Behold the Dawn (19 page)

Now that Hugh had seen Lady Mairead, he would not let her escape again, and Annan doubted the wounds he had inflicted upon the Norman would be enough to keep Hugh flat on his back very long. Hugh would find her, and Marek would never be able to defend her.

Marek would try, Annan gave him that much. He was an honorable youth despite his gringing. But he hadn’t the nature of a warrior. Hugh would cut him down where he stood, and then there would be no one to stand between him and the countess. No one—unless this desert decided to spit Annan out whole again.

If it did spit him out,
he
would stand between them. Aye, he would stand and he would fight. Grimly, he hoisted the crude
baldric
he had fashioned from the saddle girth higher onto his shoulder and lengthened his stride.

When he had promised Lord William to deliver his wife safely to Orleans, it had been nothing more than a favor long overdue to an old friend. Now it was personal, whether he wanted it that way or not. William had been wise to make him cover her with his name. He would not let Hugh find Mairead. He would deliver her safely to Orleans if he had to storm Hell itself; and he would tear asunder anyone—man or devil—who dared threaten her.

And so he walked on.

It was not until the moon reached its zenith that a new sound interrupted the hum of the wind. He rocked to a stop, shoulders tensed. Again, he heard the shuffling of feet in the sand, the tired grunt of a horse.

Drawing his sword, he pivoted to face the newcomer. Someone was about to either have his destination slightly altered or his mount appropriated. The silhouette surfaced above the dune at his right hand and continued for a moment before the horse’s head shot up and it snorted.

Annan took a step forward, lowering his sword to his side. He spoke, his tone the growl it inevitably became when he dropped his voice. “It’s urgent that I reach Constantinople. Can—”

“Annan?” The voice was unmistakably Mairead’s.

He halted, his intended words stopping up his throat for a moment. “My lady?”
She was safe. She had gotten away.
Something fiercely, surprisingly exultant hammered against his breastbone.

She flung herself from the saddle and then just stood there with her bare feet in the sand. “I feared you dead.”

“Not yet.” He took a step toward her, then stopped. “Where’s Marek?”

“I don’t know. Some of the men-at-arms followed us, and he tried to lead them away.”

The pit of Annan’s stomach hardened. “Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. He was better mounted than the soldiers.”

He grunted and lifted the baldric enough to sheathe his sword. “He’s surprised me before, mayhap he’ll surprise me again. Did you tell him about meeting at Stephen’s?”

“Aye.”

“And did he not point you in the right direction before he took off on this mad chase of his?”

“Aye, he did, but...”

“But what?”

“I came back for you.” Moonlight flashed in the hollow of her throat as she raised her chin. “And since you’re without a horse and in such urgent need of reaching Constantinople, it is well that I did.”

“Wouldn’t have been so well for you had you found Hugh de Guerrant instead.”

Her chin lifted a little more. “Would it have made such a great difference if I met him here or on my way to this Lord Stephen’s? It would have made no difference at all, so stop arguing.”

“You wouldn’t have been likely to meet him were you so far away as Lord Stephen’s. They’ll be too busy burying their dead tonight.”

She stopped. “Their dead… How many?”

“Only two. But Lord Hugh is incapacitated, for the moment at least.”

“And the Baptist?”

He came forward to take the courser’s rein. The horse sniffed the loose collar of his tunic, then snorted, apparently satisfied that his
bugbear
was an old friend after all. “The Baptist,” Annan spoke slowly, “seems to have more worthy protectors than that saber I gave him. The Templar took great care that he be unharmed.”

“Why?”

“Mayhap because he is the one who led them to us? Why else should they know we had escaped the camp?”

She drew her cloak tighter round her shoulders. “Why say such things? The Baptist would not betray us.”

He shrugged and stepped past her to the horse’s haunch. “He’s done it before—in Bari, the day before I journeyed here.”

She spun to face him. “He wouldn’t do that.” But her tone wasn’t one of denial, only incredulity.

Annan glanced at her. Perhaps meeting Gethin face to face had done more to convince her of his flaws than any of his own arguments. “Not to you, perhaps.” He pushed the pillion straight and turned to offer his hand. “There may be a good man still buried within the Baptist, but he
is
buried. Trust me.”

Her hand slid into his, and even through the darkness he could tell she was looking him in the eye. “I do trust you. Forgive me if I have been less than grateful.”

He smiled, an expression he had cause to use far too seldom. “Best seek a higher court at which to beg your forgiveness, lady, for you never had cause to ask mine.”

Through the shadows, a crooked smile blossomed on her face. “Thank you.”

He pulled her closer and lifted her to the pillion. As he turned away, she stopped him with her hand on his shoulder. “Annan.” She leaned over, her hair falling past her shoulder. His eyes followed its sway, and he fought the sudden urge to reach up and rub it between his fingers.

And why should he not? She was his wife.

The thought arose from the blank depths of his mind with an intensity that stunned him. He did not want a wife, did not need a wife. He was a condemned tourneyer, a wretch who despised himself worse with every passing day. He could not ask a woman—any woman—to share that with him, even had that been his intent in marrying Lord William’s widow.

He dragged his eyes from the swinging shadow of her black hair, back up to her expectant face. He was taking her to Orleans, that was all. She would be safe there, and that would mark the end of his promise.

And then they could both return to their miserable, solitary existences.

“What is it?” he said.

“What if this Templar recognized the Baptist?”

“He did.”

“Then Roderic will kill him.”

“Oh.” He took a step toward the horse’s shoulder, sliding out from beneath the light pressure of her hand. “You mean if he was recognized
as
the Baptist.” The thought hadn’t occurred to him during the heat of the battle.

He stepped into the stirrup and mounted, swinging his leg over the courser’s withers. He dropped into the seat, and she put a hand on his arm. “Even if he is untrustworthy, as you say, we can hardly leave him to Roderic’s wrath. His revival
has
borne good fruits.”

He touched his heel to the courser’s side and reined it northward. “But I can hardly leave you either.” He blew out a gusty breath, trying to ignore the whisper in the back of his mind that asked him why he would even consider going back for Gethin. The man had brought nothing but black omens since the day he had reappeared from the dead. Why the Baptist would collude with the lieutenants of a man he so desperately wanted killed made little sense. But Gethin was weaving a tangled web these days.

Mairead leaned closer, her chin just above his shoulder. “He saved our lives.”

“More than once.” The words passed his lips almost before they were a thought. Mairead referred to the infidel prison camp; but it was St. Dunstan’s that Annan saw once again.

Once again.

How many more times would he have to be reminded, only to close his eyes and wait until the clattering skeletons of the past had faded from before his vision? He inhaled through clenched teeth. He was tired of remembering, tired of fighting to forget.

It was a cruel God that would not let him end this life. Few men could survive sixteen years on the fields of a tourney; most would have been cut down by now, torn free of the cords that bound them to painful life. But not Marcus Annan.

He grunted, and somehow even that pained him, deep down in the core of his body.

No, Marcus Annan hadn’t died. He had survived, he had become a legend. He had become an unconquerable.

Was this the price he paid because he had withdrawn from before the face of a God he was no longer worthy to serve? A God who could no longer love him? The knot behind his breastbone hardened. Perhaps it was a God who had never loved him.

“Annan—”

He exhaled and reached up to rub the lines from his forehead. The dried blood of the flesh wound on his upper arm cracked and flaked, and he could feel the warm oozing as the cut reopened.

“What’s wrong?” Her voice was soft, like the whisper of silk.

“Nothing. Only memories that won’t be forgotten.”

For a long while they rode in silence, the steady footfalls of the courser the only cadence in the wind’s song. He thought Mairead asleep, and he was nearly so himself. The exhaustion of the last five days had finally penetrated every fiber of his muscles, every particle of his bones. He ached in every old wound, in every scar and divot, and his head felt too heavy to bear up.

I’m getting old
, he realized, without any of the wry humor Marek would have injected in such a jab. He was getting old, and he was ready to die. His lip twisted. God grant it be so.

Behind him, Mairead stirred, and again her chin lifted above his shoulder. “Master Annan?”

“Aye.”

“You said last night that some are called of God and some are not.”

“And you said there are those who are called who do not come.”

“Yes.” She fell silent and drew back a little.

He looked back at her. “Were you referring to me with that statement, Lady Mairead?”

“Mayhap. I do not know your heart. And I do not know what memories you wish to forget, but—” She leaned forward again. “I have been cruel in some of my accusations, and I am sorry. I do not know your past, and I do not know what crosses you bear.”

“No, you’ve said nothing wrong.” He lowered his chin to his chest. “My past is a dark path better not trod by any.”

“The past is over.”

“The past, the future—it’s all the same.”

“That isn’t true. With the dawn of every new day there is a new bend in the path, a new chance to turn aside from the past, if only we will take it. Are we not promised that by the blood of the Christ?”

“Some are promised. But not me.”

“Why?”

In that single question was a depth that sounded and resounded against the hollowness he felt inside. “Because not everyone deserves the mercy of that blood.”

They spoke no more after that. They rode into the night, weary step after weary step, until at last the eastern horizon began to bleed with the color of yet one more dawn that would bring no new bend in his path and no chance to alter the course of the future.

Chapter XIII

MAIREAD WOKE AS Annan drew rein at the gate of the estate belonging to Lord Stephen of Essex. Only a rim of red marred the smoky gray sky. The road, which would lead them to Constantinople when came the time, passed before the Englishman’s walls and carried on, a mere flaw etched in the rippling hills.

The road lay empty. Marek, on his bay palfrey, was not to be seen. But that coin had two sides: Lord Hugh and the Templar weren’t awaiting them either. And for that, Mairead was profoundly grateful.

A servant admitted them to the courtyard, gave the reins of the tired courser to a groomsman, and escorted them to the
Great Hall
. Mairead hugged her cloak round herself and stayed close at Annan’s shoulder, almost brushing against him, as the servant inclined his head and asked them to be seated.

Annan made no motion to sit, and she stayed beside him.

“Did a Scottish lad come through here yesterday?” Annan asked.

The servant shook his head, the gray hair of his eyebrows flitting with the motion. “Your pardon, Master Knight, but I do not know. I think not.”

Annan grunted, and the servant bowed once more before leaving. “Wretch.”

Mairead didn’t ask if the comment referred to the servant or to Marek. Annan had said nothing all morning; but she could sense the deep, knotting tension within him.

“Do you think they killed him?” she asked.

“Either that or he’s on his way back to Maid Dolly in Glasgow.” He moved to a narrow window between two tapestries.

She shivered. The heat of the day had yet to rise from the ground, and gooseflesh prickled her skin. “Can you trust this Lord Stephen to tell you if Marek did come?”

“I trust him. I saved his life once, a few years past. He had debts he couldn’t pay back in Essex, and I helped him and his wife gain passage here.” He turned to look her in the eye. “You’ll be safe with them, until I can find Gethin.”

The small oaken door in the corner near the hearth slammed open against the inside wall, and a stocky gentleman with the shading of wisdom in the hair above his ears stepped into the room. “Marcus Annan. By St. George, I never thought you’d come Crusading.”

“Better me than moneylenders. Hello, Stephen.”

The Englishman burst out laughing and came forward to offer his hand. “I’ll toast that. You will, of course, indulge our hospitality?”

“Until the morrow. I have some unfinished business to tend back Jerusalem way.”

Stephen lifted both eyebrows. “Ah?”

Annan ignored the implied question and turned back to where Mairead still stood, wrapped in the protective sheath of her cloak. “I would beg a boon, though. Until I return, will you and your wife grant sanctuary to this lady?”

Stephen looked her up and down, then withdrew his hand from Annan’s that he might bow to her. “But of course. At your service, lady.”

She inclined her head in return but didn’t offer a hand for him to kiss. “I am in your debt, Sir.”

“Not a’tall.” He rose from the bow, clicked his heels in salute, and returned to the doorway. “Ducard!” The bushy-browed servant trotted into view. “Inform Lady Eloise I would like for her to join us.” Stephen turned back to Mairead. “My wife will see to all the necessary arrangements.”