The Dagger and the Cross (43 page)

“She gave up her family to make it stronger,” Elen said. “How
brave she must have been!”

“She was brave,” said Margaret, “and canny, and only
occasionally bitter. I will not say that she loved her husband, but they
esteemed one another highly. They died within a year of one another, he of a
wound gone bad, she, I think, of seeing no further use in living. I was grown
and married, with a daughter and a newborn son; my husband was dead in the same
battle which felled my father, and he had heirs by another, older union,
leaving my son free to inherit my father’s lands. She judged me fit to take her
place in the demesne and in the House.”

“Did she die a Christian?” Elen asked. “Or did she return to
her old faith?”

Margaret smiled very faintly. “No one knows but God and she.
She was shriven, rightly enough, and prepared for the dark road in proper
Christian wise, but who is to say that, at the utmost, she did not say the
words of the Prophet’s faith?”

“I wish I could have known her,” Elen said.

“She was a terrible old woman,” said Joanna. “No one ever
mocked her for what she was, to her face or otherwise. When she went to court,
even the king gave her respect. ‘Start at the top,’ she used to say, ‘and all
the rest will follow. ’”

“And so it does,” said Margaret peaceably, biting off a
thread. “Joanna, have you any more of this green?”

Joanna’s hands were full of her baby, but Elen found what
Margaret was looking for. The talk thereafter circled lazily round women’s
things, small and quiet and comfortably dull.

o0o

Ysabel liked Tyre even better than Elen did. It was heaven
for children, if they could slip away from overburdened Nurse, or if Mother was
too caught up in the new baby to notice that some of her brood were missing.
The house alone was good for hours of exploring. They were forbidden the parts
where people lived, unless they were invited. But there was much more to the
caravanserai than warrens of rooms full of merchants and knights and knights’
women and children. Its lower level was a vast cavern full of treasure, and
under that were catacombs that went deeper even than the master of the house
might know of, down into an older earth. There were pillars there, holding up
the vaults of the roof, and floors that seemed made of jewels, and passages
that ran away into the dark.

William and the girlchildren were cowards. They did not want
to go down into the damp and the dimness, even with a lamp appropriated from
the caverns above. Ysabel tried to be charitable. They were human, after all.
They were blind outside of bright daylight.

But Akiva did not want to do it, either. He had been very
ill after Salima was born, from stretching his power too far, too soon, with no
one older or stronger to tell him when to stop. He was better now, but he was
still weak; he spent most of his days reading, or simply sitting in the garden
with the sun on his hollowed face. Ysabel knew—
knew
—that there were
things one could do to help him. She could almost put her hands on some of
them. But she was too young. Her gifts were only seeds, or straggly saplings
with green fruit on them.

People worried, and his father most of all. But they could
not understand. Simeon was afraid that he might die, because he looked so sick
and so pale. It was not Akiva’s body that Ysabel feared for. That would go on
unless someone tried very hard to kill it. His mind and his power—those were
what frightened her. He still kept trying to slide away, to go to sleep and not
wake up. She had had her tanning at last, but not for being bold in front of
the Saracen sultan; for refusing to let Akiva sleep when everyone was sure he
should. For keeping his self from slipping into the deep places and never
coming out.

Now they were sorry. Akiva had told them when he woke up
more properly, what she had done and why. They believed him when they would not
even listen to her. They still tried to make her leave him alone, but they did
not whip her for disobeying.

He looked almost healthy today, sitting on his favorite
bench under the lilac hedge. “I think I want to go for a walk,” he said,
startling her speechless. “Not underground. It’s too dark. Too much—like—”

“I know,” she said quickly, so that he would not have to go
on.

“I want to be out in the light,” he said. “Have you been up
on the walls yet?”

“You can’t climb up there. You’re too sick.”

A frown from him was so rare that when he did it he looked
like a stranger. “Who says I’m too sick?”

She looked at him. He looked mostly like himself. Thinner,
but he was growing so fast she could almost see it; he was all long and no
wide. “You can lean on me,” she said. “And we’ll go slowly.”

He did not like that, but he shut his mouth on it.

She was growing, too, if not as fast. Her shoulder was at a
comfortable height for him to lean on, when he decided to stop being insulted
and start being sensible.

They made a clean and quiet escape, with no one even
stopping to ask them what they were up to. Usually Ysabel said a prayer to
thank whichever saint was looking after her, but today she forgot. By the time
she remembered, they were most of the way to the wall, and it was too late.

A little after that, she was sorry. Someone called her name
behind her. Like an idiot she stopped to see who it was. There were people
between; she was too small to see over them. But Akiva, taller, and trying not
to seem glad of the rest, said, “It’s Lady Elen.”

It was. She always looked cool and elegant and beautiful,
even picking her way through refuse on the street. People stared as she went
by. She never noticed them.

She did notice Ysabel. And Akiva. There was a faint line of
frown between her brows. “Does your father know that you are out?” she asked
him.

“Does he need to?” Ysabel broke in before Akiva could say
anything. “We’re going up on the wall. Are you?”

It was a desperate gamble. Lady Elen was grownfolk, and
human, but she had a bit of wildness left in her. She frowned at Akiva, but he
had his strength back now; he stood by himself and hooked his fingers through
his belt. “I am so tired,” he said, “of being an invalid. If I promise to rest
when I get up there, and go right back when I’ve rested, will you come
up
with us?”

Lady Elen’s frown was almost a scowl, but all at once it
smoothed away. Ysabel would have liked to be able to do that. “Obviously, if I
refuse, you’ll go up anyway, and then who will look after you?” Elen shook her
head. “Akiva, you are a shameless conniver.”

He grinned at her, his first grin since Salima was born.

She grinned back and gathered her skirts.

They went up the stair one by one, with Akiva in the middle
and Ysabel going last. The guards on the wall were watchful, but with no enemy
in sight, they did not mind if a woman and a pair of children wanted to see
what was outside of Tyre. Akiva was not up to walking far, though Ysabel would
have liked to see the drowned city. They went a little way round instead,
toward the causeway. People were coming and going. Saladin had burned a field
or two, but there was still a great deal of green, with the dun and purple of
desert and mountain beyond it, and in front of it the white sand and the blue
water and the great sweeping curve of the coast.

Akiva sat in a crenel of the battlement and tried not to
show how badly he needed to rest. Ysabel was not deceived. Nor was Elen. Elen,
who was tall, could lean on the merlon just beyond him and let the wind blow in
her face. Ysabel could feel her wanting to strip off her veil and fillet and
let her hair fly free.

She would not, of course. It was indecent, and it was
appallingly public. She had to settle for the wind and the sun, and
conspicuously not caring if she burned her face brown.

It was peaceful up here. Akiva was almost asleep. Now and
then a guard went by. It was always a different one. They were taking turns
admiring the lady, who did not even know that they noticed her. Her mind was
full of someone else altogether.

Ysabel wandered a bit, came back, fit herself into the
crenel next to Akiva’s. She would have dangled her legs over, if Elen had not
been there. If there had been no humans there at all, she would have done much
more than that. Flown like a gull, now high up against the sun, now skimming
the water.

There were three gates in the wall, two smaller ones
flanking the great double one with its arches and its gatehouse. Only the
middle gate was open. They were almost beside the northmost one; they could see
how people went in and out, some mounted, most afoot, and how the guards looked
hard at every one. Ysabel could have told them that a spy would be an idiot to
look like one. Not that there was any, that she could see. Saladin was not
interested in Tyre.

The first she saw of the company of riders, she thought they
were knights coming back from hunting. There were about a score of them. But
hunters would not bring so many horses: a whole herd without riders, running in
a tight knot in the middle. There were mules, too. With packs. And, through the
dust they raised, a line of haughty camels.

More Christians escaped from the war.

Did Christians wear turbans? Some of the riders did. But
some did not, and those were clearly Franks: they were wearing armor and
surcoats.

Ysabel was standing in the crenel, barely holding on,
craning to see more. She knew—she knew—

It was agony to wait. Akiva was asleep. Elen was oblivious.
She must have seen the riders, but she would be thinking as Ysabel had at
first: more swords for the defense of Tyre. There were more men than women, and
all the men were armed. Fighting men.

A handful of knights and squires. A tiny company of
men-at-arms. Five mamluks who had belonged, once, to the Syrian sultan.

Only five?

Three white enchanters, a prince and a king and a figure
that was neither, but had been the most feared of the Assassins. Ysabel’s
breath ran out of her in a soft cry. It was. It
was.

They crawled closer. They could not go faster. The camels
did not like it, and some of the mares had foals at heel. Ysabel knew those
horses. They were Aidan’s best-loved beauties from Millefleurs, and Raihan’s
precious few. Maleka had a filly, bay with a white star. Raihan would be like
to burst with pride.

But only five mamluks. Seven gone. She had felt them die. It
had not meant anything real, until she saw how empty the ranks were without
them.

The wind, the high fierce wind of Tyre, stung the tears on
her cheeks. She dashed them away. Ranulf was not there, either. Would never be
there again.

o0o

They checked for a moment, all of them, where the causeway
joined the land. The guards on the wall were suspicious, seeing the turbans and
the Saracen coats, even in the middle of all the Franks. Conrad had his wives
with him, all three in veils.

But suspicion was not what the riders saw. They saw Tyre:
the loom of the wall, the three gates, the city impregnable on its
all-but-island. Some of them wept, because it was Christian, and safe, and
beautiful.

Aidan on his grey gelding, in the coat of honor that Saladin
had given him before Ysabel was born, rode ahead of the others onto the
causeway. It was not far to the gate, but it could be a lonely ride, with the
walls frowning down and the land falling away on either side to the sea. After
a little the others followed him.

Ysabel reached out to him with her mind. He was closed
against her. He could not even see her: his eyes were on the great gate, and
not looking for a lone small figure in a crenel.

It hurt, that he could not know her. She ran along the wall,
darting round guards and gawkers. She heard Elen’s cry behind her. She did not
stop for it.

The gatehouse stopped her. Aidan was almost under it. She
scrambled out onto the edge of the wall.

He paused. To wait for the others, it was plain; but he was
just below her. She called out to him. He started and turned his face up to
her. She saw it in a blur, white inside of black.
Father!
she cried in
her mind.
Father, Father, Father!
And leaped from the battlements,
falling dizzily, swooping through the blue air.

Elen, dreaming in the sun, thought at first that her dream
had taken substance. She saw them come
riding in their company, Prince
Aidan well ahead as he always was, Gwydion more quiet behind, and one in a
turban whose face was a woman’s, and a strong lad who but a season ago had been
a child, Joanna’s eldest son; and a few, a pitiful few, of those who had gone
to the war with them. Of thirty Rhiyanan knights, she counted six, and Urien
the king’s squire. Of a dozen Syrian mamluks, she saw five. Five only in their
scarlet coats, with heads high and haughty under the turban-wrapped helmets. A
pair of slant-eyed imps who at this distance seemed to have no more beard than
boys, and a golden lion of a man who, for once, was not singing, and a thickset
Turk.

And somewhat behind, riding among the herd of horses, a tall
wide-shouldered man with a handsome black beard and a face burned well-nigh
black in the sun, and eyes shadowed under the turban. But they would be blue.
Sea blue, sky blue, flaxflower blue.

The breath left her in a long sigh. He was alive. He rode
lightly, no stiffness in him, no mark of wound or hardship. He was whole. He
had come back.

She saw Ysabel dart toward the gatehouse. The child’s face,
flashing past her, was white and set, a little mad. Elen sprang in pursuit,
calling. She doubted that Ysabel even heard her.

Elen stretched her stride. The child was as quick as a cat,
and rather less inclined to serve any will but her own. Elen prayed devoutly
that she would stop before she caught the guards’ attention.