by Judith Tarr
A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed...
A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon...
It was not Aidan who came to take her hand, but Aidan’s brother, acting for the family which she had never had. Aidan, seeing them, was briefly dizzy. This was what folk would see when he stood beside her: that tall young man with his eagle’s face, towering over her, bending his head to murmur a word. Within the shrouding veils, she nodded. Two of her women came behind her—one of them was Elen; Aidan had not even seen her—and lifted the veils.
A gasp ran through the court and up to heaven. One veil was left, fragile as a spider’s weaving, floating atop her hair. The sun turned the woven coils the color of wine in crystal, with a shimmer of copper and gold. Her face shone beneath it, an image carved in ivory. Her gown was a Frankish gown, as her bared face was a Frankish custom, but it was made of golden silk and of cloth of gold, and all her jewels were gold and emerald.
She glanced once at him, and then away. Shy, now that it was almost done; or as afraid as he that she could not bear these last few moments’ parting. They could not join hands, nor do aught but stand just out of reach, until the Patriarch should give them leave. He was in no haste to do it, damn him. He seemed as staggered as all the rest, to see her face at last, and to know that she was beautiful.
Aidan almost laughed. A finger’s length of dainty slippered foot peeped from beneath her gown. It was patently no hoof, nor ever cloven.
Heraclius cleared his throat. The women’s singing died away. It was silent in the precinct but for the inevitable sounds of folk living and breathing and doing battle with the flies. Aidan gave them a gift: the flies departed in search of other prey. Then, for a moment, there was no sound at all.
“We gather here, O children of Jerusalem, to witness the binding together of two who are high in your counsels.” Heraclius’ voice did not quite match the rest of him, being thin and rather high, but it carried well enough. “Yet, since they are of differing faiths, and she is a worshipper of the false prophet Mahound, it has been judged advisable to seek the dispensation of Rome, to remove the impediment which otherwise would sunder them.”
Morgiana was not pleased to hear herself so described or her Prophet so named. Gwydion’s hand closed ineluctably upon her arm; she contented herself with a fierce and carrying whisper. “Muhammad is the Prophet of God!”
Heraclius pretended not to hear. “Therefore,” he said, “before we begin the rite, his holiness’ reverend legate has instructed that we present the document as it was given him from the hand of the Holy Father, and that it be examined and read, so that none hereafter may question the validity of this marriage.”
Aidan drew taut. Morgiana, he noticed, was whitely intent. Abbot Leo, for once clad in his proper and princely splendor, came forward on the arm of a sturdy young monk. The youth carried a coffer of no particular richness, carved of cedarwood and bound with iron. They halted on the step, from which Heraclius had perforce retreated. The monk held the coffer; but it was not Leo who opened it, but the man who had walked behind them, another monk, older but no less sturdy. Both of them looked as if they would have known what to do in a fight.
They could also, it was evident, read and write, and do them well. The elder monk opened the coffer with respect but with dispatch, took out what was in it, turned it over. “The seal is intact,” he said, “and untampered with.”
So it was. Aidan was shown it, and Morgiana, and Gwydion who would speak for her when the dispensation was read and disposed of. So too Heraclius, and the abbot himself. When they had all seen it, Leo cut the threads that bound the fine vellum. The monk unfolded it, drew a breath, and read.
“Urban, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Aidan, Prince of Caer Gwent in the kingdom of Rhiyana, Baron of the High Court of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Defender of the Holy Sepulcher. In that he would ally and wed with that one called Morgiana, of rank and lineage unknown, servant once to the Master of Masyaf in the land of Syria, Slave of Alamut, infidel and unrepentant, we have determined that impediment exists, to wit, disparitas cultus, disparity of faith. To the petition that such impediment be set aside, and that the petitioners be joined in holy wedlock with the blessing of Mother Church, we respond: No.”
The monk read on as if his tongue had outstripped his mind. Aidan heard him, but did not hear him. He had not said what Aidan had heard him say. That one word. That one, impossible, unbearable word.
“We deny dispensation. We refuse the sanction of holy Church. We condemn that one who calls himself our faithful son, who defiles his bed with the flesh of an infidel, in contravention of all the laws of man and God. Let him set her aside; let him harken to our pleading; let him turn again to the faith of his fathers, lest he be cast out into the nether darkness, and flung into the Pit.”
Aidan shook his head, back and forth, over and over. Morgiana’s face was very white and very far away. Her eyes were blank, flawed emeralds, dulled with shock.
The monk read more slowly now, stumbling over the words, but unable to stop. “...Witchcraft, sorcery, heresy and black enchantment: with these charges we indict her, and him who would unite with her. For the murder of Christian souls, the denial of our faith, the bewitchment of our servants, let her suffer due and proper punishment Only by recantation, by conversion and by penitence, may she—”
The monk could not go on. His face was ghastly.
Perhaps it was Gwydion who struck such horror in him, for simple presence before his face; for likeness to Aidan. The king was quiet, cold, and still. “May I see?” he asked gently, but it was as much as any man was worth to refuse him. The monk did not begin to try.
Gwydion took the vellum with its pendant seal, and read it swiftly, in silence. No sound broke in upon him. He looked up. “This is a forgery.” He turned the terrible calm of his stare upon the pope’s legate. “Father abbot, it were best that you ascertain the whereabouts of the proper document, and swiftly.”
Abbot Leo looked wan and old, but his voice was steady enough. “My lord king, there is no other. That is the coffer which we brought from Rome, and which has been guarded night and day since it was set in my hands.” He held them out. They shook, but it might have been only the palsy of age. Gwydion set the lying thing in them.
Leo looked long at it, and hard. He examined each seal; he scrutinized every phrase. He passed it to the monk who had read it, who though nigh prostrate with shock was scholar and theologian and secretary in the papal chancery. Their eyes met. Wretched; sorely baffled; but agreed.
“I saw it written,” Leo said. “I saw it signed and sealed. This is not what his holiness commanded to be set down. And yet...”
“And yet,” said the monk, “it is all in order. All is as it should be. There is no forgery that we can see.”
“You know that it is,” Gwydion said. He took back the lying thing, turned it. His finger traced the face of Saint Peter upon the leaden seal.
Paused.
“My lords,” he said. “My lords, what is this?”
Leo stared at him. The monk frowned, wondering transparently if he had forsaken his wits. “That is the Holy Father’s seal,” the man said, “majesty.”
Gwydion shook his head sharply. “No,” he said. “This.” He tugged at the cord from which hung the seal, A slender cord, a twisting of silken thread.
“That is the cord,” said the monk with careful patience, “with which the Holy Father seals his dispensations.” He stopped. “With—which—” He snatched the vellum out of Gwydion’s hands, suddenly and utterly forsaking propriety.
Gwydion came very close to smiling. “The silken cord with which he seals his dispensations. Anathemas,” he said, “are sealed with hemp.”
Monk and abbot looked again at one another. “A forgery,” said Abbot Leo in rising joy. “Indeed and certainly, a forgery.”
Gwydion turned upon the Patriarch. “Do you he
ar, my lord? Do you see?”
“I see a bit of thread on a seal,” said Heraclius. He might be struggling to keep the malice out of his voice. If so, he was losing the battle. The Patriarch took the false anathema from the monk’s slack hands, and made a show of reading it. Rather a good one, for a man who was not remarkably fluent in curial Latin. “Here is the seal itself as prescribed, and the signature, which I know. This surely is what his holiness wishes, though only God may know why he has done it so.”
“He does not wish it,” said Gwydion, still softly, still quietly, but his calm was cracking. “I myself saw the words written: the dispensation granted, the blessing given, the order set down that the rite should be performed by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, or in his incapacity, by a priest of his choosing, with the legate’s approval. His holiness was not greatly pleased, but he was willing, and mindful of my brother’s devotion. He would not have perpetrated so foul a sleight as this. Nor ever sealed it with a seal that is a lie.”
“That may be so,” Heraclius said. “I know only what is written here, and that is clear enough. The dispensation is denied. The marriage is void. I cannot bless what Rome will not sanction.”
He loved to hear himself say that; he rolled the words on his tongue, savoring them.
He was not party to the deception. Aidan stabbed deep in his mind, deep enough to sway him where he stood, and dim his eyes; but there was no knowledge there, no complicity. For him this was a godsend, and he would use it with pure pleasure, but he had had no hand in it.
Someone had Aidan by the arms, was shaking him, calling his name. He shook his reeling head. His hands were clawed. Heraclius cowered against the doorpost, clutching his throat. Aidan snarled and struggled. “Let me go. Damn you, let me go!”
Gwydion would not. There were others with him, holding grimly. Mamluks. Ranulf. Somewhere on the edge of awareness, Aidan laughed. A dozen men, it took. He was as strong as that.
They had forgotten one who was almost as strong: small as she was, and female, and seemingly struck down in the wreck of her joy. Morgiana was Assassin trained, and Assassin still, though she had forsaken it. She sprang not on the foolish quivering Patriarch but on the monk who had read the false letter. She did not claw him, or throttle him. She met him eye to eye and held him till he stiffened and convulsed and fell. Her eyes darted, glittering. Seized Leo. Drew him stumbling, staring, helpless. She was gentler with him, or he was stronger. He did not topple. He went down slowly, as if his knees had failed him.
“Nothing,” she said, sharp and distinct through the rising clamor. “They know nothing. Who knows? Who has done this?”
It was a cat’s scream. She poised to leap again, to strip another mind bare, to find what she must find before she went truly mad. Aidan’s captors would not let him go. Would not understand.
Except Gwydion. He left Aidan to the rest, and caught her before she sprang, and held her. She did not fight him. Her mind was not her body’s slave; it could move when she could not. He gasped as he felt the power that was in her, but he stood against her. He swayed her; he turned her aside. “No, sister. No. This is no time, no place.”
Her every line denied it, but she drew in upon herself. She ruled her rage; she gave him that gift, because he was her kinsman and her king.
It should have been joy, that acceptance. Not pain on top of pain. Aidan shook free of his captors, but he did not go to her. She would have turned on him.
He faced the Patriarch. The Patriarch blanched, but he was adamant. “I will not say the words without firm and proven dispensation. Which this not only denies; it casts out any who dares defy it.”
Lies. All lies. And no mind here that sparked with guilt; no flicker of betrayal. Some were glad enough, as Heraclius was; some were even exultant. But none had done it, or would admit to it.
This time he mastered himself. He could hardly rend them all limb from limb, though he would happily have begun with the king and descended through the ranks. Guy had all he could do to maintain an expression of shocked disapproval, and not to laugh aloud. His queen was less delighted. It was a pity, she was thinking, that that beautiful creature must be denied what he clearly wanted most in the world; but perhaps it was for the best. She would find someone for him, she would put her mind to it: someone suitable, malleable, and irreproachably Christian.
He choked on bile. He wanted no one, nothing, but Morgiana.
Calm, he willed himself. Calm. Whoever had done this had hoped no doubt to drive him mad. He would not give the satisfaction. He would find the one who had plotted this, and make him pay, slowly. Then he would find the true dispensation, and make Heraclius accept it, and wed Morgiana as God and the Holy Father had ordained.
“I swear it,” he said. “By God and His Son and His holy Mother, by the stone of Holy Sepulcher, I swear: This shall be traced to its root and expunged. I will have my blessing and my bride. And if I fail in this, may the earth gape and swallow me; may the sea rise and cover me; may the sky fall to crush my bones.”
9.
The great oath thundered into silence. The silence held for a stretching moment; then burst in tumult.
Aidan did not have to be dragged away. He went under his own power at speed which nothing human could match, and which nothing inhuman was minded to stop. He should, no doubt, have stayed and faced the uproar. He dared not. He had almost killed Heraclius once. He would happily have drunk the man’s blood and gone after the one who had forged the pope’s decree, but he was too sensible—little as anyone but his brother would have believed it. Heraclius was better alive than dead. Alive, he could have his nose rubbed in his own shame when the dispensation was found.
“We will find it.” Aidan flung the words over his shoulder, pacing the hall with the fierce restlessness of a leopard in a cage. It was not his own hall, with the wedding feast spread and now abandoned, all its dainties given to the poor and the pilgrims. This was a smaller space, and quieter: Lady Margaret’s house near the Sepulcher, with its peaceful inner courts and its iron-barred gate.
The others watched him in silence. Margaret herself; her daughter; Elen; Gwydion; Simeon the Jew with his son and, firmly ensconced upon a cushion, Ysabel; and Morgiana. Everyone who knew the full truth of what he was, and what he could do, and how he could do it. His mamluks stood with Margaret’s guards without, holding off the importunate and the curious. The city was buzzing with the scandal.
“We will find it,” he repeated. “However we must; whatever we must do.”
“What if it’s been destroyed?” Joanna asked.
He spun. She did not flinch. “It cannot be. It must not be.”
“We could,” said Elen slowly, “send to Rome, and have a copy made. Unless the dispensation is here. Then we simply have to look for it.”
“Simple,” said Morgiana, almost spitting it. “Yes, it should be simple, shouldn’t it? Except that I’ve been looking constantly, and there is nothing. No hint, no clue, no faintest suggestion of the truth. Not even a flicker of guilt, to lead me to the source.”
“Then the source must be in Rome,” Elen said.
Gwydion shook his head. “No. I saw the dispensation written and sealed. I had it on my ship; I assured myself more than once that it was intact and untampered with. Whoever, whatever did this, he has done it since we came to Acre.”
“Still,” Elen said. “If you can’t find it, we may have to go to Rome after all. Or...send to Rome.” Her eyes were on Morgiana as she said it.
“No.” Gwydion was gentle but immovable. “Don’t think it. It would be simple, yes, but for how long? People can count. They can reckon distances and days of travel, and human probability. They will know surely then what we can little afford to let them know; and if the pope is told, we gain no more than our enemies have made for us: denial and anathema.”
“You Christians,” said Morgiana, “are impossible. In Islam I could go, set my dagger to the appropriate throat, and put an end to all this mummery.”
“Hush,” Gwydion said. “This is no place and no time for casting blame. We have enemies capable of skillful and all but undetectable forgery; we have a wedding destroyed, a city in turmoil, a war in the making. Who knows but that this is a stroke in that war? It would suit neither side to permit such a show of amity between Christendom and Islam as this should have been.”
“This is no work of Alamut,” said Morgiana. “Nor of any in Islam. The stink on it is a Frankish stink.”
Aidan bit his tongue. The others did not look angry. Joanna was flushed, but that might be no more than pregnancy.
As if she could sense his thoughts on her, she heaved herself up. “I don’t see that any of this is getting us anywhere. We have to find the dispensation; that’s obvious. I gather that you’ve been searching out secrets among the pope’s men—”
“And the king’s,” Morgiana said, “and the Patriarch’s.”
Joanna’s brows drew together. “You’ve been searching, and you’ve found nothing. You’ll keep on with it, I’m sure. But what use is that to us? We can’t help you in any way that matters.”
“You can,” said Gwydion, though Morgiana’s glance denied it. “You can search by human means, with human senses. Ours are different; that difference may be the cause of our failure. We trust too much to the ways of power. We forget how much can be gained within the mortal world.”
“But what can escape power?” Akiva asked.
His father would have quelled him, but Gwydion forestalled it. “Power is not omnipotence. We can be deceived; we can succumb to overconfidence. We can fail to see what is before us.”
“Particularly when we don’t know where to look.” Aidan’s hands, reaching to rake through his hair, found the crown of flowers. He flung it from him, viciously. As it spun through the air it kindled, and fell burning to the tiles. He flung words in their goggling faces. “Powers of heaven and hell below! What mortal man can do this? What mortal man would dare?”