Alamut

by Judith Tarr

  “Love? Is that love, that rips a child from its mother’s breast?”

  “Love, and jealousy, and a deep need to matter in the world. He’s twinborn, you know. Like me. But my elder-by-b-moment had the will and the wealth to give me a share in our inheritance. Ranulf comes of a house with little more to its name than honor, and he’s Norman, and bound by Norman laws. His brother had it all. For him, always, there were only the leavings. He’d not even be a knight, now, if he hadn’t won his spurs on the field.”

  She knew all that. She did not want to know what it meant. “He’s kinder to his dog than he is to me.”

  “Of course. His dog doesn’t demand that he love it. It simply knows. And,” said Aidan, “it loves him back.”

  “He says I’m ugly.”

  “He told you once, under rich provocation, that you are not pretty. You aren’t. On occasion, you are very beautiful.”

  “As when?”

  “Not,” he said, “when you’re in a temper.”

  She spat at him, not accurately. And was quickly sorry. The hot air seared her mouth; and she would not, for temper’s sake, soothe it with water while he watched with that infuriating expression. “You,” she said nastily, “are excruciatingly pretty.”

  “Alas for my virility.”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Suddenly she was tired. Tired of remembering, and regretting, and knowing that she could have had her son, now, but for her own poisonous temper; tired of quarreling; tired of being herself. She wanted Thibaut alive, and Gereint, and Aimery warm and heavy in her arms, and Ranulf…

  Not that memory. Astonishment, when he saw his newborn son; disappointment, a little, at the wizened red monkey-creature in its mother’s arms; sudden, wondrous softening, big hands moving with unexpected competence to cradle the small wriggling body, cold eyes warming into something almost like tenderness. And he had looked at her and smiled, and yes, that was tenderness; for her; for what she had given him.

  The moment ended. He was Ranulf again, rough as old stone, and never a thought in him for her as Joanna and not as a mare in his stable.

  “That is fear,” said Aidan, shameless in his meddling. “Of baring the truth. Of being hurt.”

  She closed him out. It was bitterly hard, when he was there, under her skin, but she did it. In the end his own nature aided her: it sent him spurring away, whooping like a madman, hot on the track of a gazelle that had burst out of a hollow. she had not even known that he had a bow, until the arrow flew, a clean shot, unerring on the mark.

  oOo

  They dined on gazelle that night, in a caravanserai which they had to themselves, gathering in its court under the stars. Joanna’s cookfire was a little apart from the others, in part for her rank, in part for her sex. She was glad enough of it. The choicest bits had found their way into Dura’s pot; Joanna found that she could swallow a bite, then another, and another. Before she knew it she had emptied her half of the pot.

  Aidan sat on his haunches beside her. His teeth gleamed white as he smiled. He was in a fine good humor: he had been among the guards, trading practice strokes with one of the swordsmen. She had watched as much as she could without seeming to watch. The guard had been teaching him Saracen strokes with a weapon lighter and more supple than his own.

  He had it now, easy in his hand, turning the blade to catch the light. Wave-patterns upon it rippled and flowed.

  “He sold it to you?” she asked.

  “Lent it,” he said. “Great honor that that is. I wish…”

  “You want one like it.”

  It was alive in his hand. With loving regret he quenched it in its sheath. “I should give it back.” But he did not move. His eyes were on the fire, full of it.

  She shifted until she was close enough to touch, but not quite touching. She was aware of Dura in the shadows, a shadow herself, dark-eyed and silent. Voices washed over her, laughter; a soft, wailing song.

  She blinked. “You,” she said, “yonder. You spoke Arabic.”

  He glanced at her. “Did I?”

  “You didn’t even know?”

  He shrugged. “It’s my gift. It’s not something I think of.”

  As simple as that. “Any language?” she asked him. “Any at all?”

  “Any that a man speaks in my presence.”

  She whistled softly. “Gereint never told us about that.”

  “I doubt he knew. It was never obvious. Till I came here.”

  He hardly seemed to care that he had it, still less to be proud of it: a wonder and a marvel, to be free of Babel’s curse.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “A trick.”

  Modesty. Truly. She laughed, astonished. He could not have been less human than he was now, or more.

  She did it before she thought. Bent toward him. Set her palm against his cheek.

  He tensed the merest fraction.

  Her hand snapped back. She knotted it with the other, hating it, herself, everything but him. Him, she could not hate. Him, she—

  Him, she…almost…loved.

  This was what the priest thundered against. Lust. Unholy desire. This ache in her body. This fire when she looked at him, or thought of him, or was simply near him. She wanted to touch him again. And again.

  She wrapped her arms about herself and rocked. Why did he sit there? How could he not know? And pity her, and despise her. He would know no such weakness. He was male, and royal; he could have any woman he wanted. Princess Sybilla had cast her eye on him, people said. He would never want such a poor creature as Joanna was, wedded as she was, to a man—who—

  Who had no earthly use for her, except to breed sons. She scrambled herself up. He said something. She did not try to understand.

  oOo

  She cried herself to sleep. For all of it. Aimery, Gereint, Thibaut. Even Ranulf. But most of all, herself. She should have taken the baby, whatever the cost. Once she had him, she could have kept him. But anger had betrayed her. Had cast Ranulf out. Had brought her here.

  Into, if the priests told truth, mortal sin. Simply to desire him who was not her wedded lord; and to have no power to stop, or even wish to stop. Maybe she had gone a little mad.

  She woke in the night, and knew that he was there, beyond her door, guarding her. The ache of weeping, the heaviness in her body, mattered nothing. She could rise, if she would. Go out. Touch him.

  And be cast off. Rightly, properly; gently, even. It was in him to be gentle, when he wished to, though he would have died before he admitted it.

  She lay on her face, though her breasts ached. She welcomed the pain. Dear God, what was this that she was wanting? Hot breath, hard hands, cruel weight atop her; the old pagan dance, great pleasure for a man, but for a woman only weary endurance. And yet she wanted it. Her body wanted it. Was going to drive her mad with wanting it.

  She slid into a restless, shadow-haunted sleep. She dreamed, she knew that, but what her dreams were, she did not afterward remember. Morning was a blessing and a release.

  And yet, for all the hideousness of the night, in some strange way it had cleansed her. She rose both calm and sane. Saner than she had been since before Aimery was born. She knew herself again. Grief was no less, guilt, shame, even anger, but she was Joanna; she could bear it.

  Even Aidan in his Bedu robes that might have been made for his wild beauty: even him, she could bear. Flushing, she could not help it, but offering a smile. Which he accepted, and returned in good measure. “It gladdens me to see you glad,” he said.

  Such a pretty way with words, he had. She played the lady for him, all gracious condescension, which made him laugh. He laughed wonderfully, with all of him. It infected her, it filled her with a crazy delight. “What!” she cried. “Mock me, will you? Is that a knightly deed?”

  “No,” he admitted, “my lady.”

  “So, then. You shall pay for it. You call me your lady. Be my knight. Serve me in all humility.�
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  His eyes glinted, catching a little on the humility. “Shall I sing for you, too, and be your troubadour?”

  She clapped her hands, forgetting to be the lady. “Oh, will you?”

  But he did not forget to be the knight. “Ma dama, your every wish is my command.”

  She checked for the merest breath of an instant. This was dangerous. He knew it, she could see it clearly. He thrived on it. And she?

  It was morning; her spirit was scoured clean, and his eyes were dancing on her. She offered him her hand in her most queenly fashion, not even a giggle to betray her. He took it as a true knight must, and set a kiss in the palm, and folded her fingers over it. He seemed a little surprised at what he did. For a moment, as his eyes met hers, he seemed almost—frightened?

  Not he. He had been a troubadour since the world was young. She held his kiss to her heart and lifted her chin. “Now then, my knight. Ride with me.”

  oOo

  He knew where it was going, and he made no slightest move to stop it. She thought that she had mastered it. Brave child. There had been fairer ladies than she, but never one so valiant.

  He could admit it, in the dark that was the center of himself. He had fallen in love with her.

  No matter the catalogue of her many imperfections. She had no beauty as humans saw it. She was too young, too unschooled in graces, too damnably mortal. She had a husband, whom Aidan could not, even for his life’s sake, dislike; who was cursed to be most inept where he loved most. She had a mother of whom even Aidan could stand in awe. She had been a daughter to Gereint, of whom even these mute thoughts were a betrayal.

  No matter. He looked at her strong-boned, stubborn-chinned, inarguably Frankish face, and lost all will and wit.

  “It’s her spirit,” he told his horse as he tended it in the evening. “Her high heart. Her adamant refusal to either bend or break. Grief only makes her stronger. And yet,” he said, “that’s not all of it. Her mother is the same; but the Lady Margaret is sufficient unto herself. One can admire her; respect her; serve her. But love her...no. Not I. Her circle is complete. There’s no place in it for me.”

  The gelding was mercifully removed from such follies. He lipped up the last sweet grain of barley, and cocked an ear. Would there, perhaps, be more?

  “Gluttony is a cardinal sin,” said Aidan severely. He leaned against the accommodating shoulder, working a tangle out of the pale mane. “Yes, my friend, it’s a fool I am, and too well I know it. She sees this damnable face and this damnable reputation of mine, and of course she thinks that she loves me. I who am thrice her age, I who have years and rank and power enough to grant me wisdom nine times over, I should know better. Dear God, I’ve oaths enough on my head, vengeance to take, a king to come back to or be forsworn; and I pine for a fair young body. Is it senility, do you think? Am I, after all, about to fall into my dotage?”

  The gelding was hardly the one to answer that. He rubbed an itch out of his cheek and sighed. Aidan laid his own cheek against the warm satin neck, sighing his own deep sigh. they camped tonight on a stony level, having found the caravanserai full but no rumor of robbers near about. No one else hung about the horselines. They had all gone to fee themselves, as he should do soon, for his body’s sake.

  He felt the eyes upon him. He knew what they were. Clear green cat-eyes, his soul’s shape cast in flesh. He bore it as long as he might, until he must turn or run wild. Running seemed, for a moment, the wiser course.

  He turned.

  She was beautiful in the dusk, more real than real itself, more solidly there than the horse at his side. Her head came just to his chin.

  She saw that he had changed his manner of dress. He felt her surprise as his own, and her pleasure. How not? She was his dream.

  Her lips curved in the beginning of a smile. It could not be something she did often; she seemed to pause, searching out the way of it. It touched her eyes and sparked in them.

  It smote him with such force that he staggered. “You are,” he said. “You are.” He darted. She was solid in his hands, supple, inhumanly strong.

  All at once, she ceased her struggle. she was rigid, her eyes wide and wild. He laid his hand on her cheek. she trembled deep within. Her scent flooded him. Sweet, impossibly sweet: scent of his own people, that was like nothing else under the moon.

  Her arms locked about his neck. Oh, she was strong; wonderfully, splendidly strong. His head bent down and down. Her eyes were all his world. A moment more, and he would drown in them.

  They closed against him. She let him go, thrusting him away. “God,” she said. Her voice was hauntingly sweet, and heavy with despair. “God, God, God.”

  Allah, Allah, Allah.

  Arabic.

  He fitted his mind and tongue to the way of it, aware of his gift as he almost never was. “Tell me, lady. Who are you?”

  Step by step she backed away. He caught her hands. She tensed but did not resist.

  “Lady.” The words came faster now. “Lady, stay. Tell me your name. How did you come here? Where do you go? How did you find me?”

  Her lips set. Her head shook, tossing.

  “Please, my lady. Your name. Only that.”

  She twisted free, spun. The word escaped, flung over her shoulder. “Morgiana.”

  The air was empty. His heart cried its abandonment.

  oOo

  Morgiana.

  She was a living creature. She was no dream, nor ever a midnight fancy. And yet, that power of hers, to be there, and then to be gone...

  Aidan spoke her name in the night’s silence. “Morgiana.” Saracen name, Saracen face beneath the cast of his people. He yearned for her, and yet, deep in his soul, he feared her. There was a wildness in her, a power both old and strong. He was half a mortal man. She was nothing that had ever been human.

  His mother had been mad, but even she had not been as mad as this. Was this the old true blood? Half mad, half demon: spirit of air and fire.

  All the questing of his power found no trace of her. She was gone as if she had never been. Power, that, and stronger far than his own.

  He shivered on his mat before Joanna’s tent, and not alone with the cold of night in the desert. He had thought himself as fine a witch as ever raised the power. Beside this he was the merest child, a feeble halfling thing who only played at magery.

  As she played with him, feigning shyness, letting him think her a dream. Surely she laughed at him now. They were cold, the afarit, and treacherous. Their honor was demons’ honor.

  But ah, she was beautiful.

  oOo

  He started. A shape stood over him. For an instant he hoped, feared —

  No. Its scent was human, sharp and pungent. Always, beneath it, lay a hint of corruption, the promise of mortality; but seldom strong enough to be sure of. Tonight it caught at his throat.

  Joanna squatted beside him, her face a blur without beauty, her hair straggling out of her hood. She was utterly human, utterly mortal. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. Rough, barely musical, blessedly human voice. “Did I wake you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” She rocked on her heels. Her bones creaked; she laughed, little more than a cough, and sat more sturdily on the edge of his mat. “Do I look appallingly clumsy to you?”

  “No,” he said. Truth. It was not appalling; it was endearing. Like a foal, or a wolfhound pup.

  “I’m not a delicate lady. I’m a great Frankish cow.”

  He raised himself on his elbow. “Who says that?”

  “I do.” She pushed her hair out of her face. “It’s true. Thibaut got all the pretty. I got the Norman reiver. I should have been a man.”

  “I for one am glad you’re not.”

  “You don’t have to be polite tonight. I can bear the truth.”

  “That is the truth.” He paused. “My inclination is not toward men. Or even pretty boys.”

  “I should hope not.”

  She could not have read his face in the
darkness, but hers was as clear to his eyes as in the first fading of dusk. What he saw there made him reach for her. There was no volition in it.

  No more in her, who came as if to haven. She was warm and solid, an ample armful, nigh as tall as he and fully as broad. A fine figure of a woman, they would say in Rhiyana.

  They lay together like children, content with simple presence, with the warmth of body and body. She stroked his beard, playing with it, taking pleasure in the feel of it against her palm. It shivered in him, that pleasure, even more than the touch of her hand upon his cheek.

  She laughed into his shoulder. “You’re purring!”

  “I am.” He was surprised. “I didn’t know I could.”

  Nor could he, once he was aware of it. She settled again, the long lush curve of her fitted to his curvelessness. It was a wonder, how they were made, male and female wrought perfectly for one another.

  But not he for she. He knew it very well. She was Ranulf’s in the eyes of God and man.

  It was hard to care, here in the mantling night. She would have been astonished to know how close he was to innocent; how seldom he had wanted a woman enough to do what men and women did. They kindled slowly, his kind. But once they had begun...

  “We should,” he tried to say. “We should not—”

  Her eyes, wide blue-grey mortal eyes, drank his words and left him dry. They were on their feet. He had no memory of rising.

  She set a kiss on his cheek where her hand had been, chaste as a sister’s. He watched, mute, as she turned and left him. Wise lady.

  Wiser than he. He could not stand erect in her tent. She could, just barely.

  Her maid was not there. Design? Accident?

  He doubted that Joanna knew, either. “This is mad,” he said.

  She nodded. She let her cloak fall, stood in her shift.

  A fine figure of a woman. Not a maid, not any longer. Her body had ripened; what it lost in firmness, it gained in sweetness. None of his kind could ever be as she was, full mortal summer, with spring in it still, and the shadow of a shadow of winter.

  She shivered. He brought his warmth to her. Her heart was beating hard. She pulled away; she clung. “Here,” she said, “damn it. We’ve got to—stop—Hold me!”