The Dagger and the Cross (19 page)

They put on mail and took up the heavy practice swords,
blunt beside the fine steel of their Damascus blades but quite lethal enough.
Neither was minded to ward his head with a helm, though they wore the padded
cap under the mail-coif. Image looked at image and grinned, white and fierce. “Already
I feel better,” Aidan said.

Gwydion smiled. “We’ll see how you feel when I’m done with
you.”

“I’ll try not to gloat over my victory.”

“Victory, would it be?
En garde,
then, braggart, and
may the devil take the hindmost!”

Aidan laughed and fell to.

o0o

The sound of blade clashing on blade would have been guide
enough, even without the mask-faced Saracen who had conducted them from the
door. Evrard de Beaumarchais, who considered himself King Guy’s friend, glanced
at the brace of lordlings who accompanied him, and then ahead, to the light at
the end of the passage and the bare swept courtyard and the two who fought in
it. There were others about: more Saracens, a Rhiyanan or three, a scatter of
servants.

Evrard neither liked nor disliked the lord of Millefleurs.
This was a kingdom of fighting men, and Prince Aidan was as good a fighting man
as any in it. That made him worthy of respect, whatever else he was; and
whatever he chose to share his bed and his board.

He was in fine form this morning. Both of him.

Evrard blinked and shook his head. Of course the other would
be his twin, the Rhiyanan king. It was like watching a man and his shadow, or a
battle of mirrors. Without blazons to mark them, without any distinction of
expression or movement or skill with the sword, there was no telling which was
Aidan and which was Gwydion.

This was no simple practice bout. There was real force in those
sweeping blows. Almost, Evrard would have said, real anger; real enmity.
Neither held back, and neither gave quarter. They were faster than anything
natural should have been, weighted down with mail in the sun, and wielding the
great coarse cudgels that were the two-handed broadswords. Even as Evrard
stared, one of them melted from beneath a stroke that should have cloven him,
and slashed round as quick as a cat, and struck at the other’s neck. But there
was cold steel between, and eyes the color of steel, and a smile like a sword’s
edge. They froze so, blade crossing blade, eye crossing eye. “Yield?” said one.

“Never,” said the other.

The first laughed. The second smiled. They lowered their
blades and closed in a sudden, breathless embrace.

Still with their arms about one another’s shoulders,
bright-eyed, streaming with sweat, they thrust back coifs and caps from wetly
matted heads, and seemed for the first time to notice that they were not alone.
The one who had smiled raised a brow. The one who had laughed shook his hands
out of their sheaths of mail and ran them through his hair. Both his brows went
up. “Sir Evrard. Sir Thierry; Sir Wulfram. To what do I owe the honor?”

Evrard was surprised to realize how much it mattered that he
know which of them was which. Now that they were still, he could see how truly
still the king was, and how subtly restless the prince, like a flame in a
windowless room. He bowed to the elder first, but it was to the younger that he
spoke. “We give you greeting, my lord prince. Perhaps you would prefer to
recover yourself before we speak? Privily,” he added with a glance about, but
not quite at the king.

Aidan’s frown deepened, and Evrard went briefly cold. If the
tales were true—if he could know without being told—

But he seemed quiet enough, and while he was not visibly
delighted, he was sufficiently courteous. He saw them settled in a cool and
airy room with wine and cakes and sherbet and a servant to wait on them, while
he went to divest himself of his armor.

He did not keep them waiting unduly long: only long enough
to wash and put on cotte and hose, plain enough both, but rich enough not to
insult their dignity. He brought no one with him; once he had accepted a cup of
sherbet, he sent the servant away. He raised the cup to his lips, but barely
drank before he set it down. “Well?” he said.

Evrard cleared his throat. It had seemed a wise course when
he was persuaded to follow it. Now, he was not so certain. He found himself
wondering why he was chosen, and not someone of greater rank; not one of those
who had contrived the message. He was good with words, he knew that. He was not
notably inclined to cowardice. And yet...

He had commanded troops in the field. He knew what he was
being used for. His folly for being so blinded by the honor that he could not
see it sooner.

Whatever else he was, he was no coward. He clung to that as
he looked into the white hawk-face. He had never seen it so close or so clear.
It was not so young after all. Or so pretty. There was something disturbing in
the cast of it; in the set of the eyes in it, in the way they looked out from
under the slanting brows.

He swallowed hard and made himself speak. “My lord prince, I
come with these my fellows, not as a single man—though I believe in what I have
to say—but as one who speaks for a number of those in the High Court. A very
fair number, my lord. You may be assured of that.”

The prince waited. It was not patience.

“We share your distress in what has befallen you, and regret
that it should have come upon you. We deplore the deception, if deception it
is. Yet, for all of that...” Evrard paused to draw a breath. Still the prince
did not move or speak. “For all of that, my lord, under the circumstances,
might it not be for the best? You must be aware of what is said by those of
little wisdom and less perception, but more power in the kingdom than can
readily be ignored. That a great lord should be so closely allied with the
Saracen; that he should have tamed an Assassin. That there might be more than
alliance. That there might be—” Almost, he could not say it. “That there might
be treachery.”

The prince laughed. It was a sound exactly like that of his
blade upon his brother’s. “Yes, I know what people say. More maybe than you
think. What you’re admitting to—that is a lie.”

“No doubt,” said Evrard uneasily. “On your side, no doubt at
all. On another... My lord. This is not a pleasure, you must believe me. But
that it is necessary—that I know.”

“Then why don’t you come out and say it, and get it over?”

Sweet, those words; one remembered that the one who spoke
them was a singer. One also remembered that he was the best knight in Outremer.
And maybe more than that. Very likely more than that.

Evrard did as he was told. “My lord, I speak no word of
betrayal, not without proof. That is, of betrayal of the kingdom. What else
there may be—my lord, it has been brought to our notice by those whose veracity
can be tested, that there may be more than the impediment of religion between
yourself and your betrothed. That she may be—”

Aidan’s laughter now was full and free. “You’re trying to
tell me that she’s been accused of taking another lover? Evrard, Evrard! You
were always a pleasant enough booby, but this is ridiculous.”

Evrard bridled. He had expected anger, even physical attack,
but this mockery was uncalled for.

The prince shook his head, still smiling. “Evrard, who put
you up to this? Are you trying to make me feel better by telling me she isn’t
worth the trouble?”

“No one ‘put me up to this,’” Evrard said stiffly, and not
entirely truthfully. “I am not attempting to comfort you in so backhanded a
fashion. I am telling you the truth as I have been made to see it. God knows,
any perfidy is possible with a Saracen, and this was an Assassin. Is still, for
all any of us knows. But what she has been observed in the act of—my lord, even
if the pope’s letter is a forgery as you claim, and the marriage is not
annulled by the disparity of your religions, have you received any dispensation
for consanguinity?”

Aidan regarded him blankly. “Con—Evrard, whatever she is,
she is not related to me in any of the forbidden degrees.”

“I was not thinking of her. I was thinking of the one with
whom she has been seen in circumstances which admit of no ambiguity. Which
would forbid her to marry you, since she has shared carnal relations with one
of your close kin.”

“What?”

He was visibly stunned. Evrard had no pity to spare for him.
Not since he laughed, and made clear exactly what he thought of Evrard. “She
has been seen,” Evrard said—to his credit, not with any great relish, even now—”and
more than once, in more than one place, in close and intimate embrace with the
lord your brother.”

Aidan’s head shook. “That’s nonsense. We look exactly alike.
Is this the worst you can do? Accuse her of consorting with me, and call me my
twin?”

Evrard hesitated. It might be true. He rather hoped that it
was. “Was it you, then, in the court of the fountain in this house, three days
before your wedding? You were in blue,” Evrard said. “And wearing a ring with a
sapphire.”

The prince frowned. “I never wear blue. It’s my brother’s
color. His ring—his signet, the king’s signet, with the seabird carved on it—”
He stopped. “Someone has been lying to you, Evrard.”

“He swore to it on holy relics.”

“No,” said Aidan.

It was sinking in slowly, as such shocks did.

“She wouldn’t,” he said. “Not with my brother. She couldn’t.
He couldn’t. He told me—”

“I’m sorry, my lord,” Evrard said, meaning it. Hating what
he had been persuaded to do, and hating himself for being even so briefly glad
of it. Prince Aidan had a rough tongue, everyone knew that. It was no cause to
cut him to the bone.

But was there any gentle way to do it?

Evrard tried to find one. “My lord, it may be for the best.
If she would betray you with your own brother, what would she not do? He is not
at fault, I’m sure; she bewitched him. Our witness swore to that, as to the
rest.”

Aidan rose slowly. He seemed calm; undangerous. But Evrard’s
belly knotted. “Get out,” the prince said.

“My lord—”

“Please.” Aidan’s voice was soft. “If you value your life.
Go. Now.”

The other two were already edging toward the door. Evrard
stood, but he could not make himself walk. “My lord, I am sorry. I wish I had
not had to bring you such news on top of the rest. But we felt that you should
know; that you should consider it in the light of what has happened.”

“Out,” said Aidan. The softness shredded. There was edged
steel beneath. “Out, damn you to hell.
Out
!”

o0o

The king’s pi-dog fled. And none too soon for his skinny
neck. Aidan’s hand found a goblet. It shattered most satisfyingly. The shards,
alas, flew wide; none came close enough to touch him. He would have welcomed
the sting, and the blood that would follow it.

Morgiana and Gwydion. Preposterous. Another woman—maybe. One
had, once, and none of them had seen fit to tell the priests that she who
wedded Gwydion had once shared Aidan’s bed. But that was before any betrothal,
when a village witch loved two princes and could not choose between them, and
all three knew, and loved one another, and never stained it with jealousy. Not
even—not excessively—when she chose the gentler of them and consented to be his
lady, and afterward his queen. Aidan had not touched her since; not in that
way.

As Gwydion would not have touched Morgiana. As he had said
that he would not, lest it be discovered, and the marriage be forbidden for yet
another cause. Gwydion never lied; not to his brother, the half of his self.

Nor would Morgiana have seduced him. She wanted Aidan, and
only Aidan. She never lied to him.

Did she?

He turned in the room, seeing none of it. He was half mad
with the wreck of his wedding. This was but another sleight, a new and clumsy
blow, delivered by a wide-eyed innocent. Evrard honestly believed that he had
done it for Aidan’s own good. Those who had sent him...not so honest, they, and
never so benign. What they wanted was clear enough. To weaken him; to confuse
him; to sunder him from his Saracen, whom they had good reason to fear, and
from his brother, who might raise himself up as rival to the upstart king.

Except that Morgiana would never betray her lover, and
Gwydion would never claim any kingdom but his own. They were not ambitious in
any way a mortal would understand; these mortals least of all.

All the good that the bout in the courtyard had done him was
gone. His mood was more foul than ever. He could not even venture another bout.
He would kill the one who fought with him, even if it was Gwydion. Especially
if it was Gwydion.

He could not face his brother in this state. He thought of going
out. Yes. He would go afoot, alone, and let the city take him where it would.
For once its numbing clamor of minds and voices, its seethe and stench of
humanity, its agelong burden of holiness, seemed truly welcome. It would hammer
away his black mood; make him anew.

o0o

In his plain clothes, with a hood to draw up if he saw
anyone he knew, and no weapon but the dagger he always carried, he was no more
notable than any other knight or squire in a city full of them. That would
change in a week’s time when they were all gone to Acre, but today they were
much in evidence, going about errands for their lords or for themselves,
readying for war.

He wandered not quite aimlessly. The blunt grey dome of Holy
Sepulcher drew him, ugly after the perfection of the Dome of the Rock, ugly and
holy. Pilgrims called it beautiful because it was what it was; not through any
distinction of its own.

He was like a ghost returning to the scene of its death,
probing again and again into the mortal wound. At the foot of Calvary he
hesitated. Almost he went up, riding the current of pilgrims. But he could not.
He turned instead, and took a way he knew well.

The Mortmains lived their lives in a state of happy chaos.
Today it was chaos tenfold, but happy, it was not. It had nothing to do with
Aidan, except indirectly, in that he had begotten the object of it.