The Dagger and the Cross

by Judith Tarr

  Elen, bless the child, had a wise head on her. If she was discreet and played her widowhood to its best advantage, she would serve the kindred nigh as well as if she had never taken a lover at all. She could play suitors like the lady in the story, who held off a pack of them for years, weaving on her loom all day and unraveling all night, and promising to choose a husband when the tapestry was done: thereby preserving alliances and appearances and some measure of peace.

  Meanwhile there was Amalric, whom she had discarded rather more gently than Aidan would have been capable of. He stood where she had left him, mute and slightly stunned, and growing angry.

  Aidan yawned, showing more teeth than humans liked to see. It drew Amalric’s attention. Aidan held it with a sigh and a shake of his head. “My condolences, messire. The lady was quite fond of her husband; she took his death hard. You’ll not fault her for it, I hope?”

  “No.” It was not quite a growl. “If I may have your leave, sire, my lord? I’ve things to see to.”

  “In a moment,” Aidan said. He rose, wandering as he liked to do, but thinking of it more than he usually did. It kept Amalric’s eyes on him. The wall was higher than ever about the man’s mind.

  Aidan paused. He drew his dagger, inspected his nails, pared a rough edge. The blade shimmered. It was damascene steel, Assassin steel, narrow and wicked and deadly sharp, patterned like wind-ruffles on a calm sea. Morgiana said that Aidan’s eyes were the precise color of that steel. No doubt they were now. Gwydion’s were.

  “You know how I’ve been gladdened, surely,” Aidan said, turning the dagger idly in his hands, playing a small perilous game with it, tossing and spinning and catching, tossing and spinning and catching. “My lady and I will have our blessing at last, with the pope’s decree to hallow it. As to where we found it...we would never have guessed. It was a monk in the legate’s own train who did it, with a man or three of Outremer abetting him. Can you credit such perfidy?”

  “Shocking, my lord,” said Amalric.

  The buzzing of the wards mounted to pain. Aidan set his teeth against it. “They had defenses against us, if you can believe it. An eastern art, I understand; a discipline for thwarting witches. It has a slight disadvantage. Once known, it is as distinct as a beacon in the dark.”

  Amalric glanced swiftly, all but invisibly, toward the door. Morgiana was in it in turban and trousers, smiling very faintly.

  “You wanted to sail west, my lord brother tells me,” Aidan said, “thereby breaking your word to the sultan and leaving your brother to his fate. Is that entirely wise, messire?”

  “My brother is safe enough,” Amalric said. “My lord.”

  “He would be safer, I think, if you returned to him and waited for your ransom, and rejoined the war at his side.” Aidan smiled. “The Crusade has ample messengers to preach it. I shall go, and my royal brother, and Archbishop William who will be sailing on our flagship, and the Holy Father’s legate returning to his duties in Rome. The west will not fail you, messire. The Crusade will come to set your kingdom free.”

  Amalric had the look now of an animal in a trap. “The more messengers there are, the faster the news will travel.”

  “No doubt,” Aidan said. “But you are needed here. What is the kingdom, after all, without its Constable?”

  “The kingdom barely has a king.” Amalric bit off the words.

  “That is hardly any fault of mine,” said Aidan gently. “Tell me, messire. What did you hope to gain from the disruption of my wedding?”

  Amalric drew breath, perhaps to deny the charge. But he did not say it. He sat instead, stretched out his legs, folded his hands over his middle. “So. It’s that obvious, is it?”

  “I’m ashamed to tell you how long it took us to notice.”

  Amalric smiled thinly. His ease ran hardly deeper, but it was impressive to see. “All I wanted was to keep the kingdom safe. I wasn’t at all sure it could be that, with infidels so close to all its counsels.”

  “Prudent,” Aidan said. “Wise, after a fashion. Did you know that you were shielding the king, the morning before Hattin, when my brother would have talked him out of it?”

  Amalric flushed, then paled. “I was guarding myself.”

  “Too well,” said Aidan.

  “God’s bones,” said Amalric. He straightened in his chair as if to shift his body with his mind, away from guilt and from the shame that rode with it. “You did nothing to the others—the ones who hatched the conspiracy. Why? Were you saving it for me?”

  “No.” Aidan caught his dagger by the hilt, slid it into its sheath. “I’m not going to do anything to you, either.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t need to.” Not precisely true, but true enough. Aidan looked Amalric up and down. “You and your precious brother led this kingdom as badly as it could possibly have been led. The Crusade may win the kingdom back, but it will never be what it was before. Your fault, messire. Your brother can talk himself out of accepting the blame. You have no such fortune.”

  “Are you laying a curse on me?”

  Amalric’s voice was thick, torn between anger and fear. Aidan smiled. “You laid it on yourself in the king’s tent at Cresson. What can I do to you that would be worse than that?”

  “You share the blame, my lord. You were at Cresson. You fought at Hattin.”

  Aidan shook his head. “No, Amalric. My guilt is of another order altogether. I am removed from this war and this kingdom. You are bound to it. While it stands, you stand. When it falls, so shall you fall. There is no escape for you. The west will offer you no haven.”

  “A threat, my lord?”

  “A promise.”

  Amalric stood. His mind was no more penetrable than it had ever been. His eyes were almost laughing. “My brother is right. You have no power to touch any of us. Mockery, illusion, sleight of hand—that’s all you can offer.”

  “We never claimed to be gods.” Aidan moved aside from the path to the door.

  Amalric paused in taking it. “I’d hoped for more from you.”

  “What, hellfire and brimstone?”

  “Something befitting your reputation.”

  Aidan laughed and called up the fire.

  Amalric slitted his eyes against the pillar of flame that had swallowed Aidan’s fleshly semblance. “Trickery,” he said.

  “If you wish,” Aidan said. He quelled the fire; Amalric blinked, dazzled. “Or perhaps this body is the trickery. You saw me then as my own kind see me.”

  “What does seeing matter? I know what’s real. You are nothing but the devil’s lies.”

  “Not the devil,” Gwydion said. He sounded ineffably weary. “Messire, I tire of you. Sister...?”

  “Brother,” said Morgiana with profound pleasure.

  Amalric had his marvel. He was there; and then he was not.

  Aidan burst out laughing, though he knew that he should not. “Morgiana! Before the whole army of Islam? Naked? Backward on an ass?”

  “It is,” she admitted, “an insult to the ass.”

  “And I,” said Gwydion, “am weary of kingly restraint.” He rose and stretched and smiled at them both: as good as laughter in another man. “So then, my brother, my sister. Shall we see to the ordering of your wedding?”

  38.

  Patriarch Heraclius was not at home to visitors. He was, in brief, indisposed. Very happily so, in the arms of his handsome mistress.

  “Ah,” said Morgiana, revealing herself in a lull. “Madame la Patriarchesse. I trust I find you in good health.”

  Madame la Patriarchesse, whose title was reserved strictly for tavern gossip, screeched and snatched at coverlets. His excellency the Patriarch, laid out like an effigy on a tomb but quite as bare as he was born, dived after his paramour.

  He was rather a disappointment, after all the tales. But then, Morgiana reflected, size was not everything. Or beauty, either. She looked at him and remembered her hawk of the desert, and thought of clabbered milk.

 
He seemed determined to burrow through the featherbed and into the floor beneath. She plucked him out, blankets and all, and set him upright. Robbed of flight, he began to bluster. “Who are you? How dare you? What do you think—”

  She shook her head at his obtuseness. Surely he of all people should know what and who she was, from her mode of ingress if nothing else. She pulled off her turban and shook down her hair.

  Its improbable color and her inarguable gender enlightened him remarkably. His bluster turned to fear; his crimson cheeks went white.

  She smiled sweetly at him. “Good morning, lord Patriarch. And a fair morning it is. Would you not agree?”

  Clearly he would not. She would have been pleased to change his mind for him, but her prince was waiting. “Come, sir,” she said. “Would you be so good as to dress? We have need of you in Tyre.”

  “In—” He scrambled his blankets about him. He looked quite odd with his shaven crown and his straggling hair, his beard all fallen out of its curls. “The sultan has taken Tyre?”

  “The sultan has nothing to do with it. We have our dispensation to marry; my lord has a mind to act on it. Will you dress yourself, or shall I do it for you?”

  Heraclius dug in his heels. “The country is at war. I cannot leave Jerusalem.”

  “Or your paramour?” Morgiana glanced at the woman, who was a properly wedded wife, but not to the Patriarch. The woman regarded her with the calm of perfect horror. “We shall not keep you long. An hour only; surely you can spare us that.”

  “Nothing can take us there and back again so swiftly,” said Heraclius.

  “I can.” Morgiana looked about. There was a chest at the bed’s foot; it was, as she had hoped, full of clothing. Aidan would want him in vestments. There were none here.

  She cast her power like a net, closed it about a glimmer of gold, gathered it in. Heraclius jumped and gasped as it fell at his feet. Alb and chasuble, the latter of cloth of gold. Miter, crozier, odds and ends of silk and cord for which Morgiana had no name.

  But Heraclius was no docile sheep. Even taken by surprise, he mustered a core of resistance. “I will submit to no witchcraft. No; not though you kill me for it.”

  “I have no intention of killing you,” Morgiana said. “I will bring you to Tyre, where my lord is. You will say the words to marry us. Then I shall return you as I found you.”

  Heraclius’ head sank between his shoulders. His jaw set, obstinate. “No.”

  “The pope commands you.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Come to Tyre and you will see.”

  “No,” said Heraclius.

  Morgiana drew a long slow breath. She did not want to abduct him. Aidan would not approve; and this day of all days, she wanted to please her prince.

  Heraclius was not about to budge. Her clemency emboldened him; he stood straighter and glowered at her. She saw how he glanced at his mistress to see if she marked his courage.

  Madame la Patriarchesse was oblivious. “For God’s sake,” she said. “Give her what she wants.”

  “She is a devil,” said Heraclius. “She’ll snatch me away to hell.”

  “Then go,” said his ladylove. “It’s only for an hour. Didn’t you hear her?”

  Heraclius gaped like a fish. Morgiana plucked the blankets from him and held up a garment at random. “Put it on,” she said.

  He put it on in its proper order, if slowly and with many pauses. Morgiana advanced toward him. He quickened then. He hated her. That was no novelty; if anything, it pleased her. She folded her arms and tapped her foot. His hands shook as he took up the miter and set it on his head.

  He could have done with a comb, and a servant to curl his beard for him. But Morgiana was in no mood for trivialities. She thrust the crozier into his hand and swept him otherwhere.

  o0o

  Joanna was almost glad that it was over. The dispensation was found, the wedding begun. And so swiftly: so utterly like Aidan. Royalty was given to expecting the impossible of its servants, but Aidan knew what he himself could do. He never truly understood the limits of human capacity.

  She was up well into the night, and up again well before dawn, mustering the family, rounding up the servants, setting the cooks to conjuring a feast out of air. She gave Aidan his due: he was quite as preoccupied as she, and she did not think that he slept. When she staggered half-blindly to bed, he was still awake; when she staggered more than half blindly out of it, he was up, lending a hand with the tables in the hall.

  Now, for better or for worse, it was done. The children were clean, properly clad, and somewhat damp about the edges. The household, all that could be spared, made a suitably royal escort, even without the growing crowd of onlookers. Rumor traveled fast in Tyre, and a wedding was worth the running to, the more for that the bridegroom was a prince and his bride an Assassin.

  Tyre’s cathedral raised its dome sturdily to the sky. In the space before its door they gathered as they had in front of Holy Sepulcher. There were fewer of them now who were truly guests, but oglers enough. Some of them even comprehended that the figure with the miter, resplendent in cloth of gold, was not Archbishop William. One or two might have begun to suspect that it was Heraclius of Jerusalem. A very stiff, thoroughly browbeaten, slightly wild-eyed Heraclius, who no doubt would remember this as a particularly vivid nightmare. It had not been kind of Aidan to send Morgiana after the Patriarch, even if there was no one else who could have done it.

  Neither of them was in sight. Joanna saw Archbishop William behind the Patriarch, coped and mitered himself, but properly subordinate. He seemed to be propping the Patriarch up, or blocking his escape. The archbishop’s expression was solemnly content.

  Someone came quietly through the door behind them. Heraclius started; William smiled. Joanna blinked hard. Aidan had put on garb proper to a wedding, if he was Aidan, and wedding his Assassin. His coat was that which Saladin had given him in Damascus, the Saracen robe of honor blazoned with the tiraz, the bands of scarlet circling his arms, embroidered with his name and the name of the Syrian sultan. The cloth of the coat was silk, black subtly damascened with gold, and his belt was black inlaid with gold, and his sword hung from it, damascened scabbard, silver hilt with its great coal of a ruby. Most often he wore Frankish hose and shoes under the coat, but now he wore the trousers that were proper to it, and the soft boots with their upturned toes, and the inlaid spurs of the Saracen. He only lacked the turban to seem all infidel. His head was bare but for a coronet, the mark of his rank which he almost never wore. He passed Heraclius, bowing regally, and stood on the step, and waited.

  The sun rose slowly to the hour of prime. None of them moved, not even the lookers-on. Either Morgiana would refuse it after all and flee away and never come again, or she would gratify them with a spectacle. They waited for it, either one.

  They received neither, when it came. Simply a pair of nobles walking, her hand on his, through the cathedral close. Gwydion was in blue and silver, severely simple, with a hat on his head and no mark of his kingship.

  Morgiana was clad in green silk, seeming as much a Frank as Aidan seemed a Saracen. It was not the gown she had worn to that other, shattered wedding. This was simpler, such as a lady would wear in her own demesne, to please her lord and enchant her people. Her hair was free under the veil, confined only by a slender fillet, from which hung a single emerald to glow between her eyes. But they were brighter than any stone.

  They did not seem to see anything in all that place but the one who waited for her. He was blind to aught that was not she.

  Joanna’s heart, which had broken long ago, throbbed dully as it rose into her throat. Now they came face to face. Now the pope’s legate came forward, and in his hand a writ with a pendant seal. Now the monk who had read it on that other day, came to take it from him. The monk’s hand shook a little, as if he too remembered, and dreaded what he might find.

  The city itself seemed to stand silent, the wind to still, the gulls to wheel mute in
the vault of the sky. Joanna heard the whisper of vellum, the clack of the seal as it swung against its mooring, the clearing of the monk’s throat. He began, somewhat unsteadily, to read.

  “Urban, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his dear son in Christ, 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, and to the Lady Morgiana of the city of Persepolis, servant heretofore of the Masters of Alamut, greeting and apostolic benediction. In the matter of impediment, to wit, disparitas cultus, disparity of faith, we dispense, we permit, we remove all obstacles to their joining in holy wedlock with the blessing of Mother Church and the countenance of the Holy See.”

  None of them heard what more there was. Conditions, there were always conditions. Patriarch Heraclius or his chosen deputy must say the words; the children must be raised in the faith of holy Church; the prince would swear never to forsake that faith, on pain of anathema. None of it mattered. The pope had spoken. The dispensation was granted. Now at last Heraclius must begin the rite.

  He did not wish to. That was evident. But still less did he wish to prolong the nightmare. He raised his hand on which flamed the ruby of his patriarchate, and beckoned. The king led the lady to her lord.

  Their hands met, joined. Gwydion drew back forgotten. Heraclius, shuddering just perceptibly, laid his hand over theirs. In a voice which was, when it came to it, remarkably steady, he spoke the words for which they had waited so long.

  o0o

  Windy words, to matter so much. Aidan, hand-clasped with Morgiana, heard only that they were holy. Saw the ring brought out in Gwydion’s hand, the circle of gold that Aidan had forged himself and set with an emerald. There was another beside it, gold and ruby, made for a larger hand.

  He raised a brow. Morgiana would not look at him, but her mind was on him. Should the bridegroom be denied what is given the bride?

  He almost laughed. He should have expected it. She was Morgiana, after all.