The Dagger and the Cross (33 page)

Aimery stood stiff. Clearly he thought of refusing, but he
was too sensible to do more than think it. Nor was he so blind that he could
not see how Morgiana had won him the advantage. He was almost able to smile as
he said, “You have my word.”

Morgiana had a tent of her own, and a handsome one it was,
grand enough for an emir and looked after by servants of impeccable manners.
They were not at all dismayed to be presented with a dozen Frankish captives,
all of whom needed water first and urgently on the inside and then, at length,
on the outside. Most of them by then were dead on their feet. They had refused
to leave Ranulf lying on the field to the mercy of jackals and Saracens. With
their own hands, under the eyes but not the hindrance of their captors, they
had dug a grave for him. It nearly finished them. Once they had drunk all that
the servants would allow, lest they sicken with too much too soon, they wanted
only sleep. They were undressed and bathed like infants and laid on pallets,
and left there to heal.

Gwydion was one of them. Aidan would not have taken even
water until he saw his brother tended, but the servants were firm, and numerous
enough to persuade him. He did not, when it came to it, need much persuasion.

Morgiana did not linger to watch. She had duties, and those
were pressing: as envoy and messenger and gatherer of forces, and, even now, as
guardian of the camp. She had not fought in the battle. Aidan did not know if
he should take comfort from that. It might only have been that Saladin would
not waste her power in mere bodily combat.

She had said no word to Aidan. Not one. He might have been
but one of the dozen whom she had bargained for and won, worth no more and no
less than the others. Was that what he had become to her? An enemy only, to be
ransomed because it pleased her fancy? It must have made her laugh behind the
walls of her mind, to hear him renounce all right to avenge the slaughter of
Hattin.

Clean, fed, with a jar of water within his reach if he
should want it, he should have been in bliss. His bones ached, but that would
pass. He had a wound or two, none more than a scratch, and a multitude of
handsome bruises. None of that should have kept him from sleep.

He tossed on the pallet. The tent was as cool as anything could
be on that furnace of a hill, with a servant swaying a fan over the sleepers,
the great blade wetted down with water to cool the air—such prodigality as
Aidan could not have imagined while he fought the hopeless fight. It was not
shame that kept him awake, nor grief for the fall of the kingdom. That was on
Guy’s head; Aidan had done all that he could. The time to grieve in earnest
would be later, when it would do the most good: in front of those who had
stayed behind, and thereafter in the courts of Europe, when the pope preached
the Crusade.

That was what Gwydion meant to do, Aidan knew. He would not
break his oath, but he would not hide his head, either. What Gwydion could not
do, the kings of the greater realms could. Henry of Anglia and Richard his turbulent
heir and Eleanor his strong-willed queen, who for this might be willing to give
up their warring against one another; Philip of Francia with his grand
ambitions and his talent for intrigue; Barbarossa who was emperor of Germania
and the Italies. They would avenge Hattin, if they could be persuaded to labor
together. And there were few who could persuade as convincingly as Gwydion of
Rhiyana.

Or, for the matter of that, as Aidan his brother. That was
not why he could not sleep.

He rose. His legs cried pain; he cursed them until they
muted it to a dull ache. Muslim modesty had clothed him in drawers to sleep and
tried to make him take a light robe, but he would not. He brought it with him
now, thought of dropping it again, put it on instead. It fit. As it ought: it
was one of his own.

Night was well fallen. The camp rested, with little of the
drunken revelry that would have marked a Frankish army after a great victory.
Muslims on jihad, when Saladin was their commander, did not indulge in wine.

Aidan walked through the camp. He was barefoot, but he did
not care. He looked like a Saracen with his black hair and his hawk-face,
though he was taller than most and paler than any; he was not stared at
overmuch, nor cursed for a Frank. He could very likely have taken a horse and
ridden away, and met no hindrance.

The sultan’s tent stood under armed guard. Saladin did not
rest quite yet: there were wounded to see to, dead to gather, prisoners still
to dispose of. Most of the captive knights were dead. They would fetch no
ransom, and the sultan was in no merciful mood tonight. He had commanded the
slain Templars and Hospitallers to be stripped and flung out for the jackals.
It would seem fair recompense for the trouble they had caused him, warrior
fanatics as dangerous as any
fidai
of the Assassins.

Aidan paused in the shadow beyond the great golden tent.
Morgiana was there within, he knew as surely as the wind in his face. Not many
in the army knew what she was. She was the sultan’s servant, the eunuch from
Persia who ran his errands for him.

Aidan’s power was recovering as his body rested from
fighting, or she had lowered the wards, or both. He was aware of the camp as a
presence in his mind, a hum of human minds, the mingling of overriding instinct
and surprising intelligence that was horses, the haughty indifference of
camels. The prisoners were nearly all asleep, King Guy most deeply of all,
burying grief and shame in oblivion. Lucky man. All he had to do was beggar his
kingdom of wealth as he had of soldiery, and he was free to fight again.

This much at least Aidan could be grateful for. He would
never again be forced to follow such an idiot of a king.

“Baldwin,” he said, soft in the dark. “Baldwin my dear lord,
thank God you never lived to see what your sister’s fancy man has done to your
kingdom.”

“If Baldwin had lived, this battle would never have been
fought at all.”

Aidan quelled a start. Morgiana never came any other way but
out of thin air; and she always listened for a prudent while before she showed
herself.

“If Baldwin were alive,” she said, “Reynaud the fox would
likely have been hunted to earth before he attacked the sultan’s caravan, Count
Raymond would never have let our people over the border, and you would never
have come to Hattin.”

“There would still have been a war,” Aidan said. “Who knows
who would have won it? Baldwin was a good general, but so is Saladin; and
Saladin is older.” He shrugged irritably. “What use is there in what-ifs? This
is what is. You should be happy. Your side has won.”

“I’m sorry it cost you so much.”

Her voice was soft. It woke memories. Too many; too painful.
How very fierce she was, but how gentle she could be.

He could see her in the gloom, a slender figure in a turban,
a pale oval of face, a green gleam of eyes. She was not quite close enough to
touch.

“What do you care what it cost me?” he demanded roughly. “I’m
alive, aren’t I? You’ve had your chance to gloat over me. Now I owe you another
debt. How are you going to make me pay it this time?”

“By loving me.”

Her voice was hardly loud enough to hear. It stilled him
utterly.

But his anger ran deep, and it was master of his tongue. “You
left me for months without a word. You fought in the army that defeated me. You
bought my life with an oath which will shame me for as long as men remember it.
And you expect me to fall straight into your arms, as if none of it had
happened?”

“I thought that you might try,” she said. “For a beginning.
To forgive me. Or is forgiveness not a Christian virtue?”

“I’m not feeling very Christian tonight.”

“No. You’re not.” Her tone was sharp. “It never occurs to
you that I might have something to forgive.”

“What, that I fought against your sultan?”

She hissed as she always did when he exasperated her. “Iblis
crack your thick skull! Won’t you even ask me how many men I’ve bedded since I
left you?”

He opened his mouth. No sound came out. He closed it.

“The answer is none. Not one. Can you say the same?”

“My taste doesn’t run to men.”

She hit him. He caught her. She was warm in his grasp,
snake-supple, and not fighting very hard. When Morgiana fought in earnest, she
was too strong even for his strength. He drove his mind at hers. She hardened
against him; then all at once she cast down the walls.

He gasped. He did not want it. But, ah God, he did. He had
been a raw wound, roughly scabbed over. Now the wounds opened to the cleansing
air. Now, painfully, he began to heal.

She went still in his arms. The struggle had unknotted his
sash, opened his robe. She laid her head on his bare shoulder. Her heart beat
hard against him. “I was deathly afraid that you would fall.”

“I’m not easy to kill.”

She nipped him, not gently. Her teeth were as sharp as a cat’s.
“Arrows don’t care whose eye they pierce. Maces don’t mind that the skull they
split is one of ours. I couldn’t guard you. Wards don’t allow the warder out,
any more than they allow the intruder in.”

“Then why did you put them up?”

“To keep you from using power against my sultan.”

“They did that.”

“Of course they did. I raised them.”

He shook his head ruefully. “I’d forgotten quite what you
were like.”

She glared from the hollow of his shoulder. “Your memory is
short.”

“I’ve been slightly distracted.”

“And I haven’t?” She drew back a little. Her eyes left his
face, found the edge of the most impressive bruise, the one that stained his
side from shoulder to hip. This hiss was one of fury. “Who did that to you?”

“We weren’t introduced,” Aidan said. “I killed him, I think.”

“I should hope you did.” She pulled his robe the rest of the
way off and relieved him of his drawers. He tried to snatch at them, but her
methods had nothing to do with hands. She examined every inch of him, there in
the shadow of the sultan’s tent, with a council on the other side of the wall,
and a camp about them, and guards making their rounds. He would have laughed if
he had dared.

“You have a cracked rib,” she said.

“I do?”

“It’s the one that stabs you every time you breathe.”

“It didn’t,” he said. “Until you mentioned it.”

“Idiot.” She set her lips to his side. Warmth rayed out from
them, and pain that was almost pleasure. He could feel the rib mending.

She straightened. Her eyes burned green in the gloom. “Ya
Allah! What would you be without me?”

“Peaceful.”

“Dead of ennui.” Her hand ran down his side. The bruise
ached appallingly, then warmed and flowed and eased. Black-purple paled to sick
green to yellow to his own bloodless white. She caught her breath. She was not
the master of healing that Gwydion was, any more than he was a master of
passing from place to place in a breath. This twofold mending taxed the limit
of her gift.

Aidan caught her before she could spend it wholly, and held
her until she could stand again by herself. He was keenly aware of her body in
all its garments, and his in none at all.

“I haven’t bedded a woman since you left,” he said. “Not
one.”

“What, not even your Frank?”

“She’s eight months pregnant,” he said.

“Yes. Of course. She would not want you then. Would she?”

He cursed himself for a tactless fool. All the warmth that
had been between them was gone. For a few words; a jest that had cut her to the
bone.

He took her hands and kissed them, cold though they were,
neither resisting nor responding. “I love you, Morgiana.” He said it as if he
had never known it before. “I love no one else as I love you.”

“She
gave you a child.”

“You gave me yourself.”

“Her husband is dead. You can marry her now. No one will
object. She is Christian. She has lands and castles to give you. She can give
you children, as I cannot.”

“You don’t know that!” he snapped. “Gwydion says you’re like
a maid just grown. You aren’t ready to bear children yet. But you will be. Even
I can see it in you.”

But she was shaking her head, refusing to listen. “Now you
resent me for buying you out of captivity yet again. I’ll never be or do what
you need. I’ll always do the wrong thing, say the wrong words, spare nothing of
your pride or your manhood. I don’t know how to be a woman.”

“Why would you want to be?” He tried to grip her shoulders,
but she slid away. “Morgiana, stop it. If I wanted a simpering coquette I’d
find myself one.”

“What if you wanted a woman who is not barren?”

“You aren’t.”

“Then why can’t I make you a child?”

“Maybe you want it too much.”

She stared at him, all wide eyes and wicked temper, like a
cat. A moment more, a breath drawn awry, and he would lose her.

“If you go away,” he said, “I’ll follow.”

“You know what that does to you.”

“I don’t care.”

“You will if you lose your dinner all over my cave in
Persia.”

“So don’t run away to it.”

“You have got to learn not to get sick when you go otherwhere.
It’s purely your panic that does it.”

“Stay and teach me not to panic.”

Her eyes narrowed. He stifled a sigh. She was solidly there
again, not braced to flick herself to the other side of the world. “What makes
you think I ever meant to go away?”

That was not anything he cared to answer. He said instead, “I’ll
forgive you. If you’ll forgive me.”

“Even for Hattin?”

Aidan willed his teeth to unclench. She never bought her
truces cheaply, did Morgiana. “Hattin was none of your doing.”

“I prevented you from preventing it.”

“Out of hate for me?”

“Out of love for my Faith.”

The wall of it rose between them, higher than any she could
raise with power. Too high by far to leap, too sheer to scale.