Kingdom of the Grail (14 page)

CHAPTER 15

“Y
ou have all the luck,” Olivier said.

Roland looked up from the last of his packing. “Luck? What? You could come, too.”

“Not likely,” said Olivier. “Turpin's going to speak for the king, you're going to look fierce and wave your pretty sword about. Someone has to stay here and look after the king.

“Besides,” he added, flinging himself on Roland's cot and propping his chin on his fist, “I'm not talking about playing ambassador. I'm talking about
her
.”

“I wouldn't call that luck,” Roland said dryly.

“Have you looked at her? She's extraordinary. That skin, those eyes . . .” Olivier sighed. His mood, Roland noticed, had improved remarkably since Sarissa had come to Saragossa.

“So go in my place,” said Roland.

Olivier looked ready to leap at the chance, but after an instant his face fell. “You know I can't do that. The king wants you to brandish your sword. Mine is a good blade, but it's not the famous Durandal.”

He spoke without rancor. Olivier did not bear grudges. Roland shook his head. “My dear friend, I would happily trade places with you. But I can't trade swords.”

“No.” Olivier sighed. “Honestly, you don't think she's beautiful? She's like honey and cream.”

“I'd have said pepper and nettles myself,” Roland muttered. “She seems to dislike me intensely.”

“Don't believe it,” said Olivier from his vast fund of experience—considerably vaster and more varied than Roland's. “Women act like that when they can't take their eyes off you—and they can't forgive themselves for it. She's captivated. I'd wager gold on it.”

“One of those gold armlets you won in Pamplona?”

“Done!” said Olivier. “If you'll put up the ruby you snatched before I could get my hands on it.”

“I did not—” Roland caught sight of Olivier's grin. He broke off. “I'll have the ruby set in the armlet after I've won it.”

“What a marvelous idea!” Olivier declared. “And what a perfectly suitable wedding gift for the two of you.”

“
That
will never happen,” Roland said.

“Why not? Nobody quite talks about it, but she's noble born. Maybe royal. It's in everything she does. That's no common woman, nor ever was.”

“She doesn't want me,” said Roland.

Olivier snorted. “Get on with you. They'll be waiting.”

So they were, though not quite ready yet to leave without him. The company he was to lead was drawn up, armed and mounted. Archbishop Turpin was just bidding farewell to the king. Roland received an embrace of his own, a kiss of farewell, and a murmur in his ear: “Take care of the lady. Bring her back safe.”

Aha, thought Roland with an odd twisting in the stomach. It was that way with the king. And with her?

There was no telling. She was as aloof as ever, sitting astride her splendid stallion. Roland had to pass by them to reach his own Veillantif. As he did it, his eye caught the white stallion's. His step caught for the fraction of a breath. He knew those eyes. He knew that bright wickedness. The last time he had seen it, it had gleamed out of a cat's face.

One shapeshifter knew another. He saluted Tarik with a tilt of the head. Tarik snorted softly in response.

Veillantif was safely, peaceably unmagical, a simple mortal horse. Roland paused for a moment to rub his shoulder before springing into the saddle.

He was the last to mount. They rode out with a flourish of banners and trumpets, perhaps a little too glad to be free of the siege, but they made a handsome show.

Once they were away from the army, they settled to a more reasonable pace. Roland's men were a picked company, Franks of the king's own guard, who had served together since before Roland came to court. They never seemed to mind taking orders from the Breton Count; they had taught him most of what he knew of guardroom songs, willing maids, and the fine art of profanity.

Turpin's presence would not have deterred them in the slightest from running through every scurrilous ditty they knew, but before Sarissa they were remarkably circumspect. Roland could have sworn that even Benno Scarface was abashed, as smitten with that odd beauty as any other man in the king's army. For her sake they chose only the most decorous songs, and curbed their tongues, too.

Roland wondered if she even began to appreciate the effort. She was riding with Turpin, conversing quietly. He was telling her of the man they were riding to visit. “His grandfather was among the conquerors of Spain. They were princes before that, in the court at Baghdad, and they've always been loyal to the Caliph there. His name is Musa. They call him Nur al-Din, Light of the Faith.”

“And his wife?” Sarissa asked.

“He has three,” Turpin answered, “and, it's rumored, three dozen concubines. But the ruler of them all, though but the third wife in age and rank, is the lady Leila. She was given that name when Musa took her to wife. Her baptismal name is Julia. She comes from an old family in Saragossa, that goes back to the Romans. Saint James himself is said to have preached the Gospel to her ancestors, and converted them to the true faith.”

“They seem to have made the best of this conquest,” Sarissa observed.

“It's said she's won her husband's consent to teach her children the faith of Rome.”

“Indeed,” said Sarissa.

Roland could not tell what she meant by that. For that
matter, who or what was she? No one had ever made that quite clear. People assumed that she must be from Barcelona or Gerona, since she had first come to the king with the emir Al-Arabi. Or maybe she was from Saragossa, though she had made no effort to enter that city.

What rank she had, who her kin were—Roland could not recall that anyone had ever said. She had come riding into Paderborn on that day of late spring, dressed as a young man of the Saracens, and allowing people to think what they liked of who she was, where she had come from, and why she was there. Whatever they thought or said of her, she went on apparently untroubled.

She was not a Muslim. He was sure of that. She appeared to be a Christian. She was possessed of magic. Even without the rest of it, Tarik proved that. In Britain, Merlin had taught him long ago, they called such a creature a
puca
, a spirit of mischief that ran now in the likeness of a horse, now in that of a cat; and sometimes too a black dog or a wolf or a raven, or whatever other shape suited its fancy. And how had a Spanish woman—if she was of Spain at all—come by a
puca
? And not only come by it, but bound it to her as a servant?

He regretted that he had not found a way after all to return to Brittany before he rode to Spain, to ask Merlin's counsel. Once in a great while the enchanter came to him in dreams, but Roland could not seek him out, nor call on him through the walls of his prison. And that, just now, drove him nigh to distraction. Merlin would know what this woman was.

Roland had only such knowledge as Merlin had already taught him, and what scraps and fragments he had learned for himself. He was a very young enchanter, as he knew too well; but he'd not felt quite so young in a long while.

He watched her as she rode, aware in his skin of the road as it passed underfoot, and the sky overhead, and the country they rode through, barren to his forest-bred eye, burned brown by the heat of summer. No travelers met them. Armed Franks were a thing to walk well shy of here; even pilgrims making their way to this shrine or that had
chosen another road rather than cross paths with Archbishop Turpin's embassy.

The birds of the air did not care what banner men rode under. The beasts of the field fled anything human, for it might be hunting them. The wind sang impartially, whether it plucked at Frankish mantle or Spanish cape or Saracen robes.

Sarissa, who was none of those things, had fallen silent, composed, complete in herself. Turpin was immersed in his prayers as he liked to do on the march, knee hooked over saddlebow, book in hand, brown beard nodding on his breast as he murmured the holy words. Roland slid easily into the quiet watchfulness of the guard. It was like wearing the world on his skin, aware of everything that passed on or over it. But his eyes kept wandering to Sarissa and fixing there. The straightness of her back, the lift of her chin, the delicate arch of her profile against the rise of brown hills . . .

He turned Veillantif abruptly and rode down to the end of the line, where the ranks of broad mailed backs and steel helmets hid her from sight. No one snickered. Maybe he had not been obvious about it, after all. He preferred to take the rear; it was most vulnerable to attack, and most vital to defend. It had been more remarkable that he kept to the front for so long, mooning like a raw boy after a woman who hardly cared that he existed.

Musa's holding was an old Roman villa set on a hill, ringed in vineyards. It had an olive grove and a water mill, and a village round a squat little church. The cross had been struck off the dome, and a minaret put up, converting it to the infidel.

The muezzin was calling the faithful to prayer as they rode up in the evening, the high rhythmic wail that was the daily music of this country. Franks professed to hate it. Roland would never confess that he found in it a sort of beauty. He had asked once what it meant—if there were words in it. Indeed, he was told: words of power and holiness.

God is great! God is great! There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God!

Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to prosperity! Come to prosperity!

God is great! God is great!

Allahu akhbar!
the muezzin sang. One or two of the men signed the Cross, as if to assure themselves that they were still Christian.

Men were praying in the villages and in the fields, white-clad figures kneeling and standing and bowing toward the east. They ignored the Franks riding past in a clatter of hooves and a jingle of mail.

The gate to the villa was open, turbaned guards on either side of it, their prayer just finished and their eyes glittering in the dusk, by the still-wan light of torches. They bowed Turpin and his escort through.

Servants in the courtyard took charge of the horses and baggage. As the riders stood in the growing darkness, the master of the house emerged from the colonnade. He was robed in white, a cap on his shaven head, and a white smile gleaming in his dark face. That blood had come up from Africa, that skin as black as the night sky, those features cut blunt and broad and strong. His voice was soft, a cultured gentleman's voice, his bow and his words graceful, welcoming them, inviting them into his house.

Sarissa was taken away by soft-footed womenservants. That was as they had expected, but Roland was oddly moved to object.

He held his tongue. He would have preferred the guardroom for himself, but he was a person of rank; he was given a small but airy room with a tiled floor, and a mute servant who made himself clear with signs and glances.

There were baths in this house, in the Roman style: lamplit pools and a room filled with clouds of steam. The hot pool bubbled up out of the ground, a spring that gave this place its name, Agua Caliente.

Turpin shared the baths with him. Musa had left them a message: they should take their leisure; then when they were done, they would dine with him, partake of bread and salt, and seal, if not alliance, then a truce while they remained in this holding.

Roland lay in the hot pool till the flesh seemed ready to bake from his bones. Turpin, scarlet and sweating, had long since retreated to the cold pool. “You're half salamander,”
he said as he fled. “I'm but poor clay. I'll crack if I stay longer.”

The heat of the water made the heat of this country somehow more bearable. Roland emerged reluctantly, face to face with a sleek grey cat. It blinked, smiling at him. He smiled back. The
puca
followed him to the cold pool, sat on its rim and bathed itself in cat-fashion, with its tongue, while Roland plunged into water that seemed doubly icy after the heat before.

Turpin floated on his back, beard jutting toward the vaulted ceiling, broad bear's chest lapped with water. He seemed asleep. Roland considered the uses of wickedness. He was on the verge of resisting temptation when Turpin said, “Don't even think about it.”