives. Deeper green to the south: terraces planted, said the Lady Margaret's sergeant, with figs. Nowhere a glimmer of water, and never a moat to ward the city, only the great empty fosse and the steepness of its walls. Water here was a precious thing, rich and secret, hoarded in cisterns and in caverns, or held in guarded wells. Stone was lord; and sun; and sanctity.

They rode to David's Gate in somber splendor: the lady under her banner of black ram on silver, her women in black, her servants, her men-at-arms, her son in black and silver beside the knight all in black. His scarlet and gold lay in the armory of Aqua Bella, forsaken until his vow was fulfilled. His mail was black, his stallion's trappings black with no adornment but the silver of bit and buckle, his helm at his saddlebow all black, his lances on the sumpter mule, his shield without device save the palm-wide, blood-red cross of Crusade. In one respect only he had yielded to eastern sense, and that was in the surcoat over his mail, long and loose and belted with black, but the heavy silk was white, with the cross on its shoulder.

He was growing accustomed to it, schooling himself not to yearn, shamefully, toward scarlet and blue and gold. Gereint's life deserved no lesser sacrifice.

He resisted the urge to rub his chin, where the new beard was growing, thicker and faster than he might have expected, and fully as fierce in its itching. Vanity, it was not, but not heedless of it, either. If he would ride into Saracen lands, it might be wise to seem a Saracen.

He had told no one why he did it. They thought it a tribute to grief, and it was that, also. The men-at-arms had a wager on how soon he would exchange his red cross for a white one, and turn Hospitaller; or else let the red cross grow to span his breast in the fashion of the Templars.

Margaret watched him and said nothing. She was wise enough to take issue with nothing that he did. Thibaut still walked softly round her, but she had not taken him to task for affixing himself to Aidan's side. While the prince was content to remain near her, she could see as well as know that her son was safe from harm.

What it cost her to keep from clinging to the boy, Aidan well knew. He did not know that there was liking between them, but of respect there was much, and a certain wary acceptance of what was. Gereint, and now Thibaut, bound them; made them kin.

His stallion came up beside her grey gelding. She glanced at him, unsmiling, yet the air about her was almost light. “Does it disappoint you?” she asked, tilting her head toward Jerusalem.

Here, so close to the gate, the road was choked with people, their progress slowed to a crawl. Other parties rose out of it, armed and mounted, escorting lords, ladies riding in litters, a merchant with his veiled and jeweled wife. Lesser luminaries rode in smaller companies: poor knights fresh from Francia by the raw look of them, their mail worn bare, without the surcoat to keep the sun at bay; squires who lacked the means or the will to win their spurs; mounted sergeants with their men marching behind them. A great press of people on foot jostled and babbled under the horses' hooves, pilgrims in sackcloth with mantle and scrip and staff, hats jingling with tokens from every shrine in Christendom, but seeking now the palm of Jericho that was most sacred of all; laborers bent double under the weight of their burdens; slaves and captives in chains with the overseers' whips cracking over them. The lame and the halt and the sick dragging their way into the Holy City. Beggars wailing for alms, pi-dogs yapping, lepers crouched on the dunghills in their rags and their hideousness, or cutting a swath through the crowd with bell and clapper. Caravans coming to Jerusalem, caravans going out of it, in a roaring of camels and a shouting of drivers and a clashing of the arms of their escorts.

Over the gate flew a white banner, the golden crosses gleaming on it, sigil of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Aidan breathed deep of sun and dust and humanity, dung, herbs, horses and heated steel, and shook his head. “Disappoint me, lady? This is Jerusalem.”

A smile flickered, astonishing, for it made her young again. Then it was gone. The gate was before them, dark after the glare of the plain. Guards idled in its shade, paying little heed to all who passed.

No more did the city care. Holy, high Jerusalem: it embraced any who came to it. Even his kind; even his power, which was the merest feeble glimmer before its great flame of sanctity. Yet it did not diminish him. He burned the brighter here for that he was so small a thing. He drew a breath, half glad, half deliciously afraid, and plunged into the heart of it.

oOo

There was no reasoning with stone. Joanna could weep, rage, storm; Ranulf would sit immovable, ignoring her, seeing nothing but what he had set his mind on. When on rare occasions he was inclined to speak, it was to dismiss her with a word. “Women,” he would say, heaving himself up and leaving her to her raving.

He had taken her son away from her. Aimery would be fostered where it would best serve his father's advantage, and that was not at his mother's breast. Ranulf did not see why she should object. She had maids and pages of her own to train, and he expected her to produce another heir to his house in as short order as God would allow. Was that not what she was born for? Was that not why he had taken a wife at all?

He had come to do this duty. She was aching in body from so long in the saddle, all the way from Acre to Jerusalem after a hard and housebound pregnancy and a difficult birthing, and aching in soul for Aimery and for the news that had greeted her when she came to the city. Gereint dead at an Assassin's hand, dead and buried: shock enough to fell her when she heard. It stunned her; she could not even weep.

And Ranulf was there, driving out her maid and her page, not even troubling to take off his shirt. He had not bathed in a month; even across the room she could smell him. He dropped his hose and his braies, sparing her not even a glance. She had learned how little good it did to clutch the coverlet and protest.

When they were married, she had thought him a handsome man. His features were heavy but well-formed; his hair was thinning a little, but it curled still, and it was the rare, true Frankish gold. His body was thick with muscle, kept strong at the hunt and in the field. And he had an honored name and a substantial property won with his valor in the wars, and no heirs but those which she would give him. It had been considered an excellent match.

His weight rocked the bed. He still had not looked at her. He had made it clear long since that he did not find her beautiful. With her belly still slack from bearing and her breasts still swollen with milk after an unconscionable while, she would be even less to his taste.

He was not brutal. That much, she could say for him. “If this one is a daughter,” he said as he parted her legs, “I'll let you keep her.”

She struck him backhanded, with all her strength. “Get out of my bed!” she screamed at him. “Get
out!”

He did not even give her the satisfaction of rape. His shrug was perfectly indifferent. “Tomorrow, then,” he said.

When he had taken himself away, she wept a little, and battered her pillow, and felt no better for it. Her servants had not come back. She lay and stared at the whitewashed ceiling. The smell of him lingered. She gagged on it.

If he would argue with her, reprimand her, even strike her — but no. He left her to her moods, and came back when she was calm, and wore her down by sheer force of indifference. He did not care what she did, if only she kept out of sight and provided him with the offspring he wanted.

Which then he took from her and gave to stranger, and left her empty, womb and heart.

She staggered up. With shaking hands she drew out the first garments that came to her, and put them on. She had to rest between the shift and the gown. Her hair was too much for her. She let it hang. In a voice that, if not loud, at least was steady, she called for her maid.