The Dagger and the Cross (49 page)

“To be safe,” the little witch said. “You understand. If we
know the weapon, we can make a shield for it.”

“That was not in the bargain,” Seco said.

The witch’s eyes narrowed, but the prince restrained her, as
Seco had gambled that he would. Knightly honor, even in a witch, could be
useful. “It was not in the bargain,” said the prince, dangerously soft, “and it
doesn’t matter. I know who they are now. I know where to find them.”

“Now?” The little witch was dreadfully eager.

“Now,” the prince said.

“Us, too,” said the little witch. “You have to take us. We
know what the truth feels like; we’ll know it when we see it.”

The prince’s brow darkened. The Jew leaped into the breach. “My
lord, you shouldn’t go alone. It’s too deadly. We know; we were almost trapped
before, when we tracked them to their lair in Jerusalem. If you won’t take us,
then you should wait for your lady and your brother. Truly, my lord. We know
what we’re facing.”

“Do you?” the prince asked. “And you want to come with me?”

“With you, we’re strong enough. With your lady and your
brother—”

“My lady,” said the prince, “no. I’d prefer to finish this
without bloodshed if I can.”

“We can help you,” the little witch said. “They’ll
underestimate you. Thinking you can bring children into such danger as that—you’ll
look contemptible.”

“Such words, you have in you,” said the prince, frowning,
but wavering visibly.

She hastened to cast him down. “We won’t say anything unless
you ask us to. Haven’t we proved that we can do it?” She ignored his lowered
brows. “We won’t say a word, I promise. We’ll just watch and look harmless.”

“One of us can stay outside,” said the Jew. “And if there’s
trouble, go for your lady.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s not ill thought of,” he said. “But
I don’t think—”

She widened her eyes and pleaded.

He fell before her. “But mind,” he said. “No heroics. From
either of you.”

“Oh, no,” said the little witch, brimming with sincerity.

He favored her with a long, level look. She did not flinch.
He sighed, shrugged, allowed himself a rueful smile.

When he turned from her, it vanished. He fixed his gaze on
Seco. Seco flinched from the fire of it. “You come with us.”

“I did not bargain—” Seco began.

“You bargained for your life. How can I protect it unless
you remain in my presence?”

Seco opened his mouth, closed it again. He had outsmarted
himself. If he could only be protected within sight of the prince, then what
was that protection worth?

The prince smiled almost lazily and stepped aside, freeing
Seco from the captivity of his chair. “At your pleasure, Messer Seco.”

Gwydion, with Urien the squire to keep him respectable,
tasted for an hour’s span the joy of playing truant. Though it was hardly
dereliction of duty, as Urien pointed out, to dawdle along the quay, reckoning
the count of ships and pausing now and then to speak with a captain or an
officer of the port. He should know, after all, what anchorage there would be
for his fleet when it came, and what tariff the city would place on the water
and the stores which they would need.

But once he had ascertained that—and done his best not to
choke on it; war brought out the worst in the sellers of necessities—he was free
to go where he would. In his plain clothes, with only the squire to attend him,
he seemed no more than any knight. It was pleasant not to be known for a king,
or even for a prince. He lent a hand with a line, tasted good brown ale in a
tavern near the docks, watched a fisherman bring in a boatload of gleaming
silver fish, and among them a store of spiny shells.

“More precious than gold, these are,” the man said, setting
one in Gwydion’s hand. “They make the purple that kings like to dress in.”

The King of Rhiyana looked at the wet and glistening thing
with its scent of fish and the sea. The fisherman took his expression for
incredulity: he took up another shell, and a hammer from the clutter in his
boat. “Look,” he said. He cracked the shell, baring the beast within, soft and
quivering, shaped like a slug. He stabbed it. Ichor welled forth, cloudy,
almost colorless. But as the sun struck it, it turned as red as blood.

“Blood of the murex,” the fisherman said. “Put enough of it
in the dyers’ vat and dip your wool in it, and it turns as red as this blood;
then let the sun at it and it deepens to royal purple. Use less of it and you
get as pretty a violet as you could ask for. Double-dye it and you’ve got a
robe for an emperor, pure deep crimson, more costly than anything in the world.”

“Why does it cost so dear?” Urien asked, intrigued.

The fisherman grinned at him. “Because, my fine young lord,
one of these beasties can just about dye the tip of your finger. For a robe to
wrap an emperor in, you need a whole shipload of them, and hammers to crush
them, and vats to steep them in, and dyers to keep the secret.”

“Such as it is,” said Gwydion, “if you’re willing to tell us
who simply wandered by.”

“Well,” said the fisherman, “my father was a dyer, and we
had a falling-out, but not before I learned the tricks of the trade. And you
look like a lad who can keep a secret.”

Urien grinned. Gwydion quelled him with a look. “I’m
honored, sir,” he said.

“Remember me in your prayers,” said the fisherman, “and if
you ever put on the purple.”

o0o

“You could charm a sermon out of a stone,” said Urien as
they left the fisherman to his catch, both scaled and shelled. He skipped round
a knot of dogs snarling over a bit of offal, and nigh backed into a dray full
of wine-casks.

Gwydion plucked him out of danger and kept him there with an
arm about his shoulders. It was Urien’s cherished secret that he was never the
monument of dignity that everyone took him for, but a madcap boy. Like his
king; and all too well he knew it.

Gwydion pondered turning back. Regretfully; but a king, even
a king outside of his own country, could not idle away a day with only his
squire for company. He was almost to the end of the harbor, where the wall
stretched out into the sea. One gate opened in it, an arch of mortared masonry
between two lofty towers, and the great chain to bar it, which the sea-guard
would lower when a ship sought to pass in or out.

“Imagine this in the harbor at Caer Gwent,” said Urien. “We’d
be impregnable.”

“I am imagining it,” Gwydion said. “It’s not for us, I
think. Tyre is an island city with a harbor in its heart. Caer Gwent, but for
the headland that is the White Keep, is like a torque about a lady’s neck.”

“That lady being the sea.” Urien sighed. “I was glad to get
away from it; I thought myself trapped there. Now all I can think of is going
back, and being home.”

“I, too,” said Gwydion softly. “Soon now. When the fleet
comes; when we settle the matter of my brother’s wedding.”

“As to that, my lord,” Urien said, “do you think—”

“My lord! My lord king!”

Urien stopped. Gwydion turned. He was not precisely
displeased to be recognized so publicly, but he would have preferred greater
discretion. Even here, where the quay was almost empty. The guards on the wall,
and the odd idler, stopped to stare.

The man who came, came alone, without even a servant to bear
him company. He greeted Gwydion more circumspectly, now that he was noticed; he
did not offer an embrace, of which Gwydion was glad.

“Messire Amalric,” Gwydion said. Courteously; no more warmly
than he must. “The pleasure is unexpected. I had thought you in Jerusalem.”

“So I was,” said Amalric, offering a sketchy reverence. “But
the strength of the kingdom is here; I had a mind to look at it before I went
back to captivity.”

“Did you, sir?”

Amalric showed a flash of teeth. “You can call it spying if
you like. I’d rather call it pondering alternatives. The sultan holds my
brother hostage, well enough, but I doubt he’ll put a king to death for his
brother’s failure to walk back into the cage. Not with the ransom still to pay.”

“Is it?”

“The queen will pay it,” said Amalric. “That’s settled,
though she’ll need time to gather it all together.”

“Yours, too?”

“Mine, too,” said Amalric. “I have that much honor.”

Gwydion sat on a coil of rope, suppressing a sigh and an
urge to bolt for cover. Amalric would hardly have hailed him for idle pleasure.
The man had the look and the air of one who had hunted for some little time,
and hoped to catch his prey out of its wonted runs.

The Constable of the embattled kingdom did not presume to
sit uninvited in a king’s presence. He clasped his hands behind his back and
surveyed the long curve of the harbor, at ease, but with a subtle tension
beneath. “I’m glad to see you made it so far and prospered so well. The marquis
caused you no trouble?”

“The marquis would hardly vex a sovereign king,” Gwydion
said.

“Rude little bastard, isn’t he?”

“I have not,” said Gwydion, “heard calumny of his lady
mother.”

Amalric laughed. “That’s true: he’s his father’s son to the bone.
He calls you arrogant, as if he had a right to judge.”

“The marquis may call me what he pleases.”

“He does,” said Amalric. “He says you summoned him—lord of
this city as he is, or so he says, and no vassal of yours.”

“I informed him that I was present, and gave him to know
where I reside. He did not see fit to respond. That is his right as lord of
this city and no vassal of mine.”

“He doesn’t know when he’s outmatched,” said Amalric.

“That is as may be,” said Gwydion. “Will you, then, be
entering his service?”

“He’s asked,” Amalric said. “I’ve been in no haste to
answer. My brother still holds my oath, after all.”

“So does the sultan.”

“Another oath,” said Amalric. “Another and briefer binding.”

“Enough at least to keep the marquis at bay.”

“There is that,” Amalric said. “And you, sire? You’ll be
going home, now that you’ve sworn yourself out of the war?”

“Out of the war, perhaps, but not out of the Crusade. Europe
will learn from me what has been done to our holy places.”

Amalric considered that and whistled softly. “So that’s why
you took oath so easily. The sultan would have done better to keep you.”

“Could he have held me?”

“Probably not.” Amalric exchanged glances with a gull on a
bollard. The gull mewed and took wing. “My lord, if I asked a favor of you,
would you grant it?”

“Have you earned it?”

Amalric turned on his heel. For a moment Gwydion saw him
unmasked. Anger, yes, that was to be expected. And fear: for Gwydion was what
he was. And, always, calculation. Plain, rough, unpolished Amalric was heart-kin
to Conrad of Montferrat. Snakes of a scale, Aidan would say.

Amalric’s eyes hooded. He smiled as if at a jest. “A king
should be wary, yes, your majesty. It’s not so great a favor. Only passage on
one of your ships, for which I can pay.”

“And?”

Amalric’s smile slipped; then widened. “I forget, sire, what
arts are yours. Yes, there is somewhat more. I asked you once, if you recall,
for leave to pay court to your kinswoman. My condition has altered somewhat
since, but my rank remains, and my kingdom, though diminished, has still its
king and the core of its strength. In Europe we’ll gather armies to win it back
greater than before. With the Lady Elen at my side, I would find fire in myself
to rouse such a Crusade as this world has never seen.”

“And then? Would you ask the lady to ride into the jaws of
war?”

“Hasn’t she already done so?”

“So she has,” said Gwydion mildly.

“May I address her, at least, sire?”

“Have you not already done so?”

Amalric failed to see the wit in that. “Your majesty was
generous to allow me to speak to her on the road to Acre. But we never spoke of
marriage. It wasn’t time; and there was the war. Now, if we’re to sail
together—”

“That has not been settled,” Gwydion said.

“If we should,” said Amalric, “there will be time to talk of
gentler things. If your majesty will grant his approval.”

“The Lady Elen is a grown woman. She has been wed before;
our custom in our country, from the old times, is to leave a widow free to
choose whether she will wed again or remain faithful to her husband who is
gone.”

“Yet if she does choose to marry, surely her kinsmen have a
say in it.”

“The final word is hers,” Gwydion said.

“Would she marry against your wishes?”

“That is for her to say,” said Gwydion.

Amalric paused. Gwydion tasted his frustration: sour, with a
tang of iron. It was not Christian and hardly kingly, but Gwydion knew a moment’s
pleasure.

“I may speak with her, then?” Amalric asked. He did not
quite succeed in keeping the roughness from his voice.

Gwydion met the man’s eyes. Amalric stiffened but held his
ground. For that, Gwydion said, “I will speak with her. If she consents, then
you may address her. If she refuses, you will abide by her wishes.”

“I’ll trust you to be persuasive, my lord,” said Amalric.

“Indeed,” said Gwydion. He rose. Amalric stepped back.
Aidan, whom the monks had never managed to tame, would have smiled. Gwydion
promised his God a penance. Later. When he was well away from this thorn in his
side.

It was a king’s privilege to dispense with greetings and
farewells if it suited his pleasure. Gwydion did not often indulge it. He left
Amalric standing there and turned his face toward the caravanserai.

o0o

Gwydion’s mood had altered for the worse. He turned Urien
loose; the boy, meeting his glance, swallowed argument and went. Alone but not
content, Gwydion slowed little by little until he hardly moved at all.

It was neither kingly nor charitable, but he did not want
Messire Amalric on any ship that was his. He knew nothing truly ill of the man;
he had seen nothing to condemn, except an excess of ambition. But he could not
like him.