Behold the Dawn

  “Mayhap.” He let his lips smile. “If I say yes, does that mean you’ve caught a bigger fish than you’ve net for?”

  Bartholomew’s eyelid twitched. “You’re under arrest.”

  “What for?”

  The squire on Bartholomew’s left tensed to grab Annan’s sword.

  “For conspiracy against a holy Father of the Church and for the murder of a sworn knight of the Crusade.”

  The squire’s mail-sheathed fingers caught hold of Annan’s blade and tore it from his grip. Neither Annan nor Bartholomew flinched.

  Bartholomew kneed his horse forward and leaned the point of his blade against Annan’s heart. He smiled, his eye still twitching. “Come along. I hear the bishop is rather interested in seeing you one more time.”

  * * *

  Bartholomew and two of his knights escorted Annan through the city with exemplary haste. Save for the light from an occasional house of merriment, Jaffa lay in silence. The anticipation of battle and the inevitable fear of a city about to be laid under siege was a dank vapor upon the empty streets and the shadows that swayed like drunkards at every corner.

  Finally, after weaving through street after narrow street, they dismounted before a building of three stories. Annan craned his head, trying to see if a light still burned in any of the windows, but the overhang of the second floor and, higher up, that of the third floor, precluded the sight of anything but a sliver of sky and its smattering of white-hot stars.

  Bartholomew pounded a fist against the door, and Annan grounded his attention. The other two knights stood on either side of him. They each rested a hand on him, one on his right shoulder, the other on his upper left arm, probably hoping to remind him, by the mere pressure of their hands, that resistance was futile.

  They hoped in vain.

  He flexed his hand against the bite of the rope that bound his wrists in front of him, then clenched his fingers into a fist, feeling the swell of his upper arm against the rough homespun of his sleeve. They had taken his sword and dagger—as he had expected. And they had bound him tight enough to make his hands throb from lack of blood—something he hadn’t planned.

  But if they thought he had any intention of continuing this docile act of following them like someone’s pet goat, they were mistaken. They did well to fear Marcus Annan’s reputation. A few minutes more, and they would discover why they feared.

  Bartholomew pounded again, and this time the door creaked open. A hunched servant stepped halfway out, lofting a candle with one hand and trying to jam the hem of his tunic into his trousers with the other. “Stop it! Stop your banging! This is the bishop’s house. Ye can’t be banging on his doors!”

  Bartholomew hesitated, probably weighing Roderic’s anger at being disturbed against his gratitude for the delivery of such a coveted captive. “I’ve brought him a prisoner.”

  The servant, a Londoner from the sound of his accent, shook his head. “What’s his Grace want with prisoners? Take ‘em to the king or the Duke of Burgundy or whoever ‘tis ye answer to. We’ve no want of them.”

  “He’ll want this one.”

  The servant huffed and lifted his candle the better to see Annan. “Ah, well... Bring him in, then. If ye haven’t already woken his Grace up, we can at least keep your prisoner ‘til morn. Come.”

  Bartholomew stepped aside, and the escort pushed Annan into the doorway. He tensed, ready to swing his arms against the servant’s candle and douse them all in darkness.

  A voice stabbed across the street. “Wait, wait! Stop a minute! I know that bloke!”

  His concentration snapped. Marek? He spun, bumping into one of the knights and setting them both off balance. In the flicker of the servant’s candle, he could see Peregrine Marek—in person and in direct defiance to orders—blundering into Bartholomew’s arms.

  His fist clamped. What was that scurvy idiot doing here? Was the lad stark, raving drunk?

  Marek pushed away from Bartholomew far enough to thump himself on the chest and then wave in Annan’s direction. “I knows him.”

  “Do you now?” The Frank’s twitching eye looked him over. “And just how is it you know him?”

  “I’m with him. Whatever he’s doin’ here—” another thump on the chest “—I’m doin’ it with ‘im.”

  Bartholomew frowned, then turned to nod at the knight Annan had bumped against. “Throw him in, just in case the bishop wants to see him too.”

  “That’s right. The blinking old bishop wants to see me too.” Marek smiled happily, and then before Bartholomew’s reaching hand could close round his collar, he slammed the hilt of a narrow-bladed dagger into the knight’s chin.

  Bartholomew staggered back, and with a cry, the other two Franks lunged at Marek. Annan swung around and battered his bound hands into the stomach of the London servant. The man’s breath rushed from him in a gasp, and he and his candle fell into the mud of the street.

  Annan plowed into the scuffle. He found one of the knights’ mail-clad fists and ran his hands down to the blade. The edges bit into the calluses of his palms, but he wrenched it away with a single sweep of his arms and clubbed its hilt against the knight’s face.

  The man reeled, leaving only a ghost of movement where he had been standing. Annan flipped the sword around, took one step forward, and swung. He connected with the soft tissue of the man’s abdomen, and the knight fell with a groan.

  Sword in front of his face, Annan pivoted toward the sounds of the continuing skirmish. “Marek!”

  “I’m busy!”

  That was more than enough to distinguish Marek’s voice from his opponent’s furious grunts. Annan tore into the fray, swinging wide to compensate for his blindness. This time the blade crashed against bone. The man stumbled, and Marek tackled him, finishing him with his dagger.

  Annan turned in time to hear the old servant picking himself out of the mud. “Saints in Heaven—!”

  Annan took one running step, met him before he could rise from his knees, and dealt him a solid blow with the flat of his blade on the back of the head. Behind him, a similar thud told him Marek had remembered to administer the same service to the groggy Bartholomew.

  For a moment they listened to their own breath gusting in the sudden silence of the street.

  “Think anybody heard us?” Marek asked.

  “Would you like to tell me what in the name of the faith you’re doing here?”

  “I came to help you, you great troll. Are your hands still tied?”

  “What do you think?”

  They withdrew into the shelter of the doorway, and Marek felt along Annan’s arms for the ropes.

  “Where’s Warin?” Annan demanded.

  “With Lady Eloise.” Marek inserted his blood-sticky blade between Annan’s wrists and slit the ropes in two quick cuts. “Don’t worry. They’re fine together.”

  Rubbing his wrists, Annan growled. “I don’t suppose it even occurred to whatever swims around inside your head in place of a brain that plans are decided upon for a reason?”

  “This plan had a fault in it.” Marek ducked his head out the doorway, shot a glance in either direction, then pulled himself back in and eased the door shut. “Most notably, that you’d be dead if I hadn’t decided to come along as protection.”

  Annan’s snort wasn’t quite as emphatic as it should have been. Despite its inevitable crooked bent, Marek’s logic wasn’t entirely without truth.

  “Besides,” Marek peered up at him, arms slack at his sides, “I had to help make this right.”

  Annan sighed. Blood oozed from the cuts in his palms, and he pulled one hand away from the sword to wipe it against the front of his tunic. “Aye. I know you did.”

  Somewhere down the passage, footsteps, no doubt of some awakened servant sent to find the meaning of the commotion in the street, creaked against the floorboards.

  Annan glanced at Marek and gestured with his chin for the lad to go ahead. “Sheathe the sword,” he whispered.

  Ma
rek’s head flashed up and down in a nod. This was a ploy they had used more than once. Annan withdrew to the side of the foyer’s doorway where he would be hidden. The footsteps drew nearer, and Marek straightened the front of his tunic with a jerk before stepping into their path.

  “Hallo! You there, is there a physician in the house?”

  The glow of a candle fell across the threshold of the door, almost touching Annan’s feet. “What’s happened?” The servant’s voice was that of a young Londoner.

  “Nasty little brawl, looks like. I just happened to be walking by, of course. Appears as though some of those poor wretches is going to be in need of a holy man.”

  “I’ll fetch the bishop…” The servant’s voice started to fade, as he turned away.

  “No—wait, wait! You have to help me carry them in first.”

  Annan pressed farther into the corner, shoulders hunched and head bowed to accommodate the ceiling. He could hear the servant’s shifting feet following Marek into the entry chamber. Annan’s fingers squeaked against the sharkskin leather of his sword’s handgrip, and he again rubbed one of his bleeding hands across his tunic.

  The candlelight drifted in through the door, was blocked momentarily by Marek’s shadow as he entered first, and then sprang forth again as the servant stepped inside.

  Marek turned to face the servant and laid a finger to his lips. “Ssh!”

  With Annan’s hand over his mouth and the sword’s edge against his ribcage, the lad shushed nicely. Marek caught the wavering candle and snuffed it between his fingers.

  The servant thrashed against Annan’s grip, then came to rest with both hands clamped on the wrist of the hand against his mouth. Annan bent low, his jaw shoved up against his prisoner’s. “If you want to still have a heart in your chest tomorrow, then you’ll help us.”

  The serving boy’s fingernails bit into Annan’s wrist.

  “Bishop Roderic is holding my wife here.”

  The squirming stopped for a moment. Then she was here, undoubtedly. And every jack of a servant knew of it. Annan pressed harder with the blade. “Where is she?”

  The lad started to shake his head, but Annan clamped down on either cheekbone hard enough for this impudent underling to know how easy it would be for him to crush his face without even trying. The head shaking immediately became a nod.

  “Do you swear by the Holy City that you will not cry out if I let you go?”

  Another nod.

  He released his hold on the boy’s mouth and drew back enough to take him by one shoulder and spin him around to face the door. “Take me to her.”

  * * *

  From the other side of the street that Marcus Annan and his servant had just strewn with the bodies of a Frankish-Syrian sentry group, Gethin the Baptist limped into a narrow glow of moonlight. He lifted his cowl over the gooseflesh of his tonsure. His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowing to a hawk’s-eye glint.

  Annan had come. Just as Gethin had known he would, he had come. He folded his hands into his sleeves and picked his way across the muck of the street, avoiding the still forms that lay upon the road—detritus of the late battle.

  His eyelids quivered. The quest for justice was almost at an end. For sixteen years, he had played the game, had nursed his hopes that everything that had happened to him at the Abbey of St. Dunstan’s would finally be made right. Roderic of Devonshire and Matthias of Claidmore—they were the ones who had caused him to be beaten like a rabid dog and then cast aside for dead. They were the reason he even still carried the deep, riving scars upon his person.

  But they would finish what they had begun. Just as would Gethin himself. Justice would be had. Truth would conquer.

  And Marcus Annan would become a prisoner with no other choice but to comply with Gethin’s demands.

  At the doorway, he stopped and listened to the silence. Then, with a smile, he slipped inside.

  Chapter XXVI

  RODERIC’S SERVING LAD led Annan and Marek to a staircase at the end of the passage. At the bottom of the stairs lay a stone-encased dungeon. Packed with cells, and only a narrow path between them, it smelt of earth and rust and ash. Water dripped somewhere. Annan brushed his free hand against the wall and felt the stones’ moisture and the moss within the crevices.

  “Who’s there?” a voice, heavy with sleep, called. “MacDonald, is that you?”

  Prison guard. “Answer him.” Annan prodded his guide’s shoulder.

  The lad spoke through locked teeth. “Douglass, it’s Odo. From upstairs.”

  The guard grunted. He jangled as he moved at the far end of the passage. Annan stopped short, one shoulder against the wall, and reached out to touch the other side of the passage. He had no room to maneuver here, and no way to rush the guard with this Odo lad stumbling along in front of him like a soggy bag of flour.

  “Wait there ‘til I find a torch,” the guard, Douglass, grumbled. “If this is about the lassie again, ye can tell the bishop I ain’t no nursemaid. If’n he wanted to keep her alive, why in the name of Bethlehem’s star did he have that fool Earl of Guerrant drag her all the way to ill-fated Jaffa? Eh?” Flint sparked against steel, and half a dozen pinpricks of orange spiraled towards the floor before winking back into darkness.

  Annan tightened his grip on his handful of Odo’s tunic, his eyes fixated on the spot of darkness that disguised the body of the guard. “Marek.”

  The lad moved in closer, his breath hot against the back of Annan’s neck. “What?”

  “Keep a hold on him.”

  “A hold on who?”

  Flint and steel kissed once more, and this time the torch burst to life, illuminating the hunched figure of a portly, balding Scotsman. Annan shoved both himself and Odo sideways in the narrow passage, giving himself just enough room to hurtle past. He released the servant’s tunic, leaving him to Marek, and once again closed both hands round his sword.

  Douglass whirled to face him, his flint and steel clanging to the stones at his feet. “Sweet Virgin Mother! Who the devil are you?”

  Annan didn’t slow, and the guard had not even time to withdraw his sword before Annan smashed into him, knocking him halfway down the passage with a blow from his forearm. The torch clattered to the floor, its guttering light splashing the dungeon with grotesque shadows. Annan stood over the fallen Douglass, sword at his throat. “Where’s the Lady Mairead?”

  Gasping, Douglass inched himself onto one elbow and groped for a quivering front tooth. “She’s there—in the last cell—”

  “Where are your keys?” He grabbed the man’s shirtfront and hauled him to his feet.

  “Yessir, here they be. Take her— I wish you would.”

  Annan dragged him to the end of the row. “Unlock it.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Mairead?” He leaned against the rusted iron of the door, praying in his heart that more than silence would answer his plea. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead. Gethin would not triumph in his twisted game to force Matthias back into the open. She would still be alive, and he would take her away from this place, and they would disappear forever. The past, as always, would have to fend for itself.

  The key grated in the lock, and Douglass dragged the door across the stones. Annan shoved him aside and yanked the door all the way open. “Fetch the torch. Marek, keep an eye on him.”

  Marek grunted. “All right. But hurry. This laddie here’s been eating too many raisin puddings of late, feels like.”

  Annan stood in the doorway, seeing nothing but the shifting shadows as Douglass raised the torch from the floor. He fancied he could hear the rustling of blankets, heavy breathing, maybe a whispered prayer—and his heart thundered against his ribs. “Lady?”

  This time he had no doubt he heard a quick exhalation. “Annan!”

  He didn’t wait for Douglass and the torch; he stumbled into the cold darkness of the cell. His knees hit the frame of a raised couch, and Mairead’s warm fingers clutched his arm. “Oh, Annan— God is
merciful—”

  “Hush.” He buried his face in the hair that draped her neck and held her against him, this flesh and bone and blood that was his wife. He breathed her in—the scent of dust and damp upon her hair, the stink of fear and illness that clung to her body, the smell of life—indomitable and unbroken. She was alive, and he could feel her heart beating against the emptiness of his chest. For just right now that was all that mattered.

  “Annan, I was so afraid—so afraid I’d die before you came—”

  “We have to leave. Are you able?”

  “Yes. I’m able. Take me away from here.”

  She closed her arms around his neck and held him as though he would disappear if she couldn’t hang on tight enough.

  “We will live through this,” he whispered and started to raise her in his arms, blankets and all.

  Behind them, Marek yelped. “Annan!”

  And then all Hell came tumbling down around their ears.

  From the stairwell, Hugh de Guerrant and a man-at-arms burst into the dungeon, swords at the ready. Laughter rumbled in Hugh’s throat, deep and satisfied. “Well, Master Annan, you’re becoming rather predictable, are you not?”

  For the space of one long second, Annan stood as he was, staring across the flickering of the torchlight into the Norman’s laughing eyes. Mairead’s fingers tightened upon his neck, and even with all the blankets between them, he could feel her chest constrict. “Annan—”

  He dropped her to her feet, praying her legs would support her long enough for him to dispatch this enemy once and for all.

  With a snarl, Hugh lunged. Letting Odo go, Marek spun into Hugh’s path, sword arced in front of him. Hugh caught it and parried without slowing. Marek’s weak shoulder, unable to withstand the brunt of the Norman’s strength, gave way, and his sword hurtled from his hand. The man-at-arms lunged for him, but Marek dove at his feet, rolling past him somehow and recapturing his blade.

  Annan whipped his sword in front of him and stood before the door of Mairead’s cell, teeth bared. Since the fall of Acre, he had been waiting for this day. The beat of his blood throbbed in his left hip. Nay—since that day at the melee tourney in Paris, he had waited. And now the time had come.