The Dagger and the Cross (14 page)

“We will find it,” he repeated. “However we must; whatever
we must do.”

“What if it’s been destroyed?” Joanna asked.

He spun. She did not flinch. “It cannot be. It must not be.”

“We could,” said Elen slowly, “send to Rome, and have a copy
made. Unless the dispensation is here. Then we simply have to look for it.”

“Simple,” said Morgiana, almost spitting it. “Yes, it should
be simple, shouldn’t it? Except that I’ve been looking constantly, and there is
nothing. No hint, no clue, no faintest suggestion of the truth. Not even a
flicker of guilt, to lead me to the source.”

“Then the source must be in Rome,” Elen said.

Gwydion shook his head. “No. I saw the dispensation written
and sealed. I had it on my ship; I assured myself more than once that it was
intact and untampered with. Whoever, whatever did this, he has done it since we
came to Acre.”

“Still,” Elen said. “If you can’t find it, we may have to go
to Rome after all. Or...send to Rome.” Her eyes were on Morgiana as she said
it.

“No.” Gwydion was gentle but immovable. “Don’t think it. It
would be simple, yes, but for how long? People can count. They can reckon
distances and days of travel, and human probability. They will know surely then
what we can little afford to let them know; and if the pope is told, we gain no
more than our enemies have made for us: denial and anathema.”

“You Christians,” said Morgiana, “are impossible. In Islam I
could go, set my dagger to the appropriate throat, and put an end to all this
mummery.”

Aidan stopped short and whirled upon her. “Yes. Yes, it’s my
fault. If I hadn’t sworn—if I hadn’t insisted—”

“Hush,” Gwydion said. “This is no place and no time for
casting blame. We have enemies capable of skillful and all but undetectable
forgery; we have a wedding destroyed, a city in turmoil, a war in the making.
Who knows but that this is a stroke in that war? It would suit neither side to
permit such a show of amity between Christendom and Islam as this should have
been.”

“This is no work of Alamut,” said Morgiana. “Nor of any in
Islam. The stink on it is a Frankish stink.”

Aidan bit his tongue. The others did not look angry. Joanna
was flushed, but that might be no more than pregnancy.

As if she could sense his thoughts on her, she heaved
herself up. “I don’t see that any of this is getting us anywhere. We have to
find the dispensation; that’s obvious. I gather that you’ve been searching out
secrets among the pope’s men—”

“And the king’s,” Morgiana said, “and the Patriarch’s.”

Joanna’s brows drew together. “You’ve been searching, and
you’ve found nothing. You’ll keep on with it, I’m sure. But what use is that to
us? We can’t help you in any way that matters.”

“You can,” said Gwydion, though Morgiana’s glance denied it.
“You can search by human means, with human senses. Ours are different; that
difference may be the cause of our failure. We trust too much to the ways of
power. We forget how much can be gained within the mortal world.”

“But what can escape power?” Akiva asked.

His father would have quelled him, but Gwydion forestalled
it. “Power is not omnipotence. We can be deceived; we can succumb to
overconfidence. We can fail to see what is before us.”

“Particularly when we don’t know where to look.” Aidan’s
hands, reaching to rake through his hair, found the crown of flowers. He flung
it from him, viciously. As it spun through the air it kindled, and fell burning
to the tiles. He flung words in their goggling faces. “Powers of heaven and
hell below! What mortal man can do this? What mortal man would dare?”

It was not a question that any of them could answer. Joanna
broke the silence, her voice as low as ever, determinedly calm. “I think,” she
said, “that I can do more good elsewhere.”

“Yes,” said Morgiana. “You can.”

Joanna’s lips thinned, but she did not rise to the bait. “Ranulf
may have heard something in the city while we’ve been sitting here being angry.
Or I may be able to learn something useful myself.” She held out her hand. “Come,
Ysabel.”

Ysabel dug in her heels, but Joanna was having none of that.
She said her farewells, even, pointedly, to Morgiana, and took her leave, with
Ysabel mutely furious behind her.

This silence was the longest of all. The garland smoldered
into ashes; they watched it, transfixed. Aidan moved suddenly to quench the
last of the flame, to swirl the ash into the air. “Damn them,” he said almost
gently. “Oh, damn them.”

o0o

“Damn them to their own hell!” The King of Jerusalem was
nearly as furious as Aidan, and much less quiet about it. What set the veins to
bursting in his temples and heated his face to burning was hardly the scandal
of the morning— that had been a profound and completely unexpected pleasure—but
another outrage altogether, and one much closer to his kingship.

Reynaud de Châtillon, younger son of the Count of Gien in
Francia, lord of Kerak in Moab, Prince of Antioch that was second only to
Jerusalem, had, like Guy himself, sailed out of obscurity to win a princess.
Unlike Guy, he had wits and to spare: the mind of a fox and the heart of a
bandit lord, people said of him, not without admiration. Though past sixty, he
had the vigor of a man half his age, and a flair for treachery which put the
Byzantines to shame. They loathed him: they could never stomach a foreigner who
excelled in their native arts.

Saladin more than loathed him; he despised him. Reynaud,
gleefully aware of it, had let himself be bought, and been paid more than
handsomely for a truce, so that the caravan from Cairo to Damascus might pass
in safety by his castle of Kerak. The sight of so much wealth rocking and
swaying under his gate and the sound of Muslim voices calling peacefully to one
another in his very ear were more than he could bear. Like the bandit he was,
he seized the caravan, stripped it of its treasures, and sent the merchants
staggering, naked and afoot, back to their own lands.

Saladin could be as ruthless as any king born, but his honor
was inviolable. An oath to him was sacred; the breaking of a man’s given word,
the most mortal of sins. When word of Reynaud’s oathbreaking came to him, the
brittle thread of his forbearance snapped. He called up his armies. He laid
siege to Kerak. He ravaged the lands about it, clear down to the Jordan. He
raised the jihad.

“If that were all,” Guy lamented, flinging himself about the
solar, wreaking havoc with the more fragile of its furnishings. “If that were
all
anyone had done—”

It would have been enough, Amalric finished for him,
watching him rant. But of course God was not so merciful, and men were not so
simple. Even as Reynaud succumbed to temptation, Count Raymond of Tripoli made
a mistake. That was a rarity, Amalric granted him that. It was Raymond who
should have been king, and not this poor distraught fool: Raymond the wise,
Raymond the circumspect, Raymond who had been King Baldwin’s own favored choice
to rule after he was dead. But even Raymond was mortal, and could on occasion
choose awry. Like every great lord in Outremer, he had his own, sometimes
contradictory net of agreements and alliances; and those could close to trap
him if he let down his guard. As, a very little while ago, he had.

Perhaps he had had no choice. It had seemed a reasonable
request, in its way. Saladin requested leave to make a show of force across the
Sea of Galilee; a show, no more, a promise of what was to come, a repudiation
of Reynaud’s treachery. And Raymond granted it, with strict conditions. For one
day only, from sunrise to sunset, Saladin’s men might ride in Frankish lands.

That, they had done. Seven thousand of them, with the sultan’s
son at their head.

“I heard of it,” Guy said, biting off the words. “You know
what I did. I sent my strongest lords to head them off. And what did they do?
They dawdled. Someone’s horse lost a shoe. Someone else wanted to tup the
serving wench, for all I know. They came too late, and there was the enemy, the
whole heathen horde of them, taking their ease at the springs of Cresson, as
cool as if they owned them.”

“It would have been better,” Amalric said, bluntly enough
since there were only the two of them, “if you had kept the Master of the
Templars on his leash, and not sent him with the others.”

“But it was you who said—” Guy broke off. He had learned
through long and sometimes painful lessoning, when not to remind Amalric of a
palpable truth. “Well then. What could I do? He insisted that I let him go. He
promised to do what he judged was best. How was I supposed to know he’d think
it was best to take twoscore Templars and ten Hospitallers and a hundred of my
own knights, and fall on the Saracens?”

“Gerard de Ridefort has no sense at all when it comes to
infidels,” Amalric said. “One glimpse of a turban and he foams at the mouth.
Seven thousand of them were more than his sanity could bear.”

“Yes, he is mad. A hundred and fifty knights against seven
thousand, three only escaped alive or untaken, the Grand Master of the Hospital
dead on the field—O sweet Jesu, we can’t even spare one, let alone seven score!”

“It will,” said Amalric, “teach Raymond not to swear pacts
with the infidel behind our backs.”

“There is that,” said Guy, but he was little comforted. His
brows met over his fine straight nose. “Ridefort ran away, Amalric. As soon as
he saw the tide turn against him, he turned tail and bolted.”

“He can’t afford to be a hero,” Amalric said. “Not as high
as he stands. He is Grand Master of the Templars, after all.”

Guy nodded. His frown had faded slightly. “Still, that was a
cowardly thing to do.”

He would have gone on, but there was a page at the door,
flushed with haste and full of news. “Sire! Sire, look who’s come!”

Guy strode past him, oblivious to the impudence. Amalric
made note of the child’s face for punishment later. These
pullani;
worthless,
the lot of them. But pretty to look at. They were certainly that.

There was indeed a guest. Even white with the dust of the
road, even unsteady on his feet from riding straight, barely pausing even for
remounts, he kept his regal bearing, his air of sublime superiority. But what
he had come to do was all that Amalric could have wished and more.

Count Raymond of Tripoli had made a mistake. And, being a
wise man, he was able to see that it far outweighed his earlier error of
refusing to accept Guy as king. The words came hard, as if round bile, but they
were sweet to hear. “Sire,” he said, clear and proud in front of the court, “I
have sinned. I cannot say in all truth that I repent. But I have opened my gate
to the Saracen under a bond of truce, and he has ridden beneath it with the
heads of Christian knights upon his spears.” His voice rose, ringing to the
roof. “My lord, my king, I will serve you faithfully, if only you will grant
this that I ask. Avenge your knights who have fallen so foully. Take up the
banner of Crusade. Raise the chivalry of Outremer against the Saracen. God
wills it, my lord, my king. Will you lead us to war?”

Guy’s head came up. His eyes shone. His voice rang out,
deeper than Raymond’s, clearer and stronger and immeasurably more potent. “Yes,
my lord of Tripoli. I will lead you. Who else will follow me? Who will take
arms against the infidel?”

“
I!
” his knights and his barons roared back; and if
not to the last man of them, then close enough. “God wills it!
Deus lo volt!
Deus lo volt!”

o0o

Deus lo volt!

The cry of it rang through the evening, reaching even into
the sanctuary of Margaret’s house, where Aidan still was, sunk from the first
flush of rage into a bleak stillness. The others had gone about their business,
even Morgiana. He sat alone in his forgotten splendor, staring at a smudge of
soot on the floor.

A light hand laid itself against his cheek. He did not
start, or even look up. Morgiana knelt in front of him. He had to look at her
or turn away.

She was dressed as a Muslim youth again, except for the
turban. Her hair was plaited in a single braid, her face scrubbed clean. She
looked small and young and rather forlorn, but her eyes were agate-hard. “You
should put on something more comfortable. Or eat, at least. You haven’t touched
a thing since morning.”

“Later,” he said.

She frowned, but she let it be, for the moment. “Aidan,
beloved, we can’t let them conquer us. It’s bitter, this blow, and
unconscionably cruel, but we are stronger. They can only slow us. They can’t
stop us.”

He stretched out a finger to trace the shape of her face:
narrow oval, pointed chin. “It’s not that I’m weak,” he said. “It’s that they
are so petty. What possible profit can anyone gain from striking us down at the
church door?”

“Of profit, little,” she said. “Of pleasure, much too much.”

“Is that why they do it? For pleasure?”

“Maybe they believe that they’re punishing treachery. Or
witchcraft. Franks are given to that.”

“I am a Frank,” he said, a little tightly. Not much, not
yet.

“You are yourself.” She leaned against his knees. He opened
them; she came into his embrace. She was much more lightly clad than he was. He
ran his hand down the sweet familiar line of her back, and up to her nape. She
caught his free hand and held it to her cheek. “We’ll find the pope’s letter.
We can go back to Millefleurs, recover our senses, set about a proper hunt.”

“Millefleurs?” He was puzzled. “How can we go to
Millefleurs?”

“What can we do here? We only came for the wedding. We were
going back home after. Or don’t you remember?”

He remembered. But. “We can’t go back now.”

“Now more than ever. You know how you hate cities; and this
one has gone mad.”

“This one is about to go to war. Can’t you hear them in the
streets? Saladin has raised the jihad. Count Raymond is here and has sworn
fealty to Guy—God help the man, he should have more sense than to pile an error
on top of a mistake—and his price is Crusade. The king has called the
arrière-ban.
The muster is in Acre within the fortnight.”