The Dagger and the Cross (18 page)

“They may be together,” she said. “They seem to have taken
to one another.”

Simeon set the cup down empty, but would not let her fill it
again. He seemed to have mastered himself. “So they have,” he said. “I wish I
could say that it comforts me.”

“So do I.” She took the cup and filled it, and drank it
herself. The wine was strong and sweet, sharpened with cinnamon. It cleared her
head a little. “I’ve got searchers out. If they’re in the city, they’ll be
found.” If it was not simply childish rebellion that had taken them; if they
had not come to harm. Two children in a city on the edge of war, crowded with
pilgrims from all over the world, and some who were not pilgrims, but folk who
preyed on pilgrims...

She closed her eyes to that. Ysabel had vanished before. She
had always come back, or been brought back, intact and unrepentant.

She was with Aidan. That was all. Whenever she was in
disgrace, she went to him for sympathy. She usually got it; even if he took her
mother’s side, he broke down soon enough and let her have her way.

“Little minx,” Joanna muttered.

Simeon managed a dim smile. “Your aplomb is admirable, my
lady. I, alas—I only have the one, and he drives me to distraction.”

“You think she doesn’t?” Joanna shook her head. “She runs
away whenever it pleases her. I’d take a whip to her if I thought it would do
any good at all.”

“I threaten my hellion with my lord king. That holds him for
a while.”

“I can’t threaten her with my lord prince. He aids and abets
her.”

“Then perhaps,” Simeon said, “she has gone to him.”

But she had not. Nor had Akiva.

Which left the searchers in the city and Joanna in the
solar. Simeon took one or two of those who had come back, and went out with
them. It was harder this time not to follow them. “Someone has to be home,” she
told herself sternly. “In case she comes back by herself. Someone has to be
ready to tan her hide.”

o0o

Aimery was not pleased to be scouring the city for his
sister. The adventure was all very well, and the excitement of stalking the
streets with torch in hand, startling the rats and the beggars asleep in doorways,
passing the lights and clamor of the taverns, once surprising a pack of
footpads about their business and driving them off. His father went about it as
a good soldier should, not too fast, not too slow, with a minimum of fuss.
Aimery was proud of him. That was what he wanted to be when he was a man.
Strong. Looked up to. Worth something in the world.

But to waste it all on a chit of a girl...

King Gwydion’s Jew met them near the Temple wall and told
them that his son had vanished, too. That gave them two targets to aim for.
Ranulf was polite to the Jew, though Aimery would have told him to go back to
his prayers and leave the hunt to proper men. The Jew went away toward the
cattle market; Ranulf’s party paused, debating. Some were minded to go back and
see if Ysabel had come home by herself. Ranulf told them grimly to go on
hunting.

Aimery had time to think. He was angry and he was tired and
he was disgusted with all of it, but his mind was clear enough. They were not
going about this in the right way. They were thinking like grownfolk; not like
a child.

He kept on thinking, trudging in his father’s wake, peering
into doorways and alleys, sometimes calling his sister’s name. Suppose that he
was a girl, and Ysabel, and mad at her family for expecting her to act like a
properly brought up child. He would want to run away, and do it thoroughly.
Which, since she was Ysabel, meant very thoroughly indeed.

The others were afraid that she might not be staying away of
her own will. Aimery doubted that. Another girl, maybe. Not Ysabel. Ysabel
never did anything she did not want to do.

They stopped by Lady Margaret’s house, and the porter was
waiting for them with wine and a bite to eat, but no news. Aidan had not been
told. Everyone agreed that that was best. He had troubles enough without this;
and, said the porter, he had been persuaded to sleep a little, with his brother
watching over him. The Lady Morgiana was gone, no one knew where. No one
suggested that Ysabel might be with her. Which was as well, thought Aimery. If
Morgiana had her, she could be anywhere in the world.

He preferred to think that she was in Jerusalem. Somewhere
no one thought to look. Not in a church—that was not like Ysabel; especially if
the Jew’s son was with her.

The men were starting to stumble. His father was as steady
as ever, but Aimery could see that he was tired. He was thinking of giving it
up; of waiting for morning.

Almost as soon as Aimery thought it, Ranulf said it. “Back.”
His voice was rough. “It’s no use. She’ll turn up on her own, or we’ll go out
again in daylight. God knows, it won’t be the first time.”

No one tried to argue. Aimery held his tongue. He knew he
should say something of what he was thinking, and where he thought Ysabel might
be. Maybe his father would agree; maybe he would refuse to listen. It would be
out of Aimery’s hands. Just as it always was.

He kept quiet and followed obediently, the good, dull,
unnoticed eldest son, doing what his father told him. His mother was waiting up
for them; all she could say was, “No?”

“No,” said Ranulf heavily.

She hardly saw Aimery at all. Her thoughts were all for
Ysabel. She hugged him gingerly against her bulk, kissed him with a preoccupied
air, and said, “Bed, now. You’ve done enough for one day.”

Just as if
he had been a child, and not a favored
one, at that. He went where he was bidden, where William was already, sound
asleep with the lamp flickering low. He had all the blankets, as usual. Aimery
lay down in his clothes. Just for a while, to rest his tired feet. Just until the
house went quiet.

o0o

He started awake. William was still asleep, still wrapped in
blankets. All Aimery could see of him was a tuft of straw-colored hair.

It was dark beyond the lamp’s light, but the air through the
opened window had a tang of morning. Aimery combed his hair with his fingers,
groped under the bed for his boots.

Cook was up, baking bread. Aimery’s stomach growled, but he
did not stop to appease it. Hakim the porter, as Aimery had hoped, was snoring
in the gate. Aimery stepped gingerly over him and eased the gate open. It
creaked; he froze. Hakim’s snores never faltered. Aimery slipped out and eased
the gate shut. He pulled on his boots. His heart was thudding hard. He had
never done anything like this before. A good boy, people said. No rebellion in
him.

Dull.

He would show them what he was made of.

The city, like the Mortmains’ cook, woke early. The devout
went to mass at dawn. The hungry went in search of food, and the vendors and
the shopkeepers obliged them. The gates opened at sunup with the changing of
the guard: the night guards yawning off to bed, the day guards coming
bright-eyed to their posts. They were not usually so alert, but there was war
in the air. That roused them wonderfully.

They took no notice of Aimery. He was not the only one going
out. The first eager pilgrims were straining at the leash, and from the look of
them had been doing it for half the night. “We have to do it now,” he heard one
of them say in some agitation. “Before the Saracens come and kill us all.”

He could have thought better of the chivalry of Outremer,
Aimery thought. He did not trouble to say it. It never did any good to tax
pilgrims with truth.

Aimery’s step was light as he started up the Mount of Olives
and took the turn that led to Gethsemane. He outdistanced the pilgrims soon
enough: they kept stopping to marvel, or to burst into tears, or to pray. He
was born in this country. He knew how holy it was, but he had to keep on living
in it. And, now, hunting for his sister.

She was not where he had thought she would be. He sagged. He
had been so sure. It was what he would have done, and where he would have gone,
if he had been Ysabel.

A sound brought him about. He had his dagger out before he
thought.

The Jew’s son blinked at him sleepily. The head on his shoulder
was sound asleep, hopelessly tangled, and indisputably Ysabel’s.

Aimery let his breath out slowly. They had taken shelter
under a tree, half-hidden behind it. Clever of them. He wondered which had
thought of it.

He sheathed his knife and stood over them. He ignored the
Jew. He dug his toe into his sister’s side. “Wake up,” he said.

She came up spitting. Aimery got out of the way. Akiva got
hold of her skirt and pulled her down again, and sat on her.

She settled quickly enough, once she had a chance to wake
up. Akiva let her go. She glared at them both, but especially at Aimery. “Where
did you come from?”

“Where do you think?” He planted his fists on his hips. “We’ve
been hunting all night. Father is worn to a rag. Mother is furious. Couldn’t
you have picked a better time to run away?”

She went red. Good: he had scored a hit. “They locked me up.
I couldn’t stand it.”

“And why did they lock you up? Because you were acting like
a spoiled brat.”

She scrambled up. “I was
not!”

“You were. You couldn’t think of anybody but yourself.”

“Was not!”

“Was.” Aimery curled his lip. “You made a bad day worse. I
hope you’re proud of yourself.”

He thought she might leap at him; but she stood still,
shaking, with her fists at her sides. “I hate you,” she said.

“Not half as much as I despise you.” He turned his back on
her. “You can stay here for all I care. I’ll tell Mother where you are.”

“That’s all you want, isn’t it? To get some attention from
her.”

His back snapped straight. “Maybe it is. At least I don’t do
it by keeping her up all night and making her afraid I’ve been kidnapped. Or
worse.”

He started walking then, toward the city. He refused to look
back.

She caught up with him halfway down. The Jew came more
slowly, moving as if he was stiff with sleeping in the open. Aimery ignored
them both.

Ysabel stayed next to him, glaring at the ground in front of
her feet. He hoped she felt good and guilty. He doubted she did. She looked
purely angry.

“You don’t hate me,” she said.

“I didn’t say I did.”

She let that go for a step or ten. Then: “I don’t like to be
despised.”

“Then stop doing things to earn it.”

“You’re horrible.”

“You’re a spoiled baby.”

“I’m not,” she said. Not as loudly as she had before; not as
furiously. “You don’t know what I am. You don’t know—why—” She stopped. “You
don’t understand.”

He would have liked to hit her for sounding so
condescending. “Maybe I don’t want to.”

“You never liked me. Not from the first, when you stopped
having Mother all to yourself.”

He would not answer that. She was baiting him; she was
pricking his scars to see if he would bleed. He would not give her the
satisfaction. He would not even walk faster, to get away from her.

“She doesn’t love me any more than she loves you. You’re the
good one. The one who never gives her trouble. The one she always throws in my
face. ‘Aimery listens,’ she says. ‘Aimery knows how to behave. Aimery is what a
child ought to be.’”

Aimery set his teeth. “And of course you would never want to
be like that.”

“I try.” She even sounded as if she meant it. “We aren’t all
born good. Some of us have to work at it.”

“Not very hard, from the looks of it.”

She kicked a pebble viciously. It skipped down the hill,
over a pilgrim’s foot, into a tuft of grass. “Why don’t you just shut up?”

He shut up. They went the rest of the way in silence, with
Akiva trailing behind, offering no intercession. Wise of him. Between the two
of them, just as between the Christians and the Saracens, there would never be
more than an armed truce.

Aidan flung the pen across the room. It pierced the
plastered wall as if it had been a dagger, with a splatter of ink raying out
from it. He thrust himself up and away from the table with its ledgers, its
rollbooks, its manifold minutiae of a prince’s preparation for war.

His seneschal watched him, a little pale about the eyes, but
carefully calm.

And that drove him as wild as any of the rest of it. They
were all indulging him with heroic patience. Coaxing him back to his house;
giving him ample tasks to occupy his mind; sitting quiet through his blasts of
temper. Time would settle him, they told one another sagely. Time and a good
fight, which he would get, once the king had called up the levies. His portion
of which he was purportedly attending to now, this morning that should have
been the morning after his wedding night, with his wedding denied him and his
lady hunting without him and only the war left to console him.

Aidan stalked from table to wall and back, snatching the pen
as he passed, dropping it under Master Gilbert’s nose. “What in the world can I
do here,” he demanded, “that you cannot do better?”

“Wield the authority of your position,” Master Gilbert
answered, “my lord.”

Aidan snarled at him. “What authority? What position? What
do I have at all, that matters in the slightest?”

“Your life.” That was not Gilbert, and well for him that it
was not, or he would have taken a stroke for it.

Aidan turned on his brother. Gwydion had a look about him
that Aidan almost welcomed: of patience carefully sustained, and calm that had
nothing in it of passivity.

“You need,” said Gwydion judiciously, “to hit something.
Will I do?”

Aidan regarded him, narrow-eyed. Something was blooming in
him; something black, with fire in it. “A match, brother?”

Gwydion inclined his head. “A match.”

o0o

They could have done it naked, without weapons, as they
often had: wrestling to a fall, or dancing to best of three. But Aidan’s mood
wanted something deadlier, and Gwydion was minded to oblige him. It was not, by
God’s bones, indulgence. It was temper needing to match itself with temper, and
body with body, more perfectly equal than any other in the world.