The Dagger and the Cross (10 page)

“Ah,” said Sybilla, not a whit dismayed, “but grief is
seldom a luxury permitted us who are royal. My first dear lord was hardly cold
in his grave before the hunt began for his successor.”

“How unfortunate,” Elen murmured.

Sybilla sighed profoundly and tilted her head at what, no
doubt, was reckoned a fetching angle. “It was necessary. Our kingdom needed a
man who could be its king.”

“You found him yourself, I understand.”

The queen smiled. Her eye sought her husband where he stood
amid a circle of barons, with Gwydion tall and shadowed at his side. “Yes,
indeed, I found him and I chose him; but I took care to choose a man who would
look well upon the throne.”

“He does look well,” said Elen with no particular emphasis.

Sybilla took Elen’s hand with a great air of sharing
confidences. “We have splendid men here. Not all as handsome as your Rhiyanan
lords—they are beautiful, do you breed them for it?—but the sun and the air and
the fighting make them strong, and the court teaches them the gentler arts. We
can hardly spare time from the wars for a proper, courtly court, but we do our
best with what we have. Maybe one will catch your eye. Or two, or three.” Her
glance was wicked. “You see how rare a jewel a woman is here, and a woman of
pure western blood, and beauty with it—there’s no doubt of it. You’ll have your
pick of our fairest knights.”

“I had thought,” said Elen, “to be a proper pilgrim.”

Sybilla laughed, high and consciously sweet. The others took
up the note like a chorus of birds. “Oh, but your grace! Our knights will be
desolate. Surely it’s a Christian’s duty to console them.”

“Did you have any in mind?”

Elen meant it for irony, but Sybilla took her at her word. “I
knew you were a woman after my own heart. Come, I know just where to begin.”

Elen would have given much to be as heedless of royal wrath
as Aidan was, and as ready to speak bluntly; or simply to walk away. But she
was too well trained, for too long, under Gwydion’s firm hand.

She was also, and somewhat guiltily, curious. Now that she
had been both wife and widow, she realized that she much preferred the former. Unless
there was a way to have them both. A widow’s freedom and power to rule her own
possessions; a wife’s pleasures of bed and body.

Shocking thoughts for a lady of breeding as she walked hand
in hand with the Queen of Jerusalem, making a gracious circuit of the court.
They paused often, wherever there was a man who might be the better for the
company of a wife.

Elen could not recall exactly when King Guy’s brother
appeared. He had not been in the hall when she began; she was sure of that. He
took shape on the edge of her attention, obtrusive in his very unobtrusiveness.
He was at her elbow, watching as a baron of a certain age and considerable
girth, and a handsome fief near Banias, labored to be captivating.

In remarkably little time the baron was gone, and his
lumbering courtesies with him. The queen had withdrawn on the arm of someone
young, handsome, and betrothed. Elen was alone but for Messire Amalric.

“It’s a pleasure,” he said, bowing over her hand, “to greet
you again.”

She murmured a word or two and resisted an inexplicable urge
to wipe her hand on her skirt. It was not that Amalric was ill to look at, or
that she had any care for the shape of a man’s face: God knew, Riquier had been
no beauty. Amalric was a plain man, plain-spoken, with none of his brother’s
conspicuous charm. She should have found him easier to like. If he reckoned her
wealth and her lineage and saw in her a chance to gain a throne, as his brother
had before him—why not? It was an honest ambition.

He spoke in her silence, words which, with a start, she
struggled to recall. “You’re brave to have come so far on such a pilgrimage,
with war in the air.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“More now,” he said, “though we’re never completely at
peace. This is no country for the weak.”

“I hardly reckon myself strong. I wished to see my kinsman
wed, that is all; since I had some small part in it.”

He did not choke as the others did at the mention of Aidan’s
wedding. He smiled with every appearance of ease and said, “A joyous occasion,
and long in the making. Was it you, then, who worked the wonder in the papal
curia?”

“Indeed, no. That was my lord king, and her majesty the
queen. I helped them as I could, which was little enough. I know somewhat of
canon law, from an excess of curiosity in my youth; it was useful in its way.
The sons of holy Church find learning disturbing in a woman, and appalling in
one who has no calling to religion.”

“It is unusual,” Amalric said.

“And, no doubt, unnecessary.” She made little effort to keep
the malice out of her voice. “Are you versed in the law, sir?”

He spread his hands, smiling. “I’m but a simple knight, my
lady, come to defend the Holy Sepulcher.”

Simple, she thought. Indeed. “There is wealth to be won
here, I’m told,” she said, “and more than wealth, if one is clever.”

It was impossible to shake his composure. He looked, if
anything, delighted with her rudeness. “Of course, my lady. There’s the soul’s
wealth, for the pilgrimage. And it’s a great virtue to divert the riches of the
east from the infidel’s clutches into good Christian coffers.”

“Where they can do good Christians as much good as possible,”
she said. “Or is it Christian to hunger after gold?”

“Why not, if it’s Saracen gold?”

“Ah, then you are of the school which teaches that nothing
is evil if it thwarts the infidel.”

“I might balk at alliance with the devil,” he said. “Or I
might not.”

His eyes rested, not by accident, on Gwydion. Elen smiled,
cool to coldness. “Indeed; and if the kingdom falls, he might offer you a
refuge.”

“A warm one, no doubt,” said Amalric.

“I wish you joy of it.” She caught a listener’s eye over
Amalric’s shoulder. Blue in a dark face, and for a moment—angry? Amused? Both
at once?

He came as readily as if she had called him, bowed extravagantly,
overwhelmed her with eloquent nonsense. As neatly as she had been trapped, she
was freed. He bore her away before Amalric could say a word.

His babble stopped as soon as they were well away. He did
not withdraw his arm from beneath her hand. She would have liked to throw her
arms about him and kiss him; she had instead to pace coolly beside him with her
head at a regal angle and all her laughter trammeled in her eyes. “I am
grateful,” she said, “for the reprieve.”

“You seemed to be holding your own,” said Raihan.

She showed a gleam of teeth in what might have passed for a
smile. “Is that why you rescued me?”

Above the heavy shadow of his beard, his cheeks glowed ruddy
bronze. “I happened to be nearby,” he said. “My lady. And I did not like what
he had to say of your kinsman.”

“It’s not what he said. It’s what he was being careful not
to say.” She frowned slightly; her fingers tightened on his arm. “No. It’s not
even that. He is his brother’s man, after all; he’d be a poor partisan if he
failed to defend him. It’s just...I don’t know what it is. I simply can’t abide
him.”

“Maybe it’s the reek of jackal that surrounds him.”

His tone was frankly venomous. She regarded him in surprise.
“I thought,” she said, “that Saracens never spoke freely if
they could avoid
it.”

He showed his teeth as she had, with nothing of humor in it.
They were excellent teeth. “Ah, but I’m corrupted: I’ve been raised in a
Frankish castle. Or maybe it’s blood that will tell. My father, insofar as my
mother ever knew, was a man-at-arms from Tripoli.”

“She didn’t—” Elen stopped herself.

Raihan finished it for her. “She didn’t know for certain.
One doesn’t, when one is diversion after a battle. Her husband was kind: he
kept her afterwards, and let her raise me, and when I was old enough to be
worth something, sold me for a decent price.”

He was perfectly calm about it. No doubt he had to be. His
eyes on her were level, daring her to recoil, or to say something regrettable.
He could not help but know what Christians thought of birth outside of wedlock.

She was neither shocked nor repelled. She did not even pity
him. “You’ve done well for yourself,” she said.

He laughed, light and free. “So I have! My lady, you are
wasted on these dogs of Franks. A Muslim, now: a Muslim would appreciate you.”

“What, as a beast in his menagerie?”

“As a jewel in his crown.” His cheeks had gone ruddy again,
though his voice was as smooth as ever. “That one only wants you for what he
thinks you can give him.”

“Most men do,” she said. “Why not? I know what I am. Rhiyana’s
succession is clear enough. Neither my lord nor his brother has an heir. Their
sister has a daughter, and the daughter has Rhodri, who is man enough and heir
enough, but as mortal as any; and I am his sister. May God forbid that I ever
come closer to a throne than I am now, but I am close enough, for a man of some
ambition.”

“I should like to see him touch my lord or his brother,”
said Raihan through gritted teeth.

“I doubt that he would,” said Elen.

“Do you, my lady? I wish that I could be so certain. That
one never means to live out his life in his brother’s shadow, you can be sure
of it. If he saw a way to a crown, he would take it, even if the price for it
was a life. Or two. Or four.”

“Two at least of those lives may not be so easy to take,” Elen
said. “No; he’s more likely to gamble, and pray for a stroke or two of fortune.”

“He may pray all he likes,” said Raihan, as sweetly
poisonous as ever Aidan could be.

“And,” said Elen, “if I’m to be given away, it’s my lord the
king who will do the giving.”

He seemed to agree with her that that concluded the
argument. He deposited her in the company of the lord and lady of Mortmain, who
were quite sincerely glad to see her, and went to attend his prince. She did
not know why, for an instant, she should feel abandoned. He was only being a
good servant.

And, no doubt, a good Muslim.

“It is certain?” the Patriarch asked.

“Incontrovertible,” said the pope’s legate.

There was a silence. Patriarch Heraclius was a Byzantine
Greek—a
Roman, he would insist. Abbot Leo was Roman in truth, of a line
that went back unbroken to the Republic. Of the two of them, he was the elder,
the smaller, and the more visibly saintly: a sweet-faced old man in rusty
black, who affected no mark of his rank. Heraclius beside him seemed a true
prince of the Church. His eyes were dark and deep, his beard long and beginning
augustly to silver, his body—regally slender in youth, thickening as it
aged—set off to best advantage in patriarchal white and scarlet. If Abbot Leo
objected to the presumption of equality with the pope in Rome, he did not
express it.

Leo sat back in his chair and folded his hands over his
middle. “The Holy Father left no doubt of it. The dispensation is granted. The
marriage will take place.”

“It could not have been an easy decision,” Heraclius said.

“Easy enough in the end,” said Leo, “the petitioner being an
anointed king on behalf of his brother, who is not only a faithful son of the
Church but a defender of the Holy Sepulcher.”

Heraclius’ expression was sour. “You have the document,
then.”

“In a locked coffer, under guard.” The legate smiled. “I
thought it best to take no chances.”

“I should examine it,” said Heraclius,
“
if I
am,
as I presume, the one who must perform the rite.”

“You are,” said Abbot Leo. “The bridegroom himself requested
it, as he professed in his petition, ‘so that there may be no doubt in any man’s
mind that this union is valid and binding.’”

“I could choose to be flattered.”

“Indeed you should.” Leo cocked his head, birdlike. “The
dispensation shall be read publicly before the wedding. That is the Holy Father’s
instruction. I may not, until then, break the seal, to which the fortunate
couple should bear witness as whole and unbroken. Will my word be sufficient
that all is properly in order?”

“I can hardly offend you with a refusal.”

The legate smiled his sweet, vague smile. “Oh, but I am
impossible to offend, when I understand perfectly. Still, I am his holiness’
man. You do understand, your eminence.”

It was not a question. Heraclius took it with such grace as
he might.

“Tell me,” Leo said after a while, when Heraclius had poured
and drunk a cup of wine. “What is there that makes you so reluctant to perform
this marriage? They are hardly the first to cross the wall of faith and creed.”

“They are the first of royal blood,” said Heraclius. The
wine slowed his tongue somewhat, but did not calm him. “The woman, of course,
is unspeakable; though he seems to have tamed her slightly since she presented
herself before the gathering of the High Court and proclaimed that he had sold
himself to her in return for her power over the Master of the Assassins. He is
to be applauded for insisting on a proper Christian marriage, if not for
suffering her to persist in her unbelief. One may argue that she is, after all,
only a woman.”

“So was it argued in the curia,” Leo said.

“Successfully, I presume.” Heraclius stroked his beard,
frowning. “Do you know the prince at all?”

“Somewhat,” Leo answered, “long ago. I was in awe of him
then. I was a novice, and young for it. He,” said Leo, “was but a little older
than he seemed.”

“That does not trouble you?”

“Not while the Holy Father is content.”

Heraclius’ teeth clicked together, painfully: they were not
of the best. The pain burned away his shock. A prince of the Church was not
well advised to wonder at anything a saint chose to do. “It troubles me,” he
said. “As does the necessity of accepting it.”