by Judith Tarr
7.
From the Latin shore Constantinople seemed vast beyond imagining: vast and marred.
“That’s a good stretch of palace wall we’ve taken down,” said Thibaut de Langliers, peering under his hand, “and a company of our men inside to keep an eye on the Emperors.”
Jehan leaned back against the tent pole and sighed, replete with good solid Fare after a Mass well sung. “I don’t envy anyone who has to live in that wasps’ nest.”
Another of the young knights regarded him with surprise. “Why, they’ve been made very welcome. Fed well, too. Better than we, and we’re faring like princes.”
“Now we are. Wait till the crisis comes. Do you think we’ll get what we’ve been promised? Supplies for the voyage to Jerusalem, and two hundred thousand marks in gold; ten thousand Greek troops for a year and five hundred more committed to the Holy Land for life, and the union of our churches besides. Will we get all that? Will the Devil turn Christian?”
“Provisions you will have,” Alf said, “for a while. The rest is a fool’s dream.”
Even Jehan turned to stare at him. He had been all but voiceless throughout the Mass and the meal after, sitting in the shadow of the tent with Thea in hound-shape seeming to drowse at his feet. He met the stares with wide clear eyes, and toyed absently with Thea’s ears. “A young pretender promised you the world to win back his empire. Now he has what he aimed for, and it’s considerably less than he thought it was. He can feed you for a time, pay to keep your fleet, but no more. If I had taken the cross, and were wise enough, I’d take what he could give and leave before another week had passed.”
“And what of honor?” demanded the youngest knight.
“Honor is not the same as wisdom.”
The boy leaped to his feet. “Are you calling me a fool?”
Thea raised her head from her paws; Jehan braced himself for a battle. But Alf sat back unruffled. “Did I say anything of the sort? Come, Messire Aimery. Won’t you concede that the wise course is not always the honorable one?”
“That’s true enough,” said Jehan a shade quickly. “Look at the Greeks. Any knight worth his spurs would settle his troubles the honorable way, in the lists; but a Greek will think and ponder and negotiate and intrigue, and get what he’s after without a fight.”
“Greeks and priests.” Aimery had subsided into his seat again. “You excepted, of course.”
“There are those who say I shouldn’t exist: a priest who carries a sword. And uses it too.”
“And what of Saint Michael?” Alf asked.
“Well. He’s an archangel.”
“He does provide a precedent.”
“That’s our usual argument. But when God and knight’s honor demand different things, it presents a dilemma.”
Alf nodded slowly. “What does one do when God seems to be on both sides of the battle? When Christian attacks Christian and each wears the cross of the Crusade—what then?”
“One loses all one’s illusions,” Jehan answered him grimly. “We took Zara; have you heard that?”
“I’ve heard.”
“They were Christians; they’d taken the cross. But they’d rebelled against Saint Mark, and it was part of our price of passage that we defend the Republic’s interests. The Pope was livid. And yet he didn’t make more than a token protest. I was appalled. How could all that was high and holy be so besmirched? Christians slaughtered Christians; Crusaders killed Crusaders—for what? Money and provisions to take the Holy Sepulcher. Would Christ want it to be saved by such horrors as we are?”
“Perhaps it’s not to be saved by anyone.” Alf examined his laced fingers, seeing a pattern there, clear for his reading. “I’ve had strange thoughts of late. What arrogant creatures men are, to presume that they know God’s will. And priests are more arrogant than any, for they not only purport to know, but presume to execute the commands of divine Providence. Yet, is it Providence or their own desires? If God places the Holy Land in the Saracens’ hands, perhaps after all He wants it to be so?”
“That’s heresy,” Aimery muttered.
“It is; and I was a priest once. I’m no fit company for God’s knights.”
“Is that why you’re not a priest now?”
Jehan drew a sharp breath. Alf smiled and shook his head. “No. I was raised in an abbey and took vows there. But I found that I couldn’t be the sort of priest I wanted to be. I asked that my vows be dissolved. It was easy enough in the end. There’s a law, you see, that a man raised by monks must not take full vows before his twenty-fifth year. I was much younger than that. So, a stroke of the papal pen, and suddenly I was a layman. My mind marked the occasion by conceiving half a dozen heresies.”
“That’s not so,” Jehan said hotly, “and you know it. Here, finish off the wine and stop trying to frighten these poor boys.”
“Oh, no,” said a new voice. “I find him fascinating.”
They started to their feet. The newcomer stood with hands on hips: a pleasant-faced young man in clothes as rich as a prince’s. Although they were of Greek cut and fabric, from round-cut head to spurred heel he was indisputably a Latin. He regarded Alf with a steady brown stare, head cocked slightly to one side, lips quirked. “In dress a Greek, in accent a Latin, in name, if I’m not mistaken, a Saxon. You’re an interesting man, Master Alfred.”
The young knights had gone pale. Even Jehan seemed nonplussed. But Alf returned the other’s gaze with perfect calm. “It seems I’m known among the high ones, my lord.”
“How not, when your priestly friend has described you so lovingly, and told us that you were to be honoring our camp with your presence? You have a clear eye for all our weaknesses.”
“And for your strength.”
“What may that be?”
“Courage,” Alf answered, “to face so great a city with so few.”
“Perhaps, after all, God is on our side.”
“He may be. Who am I to say?”
The young lord smiled. “Who indeed? Who is anyone, when it comes to that? Come with me, wise master. There’s a man I’d have you meet.”
Alf bowed his head. As he followed the brown-eyed lord, Jehan fell in behind, a solid presence, and with him the quicksilver that was Thea. Her amusement danced in his mind. Another conquest! And a lofty one, too. There aren’t many men who’d bandy words with Messire Henry of Flanders.
I’m old in insolence, he responded coolly, without pausing in his stride.
In the center of the tent city stood a great pavilion, all imperial purple with the Lion of Saint Mark worked upon it. Under its canopy in sweltering shade a number of men sat over wine. Yet Alf saw first not faces but a cloud of clashing wills. Two men leaned toward one another, one young and one not so young; although they smiled, the tension between them was solid enough to touch.
“So, my lord Boniface,” the younger man said, “you would ride away to Thrace with young Prince Popinjay and leave the City to its own devices.”
The other’s smile neither wavered nor softened. “Why not? Someone should be with him to pull his puppet-strings; or are you unsure enough of our position here to be afraid to leave it?”
“I fear nothing at all. But I see an empire with its young emperor abroad doing battle with the usurper he cast down, and in the palace naught but an eyeless dodderer. A fruit ripe for our plucking.”
“Might not the empire do the same with us?” asked the man who sat between them. He glowed darkly, dressed in the same imperial splendor as the pavilion; on his head was a crown, but it was fashioned of cloth and marked with a white cross. He was old, bent and shriveled with age, the skin deep-folded over the strong bones of his face. The eyes that burned under heavy brows burned upon nothingness, for he was blind. Yet when he spoke his voice was deep and firm, gathering all these proud rebellious lords into the palm of his hand.
Alf moved forward, caught by the brilliance of the soul that flamed behind the useless eyes. “A blind emperor,” he said; “a blind D
oge. But one is a dotard, and one is stronger than any paladin.”
The black eyes flicked toward him; the crowned head cocked. “A stranger? Has a spy come to overhear our counsels?”
“A sage, Messer Enrico,” Henry answered, “a pilgrim from Anglia who has settled among the Greeks. I found him corrupting our youth with the aid of my lord Cardinal’s secretary.”
The Doge beckoned. “Here, pilgrim. Come over where I can see you.”
His hard dry fingers explored Alf’s face, swift and impersonal, a stranger’s scrutiny. “A boy,” the old man muttered, “and pretty as a girl. Yet, a sage, says milord Henry, who has a legion of faults, the worst of which is his inability to lie. Who can read me this riddle?”
Henry sat beside the young lord. So close, they were as like as brothers can be, though Count Baudouin frowned at this interruption and Henry smiled, saying, “What can be simpler? In Anglia, prophecies come from the mouths of babes, and fatherless boys foretell the fates of kingdoms. This pilgrim has seen all our future, and sat in judgment upon us.”
“And the verdict?”
Alf drew a breath. They watched him narrowly, all of them, the greater and the lesser, skeptical, credulous, annoyed, afraid.
That was Jehan’s fear for him, that he had betrayed all his secret. But he had never had any fear to spare for princes, nor ever for commoner kings crowned with linen. Calmly he said, “lf you intend to fulfill your vow and take the Holy Sepulcher, you had best do it now, or none of you will ever see Jerusalem.”
“Is it our death you foretell?”
“Yours,” Alf answered, “or this city’s.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I use my eyes and my wits, and I listen to all the wind brings. I’m not as young as I look and sound, Messer Enrico Dandolo.”
Suddenly someone laughed. Marquis Boniface grinned at Alf like an aging wolf, and smote his thigh. “Ha! At last! A match for our old fox. Tell me, sir oracle. Which sly Greek serpent has sent you to confound us?”
“None, my lord. I speak on my own authority, and perhaps on God’s.”
“The least and the greatest. You cover all eventualities.”
“But of course, my lord. After all, I’m a scholar trained.”
Baudouin glared at him. “This camp is infested with priests and spies. Will no one rid of us of this one?”
“No.”
Baudouin shut his mouth with a snap. The Doge went on unruffled, “No spy would come to us so openly, or led by your brother. A madman might; but a madman is seldom so logical. Sit down, sir pilgrim, and be wise for us. Wisdom is in short supply here.”
Alf did not move to obey. “If it’s wisdom you look for, my lord, I have little to offer. For you”—He bowed low to them all— “are lords of high degree, and I am but a commoner without name or lineage. Should I presume to counsel princes?”
The Doge’s black eyes glittered; “Why not, if princes need good counsel? There’s pride in your humility, pilgrim. Sit or stand, I hardly care which, but stay by me. I like the feel of you.”
“And I detest it!” Baudouin burst out. “The rest of us can see what comes with it. If this isn’t one of His Majesty’s ball-less wonders, then I’m—”
“My lord,” Alf said gently, “if you would be an emperor, you would learn well that no man holds a throne by setting all his allies at odds.”
Baudouin sneered. “I suppose you know intimately how an emperor must act.”
“I know what I see,” Alf responded. A squire had set out a chair for him; he took it. Thea crouched at his feet. Jehan stood beside and a little behind him, as a guard will, his hands fisted at his belt, close to the hilt of his sword.
The Doge smiled and raised a new-filled cup. “To wisdom,” he said, “and to foresight.” He drank deep.
After a moment Henry followed suit, and Boniface after him. But Baudouin glared and left his wine untouched, though Alf saluted him, smiling wholly without malice.
8.
It was very late. The lamp burned low; Alf quenched the wavering flame and sat in the dark that for him was no more than a grey twilight. Beyond the rose-rimmed window the air was warm and close, windless, the stars half hidden in haze. A burning day, a steaming night, a white-hot day thereafter. That had been the pattern for days now.
He looked down at the book open in his lap, and up into the cat-flare of Thea’s eyes. She eased the door shut behind her, smiling a little. “You couldn’t sleep, either.”
“Who can in this heat?”
“You, for instance, when you choose.” She came closer. Life in House Akestas had taught her modesty of a sort; she wore a brief shift that left her arms and her long legs bare. Briefly he thought of Saint Ruan’s far away in green Anglia, and of the monk who had lived long years there without ever thinking of a woman.
“You never had me to think of.” She perched on the arm of his chair and peered at the book. “What are you reading, little Brother? Theology? Philosophy? Stern moral strictures?”
Without his willing it, his hands moved to close the book. She caught them; he struggled briefly and fiercely.
All at once he surrendered. She brandished her prize. “See now! What secret are you hiding?” She opened at random. Witch-light welled through her fingers; she read a few words, stopped and looked up. “Why, this is beautiful.”
He sat perfectly still, face turned away from her.
She shook her head, incredulous. “Who would have thought that a monk could have taste? And such taste at that.
‘Once, when the world was young,
Tantalus’ daughter became a stone
upon a hill in Phrygia;
and the daughter of Pandion
touched the sky, winged as a swallow.
O that I were a mirror,
that you would look at me;
a tunic, that you would wear me;
water to bathe your body,
myrrh for your anointing.
Gladly would I be a cincture
for your breasts, a pearl
to glimmer at your throat,
a sandal for your slender foot,
if only you would tread on me.’”
She touched his cheek. It burned under her hand. “Would you really, Alf?”
He tossed back his hair so suddenly that she started. “No!” he snapped, more startling still in one so gentle. “It’s only a book. Irene lent it to me.”
“Did she?”
Her eyes were dancing. He stood and sought the window. It was no cooler there, nor had he escaped her. Although she remained where he had left her, her voice pursued him, as relentless as it was beautiful. “Irene is in love with you, little Brother.”
He breathed deep. The scent of roses filled his brain. “What is there in this world, that even on the edge of ruin, no one has any thought but that?”
“It’s the Law,” she answered him. “‘Go forth; be fruitful, and multiply.’”
“Even our kind?”
“Especially our kind. If there were any god but the One, and we could choose our own, it would surely be Aphrodite.”
“You are an utter pagan.”
She laughed; he knew without looking that she tossed her free hair. “‘Immortal Aphrodite of the elaborate throne, wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, I beseech thee’…tame for me this lovely boy, who looks on me by day with priestly disapproval and cools these torrid nights with Anakreon and Sappho and others no less sweet.”
“The patron of this city,” he said deliberately, “is the Blessed Virgin.”
“She protects you a great deal better than she’s protecting her city.”
He turned to Thea then. He had won, for the moment; her eyes yielded, although her smile had only begun to fade. “You see it, too,” he said.
She shivered. All mockery had left her. “I don’t have your sight. But I feel it. Something is going to break, and soon.”
“Very soon. Alexios is in Thrace with many of the Latins. But
Baudouin is here as he wished to be, and the old Emperor is as feeble in mind as in body.”
“Old!” She tried to laugh. “He’s younger than either of us.”
“Do years matter? ‘Boy,’ you call me, though I’ve lived longer than most men ever hope to.”
“And ‘dotard’ is what Isaac is. Hopeless, my friends tell me. Completely out of his mind.”
“Your friends?”
She twined a lock of hair around her finger and watched him sidelong. “My friends,” she repeated. “I have a few, you know. You’re not the only one who goes out and about and explores the City.”
“I never thought I was.”
She smiled. Alf frowned. There was something suspicious in the way she looked at him, as if she treasured a secret she knew he would not approve of. The last time he had seen her so, she had been frequenting the harem of a Saracen emir.
“In Constantinople?” She laughed. “Hardly. My friends are good Christians. Latin Christians. Saxons.”
“Saxons? Here?”
“In the palace, in the Varangian Guard.”
For a long moment he stared at her, blank with shock. This was worse than the Emir’s harem. Or the Lord Protector’s kennel. Or the Prince’s mews. Or—
“How do they see you?” he demanded. “As a cat? As a hound? As a falcon?”
“Of course not. Beasts can’t ask questions or make friends with guardsmen.”
His breath hissed between his teeth. She was smiling, relaxed in his chair, leafing idly through Irene’s book. No sheltered Eastern maiden, she, who had run off in youth with a Lombard prince and ridden to battle with the princes of Rhiyana and gone to the stake as a witch and a heretic. Yet—
“Guardsmen,” he said. His voice sounded thin in his own ears, and cold. “Soldiers. If you have no care for your own honor, might you not at least consider that of your hosts? What would Bardas say, or Sophia, if they knew that their guest ran wild among the Varangians?”
Her eyes glittered, emeralds ringed with fire-gold. “Their female guest. Don’t forget to add that. Their male guest, of course, is far too holy ever to exceed the bounds of sacred propriety.”