Isra spun around and stalked in the other direction. “But the woman only heard terrible roars and, thinking she would soon be eaten, she dropped her water bucket and ran for her life toward the village, shouting for help.
“The prince, seeking to calm her fears, gave chase. He caught her quickly, reaching out his arms to embrace her, lowering his head for that first sweet kiss. But when she did not respond, the prince looked and saw that his love was dead, mauled by his long claws and sharp teeth.”
The crowd was tomb silent, and so Isra lowered her voice and stepped around Roman’s solid form, nearly whispering to the crowd now pressed together in hushed expectation.
“And so the prince retreated back into the jungle, damned for eternity to live out his days as a tormented beast, never to be seen again.” She turned and walked toward the wagon, pulled herself up on the rear wheel. “Until tonight.” She looked up and saw that Gunar was already unfastening the latches at the top of the wooden walls, and then Isra looked over the crowd, where streams of people still trickled in from alleys and other parts of the city.
Word was spreading. The baskets were filling.
“Ladies and gentleman, Prince Kahn!” Isra pushed the edge of the front wall away as Gunar trotted along the roof, freeing the other three walls that crashed to the dirt, and the crowd gasped in delight.
Isra looked to her right and saw, as if she had trained him to do so, Kahn rising up on his haunches in the center of the cage, pawing the air with his fangs bared.
A shiver ran up her spine at his magnificence, at his power. A shiver of pride, and yes, a little fear.
Nickle appeared near her feet, bearing the wrapped portion of butchered meat she had procured for the tiger, and in the next moment, Gunar hopped down on the opposite rear wheel.
“Ready, mistress?” he asked in a low voice.
Isra nodded, and van Groen’s squire opened the door enough for Isra to slip inside the cage. Again the crowd gasped, and Isra unfurled her whip.
“Hie, Kahn!” she called, and the crack split the air.
The tiger snarled and tossed his head, spittle flying from his whiskers.
She flicked the whip again. “Hie, Kahn! Come!” Her heart felt as though it would burst in her chest.
Then the tiger reared to his full height again, his scream pressing against Isra’s eardrums. The wagon shook as he fell back to his front paws, and Isra knew it was enough. She flung the meat to the far end of the wagon, where Kahn chased it down and pounced on it. Isra backed quickly to the door, and in the next moment she was free, swinging herself around the end of the wagon on top of the wheel, one arm extended over the crowd.
“Prince Kahn!” she announced in a triumphant voice.
And Constantinople welcomed the menagerie at last.
Chapter 21
Roman sat on the floor of van Groen’s wagon, watching Isra in the lantern light as she removed her tiger’s eye crown and released her hair from the numerous plaits—twice as many as she had worn on her first performance in Constantinople three nights before. Her eyes were kohled and her cheeks rouged so artfully that he thought Fran herself would approve. The shape of Isra’s face was sharper now, her eyes at a dramatic, dark slant.
Roman found her nearly irresistible.
They were in the very center of the city now and had held private performances for the mayor and his court and, tonight, a visiting emir and his entourage. Isra was the darling of the city, and the troupe now had enough coin to journey the entire way back to Austria without performing if they so desired. But because she was the darling, Roman feared Isra’s continued presence in Constantinople, her spreading fame, was becoming more and more dangerous.
And so the time had come to discuss the future.
“I’ve spoken with Zeus,” he began. “We’ll leave for Jerusalem on the morrow.”
Isra’s hands slowed on the last of the ribbons and she looked to him. “As you wish.”
“It is unsafe for you here now; word is spreading,” he explained, although she had not asked for any explanation.
“I understand.” She carefully folded van Groen’s familiar green tunic.
Roman ran his tongue along his teeth, buying himself a moment of time. “I don’t want you to show Kahn again.”
Now her eyes flashed, her mouth thinned. But she only replied, “As you wish.”
Roman was frustrated. He had expected some sort of argument, at least a press for an explanation, and instead Isra was giving him curt obedience, almost as if she was angry with him.
“Do you not have anything to say?” he asked at last. “No disagreement with my decisions, no questions?”
“Yes, I have questions,” she said, placing the tunic in the trunk carefully before pushing it beneath the cot. “But they are nothing to do with leaving Constantinople.”
Now he was more confused. “Then what are you angry with me for?” he asked.
She looked up to him. “I do not wish to discuss it.”
“You have questions, but you won’t ask them? That makes no sense, Isra.”
She turned around quickly. “It makes no sense? It makes no sense? I offered myself to you weeks ago and you refused me. I think you do not want me, and I accept your decision. But then you treat me like your woman, you protect me and care for me and buy me gifts; you lie with me at night and hold me in your arms. You kiss my face, my hands, you have my very future in your hands, and yet you let me linger, not making me yours in truth. Is that because you only plan to leave me behind? Or because you would regret taking me?”
The wagon was silent except for the quiet squeak-squeak of the lantern set swinging by her speech. Roman looked up at her and his frustration melted away.
“You’re angry with me because we haven’t made love?”
“No! I am angry with you because I do not know what I am to you!”
He held his hand up to her. “Come here,” he said.
She lifted her chin. “No. You answer me first.”
“All right,” he said and dropped his hand, unable to hide his smile. She was nearly unrecognizable from the woman he had found on the hillside at Melk.
“I will ask you to be mine,” he said, looking into her eyes.
“When?” she pressed. “The forty-third of Never?” Her accent trilled the words, making them so much more amusing coming from her mouth in anger.
He chuckled. “Sooner than that, I hope. But I can tell you one thing . . .” He held up his hand again and lifted his eyebrows to her in unspoken question. After a moment’s hesitation she came to him and placed her fingers in his palm. He pulled her down onto his lap and cradled her against his chest.
“When we decide our future, it will not be in Asa van Groen’s wagon. And it will not be until you feel you are truly free.”
She turned her head against his tunic to look up at him. “What do you mean?”
“You still feel beholden to me,” Roman explained. “And your past is yet between us. Not on my part but on yours. I am not your master or your keeper or your lord, and I don’t ever wish to be.”
“But I l—”
He placed his finger over her lips and shook his head. “There are things in my heart that I would have you know. But I will not be free to speak them until we are finished with this business hanging over us.”
“After we find King Baldwin?”
“If we find King Baldwin,” he corrected. “We shall see how you feel about me then.”
“You are a terrible master,” she said and lay her head back down. “To deny me so. You say yourself that we don’t even know if we will locate the king. He could be dead already, and then we would be more likely to find the forty-third of Never.”
Roman smiled at the frown in her voice and opened his mouth to speak, but he was cut off by a polite knock on the door of the wagon. He eased Isra aside, mindful to disguise the discomfort in his chausses, and leaned over to open the door.
“Boss?” Zeus asked, h
alf his face flickering by the torch he held. “Some men requesting to speak with you.”
Roman glanced over Zeus’s shoulder but could only make out the shadowy outline of a trio standing in the common, backlit by the few torches still alight by those members of the troupe loathe to retire from the festive atmosphere of Constantinople at night.
He looked back at Isra, who still wore a frown, though now it was tinged with worry.
“Lock the door behind me,” he said in a low voice. At her nod of understanding, he slid the dagger Valentine had given him back into its place beneath his belt and pulled himself from the wagon.
“Is there a problem?” he asked, looking to the silhouette of strangers.
“No problem,” the man in front replied, stepping toward Roman in a completely nonthreatening manner. As he continued speaking, Roman noted his heavy Frankish accent. “We only wish to commend you on your successful performance and extend to you an invitation on behalf of our lord to perform for his household and esteemed guests. We hope you will accept.”
Roman frowned. They could stay no longer in Constantinople; it had already been decided. “It is not the menagerie’s habit to disappoint an eager patron, but we are moving on with the dawn.”
“Then let us attempt to persuade your direction,” the man said with a smile. “We have come to invite you to the Castle Kerak at the request of Raynald of Chatillon. Certainly you have heard of him.”
Roman’s blood seemed to freeze in his veins. This was the lord who’d been accused of breaking Baldwin’s truce with Saladin. Was it possible they would be led directly into the assassin’s den?
“Not being of the soldiering ilk, I’m sorry to say I have not,” Roman lied. “It is possible Kerak is much farther south than we planned on traveling.”
“Perhaps it will sway you to know that my lord wishes your entertainment for none other than the king of Jerusalem himself,” the man rejoined. “Soldier or nay, everyone in this part of the world is familiar with Baldwin. The Leper is in poor health, and my lord wishes to bring joy and comfort to his dear ally. You will be paid handsomely for your performance, and given leave to advance through to Jerusalem if you so desire. The winter weather there is much more tolerable, I should advise you.”
“I’ll need to speak with my men,” was all Roman would say, and he felt an odd trembling in his hands, usually steady and untouched by anxiety.
Roman marveled at the idea that a laugh could be accented. “That is noble of you,” the stranger allowed. “But our request is only a courtesy. My lord insists you accept. If you have any intentions whatsoever of traveling south of Constantinople and prefer to do so safely, perhaps you will quickly consider our request.”
“I see,” Roman said and thought of how van Groen would handle the situation. He gave a bow. “Certainly, we would be honored to entertain the king at Kerak.”
“Bien. We will send an escort to your party at dawn to lead you from the city. There will be no performances along the route for commoners; we must travel quickly. You will be compensated for any loss of income. Adieu.”
Roman watched the three men turn and depart the alley while Zeus stood at his side.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” the strongman said.
“So do I, Zeus,” Roman said, clapping the man on the back and then turning toward the wagon once more, where Isra waited. “So do I.”
* * *
Despite the man’s initial reluctance, traveling from Constantinople through the county of Antioch was an uneventful pleasure. Surrounded front and back by Raynald’s soldiers ensured that the caravan was completely safe from thieves, and the camps at night were festive things, the fighting men intermingling with the troupe beneath warm, starry skies filled with music and laughter and plenty of drinking.
Isra felt layers of anxiety peeling off her like the woolen skirts she had discarded as the familiar scents of her homeland surrounded her and the horizon beckoned to her like a beloved acquaintance. They were going to a Christian stronghold, far from Damascus and from anyone who might know her. Although it caused a prickle at her spine to even think it, she had reason to believe now that Roman would soon accomplish his mission and he and his friends would be free.
As would she.
Would she then be his?
She watched him as he sat around the campfire, discussing things she had little interest in with a small group of soldiers, his expression intense in the midst of the conversation, but his posture relaxed, easy. Any concern that his true identity and connection to Chastellet would be discovered was soon relieved as the men in Raynald’s company had not been in the Holy Land at the time and knew little about the trouble at the Templar fortress, which seemed to have happened ages ago to them in this place of constant strife. All the troupe referred to Roman as boss, and it had been assumed that Roman was nothing more than the leader of a band of performing misfits who traveled the map for coin.
Isra had handily excluded herself from scrutiny when her nationality was questioned by implying that Roman had purchased her from her master years ago. This had made the blond man frown fiercely at her as the soldiers congratulated him on his good sense, but to Isra’s mind, the idea of Roman acquiring her wasn’t entirely untrue. The night she had met him on the Damascus street had been the moment when her life had changed. When the first thoughts of rebellion had been tiny seeds planted in her mind, the first time she had deliberately disobeyed the rules of her life up to that point.
Her master’s name had been fear, and now that master was gasping its last breaths.
She sat next to Roman as he drove the horses over the hard, bumpy road, and it was she who pointed out the long, rectangular shape of Kerak as it came into view. Sitting atop a great hill over the city, it seemed a forbidding place—stark and silent and enormous against the white sky at noon. But while Isra was disconcerted at the sight of the fortress, Roman was fascinated, pointing out to her details of its construction, naming the parts of the stronghold and their purposes. His knowledge of and obvious passion for building was evident, and she found herself proud of his intelligence and skill.
He craned his neck in all directions as they pulled through the first gatehouse into an enclosed bailey, the citadel itself still some distance away and behind another walled barrier. The caravan progressed slowly through the compound until they were in the inner bailey, and at last the long train of vehicles came to a stop.
The troupe set up the round in the bailey, directed by the stewards of the house, and Isra and Roman fell into their established routines of helping erect awnings, stake festive pennants, and adjust the spacing of the carts. The inhabitants of the compound paused to smile and point and whisper to their companions as they crossed the dirt en route on their various errands, or took a moment to lean over the long, smooth half walls of the verandas suspended on the side of the keep overhead and peer at the activity below.
The stable master had refused in no uncertain terms to house the troupe’s ragged animals alongside the fine beasts of the lord or the garrison, so Roman and Zeus made do with a splintered trough in a corner of the bailey and piles of fodder brought by two young boys. Isra had to smile at the sight of the now tattered red sick flags ringing the makeshift corral, remembering that first camp she and Roman had made together.
“He’s quite the handsome fellow, is he not?” Delilah said in a whispered giggle and nudged Isra’s ribs with her wide, round elbow so that she staggered on her feet. “I fancied him a bit myself at first. Even if his face is oversmooth.”
Her cheeks warmed over her smile and she dropped her eyes, but she said nothing as she continued sorting Delilah’s little beaded jewelry into the wooden display bins. There wasn’t time for her to sit and stare after Roman; the steward had commanded that she would perform within the hour. It was much sooner than Isra had expected; she’d thought perhaps on the morrow, after everyone had had time to rest and Roman would have time to surreptitiously seek out the Chris
tian king.
Isra dropped the last bag of carved bead rings into a little niche, continuing to smile to herself as she caught sight of the identical one she still wore, and then left the bearded woman with a wave, walking around the side of van Groen’s wagon. There was just enough time for her to change into her costume and prepare for the performance. But when she raised her eyes across the compound she stopped short at the rear corner and pressed herself back against the wood.
There, walking across a far corner of the bailey toward the wide opening that led into the main building was a pair of Damascene soldiers, the telltale colors of their sashes like a slap to Isra’s face. She looked as closely as she could at their dark faces, so out of place here in this compound of reddened, pale complexions—and so much like Isra’s own—but she could not say they were familiar at such a distance.
Neither could she say they were not.
A hand grasped her arm from behind and Isra barely stifled her scream as she jumped and spun around, pulling free of the grasp.
But it was Roman who had touched her—of course.
“What is it?” he asked, at once alert to the fear on her face.
“Those men,” she began and turned around to indicate the pair of soldiers, but they had vanished. “They must have gone inside.” She looked up at him again. “Two men. Perhaps from Damascus.”
Roman’s brow fell into a frown. “It’s possible they are only mercenaries, but there is no way of inquiring unless we wish to incur suspicion. I’ve just been told the king is feeling exceptionally poorly this evening and will not be present for your performance.”
Now it was Isra’s turn to frown. “I thought it strange they wished the troupe to perform so soon after our arrival. Think you they would make their attempt this night?”
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