by Judith Tarr
“You did, didn’t you?”
“What else was there to do? I wasn’t about to let old Beetlebrows prove me a fool and have me holding off the mob while he stole the crown. On my way to tell the truth to my friends I found you slinking about, mildly suicidal as usual and fancying yourself clever. Naturally I humored you. Why not? My mission was a lost cause in any case, and I saved your precious skin.”
His nostrils were pinched and white; his eyes glittered. She clapped her hands. “Ah, joy! At last I see you in a temper. Go on, hit me if you like. I don’t mind.”
His fists clenched, but he did not raise them.
She reached for the roast fowl in front of her, dismembering it neatly, biting into the leg. Her teeth were white and sharp; she ate like a cat, at once delicate and fierce. “The trouble with you,” she said, “is that you don’t know how to handle your temper. Either you crush it all into a tiny box and sit on the lid, or you nurse it and pamper it and tend it like a baby till it grows into a monster and devours you. Why don’t you just let yourself go?”
“The last time I did that,” he said, low and controlled, “I killed a man.”
“No.” She finished stripping the bone and turned it in her fingers. “Even that, at the last, was coldly logical. An execution, not a murder. There’s passion in you, no doubt of it, but every time it makes a move toward freedom, you either throttle it down or go out of your mind with fear of it, or escape it by telling yourself its object means nothing to you. Doesn’t it go against all your priestly training to lie to yourself so much?”
Her light dispassionate voice struck Alf deeper than any torrent of abuse. She had done with her meal; she sat back, sipping wine and watching him over the rim of the cup.
“You don’t care for me,” she said. “Oh no. You would have come to the palace for any stranger, ignoring all your instincts, that, sir prophet, should have told you there was no danger at all for me. Can it be that after all you’re blindly and hopelessly in love with me?”
He drew a sobbing breath. Without warning he struck her.
But she was not there. She stood just out of reach, not quite smiling. “So,” she observed with a world of understanding in the single word. “I’ve flattened you twice for saying the same thing to me. Do you want to try again? Do you love me, little Brother?”
“Yes!” It was a cry of pain.
Thea drew closer to him and laid her hands on his shoulders. He trembled and would not look at her, staring fixedly at the air above her head. “There now. Old grudges die hard, don’t they? And the truth can be agony. Will you believe me if I promise you that your pride will recover?”
He shook his head from side to side, tossing it. “It should die the death.”
“That’s not wise, either. Look at me, you lovely idiot. Do you know what you’ve been doing to me with all your cold-shouldering? The best friend I’ve ever had, for all your shortcomings, and you’ve cut me off as if I were your worst enemy. For nothing.”
“You call it nothing?”
“Wasn’t it? You asked me to marry you. I said no, and told you why. You stalked off in a rage. And stayed in that rage for well over a month. You’re still in it. Are you always like this when you can’t have what you want, precisely when you want it?”
That startled him into meeting her gaze. She regarded him steadily, neither yielding nor resisting. His throat constricted; he forced words through it, painfully. “You…said I had to be the one who ended this battle.”
“You came to the palace for me.”
“I didn’t intend—” That was not exactly true, and he knew it as well as she. “You were going to alert the Guard. That would have precipitated a civil war with you in the very middle of it. Could I lie here safely out of the way and let you do that?”
“By then, of course, I’d come to the same conclusion. I understand oblique apologies, little. Brother, though this one is more oblique than most. I accept it. Now kiss me, to put the seal on it.”
He hesitated. Her eyes laughed; her hands linked behind his neck. Laughter bubbled up within him for all that he could do.
With sudden resolution, he bent his head and did as she bade.
21.
Cartwheels rattled on the road; cattle plodded behind and among the wagons, lowing their complaint, while sheep milled and bleated and herdsmen hemmed them in with cries and curses. Over all rang the clamor of iron on iron and iron on paving stone: the heavy destriers, each bearing an armed and armored knight.
Jehan looked back along the column. As far as he could see before trees and the road’s curve concealed it, the army advanced ponderously but in good order, each knight or squire or sergeant in his place, mail-coif up and helm ready at his saddlebow. One or two caught his glance and grinned. Victory had lifted all their spirits, the town taken and plundered behind them, its booty safe here among them or sent ahead to the camp, food and drink enough to sustain the army for a full fortnight.
His red stallion fretted, sidling, threatening the bay beside it with flattened ears and bared teeth. He brought the beast sternly to order and grimaced at the bay’s rider. “He hates to drag along at a walk.”
“Don’t we all?” Henry of Flanders eyed the trees that closed in upon the road. “I’ll be glad to come out into open country again.”
Jehan nodded. “I like to see where I’m going, and what’s waiting for me. Though this road is better than anything I ever saw in a forest at home. Deer tracks, those were. This is a road.”
“We’re spoiled. All this Eastern luxury: roads and baths and spices, and silk by the furlong. Do you know, I have it on good authority that the Greeks don’t heat their houses with simple fires. They put the fire in the walls or the floor and stay warm all round.”
“That’s the old Roman way. Furnaces and hypocausts. I saw it in House Akestas.”
There was a small silence. Henry brushed dust from his helmet, saying slowly, “I…heard something in one of our councils. A rumor only. Before the new Emperor seized the throne, old Isaac had his fortune told. It wasn’t to his taste. The soothsayer—he was, they said, no more than a boy, but he wore the robe of a master surgeon. They…disposed of him.”
“I know.”
There was no expression in Jehan’s voice. Nor could Henry read anything in his profile with its strong Norman arch of nose and its stubborn jaw.
After a little Jehan said, “It was Alf. Who else could stand up in front of an emperor and say what he said?”
Sudden anguish twisted Henry’s face. “How could he let himself die like that? So horribly, and for so little.”
“He didn’t.”
Jehan had spoken so quietly and so calmly that for a moment Henry did not trust his own ears. “He—”
“He’s alive,” Jehan said. Face and voice had come to life again; Henry saw a touch of mirth there, and a touch of [compassion. “Not that he isn’t capable of running after his own death. But it would take a good deal more than a senile old fool to finish off the likes of him. You can lay wagers that he read the future for His Majesty and didn’t soften the truth to the smallest degree, and that afterward he arranged to drop from sight for a while to keep his friends safe.”
“He sent you a message.” It was less a question than an accusation.
Jehan shrugged. “Not really a message. Just…I know he’s alive and well. I’d know if he weren’t. Don’t ask me to explain, my lord. Alf’s not precisely amenable to explanations.”
Even to himself Henry could not admit the depth of his relief. He turned aside from it to consider the road ahead.
Nothing moved on it, not even a shadow; above the laced branches of the wood the sun was shrouded in cloud. The trees were thinning; beyond them he could see the open sky and the long stretch of winter-bared hills rolling down to the camp.
Somewhere behind, a pair of sergeants argued. Their voices carried on the cold still air, both amiable and contentious.
“Well now,” drawled one, a lig
ht voice with the liquid accent of Provence, “surely one emperor is as good—or bad—as another. By the time anyone learns how to pronounce the name of this latest eminence, we’ll be princes in Jerusalem.”
The other spoke in a rumbling basso, a solid Flemish peasant’s voice with a hard head behind it. “I can say it already. Mourtzouphlos——Mourtzouphlos. Mourtzouphlos the warmonger. He’s no coward of an Angelos. You don’t see him sitting on his behind listening to soothsayers, or dithering about from Latin to Greek and back again. Hasn’t he opened war already? Shoring up the walls, bricking up the gates, building those towers on top of the towers he already has, to keep us out; and riding abroad whenever it suits him, to harry our foraging parties. He’ll give us a good dose of cold steel before he’s done.”
“Empty defiance,” said the southerner, undismayed. “He’ll never go beyond a threat or two. These Greeks are lazy; effete; effeminate. One show of genuine force and they’ll topple.”
The Fleming grunted. “Tell that to the Varangians. If you can persuade them to lay down their axes long enough to listen to you.”
“Ah, but those are mercenaries. The Greeks are made of lesser stuff. Haven’t we just overrun a whole town full of them?” The southerner laughed. “Oh, no, old friend. We’ve nothing to be afraid of. Come spring, we’ll twist the Greeks’ arms to get our money and sail down to Outremer.”
Henry sighed a little. He had not thought that anyone clung still to that dream.
The Fleming most certainly did not. “If we leave this place, it will be by fighting our way out of it. Or conquering it, if it comes to that. Never trust a Greek, boy, and never underestimate him.”
The southerner’s laughter rang clear and mocking over the manifold noises of their passage.
Abruptly it stopped.
Before Henry’s mind woke to alarm, his body had hauled his horse about, his eye flashed to find the armored figure toppling slowly from its saddle. One eye was wide, astonished. The other had sprouted an ell of black arrow.
Someone thrust Henry’s helm into his hand. Jehan’s was already on, the priest reaching across to aid his friend. One of the cattle bellowed, struck by a dart; men cried out, screams and curses and prayers to every saint in heaven.
The bay destrier wheeled on its haunches. The wood swarmed with Greeks, an army all about the Frankish column, and at its head under the imperial banner, the Emperor himself, crowned, cloaked with purple. His soldiers slipped beneath the lances of the knights to strike at the horses with swords and daggers, or shot from the branches of the trees where none could reach them, or plunged a-horseback into the howling chaos of men and cattle and wagons.
Henry filled his lungs. “Drop lances!” he bellowed. “Out swords! Form up around the wagons!”
Even as he spoke he let his lance fall, drew his greatsword, spurred the charger forward. A Greek plunged toward him, a wild-eyed fool who wore no helmet, only a circlet of gold about his brows. Henry’s blade swept down; the man’s face dissolved in a spray of scarlet.
The young lord laughed, for he realized suddenly that he was himself without a helm. He had dropped it somewhere, he knew not where, nor cared. “To the wagons!” he roared. “To the wagons!”
Jehan’s world was a clamorous darkness lit by a thin line of light, the eye-slit of his helm. He heard Henry’s voice, his lance already forsaken, his sword red with blood, and in his mind a bitter clarity. What fools we were, it observed, watching his sword cleave its way through the massed attackers, riding like ladies on a holiday and never looking for an ambush. If we survive this, we’ll take no credit for it. And: It’s an honorable death, I suppose. And: By our Lady! What bold brave knights we are! He whirled his dripping blade about his head and whooped, and drove his stallion into the midst of the enemy.
Shapes whirled past him, a blur of blood and steel. A banner whipped in the wind, bright, strange, heavy with purple and gold. A mailed knight matched blade to his blade; another crept up behind, a crawling in his spine. He touched spur to his stallion’s side. The great horse gathered and leaped, lashing out with deadly heels even as Jehan’s blade clove the helmet of the man in front of him.
An image floated above the press, a shimmer of gold and jewels: a gentle Lady whose great eyes stared serenely into nothingness; whose lips smiled, impervious to the clamor of battle. Beneath her rode a figure of splendor, a knight in gold-washed armor on a milk-white mare, his helm surmounted with a cross; for surcoat he wore a garment of cloth of gold, across its breast a cross of gems and gold.
Jehan grinned within his helm. A poor priest, he was, in his plain steel with his surcoat all bloodied, and the Patriarch of Constantinople flashing and glittering under the icon of the Virgin.
Not all the Latins had gathered about Henry. A bold handful raged among the Greeks. Jehan called out to them. “To me, my lads! To me!”
They came as the cubs to the lion, a shield for his back and his sides. He raised his sword and sprang forward full upon the Patriarch.
The guard of Greek knights scattered. The Patriarch hauled at the reins, but his mare jibbed, shying.
Jehan’s blade swept down. In the last instant it flickered. The flat of it crashed upon the nasal of the Patriarch’s helmet. The reins fell from nerveless fingers; the mare bolted, her rider clinging blindly to her neck.
The icon swayed dangerously on its great ark of gold and jewels. One of its four strong bearers had fallen, trampled under a charger’s hooves. Another stumbled.
Jehan shouted something only half coherent and leaped from his saddle into the very midst of the Greeks. They scattered before his sword. The icon was falling. He thrust his shoulder under the ark and staggered, eye to staring eye with a Greek well-nigh as tall as himself.
The Greek yawned and dropped. A burly man in tattered surcoat and dented helm filled his place; and another, heaving up the mighty weight, raising it again toward heaven. The Virgin smiled her secret smile; the gems glittered about her, set in pure gold.
Henry saw the icon fall and rise again upon Latin shoulders. The Franks lifted a shout; the Greeks faltered in dismay.
Now, Henry thought. And aloud: “Now!”
All his gathered men drew together with Henry at the head of the spear. The enemy held before the charge; weakened; broke. Mourtzouphlos himself, within a circle of chosen princes, saw all his guard felled or driven in flight; and Henry’s sword smote past his shield to send him tumbling over his horse’s neck, sprawling ignominiously upon the ground.
Sick, half stunned, he staggered to his feet. The charge had swept past him. His mount was gone; his army was an army no longer but a fleeing mob. Over the Latin helms swayed the icon that was the luck of his City, and the bright banner of his empire.
No one paid him any heed, not even the crows that had gathered to feast on the dead. His dead, save for the one reckless Provençal whose laughter had roused the ambush.
He cast off his shield and his crowned helmet. Pain stabbed his right arm, the mark of Henry’s sword. He set his face toward the distant City and began to run.
22.
Bardas slept as easily as he ever did now, freed for the moment from the torment of coughing that racked his whole body, granted the release from pain that was all the healing Alf could give. His face, though thinned to the bone, wore a semblance of peace.
Sophia combed out her black braids. Freed, they tumbled to her knees: her one beauty and her one vanity. This morning she had found a thread of grey. Well; it was time. She was thirty-four.
Across the bed, Alf straightened. In lamplight and intent on his task, he looked strangely old, an age that smoothed and fined rather than withered and shrank, like the patina of ancient ivory.
She was obsessed with time tonight. As he began to gather the packets and vials from which he had made Bardas’ medicine, she asked, “How old are you, Alf?”
A bottle dropped from his fingers, mercifully falling only an inch or two, striking the table with a sound that made the
m both start. Very carefully Alf picked it up again and laid it in his box of medicines. His voice was equally careful, his face completely without color. “How old would you like me to be?”
“As old as you are.”
He tightened the knot on a bundle of herbs, head bent. His hair hid his face, whiter in that light than Bardas’ yet thick and youthful. “That,” he said, “could be embarrassing. Or frightening.”
“To you or to me?”
“Both.” He looked up. It was a boy’s face with the barest hint of white-fair downy beard. But a man’s voice, well settled, and eyes too unbearably ancient to meet.
He laughed as a strong man will, in pain. “I’m not that old! If I were like anyone else, I could conceivably be still alive.”
“Then—”
“I was seventeen when l took vows in Saint Ruan’s. Bardas was a very young child. In too many ways, I’m still seventeen.”
“I’m neither embarrassed nor frightened.”
Wide-eyed, surprised, he looked younger than ever.
She smiled. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m still seventeen, too. I just don’t look it, and I try not to act it. At least not in public.”
“It doesn’t matter? That I—”
“Why should it? I only wanted to be sure. I hate mysteries.”
She finished her combing and began to bind up the gleaming mass again. “It’s reassuring, in its way. All that wisdom and experience, and a body strong enough to last out any storm.”
“But also, all too often, at the mercy of its own unnatural youth.”
“Unnatural, Alf? Did you buy it? Or induce it?”
“Saints, no!”
“Well then,” Sophia said, “for you it’s natural. It certainly looks well on you.”
Alf closed the lid of the box and fastened it. He was smiling wryly. “There are two kinds of people in the world. People who want desperately to burn me at the stake, and people who take me easily in their stride.”