Behold the Dawn

  Warin’s horse spooked, half-rearing and running backward. “In the name of the saints—”

  Another scream shivered in the morning air, but this time it was mostly inarticulate words. And this time, Annan could tell the voice was not Mairead’s.

  Lady Eloise, then?

  Sword still in hand, he dismounted and handed the reins to Warin. “Wait for me.”

  He entered the foyer through gaping doors and stood for a moment, sword held before his left shoulder. The fire here had not burned as intensely as in the outbuildings. Perhaps someone had been able to put it out before it had properly started. Thin sunlight, choked with the smoke, trickled through the windows to either side of the door. The wooden furniture—chairs, tables, and coffers—bore the unmistakable black scars of the flames.

  Relaxing his arms, he took a step forward. No one came to challenge his entry. No one seemed to know of it at all. Did that mean they were all dead? His stomach, empty since the repast of the night before, twisted.

  The circular stairway at the far end of the passage had burned more thoroughly than much of the house. From what he could see around the curve of the wall, the steps had crumbled into cinders in as many as half a dozen places. Footprints not quite small enough to be a woman’s showed where someone had climbed through the soot. He stared at them. Mairead’s? His stomach cramped. It was a false hope. He knew it was a false hope.

  The stairs groaned under his weight, the boards straining and cracking, but they held. He reached the top and turned the corner—right into the point of a blade.

  “Stop!”

  His left hand snapped up to thrust the blade away, even as his right hand brought his own sword swinging against his attacker’s neck. Before the blade could connect, his eyes found the other’s face, and he jerked both hands back as though they had been burnt. “Marek—”

  “Annan—oh, God…” Marek swayed where he stood, and his free hand crept up to hold his shoulder. Blood, most of it dried deep red, stained his face, starting at a gash on his brow and streaking like angry fingers down across his cheek. Beneath the blood, his face was splotched purple, one cheek swollen and blackening with bruises.

  “Mairead— What’s happened to Mairead?” Annan came forward, his heart thumping loud enough to drown his own thoughts. He reached to grasp the lad by the shoulders, but Marek fended him off.

  “Don’t. My shoulder came out.” Marek closed his eyes, and his brow creased as though he were an old man. “I got it back in.”

  “Marek.” Annan’s voice rumbled. “What’s happened?”

  He just stood there, swaying. “They took her.”

  Annan’s hands fell to his sides. Marek had allowed them to take her? He had stood here, alive, while Hugh de Guerrant committed God knew what atrocities against the woman whose life Annan had trusted to him? “You let them take her?”

  Marek’s eyes snapped open, his pupils tiny against the red veins of his eyes.

  “I trusted you!” Annan said. “I trusted you to die for her!”

  “I tried.” He closed his eyes again, his voice hoarse.

  Annan took a step closer, looming over the lad, the strength of his arms trembling. “Not hard enough.” And then he pushed past, suddenly wishing with all his heart that he had left Peregrine Marek to rot in that Glasgow dungeon.

  In her chambers, he found Lady Eloise sitting in a half-burnt wreck of a chair, wrapped to her chin in a dirty gray blanket. Her eyes were closed, her silver hair falling around her face like a veil. She was shaking with more than cold.

  Annan came farther into the room, and his rage turned chill within him. What had they done to her? But he knew. Another step showed him the body of Lord Stephen, a black hole in his stomach, eyes staring at the ceiling.

  “Lady.” His voice cracked.

  Her eyes flew open. They were glassy, unseeing. But she recognized him. “Master Annan.”

  He came closer and knelt on one knee at her side. “Lady, I’m sorry. I brought this on your house.”

  Her eyes focused with some difficulty, and she curled herself tighter into the blanket. “It was the will of God.”

  And that made it less his fault? He swallowed past the thickness of his throat, and his eyes shifted to Stephen’s body. The man had been a friend. One of few. “We’ll bury him.”

  She shook her head, and one arm emerged from the blanket and groped to find his shoulder. “Your boy… they dropped him over my balcony.”

  His neck muscles spasmed. They dropped Marek from the balcony? Marek—his son, his brother, his friend? Marek, who had given his life for Mairead. Was the lad to be blamed if Heaven hadn’t been ready to take him?

  Behind him, the frame of the door creaked, and he turned to see Marek leaning there, his swollen face damp. “Annan—”

  “Never mind.” The words came out in the reflexive growl that had for so long frightened Mairead. He rose to his feet. “What about your shoulder?”

  The lad looked at the floor. “It’ll be fine.”

  “We’re leaving.” He turned back to Lady Eloise. She stared at him, waiting. He couldn’t very well abandon her here, no matter how desperate his need to pursue Mairead. “Where can I find you a haven?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Lady, I can’t leave—”

  She lifted her hand from her lap in a wave full of weariness. “Find Mairead. Ducard went for help. He’ll be back before the night falls. And if he is not...” She shrugged.

  The scar on Annan’s cheek quivered. “Lady Eloise.”

  She dragged her eyes up to his face.

  “I’ll find them. Where, I don’t know. But I will find them.”

  “I know where,” Marek said.

  Annan turned. “What?”

  Marek tilted his head up, and his shaggy hair fell over his eyes. “They’re taking her to Jaffa.”

  “Jaffa…”

  Marek lifted his head a bit more. “They said, to get her back, you have to bring Matthias of Claidmore in exchange.”

  Annan froze. So this was Gethin’s master stroke.

  “Annan!”

  His senses jerked back into focus, and his hand scrambled for his sword, even as Marek leapt into the hallway to engage Warin.

  “Stop!” Annan crossed the room and jerked the lad back by the hood of his jerkin. Marek grunted his pain, and Annan immediately regretted the act.

  “It’s all right,” he said, as much to Warin as to Marek.

  “But it’s him! The Templar!”

  “It’s all right, lad.” Warin lowered his sword. “I’ve no notion of fighting you any longer.”

  “And why’s that?” The swelling of Marek’s face stretched tight.

  Annan didn’t let him answer. “Hugh’s taken her to Jaffa,” he told Warin.

  “How do you know?”

  He nodded to Marek. “How many hours head start have they?”

  Marek lowered his sword slightly. His eyes remained flinty with suspicion. “Maybe five.”

  “Five hours. If we take the time to bury Stephen and see Eloise to safety in the nearest Christian city, we could give pursuit in less than a day.”

  Warin shook his head. “If the countess is still alive, Hugh will have to protect her fragile condition, and since time is short that would mean traveling by sea.”

  Annan was silent, figuring in his mind. “Then they could already have reached port in St. Symeon.”

  “Aye. Which means we wouldn’t be able to overtake them before they reach Jaffa itself—if Jaffa isn’t under siege by then.”

  “Siege?” Marek’s frown burrowed deeper. “I thought peace negotiations were under way.”

  Annan had heard rumors of the renewed siege while still in Antioch. It seemed the Turks couldn’t resist one more strike upon the Christian army. They had attacked Jaffa once already, within the last week, and the city had been saved only by Richard’s hasty intervention. “Sometimes the best peace is when there is no longer an enemy with whom to negoti
ate.”

  “If Richard’s stuck in Jaffa, the Moslems could stamp out the whole Crusade in one more battle.”

  Warin shook his head. “Richard’s summoned troops from Caesarea.”

  “The battle could be over and done with before they get there.”

  “They’ll get there.” Warin looked at Annan. “But if the Turks have the city surrounded how do you propose to get in?”

  Annan rubbed the lines in his forehead. They were deeper than he remembered. “I don’t know.” His hand slid down his face. A prayer welled in his heart, and for the first time in sixteen years he didn’t crush it into silence. Christ in Heaven, I am unworthy... but show me. Show me the way.

  “If the Moslems don’t capture you, the Christians probably will. You realize that?”

  His hand dropped from his face. He cocked his head. “That’s a bad thing?”

  “It is if you’re a marked man, and after what happened in Antioch you undoubtedly fall into that category.”

  Marek spoke, “Even after we gain entrance to the city, we’ll still have to find a way past the bishop’s personal defenses.”

  “Maybe—” Annan pressed his lips together, staring at the ash-streaked stone of the passage wall. Warin was right. Besieged cities lived and died on their alertness. Anyone trying to gain entrance to Jaffa would probably be put under arrest until his identity could be ascertained.

  But once Annan’s identity was known was it not likely he would be taken directly to Bishop Roderic as a prisoner?

  “I’m going to let them capture me.”

  Marek’s gaze sharpened. “What?”

  “Once they’ve taken me to Father Roderic, I can escape.” He turned back into Eloise’s room. “Lady, I’m going to Jaffa. Marek and Brother Warin will stay here with you until I can return. Do you understand?”

  Her shoulders lifted beneath the gray blanket, but her eyes stayed on the floor. “Go, Marcus Annan. If you can find the Lady Mairead, perhaps you deserve her after all.”

  * * *

  None of Stephen’s horses remained within the smoldering stable, so Annan tightened Airn’s girth once more and accepted the wallet of food Warin had scraped together from somewhere. The Templar looked him in the face, his gaze frank. “Good luck, Master Knight. God help you.”

  “And you.” Annan’s gaze wandered to where Marek waited a pace off, his body rigid, his head down. Marek and his gentle heart. The guilt was killing him... guilt that Annan’s unthinking condemnation had only strengthened. “Laddie?”

  Marek whirled. His eyes flashed in their hollow sockets. “Let me come with you.”

  “Nay—”

  “Annan, please. I need to come with you.”

  “I said nay. You’ll stay with Brother Warin and Lady Eloise. They need you more than I do.”

  Marek’s shoulders dropped.

  “Marek.” Annan stepped closer and grasped the boy’s uninjured shoulder. “Listen to me.”

  The lad looked up. The knot of muscle at the corner of his cheek worked itself back and forth.

  Annan stared him in the eye, wanting to bore this into his brain more deeply than any message about swordsmanship or wisdom or keeping his confounded mouth shut. “I’m not sorry.”

  “What?”

  “That Hugh didn’t kill you. Don’t think I’m sorry you’re still alive.”

  The smoke against the sun made shadows of Marek’s unruly hair, and Annan couldn’t see into his eyes enough to tell if that knowledge made any difference. The knot in the lad’s jaw didn’t relax.

  At the other end of the courtyard, the shattered gates groaned in the wind.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Annan said. He gave Marek’s shoulder a squeeze, then turned to accept his reins from Warin. He mounted and paused to look over at the lad who had been his only companion for nigh on three years. “If you get out of Palestine alive, you go back to Maid Dolly.”

  Marek’s head came up, his mouth opening. That was all Annan had time to see before he reined his courser around and spurred him into a run. They galloped through the broken gates, past the crumbled walls, into the gray-green of the hills.

  Chapter XXV

  RODERIC STOOD AT the mouth of the dark cell and stared at the woman upon the pallet. His heart pounded so hard it pained him to breathe, much less speak the fury tumbling in his brain.

  This was the Countess of Keaton. She lay curled beneath the blanket, her face hidden in the dark riot of her hair. Whether her sleep was real or feigned, he had been unable to decide. But the very fact that she was here turned the pit of his stomach cold.

  Lord Hugh, standing with hands clasped behind his back, spoke over Roderic’s shoulder, “She’ll live, your Grace. She isn’t hurt so badly as that, and she’s convalescing nicely.”

  Roderic whirled past him and stalked into the dark hallway. He waited until Hugh joined him, closing the cell door behind him.

  “You fool!” Roderic spat. “It was Veritas’s plan that she die—not that you bring her here as bait in some absurd trap!”

  In the flicker of the torchlight, Hugh’s eyes hardened. “Veritas changed the plan.”

  “He had no right to change anything! And you had no right to take his advice without consulting me!” He clamped his arms across his chest and groped for the comforting weight of his crucifix. “You don’t even know for certain that this cloaked messenger was Veritas. It could have been a drunken Turk for all we know!”

  “A drunken Turk who knew of Matthias and Annan and where to find the Lady Mairead? I think not. Besides,” Hugh came forward a step, “his plan is brilliant.”

  “Hah!” Roderic pinched the crucifix harder. How could he tell Hugh that the plan’s brilliance was the very thing that left his insides shaking? “Jaffa is about to come under siege again—this time by a force three times our current strength—the Baptist has been seen preaching within these very walls, and now you have the audacity to lure my enemies into my bedchamber!”

  Hugh arched an eyebrow. “The Baptist is here?”

  “Yes.”

  Hugh’s lips drew back, parting just enough to show his teeth. It was as close to a smile as Roderic had seen since they had left Normandy. “Then it appears,” he said, “that Veritas has maneuvered all your rats into one fire. Doesn’t it?”

  Roderic could only glare as a sudden wave of nausea swept over him, muting upon his tongue the conviction that this fire would burn more than just the rats.

  * * *

  From Stephen’s castle to Jaffa was a ride of six days. Annan made it in little more than four and a half. When he stopped, at last, mere miles from the city, it was only to give way to the infidel hordes encamped in the plains roundabout.

  He leaned an elbow against his saddlebow, squinting at the Turkish army. Then he straightened and inflated his chest with the first scent of the evening’s cooler air.

  This was the fortress city of Jaffa, its repaired walls dark against the sunset red of the sea, pinpricks of early firelight just beginning to show through the window slits in the wall. Somewhere within those walls was Mairead—and probably Gethin and Father Roderic. All that separated Annan from them was a defeat. And with Saladin’s armies crawling just within sight, Jaffa’s watches would be double. It should be easier than teaching a cod to swim for him to engineer just such a defeat. His defeat.

  Emptying his lungs, he laid the rein against Airn’s neck and clucked. “Come along then. I’ve it in my mind to reward the first deserving patrol I can find.”

  * * *

  The moon, swollen just beyond half-full and glowing a frothy yellow, hung above its distorted reflection in the sea. Annan wet his lips and tried to keep his breathing even. It was a useless effort. His body didn’t understand that the Frankish-Syrian patrol ambling on the beach below wasn’t yet a target. His limbs quivered in anticipation.

  The soldiers’ equipage clanked, just loud enough to be heard above the sweep of the tide as it rose and fell and rose again. Annan
touched a spur to Airn’s side, and the horse started forward. God help me.

  The fall of sand from the courser’s sliding hindquarters caught the attention of the Franks before he was halfway down the hill.

  “Arrêtez!” one of them called, his mail sleeve glinting as he pointed.

  The excitement of battle blossomed in Annan’s brain, but he kept his right hand away from his sword. The courser lunged the final steps to the ground and tore across the beach toward the city gates.

  “Arrêtez! Vous êtes en ètat d’arrestation!” The knights scrambled to follow, the hoofbeats strangely muted against the wet sand. Annan could hear the kiss of battle-honed blades leaving their sheaths.

  He clenched his teeth, his hand clamping down on the courser’s mouth, forcing it to slow its pace. The walls loomed before him; he was almost within their shadow. Any nearer and he would be shot by the archers on the embattlements before the knights could arrest him.

  Hoofbeats pounded behind him. He waited, feeling the strain in the cords of his neck. Almost, almost—now! He grabbed for his sword and whirled the courser.

  The nearest knight, little more than a length behind, hauled at his horse’s gaping mouth and slid to a stop in time to engage Annan.

  If this had been a true battle, the young Frank’s head would have been rolling in the sand a long eternity before his sword could have met Annan’s. But, for just this once in his life, Annan wasn’t fighting to the death. He parried the youngster’s blow, feinted to the left where he knew his blade would be easily blocked, then spun his horse to face the arrival of the others.

  “Arrêtez là-bas! Se rendre!”

  “Sir Bartholomew, we have him!” cried another.

  Annan disengaged his sword and swung it in front of him to guard his face. The dark-haired knight, probably their leader, judging from the way their ranks shimmied apart to let him through, laid the edge of his own sword against the tip of Annan’s. “Qui vive?”

  “My name is Annan.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. His sword inched nearer. “Marcus Annan? The tourneyer?”