"Saladin's camp." Philip's green eyes were gently mocking over the cup rim. "Why so shocked? Is it not natural for a Saracen to return to his own?"
"Did he go voluntarily?" Alexandre asked in a low voice.
"Oh, yes. He could scarcely wait to be gone. The pickets sighted him a fortnight ago heading into the eastern dunes." Philip's brows slanted wickedly. "Dare we hope we've found our traitor?"
"No," replied Alexandre, remembering the medallion of Almansor that Liliane had given him; she would be wearing it now. "Jefar would not have gone to Saladin for that."
Philip laughed sardonically. "Do you know him that well?"
"Admittedly, not so well as I thought." Alexandre bowed quickly. "I thank you, my sovereign lord. I am in your debt."
"Thank me by not going off on some harebrained ride to Saladin. He will not likely grant you amnesty a second time. If Richard has his way when Acre fells, any Christian in Saladin's hands will be flayed alive. Be resigned that Jefar el din has wearied of your company. Also be grateful that you are outside the walls of this wretched infidel city."
Alexandre did not answer and, as soon as he took his leave of Philip, he went to find his destrier.
* * *
Saladin watched Liliane as she stared across the sands in the direction of Acre. "Why return to Spain when your heart still lies in the desert, Comtesse? You have done little but gaze toward the city. Surely, if armies may contrive peace, a man and woman may not lose hope."
She looked at him gravely. "You have been most kind to receive me, Great Lord. When I return to the protection of Almansor, I shall tell him of your great generosity."
"Will you send no message to the comte?"
Liliane shook her head. "He might feel obligated to recover me. Far better that I simply disappear."
Saladin eyed her quizzically. "No price is too great for pride; so saying, men have warred since the beginning of time, and for that price shall Acre die."
"You are sure?"
"Tomorrow the crusaders will walk Acre's streets with blood beneath their feet."
"But you say the city is prepared to surrender, that the terms are agreed," she protested. "Why would Richard butcher what will be freely given him?"
"You who are so proud ask this?" Saladin reproved gently. "There is a roaring in your royal lion's heart. If he drowns Acre in horror, other Palestinian cities will quail before him. His task as conqueror will be simplified."
Liliane's lovely face went pale. "Surely he will release the women and children."
"Richard's men have been kept too long from their kill. They will not now dine with chivalry. He will give them their fill, so that they will follow him when he turns from Acre."
Wearily, Liliane closed her eyes. ''I helped Richard to this. Fought for him without faith, conviction . . . heedless for the morrow. I did it all for love, and for justice of old crimes, but love does not sanction all, and justice cannot make right new crimes." She was silent for a long time, then murmured, "I shall not return to Spain for a time, effendi. "
Saladin lifted a dark brow. "Then you have decided to return to the comte."
"No, I wish to go into the city . . . with your help. I lost my honor there, confused it. I wanted children badly once, and I owe the children that now play upon this earth some protection, at the very least I have sinned; both Allah and God are owed recompense."
"If you enter Acre as a Moor, you will pay with your life. You will either be regarded as one of us or as a traitor. If you survive our judgment, you will not survive Richard's forces. Are you prepared to pay so great a price for your confusion?"
"Shall I spend a lifetime in Spain remembering Acre?" Liliane smiled faintly. "I take the coward's way, effendi. Short memories, long sleep."
"Does one sleep in the lap of Allah?" he mused. "I wonder. Somehow, I think that cowards do not rest easily, that crime without conscience merits a more merciful end." His gaze followed hers toward flie doomed city beyond dunes already somnolent under the setting sun. "I will see you enter Acre, if that is your wish, but once the sun rises, not even I can help you leave again."
"I understand."
"Can you swim?"
"Yes."
"Then you will enter the city with tonight's swimmers through the drainage ducts. You will be taken to a house where you will be safe. Do not speak outside that house or you will be killed as a spy."
Liliane laughed softly. "I thought my Arabic accent had improved."
His laughter matched hers. "Pride deludes us all."
"Who are the swimmers?"
"Because I must know what passes behind Acre's walls, messengers swim to and fro like fish each night." He sobered. "Tonight, they carry only news of approaching death."
"I am sorry, effendi," she said quietly. "I have helped to cause so much pointless waste."
"War is always waste," he said briefly, with the first touch of bitterness she had seen in him. "We who rule Allah's creatures are the greatest of His fools. How blithely we assume that His patience is eternal."
* * *
The desert was silent, the stars high and still. On just such a night, the Christ child was born, mused Alexandre as his horse labored through the high dunes. God's peace was as distant, Liliane as distant, as if they dwelt upon one of those glimmering mysterious stars. He must get her away from Saladin before dawn, when Acre's gates would open to rape, massacre and pillage, and when Liliane would be left to Saracen retribution. There were four hours now to sunrise. So much damage had been done—how could he persuade her to leave with him in time?
Suddenly the dune was mounted by ten riders descending from both sides of him. Urging his horse to gallop, the destrier slid in the sand, losing its footing as if scrambling through deep butter.
The Saracens closed swiftly in on him. Rising in the saddle to steady himself against the destrier's stumbling, Alexandre drew his sword. "I wish to see Saladin!" he shouted. He might be a dead man, but he was not yet cold.
Just as he braced himself for their attack, a shout reached him. "Le Comte de Brueil?" At his muffled, startled affirmation, a Saracen cried, "Follow us!"
Across the desert they led him, not toward the camp of Saladin but to the oasis. Puzzled, he dismounted to greet the tall Saracen waiting for him. "I am Sheik Faroud," the Saracen informed him. "You have come seeking your comtesse?"
"I have," Alexandre answered slowly, eyeing the grim, surrounding faces of his escort.
"Look for her in Acre," replied the sheik, "but come no nearer to our camp. Saladin himself can take no responsibility for your safety this night."
"In Acre?" Alexandre's spirits soared. "The countess has returned to the camp?"
The sheik gave him a pitying look. "She is within the city."
Alexandre went white. "That is suicide!"
The sheik shrugged. "As Allah wills. Who can explain the workings of women's minds."
"But where is she in the city?" Alexandre asked, desperate.
"Where no one will find her until dawn." The sheik's flat stare told Alexandre that he would get no more elaboration. The Saracen bowed. "You would be wise to make haste, milord. My men are in short temper."
Being in a less suicidal frame of mind than his wife, Alexandre speedily took his leave.
What now? Liliane was as far beyond his reach as if she had gone to the moon. As he rode, black images of what the morrow would bring loomed in his mind. He had to find her! He had to retrieve that mischievous, beautiful girl who had bewitched him in the forest of his demesne. He could see Liliane now, lightly poised with her fishing spear over the trout stream. She had been playing then, had gone on playing until the games had turned deadly and even she had been appalled by them. And when she had tried to escape those terrible games, he had turned his back on her. In bleak desperation, he had been forced to turn to an enemy. Had Saladin sheltered her out of regard for his old friend, Almansor, or had he seen a way to avenge himself upon a pair of Christians who had helped br
ing about the fall of Acre? Whatever Saladin's reasoning, Liliane was in deadly peril.
As soon as he reached camp, Alexandre went to his tent. He roughly shook Saida awake. Her arms went predictably around his neck, and he firmly pried her loose. "Tonight, little desert cat, I have better prey for you than a common knight." He lifted her chin. "How would you like a powerful king to adorn your pillow?"
Saida looked startled, then delighted, but within seconds her smile became a frown. "Richard? But he is—"
"Richard is not the lover for you. What think you of Philip?"
She smiled slowly. "He is very handsome." Her forefinger began to twirl a dark curl at her shoulder. "Is he generous?"
"If he does not pay you, I will." Alexandre gave her a feral smile. "What say you?"
"Let me but comb my hair."
He pulled her to her feet. "Leave k. The king is hot."
* * *
On the contrary, Saida found the king cold. Not only limp, but asleep and totally unaware of her coming. For a quarter of an hour, she and Alexandre waited outside the royal tent while Philip's chamberlain-drowsily informed him that Alexandre had brought him a fire-eyed wench in a nightshift.
"That little Saracen bitch?" mumbled Philip. At the chamberlain's dull nod, Philip crooked a lax finger. "It is about time. He has probably worn her to a nub."
Moments later, Philip felt his bed give. He opened an eye. Saida, distinctly unworn, smiled wickedly at him.
"How would you like her?" Alexandre murmured from the shadows.
Philip stroked Saida's hip appreciatively. "Ripe as a peach. Can she speak French?"
"Will you miss conversation?"
Philip laughed. "Not much. Besides, she looks noisy enough, given encouragement. I love to hear a wench squeal." He pinched. Saida squealed. "Ah, so you do speak the universal language, my piglet."
"She is a gift. I thought you might like a little something on the eve of victory," drawled Alexandre. "By the way, do you mind if I review the maps of the city while I am here? If I lead a battle group into Acre tomorrow, 'twould be well to know where the hell I am going."
"Good boy. Do your homework and make no more mistakes." Philip tumbled Saida under him. "Run along, and thank you for the present."
"Think nothing of it."
Leaving the king to his pleasure, Alexandre went into the rear of the tent, which had been partitioned for strategy councils. Scrolled maps were neatly stored in a tooled leather cylinder beneath a folding wooden table. He quickly reviewed the maps of Acre. The general outlay of the city streets was already familiar to him and the illuminated maps showed little more than the quarters of the city. He was more interested in the fresh water cistern system that eventually linked with huge cesspits and tunnels under the city walls on the ocean side. He found a large parchment covered with, sketches and notes of the area, each carefully inked as spies reported their reconnaissance.
Among the camp's beggars and native innkeepers, rumors ran that Saladin moved messengers in and out of Acre by way of the cisterns. If Liliane had entered the city, this was the way she had done it, but which cistern was set close enough to the low tide to allow a swimmer to pass through it without drowning?
Alexandre headed for the quays. In a shack by the farthest quay an ancient native fisherman lived. Alexandre mercilessly roused the old man. "What is the shallowest part of the wall?" he barked.
The old man shook his head in confusion, "Fishing's better where it's deep. Why do you want fish tonight? I don't have any tonight."
"Look, I want to go fishing tonight and I wish to use your boat. I do not like deep water because I cannot swim." Alexandre dumped coins in the old man's hand.."I shall pay for everything."
"Tonight? You want to fish tonight?" The old man began to shake his head again. Finally he shrugged. "I don't rent my boat to a crazy man. Pay me another ten dirhams and the boat is yours. You drown, so . . ."
I drown, so . . . The man's last words haunted Alexandre a short time later as he sat in the ramshackle boat and stared uneasily at the black water lapping at the wall of Acre. The wall was many feet thick. If the cistern tunnel was built on an incline, it might run submerged for a long way, longer than his lungs would hold air. In the pitch dark, he stripped and dumped his clothes in the boat bottom. He tied a small bundle of clothes he had bought from the fisherman around his waist, then looped his sword and dirk to his boot thongs and tied it around his neck. He eased over the side and took a deep, prayerful breath.
In the water's lap, not twenty feet from Alexandre's rising air bubbles off the old boat's stern, a light Saracen skiff rocked to and fro. Alexandre had not noticed the boat, much less whether it was empty or not. The boat was empty—the tunnel was not.
* * *
In rising, panic, Liliane pressed high and hard against slimy stone. Saladin had merely asked whether she could swim; he had not described the cistern tunnel. The two Saracens with her had dived from the skiff, leaving her to follow as best she could. An infidel female was of no account to them; if she drowned before reaching her destination, no one would be alive tomorrow to complain of their neglect to Saladin. Fearful of losing them in the darkness, she leaped into the water almost upon their very heels and followed so closely that she was once struck in the face by a kicking foot. Second followed inky second until her lungs threatened to burst. Finally, frantically, she thrust upward to butt her head painfully against rough stone. She clawed at the stone, tried to breathe. She was rewarded by a tiny whiff of air, then a ripple of water up her nose that choked her. Wildly, she tried again; this time she found more air, enough to calm her a little. Lying still against the water surface, she took short, tentative breaths until her lungs ceased to burn. With a fatalistic gulp, she submerged again and flailed after her callous escorts. The tunnel went on and on, allowing only inadequate snatches of air until her lungs scalded and her mind blurred. If she had not known the Saracen couriers had previously made the trip through this tunnel with success, she would have panicked entirely.
Finally, a disk of steel-gray light, so faint it faded almost instantly, glimmered overhead. Liliane swam furiously for the spot where she had seen the light, clawed higher and found hot August night. The couriers looked down at her strained, glistening face in the well.
One of them grunted. "Your Christian God must think well of you. In three months, we lost twenty men down there." He dragged her limp, exhausted body up.
* * *
Alexandre was lost. He knew in all sanity that he could not be lost so long as he kept moving forward, but the cistern was wider than his body, and in those horrid, strangling moments of fear when he could find no air at the top of the cistern, he became disoriented. He was no longer sure whether he was advancing in the tunnel or going back the way he had come. He was not even sure if he had the right tunnel. He had never liked closed places; they made him feel like a trapped animal. Now he was drowsing in a black, watery cage that pressed in on him under tons of stone. For the third time, he went up for air that was not there.
* * *
Although she had a good sense of direction, Liliane was completely confused by the time the Saracens hastily deposited her in a tiny house near the harbor. The dark streets, filled with stealthy rustlings and the grieving wails of the doomed behind barricaded doors, wound mysteriously throughout the city. Sorrow seemed to echo, to be imbedded in the very stones of the streets and the blank, crumbling plaster of the walls. Acre had known many revolts, many wars throughout the centuries; and by tomorrow's sunset, the city's cries and' murmurings would be ominously silent. They would wait, brooding, for that next dreadful moment in time when disaster would summon them to howl again. Was it only the battering of war machines and armies that eventually brought cities to dust, Liliane wondered. Or was it disintegration from within, an exhausted shudder that shook a city to bits upon the heads of its makers and destroyers alike?
After exchanging a few words with a slight man who bitterly protested Lili
ane's presence, the two Saracens shoved her through the door of the house and hurried off down the street. The resentful householder slammed the door shut behind her and thrust a heavy beam through the latch. For a long moment, he stared at Liliane with pure hatred, then with a muffled mutter, he turned to his family. A woman and two children huddled by the empty grate, their faces lit only by a fragment of candle stuck to the floor. The woman was probably thirty, the boy seven, the girl eight; because of starvation, they all looked older. Their food was long gone, and their few sticks of furniture had been burned as firewood. Their eyes had a despairing, bestial gleam. Hate sang about the room, adding its relentless note to the discordant chorus reverberating from Acre's ancient, shrunken gut.
"I have come to help, if I can," Liliane murmured in Arabic. Tiredly, she pulled off her wet haik. The Saracens gaped at her long, pale hair.
"Help?" the man spat. "You, a woman? And worse, a fool? Tomorrow you will die—we will all die. This once, Allah's will is no mystery." He shook his head in exasperation. "Not only must we suffer a foul end, we must also endure an infidel madwoman."
"Does not Allah bid us all to bear madness patiently?" Liliane gave him a faint smile. "May I sit? Even the crazed grow weary.''
"Sit. What does it matter?"
Liliane sat and unwound a knotted sleeve of her aba to take out an oiled parchment packet. She held it up to the Saracen. "I brought food."
He snatched the bundle, his family rushing toward him like a hyena pack. His face white, he ripped into the parchment. "It's wet," he observed in flat disappointment, then without another breath, he tore into a chunk of dripping mutton. The boy grabbed a handful of shapeless fruit. Their faces strained, the two females watched the food disappear. Finally noticing them, the man pushed the remains at them. With terrible sounds, they wolfed the scraps.
Perhaps I am a fool, decided Liliane as she watched them, but I do not wish to live in a world where starving women are allowed only scraps left by men. I was wrong to take part in a pointless war, but I was right to claim a freedom denied to me only because of my sex. War is not the only stupidity in the world.
A Flame Run Wild Page 30