Behold the Dawn

by Weiland, K. M.

“Gone.” Roderic stared at the open tent flap, and the sunlight stung his bloodshot eyes. Fear again bared its fangs, ready to puncture his heart. “He’s left us to join Matthias?”

  “No doubt.” Hugh planted a hand on either side of his sword belt. “I warned you he was dangerous.”

  “We don’t know he betrayed us,” Warin said. “It may be he is among the dead—or in the prison camp. But we shall never discover the truth if Richard continues with this mad plan to prevent us from exchanging the prisoners.”

  His words were a mere buzz in Roderic’s ears. All he could see—all he could think about—was what would happen if this Marcus Annan had indeed survived and was even now on his way to find and warn Matthias. If he did, not only would Roderic never gain the chance of destroying Matthias once and for all, but very likely it would bring Matthias down upon him with vigor and resolve redoubled.

  That could not happen. Must not happen.

  “Find him.” Roderic had to fight to keep himself still, had to concentrate on making his breathing even. “Kill him.”

  Warin dropped his head in a bow, almost in time to mask the compression of his lips. “You wish us to see to it personally, your Grace?”

  “Yes.” The sunlight burned in Roderic’s eyes, drawing moisture from the corners. “First make certain he is not a prisoner. If he is and Saladin decides to slaughter them all in retaliation, we will have no need to worry.”

  Beneath his pointed beard, an expression of satisfaction tugged at Hugh’s mouth. “Perhaps we shall also find the Earl of Keaton and his retinue.”

  Roderic snapped his gaze to the Norman’s face. “I care not about the Earl of Keaton! And I care not about Richard’s prisoners.” He glared at Warin. “My very life may be in danger! All I care is that you find him and kill him. By all that is holy, can you not understand that?”

  Both men, whatever their personal disagreements, could not but recognize the force behind his words. They nodded in unison, and, by their eyes, Roderic knew they would obey whether they understood or not.

  * * *

  All of Annan’s dreams were battles.

  The clash of iron against iron; the stampede of hooves pounding sod and rock alike; the wordless roar of men pitted one against another. Sometimes he dreamt of St. Dunstan’s Abbey, sometimes he dreamt of the tourneys. And now he dreamt of the Crusade.

  He jerked awake and knew immediately that he had been shot. His heart beat with a ferocity that left him winded, a lingering effect of the phantom battles in his head. He lay still for a moment, slowing his breathing the better to hear and casting from his mind the broken images of his dream.

  He waited, listening to the moans and rasped mutterings of the other wounded in the tent and to the wind rattling across taut canvas. It was dark, save for distant firelight gleaming from the other side of the tent wall. Had he been rescued, after all?

  Carefully, quietly, he thrust an elbow against the ground and levered himself up. The movement woke dormant pains all through his chest; the back of his head throbbed with a heaviness born in part of his long unconsciousness.

  He sucked air past his teeth and waited until all the little pains resolved into a single great one, concentrated high in his left breast, just beneath the collarbone. Gingerly, he exhaled. He remembered now—everything up to the point when he had fallen from his horse. How long ago had that been? How many hours, days, weeks had passed since then? And where was he now?

  Outside, voices murmured meaningless words. Foreign words, he realized. Turkish words.

  His heart turned cold. He was a prisoner.

  The voices stopped, then grew nearer, accompanied by the sound of footfalls. Ignoring the ache of his bones, he swiveled on his hip and fumbled onto his knees. His hand reached instinctively for his weapons, but both his sword and the dagger he wore at his back were gone, as were his mail and helm. He wore a loose white tunic, the sleeves rolled above his elbows, and, beneath that, a swathe of cotton across his injured shoulder.

  The voices ceased as half a dozen shadows stopped before the tent flap. The canvas was thrust aside, and a scarred Moslem entered with a torch. Two Knights Hospitalers followed, supporting a semiconscious Christian.

  Annan quelled the coiled intensity in his body. The Moslem merely glanced at him, gestured to a pallet at the other end of the tent, and muttered something in his own language. The Hospitalers lowered their burden to the indicated ground and set about straightening the man’s fevered limbs.

  Casting the light of his torch across the unconscious and semiconscious denizens of the hospital tent, the Moslem grunted and handed the torch to one of the Hospitalers. For the first time, the light fell on a dark-haired woman. She stood just inside the entrance, one hand lowering the tent flap behind her, the other clutching a bundle to her chest.

  Her large eyes—the color of freshly turned soil—shifted to meet Annan’s, and she started toward him, lithe and straight, like a reed in the wind. Her bearing spoke of nobility, but she bore it with a composure that was charming, even alluring. The hair hanging in confusion to her waist was thick and straight and not quite black.

  She stopped before him, and a smile touched her mouth. “Master Knight.”

  “Lady.”

  The smile deepened slightly, and she knelt beside him. Her free hand pressed against his uninjured shoulder. “Are you not aware that you are yet an invalid? Lie down, please.”

  He yielded, ignoring the grumbling pains in his chest.

  She helped him straighten himself, then leaned over him to lift the dressing from his wound. Her hair fell past her shoulder and brushed against his bare arm. “I’m glad you’ve woken. The Hospitalers thought you might not.” She glanced at him, then back to the dressing. “The wound is healing well. If you were wondering.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Mairead. I am the Countess of Keaton.”

  “Keaton?” He breathed deeply, fighting back an overwhelming weariness of brain and bone. His eyes drifted from her face and focused on the shadows in the canvas above his head. “You were the woman with the Earl of Keaton. His… wife?”

  “Aye.” Her voice snagged on the word, and he shifted his gaze back to meet hers.

  “Where—” He could feel the catch in his own voice even before he heard it. “He is here?”

  “Aye. He was wounded.” She replaced the dressing and tugged the collar of his tunic to cover it. She didn’t look at him. “Do you know him?”

  He lifted an unsteady right hand to rub his chin. “I did. A long time ago.”

  Her hands came to rest in her lap, clasping themselves with an utter calmness that bespoke inner pain all too well. “What is your name, Sir?”

  “Marcus Annan.” He exhaled, and an unrealized shudder filled the breath. Here, before him, was the woman Father Roderic had been willing to pay him to kidnap. They were all within his grasp—this woman, Lord William, even the Baptist. He had not accepted the commission, but did not the mere fact that his reputation had given men cause to think he would, make it fitting that he lay here now, in their presence, an arrow hole in his body?

  Her face gave no sign that she recognized his name. “You fought in the siege of Acre?”

  “Aye.”

  “I can tell from your voice that you are Scottish. But you wore no cross on your surcoat?”

  “I’m not a Crusader.”

  “Then why come to the Holy Land?”

  “A pilgrimage.”

  “To visit the shrines of the saints?”

  “Nay.”

  The look in her eyes was one of further questions, but he gave no further explanation. She was young, perhaps a score and five years, and there was still much of the girl in her. The contours of her face were narrower than they would have been as a child, the lines harder. But he could still see the girl she must once have been—in the soft formation of her words, in the way she held her lower lip between her teeth, in the striking contrast between pale skin and dark unr
uly hair. “How did an English countess come to be in this sty?”

  “I came with my lord.” Her hair fell across her cheek, shielding her.

  Annan stared at her. There was more than this to her story, including no doubt the bounty in Turkish gold placed upon her head by Father Roderic. The Baptist had been more right about Lord William’s danger than he knew.

  She stirred and turned her head to find her bundle, still without lifting her eyes. “I should go. Lord William is waiting—”

  “What’s the status of the prisoners?”

  She hesitated. “There are rumors that we are to be released. The Christians have taken Acre. They took it the day you were brought here. King Richard’s terms call for 200,000 pieces of gold, the return of our True Cross, and an exchange of prisoners.”

  “When?”

  “I know not. Soon though, I think.”

  She began to rise, and he reached out to grasp her wrist. She looked down at him, and her lips parted in surprise.

  Lifting himself onto his good elbow, he looked her in the eye. “Lady, I wish to see the Earl of Keaton.”

  “That’s impossible. He is wounded, he is dying. He can see no one.” She started to pull away, but he held fast, his eyes boring into hers.

  “I must see him before he dies. Tell him—” He filled his lungs with the stench of sweat and filth and rotting flesh. “Tell him that someone who saw St. Dunstan’s fall wishes to see him.”

  She stared at him, and her dark eyes grew wider yet. It was clear she knew at least part of the story behind the name. Did she know it was knowledge of the Abbey that had driven the earl to this place?

  “You know Matthias?” Trembling, she drew away, her eyes still on his face. “Aye. I will tell him.”

  And then she left, tearing her gaze from his face and slipping from the tent in silence.

  * * *

  She did not return until after the moon passed its zenith, hours later.

  The night’s coolness had done little to quell the heat of the sick tent or the fevered moans and thrashings of its occupants. If Annan had slept at all, it was only fitfully. Mostly, he had sat with his head in his hands and wished he might pray, though he did not know what he would ask. For redemption? For the chance to revoke the gory past? For peace? He snorted; he would not waste his time in futility.

  He thought of Lord William and of the Baptist and of the Lady Mairead. And of Matthias. Matthias who had destroyed Annan’s life, who had left him this empty, desecrated shell of a man. Matthias who was responsible for the path that had led William and Mairead to this place, whose only legacy could be their deaths.

  Gethin still thought Matthias the hero he had been lauded as so many years ago, when he had destroyed the Abbey of St. Dunstan’s. But he was wrong, so very wrong. Gethin did not know the truth of what Matthias had been. Annan did. Hatred churned in his heart as he had not allowed it to in years.

  It was then that the whisper of footsteps and the gentle kiss of cloth against cloth brought him from the darkness of his thoughts. A hand thrust aside the tent flap, and Mairead stood, silhouetted against a cloudy sky.

  He took his head from his hands and watched her creep through the maze of pallets. She stooped before him, her features obscured in the shadows. “Word has come that Richard slaughtered his prisoners yestermorning.”

  His spine went stiff. He knew the implications of such an act. “Why?”

  “Saladin delayed in collecting the ransom money.” She leaned nearer. “Lord William fears retribution against us. I have told him what you said, and he bids you come to him if you are able.”

  “My legs will bear me.”

  “Then come.”

  She led him outside, into a night that was cold beneath its windblown sky. He could see no stars, and he could only surmise that the time was somewhere between midnight and matins. Campfires burned in the distance, flickering, dancing to the windsong. But there were no voices, no shadows of mankind. All the night was still, save the snapping of the lady’s cloak and the crunch of his own footsteps.

  His legs did indeed bear him, though he could feel the weakness that dragged at his muscles. The back of his head was still heavy from his long unconsciousness, and his shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat. But he could sense that full strength was not so distant as it might have been. He would be well enough to run—and fight—when the time came. If what the lady said about the English king slaughtering his prisoners were true, that time was near at hand.

  She led him to a soiled gray tent languishing beneath two twisted cedars. Firelight gleamed inside the canvas walls, swaying in time with the shadows of at least two men.

  Mairead stopped at the door flap and turned to look up at him. “He is not well, Master Annan. I pray your news is good.”

  On a raised pallet at the far end of the tent lay a man much older than Annan’s memories of the earl. He was stretched prone beneath a thin coverlet, arms limp at his sides. Skin ashen, breath harsh, this man was not the stalwart, laughing knight who had once been both a mentor and a friend.

  Slowly, head bowed to keep from brushing the low ceiling, Annan came forward, Mairead trailing him. The other men in the tent, a priest and a servant, drew back to let him pass.

  At the bedside, he stopped. A splotch of brown showed against the muslin bandage that covered the shallow rise and fall of William’s chest. Annan’s mouth twisted. Gethin had been right. Father Roderic had wreaked his havoc once more.

  If Annan had listened to Gethin… if he had believed… would this still have happened?

  No. When Gethin had come to him in Italy, he said William had already embarked for the Holy Land.

  For once, Annan could not blame himself.

  Mairead drew near, glanced at him, then dropped to her knees beside the bed and laid a hand on William’s. “My lord.”

  His eyelids fluttered open.

  “He has come,” she said.

  His eyes flicked past her face. Annan stayed as he was, lips pressed together, and waited to see his reaction. When Lord William’s breath rasped deep in his chest and his lips silently formed a name, Annan knew that here, at least, was one who had not forgotten him.

  “Lord William.” His own voice was low.

  The earl raised his hand from Mairead’s, and Annan stepped forward to clasp it. “I feared you dead,” William rasped.

  He referred to St. Dunstan’s, Annan knew. That was the last they had seen each other, the last either knew of the other. But Annan brushed over it. “The lady says you seek Matthias of Claidmore.”

  William’s eyebrow lifted just slightly. He darted a glance at Mairead and then nodded. “Aye—” The word was a hacking cough. He patted his wife’s hand. “Leave us, child.”

  Lady Mairead lifted her skirt and rose to her feet, her eyes seeking Annan’s in an expression that was as much a plea of hope as it was an admission of despair.

  Lord William turned his head to look at the priest and the serving boy. “Leave us, all of you.”

  When they had gone, dropping the tent flap back across the cold expanse of night, the earl’s eyes found Annan’s, and he beckoned with his fingers, his arm not rising from the pallet. “Come to me.”

  Annan drew a step nearer and knelt.

  “I prayed we would meet again.” A smile carved its way through the slack skin of the earl’s face.

  Annan said nothing. He had thought never to see Lord William again. And now to have found him like this… dying.

  “You’ve seen the Baptist?” William asked.

  Annan forced a nod. “In Italy.”

  “Then you know?”

  “That Father Roderic wishes to eradicate all memories of St. Dunstan’s? Aye.”

  William sighed, and phlegm rattled in his throat. “He has hunted us like dogs.” Still not raising his hand from the coverlet, he gestured with his fingers to the wound in his breast. “And now here I lie. The bishop fears the repercussions of what happened there more than
you can know.”

  “So the Baptist told me.”

  Behind Annan, the fire hissed and snapped.

  “And what—” The earl caught a cough before it could tear his throat, then paused to swallow. “And what is the news you bring me?”

  “What news do you wish?”

  “I’ve heard whispers that Matthias is dead.” Life burned a little harder behind the brown eyes. “Is that true?”

  “It’s true.” He met the earl’s gaze.

  “The Baptist insists that cannot be.” The words had a hard, raspy edge. William stopped another cough from forming, but Annan could see the quiver in his chest, the specks of saliva gathering in the corners of his mouth.

  “And if he did live? What could he do?” Annan said.

  “He is perhaps the only man the bishop truly fears.”

  “What about the Baptist?”

  William gave his head a shake. “Roderic fears the Baptist only by proxy. The Baptist will bring Matthias. That is what Roderic fears.”

  Annan shook his head. “The Baptist wants vengeance for what was done to him sixteen years ago.”

  “Did you know I took him into my home after Roderic finished torturing him? He is not the same man he was before his injuries. His mind and his soul were touched just as his body was.”

  Annan waited.

  “But if vengeance were his only motive, surely his revival would not have borne such fruits as it has? Rousing the people? Mass repentance? Conversions and pilgrimages by the score?”

  “I’ve yet to see these fruits. All I’ve seen is that this drive for vengeance is all that’s kept him alive. He has eaten it, breathed it, lapped it up until he is drunk with it.”

  “Then why wait sixteen years? What need has he to bring all that remains of St. Dunstan’s to this place?”

  “He’s seeking to recreate what happened that day. He believes Matthias should have killed Roderic, so now he will do anything to at last make it happen. So he can witness it.”

  William looked at him askance, but another cough seized his innards. His body shuddered with the force of his hacking, and flecks of red appeared in the bubbles of saliva at the corners of his lips. “Hold me— Hold me up!”