“Oh, he isn’t kept hidden away,” Roman said, and then cooed and clucked to Lou as he replaced the small leather hood. Isra was disappointed; she loved to look at the bird. “This catacomb is paradise for our pale brother. Would you like to see? I have been caged long enough. Perhaps you feel the same.”
Isra thought Roman would be shocked at how close his words were to the truth for her. But she felt she must ask, if only for the safety of him and his friends at Melk. “Is it not dangerous to risk me being seen?”
His grin was boyish. “I assure you, no one comes down here of their own accord unless they must, and Wynn is already very aware of your presence. Ready?”
Isra nodded, wondering what horrific things she would see. The sounds in the night were unnerving enough. But she followed Roman from the cell, trusting he would not lead her into danger.
The gallery beyond was as empty as it had been the handful of times she’d spied it through the doorway of the little barred window. Because of its location beneath the massive abbey, there were no windows, making it nearly impossible to determine whether it was day or night save for the meager light that filtered down the wide stairs from above. But all the torches between the doors were lit and cast a soothing glow over the smooth stone floor and bubbling cistern.
Isra followed Roman to the edge of the fountain.
“Can you guess what is here?” he asked, looking down at her from his considerable height. He seemed a mountain inside this stone cavern, and yet Isra was comforted by his presence, rather than intimidated. “Surely the sounds have given you clues.”
She looked around at the nearly identical doors. “A prison of some sort, I can only assume.” Her eyes found his again. “Or a hospital? A place to care for those who have gone insane? Brother Wynn would be a capable caretaker.”
“Close,” Roman said. “But it’s not ill monks Wynn cares for. He fashions himself a modern Noah, Melk his own personal ark.”
Isra’s eyebrows rose. “The prophet?”
“Yes. Wynn has made it his holy mission on earth to—” His explanation was interrupted by a door banging against the stones, and the sound of the albino monk shouting as he backed through the farthest doorway to the left of the steps, a long staff in one hand and a short whip in the other.
Isra only now noticed that a pair of wrought-iron gates had been swung shut at the bottom of the stairs, sealing off the only exit from the dungeon.
“Well,” Roman said, “I’ll let you see for yourself.”
Isra turned her head to watch the monk back from the cell and into the empty floor of the far gallery. He held the staff and whip away from his body, moving them up and down.
“Hie! Come now. Come now,” Wynn called in a steady voice. “Hie!”
Her eyes widened as half of the wide head appeared in the doorway, the orange and black and white stripes recognizable. She gasped as the tiger took two slow steps into the gallery and then yawned, the torchlight causing its long, pearly fangs to glow.
“Hie, now!” Wynn commanded, cracking the whip and causing the tiger to advance in the direction away from the weapon. It began padding toward the fountain, its shoulders rolling. It stopped as its glowing eyes caught sight of the people standing on the opposite side of the pool, but began walking forward almost at once, an air of curiosity quickening its lazy strides.
“Roman?” Isra asked, unable to keep her hand from inching up to pinch a fold of his robes at his left elbow.
Lou squawked.
“Perhaps I could have chosen a better time,” Roman allowed. “I thought that was the striped horses’ cell.”
“Stay where you are,” Wynn called out, striding behind the tiger and heading around the fountain toward them. “Don’t think to run. Brother Roman, you will wish to remove Lou’s hood.”
Isra began to tremble as Roman did as he was bade without comment, and she couldn’t help her start as the tiger reached the far edge of the pool and stepped up on the smooth stone edge. It crouched there and drank, its wide, flat tongue scooping up the water, but its eyes stayed locked on the people across from it.
Isra felt they were locked on her. Her fingers took more of Roman’s habit into her fist, until she could feel the warmth of his arm beneath the cloth on her skin.
“She’s had her fill,” Wynn explained, “so she’ll likely have little interest in eating you. But she will be curious. Only be still, and do not turn your backs to her.”
To Isra’s dread and fascination, the tiger raised its head and began walking in its rolling gait atop the pool’s edge toward her.
“Have no fear,” Wynn insisted, although Lou did disembark from Roman’s shoulder just then with a warning cry, and the albino monk shoved his way between Isra and Roman, breaking her link with him and holding out his staff across Isra’s chest. “She’s only curious.”
The tiger slunk around the perimeter of the pool closer to Isra, and the water splashing from the fountain seemed to grow as loud as the roar of a waterfall. On such an elevated walk, the animal was as tall as Isra, and its head appeared so wide that she could not have encircled it with both arms. It snuffed and blew, lowering its still dripping muzzle as it slowed to a stop before her, taking up her scent. Isra, too, could smell the tiger’s unique odor, warm and musky, deep like amber inside her head. She forced herself to swallow.
“Easy, easy,” Wynn said in a low voice, and Isra could not be certain whether the monk was speaking to her or to the creature.
The tiger pushed its head forward beneath Wynn’s staff, snorting at Isra’s borrowed gown and then swinging up to brush its nose against her shoulder. Isra felt the damp imprint left by that firm bump and then squeezed her eyes shut as the wide head was suddenly before her face, misting her skin with its humid breath, its whiskers stiff as they dragged across her skin. She gasped through her nose as the tiger pushed its face into hers and then rubbed, running its wide head down the side of Isra’s cheek and then onto her chest.
She dared open her eyes and her hands wanted to lift, to instinctively bury her fingers into the deep fur around the tiger’s face in much the same manner in which she had been unable to resist touching Roman’s falcon, but Wynn’s solid staff cracked down on her wrists.
“No, lady,” Wynn said in a low voice, and Isra understood that the staff had not been for her protection from the tiger.
Then the tiger moved on, stopping before Roman to sniff at the lumpiness of his robe and then finishing the circuit of the pool’s ledge to take up a spot on the far side. The tiger lay down, one paw hanging over the stone edge to dangle in the water, the tip of its tail swishing.
Isra blew out her breath at last, realizing she had been holding it for most of the encounter.
“My apologies, Wynn,” Roman said from the other side of the albino. “I wasn’t aware you would be exercising her this morning.”
“Think nothing of it, my brother,” the monk replied, tucking the handle of the whip beneath his rough cincture. “Indeed, this is not our routine, but she has only just finished the last of—” The albino glanced at Isra so quickly that she could almost convince herself that she had imagined it. “Her meal. She’s not been about for several days.”
Terrible screeching and banging noises erupted behind the trio, causing all three heads to swivel toward the opposite end of the gallery. Isra saw little brown hands reaching through the barred window of one of the doors, a dreadful cacophony behind it.
“Well, blast,” Wynn said. “Better release them before they render us all deaf. They’ll have nothing else but to be let out if Princess is about. Do you stay or go?” Wynn demanded.
Roman looked at Isra and raised his eyebrows.
“As you wish,” Isra said, lowering her eyes, but inside she trembled with anticipation.
“We’ll stay, if we won’t be a hindrance,” Roman told the pale monk. Wynn moved away and she dared a look at Roman. He was watching her. “Are you not frightened of what wild beasts Wynn might next introduce?”
<
br /> She shook her head. “There are worse things to be frightened of than animals.”
Her answer seemed to be punctuated an instant later by the skittering, dashing, screeching brown balls that flew across the stones around their feet, causing Isra’s skirts to sway. The creatures swarmed over the ledge of the fountain, their long tails held erect behind them, and overtook the tiger so suddenly that Princess squealed and went over the side of the fountain into the pool, her big paws swiping in the air, slinging up wide arcs of water.
The monkeys dashed away, chittering and screaming in what sounded like delight.
“They torment her so when they know she is too fat to be nimble,” Wynn chortled as he came once more to stand between Isra and Roman. “She behaves as though she would kill each one of them and eat them as raisins, but I can’t help but think she has grown attached to them. They are the only creatures who will come near her. She is getting old. She needs a mate.” His face turned toward Isra. “I don’t suppose you know of anyone with a male tiger, do you?”
Isra pressed her mouth together into a grim line. “I am sorry. No.”
The monk turned back to watch the monkeys frolicking in the water. “Ah, well. God’s will be done.”
“Is she tame, then?” Isra asked, finding herself unable to keep from asking after the majestic tiger who had pulled herself out of the pool, shook, and was lying along the stone edge once more, licking one massive paw. “Princess.”
The albino looked at Isra as if she’d just turned into a monkey herself. “Tame? Lady, this is no domestic creature who lurks inside a gentle stable seeking rodents. She is tigris. More specifically, she is a man-eater.”
Isra’s eyes went over the monk’s head to Roman’s face, as if he would give her some reassurance. But he seemed as enthralled by the albino’s speech as Isra.
“Oh, yes,” Wynn continued, looking across the pool at the stunning animal who had turned her attention to grooming her chest. “Tigers can come to have a taste for human flesh. Princess killed and consumed more than a score in her village before she was captured. Why do you think they brought the—”
“Wynn,” Roman warned in a low voice.
The monk quirked his mouth and then continued, hardly skipping a beat in his story. “She was on her way to be used for sport in the south of France, I believe, when I purchased her.”
Isra didn’t know whether she was horrified or amazed. “You do not fear her? Down here, all alone?”
Brother Wynn rocked back on his sandals, as if considering her question. “The day I am afraid of her is the day she shall kill me. So, no, lady, I am not afraid. That is the way with tigers. You must always face them. Always command them. The moment you allow yourself to believe the tiger cares for you, the tiger is your friend, you have tamed the tiger, that is when the tiger loses all respect for you. They kill animals they feel are lesser than them, weaker than them. Sometimes, too, they eat those animals.” The monk sniffed.
“How do you come to know so much about the creatures?” Isra asked, slightly unnerved at the man’s outlining of the bloodthirstiness of the animal lounging not thirty feet from them.
Wynn glanced at her, a frown creasing his forehead over invisible eyebrows. “God has given me this knowledge. It is my holy mission. Why else would I be here?”
“Thank you for allowing me to see her,” Isra said, dropping her eyes to the stones for a moment. When she raised her face it was to find Roman’s eyes again. “I would prefer to return to my cell now, if it will not disturb Brother Wynn’s charges.”
“Not at all,” Wynn said, already sliding his whip from his cincture. “She needs to exercise her limbs, any matter. She lies about enough.” The monk moved away from them and around the fountain toward the tiger, who watched the albino over one shoulder and flashed her teeth. Wynn cracked his whip and raised both arms in response. “Hie now, you great sloth. Come! Up with you!”
“I think it best we go now, before Wynn becomes more enthusiastic about exercise, don’t you?”
She smiled her agreement and let him lead her back to the safety of her own cage. Unlike the tiger, Isra felt afraid of the open, of the unknown. Princess was fierce, fearless, a man-eater.
Then the thought of the man she had killed in Damascus came charging through her memories; the worst of all the things she had seen and done and been forced to do in the past three years swirled in her mind, causing her face to flush with blood and her heart to pound.
And she wondered if, even though it was Roman Berg who pulled her into the cell, it was she who was leading him to damnation.
* * *
Roman shut the door behind Isra. There was no bolt on the inside, but he was confident enough in Wynn’s rule over his subjects that there was nothing to fear from the creatures milling about the gallery beyond the wooden barrier. He went to the table near the cot and unrolled the map he’d brought earlier. The table’s surface was not wide enough for the chart, so he spread it on the clean, rough stone floor, tucking one curling side under the legs of the table. He placed the toe of his right sandal on the other end of the map. Isra came to sit above him on the pallet, her feet tucked to the side and one slender arm holding her while she leaned over the diagram.
“We are here,” Roman said, pressing the index finger of his left hand in approximately the middle of the continent. Then he reached up to the tabletop, breaking off a long, curling piece of cooled yellow wax from the base of the metal candleholder. He snapped it in half and placed one piece on the area he’d indicated.
“Here is where we must go.” He dropped the other piece of wax east of the Mediterranean, west of Damascus. Then he looked up at Isra, who was frowning at the map. “What way did you come?”
She only continued staring at the map, her eyes becoming a little wider, her face a little pale under her olive complexion. “Where is Constantinople?” she asked, her voice carrying a heavier hint of rasp than it had since she’d first awakened.
Roman pointed to the little spit of land between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Isra’s lips parted and she was as still as one of the statues in the abbey’s bailey for a moment. Then she turned wide, frightened eyes to Roman. “Where am I?” she asked in wonder.
“You don’t know?”
Isra shook her head.
Now it was Roman’s turn to frown. “You’re at Melk Abbey. In Austria.”
“Austria,” Isra echoed in a whisper, dropping her eyes back to the map on the floor. He saw her throat move as she swallowed.
“Isra, how did you get here?” Roman asked.
She raised her face to look at him and her eyes welled. “I walked,” she said, her voice cracking.
His heart flinched in his chest. “Alone? From Damascus?”
Isra nodded and then swiped her fingertips under her eyes before the tears could spill over. “What month is it?”
“October.” He tried to keep his voice even. “When did you begin?”
Her voice was thin and reedy when she answered. “July.” She swallowed again. “That would explain why it is so cold.”
Roman felt his jaw grow tense, and he had to look away for a moment. Was it even possible that this woman had walked to Austria alone—a journey that had taken her four months—while being hunted the entire way? That she hadn’t known what month it was, or where she’d ended up? It didn’t seem conceivable.
He looked back to her. “You must tell me how you knew where I was. How you found me.” He heard the threat inherent in his tone, but he could no longer be gentle with her. What she was suggesting was so unlikely that Roman feared Constantine’s wariness of the woman could be warranted.
She shook her head, and for a moment, Roman wondered if she would refuse to tell him. But then she met his eyes. “You will not believe me.”
He had no choice. “If you do not tell me, Isra, I will be forced to report to my friends that you cannot be trusted. I doubt I need remind you what their initial plans
for you were.”
She winced, as if he had physically struck her. Her shoulders rounded, her head ducked. She hadn’t shown this weakness to Constantine; was it an act for his benefit? Did she think him naïve?
Was he naïve when it came to her?
“I snuck through the city gate at night, behind the men who led the patrols,” she said in a steady voice, although she wouldn’t meet his eyes now. “I followed in their wake to the base of the hills, and when they returned to the city, I fled north into Mumed-Adin. I hid in the brush when the sun rose.”
All Roman could see of her face was the black fringe of lashes above the tip of her nose. “That night, I carried on toward Antioch.”
Roman frowned. “You came directly here from Damascus. You instinctively knew the route to take and where to find me.”
“No,” she whispered. “There were many nights I went in the wrong direction. At first I did not know.”
“You didn’t know what?” Roman demanded. He felt his heart growing cold in his chest and he didn’t care for the feeling at all. The feeling of being made a fool of. The feeling of knowing this woman was sealing her fate with every word she spoke.
“My lord, as I have told you, my mother is dead. But she came to me in my dreams while I hid in the daylight. She led me on the correct paths.”
Roman stared at the top of her head. He didn’t know what to say. But he had no need to say anything, for Isra continued. “It was many weeks before I realized that when my sister came to me while I slept, I was in danger.”
“Your sister—she is dead, too, I suppose?” Roman was shocked to hear the condescension in his voice. It sounded unlike him even to his own ears.
Isra gave a tight nod.
“You’re right,” Roman said. He took a moment to collect himself, while the coldness in his heart turned fully to ice. “I don’t believe you.” And then he slid his sandal from the map and pulled the other edge from beneath the table legs. He rose and then awkwardly rolled up the parchment against his torso with one hand, the little pieces of wax flying across the floor.
“Her name was Huda,” Isra whispered. “She was ten years old.”
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