All eyes turned to the Spaniard, but it was Constantine who spoke.
“You stopped to let a falcon in a cage while dragging a dead body?”
“He’d had a trying morning as well, yes? He was tired. And I was no so much dragging the body. It is no as heavy if you tie up the hands and feet just so and then wrap it—”
“Did anyone see you?” Victor interrupted, holding forth one palm with a pained expression across his kind face.
Valentine looked offended. “Of course no.”
“What’s going on?” Adrian interjected.
All eyes in the room turned to Constantine. But when the general looked up again, it was to pin Roman with his gaze.
“Well? You are the only one she’d talk to.”
Roman shifted in his chair, adjusted his throbbing arm. His forehead prickled with sweat. “She is the woman who found me in Damascus. The one who led me to the prison.” He paused a moment. “Isra Tak’Ahn.”
“Egyptian surname.” Adrian’s brow was creased in a frown. “Why is she here now looking for you? And how did she find you?”
“The how of it I don’t yet know,” Roman said. “She is too weak to speak at any length. But she told me that we must return to the Holy Land. That King Baldwin’s life is in danger. There is a plot to assassinate him.”
“Apparently the Christian king’s life is no the only one in danger,” Valentine said, “if the package I dragged through the wood is any measure. Perhaps Saladin’s men?”
“Perhaps,” Victor conceded. “But there has been a well-respected truce between Saladin and Baldwin for at least two years. I’ve had no word to indicate it’s imperiled.”
Valentine sniffed. “A time of truce would seem to me to be the best time to attempt an assassination.”
“That is not Saladin’s way,” Constantine argued.
“No,” Adrian said, a hint of his old bitterness creeping into his words. “He would rather torture his enemies slowly.”
The silence grew thick again for a moment.
Victor cleared his throat. “Why did she seek you, Roman?”
“I don’t know.” Roman shook his head. “Perhaps she feels I owe her a debt and she has no one else she can trust. That night in Damascus, it almost seemed as though she was taking revenge against someone by helping me. Perhaps one of the higher-up generals?”
Adrian pulled a face but said nothing. Constantine regarded the table once more.
Valentine leaned forward, one arm along the edge of the table. “She wishes you to travel all the way back to Syria, you, who would be the most conspicuous of us all, in order to warn Baldwin that—in a time of war, mind you—someone at some time might try to kill him?”
Roman opened his mouth but then closed it again. His thoughts were tied up in knots. At last he said, “I don’t know what she wants, Val.”
“It sounds like a trick to me,” Valentine said, relaxing back in his seat. “Though why should we care if it is true? Baldwin is a leper. His days are already numbered. Adrian is too well-known, as are you, Stan. I certainly will no leave my women to save the life of a rotting man who has done nothing for those who sought to preserve his fortress. In fact, he would likely try to kill any one of you himself at first sight. Let him die, I say, by whatever means befall him.”
Roman caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and when he turned to the left, he was shocked to see Constantine nodding.
“I agree, Valentine.”
Adrian’s brows raised. “What?”
“Baldwin would never believe any of us.” Constantine kept his eyes on the tabletop as he explained his reasoning. “He thinks us traitors, when in his heart, he should know the three of us would be the last men on earth to ever betray him.”
“To betray Chastellet,” Adrian added with a wistful tone in his voice that made Roman’s heart flinch. He’d loved that fortress as much as Roman.
“Kind of you to exclude me.” Valentine sniffed and waved a hand toward Roman. “I have only been made a criminal by this business, when I had no part in it save to help a man out of the goodness of my heart.”
That at least made Adrian grin. “You were a criminal long before you met us.”
“And I had to give you a sack of gold in order for you to help me,” Roman added.
But Constantine was having no part of the attempt to lighten the mood. “I was to have already left Chastellet,” he said pensively. “The day of the siege, I should have been on the Mediterranean, en route to Benningsgate. But Baldwin beseeched me stay, look over Chastellet in his absence. Only a short journey. He said he trusted Glayer Felsteppe not, and would rather have him under his thumb.” He paused. “Had I died in the final battle, perhaps he would have thought otherwise. But instead, I am here, and my family are dead. My home lost.”
It was as if the room had been surrounded by a thick, dank cloud of despair, humid with sorrow and regret. No one spoke, for none of the men could refute what the general had said.
Then Constantine stood up from his chair and all the men looked at him: his rumpled clothing, his wild hair, his red-rimmed eyes.
“Let him die,” Stan repeated. “The woman, too. We cannot let her leave now that she has discovered our identities and our location.”
Constantine stepped away from the table and began walking toward the door, and Roman’s head was spinning too much to form enough of a thought to stop him.
But Victor intervened, taking hold of Constantine’s forearm as he passed and rising. “I cannot allow a murder in God’s house, Constantine,” Victor warned. “In my house. Has the woman not suffered enough? What is her crime that she should be put to death?”
“What was Christian’s crime?” Constantine said, shaking the abbot off. “What did my little boy do that warranted his burning to death in his home, along with his mother?”
Then Constantine leaned into Victor’s face, his mouth pulled into a grimace, his posture threatening. Victor did not shrink away.
“If you let this woman go free, she will run to the first coin she can find to trade what she knows. The village and all the countryside around Melk will then be filled with criminals the like you’ve never even imagined. Think you they would bother determining identity once they discover we have been posing as monks? They will kill everyone here, including you.
“If we were to depart Melk after she betrayed us,” Constantine continued, leaning away from Victor and looking at all the men, “there would truly be no protection for the brethren. And where else in the world would we go? Wyldonna, to be devoured by beasts or drowned by creatures of the sea? I would not trade the life of even the basest beggar of yonder village for that woman’s, let alone the lives of the men who reside within these walls.”
Now Constantine looked at Roman. “Get rid of her by morning or I will.”
He strode to the secret door that led to the larger library and was gone a moment later.
Valentine drummed his fingertips on the table. “It is nice that he is talking again, yes?”
“I don’t understand,” Adrian said. “Constantine’s attitude toward Baldwin is perhaps justified, but why should he hold such hateful feelings toward the woman who effectively saved our lives in Damascus?”
“Because,” Roman said in a low voice, the realization resting on him as heavy and real as a block of granite, “if he could return to that time in the past, knowing what would become of his family, his home, he would not wish to have his life saved. The three of you were only hours away from death in the prison, Constantine only hours away from avoiding a long life without his little son.”
Roman had felt the very same after Saladin’s army had lain ruin to Chastellet and left him alone with nothing but corpses and carrion birds for companions.
“I do no doubt that you are right, my astute friend,” Valentine allowed with a tinge of admiration in his voice. “However, there is much to be said for Stan’s reasoning. The woman has seen us and knows where we have hidden
away. I have a wife and child now; Adrian his own woman. We can no risk discovery.”
Victor rejoined the discussion, sitting once more in his chair. “Roman, do you feel the woman would betray us?”
“I don’t know,” Roman said. “She refused to tell Constantine anything before I entered the room. Not her name, not why she was asking after me. I can only surmise that is part of the reason the Saracen bothered to beat her so badly rather than just kill her outright once he’d caught up with her. Perhaps she has more to tell us, if only we give her the opportunity to heal—and to live,” he added.
“I agree,” Victor said.
Adrian nodded. “As do I.”
The men looked to Valentine, who was wobbling his head from side to side, contemplating the ceiling. Finally, he sighed. “Agree. For the time being.”
All four men stood, and Roman tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as he braced himself on the edge of the table. His head swam still, and the gentle candlelight in the library seemed to throb for a moment.
“Constantine will not like being overruled,” Victor said. “I don’t know how he will take the news that she still lives on the morn. He is a man of his word.”
“I will sit with her,” Roman said. “I will not let him harm her, not only for her safety but for Stan’s own good. Perhaps there might come a day when he would bitterly regret such an action.”
“Thank you.” Adrian nodded toward Roman, and he was again made aware of the change in the formerly snide and bitter man as the four of them made their way to the gatehouse passage.
Valentine struck Roman on his uninjured arm. “Yes, that is a good idea, my friend. He will have a most difficult time climbing over your large body when you faint. But you? You will no even feel it. Brilliant.”
Roman gave his friend a shove that nearly sent Valentine from his feet. “Then you’d best bring me something to eat, you sneaking Spaniard.”
“I’m certain Brother Wynn has sufficient provisions to sustain you. Plenty of hay and leaves; perhaps some delicious grubs, yes?”
“Won’t you precede me down the stairs?”
Valentine grinned over his shoulder while he stepped into the black corridor. “So you can push me down them?”
“Don’t worry; you won’t even feel it.”
* * *
Isra could feel the redhead’s eyes on her as if they were tethers holding her to the pallet. She couldn’t have moved even if she’d wanted to, her body was so sore, but even had she been well, she doubted she was brave enough to test the woman’s unspoken threat.
She was a prisoner here.
No matter, that. She’d been a prisoner the whole of her life, really. A prisoner dressed in the finest silks and jewels, provided the best food and drink, her health and grooming looked after in the most meticulous ways. But she had never been free.
Isra shifted her gaze and confirmed that the woman was indeed watching her closely, a frown of concentration across her pale face. Her eyes sparkled like emeralds, and Isra thought she would rather enjoy looking at the woman had she not felt so threatened by her.
“Are you going to kill me?” she rasped.
The woman’s eyes widened a bit. “I didna know you were awake. ’Tis difficult to tell with your eyes as swollen as they are.” She crossed her arms over her slight chest and leaned back in her chair. “I’m nae going to kill you, nay. What their plans are, I doona yet know. You’re a danger to them; surely you ken that?”
Isra swallowed, and yet the words still broke in her raw throat. “I know.”
“You’ve much death around you already.”
The statement brought to Isra’s mind her mother, and Huda, and the man she’d killed on her last night in Damascus. Her eyes strained with the desire to produce tears, but none would come. She said nothing.
The redhead sat up and scooted to the edge of the seat, reaching out her hand. Isra tensed and heard her own gasp.
“I’m nae going to hurt you,” the woman said. “I just want to—”
“Maisie.” The word caused the woman to withdraw her hand and look crossly at whomever had entered. It was a man’s voice, but not one Isra recognized from earlier.
“What?” the woman demanded. “I only thought I’d see—”
“The less you know of her, the better for you,” the man replied, coming at last into Isra’s line of sight. He had brown hair laying over his shoulders, a slender, pale face. When he reached out his own hand toward the woman and she took it, Isra saw swirling black designs on his forearm. “Come. You’re being relieved.”
“By who? Him? Doona be ridiculous,” Maisie scoffed. “He’s in nae condition to sit up with her all the night.”
“He’s not keeping her company,” the long-haired man said, and then pulled the woman away, giving Isra a curious look before both he and the woman were gone. She heard him speak in a low voice again. “You will fetch me at any time if you have need of me? I must have your word or I shan’t leave at all.”
“I will. Val will be here soon to look in on me.”
Isra’s heart skipped in her chest. He’d come back.
She heard the door scrape closed and then heavy footsteps growing louder as he approached. He took the seat Maisie had recently vacated, but beneath his huge frame it seemed a child’s chair. He pulled his right arm toward him and held the elbow in his palm.
“Are you awake?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. She tried to ask what had happened to his arm, but her words were like gravel in her mouth.
Roman leaned forward and retrieved a cup that was out of Isra’s line of sight. “You must either hold up your head or try to grasp the cup. I fear I have only one capable arm at the moment.”
Isra lifted her right hand from the pallet and saw that it trembled. She wrapped her fingers around the cup and discovered the tips beneath her nails were quite numb. She grasped it as firmly as she could. While she concentrated on lifting the cup, Roman slid his wide palm beneath her head and lifted.
Her lips stung as she fitted the rim to her mouth, the sweet taste of the water made salty by her own blood. But each swallow came easier, as if the water was holy elixir in this strange prison. She drank it all.
Roman eased her head back down onto the hard pallet and then took the cup from her before sitting in the chair again.
“You are injured,” she said, her words smoother but still heavy with rasp.
“A gift from the man I found you with,” he said. He paused, as if waiting to see if she would ask the question she was too frightened to give voice to. “He is dead.”
Isra closed her eyes for a brief moment. Thank God.
“Are there more following you?”
She emerged from the darkness once more at his question, to look at this man who seemed to be the embodiment of light with his pale skin, his curling, almost-white hair, and his glittering blue eyes. She was still so afraid. Afraid of the people who effectively held her captive, afraid of this strange land, afraid of Roman Berg’s question, afraid of what a truthful answer might mean for her.
But she would not lie to him.
“I do not know. Probably.”
He said nothing, only nodded while he dropped his gaze to the floor for a moment. Then his face raised again and Isra was enchanted by the way his eyes seemed to hold all the colors of the sky.
“Why are they hunting you?”
Isra swallowed. No lies.
“I killed the man who was to lead the party meant to kill Baldwin. Certainly when they found him dead and me missing . . .”
Roman continued to watch her, his eyes flitting over her face as if trying to discern the truth beneath her swollen features.
She continued. “They likely think me to have gone to Baldwin or to one of his vassals. But at least one tracked me here. There could be more.”
“Why have you come? Why have you sought me out?” he asked. “We are strangers, and you owe the king of Jerusalem nothing.”
“Abdal is dead.”
“I know,” she said. “But there were many evil men ready to take his place. The man who came after him is even worse and has stolen the last thing in my life that I held dear. It is he who has made the pact to kill Baldwin in a time of truce, and I must see that he fails.”
“You came all this way, risked your life, thinking to convince me to return to Syria to exact revenge for you?”
Isra tried to shake her head, but it was little more than a weak wobble. “I am not so selfish, my lord. The man who took Abdal’s place is called Hamid. He has been promised a great deal of gold to assassinate the Christian king for an Englishman named Glayer Felsteppe. I believe you know of him.”
Roman only stared at her, and she could not tell what he was thinking.
“Spies have been placed in the different kingdoms of the Holy Land. There will be minor attacks in the coming months meant to draw both sides out, and when Baldwin nears the north country before the spring, he will be killed.”
“Why?” Roman asked.
“Because,” Isra paused to swallow again, “there have been rumors that the men charged with the betrayal of Chastellet have been wrongly accused. And this Glayer Felsteppe is to receive a very wealthy English estate. In the spring.”
“Baldwin could see him ruined before he gains his title.”
Isra only blinked.
“Who is Hamid’s English connection in the Holy Land?” Roman pressed.
“I do not know his name. A titled lord. Trusted by Baldwin, but frustrated with his lack of power. Would you be able to find him?”
Roman shook his head with a grimace. “That could be anyone in the whole of Jerusalem. Even Baldwin’s own family.” Isra could not tell if he was in pain or chagrined by the holes in her information. “It is not my area of expertise. My duties at Chastellet did not involve mingling with the nobility.”
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