The Golden Horn (31 page)

Anna sat on the large and comfortable bed and watched him. Here
in seclusion, she had taken off her cap; her braids hung down, very black and
thick on either side of her narrow pointed face.

She tugged at one. “Won’t you let me cut them
off?” she begged.

“No!” he snapped. He stopped in front of the
saint painted with jewelled tiles upon the wall, and glared into her huge soulful
eyes. “‘Holy Saint Helena,’” he read, “‘finder
of the True Cross, pray for us.’ If you could find a Cross buried for
three hundred years, why in God’s name can’t you find a handful of
prisoners lost for a day?”

“Maybe because you haven’t asked her before,”
Anna said reasonably.

He growled and began to pace again.

Someone knocked softly at the door. Anna stuffed her braids into
her cap. Jehan muttered something in Norman; and louder, in Greek: “Who
is it?”

“You ordered food, my lord,” said a light
sexless voice.

Jehan shivered a little. These eunuchs made his skin creep, silent
gliding creatures, neither male nor female, serving their new masters with
obsequiousness that masked deep and utter contempt.

He found his voice. “Come in, then.”

The servant entered with bowed head and laid his burden on a
table. Anna, with the perfect ease of the Greek aristocrat, stepped around him
as if he had not been there and began to investigate the various plates and
bowls.

The eunuch made no move to go. He was a young one, overdressed
as they all seemed to be, painted and perfumed like a woman; there were jewels
in his ears and on his fingers and everywhere between. As he lifted his face,
with a shock Jehan knew him. Either the chief steward of the palace had
suffered a great reduction in rank, or there was something afoot.

Without conscious thought, Jehan reached for his sword and drew
it and set himself between the eunuch and the child.

Michael Doukas looked from the bright blade to the cold eyes
behind it and smiled slightly. “I take it, holy Father, that we know one
another.”

“I think,” said Jehan, “that we do. Are
you in the habit of running errands for minor clerics when there’s
nothing of greater import for you to do?”

“On occasion,” replied Michael Doukas, “I
will stoop to it.”

He laid a delicate finger on the flat of Jehan’s
blade, just below the point, and moved it fastidiously aside. “Do you
mind, my lord? It’s quite vulgar to greet one’s guests with steel.”

“Barbaric, too, of course.” Jehan returned
Chanteuse to its sheath and relaxed a little, though ready at a word to cut the
eunuch down.

Michael Doukas sighed, relieved. “Ah. Now I can
breathe again. Father, will you hear my confession?”

That caught Jehan completely off guard. “But you’re
a Greek!”

“So I am. Will you, Father?”

“You know I can’t.”

The eunuch shook his head sadly. “Such injustice. And all
for a word or two in an ancient prayer. Where can I go with such a burden as my
soul carries?”

“This place is swarming with priests of your
persuasion.” Jehan’s eyes narrowed. “All right. Out with it. What
did you come here to tell me?”

Michael Doukas inspected him in detail, turning then to examine
Anna, who ate hungrily but watchfully. One of Jehan’s daggers had found
its way into her belt. “Your boy, Father? Or—no.” He
snatched, too quick even for Anna’s quick hands, and brandished her cap,
meeting her glare with laughter. He was, Jehan realized, much younger than he
looked, hardly more than a boy himself. “Indeed, my lord, you take them
up young! and out of hospitals, too, it seems.”

“Saint Basil’s,” she snapped. “Who
are you?”

“My name is Michael Doukas. And yours, noble
lady?”

She chose not to answer him. “Michael Doukas? Did you smuggle
Alf out of the palace?”

“Indeed, lady,” he replied, “and how do
you know of that?”

“He’s my brother. We’re looking for him.”
Her eyes glittered with eagerness, her anger forgotten. “Do you know
where he is?”

“Your brother?” mused Michael Doukas. “Ah,
then you are an Akestas.”

“Of course I’m an Akestas! They took him away
with Thea, and Nikki too though they didn’t know he was following till it
was too late. Now we can’t find him. Where is he?”

“How strange,” Michael Doukas said. “I
have a friend, you see. He has a friend who knows a man, who knows a woman who
plies a very old trade near the All-seer’s hill. She likes to talk while
she works, and her clients, it seems, like to talk to her.”

“Why?” asked Anna. “What does she do?”

“Never mind,” Jehan said quickly, glowering at the
eunuch. “Go on. What rumor did she hear?”

Michael Doukas sighed and shook his head sadly. “Business,
she asserts, is better than ever before, but the clientele leaves something to
be desired. But she has a little Frankish, learned in the trade, and, as I’ve
said, she likes to use her tongue. Last night she had a client of somewhat
higher rank than usual, a sergeant-at-arms who served one of the Flemish
knights. A very handsome man he was, for a Frank, and very proud of it. Our good
dame took due note of this. Ah so, quoth he, but he had a rival in beauty.
Indeed? said she. Impossible! And he sighed, languishing, and averred that
alas, it was so, but certainly she would never see this paragon, seeing that he
lay in prison awaiting the hangman’s pleasure.”

Jehan’s fingers locked around the eunuch’s
throat. “Where, damn you?
Where?”

Michael Doukas swallowed painfully. “My lord—might
you—?” Jehan relaxed his grip by a degree. “My lord, if I
may continue, our keen-witted woman of affairs, having some liking for her
trade and a certain desire to improve its quality, continued to question her
client. He was pleased to tell her what he knew, for her persuasions were quite
irresistible. Yes, he had seen the man he spoke of; yes, it was certain: he was
destined for the gallows, for he, Latin-born, had fought as a Greek; and there
was a whisper of darker things, witchery perhaps—certainly he had a
familiar, a small fierce cat that had followed him into his prison. And truly
he had enemies. Not the least of whom was my lord the Count of Flanders.”

“Baudouin!” Jehan muttered. “I knew he had
a hand in this.”

His fingers tightened till the eunuch gasped. “If you
don’t tell me now where Alfred is, I’ll choke it out of you.”

Michael Doukas licked his dry lips. He was not precisely
afraid, but he was very much concerned for the safety of his skin. “Very
well, my lord. He lies not in any proper prison but in a guarded chamber, very
close indeed to Madame’s place of business. She, it seems, knows the
place well; it was a tavern once before the fires swept past it. Its cellars
are intact, and well and strongly bolted.”

Jehan loosed his grip but did not set the eunuch free. “Take
me there,” he said. But then, abruptly, “No. Not quite yet. Where
is my lord Henry?”

o0o

The City was deathly quiet under the stars, lying stripped and
torn upon her hills, her people cowering still in terror of the conquerors. Yet
the Latins were quenched at last, exhausted with their three days’
debauch; their lords moved now to rule the realm that they had taken, and to
repair the ravages of war and plundering.

Along the shore of the Horn, Saint Mark’s fleet rode
at anchor. One galley glowed vermilion in the light of its many lamps; the lion
banner of the Republic caught the light with a glimmer of gold.

Enrico Dandolo received his late guests in a cabin as rich
as any emperor’s. Weary though he surely was, no less weary than the
young men who faced him, he betrayed no sign of it. He listened quietly to the
tale Michael Doukas told, lids lowered over the fierce blind eyes, his face
revealing no hint of the thoughts behind. The eunuch, for his part, seemed not
at all alarmed to be here, face to face with the man who had ordered the
conquest of his city.

“What,” asked the Doge when he was done, “have
I to do with this market tale?”

“An innocent man is like to die,” Henry answered
him. “I know better than to confront my brother in one of these moods of
his. You on the other hand, my lord, he plainly respects. If you pleaded Master
Alfred’s case, he would be likely to listen.”

“Is he innocent?” asked Dandolo.

Michael Doukas smiled. “As to that, my lord, I know he
was no creature of ours. Indeed I would have wagered that he was yours, if
anyone’s.”

Anna shook herself awake in Jehan’s lap. “He
wasn’t anybody’s! He worked in Saint Basil’s and mended the
hurts their fighters made. He only actually hurt anybody when they hurt one of
the family. They—they killed Mother, and Irene, and Corinna. And then
they shot Thea. He loved Thea better than anything else in the world. If he
killed people after that, can you blame him?”

“Of blame,” said the Doge, “I can say
nothing. He is a Latin. He slew Latins.”

“Hasn’t there been enough killing?” She
was close to tears. “He told you you’d win. I know—he said
so.”

“So he told the Emperor Isaac,” said Michael
Doukas.

Anna slid out of Jehan’s lap and stood in front of the
Doge. “You can save Alf’s life if you want to. Why don’t you?”

“Child,” Dandolo said to her, “I am not
all-powerful. Count Baudouin is a great prince, at least as great as I. If he
chooses to dispose of a man for whom he has no love to spare, there is nothing
I can do.”

“You can try!”

It was a strange sight, the small girl in ill-fitting boy’s
clothes and the ancient and terrible Doge of Saint Mark. He, who could not see,
yet felt it; a spark kindled deep in his eye.

“Very well, then. If I set your Alfred free, what will
you give me?”

“My thanks,” she answered.

The young men and the eunuch exchanged glances, half in alarm,
half in laughter.

The Doge nodded gravely. “A fair price, when all is
considered. I suppose you expect prompt service?”

“Immediate, sir.”

“So.” He raised his voice slightly. “Paolo!
My cloak!”

o0o

With great care and with Nikki’s help, Alf eased Thea
out of her armor. The wound in her side seemed a small thing to have brought
her so close to death, a circle of scarlet beneath her breast, no wider than
her finger. Gently, with water from the jar and a strip torn from his tunic, he
washed away the last of the blood.

She sighed a little under his hands. “So much metal,”
she said. “It weighed on my soul as much as on my body.”

“You regret your bravery?”

“Of course not!” She had moved too quickly; she
winced. “I regret that I didn’t give Edmund a better escort into
Hell. He was a fine lad. A fool, but... a fine one.”

Alf touched her cheek. She blinked fiercely. “I’m
not crying!” she snapped, although he had not spoken. “I’m
giving the dead their due. That’s all. It’s over; we survive, as
usual; life goes on. That, dear pilgrim, is the wisdom you came all this way to
find.”

He touched his lips to the center of her body’s pain.
Let me heal you
, he said silently.

No.
Her fingers tangled
in his hair.
I want to do my own mending
.

Why?

Because, she said,
I want
to.

Monk that he had been, he understood. But he was a monk no
longer, and he loved her. Let me!

No, she repeated. Aloud she said, “I don’t
suppose there’s anything to eat in here?”

It distracted him, as she had meant. Yet he paused. She thought
hunger at him; he yielded at last, with reluctance in every movement.

o0o

Jehan’s torch, raised as high as the ceiling would
allow, illuminated very little. Other senses than sight told him that the space
below was bare of furnishings though not of life.

A pool of scarlet caught the light. For an instant his heart
stopped. He all but fell to the stone floor; the torch flared wildly as he
fought to keep his feet.

The toe of his sandal nudged dry softness. A cloak the color
of blood; and under it, curled together for warmth, three larger bodies and a
much smaller one. They opened eyes blurred with sleep; Thea smiled and yawned.

“Good—morning, is it?”

“It’s just after midnight.” Jehan was
suddenly and blindingly angry. “Aren’t you even surprised to see
me?”

“Not surprised,” Alf said. “Glad, yes.
Very, very glad.”

Very carefully Jehan unclenched his fists, then his teeth.
“I should have known better. You being what you are, and Thea being what
she is... you’ve made a fool of me, do you know that?”

“Of course we haven’t,” Thea said.

Alf was on his feet, hale and calm, embracing Jehan with a quiet
joy that slew all his anger.

Light flooded the cell. Henry stepped away from the stair, and
after him what seemed to be a great number of men. Some bore torches; others
supported a bent figure in rich vermilion, easing his passage down the steep
narrow way. Yet, once on the level, he stood alone with but his sheathed sword
for a prop.

Alf bowed low. He had barely straightened before a small whirlwind
overtook him. “Alf! Is Thea all right? Why didn’t you witch
yourself out as soon as you got here? They said Jehan had to go down first, and
not me—I don’t know why. I’m angry.
Alf!
”

He gathered her up. She buried her face in his tunic and
babbled into silence.

“Thea,” said that lady, “is quite well.
But not, yet, quite up to any greater magic than the healing of her own body. Jehan,
help me up.”

He approached her almost fearfully. She looked pale even for
one of her kind, and thin, almost transparent; but her eyes were bright. Under
the cloak she was all but naked; he draped it around her carefully and helped
her to her feet.

She drew a cautious breath. “My lords will have to
pardon me if I neither bow nor curtsey. I’m... slightly... indisposed.”