Behold the Dawn

  The crowd broke, most of them rushing to Bertrand’s headless body. As if they could help him. A few of the mounted knights gave chase to the unknown assassin. But they would not catch him. Roderic could not even begin to hope they might catch him.

  Realizing his arms were still lofted, he cinched them around himself and tried to pretend his bones did not feel as though they were trying to melt into the tightness of his muscles.

  “Your Grace?” The clipped Syrian accent of Sir Alard, the Antiochan noble who stood at his side, might have been a mace against a rock wall.

  Roderic gritted his teeth. His eyes did not leave the swift trail of the knight’s gray courser galloping into the anonymity of the city.

  Sir Alard gripped Roderic’s sleeve. “Who was he? Do you know who he was?”

  Roderic could feel the pinch at the base of his skull that would clamp into a vise by the time he reached his quarters. “Marcus Annan.”

  “Who?” Alard darted a look after the group of horsemen who were giving chase.

  Roderic caught up his robes. He should never have agreed to this barbaric exhibition. Alard released his arm and said no more, probably because he thought that was where the matter ended.

  But what could he possibly understand? Nothing!

  The heat of anger and the cold of fear clashed in Roderic’s stomach, churning his innards into nausea. How could Hugh have erred to such a colossal extent? For all Roderic knew, Hugh might have stolen off with Mairead of Keaton and left Annan to seek revenge on whom he might. Or mayhap this was the mistake for which Bertrand had been dismissed?

  His blood turned to sludge beneath his skin, and he stopped, halfway down the dais’s hollow-sounding steps, and cursed them both.

  “Your Grace?” Alard, close behind him, leaned forward.

  “Be still, you fool!”

  “Ah… Yes, your Grace.”

  Roderic stalked to where Odo held his bay mare in readiness. Earlier that morning, as he appeared before a cheering crowd, he had held his trailing robes up from the dew-wet grass. Now, he hardly cared if they were ruined forever.

  Not waiting for his escort, he mounted the mare and whipped her forward. He was no longer safe in Antioch, that was clear. And he had no intention of ignoring Marcus Annan’s all too clear warning. As soon as he could gather his entourage, he would be leaving.

  His spur gouged the mare’s side. He would return to Jaffa and to Richard. Perhaps, after all, he would be safest in the middle of a war.

  * * *

  After his parting with Bishop Roderic in Jaffa, and all the revelations their severance had entailed, Brother Warin had discovered he no longer believed in the cause of the Crusade. He had wanted to believe—had wanted to fight for it, even unto the shedding of his last drop of blood.

  But he couldn’t.

  The tourneyer Annan had been right. Though God Himself must shudder at the infidel occupation of His blessed Holy Land, He could never want it rescued by men such as led this Great Crusade. This Kings’ Crusade.

  And so Warin had left behind Jaffa, his brother Templars, his King, and his dreams of winning back the Temple of the Holy City.

  He had set his face toward the northern ports, in order that he might leave unnoticed. Tonight he had made it almost as far as Lattakieh.

  Full darkness had fallen only minutes before, forcing him to dismount. His footfalls and those of the horse walking behind him were muted in the sandy bank of the Orontes River. He listened to them, hearing the sand sliding beneath his feet. The wind soughed through the leafy branches overhead, whispering to itself, tsking its displeasure at this stranger in its midst.

  At that moment, Warin had never felt more alone.

  * * *

  Footsteps, no more than three spans away from where Annan’s head lay in the sand of his bedding place, yanked him up from the beginning fog of sleep. His reflexes wrenched him to his feet and his dagger into his hand before the intruder could take another step.

  The man’s horse reared and tore its reins free from its master’s restraint. Before the intruder could turn, Annan’s arm clamped across his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. He slammed his blade against the man’s throat, hard enough to bruise but not break skin.

  “In the name of God—” The man, a knight judging from the grate of mail armor against Annan’s forearm, lunged forward. His words were strangled with frustration and surprise. But some halfway familiar note made Annan’s sword arm freeze, his blade hovering over the knight’s windpipe.

  He blinked, trying to shake off his exhaustion long enough to think. All day, he had ridden, fleeing the posse of knights who had given chase after he had slain Hugh’s lieutenant that morning. He tightened his grip across the man’s chest. “Who are you?” His voice was hoarse. He hadn’t spoken to anyone since the previous night in the inn.

  “A soldier of the Temple.” The knight eased his hand toward his sword. “A Crusader. Kill a Crusader, and you risk eternal damnation.”

  “Too late for that, Templar.”

  The man froze. “Marcus Annan?”

  “You—” Annan leaned closer, the side of his chin pressed against the knight’s cheekbone, and his knife bit deeper. “Roderic’s Templar.”

  “Aye.” The man straightened as much as he could, his hand no longer searching for his sword. “But if you think adding my death to your reputation will rid you of an enemy, you’re wrong.”

  Annan shoved him away, nearly toppling the man to his knees. As the Templar regained his balance and turned to face him, Annan backed up until his feet were in the wet, crumbly sand of the waterline. He kept the dagger in plain view but lowered its point. “I’ve no reason to trust you.”

  Through the shadows, lit by the moon against the shifting clouds, the Templar gripped his sword, but made no motion to draw it. “Bishop Roderic and I have parted.”

  A heavy breath slid past Annan’s nostrils, and he resisted the urge to rub at the grit of his eyes. Right about now would have been a good time to have the ever-suspicious Marek at his side—someone to remind him that this was likely nothing but an elaborate ruse to make him drop his guard.

  “You don’t believe me?” Warin said.

  “Should I?”

  “My word was good when you and the monk left my camp, wasn’t it?”

  “You didn’t have a choice then.” If they’d resisted his efforts to free Gethin, he would have strewn their bodies across the desert.

  “I swear by the True Cross that I’ve left the bishop’s service forever. If that isn’t enough to satisfy you, and if it’s a trial by battle you want, then let us have it.”

  “Perhaps we will.” Annan stepped forward, and his dagger rose once more to point at the other man’s heart. “Were you involved in the attack upon my wife?”

  “Your—wife?” Moonlight flickered against the Templar’s incredulous expression.

  Annan took another step. His voice deepened until it was almost inarticulate. “The Lady Mairead.”

  The man looked as though he had been hit by a charging horse. “Lady Mairead—the countess? Hugh’s attacked her?”

  The weight of Annan’s shoulders was suddenly too great to hold up. “She may be dead.” He lowered his dagger to his side.

  The Templar drew himself aright. “You have my word as a Knight of the Cross, a soldier of the Temple, and a Christian that I had no part in it. I swear it.”

  Against his every better judgment, Annan believed him. He was too tired not to believe him. Too tired to keep in mind that once he had gotten some sleep, he would probably remember he had reason to hate this man.

  “Aye.” It wasn’t the right thing to say. It probably didn’t even make sense. But it didn’t matter.

  A gust of wind churned through the riverbed, whipping the water into white breakers.

  “I’m sorry,” the Templar said.

  Annan only nodded.

  * * *

  By the time they reached Stephen’s home, a haze of
red shrouded Mairead’s vision. Marek brought her to the door and sent Ducard scrambling to find his master.

  She exhaled and heard herself whimper before she could even remember making the sound. She needed to see Annan again, needed to tell him it wasn’t his fault. She needed him to hold her against him as the pain avalanched through her body.

  She clenched her teeth. Her throat felt clogged and sticky with phlegm and only half the size it was supposed to be.

  “What is this?” Lord Stephen’s voice boomed in her ears.

  “It’s Lady Mairead, Sir.” Footsteps brought the voices nearer. “She’s wounded.”

  A hand too large to be Marek’s pressed her forehead. “Where’s Annan?”

  Marek didn’t answer.

  “Never mind,” Stephen said. “I can guess. Who’s done this?”

  “I don’t know. Annan’s got a tolerable share of enemies.”

  “And the lady herself has at least one, or so I gather. Lady Mairead—” Stephen’s hand lifted, and he leaned close enough that his words thundered inside her head. “Can you hear me?”

  She made herself squint her eyes open, but all she could see was the occasional flash where the fire of a torch penetrated the night.

  Stephen swore under his breath. “What have they done to her? Ducard!”

  A moan seeped between her teeth. She could only wish for strength enough to pull her arms from beneath the warmth of the blanket and cover her ears with her hands.

  Stephen, unaware, kept roaring. “Get her off this thing!”

  No doubt they tried to unfasten her pallet gently, but every time they touched the frame, waves of pain hammered against her heart.

  Somewhere between the courtyard and the bedchamber, she must have swooned, because the next thing to penetrate the red haze was the palette bumping to a stop.

  Lady Eloise’s voice raged somewhere not too far away. “Fiends! They’re fiends, I tell you! What have they done to her?”

  “Hush, woman.” Lord Stephen scooped Mairead up, and her body crumpled between his arms. She bit her lip until she tasted blood, and the scream welling inside turned to another moan.

  “’Tis all right,” Stephen said. He laid her down and a straw tick rose up on either side to surround her. Blankets fell into place over her, but a shuddering wave of chills came anyway.

  Stephen’s voice again, farther away: “Get the priest.”

  “Nay—” She forced the word out. “I don’t need the rites—”

  “Nay, dear heart, not to read the rites.” Eloise’s hand was soft and warm against her cheek. “He’ll pray over you.”

  She groped until she found Eloise’s hand. “I need Annan.”

  “He’s gone away to keep you safe.”

  “Then send Marek to me, please—”

  “Ssh. The lad needs to sleep. As do you. Hush now, Father John will be here soon. Very soon.”

  Under the steady rhythm of Lady Eloise’s hand upon her hair, her shivers began to dissolve. She released the clench of her jaw and let herself sink once more into the blur of red and black. Later, when she had more strength, she would insist they keep a man by her side… in case Annan couldn’t make it safe for her…

  * * *

  By the time the Templar, Warin, caught his horse, Annan had built a small fire. If someone had tracked him this far, which he doubted, the fire might possibly be a death sentence. But he was fairly certain he had lost his pursuers before he had even left Antioch.

  And as things stood now, if he were going to stay awake long enough to make certain this Templar wasn’t going to stab him in his sleep and use his death as grounds to regain Roderic’s favor, he needed a fire between them for at least a few hours longer.

  Once the crackle of flames was bouncing knee high and their bellies were partially full of black bread and dried stockfish, Warin surprised him by being the first to speak. “Does the name Veritas mean anything to you?”

  “It’s the Latin word for truth.”

  “It’s also the name of a man.”

  “What man?”

  “Someone who has been acting as an anonymous informer to the bishop. His knowledge is uncanny, clairvoyant even. And most of it has been in regard to this monk they call the Baptist. You’re familiar with him, I know.”

  Annan ignored the satire. “What about the Baptist?” The wind shifted, bringing the tang of wood smoke to his nostrils. Did Warin know the truth about Gethin after all?

  “Veritas told us what the Baptist was preaching, what towns he traveled through, and how we could thwart him. His missives came to me, and I brought them to the bishop. We never knew where they came from, only that his words were never false.”

  Warin looked up from the piece of cheese he had been rolling back and forth in his fingers. “It was Veritas who encouraged Lord Hugh’s attentions to the Countess of Keaton. He was keeping us informed of the Earl of Keaton’s actions and the Baptist’s and this Matthias of Claidmore’s—so that we could kill them when the time came.”

  “And when the time came, you hired me.”

  “Aye.”

  “What’s your point?”

  Warin turned his head toward the river, staring without really seeming to see. He flicked the cheese onto the sand of the shore. “Maybe I don’t have a point. Not one you would care about anyway.”

  “If it involves any man who encouraged what happened to the Lady Mairead—I care.”

  Warin turned back. “I know who he is.”

  “Veritas?”

  He nodded. “I’ve seen him twice, but I didn’t know it was him. I don’t know his name or where to find him.” His eyes, almost orange with the flickering reflection of the fire, grew as sharp as any of Annan’s blades. “But you do.”

  Annan’s brows came together. “What?”

  “It’s that man. Your traveling companion. The one you wouldn’t let me take to Roderic.”

  What? Annan had to make himself blink. Gethin was informant to Roderic?

  “I didn’t know it was him at the time,” Warin explained. “But he made me curious. When the army was leaving Acre, he stopped me and told me you hadn’t died in the prison camp as we had thought. That you had escaped, with a woman.”

  The air mired in Annan’s windpipe. Gethin was responsible for all this? Gethin, who had once been more to him than any brother? He had orchestrated all this—the mendicant charade, Lord William’s death, the attacks upon Mairead—just to wreak his own twisted vengeance?

  He barked out a laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all.

  Warin peered at him. “I would never have realized it myself except he wrote to the bishop about things that none could have known save those who were present that evening you came to rescue him.”

  “Does Father Roderic know?”

  “Nay. I didn’t tell him. He’ll wake up some morning to find himself entangled in his own web.”

  Annan’s limbs trembled, and he found he could stay still no longer. He rose to his feet, paced a few strides into the darkness, and stood with his hands on his hips, pulling the cold night air into his lungs.

  Behind him, the Templar spoke on, more to himself than to Annan. “One thing I would know. Why should this man care about destroying Matthias and the Baptist? When he was with me, he talked as if he agreed with them.”

  Annan whirled. “You fool. He is the Baptist.”

  It was Warin’s turn to look as if someone had slammed the end of a cudgel into his stomach. “What—” The firelight turned the hollows of his face to ghastly canyons. “That can’t be true.”

  Breathing as though he had forgotten how, he rose to his feet. When his eyes lifted to meet Annan’s, they held the light of full realization. “Then Roderic has been a pawn in the Baptist’s hands since the beginning.”

  “We all have.”

  “But why?” Warin took a step to join him. “What does he want? Not for us to find him and kill him, obviously.”

  Annan swallowed the copper taste of bile
. “He wants to reconstruct what happened at St. Dunstan’s the day Roderic had him tortured. He wants to change it, so it ends the way he thinks it should have. He wants Matthias to kill Roderic.”

  “I thought you said you’d killed Matthias?”

  “Gethin doesn’t believe me.” Gooseflesh pimpled the skin of his arms.

  “Then…” The Templar took another step and stopped in the corner of Annan’s vision. “He won’t stop this madness. He’s going to try to kill all of you. You know that. And probably the countess first of all.”

  “He’s not going to get the chance.” Forcing his exhaustion, his pain, his confusion down deep inside himself, Annan filled his lungs and turned to fetch his equipage. He hefted the saddle onto his shoulder and rose to find the weary gray courser. The courser that Gethin had given him. The courser that he would ride in pursuit of Gethin. All the way into the depths of Hell if he had to.

  * * *

  In the dark alley outside the inn where Hugh and his men had stopped for the night on their way to Antioch, Hugh was accosted by a shadow in a black cowl. Alone and half-drunk, he nearly pitched onto his face. But the stranger was too quick. He seized Hugh by the throat before he could fall and slammed him into the wall.

  “Listen to me.” The voice that hissed from within the cowl was English, with a strong Cheviot accent. “You’re following the wrong trail. Marcus Annan goes to Antioch to kill your man Bertrand. If he finds you there, he will kill you too.”

  “Wha— Who are you?” Hugh fumbled for his sword, but the stranger, though a head shorter, slammed him against the wall once more, knocking the breath from his lungs.

  “Go back to the home of Stephen of Essex.”

  “Stephen of Essex?” He squinted.

  “Aye. The lady is there.”

  “She’s still alive?” His brain was beginning to clear. Who was this man? How did he know these things? “Who in the name of St. Denis are you?”

  “Roderic is returning to Jaffa. Take the lady to him. Annan will follow, and you must leave word for him that the only way he can save her is to bring Matthias of Claidmore. Tell him.” The stranger relaxed his fingers, and the blood began to throb back into Hugh’s throat. The stranger backed away from Hugh and reached with both hands to straighten his cowl.