The Golden Horn (6 page)

Anna babbled on. “Her name is Althea. She comes from Petreia.
She’s been to the West and to Jerusalem. Her tales are as good as Alf’s.
Better, because she puts him in them and doesn’t try to make him look
modest. Did you really save your Abbot’s life, Alf? And kill a man with
his own sword?”

All color had drained from his face. “Yes,” he
said in a harsher voice than they had ever heard from him, “I killed a man.
In the chapel of my abbey. The Abbot died, but not before he’d sent me to
Jerusalem.”

“They call you a saint in Anglia, she said. Are you
really—”

“Anna.” Bardas spoke softly, but she stopped
short. “Go and tell the ladies that we’ll be with them shortly. Alf
will bathe and change first.”

Alf shook his head. “I’ll go directly.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Bardas said. “Put
the boy down and let him walk like a man, and go to your bath.”

o0o

In the coolest corner of the garden where an almond tree shaded
a small stony waterfall, Bardas and the ladies had settled with sweets and
wine. Alf came to them scrubbed clean, wearing his best coat over a tunic of
fine linen no paler than his face.

Thea sat with her back to the tree trunk, demure in a plain gown,
her pilgrim’s mantle laid aside in the heat; she had braided her hair and
coiled it about her head and covered it with a light veil. She looked very
young.

As he approached, she rose with her own inimitable grace, smiling
as if there had been no quarrel between them at all. “Little Brother! How
well you look.”

“And you.” He took her hands like one in a
dream. “I’m... very glad to see you.”

“No more so than I. You’ve been ill, my lady
tells me; and Jehan in the camp.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“He told me where to find you. I’d meant to stay
in Petreia, but there was nothing there for me after all except a ghost or two.
So I came to the City. I met Jehan as he was coming back from here.”
And spent the night with him
, she added in her
mind.
Everyone was fiercely jealous. Such a lovely
white hound, I was.

Alf smiled without thinking, and remembered at last to let
go her hands. Both Bardas and Sophia were drawing alarming conclusions. The
blood rose to scald his cheeks; he sat down too quickly in the chair she had
left, refusing to meet her bright relentless stare. She stood between him and
the sun and said, “It’s a fine haven you’ve come to, little
Brother. I’m delighted to see you so well looked after.”

“It’s generally agreed that I need a keeper.”
The fire had fled as quickly as it came. He had her hand again, God help him, and
her mockery upon him like a lash of cold rain. “Have you unveiled all my
black past yet? Murder, sorcery, heresy, and plain lust—have I forgotten
anything?”

“As a matter of fact you have. The worst of all:
burying your brilliance in a monastery for longer than I care to think, and hiding
it with humility forever after.”

“A failing you certainly are free of.”

She laughed. “Certainly! I know what you’re
worth. As does the heir of House Akestas. How is he now?”

Her concern was genuine, and it eased his tension. “He’s
asleep in my bed.”

A good place to be.
Mercifully she did not say it aloud. She sat at his feet; he looked down at the
smooth bronze braids, knotted his hands in his lap and forced himself to be
calm.

This was her revenge, this utter ease with its implications
that even Anna could read. But he would not make it any sweeter than he could help.

He accepted the wine a servant offered, and sipped it, hardly
tasting its spiced sweetness, listening to the flow of conversation and saying
very little. It tormented him to have her here so close after what they both
had said and done and thought. Yet when she glanced up at him, he found himself
smiling like the veriest, most besotted of fools.

Far too soon she rose again, saying words that meant nothing
but that she must go.

“No, no,” Sophia said, “there’s no
need. We have ample room, and a friend of Alfred’s is more than welcome.”

“Even when you know—” He had said that; he
bit back the rest. They knew nothing that mattered. Yet they knew everything,
down below reason where the great choices were made.

“Hospitality is sacred here,” said Bardas. “You
know that, Lady; you’re one of us. Honor us by honoring it. Stay with us.”

It would be best if they both went far away, from the
Akestas and from each other. But when Thea nodded and bowed and acquiesced, his
heart turned traitor and began to sing.

From the Latin shore Constantinople seemed vast beyond
imagining: vast and marred.

“That’s a good stretch of palace wall we’ve
taken down,” said Thibaut de Langliers, peering under his hand, “and
a company of our men inside to keep an eye on the Emperors.”

Jehan leaned back against the tent pole and sighed, replete with
good solid Fare after a Mass well sung. “I don’t envy anyone who
has to live in that wasps’ nest.”

Another of the young knights regarded him with surprise. “Why,
they’ve been made very welcome. Fed well, too. Better than we, and we’re
faring like princes.”

“Now we are. Wait till the crisis comes. Do you think
we’ll get what we’ve been promised? Supplies for the voyage to Jerusalem,
and two hundred thousand marks in gold; ten thousand Greek troops for a year
and five hundred more committed to the Holy Land for life, and the union of our
churches besides. Will we get all that? Will the Devil turn Christian?”

“Provisions you will have,” Alf said, “for
a while. The rest is a fool’s dream.”

Even Jehan turned to stare at him. He had been all but voiceless
throughout the Mass and the meal after, sitting in the shadow of the tent with
Thea in hound-shape seeming to drowse at his feet. He met the stares with wide
clear eyes, and toyed absently with Thea’s ears. “A young pretender
promised you the world to win back his empire. Now he has what he aimed for, and
it’s considerably less than he thought it was. He can feed you for a
time, pay to keep your fleet, but no more. If I had taken the cross, and were
wise enough, I’d take what he could give and leave before another week
had passed.”

“And what of honor?” demanded the youngest
knight.

“Honor is not the same as wisdom.”

The boy leaped to his feet. “Are you calling me a
fool?”

Thea raised her head from her paws; Jehan braced himself for
a battle. But Alf sat back unruffled. “Did I say anything of the sort?
Come, Messire Aimery. Won’t you concede that the wise course is not
always the honorable one?”

“That’s true enough,” said Jehan a shade
quickly. “Look at the Greeks. Any knight worth his spurs would settle his
troubles the honorable way, in the lists; but a Greek will think and ponder and
negotiate and intrigue, and get what he’s after without a fight.”

“Greeks and priests.” Aimery had subsided into
his seat again. “You excepted, of course.”

“There are those who say I shouldn’t exist: a
priest who carries a sword. And uses it too.”

“And what of Saint Michael?” Alf asked.

“Well. He’s an archangel.”

“He does provide a precedent.”

“That’s our usual argument. But when God and
knight’s honor demand different things, it presents a dilemma.”

Alf nodded slowly. “What does one do when God seems to
be on both sides of the battle? When Christian attacks Christian and each wears
the cross of the Crusade—what then?”

“One loses all one’s illusions,” Jehan
answered him grimly. “We took Zara; have you heard that?”

“I’ve heard.”

“They were Christians; they’d taken the cross.
But they’d rebelled against Saint Mark, and it was part of our price of passage
that we defend the Republic’s interests. The Pope was livid. And yet he didn’t
make more than a token protest. I was appalled. How could all that was high and
holy be so besmirched? Christians slaughtered Christians; Crusaders killed Crusaders—for
what? Money and provisions to take the Holy Sepulcher. Would Christ want it to
be saved by such horrors as we are?”

“Perhaps it’s not to be saved by anyone.”
Alf examined his laced fingers, seeing a pattern there, clear for his reading. “I’ve
had strange thoughts of late. What arrogant creatures men are, to presume that
they know God’s will. And priests are more arrogant than any, for they
not only purport to know, but presume to execute the commands of divine
Providence. Yet, is it Providence or their own desires? If God places the Holy Land
in the Saracens’ hands, perhaps after all He wants it to be so?”

“That’s heresy,” Aimery muttered.

“It is; and I was a priest once. I’m no fit
company for God’s knights.”

“Is that why you’re not a priest now?”

Jehan drew a sharp breath. Alf smiled and shook his head. “No.
I was raised in an abbey and took vows there. But I found that I couldn’t
be the sort of priest I wanted to be. I asked that my vows be dissolved. It was
easy enough in the end. There’s a law, you see, that a man raised by
monks must not take full vows before his twenty-fifth year. I was much younger
than that. So, a stroke of the papal pen, and suddenly I was a layman. My mind
marked the occasion by conceiving half a dozen heresies.”

“That’s not so,” Jehan said hotly, “and
you know it. Here, finish off the wine and stop trying to frighten these poor
boys.”

“Oh, no,” said a new voice. “I find him
fascinating.”

They started to their feet. The newcomer stood with hands on
hips: a pleasant-faced young man in clothes as rich as a prince’s.
Although they were of Greek cut and fabric, from round-cut head to spurred heel
he was indisputably a Latin. He regarded Alf with a steady brown stare, head
cocked slightly to one side, lips quirked. “In dress a Greek, in accent a
Latin, in name, if I’m not mistaken, a Saxon. You’re an interesting
man, Master Alfred.”

The young knights had gone pale. Even Jehan seemed
nonplussed. But Alf returned the other’s gaze with perfect calm.
“It seems I’m known among the high ones, my lord.”

“How not, when your priestly friend has described you
so lovingly, and told us that you were to be honoring our camp with your presence?
You have a clear eye for all our weaknesses.”

“And for your strength.”

“What may that be?”

“Courage,” Alf answered, “to face so great
a city with so few.”

“Perhaps, after all, God is on our side.”

“He may be. Who am I to say?”

The young lord smiled. “Who indeed? Who is anyone,
when it comes to that? Come with me, wise master. There’s a man I’d
have you meet.”

Alf bowed his head. As he followed the brown-eyed lord,
Jehan fell in behind, a solid presence, and with him the quicksilver that was
Thea. Her amusement danced in his mind.
Another
conquest! And a lofty one, too. There aren’t many men who’d bandy
words with Messire Henry of Flanders.

I’m old in insolence,
he responded coolly, without pausing in his stride.

In the center of the tent city stood a great pavilion, all
imperial purple with the Lion of Saint Mark worked upon it. Under its canopy in
sweltering shade a number of men sat over wine. Yet Alf saw first not faces but
a cloud of clashing wills. Two men leaned toward one another, one young and one
not so young; although they smiled, the tension between them was solid enough
to touch.

“So, my lord Boniface,” the younger man said, “you
would ride away to Thrace with young Prince Popinjay and leave the City to its
own devices.”

The other’s smile neither wavered nor softened. “Why
not? Someone should be with him to pull his puppet-strings; or are you unsure
enough of our position here to be afraid to leave it?”

“I fear nothing at all. But I see an empire with its
young emperor abroad doing battle with the usurper he cast down, and in the
palace naught but an eyeless dodderer. A fruit ripe for our plucking.”

“Might not the empire do the same with us?”
asked the man who sat between them. He glowed darkly, dressed in the same imperial
splendor as the pavilion; on his head was a crown, but it was fashioned of
cloth and marked with a white cross. He was old, bent and shriveled with age,
the skin deep-folded over the strong bones of his face. The eyes that burned
under heavy brows burned upon nothingness, for he was blind. Yet when he spoke
his voice was deep and firm, gathering all these proud rebellious lords into
the palm of his hand.

Alf moved forward, caught by the brilliance of the soul that
flamed behind the useless eyes. “A blind emperor,” he said; “a
blind Doge. But one is a dotard, and one is stronger than any paladin.”

The black eyes flicked toward him; the crowned head cocked. “A
stranger? Has a spy come to overhear our counsels?”

“A sage, Messer Enrico,” Henry answered, “a
pilgrim from Anglia who has settled among the Greeks. I found him corrupting our
youth with the aid of my lord Cardinal’s secretary.”

The Doge beckoned. “Here, pilgrim. Come over where I
can see you.”

His hard dry fingers explored Alf’s face, swift and impersonal,
a stranger’s scrutiny. “A boy,” the old man muttered, “and
pretty as a girl. Yet, a sage, says milord Henry, who has a legion of faults,
the worst of which is his inability to lie. Who can read me this riddle?”

Henry sat beside the young lord. So close, they were as like
as brothers can be, though Count Baudouin frowned at this interruption and
Henry smiled, saying, “What can be simpler? In Anglia, prophecies come
from the mouths of babes, and fatherless boys foretell the fates of kingdoms.
This pilgrim has seen all our future, and sat in judgment upon us.”

“And the verdict?”

Alf drew a breath. They watched him narrowly, all of them, the
greater and the lesser, skeptical, credulous, annoyed, afraid.

That was Jehan’s fear for him, that he had betrayed
all his secret. But he had never had any fear to spare for princes, nor ever for
commoner kings crowned with linen. Calmly he said, “lf you intend to
fulfill your vow and take the Holy Sepulcher, you had best do it now, or none
of you will ever see Jerusalem.”