Behold the Dawn

  Marek stayed where he was. “You’re— you’re— mar… I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to.” He picked up his saddle and carried it to the bay charger’s stall. Lifting aside the rope that closed off the opening, he laid a hand on the horse’s chest and stepped inside.

  “But—” Marek lurched forward and stopped in front of the stall, a hand on either side of the entrance, “—how did this happen? And why didn’t I happen to hear so much as a ruddy word about it? Eh?”

  Annan swung the saddle onto the bay’s back, and as he bent to pick up the girth, he gave Marek a hard stare. “Go saddle the courser.”

  “All right, all right.” The lad threw up his hands and turned away.

  “And, Marek. This isn’t a matter that’s open for your blathering, not with me and not with the lady. I hear one word of it, and I’ll tie your feet beneath your palfrey’s belly.”

  Marek shrugged and ducked under the rope into the gray’s stall. “Oh, not a word, I vow. But—how’s this all affect our plans? If you’re going to stop this chasing around after melees in favor of making yourself a family, I can’t see as you’ll hardly be needing me anymore. Maybe I haven’t told you, but my Maid Dolly’s pining her heart out, waiting for me to do the same as you’re planning—”

  “No.” Annan straightened, one hand rubbing the small of his back.

  Marek’s head bobbed into sight above the courser’s withers. “Why?”

  “Because the plans haven’t changed. Weather and saints providing, we’ll be in Orleans in twenty days.”

  “Orleans? I thought we was going to Orleans ‘cause there was a convent or something there.”

  “We are.”

  “But men don’t go around chucking their lawful wives into French convents. T’ain’t right and t’ain’t nice. I thought you said you was married to her?”

  “So I am.” He stepped forward to the charger’s bridle and faced the slap of the wind. “For twenty days.”

  * * *

  Mairead was waiting, Annan’s cloak folded in her arms, when he returned for her. One hand cupped round the edge of the door, he stepped halfway into the room and cocked his head to avoid knocking it on the lintel.

  “The horses are ready.”

  “Annan—” Her fingernails bit into the heavy gray wool of his cloak. She couldn’t say the rest... that she was sorry. Because she wasn’t sorry. Even beyond the dread of the inevitable future, the warmth in her stomach whenever he was near could never be interpreted as sorrow. “Where do we go?”

  “To Orleans.”

  She had known the answer, but still her heart felt like a stone. What right had she to think anything had really changed since the day he had taken leave of her in her chambers at Stephen’s?

  He sighed and took another step, straightening to his full height as the ceiling allowed. “Mairead, I can never give you a home.” Bitterness chimed in his tone. “I have no home to give.”

  She looked to the ground between them, squeezing her lower lip between her teeth. “I’m sorry. Know that. Please, know that. I didn’t mean for it to happen. It would have been better had we gone on as before—”

  “Would it?”

  She looked up. Beneath the lines of his brow, his eyes—those eyes that could be as cold and sharp as shards of stone—looked at her with all the force of his fierce nature.

  He left the door and crossed to stand in front of her. “Don’t believe me sorry.” He lifted one of her hands from its grip on the cloak and held it in the calluses of his own. “I meant what I said.”

  Joy rose up inside and smashed against her breastbone. You are my wife. That is all that matters. He knew what Hugh had done to her, he knew of the child she had borne and buried—and it didn’t matter. They had not been words yielded of the moment’s impulse. He had spoken the truth.

  If he had done nothing else to deserve her accolades, that alone was worth enough to raise him above any man she had ever known, even Lord William.

  He raised her hand, his thumb resting on the backs of her fingers. “But where we go from here, I don’t know. If you could ride behind my saddle for the rest of my days, I would not be unhappy.” His eyes left her face in favor of her hand, and the bitter smile he wore so often hardened on the corners of his lips.

  She said nothing. She would have ridden behind him to the end of the world if he would let her. But it was impossible. She knew it was impossible. And now was not the time for desperate foolishness.

  “In twenty days’ time, we’ll have to find an answer.” He looked up. “Twenty days for us to pretend there isn’t an answer.”

  Her throat cramped, and she swallowed past the sudden burn of tears. “God’s will be done.”

  “Aye.” His face bowed once more to her hand, and the stubble of his cheek, just long enough to be soft, brushed against her skin. “Tell me why it is that God always seems to will for my heart and soul to be torn asunder?”

  Again, she saw it—that raw, bleeding wound inside him that made her ache with the need to hold him in her arms and sing away the pain. She raised her other arm, cloak and all, to the back of his neck and held him.

  Now that it was her right to do so, how many chances would she have?

  * * *

  Hugh was in the little port town of Jebail when he received Bishop Roderic’s message.

  It was a message that said Veritas the Omniscient wanted him to find Lady Mairead and kill her. It was a message that Roderic and Veritas sought to justify with a single line about woman being the weakness of man.

  Crumpling the parchment in his hand, he crossed the dingy upper room of Jebail’s finest inn and stood at the window, bathed in the red and violet hues of the sunset. Whether he wanted to or not, he must agree with that single line.

  The Lady Mairead was more than capable of creating weaknesses in many a man; he was himself chief among them. And mayhap, if her nonsense about being the wife of Marcus Annan were true—utterly mad as the thought might be—there truly was a weakness to be exploited.

  But not in the way the bishop wanted.

  No, indeed. When Hugh was through, even the great and mysterious Veritas himself would be groveling in admiration at the thoroughness of Hugh’s skill. His lips straightened into a hard line. When it came to these sorts of things, no one was more thorough than himself.

  He peered into the narrow street below and nodded when Bertrand looked up with a salute that said the men were ready to move. If the bishop’s messenger was right, and they had discovered that this wench was Annan’s weakness, then Hugh could do much better than kill her.

  Indeed, if Veritas was right—and Hugh could not help but believe, in the pit of his stomach, that he was right—then he would wring a weakness from Annan that would scar far deeper than the lady’s death.

  His hand pressed tighter round the crumpled message, driving its creases into his palm, burning the truth of its message into his veins as surely as Lady Mairead’s hand had burned his face.

  “Bertrand.” He spoke loud enough to be heard through the window. “Come up here. I wish to speak with you before we leave. There’s going to be a new plan.”

  “M’lord.” Bertrand nodded and ducked out of sight beneath the overhang of the first story.

  Hugh stepped back from the window and turned to await his lieutenant. Heretofore, they had ridden as a single unit; but it no longer mattered if someone other than himself found the Earl of Keaton’s widow.

  There was a greater purpose now. And Hugh prided himself that even he could appreciate that.

  Chapter XIX

  FOUR DAYS FROM Shaizar and the night that changed everything, Annan stopped somewhere in the verdant hill country between Turbessel and Edessa.

  In front of them, carved in the face of a hill, was a square hole, perhaps as tall as his shoulder. Other holes, of varying sizes, stretched eastward along the side of the hill, each of them no lower than his waist. Larks perched in some of the holes, looking
at the approaching threesome, black eyes shining in their cocked heads.

  “What is that?” Mairead asked, as Annan dismounted his bay charger and came over to take her courser’s bridle.

  “Hermitage.” He stopped at her side and reached for her.

  “Aye, but where’s the hermit?” Marek lifted his leg over his palfrey’s shaggy neck and slid to the ground, catching his rein on the way down.

  “Do you know there is one?” Mairead asked. The soft dirt puffed beneath her feet as she landed beside Annan.

  “Aye. Stephen knew of him.” He let go of her and reached for the courser’s rein.

  She stayed close to him, her shoulder against his side. “We’ll be safe here?”

  He shrugged. Safety was a matter of coincidence more than anything, and, when necessary, a fair amount of skill. “Brother Werinbert!” His left hand shifted, out of precaution, to his sword hilt. “Pacatis!”

  As soon as the Latin greeting of peace had left his lips, he felt Mairead’s quick glance on his face, sensed her astonishment that he, a wandering soldier, was able to speak the language of the Church.

  It was so easy to forget she knew no more of him than what she could see with her eyes. He had forgotten that St. Dunstan’s, that black hole of his being, meant nothing to her.

  Perhaps, if he had been granted the rest of his life with her, he would have told her. He would need at least that long after speaking his tale to convince her not to shrink into the shadows every time he drew into sight.

  From the gray-black depths of the largest hole came the scuffling of sandal-shod feet, and then a man appeared against the blackness. Perhaps Annan’s own age, with a tonsure wormed with veins, and bones that jutted beneath the folds of his ragged sackcloth, he was bent with the rigors of his solitude, and his steps were the shuffles of an elder. Only his eyes, sparkling against the sun-speckled bags of his skin, were young.

  Annan took a step forward, leading the horses. “Greetings, Brother. We are travelers, in need of a place for the night. Lord Stephen of Essex directed me to you. May we share your hospitality?”

  Smiling, the hermit slapped his ear with the hand that was not supporting him against the doorframe.

  Marek slacked a hip. “Maybe he’s deaf.”

  Annan tried a Saxon dialect, and Werinbert’s smile immediately widened to a snaggly grin. When Annan had finished speaking, the hermit crossed himself and bowed to them. “Greetings in the name of Christ and St. Beuno.” His accent was heavy, probably from east of Normandy. “Please be welcome to rest with me for the night. You are English?”

  “Scottish.” Without looking around, Annan reached back for Mairead, and she folded both her hands into his palm.

  “You are pilgrims to the Holy Land?”

  “The Crusade brought us.”

  “Yes, yes.” Werinbert blew out his cheeks in an expression that did nothing to soften the hard ridges of his cheekbones. “The defense of Christ’s city is a mission most worthy.”

  Annan grunted.

  “Soldiers traveled past only a few days ago. They bring word that peace negotiations are under way.”

  “If all the Christians wanted was peace, they shouldn’t have come in the first place.”

  Marek shot him a glare.

  “Come.” The hermit lifted both hands and gestured over his shoulders. “I will prepare a repast for you. The horses you may leave near the water.”

  Annan followed the line of his pointing finger to where a stand of shrubs closed the gap in the hill. If he listened hard, he could hear the chimes of a waterfall. He pressed his hand against the small of Mairead’s back. “Go with him.”

  She looked up into his face, hesitating. But she had nothing to fear from this man, and she knew it. She looked away, let go of his hand, and gathered her skirt. Ducking beneath the gray courser’s reins, she came forward and met the hermit with the sign of the cross.

  Marek started for the pool, but Annan tarried, watching as she bowed to Werinbert with the grace of nobility.

  Werinbert’s ragged sleeves weren’t wide enough to hold both his wrists and the opposing hands, but he tried to fold himself into them nonetheless. “What is your name, mistress?”

  “Mairead.”

  By itself, the name sounded naked. Annan frowned. He had no home for her to claim as her own, no title to gift her with. He had taken all that from her to save her life.

  No, that wasn’t true. She could have kept her title, the prestige of Lord William of Keaton’s name, if she had wished. She had chosen differently.

  His stomach, empty since midmorning, tightened. Aye, she had chosen—but poorly. She had chosen a man whose life was nothing but a long chain of mistakes. A man who, even with all the blood and sweat and strength of his body, could give her nothing come the end of the day, save his own life in exchange for hers. And he would give it without question. To die for a cause worth living for was far more than he deserved.

  He turned to go, his tired bay charger falling into step behind him, and the gray courser trotting up to walk at his shoulder, ears perked forward, nostrils distended with the scent of water.

  “Mairead.” Werinbert rolled the name on his tongue as Annan walked away. “Meaning a pearl of great price. Like that in the most excellent proverb, for which a man sells all that he owns.”

  Annan reached a hand to the courser’s bridle and brushed his fingertips against the soft short hair on the horse’s jowl. How many men had sold everything for this particular pearl?

  Lord William, who had given his life. Lord Hugh, who had sold his soul. And now himself. What had he given? Who was to say he had not given both body and soul?

  He trudged to where the waterfall churned lacy bubbles into the silver-green pool at its base. Surrounded on three sides by the steep hills and deep enough to drown a lad of Marek’s size, it was the clearest water he had seen since the plains of Lombardy in early spring.

  Marek, flat on his stomach on the bank, flung his head back from its immersion in the pond, water droplets shimmering through the twilight. He blew through his lips like a horse and rose to his knees to give his streaming locks a good shake. “Whew. Right cold, I’d say.”

  “Better than drinking sour wine, that’s sure.” Annan stopped at the bank, a horse on either side, and tugged once on the courser’s rein to keep him from nipping at the palfrey’s neck.

  “Tell me this—” Marek rocked back onto his haunches and pushed a hand against the bank to gain his feet. “Why’s it the Church comes a-fighting its head off for hot, stinking places like Acre, and leaves a paradise like this to the heathen?”

  “Tell me why any man goes a-fighting.” Annan stripped halfway out of his sleeveless jerkin, keeping one armhole looped round his elbow as he knelt to wash his face.

  “If you don’t know the answer to that, probably nobody does.”

  He did know the answer—knew all too well. But right now there was a heaviness in his bones, and in his soul, that he wondered if even the hottest battle fire could melt. He bowed to the pond and splashed his face with both hands. As the water, cold and smelling of moss and mud, slid from his jaw down the front of his neck, he rubbed a hand across his eyes and pressed until white and yellow lights danced behind his lids.

  “What do you think?” Marek asked. His saddle creaked as he loosened a strap. “Are we clear of trouble?”

  “Are we ever clear of trouble?”

  “There’ve been moments. But I gather you don’t think this is one of them?”

  “Maybe.” Annan dropped his hand from his eyes and waited until the spots cleared and he could again see the red streaks of sunset reflected in the pool. “Depends what’s happened to Hugh.”

  “Well, I didn’t best him in a sword fight if that’s what you were hoping.”

  Annan gave a little snort.

  “If that’s the best answer you can muster, I guess you must be expecting trouble.”

  “Trouble is what you make of it, laddie buck.
”

  “And right now you’re making it, is that it?”

  Annan blinked and turned to look at him. Marek’s ruddy face, framed by the water-darkened hair that clung to his forehead, was as wide-open and frank as Annan had ever seen it. For the first time since he had picked the lad out of the mud of that Glasgow street, he saw a man looking back at him from behind the wide-set eyes.

  Annan leaned his chin against his propped-up hand. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying nothing. Just that if there is trouble, it’s ‘cuz of her.”

  “So you’d have me leave her to her fate?”

  “Course not.” Marek’s scowl flashed as he ducked to loosen his girth. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t have married her. She’s in enough trouble without adding ours to hers.” The girth swung free and bumped against the palfrey’s knee. Marek straightened back up and took a good hold of the saddle, front and back. “You know full well you’re not exactly the most difficult person to find under the sun. If this Hugh fellow can’t find her, he’ll find you.”

  “That’s hardly a deterrent.”

  “Well, surprise though it may be, one of these days you’re gonna find out you’re not as immortal and all powerful as ye think you are. He almost bested you the last time you two collided. Mark me, Annan.”

  “Is that so?” But the throb of his hip wasn’t likely to let him forget.

  Marek dropped the saddle to the ground and reached to catch his palfrey’s rein before the horse could wander. “All I’m saying is you shouldn’t’ve married her.”

  Annan rose to his feet, knees cracking. As his arm straightened, the jerkin fell, and he caught it in his hand. Shadows were descending over the pool, sharpening his hearing, even as they damped his ability to see. The waterfall plummeted with a rush and gurgle that spoke something different with every passing moment—and yet was always the same. For years it had fallen; for years it would fall.

  As would mankind. As would Annan himself. His fall hadn’t ended after St. Dunstan’s. He was falling yet, adding more mistakes to his chain.