by Judith Tarr
“Now,” said Aidan. “Tell.”
Thomas thought that he could sense the force of all their sorceries beating upon his inner defenses. His head ached dully, far back behind his eyes. He knew how he might lay himself open to them. So simple, it would be: to let down the walls, to relax the discipline which for so long had held his soul inviolate. But that courage was not in him.
The silence had begun to stretch. Aidan, ever restless, spoke to fill it. “Your game is up. You know that perfectly well. If you won’t tell us what you’ve done with our dispensation, we’ll find it. It will simply take a little longer.”
Likewise, Thomas was certain, the death which they intended for him. The Assassin’s hand was on the hilt of her dagger, her eyes hungry, needing but a word to spring upon him.
Her leman did not give it. He said, “Tell us.”
Thomas sighed. The ache in his skull was rising to true pain. Five of them, all fixed upon him, all battering at his walls. How proud his teacher would have been. But pride was a sin, and Thomas was but mortal flesh. He said, “It lies in the box of my belongings in the cell which I occupy here.”
The ifritah was there, and then she was not: astonishing, even when expected. Kings would pay high for such a servant. So had the masters of the Assassins; and the Prince of Caer Gwent, who had fought so long a battle to win her the name of wife. Thomas considered pitying him. She was not, by all accounts, the mate of his choosing; that had all been her doing, and he had bowed to the inevitable.
God granted each man his just deserts; so too each man of the unhuman kind.
As she had vanished, so she appeared, with a parcel wrapped in silk. She held it out to her prince. His hands closed over hers.
Not all her choosing, then. If that kind could love, then he loved her with all the fire that was in him. Moving together, they folded back the silk. The vellum lay in their conjoined hands, heavy with its pendant seal, all as Thomas had left it. He had not even cut the thread that bound it. There had been no need.
“It is,” the prince said as if to continue a colloquy long since begun. He offered it to his brother. “It is the dispensation which you won.”
The king nodded. No doubt he could tell by his sorceries. “Will you read it now?”
The prince hesitated. The ifritah said, “Let the abbot do it. He has to bear witness, no?”
“Yes,” said Abbot Leo. His hands were steady, taking the packet, cutting the bindings: even with the dagger which she gave him, Assassin’s weapon, shimmering, sorcerous steel with a silver hilt. The vellum whispered as he unfolded it. His lips moved, reading what was written there. They watched the light grow bright in his face.
“It is,” he said as the prince had said before him. “It is indeed.”
“Keep it, Father,” the prince said. “Guard it for us, if you will.”
The pope’s legate bowed to him. He inclined his head, a prince’s courtesy, and turned again to Thomas.
“And you, Brother,” he said. “Do you know of any reason in the world that I should suffer you to live?”
“Yes,” Thomas answered. “I know one. Mercy.”
“You know what I am, and yet you allow me that?”
“You were raised by Christian men,” Thomas said. “What you may not know by nature, surely you have learned to know by art.”
“And why should I be merciful? I have no soul,” Prince Aidan said, “to endanger with my sins. Why should I not simply cut you down?”
“You may,” said Thomas. “How can I prevent you?”
Aidan smiled. “You can’t, can you?”
Thomas crossed himself. His palms were damp, betraying him; but the rest of him was strong. This was what he had dreamed of all his life. This was what he had prayed for. To die in the name of God. To take the crown of martyrdom.
The others had drawn back somewhat. Even the ifritah; even young Marco, though his body yearned toward Thomas. This battle was for the two of them.
Thomas considered his adversary carefully. Despite what he had said, he did not think that this was a cruel creature. Soulless, yes. Inhuman. Dangerous, as an animal is, by its nature.
“You will do what you will do,” Thomas said. “What defenses I have are only that; I cannot fight against you. I knew that when first I took up my pen. I knew then what I did; I understood how, in the end, I must pay. I would do it again if I could.”
“Why?”
It was an honest question. Thomas answered it honestly. “I envy you. I covet your youth, your beauty, and your magic. And I know that thereby I sin. You are temptation made flesh. How can I do aught but destroy you?”
“You might resist me. Other humans do.”
“Do they?” Thomas regarded Abbot Leo; Marco, loyal in extremity; the children. One of whom was not human. One of whom...
Was not. In earliest youth they truly deceived. God’s gift, or the devil’s.
It did not alter what was true. “Humanity was not made to endure such trial as you are to it by your bare existence.”
“Are you telling me that God has made a mistake?”
“God, never. The devil may claim infallibility, but he is the Lord of Lies.”
“What are we, then? Satan’s image as humans are God’s?”
“It is known,” said Thomas, “that the Adversary cannot create, only twist what God has made. You are humanity altered. All of it that is solely of earth, you are. All that is of heaven, you lack utterly.”
The prince was not pleased to hear so stark a truth. His face tightened; his cat-eyes narrowed, glittering. “Someday,” he said, “if God has any care for us, we will produce a theologian to match what you humans brag of. Then we shall see how the battle runs. I, alas, have no skill in the higher logic. I only know what is. I am no spawn of the Evil One. Nor is any of us. Far less than you who call yourselves children of God, can we abide the stench of the Pit.”
Thomas shook his head in honest sadness. “Even your candor is a lie. The Adversary, it is said, truly believes himself wronged. Can you do any less?”
“Come now,” said the ifritah, sharp and piercing-clear as a bell in the morning. “This is nonsense. Will you slit his throat, my lord, or must I?”
She had her dagger in her hand, ready to strike. Her temper was fierce. She was beautiful, like the lioness defending her lion.
Thomas was ready. Now at last it would come. Now, after so long, he would die.
The prince laid his hand on the ifritah’s, restraining it. “No,” he said. “You will not kill him. Nor shall I.”
She was stiff with resistance; but no more so than Thomas. The prince saw it. His eyes glittered. “He wants it, do you see? A martyr would serve his cause. It would prove that we are what he says; it would fire his followers to greater passion against us. How better to take our revenge than to take no revenge at all?”
They stared at him, all of them, save only his brother. The Rhiyanan king smiled slowly, but said nothing.
Prince Aidan laughed a little wildly. “You didn’t think I was capable of it, did you? Believe me, I’d happily tear out his throat, and never mind the nicety of a dagger. But that would be too gentle a punishment. Let him live and learn to see how all his truths are lies.”
The ifritah regarded him as if he had gone mad. “You let him live? The others, yes, they count for nothing; let them go if you please. But this one, the king serpent—he has barely begun to distill his poison. Let him live, set him free, and we shall rue it down all the long years.”
She spoke eminent sense. But her prince was in no mood to hear it. His face set, stubborn. “I said that I would not touch him, and I will not. Nor shall you. Any of you.” His eye fixed on each, but longest and most particularly on the youngest. “We have what we came for. The reverend father may punish the sinner as he chooses. Our part is done, and well done.”
“We did nothing!” snapped the ifritah.
“We have proved to human men that mercy is not purely a human province.
” He took her hand, clenched though it was, and raised it to his lips. “Is he or any of them worth your anger, my lady?”
She drew a sharp breath, perhaps to argue; but she let it go, hissing like a cat. “None of them is worth a hair of your head.”
“Then why do we waste time that could be spent preparing for our wedding?”
Her scowl lightened as if of its own accord. She strove to sustain it; she said, “They will come back to haunt us.”
“Let them.” He was magnificent in his folly. He opened his arms wide, taking in all his following. “Come, my friends! Who’ll sing at my lady’s bridal?”
“Conrad,” said the maidchild, facetious. Prince Aidan laughed and swept her up. With her still struggling and ordering him peremptorily to set her down, he bore her away.
It was grand insolence, well befitting a demon prince. In the moment before he was gone, his eyes met Thomas’ once again. They laughed indeed, but that laughter was white and cold, demon-laughter, daring Thomas to do as his lady prophesied.
Thomas stood where they had left him. Marco, freed at last from the weight of their presence, tumbled in a faint.
Very slowly Thomas knelt beside him. He was deathly white, but his heart beat strongly enough. Terror only, and shock. Poor child, he had had more than his strength could bear.
He came round slowly. Thomas made no move to hasten it. He was numb, emptied. Mercy, had it been, that they let him live? The devil’s mercy, and the devil’s contempt. Thomas tried to exorcise it with a sign of the cross; with the words of piety. “I shall do as God wills,” he said.
Marco stirred, murmuring. Thomas stroked his brow to quiet him. He started, thrashed. His eyes opened wide. White rimmed them. His mouth worked. “I can’t—” he said. “I can’t—I can’t—”
“Hush,” said Thomas. A little sharply, perhaps. Defeat was bitter; the scorn of his enemies more bitter still.
Marco’s hands, groping, found Thomas’ habit. They wound themselves in it. He pulled himself up. His eyes, still fixed in that wide, mad stare, rolled upward, over Thomas’ head.
There was nothing to see. Only air.
“Light,” said Marco. “All light. I can see—Brother, look! Do you hear it?”
Hysteria. Thomas raised his hand to slap the boy to his senses. But Marco had staggered to his feet. He swayed perilously, but he stood.
Now Thomas knew that stare. Blind.
“Blinded,” said Marco, “by the light.” He half-sang the words. “Don’t you see, Brother? What they did? What they freed us for? Even the devil—even he must do the Lord’s bidding.”
Mad. When Thomas was himself again he would grieve. For a little while he had hoped that here was one who shared his true vocation. They had taken that from him as they had all else.
Marco turned, stumbling, and nigh went down. Thomas was there to catch him. He wound his fists again in Thomas’ habit, like the child he was, and laughed. “Oh, Brother! Don’t you know what they’ve done? They’ve shown us what to do. Like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. They’ve made our faith all new.”
It was an appalling prospect, as if these devils could stand in place of God Who had blinded Paul so that he might see the truth. But had not the Adversary himself been suffered to tempt Job?
Thomas was beginning, however dimly, to see. Pride and shame had robbed him of his wits. Now this child showed him the way.
Iblis’ daughter had foretold it. Thomas said it in the words which God set on his tongue. “This is God’s will,” he said. “For this He set us here, and tried us so, and tempered us with defeat. For this and no other: to be the end of them.” He paused. The light that dawned in him was nothing so feeble as to blind him. No; it made him see as he had never seen before, down to the very heart of things. “And not you and I alone,” he said. “A whole army of us, an order sworn to the service of God, bound by our vows to destroy witchcraft and heresy wherever it may be.”
“Yes,” said Marco, rapt. “Yes.”
Thomas seized the narrow shoulders; held them, shook them, clasped the boy to his breast. Tears ran unheeded down his cheeks. “I shall do as God wills,” he said again: and now, truly, he meant every word of it.
37.
Once Aidan was out of the chapel, he set Ysabel down, to her manifest relief. It had not come home to him yet, for all his show of exuberance. The hunt was ended. Abbot Leo had the dispensation, wrapped again in its bit of silk, laid carefully in the breast of his habit. The man who had forged it, the men who had abetted him, were gone and forgotten.
Yet Aidan could not summon the joy that had lain on him in Jerusalem. Its bright clarity was clouded, its purity stained by war and defeat and the long bitter hunt.
The hunters stood about him in the corridor. They had let him lead, even Morgiana, against Brother Thomas and his conspirators. It was his oath and his battle. Now they waited for him to say what they would do. Go back to the caravanserai, first, and bear the news to the rest; then consider how to go about wedding a Muslim woman to a Christian prince, with the Patriarch in Jerusalem and a war between.
He shook his head. “Why should we wait?” he said to them. “Why not do it as soon as may be? Not today, no, the poor cooks would never forgive us, but tomorrow—surely that’s time enough.”
“You did insist,” Morgiana pointed out, “that the Patriarch say the words.”
“So he shall, if you will fetch him for us. He can hardly refuse the pope’s command.”
“He might refuse to travel as I travel.” But she was catching his mood. This was purely to her taste: sudden, headlong, and full of witchery.
They grinned at one another, he and she, well matched and knowing it. For a moment it was almost pain to know that they would be wedded at last. Now. Tomorrow.
Abbot Leo ventured to break in upon them. “I can understand your eagerness, my lord, my lady. But would it not be wiser to wait somewhat—two days, even? Three? Surely even you cannot effect a court wedding in an afternoon and a night.”
“Would you care to wager on it?” Aidan asked.
The abbot looked so dismayed that Aidan laughed, laying an arm about his shoulders and embracing him, shaking him lightly. “Come, father abbot! Aren’t you a man of God? Don’t you believe in miracles?”
“Surely, my lord, but—”
Aidan overrode him, the gladness rising now, and the wildness, and the sheer, white exhilaration of knowing that he had power, and it was strong, and he was free to wield it. “My lady?”
She nodded, smiled, took the hand he held out to her.
“Brother,” Aidan said, clear as on the battlefield. “If you will, go to our kin now, and tell them. Ysabel, Akiva, go with him; assure Lady Joanna that I haven’t gone quite mad, and ask her if she’ll tell the cooks.”
Gwydion nodded. The children looked mildly rebellious, but he offered a hand to each and bent his glance upon them. They could hardly refuse a king. They went together, Ysabel with her chin on her shoulder, willing her father to change his mind.
Her father was hardly aware of her. “And I,” he said before the abbot could say it for him, “shall have a moment’s audience with my lord archbishop.” He slanted a brow at Morgiana. “Will you come with me?”
She inclined her head. She was amused. She often was, when Aidan troubled to be decisive.
Precipitous.
Aidan refused to be discommoded, even by a whisper in his mind. He gathered the two of them, abbot and Assassin, and went to face the spiritual lord of Tyre.
o0o
The Archbishop of Tyre was no stranger to the lord of Millefleurs. Aidan had known him since he was Archdeacon William, chancellor of the kingdom and tutor to King Baldwin. It was William who first ascertained that the heir to the throne was a leper, and William who stood as friend and teacher to the young king, until Baldwin died and the throne fell, lurching and tottering, into Guy’s hands.
William was still an elegant personage, although the years had thickened
his middle. He received the prince and his lady at once, as much for policy as for friendship, and set aside the pens and parchment with which he had been working. “A history of our country,” he said as he greeted his guests, “and a stone around my neck when I consider how much of it is still to tell. But I write a little every day, as God and my duties allow.”
Aidan smiled. He would not at all have minded hearing William’s new chapter, but time was pressing. “Your excellency, when you’ve a mind to read to us, we’ll happily hear it, but now I have a favor to ask.”
William was only slightly disappointed. If there was anything he preferred to the writing of history, it was the making of it “Ask on, my lord,” he said.
“Today,” Aidan said, “we have won back what was taken from us in Jerusalem. My lord abbot has it now: the dispensation which was stolen, permitting my marriage to Lady Morgiana and obliging the Patriarch to officiate. We see no purpose in delaying past the morrow. My lady will go when it is time, to fetch the Patriarch.”
“Wiser so,” she said, “and more practicable. Even I would be hard put to bear all our friends and kin to Jerusalem, that they might see us wedded.”
“Yes,” William said. “That might be a strain even on your...capacities.” He raised his brows. “Fetch the Patriarch? Here?”
“If you will consent,” Aidan said.
“Heraclius is my metropolitan. Obedience binds me to him.” William’s tone was faintly sour. He was no admirer of his Patriarch.
“I’m not speaking of obedience,” Aidan said.
William’s face was perfectly still, but a spark had kindled in his eye. “You’ll be wanting the cathedral, of course.”
“By your leave.”
“The canons will have to be consulted.” He allowed himself a very small smile. “There are procedures, and precedents. We can hardly give you what we have always given the kings of Jerusalem, but what we can manage, you shall have.”
Aidan was puzzled for a moment. “The kings... I had forgotten.”
“Kings have often been wedded here,” William said. “A prince will suit us very well.”