Kingdom of the Grail (25 page)

CHAPTER 28

T
he day they broke the siege of Saragossa, clouds veiled the sun. The wind blew, if not cold, then less searing hot than it had for so long. The Franks took it as an omen, a remembrance of their cool and rainy country.

The people of the city lined the walls to watch them go. There was no jeering, no mockery. Only silence. The Franks sang as they formed in their long column, mounted, lifted banners, rode away. Behind them they had scoured the earth of every living thing. There would be no harvest for Saragossa.

This was a darker joy than had brought them into Spain, but it was joy nonetheless. They were going home. The war had failed, but their honor was intact. They had done as they agreed to do. The Spaniards had broken their word and so dishonored themselves.

That was the song the Franks sang as they rode: the song of Spain's dishonor. They sang it in all the languages of all their nations. Some even sang in the Spaniards' tongue, and a few in Arabic. It was a soldiers' song, fit to burn delicate ears.

Sarissa, who had heard worse, was glad to be riding in man's clothes on a rather plain Frankish cob—for Tarik refused to carry her while she persisted in what he considered to be her folly of mistrusting Roland. It would have
mortified the rough troopers in the line before and behind, if they had known what she was.

She was as glad as they that the siege had ended. Now, she thought, the real war would come. Already in spirit she could see the loom of mountains, feel the cool air streaming down from snowfields that lingered even in summer. If she closed her eyes, she could forget this sun-parched plain and see another landscape altogether.

It happened that she was riding between the Bretons and a company of men from the lands near Paris in Francia. Just ahead of those rode the women, both the king's mistresses and the few nuns who had come with the army. Her erstwhile companions from Chelles were riding there, mute and demure beside the formidable Sister Dhuoda.

Sister Rotruda was clenched upon herself, huddled on the back of her mule. Dhuoda's cold blue eye caught Sarissa's. The elder nun nodded very slightly. It was seen to, that nod said. Rotruda would be looked after.

Sarissa sighed faintly. For a moment she allowed herself to remember the abbey of Chelles: the chilly quiet of the cloister, the echo of sweet high voices in the chapel. She had been almost content there in that house of women. In another world, perhaps, in another life . . .

She shook her head and sighed. Not in this world, and not in any world that touched on it. That God was not her God, that rite not hers. She was born to one older and higher.

The world of men and war closed in about her. The wind was freshening. It bore a scent of rain. The Franks breathed deep and sighed, as if for this little while they had come home.

Roland was riding in the van with the king, rather than commanding the rear as was his wont. He had been close by Charles of late—conveying a message to the army, and guarding the king from the old enemy. The men had taken note of the king's favor. Wise that they were in Charles' ways, they understood what he had done. Rather more seemed to find it acceptable than not.

And that, she sensed, was not to the enemy's liking. Now that she knew who he was, she could feel him like a crawling just under the skin. He could by the force of his magic
have turned that whole army against Roland, but he did not choose to do it. He was biding his time.

Or perhaps he was preoccupied with greater matters. She had been aware of things passing in the night, wings against the moon, shadows in starlight. Her own messenger had not returned, nor had there been a response, but that was as she had expected. What she had set in train was begun long before.

She would have been glad of something to do. If Roland had not been such a fool as to turn his back on her—

And need he do that now? Between his own headlong act and the king's clear favor, maybe he would reckon himself safe again. Her bed had been lonely these past nights, her arms empty. She had caught herself dreaming of him even in daylight—she, who was not one to lose her wits over any man.

The rain closed in a little after noon. By nightfall it had diminished to a few sudden squalls and a flurry of clouds streaming away eastward. Though the sun had set some while since, the western sky shimmered still with rose and gold.

The king's army camped on a long hill by a trickle of river. There had been no attacks, though they had seen riders at a distance: scouts or spies, sent no doubt to be certain that the Franks were riding homeward. The king had ordered a war camp, with walls of earth about it and guards set on it. Even so, the mood was as light as it had been since they left Saragossa. The men might even have welcomed an ambush. It would have given them an excuse to strike back against the Spaniards.

It was a strange mingling of joy and anger, gladness and hunger for revenge. Sarissa tasted it as she passed through the camp, sweet, underlaid with a gagging bitterness.

The joy was their own. The anger . . . was it stronger than it should have been? Was it darker?

That was one of the enemy's arts and ancient skills. He had never created anything. Like his master of the darkness, he could only misshape and destroy. Whatever he wrought, he wrought of what he found before him. He could use this anger, could twist it to his own ends.

As she walked, a shadow in shadow, she cupped light in
her hands: some from the last gleam of sunset, some from stars and moon, some from firelight and men's hearts. She gathered it all together and sowed it like seed. Where it fell, anger faded. Darkness brightened. The air was cleaner, and not only from the rain.

Roland had gone to the tent far sooner than Olivier, as she had known he would. It wore at him to be stared at, as he still was, though no longer with such open hatred.

The lamp was lit. He was lying on his side, arm crooked under head. Tarik's grey cat-shape curled in the warmth of his middle.

They regarded her with the same flat yellow stare. She would have expected it of Tarik; he was a
puca
, a creature not remarkably susceptible to either logic or reason. Neither was a man, for the matter of that, but she could not think of anything that she had done to Roland to deserve such coldness.

“A fair evening,” she said with determined sweetness, “and a fine greeting to you, my lord of Brittany.”

Roland's lips tightened. His habit of courtesy, like that of solitude, was well ingrained. “Good evening, lady,” he said without warmth.

She sat on Olivier's cot, tucking up her feet, smiling brightly. “Were you glad of the rain today, my lord? A good omen, the men were saying. A promise of a safe and fair return to Francia.”

Roland crossed himself. “I pray it may be so,” he said.

“So it should be, if you ride straight and swift, and offer no threat to this country,” she said.

“You are in great haste to be rid of us,” he said. “Was it only a game, then? Were we no more than trained bears dancing to your drumming? ‘Let us test the Franks' simplemindedness,' you said to one another. ‘Let us see how unwieldy an army they will raise, and how futile a war they will fight, for a cause they are too lackwitted to understand. Then let us cast them back again, and send them home no wiser and no richer; but we have been much diverted by the game.' ”

He was as bitter as the worst of the darkness that had lain on the camp, as angry as the angriest of the men she had passed. Her seeds of light had not touched him. He had old blood, wild blood. His magic made him stronger
than any mortal man, but it was his weakness, too. The enemy could touch him through it, could lay hold of his spirit.

The gust of his anger rocked her where she sat. “You can't trust me, can you?” he demanded of her. “You'll always wonder. You'll always doubt. You won't ever believe that I'm just as you see me.”

“You aren't,” she said. It always disconcerted her that he could do that; that he could read her so terribly easily.

And could that be, her heart asked, because he trusted her, and did not doubt her?

He had turned his back on her. She astonished herself with pain. It was only a boy's temper, but it was a cold, lonely thing to be the object of it.

She could not help either her heart or her head. He would learn to see it, or he would not. And that was a cold and lonely thing, too, but it was what she was.

For all of that, she did not have to let him shut her out. She stared down the
puca
until he flattened his ears and hissed, but took his leave. When he was well and thoroughly gone, she slipped off her garments, softly, and fitted herself to Roland's back. He was rigid against her. Her hand moved down over his breast and belly to the proof that one part of him at least would welcome her. He must be aching with it.

He gasped as her fingers closed about it, but he did not ease or turn. She kissed his nape and the curve of neck and shoulder, nibbling, nipping. He flinched but held silent. She slid round to the front of him. His face was set. She kissed his lips. They were stiff and cold. “Do you hate me?” she asked him.

He shook his head once, sharply.

“Then love me,” she said.

His whole body clenched like a fist. All at once it let go. She gasped with the force of it, and laughed, opening to take him in.

His own gasp was half a sob. He buried his face in her breasts, and held her till she thought she would faint for want of air. Then they found it again as if they had never lost it: the old harmony, the perfect match of body and body, heart and heart, spirit and spirit.

They lay together in the aftermath, warm flesh on warm
flesh. He was all loosed as before he had been taut, lying in her arms. Little by little his breathing quieted.

“Are you still angry with me?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he said.

She kissed the parting of his hair. “Do you love me?”

“With my heart and soul.”

“Then I'm content,” she said.

“Even though you don't trust me?”

“I do love you,” she said.

“But I have no honor in your heart.”

“You have all honor,” she said.

“And no trust.”

“That is earned,” she said.

“And love is not?”

“Love simply is,” she said.

He sighed. “I'll never understand you,” he said.

“No one understands me better than you,” she said.

“Then you are truly incomprehensible.”

She laughed softly. “I'm a woman. That's ineffable enough, as any man will tell you.”

“It is true,” he said, “that I know nothing of women. But even what little I have seen—there's none like you.”

“There are many like me,” she said.

“None,” he insisted.

“So strong-willed a child,” she said.

He lifted himself abruptly, raising his face over her. For the first time in a long while, she caught her breath, taken aback by the oddity of his eyes. He saw: they narrowed. But his mind was on another thing. “Tell me how old you are,” he said.

She blinked. Somehow she had not expected that question. “Do I look ancient?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” he said.

“All women do.”

He shook his head. “No, don't. Tell me.”

“Someday,” she said, “I will.”

He thrust himself up and away. “I,” he said tightly, “have one-and-twenty summers. I keep count. It matters, Merlin told me, when one is young. He stopped counting for long years. Then I came, and he reckoned the years again.”

“By that count,” she said with the flicker of a smile, “I
was born a year ago, in the spring, in the magic of wood and water.”

“I could almost believe that,” he said. “Except . . .”

“Except?” she asked.

“You never limned your life in memories of me.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Roland did not trouble with answers that she already knew. He was closing her out again. He would not be content, she knew, until he had all her secrets.