Behold the Dawn

  “You wound me to the quick, lady. Please tell me you don’t also think me as much a troll as you do my master?”

  The smile disappeared. “Hardly.” She returned her gaze to her lap and smoothed the wrinkles she had created in her skirt. Tears gathered in the back of her eyes, and she was surprised to find she no longer despised herself for it. “I fear for him.”

  Marek leaned back again, the spread of his arms just long enough to touch the edges of the bench’s back. “Takes a mighty hefty blade to put that life in any danger. Tourneymen can’t dent him, the Saracens couldn’t do more than poke a hole in his arm, and he fought off all those blokes t’other day and still managed to get you back here before I could. That should be evidence enough to lay your fears at rest.”

  She didn’t look up. “He’s only a man. All men must die.”

  “You fret yourself too much, lady. I’ll be off at first light no doubt, and I’ll have him cleared out of this mess in a flash, eh?”

  “Nay, you’re to stay with me until he returns.” And he would return. Holy Father, may he return to me! She did not know what future she might face if he did not. She did not know if she wanted to face the future if he did not.

  Marek sat up a little straighter. “Ah, well that’s more as it should be. I say, it’s about time he gave the devoted slave a little ease and repose.”

  The door opened, and Lady Eloise entered, her rust-brown skirts billowing like a sail. Mairead rose, and Marek leaned to peer around the corner of the inglenook. Eloise stopped and frowned. “Who’s this?”

  He stood and bowed with a flourish of his cap. “Your ladyship, may I introduce myself as Peregrine Mar—”

  “Marek.” Her frown deepened. “Aye, I remember. Well, get along with you, boy, and don’t trouble the lady any longer.”

  “Trouble her, gracious one? I assure—”

  “Oh, get out with you. One would think you believed yourself a troubadour, ‘stead of a sharp-faced swindler.”

  That, apparently, brought him back to his senses. Living with a man like Annan, who made up his own rules as he went along, hadn’t likely been a very good lesson in gentle manners. He shut his mouth, bowed once more—this time without the flourish—and ambled to the door, tugging his cap back over his ears. Before he left the room, he turned to glance at Mairead, such a look of long-suffering on his face that she couldn’t help but smile.

  Lady Eloise shook out her skirts and glided over to where Mairead had dropped the lute. “That rogue Annan did a good turn in pulling that lad from the streets, but, merciful Heaven, what a villain.” She picked up the instrument and ran the backs of her fingers down the strings.

  Mairead sat back down in the inglenook. “Annan’s done many good turns.”

  Eloise sniffed. “Aye, and he’s also created his share of villains. Men like Marcus Annan are more trouble than they’re worth.”

  Mairead spun back to her feet, ducking out of the inglenook. “You say that so smugly. But you and your husband would not be here today were it not for him.”

  Eloise clucked. “My dear girl, he’s only another tourneyer, no better or worse than the lot of them.”

  “Then you do not know him.” Mairead snapped the words without thinking. No, Eloise did not know him. But did she? What if he knew the extent of her shame, of the scars in her past that had brought her and Lord William to this heathen land? Would he still have been so willing to close the door she had opened to release him from his promise?

  With her eyebrows lifted, Eloise looked rather too feline. “Child, you place too much trust in the man. The Church has condemned the tourneys for three score years. The Devil’s mark is on men like him. I’m not even sure the Crusade could absolve him.”

  Mairead looked at her levelly. Her breath came in quick tugs, but it did not clutter the calm of her voice. She had never thought herself capable of such calmness. “There is always redemption.”

  Eloise laid the lute on the stool where Mairead had been sitting before Marek came in. The movement was deliberate, final. “Not for the likes of him. Even God Himself is not always merciful.”

  “He is when one seeks His mercy.”

  “That man doesn’t seek mercy. He’s more interested in the blood on his sword and the gold in his purse.” Eloise tugged her bodice, the movement seeming to yank straight all the lines in her face. “What would your husband think were he to hear these things you say?”

  Mairead’s breath slipped past her lips. “I hope he would agree with me.”

  * * *

  For three days Annan rode a hard course due south. He entered the fertile Orontes valley as purple dusk began to burn the horizon’s edge, and immediately, he knew something was different. In the trampled sand only paces to the east were horses’ hoofprints. Not camels, not donkeys, not oxen. Horses. And in this time of war, only soldiers rode horses.

  Filling his lungs with the cool of evening, he nodded to himself and turned his bay charger’s head aside. Under the shelter of darkness, he would discover whether the horses’ riders wore the white of Mohammedan muslin over their chain mail or if they labored under the gay caparisons of the Knights Templars and the House de Guerrant.

  He tracked them until it was too dark to see, and then he lifted his head to see the orange glow of fire against the moonless sky. He smiled. Leaving the tired charger secured in the darkness of a juniper’s shade, he checked his weapons and started forward, all but invisible in the darkness, his footfalls silent beneath the mutterings of the wind.

  He almost missed a sentry posted some fifty paces from the fire, but the murmured voices of one Frank to another as they changed the watch stopped him in his tracks. He kept an eye on the retreating shadow until the man had seated himself by the fire. Then, rising from his crouch, his dagger slipping from its sheath, he crept near enough to hear the shuffling of the man’s feet.

  With a speed born only in battle, he caught the man’s shoulder and spun him up against his own chest. The Frank’s grunt was cut off by the dagger against his neck. Annan shoved his jaw alongside the man’s ear. “You’ll be silent if you value your life.”

  The Frank’s panting told well enough that he had no desire for his blood to be let by the blade of an unknown assassin.

  They were five paces from the fire when the seated men-at-arms caught sight of their approach. Annan kept his blade tight against his prisoner’s neck and waited until the two knights had completed a general scramble to find their weapons. “Hold your blades, laddie bucks. I’d have a word with your leader before you get yourselves killed.”

  The Templar straightened from his defensive posture. “Marcus Annan. We meet again.”

  “Indeed. My heart sings with the pleasure.” He cast a quick glance around the camp. Only two men-at-arms accompanied the Templar. Hugh and those who had given chase to Marek were not to be seen. Gethin stood at the edge of the firelight, having also risen in the moment of alarm. His face was passive, his arms folded into his sleeves. But the dancing firelight could not hide the twist of his eyebrow.

  The Templar came forward a step but did not lower his sword. “Be assured, the feeling is reciprocated, Master Knight. But perhaps you haven’t been informed: we were to follow you, not you us.”

  “He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it, Templar.”

  Gethin’s brow lifted a bit more.

  The Templar shrugged. “As you will. You only make the task easier for us.”

  The other man-at-arms began inching forward.

  Annan held his ground. “If you’ve not learned your lesson from our last encounter, I’ll be more than happy to teach it again.” He looked at the approaching man-at-arms. “Hold fast, laddie.” The man took another step before stopping uncertainly.

  The Templar frowned, then lowered his sword. “All right. Have your say.”

  “I’ve come for the monk.”

  Gethin remained passive, but Annan thought he saw a flicker of confusion tighten his brow.

&n
bsp; “The monk?”

  “Aye, grant the monk’s freedom, and we shall all be spared the trouble of killing each other at this late hour.”

  “Why should you want him? He told me he was a passing acquaintance, merely a fellow traveler.”

  The Frank in his arms twisted his head, and Annan pressed harder with the blade. “What the bishop does with his prisoners is not something I’d wish upon even the most passing of acquaintances.”

  The Templar’s head tilted back warily. “The bishop?”

  “Aye, I know you answer to Bishop Roderic. If stupidity was a requirement when you hired me that night in Acre, you should have looked elsewhere.”

  “I should have looked elsewhere anyway. I had been told you were a man of honor, but apparently I was misinformed. Men of honor do not decamp with their hire jingling in their purses unfulfilled.”

  “I promised you only Matthias of Claidmore. The others were not part of my agreement.”

  Gethin’s expression froze. He limped forward, his hands dropping from his sleeves and revealing the thick rope that bound his wrists. “With every new discovery, I find you sinking a bit lower.”

  “Do I indeed?” Annan didn’t take his eyes from the Templar. “Well, Master Knight, do I regain my fellow traveler, or does the dying begin with this unfortunate fellow?” He bumped the blade against the corner of the man-at-arms’s jawbone.

  The Templar’s expression hardened. “I was sent to kill you.”

  “So be it.” Annan’s hand tightened on the dagger’s hilt. The Frank stiffened in his arms.

  “Wait.” Gethin slid forward between the Templar and the other man-at-arms. “Ask him why he was sent to kill you.”

  Annan flicked his gaze in the Templar’s direction.

  The man shifted, the shadows of the fire catching against his rigid jaw. “Because you betrayed Roderic.”

  To that, Annan could only laugh. “Forgive me if I save my surprise for a more worthy occasion.”

  Gethin took another step. “Roderic fears you’ve betrayed him to Matthias.”

  He glanced at the Templar. “Is that true?”

  The knight nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Annan narrowed his eyes.

  “I tell you the truth,” the Templar insisted. “He fears him, but why I don’t know. Matthias knows something about his past.”

  “How much does he fear Matthias?” Gethin’s question was for the Templar, but his eyes burned into Annan’s.

  “More than any man—save the Baptist.”

  “And the Baptist he fears because of Matthias.” Triumph gleamed in Gethin’s face. “Now what do you say, Marcus Annan?”

  For a moment, he wondered how much more self-respect it would cost him to leave Gethin with the Templar. Between Gethin and the money Roderic had offered for him, the gold would certainly be the more agreeable.

  He released his hold on the man-at-arms. Keeping one hand choked down on the Frank’s collar, he allowed him to step away to the end of the blade. “I say what I have said from the beginning. Free the monk, and I’ll let you return alive to your unholy master. Else let us end this now.”

  Firelight flickered in the Templar’s eyes. “First, I would ask a question of you.” He lowered his sword still more, until its point almost touched the ground. “Do you know why my master fears this Matthias?”

  Annan said nothing for a long moment. Gethin stared at him, a silent, mocking challenge burning in his eyes.

  “If Father Roderic fears Matthias of Claidmore, it is because he fears judgment upon a soul that is worthy of all the fires of Hell.”

  “You are a follower of the Baptist?”

  Annan glanced at Gethin. “Nay. But if he is a heretic for such beliefs, then his heresy is also mine.”

  A smile flashed across Gethin’s face, but Annan ignored him. “You do not know the man you serve, Templar. You will never win God’s battles so long as your lords are murderers and whoremongers.”

  The Templar shook his head. “Bishop Roderic will be beatified when he dies.”

  “And that makes him less a murderer or a whoremonger?”

  “Perhaps he has repented.”

  “Then why does he fear judgment?”

  The Templar lifted his face, a look of caution in his eyes.

  “If you don’t know the answer, ask him. Ask him why such a man as he should wear the holy robes of God’s appointed.” Annan took a step, pushing the man-at-arms along with the point of the dagger. “And ask yourself why you pledge your allegiance to this man when he calls for you to destroy the blood of innocents simply because such are his enemies.”

  They stared at each other a long time, until at last a log in the fire crumpled into a sparking, snapping mass of embers. The Templar sighed. “All this from a tourneyer?”

  Some of the tautness ebbed from Annan’s shoulders. “Aye. All this from a tourneyer.” He had not spoken convictions such as these for many a long year. Some part of him had forgotten he even believed them.

  The Templar turned to the other man-at-arms. “Fetch the monk’s donkey.” He turned back to Annan. “You may have your traveling companion, Master Annan.” He sheathed his sword. “If you turn out to be a messenger of the Most High, I will thank you. If not, then I suspect we will be meeting again.”

  Annan shoved his man-at-arms forward. Gethin, his hands freed by the Templar, met him with donkey in tow; they left the camp without a backward glance.

  Nothing was said until they returned to Annan’s horse and both had reined their mounts northward.

  “Have you changed your mind then, Marcus Annan?” For the first time since they had met in Bari, Gethin’s voice did not bear its hard edge.

  Annan rubbed the back of his neck. He wearied of rebuffing the man’s persistence. “The years have not changed me so much as to make me fickle in my decisions.”

  Gethin reined his donkey close enough that his knee pressed against Annan’s. “You said he deserved God’s judgment.”

  “God’s judgment, Gethin! You are mistaken in this belief of yours that there is vengeance yet to be paid out for what happened sixteen years ago. What happened then was wrong. Reconstructing what happened at St. Dunstan’s will not make it right.”

  “Won’t it?” His voice was cold, heavy, like the fall of a stone from a battlement. “Sin begets sin. Haven’t you of all men learned that?”

  “Aye, and I have paid the price for my sins every day of my life. Who’s to say Father Roderic does not the same?”

  “You believe that?”

  “Nay.” He sighed from the depths of his soul. “I do not. He is hungry for blood even still.”

  “He is hungrier. People die everyday now because Matthias did not exact the full price from him sixteen years ago. No longer is he a mere abbot, able only to squeeze in his fist the lives of monks and penitents and villagers. Now he is a bishop.” Gethin’s voice dropped to a hiss. “Now he holds armies, lords, kings in his hand. That kind of corrupt power can be protected against only one way.”

  “No.” For sixteen years, Annan had striven to put the distance that only time can bring between himself and the crimes of St. Dunstan’s. He would not be drawn back into them now. “I will not. Besides, you forget—Matthias is dead. He will not be your tool to find vengeance.”

  Gethin laughed. “You delude yourself, Marcus Annan. Matthias is not dead. And I will find him.” He exhaled, the breath barking in the back of his throat. “Grieve you though it may.”

  Annan rode with his back stiff, his fingers so tight on his sword hilt that they trembled from lack of blood.

  Gethin reined the donkey aside. “When that day comes, perhaps we shall find that we are once again on the same side. Farewell.”

  The donkey lumbered some dozen paces before Annan again forced his tongue to speak. “Gethin.”

  The Baptist did not stop.

  “What happened to Marek?”

  “I know
not. The men-at-arms returned empty-handed.”

  “What about Lord Hugh?”

  “He lives—unhappily for you. He took the other knights and has gone on a mission of his own.” Off to Annan’s right, the shadow of the donkey stopped. “Be wary. Bishop Roderic is most dangerous through his pawns. You may have cooled the Templar’s zeal tonight, but Hugh de Guerrant is a blade of another metal. Perhaps he will yet teach you the truth of my words about the bishop’s ravaging.”

  For a moment there was only the silence of night. Then the donkey’s jostling steps resumed, and Annan was left to sit in the dark, alone, until even the hoofbeats were only a memory in the darkness.

  Chapter XV

  IN THE BLACK depths of midnight Mairead woke with her sweat cold upon her scalp. She had heard his voice. Hugh de Guerrant’s voice. She was certain of it.

  She rolled onto her back and lay still, her breath trapped in her chest as she listened. Only the scampering footsteps of a mouse and the night wind purring outside her window marred the silence. She lay back against the pillow, her blankets rolled down to her waist. Had she imagined it? Could it have been only a dream?

  Outside, the stamp of a horse’s foot made her heart catch. Carefully, shooting a quick glance at her bedchamber’s closed door, she rolled to the bed’s edge and slid from beneath the blankets. The cold stone of the floor sent an immediate chill up her spine, but she hardly noticed. At the window, she peered around the corner. No moon lit the clouds, but she could see the silhouettes of horses in the yard below. One tossed its head, bit clanking.

  “No…” The word was soft, a reflex. She twisted her neck to see the sky, forgetting there was no moon, no stars, no light on the horizon to tell her the hour. But she knew it was too early. The hard, cold knot in the deepest part of her stomach told her it was too early for vassals to be about or for the lord himself to have returned from his trip to Constantinople.

  It could be Annan.

  The thought seized her, then fled. It was not Annan; it could not be Annan. She would not have confused his voice with Lord Hugh’s.

  Muffled footsteps slapped the hall outside her door, and she froze. She should have thought of finding a weapon before this, should have located a poniard that could now have been within easy reach. She would not be taken without a struggle, not this time. The price for her soul would be a high one.