Bertrand stood in front of him. “Help me get to the stables,” he said, “and onto a horse. I don’t care if it’s one of the plowhorses. Just get me into a saddle.”
“Yusuf will pitch a fit,” Arslan said.
“I don’t care if he dies of it,” Bertrand said fiercely. “I don’t care if I die. I’m dying here, and in misery too.”
“Of course you must go on living,” Arslan said. “But I’ll catch the whipping for your transgression.”
“You will not,” said Bertrand. “I will take all lashes that are honestly coming to me, and any that may be meant for you. Only help me to escape from this prison.”
“Such a prison,” Arslan said. “Lined with silk, and better victuals than a monk will ever see.”
Bertrand set his lips together. “Very well,” he said. “Go. I’ll find another way.”
“What, and get yourself killed?” Arslan shook his head. “No. I’ll do it for you. It may take a day or two. Can you wait?”
“I have been waiting,” Bertrand said, “for months.”
“Good. Then wait a little longer.” And with that, Arslan left him.
Bertrand wondered after the boy was gone, whether he could trust what after all had been no promise – and no agreement to do as Bertrand wished. But if he could not trust his own son, on whom could he ever rely?
He set himself to be patient. If in two days or three he had heard nothing, he would find another accomplice. He could be as patient as that. If he must.
Sixty-Five
Arslan supposed that he was much a fool as his father was, creeping about and conspiring against the king’s own and best physician. For the matter of that, neither the ladies nor Michael Bryennius would be delighted to discover what Arslan was up to. They were all convinced that Bertrand was as strong as he would ever be; that he would be bedridden the rest of his life. They did not talk about it, maybe did not admit it, but he could see it in their eyes. They had despaired of ever seeing Bertrand strong again.
Arslan had his own doubts, but he had seen his father standing and, after a fashion, walking – and not fainting or falling, either. Such determination was hardly surprising in a man who could keep an oath for thirty years and more, and hold a grudge for nigh on twenty.
If it kept Bertrand alive for another twenty years, Arslan would do it and be glad. That was his own battle, his own irresistible oath.
With everyone so preoccupied with Lady Richildis and the baby, it was not as difficult as it might have been to conspire with Muhammad in the stable. Muhammad was apt for mischief, and willing to pretend that he was taking Lord Bertrand’s Malik to the west field for exercise. After all, his lordship could not ride the stallion himself, but would never be separated from him, even in illness.
Bertrand might not have been thinking of Malik; had perhaps expected a quiet mare or one of the geldings. But Arslan trusted the grey stallion, and trusted Muhammad to run the edge off beforehand.
That was simple. More difficult by far to spirit Bertrand out of the castle without rousing every servant and man-at-arms.
In the end he decided to trust again. He went to Kutub.
Kutub could very easily turn traitor. He was Lady Richildis’ man, had been since Arslan was born. Yet Arslan rather thought that old loyalty might suffice, and sympathy for a warrior who must, for his life, ride again.
The Turk raised his brows at Arslan’s request. Arslan held his breath. Just as he must let it out or burst, Kutub said, “Two of my lads and a diversion. Simple. But it can’t stay a secret. They’ll see him out there.”
“Just let him get out,” Arslan said. “Once he’s done it and survived, they can hardly stop him after.”
“You think so?” Kutub shrugged. “Well then. If we in Islam could sin as you Christians can, I’d be running to confession for this. Isn’t it a wonderful thing to be a sinless man?”
“No man is without sin,” Arslan said severely. Kutub only laughed at him.
* * *
They got Bertrand out by slipping him down a rear stair and out the postern, two big sturdy young men of Mount Ghazal carrying him between them, and Arslan in the van, on watch against attack. He had chosen the time of day when everyone was either occupied or playing with the baby, midway between sunrise and noon. The servants were in the hall or in the kitchens. No one met them. No guard stood at the gate to bar their way.
Malik was waiting in the field out of sight of all but the castle’s towers, out beyond the hill and toward the eastward road. He was sweating lightly but breathing easy, head up, ears alert as he watched a handful of strangers carrying his master toward him. Bertrand did not try to stop them at the field’s edge, did not ask as Arslan had half expected, to walk to his horse. That was wisdom, perhaps: to save his strength for the saddle.
He did not seem surprised to see his own stallion and not some quieter beast. Perhaps he drew a breath in a sigh. Arslan, striding to hold the stirrup, could not be certain. Malik stood motionless as if he understood what he must do. Only the flick of an ear betrayed his wonted spirit.
They lifted Bertrand into the saddle. He reached as he rose, drew himself a little of the way, swung his leg over and rested for a moment. His face was white, but on it such a look of triumph that no one could utter a word.
And while they stood staring, he set heels to the stallion’s sides, plucked reins out of Muhammad’s hand, and sprang off at a gallop.
None of them – not one, not even Kutub – had thought to come mounted. Fools, idiots, and far too trusting.
Arslan ran a little distance, but no man could catch a galloping horse. He stopped in frustration, glanced back. The others had not moved.
The grey horse circled the field. After his first headlong leap he settled to an easy gait, light and smooth. The man on his back was grinning like a skull.
Bertrand came back to them. He was dead white, swaying in the saddle, but he was laughing. “I can,” he said with the thread of breath that was left to him. “I can do it!”
* * *
Bertrand paid for his folly, but he reckoned it well worth the price. Malik carried him back to the castle to an uproar that he barely heard. He was carried off to bed, and collapsed there for the rest of the day and all that night, a deep and sodden sleep scarlet-edged with pain.
But he had done it. He could do it. He would again – not tomorrow perhaps, but the day after.
When he woke in the morning to the grey light and the cold hiss of rain, he laughed to see it. “I cheated you,” he said to it. “I saw the sun again.”
Someone moved on the edge of his vision. He started slightly, turned to upbraid the servant for creeping in without warning.
It was no servant. It was his son, and looking as if he had been there for a while, sitting in the chair by the wall. He did not seem to have slept there. He was clean, combed and dressed, and bright awake.
“Did they crucify you?” Bertrand asked him.
He shook his head. “Only a few mild lashes of words, and a great deal of expostulating to one another. They’re all outraged that you deceived them for so long. Yusuf was so angry that he left.”
“What, to return to Jerusalem?” Bertrand rebuked his heart for singing; but he had not loved that sour-faced creature.
“No,” said Arslan. “He was talking of Baghdad. But he only went to bed. I suspect he’ll tarry a while, to be sure you haven’t killed yourself.”
“Pest,” said Bertrand mildly. “I would have been – so glad – to be rid of him.”
“You’ll drive him off next time you go galloping about and opening your wound.”
“Did I?” Bertrand’s hand went to his side. “It doesn’t feel any worse that it ever did.”
“Yusuf lanced it,” Arslan said, “and let out a great quantity of ill humours and a shard of metal that must have been buried deep. I thought I heard him mutter that maybe now you would heal.”
“Then I will,” Bertrand said. He was dizzy, and not
with exhaustion. “You didn’t set a price on this that you did for me. Why?”
“What price could I have set?” Arslan asked.
Bertrand did not think he was as innocent as he looked and sounded. Nonetheless, if that was the game, then he would play it so. “I think you know,” he said.
“Would it have done any good?”
“It might,” said Bertrand.
Arslan shook his head and turned his face away. “No. Not you. Not after this long.”
“Are you demanding proof?”
“No,” said Arslan. “I won’t humiliate myself.”
“You,” said Bertrand, “are the most infuriating child.”
The fair brows lifted. It stabbed at Bertrand to see so world-weary an expression on so young a face. “I come by it honestly,” Arslan said.
Bertrand drew a breath. It stabbed, but not as deep as it might have. Perhaps he deluded himself. Perhaps indeed he would heal. If there had been a notch in the blade that pierced him – then steel in the flesh would have weakened him indeed; and now it was gone.
Out of that hope he cobbled together a semblance of patience. “What do you require? Full Court ceremonial? A papal dispensation? Legitimacy?”
“A simple word will do,” Arslan said levelly.
“There is a price for that,” said Bertrand. “You must agree to be my heir.”
“And if I won’t,” said Arslan, “I’m no worse off than I was before.”
Bertrand inclined his head. This was difficult, more difficult even than he had thought. The words alone were simple enough, the wounds they dealt as deep as might be expected. But that face, that weariness, that certainty that he had seen all the blows that the world could deal – Bertrand found that most grievous to bear.
He was weak, that was all. His long wound had made him feeble. All young men grew weary of the world; it was their way.
They did not all grow as weary as this. Nor was any of them Bertrand’s fault, save this one. All the things that he could have done and had not; the years he had lost, the words unsaid – they were all here, in front of him. And yet whatever he did, however he strove to make amends, he could never undo what he had done. He could not cast back time to live those years again.
“It’s only the word you want,” Bertrand said. “Why? Why not all of it?”
Arslan shrugged. “Lands and lordship I can get from my king. But the name of son – only one man can give me that.”
“You are a strange man,” Bertrand said, not meaning to say it aloud.
But it was said; and Arslan laughed at it, not particularly bitter. “People always say that to me. It’s true, then, I suppose. Are you going to rebuke me for it?”
“Hardly,” said Bertrand. “Many a father would give gold for such a son.”
“Would you?”
“I have him,” Bertrand said.
“Then,” said Arslan, “what would you give up, to keep me? Can you sacrifice your pride? Can you really do what you say – can you name me yours before the High Court of Jerusalem?”
“I have never had any shame of you,” Bertrand said.
“That is not what I asked,” said Arslan.
“I said that I would,” Bertrand said. “And I will, when I can walk into the gathering of the Court and stand in front of them again.”
“Easter Court,” Arslan said. “Promise me.”
“If God wills,” Bertrand said.
Arslan seemed content with that. Bertrand, to himself, resolved to do it sooner. Christmas Court if he could, if God was merciful. Before not only the nobility of Jerusalem but the lords and the King of France, who by all accounts would still be there. Then he could name Arslan heir to La Forêt, too, and lord-to-be of Beausoleil. Let him have it all, though he professed to want only the word.
Sixty-Six
Zenobia grew and thrived, and Bertrand thrived with her, though the year greyed and faded into the chill of winter. She was smiling, then laughing, tumbling on the floor when her nurse would let her, while he was indeed riding before he could walk any distance at all. In the saddle he was a man again.
The more he rode, the more swiftly he felt himself heal. Yusuf had not been so kind as to vanish after all. He lingered, hovered, muttered, but did nothing to prevent Bertrand from doing as he pleased. If it had been any man but Yusuf, Bertrand would have thought that he was happy here in Mount Ghazal; that he was in no haste to go away from it.
It was a pleasant place. People knew how to laugh here. No one went hungry. Even the village’s one leper was taken care of, given a hut of her own at some little distance but still within sight of the castle. She had a dog to protect her, one of the castle’s hounds, and food was brought her every day, and prayers said for her in the castle’s chapel.
Beausoleil should be as well ruled as this. Bertrand could admit it in the generosity of his old age: his sister was a better lord than he, and happier in it, too. Even in that common failure of women, that she could not lead men to war, she had managed well in Kutub and in Bertrand himself.
Bertrand would lead men again, would ride to war, would be lord once more in Beausoleil. What once had been as certain as the sun’s rising, was now a wondrous thing. Joyous; miraculous. Each morning when he rose, he thanked God that he was healed. Each evening before he went to sleep, he prayed that he would wake and find it all no dream.
He passed Martinmas in something close to his old strength. The wound in his side was shrunk to a scar, deep and livid, that pulled when he moved too quickly, but he had long grown accustomed to the stab of it. Yusuf gave him an ointment to rub into it, that smelled remarkably sweet. Perhaps it helped; perhaps it merely appeased the nose.
* * *
As Advent approached, the castle stirred to a different kind of life. Its lady was preparing to attend Christmas Court, that this year was in Jerusalem. They would all go, all her kin. Bertrand would ride, would come to the Holy City as befit a baron of its High Court: erect on horseback, and not prostrate in a litter.
Always when the court gathered in Jerusalem or in Acre, it became a kind of pilgrimage. The barons and their trains flowed together on the roads, friend meeting friend, enemy shunning enemy as they rode down to Jerusalem. Now and then they met companies of westerners, a German or two and many a French knight or lordling, wandering about while his king tarried in the holy places.
Bertrand had been apart so long – longer than he had imagined; and before that, ever since Damascus, he had been wrapped in a black dream of pain. This was like waking: the crowded road, men whom he had known nigh his life long and men whom he had first met in the Crusade; joy of festival, but grimness too, a war lost, a great venture failed.
None of them would renew the fight. Germany had gone home. France remained only on pilgrimage, and in avoidance of the inevitable: wars and quarrels in the West, a queen who wished no longer to be queen, coffers sore depleted and spirits broken. Happier to linger here, to pray where the Lord Christ had prayed, to wash the soul clean.
The men of Jerusalem had no such escape, and for most of them, no such despair. They were not far away from home in a strange land. This was their country. They would continue to defend it against the infidel; to protect the Holy Sepulcher, to stand watch in their chain of castles. The loss that they had suffered was one of many. After it would come victory, however they won it, however long it took them.
And Bertrand was one of them. Long ago, so long that he could barely remember it, he had been a knight of Anjou. He had looked in time to marry an heiress, to be lord of a holding while his brother Giraut was lord in La Forêt. His little sister would be wedded to a man of worth, would bear him sons and look after his affairs and be no more and no less than a noble lady should be.
How strange to remember what he had been. To look about him, to see his thin awkward sister grown tall and beautiful, married for love to a man of Byzantium, served with conspicuous devotion by Turks and Saracens, and servant herself to the Queen of Jerusa
lem. And he… no wife to his name, but a lady who in all respects had been as a wife, and a son who carried himself like a prince, and a barony on the borders of the kingdom, to which he would return when this court was ended. This was real. This was solid and strong. Anjou had shrunk to dream, a dim and misty shape on the edge of memory.
So ran the world. Bertrand wondered if his sister understood what had happened to them both – if she still imagined that she could go back to La Forêt. None of them could. Not now; not ever in this life.
* * *
Arslan in Jerusalem was like a young stallion sent away to a stranger’s pasture, but now he had returned to the fields where he was raised. He ran a little wild, insofar as he ever could, which – said Baldwin – was not very. But Baldwin meant it well. He could not be a wild thing at all, not and be a proper king.
Jerusalem was full of idle French and delirious pilgrims: much as always. Nahar his friend and sometime lover had left the house in which Arslan first found her, to take her own small house in the company of three or four women both skilled and beautiful. She had ambitions, she told him. She was going to rise in the world. She was growing older; her beauty had never been remarkable, but even character did not long survive the ravages of age. Not in her occupation.
He knew better than to deny it. Nor did he doubt that she could do as she intended. She was like his mother, like Lady Richildis – like, for that matter of that, Queen Eleanor. A determined woman could shift the world, or reshape it to suit her pleasure.
Queen Eleanor had undergone, it seemed, a change of heart. She was no more enamored of her husband, but she had put aside frivolity to play the pilgrim. Sackcloth she would never wear, and a hairshirt would torment her beautiful white skin, but she put on gowns of almost monastic plainness, veiled her bright hair and lowered her eyes and showed herself all piously demure.
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