Alamut

by Judith Tarr

  “A worthy ambition,” said the Hospitaller. “You’ve never considered any other of our princes?”

  Aidan knew a test when he scented one. He shook it from his shoulders. “Raymond of Tripoli, perhaps: there is a great lord and gentleman. But he is a count, and I am royal born. I should look first to a king.”

  “Such a king,” said Gilles, sighing. There was no irony in it. “Young, little more than a child, and yet a great warrior, a gifted general, a scholar of no small accomplishment, a paragon of grace and courtesy. And for all of that — ” His voice caught. “For all of that, God has exacted a price of surpassing cruelty. He has seen fit to make our lord a leper.”

  “Yet he is king,” said Aidan. “No one has ever contested his right to the crown.”

  “No one is so great a fool. He is king. He was meant for it from his birth. Even when he was grown to boyhood and his malady was known, he was our king who would be.”

  “He inspires remarkable devotion.”

  Gilles shook his head and smiled wryly. “Am I so transparent? So, then: you will go to Jerusalem. I think you will find our lord worthy of your service. He will be most glad of you. Every knight is precious here on the sword’s edge between Christendom and the House of Islam. A knight of your proven skill is thrice and four times welcome.”

  Aidan shrugged. He was not modest; he had never seen the use in it. But he had other purposes that this man could not see. They came clear as he stood there: a bitter clarity.

  Its embodiment came toward him across the sunstruck courtyard, slight and dark and fixed on him as a moth on a candle’s flame. Thibaut had proper reverence for the soldier of God, but for the Prince of Caer Gwent he had his whole heart and soul.

  It was not in Aidan to refuse such a gift. The pain was its price. He held out his hand to the boy and smiled, and that smile was the beginning of acceptance.

  II. Jerusalem

  5.

  No city had ever been more holy. Holiness breathed through the very stones; quivered in the air; dizzied Aidan’s senses that were keener than a man’s. The hand of God was on this place, this loom of walls and towers by the mount of Sion, this City of Peace.

  It did not matter what the eyes saw. Bare stony plain rolling into the hills of Judea; bleak dun rock, a grey wall, and towers in it, and their king above them all, David’s great square Tower frowning westward. Grey-green to the north: outriders of the Mount of Olives. Deeper green to the south: terraces planted, said the Lady Margaret’s sergeant, with figs. Nowhere a glimmer of water, and never a moat to ward the city, only the great empty fosse and the steepness of its walls. Water here was a precious thing, rich and secret, hoarded in cisterns and in caverns, or held in guarded wells. Stone was lord; and sun; and sanctity.

  They rode to David’s Gate in somber splendor: the lady under her banner of black ram on silver, her women in black, her servants, her men-at-arms, her son in black and silver beside the knight all in black. His scarlet and gold lay in the armory of Aqua Bella, forsaken until his vow was fulfilled. His mail was black, his stallion’s trappings black with no adornment but the silver of bit and buckle, his helm at his saddlebow all black, his lances on the sumpter mule, his shield without device save the palm-wide, blood-red cross of Crusade. In one respect only he had yielded to eastern sense, and that was in the surcoat over his mail, long and loose and belted with black, but the heavy silk was white, with the cross on its shoulder.

  He was growing accustomed to it, schooling himself not to yearn, shamefully, toward scarlet and blue and gold. Gereint’s life deserved no lesser sacrifice.

  He resisted the urge to rub his chin, where the new beard was growing, thicker and faster than he might have expected, and fully as fierce in its itching. Vanity, it was not, but not heedless of it, either. If he would ride into Saracen lands, it might be wise to seem a Saracen.

  He had told no one why he did it. They thought it a tribute to grief, and it was that, also. The men-at-arms had a wager on how soon he would exchange his red cross for a white one, and turn Hospitaller; or else let the red cross grow to span his breast in the fashion of the Templars.

  Margaret watched him and said nothing. She was wise enough to take issue with nothing that he did. Thibaut still walked softly round her, but she had not taken him to task for affixing himself to Aidan’s side. While the prince was content to remain near her, she could see as well as know that her son was safe from harm.

  What it cost her to keep from clinging to the boy, Aidan well knew. He did not know that there was liking between them, but of respect there was much, and a certain wary acceptance of what was. Gereint, and now Thibaut, bound them; made them kin.

  His stallion came up beside her grey gelding. She glanced at him, unsmiling, yet the air about her was almost light. “Does it disappoint you?” she asked, tilting her head toward Jerusalem.

  Here, so close to the gate, the road was choked with people, their progress slowed to a crawl. Other parties rose out of it, armed and mounted, escorting lords, ladies riding in litters, a merchant with his veiled and jeweled wife. Lesser luminaries rode in smaller companies: poor knights fresh from Francia by the raw look of them, their mail worn bare, without the surcoat to keep the sun at bay; squires who lacked the means or the will to win their spurs; mounted sergeants with their men marching behind them. A great press of people on foot jostled and babbled under the horses’ hooves, pilgrims in sackcloth with mantle and scrip and staff, hats jingling with tokens from every shrine in Christendom, but seeking now the palm of Jericho that was most sacred of all; laborers bent double under the weight of their burdens; slaves and captives in chains with the overseers’ whips cracking over them. The lame and the halt and the sick dragging their way into the Holy City. Beggars wailing for alms, pi-dogs yapping, lepers crouched on the dunghills in their rags and their hideousness, or cutting a swath through the crowd with bell and clapper. Caravans coming to Jerusalem, caravans going out of it, in a roaring of camels and a shouting of drivers and a clashing of the arms of their escorts.

  Over the gate flew a white banner, the golden crosses gleaming on it, sigil of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Aidan breathed deep of sun and dust and humanity, dung, herbs, horses and heated steel, and shook his head. “Disappoint me, lady? This is Jerusalem.”

  A smile flickered, astonishing, for it made her young again. Then it was gone. The gate was before them, dark after the glare of the plain. Guards idled in its shade, paying little heed to all who passed.

  No more did the city care. Holy, high Jerusalem: it embraced any who came to it. Even his kind; even his power, which was the merest feeble glimmer before its great flame of sanctity. Yet it did not diminish him. He burned the brighter here for that he was so small a thing. He drew a breath, half glad, half deliciously afraid, and plunged into the heart of it.

  oOo

  There was no reasoning with stone. Joanna could weep, rage, storm; Ranulf would sit immovable, ignoring her, seeing nothing but what he had set his mind on. When on rare occasions he was inclined to speak, it was to dismiss her with a word. “Women,” he would say, heaving himself up and leaving her to her raving.

  He had taken her son away from her. Aimery would be fostered where it would best serve his father’s advantage, and that was not at his mother’s breast. Ranulf did not see why she should object. She had maids and pages of her own to train, and he expected her to produce another heir to his house in as short order as God would allow. Was that not what she was born for? Was that not why he had taken a wife at all?

  He had come to do this duty. She was aching in body from so long in the saddle, all the way from Acre to Jerusalem after a hard and housebound pregnancy and a difficult birthing, and aching in soul for Aimery and for the news that had greeted her when she came to the city. Gereint dead at an Assassin’s hand, dead and buried: shock enough to fell her when she heard. It stunned her; she could not even weep.

  And Ranulf was there, driving out her maid and her page, not even tro
ubling to take off his shirt. He had not bathed in a month; even across the room she could smell him. He dropped his hose and his braies, sparing her not even a glance. She had learned how little good it did to clutch the coverlet and protest.

  When they were married, she had thought him a handsome man. His features were heavy but well-formed; his hair was thinning a little, but it curled still, and it was the rare, true Frankish gold. His body was thick with muscle, kept strong at the hunt and in the field. And he had an honored name and a substantial property won with his valor in the wars, and no heirs but those which she would give him. It had been considered an excellent match.

  His weight rocked the bed. He still had not looked at her. He had made it clear long since that he did not find her beautiful. With her belly still slack from bearing and her breasts still swollen with milk after an unconscionable while, she would be even less to his taste.

  He was not brutal. That much, she could say for him. “If this one is a daughter,” he said as he parted her legs, “I’ll let you keep her.”

  She struck him backhanded, with all her strength. “Get out of my bed!” she screamed at him. “Get out!”

  He did not even give her the satisfaction of rape. His shrug was perfectly indifferent. “Tomorrow, then,” he said.

  When he had taken himself away, she wept a little, and battered her pillow, and felt no better for it. Her servants had not come back. She lay and stared at the whitewashed ceiling. The smell of him lingered. She gagged on it.

  If he would argue with her, reprimand her, even strike her — but no. He left her to her moods, and came back when she was calm, and wore her down by sheer force of indifference. He did not care what she did, if only she kept out of sight and provided him with the offspring he wanted.

  Which then he took from her and gave to stranger, and left her empty, womb and heart.

  She staggered up. With shaking hands she drew out the first garments that came to her, and put them on. She had to rest between the shift and the gown. Her hair was too much for her. She let it hang. In a voice that, if not loud, at least was steady, she called for her maid.

  No one tried to stop her. She took very little: only a single bundle and her chestnut mare, and mute Dura who never questioned her mistress’ will. Ranulf was gone. He had women in the city, Joanna knew that. No doubt one of them was accepting with pleasure what Joanna had spurned.

  Joanna wished her joy of it.

  For Joanna there would be no more of it. Her refuge was waiting, and it welcomed her with unfeigned gladness, even in mourning. Her chamber was as she had left it, Cook had dainties for her, and Godefroi the house-steward gave her the word she hoped for. “Tomorrow,” he said, “they come.”

  She did not try to think beyond the moment. She prayed for Gereint’s soul, and then she wept for him, cleanly, in her own narrow bed. Then, cleansed, she slept.

  oOo

  She was ready when they came. She could do little for lank hair or shadowed eyes, but what she could do, she had done. Her gown was fresh; its somber blue suited her not too badly. She had found that she could eat, and drink a little wine. She was still sipping it as she sat on the roof, leaning on its ledge, shaded by the lemon tree that grew in a great basin in the angle of the wall. The street below was its narrow, quiet self. When she looked up she could see the great grey dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

  They came from the other way, from the Tower of David. Her eyes leaped to their head: the small round figure on the grey horse. There was a young man just behind her: Thibaut, it had to be. He had grown. He had not lost his habit of riding with his hand on his hip, which he thought elegant. It suited him better now that he was almost old enough to carry it off.

  There they all were, the servants, the soldiers, dour Brychant in his old scale armor that he had taken from a Saracen. And —

  There was a knight in black on a blood-bay horse, and he was not Gereint. He could not be. That long lean body, so light in the saddle; that sharp hawk-face; that turn of the head as Gereint said something — it was not a dead man riding.

  And if it was not, there was only one thing it could be.

  Her fingers clamped on the balustrade. Grimly she pried them free. Her heart was beating hard.

  He was not so like his kinsman as he came closer. A family resemblance, that was all. He was certainly much prettier; and yet she was disappointed. Handsome, yes. But where was the beauty that cut like a sword?

  He looked up, and she gasped. Oh, indeed, a sword: straight to the heart.

  oOo

  Her mother asked no questions. Thibaut did, but only with his eyes. Prince Aidan, who could not have known that there was anything to ask, was courtesy purely. Warm fingers lifting her cold ones; the brush of a courtly kiss. She did not think that anyone saw how she trembled.

  His voice was deeper than she had expected, yet clearer, its western lilt stronger even than Gereint’s had been. It made her think of far green places, and of water falling.

  It was witchery. She knew it, and she did not care. Thibaut was far gone in it, she could see. Margaret seemed impervious, but Margaret was Margaret. She wore her widowhood as she did all else, with quiet competence.

  With greetings disposed of, Thibaut took the guest in hand. Joanna stayed with Margaret, which meant a detailed inspection of house and servants, and the overseeing of the baggage, and the disposal of a caller or two. Joanna fell into her old place a step or two behind her mother, like a young wolfhound in the wake of a small, rotund, and very busy lapdog.

  But she was not the child she had been. She had to sit down, rather abruptly, in the middle of her mother’s stillroom.

  Margaret did not seem to hurry, but she was there very quickly, kneeling on the floor beside Joanna. Her hand was cool on Joanna’s brow; her arm was firm. She took no notice of the flutter of servants, except to dismiss them. “Tell me,” she said.

  Joanna shook her head hard. “You have grief enough.”

  “Let me judge that,” said Margaret.

  Joanna’s teeth set. The dizziness was passing. She almost wished that it would not. To run away — that was as simple as taking her horse and riding to her mother’s house. To tell her mother why... that was harder. Margaret would not have done it. She would have found a way to rise above it.

  It came out tail first. “He took Aimery,” Joanna said. She surprised herself with how quietly she said it. “He never asked my leave. In the night, while I slept, they took him away. When I woke up he was gone.” Her hands were fists. She could not make them unclench. Her heart had been clenched since that bleak waking. “When I asked why — I tried to be calm; oh, God, I tried — Ranulf said, ‘Does it matter?’ And when I asked why he had never consulted me, he said, ‘Why should I have consulted you? He’s my son.’ As if I had never carried him in my body; as if I had never nursed him at my breast. As if I were nothing at all.”

  “It might have been better,” said Margaret coolly, “if you had not insisted on nursing him yourself.”

  Joanna gasped as if she had been struck.

  “But,” her mother went on, “to take him without your knowledge — that was ill done.”

  “It was unspeakable.”

  Margaret frowned slightly. “Perhaps he meant to spare you pain. A clean cut, all at once — a man would think so, if he were young and rough-mannered and unaccustomed to women.”

  “He doesn’t care enough to spare me anything. I’m no more to him than the mare in his stable. He doesn’t consult her, either, when he takes her foal away from her.”

  “He comes from Francia,” said Margaret, “and not from a wealthy house. He knows no better.”

  “I hate him,” gritted Joanna.

  Her mother’s frown deepened. “What has he done to you, apart from this one misjudgment? Has he beaten you? Dishonored you?”

  “He has women.”

  “Men do,” Margaret said. “Islam at least admits the truth, and allows concubines: a great wisdom
. But beyond that? Has he mistreated you? Has he shamed you before court or people?”

  “He hardly knows I exist.”

  “I doubt that,” said Margaret. She held Joanna’s eyes with her level dark ones. “What do you want of me? I have no power to make you a child again.”

  Joanna flushed. That was exactly what she had wanted. To unmake it all. To take refuge behind her mother’s skirts, and forget that she had ever been a woman.

  “I won’t go back,” she said. “I’ve given him what he wanted. I owe him nothing.”

  “Except honor.”

  “What has he given me? He took my baby.”

  Margaret sighed. “See how God has tested me. That child of mine who seems a very son of Islam, is as perfect in forgiveness as any Christian could wish to be. But that one who seems all Frank... she neither forgets nor, ever, forgives.”

  Joanna’s chin came up; her back stiffened. “Are you telling me to go?”

  “No,” said Margaret. She rose, smoothing her skirts. “I am telling you to go to bed. You insisted, I suppose, on riding from Acre?”

  “You know what a litter does to me.”

  “I know what the saddle does to a woman new risen from childbed. Now, go.”

  Joanna had wanted to be a child again, and to forget that she was a mother. It was not as blissful as she had thought, to have what she had wished for. But Margaret was not to be gainsaid. Joanna went where she was bidden, and did as she was told. There was an odd, rebellious pleasure in it. She was safe here. No one would lie to her, or betray her, or be indifferent to her. She had come home.

  oOo

  “Joanna is always angry at something,” said Thibaut.

  Aidan opened an eye. The eastern habit of drowsing through the heat of midday had struck him at first as sheerest sloth, but he was learning to see the use in it. Here, in a cool tiled room, with a servant snoring softly as he swayed a great water-dampened fan, and a scent of roses drifting from the window on the courtyard, it was utter luxury. He who seldom slept had slid into a doze, until Thibaut’s voice startled him awake.