Alamut

by Judith Tarr

  oOo

  God was merciful, perhaps. Ranulf had taken up residence in the same house as always, but he was not in it when she came to it. She had time to bathe, eat, shed her travel-stained clothes, even rest if she was minded. She did all but the last. Her body was as comfortable as it would allow itself to be, settled in the solar with a book and a flagon of wine, but her mind bated like a hawk in a cage. She filled a cup. The scent of the wine made her ill; she set it down. Her eyes would not focus on the page. Her hands were icy.

  She had rehearsed, over and over, what she had to do. Grovel at Ranulf’s feet. Beseech his forgiveness. Seduce him. Give him reason to believe that he was the father of her child.

  She did not have to like herself for it. She would never call it folly, what had been between herself and Aidan, but neither did she intend to make their child pay for it. What she did, she did for her baby; and for Aidan’s honor and her own. And Ranulf’s ... yes, even his.

  It would seem, at best, a six months’ baby. But there were ways to hide it, old ways, women’s ways. A retreat to a convent, to mourn the deaths of her kin. A pilgrimage on the same pretext, and care taken that her husband did not take it into his head to accompany her. Even return to Aleppo where he could not follow. Ranulf would never know

  how brief a time had passed between his reunion with his wife and the birth of their son or daughter. And she would pray that it did not take after its father.

  As thin a line as she walked, thin as the sword’s edge, it was no wonder that she nigh went mad waiting for Ranulf to come back. She refused to think of what would happen if he did not; if he was drowning his sorrows with one of his whores. He need do no more than deny his paternity, to escape acknowledging a bastard.

  She could not indulge her anger at the unfairness of the world. For her baby’s sake, she must not. She made herself bend to her book. Natural philosophy seemed a dry and sapless thing beside what she was suffering, but it offered an escape. She set her teeth and took it.

  Ranulf found her so, deeply engrossed in Pliny the Elder. It was a long moment before she knew that he was there. She looked up, blinking, more than half out of the world.

  He was thinner. She noticed that first. There were shadows under his eyes. He was clean, shaven, his hair newly and neatly cut, but all of that had the look of a servant’s care, not of his own. He had a new scar on his cheek, somewhat swollen still, but beginning to heal. It did not disfigure him too badly. Zoe should look at it, Joanna thought. The Greek was a better doctor than any of the butchers in Jerusalem.

  He stood in the door, holding fast to the sides of it, as if to keep himself from falling. He was not drunk, she did not think. His face was perfectly blank.

  She lowered the book to her lap. “Good even, my lord,” she said.

  He moved forward. She had forgotten how big he was; she had never noticed that there was grace in his bulk.

  He stared down at her. Very likely he was angry. She could not read him at all.

  “I came back this morning,” she said. She was trying not to babble, but her tongue had its own opinion in the matter. “It was a good journey, all things considered. I went to Acre, but you were gone. I hoped I’d find you here.”

  “I didn’t think you were coming back,” he said.

  She laughed shrilly; caught herself. “Of course I came back. You said you’d let me have Aimery.”

  “You wouldn’t take him.”

  “I’ve had time to think.”

  “He turned you away?”

  She went hot, and then cold. She had begun to shake. By a miracle, her voice was steady. “If you mean the Prince of Caer Gwent, he left me in Aleppo as he was sworn to do, and rode against the Assassin.”

  “Did he succeed?”

  “I don’t know.” She knew how that sounded; she hastened to cover it. “I couldn’t stay. I was going mad in the harem.”

  “You were mad to leave it, with an Assassin hunting you.”

  “Not any longer. I was caught.”

  The color drained from his face.

  “I wasn’t hurt badly,” she said, praying that he was too distraught to scent the lie. “The Assassin was driven off. That was how — that was why his highness left. To hunt the Assassin.”

  “So he sent you back here. What made him think you wouldn’t be bait?”

  “I wasn’t,” she said.

  Ranulf glowered at nothing and everything. “Why did you come back?”

  I told you,” she said. “I want Aimery.”

  “What if you can’t have him?”

  Her shaking was harder now, almost too hard for speech. “Then you’ve lost me. I’ll — I’ll go into a convent. I’ll demand sanctuary. I’ll never let you near me again.”

  He stood and stared at her. All her plans and all her strategies, and the moment she saw him, she forgot every one of them.

  She struggled to remember what it had been like before Aimery. A hard pregnancy; months of swollen, burdened misery. Before that, not bliss, but something better than this. After her hoyden girlhood, she had decided to become a perfect lady, chatelaine of her own manor, baroness to Ranulf’s baron. She had not been very good at it, but trying had kept her amply occupied. She had liked Ranulf then. They had been able to laugh together, sometimes. He was hardly what she would call a good lover, but he gave her pleasure more often than not, and when she tried to give it back, he seemed to be pleased.

  He was happy when she told him that she was going to have a baby. He gave her a necklace of blue stones from Persia, and smiled to see her in it. “You’re beautiful,” he said then. The only time he ever said it.

  Then when their son was born, Ranulf took him away from her.

  He faced her now, on the other side of that wall, and his scowl was black. “You don’t ever forgive anything, do you?”

  “Do you ever think of what anyone wants but yourself?”

  She wondered if he would hit her. He never had. Even under richest provocation.

  He did not now. He raked his hand through his hair, ruffling it into disarray, like a child’s. Suddenly he seized her. She was too startled to fight, too startled even to dig in her heels. He dragged her out of the room.

  By the time she gathered her wits to do battle, she was moving too fast for anything but keeping her feet. His grip was strong but hardly painful, simply inescapable. He swept her past the servants’ regions, through an angle of garden, into the one place she had sworn not to approach. It would have been the nursery.

  He let her go so abruptly that she stumbled and fell. She clutched, caught the first prop that presented itself: Ranulf’s body.

  She was hardly aware of what she clung to. She was being stared at, hard. By a woman somewhat older than she, a dark, round, placid creature. And by what sat in the woman’s lap.

  He looked like his father. He had Ranulf’s wheat-gold hair. But the jaw, even so young, had a stubborn set to it which Joanna knew too well.

  She could not move. This was not her baby, this stranger, this solid youngling of half a year’s growth. She did not know him at all.

  Nor could he know her. He looked her over and debated, visibly, the wisdom of a howling fit.

  “Aimery?” It was barely audible.

  He frowned. His face began to redden.

  “Aimery,” she said. “Aimery.”

  He let her hold him. He stiffened only a little. He seemed to remember something: he nuzzled, seeking. She buried her face in his hair. His scent was warm and milky, a rich, sweet baby-scent, that brought the tears springing.

  She shook them away. Ranulf was glowering again. He looked exactly like Aimery.

  Something huge that had been in her, swelling, choking her, suddenly burst its bonds and shattered in the air. It left her light and hollow. Except for what burned steadily, down below her heart, where Aimery had begun.

  He shifted in her grip, protesting its sudden tightness. She eased as much as she could.

  She had dream
ed of this, and it was not the way it should have been at all. Aimery had grown while he was kept away from her. And she — she had done things that could never be undone. Only lied about. Only hidden.

  “I give you my word,” said Ranulf. “If I ever take another baby from you, it will be because you ask it.”

  Her breath caught on something — laughter, sob. If he knew — if he only knew —

  He was trying so hard. To please her. To keep her. To be what she wanted him to be. Poor, clumsy, mortal man.

  Why, she thought, looking into his wide blue eyes. He’s terrified of me.

  Because she was a woman. Because he could never know what she would do next. Because — God help him — he loved her.

  He did. Maybe it was Aidan’s magic, lodged deep in her, or Aidan’s loving, that had given her eyes to see.

  Aidan was fire. This was earth, plain and solid, no words in it, no grace and no lightness. It would never know what to say; seldom what to do. Except persist.

  She gave Aimery back to his nurse. He protested: a stab of grief in her, and a flare of joy, both at once. He remembered her. After all, he remembered his mother.

  “Hush,” she told him. “Hush, love. I’ll come back soon. I promise.”

  Promises meant nothing to a baby deprived of his mother. His nurse stopped his howls with her breast.

  Joanna’s heart twisted. She had no milk now; nor would again, for Aimery.

  She turned away from the sight of another woman doing what she could not, and faced her husband. Her arms circled his neck. He was only a little taller than she, but much larger, broad and thickset, with none of Aidan’s panther-suppleness. His skin was human skin, his scent human scent: strange now; alien. He was rigid. Terrified.

  So would she have been, if she had had time to think. He followed her docilely, as if she had bewitched him. Maybe she had. There was a demon in her now, in more ways than she could count.

  She brought him past servants and stares and questions, into the bedchamber. She disposed of his squire, and even of his favorite hound. She got him out of his clean new clothes, not without difficulty: he could be as modest as a girl. Though what he had to be ashamed of, she could not see. Under the knots and scars and the mat of wheat-gold hair, he was a wellmade man.

  She surprised herself. She wanted him. His humanity; his strength and his mortal fragility. He was hers; he belonged to her. Only God could take him away from her.

  It was outrageously wanton: to lust after one’s own husband. The priests would be shocked.

  She laughed, which shocked Ranulf. He had never seen her like this. She tried to explain. “I’m home, don’t you see? I’ve come home.”

  He could call it hysteria, if he liked. His scowl was not anger, she realized. He was struggling to understand. How much of him had she ever understood?

  She dropped her own garments, shocking him further, and led him to the bed. A glint had wakened in his eye. He liked what he saw. A good solid armful of woman, he had called her more than once. Now, again, he made sure of it. She kissed him deep, to his astonishment and sudden pleasure. She felt it all through her skin, like a breath, or the brush of a hand.

  He hurt her a little, with his weight, with his ardor. He had no power to know when she was ready, or where; or how to pleasure her. She tried to show him. It was awkward. They were beginning all new, as if they were strangers. He needed more than showing. He needed telling: a nudge, a word, a guiding hand. It made her think of training horses.

  This time she buried her laughter in his shoulder. He was too preoccupied to notice. Men seemed to need more of themselves for this. Maybe because this was all they gave. Women had the consequences to face.

  He stayed awake long enough to ask her if she was happy. She gave him the answer he wanted to hear. The whore’s answer; though it might have been the truth. He went to sleep smiling.

  She wept, at first hardly aware of it, then painfully so. Some of it was relief. She was safe now. She had Aimery; she had her husband.

  What she had lost...

  She should hate herself. That was part of why she cried: because she could not. She had sinned mortally, and she repented not a moment of it. A man could go without shame from woman to woman. She had gone to one man. She could not go back to him. Nor would she regret him. He had found her broken, and made her whole. That she had still a few scars, that they ached when the wind blew cold, that was but mortal reality.

  Aidan would understand. He lived his own lies, for his safety’s sake. Ranulf never lied; he never needed to. She could never tell him the truth. He would see it all awry. He would hate her.

  And that, she knew surely, she could not bear.

  She prayed. Maybe she should not; maybe she only damned herself more blackly. Yet she shut her eyes tight and made of her whole self a prayer. For the child that would be; for Aimery; for Ranulf; for Aidan. And for herself. To keep them all safe; to protect them from one another.

  VII. Jerusalem

  38.

  Aidan stood on the Mount of Olives, just where Tancred had stood, a hundred years ago, with his army of soldiers and saints and outrageous sinners, under the banner of the first Crusade. Tancred had wept to see Jerusalem; to know that it lay under the sway of the infidel. He had won it, he and his brother princes: Raymond, Robert, Bohemond, Godfrey of Lorraine. The names rang in the silence of Aidan’s skull, like the song of steel on steel.

  He turned slowly about. On the summit where he stood was the ruined chapel, the shrine where Christ had left the mark of his foot. Eastward shone the lake of Sodom beyond the march of blue-hazed hills, and the long ridge of Moab like a dragon’s back above the silver ribbon of the Jordan. Westward was the deep valley of Kidron, and the walls of Jerusalem.

  His mamluks, for once, were both mute and still. One or two of them seemed close to weeping.

  He did not know what he felt. Joy, yes; awe of the high and holy city; eagerness to enter it, to pay fealty to its king. But sadness, too, and something very like regret. He had no lover to share this moment with him. Joanna was gone. Morgiana had not come to claim him, though over and over on the long road, he caught himself riding with his chin on his shoulder, starting at every sound or shadow, calling her name. She never answered. The air, like his heart, was empty.

  His gelding stamped, and snapped at a fly. He gathered the reins. He had paid no heed to the pilgrims who flocked upon the Mount; now they burst upon his consciousness: a babble of voices, a mutter of prayer, a glitter of eyes at the outrage of Saracens in this most Christian of places. He crossed himself with conspicuous devotion, and vaulted into the saddle. The shocked stares lightened his mood miraculously. He wheeled his gelding on its haunches and sent the whole troop of them thundering down the hill.

  Jerusalem spread wide before him. He found that he was singing as he had on that first morning on the road to Aqua Bella; but without that giddy lightness which should have warned him of disaster. His victory was won, whatever its price. He had come home.

  The cousins and the caravan had gone their own ways even before Aidan turned off to climb the Mount of Olives, promising to deliver his baggage to Lady Margaret’s house. The mamluks had not let him send them away then, and would not now. They crowded about Aidan, jostled together in the narrow streets, bristling like hounds in a strange kennel. He welcomed the labor of keeping them in hand. It kept the city from overwhelming him.

  Near the crossing of the roads, where they should turn off toward David’s Tower, they came to a halt. A baron was passing with retinue enough for a king and clamor enough for an emperor. Aidan’s hellions would have pressed on regardless, for their prince’s honor; the baron’s guardsmen were not inclined to indulge them. Aidan extricated Timur by the scruff of his neck and hauled Conrad back by the belt, before they could begin a war. Timur was frothing with rage. “Did you hear what he said? Did you hear? Filthy Saracen, he called you. You, my lord!”

  “So he did,” said Aidan. “In atrocious Arabi
c, too.”

  “And you’ll allow it?” cried Ilkhan.

  Aidan grinned at him. “Why not? He thinks he’s telling the truth.”

  By now they were used to his outrageousness. The Kipchaks subsided. Conrad stopped cursing and blinked at him. The others settled in to watch the procession, since their lord seemed minded to do the same. It did not go on much longer, though it seemed to, as crowded as the street was, and growing more crowded as the side ways added their streams of people to it. Even when the stream began to move again, it advanced sluggishly, with many halts and entanglements.

  Aidan, seeking a clearer path, got down and led his horse. His mamluks followed in file, with Arslan last, riding herd on the twins. The horses were uneasy, unused to the press and the tumult. Timur’s mare squealed; Aidan heard the boy’s curse, and a child’s sudden, full-throated howl.

  He flung the reins into Conrad’s hands and bolted back down the line. It was like swimming upstream in a flood. He thrust through it without mercy. He might have bowled someone over; he hoped that it was one of his own.

  Timur’s mare had gone quite gleefully berserk, spinning about the center that was her white-faced master, lashing out with her heels. She had caught Ilkhan’s gelding, who had since had the sense to stand still, out of her reach, ears flat to his head. The crowd eddied, with an occasional foray past her. Beyond her, flattened against a wall, was the trembling, wailing figure of a woman, clinging desperately to the baby, which had begun to scream in earnest.

  The mare had cleared a goodly circle. Aidan walked through it, taking no particular care to elude the restless heels, and set hand to the bridle. The mare jibbed; her eye rolled; her heel trembled, paused, settled to the ground. “Wise,” Aidan said to her. “Most wise.” He ran a hand down her streaming neck. She settled slowly. He coaxed her toward the wall, into the illusion of safety. The crowd began to move again, tentatively at first, then more strongly.

  The baby’s howls subsided into hiccoughs. It seemed none the worse for its ordeal, a robust, fair-haired Frankish child in the arms of a nurse who was, all too evidently, indulging in a bout of hysterics. As it caught sight of Aidan, it stopped howling to stare. Its eyes were wide and thunder-colored, dark not with terror but with rage; though that was giving way to curiosity. It wanted to touch the wonderful, terrible animal with the flying heels. Its nurse had all but strangled it, and driven it wild with her crying and carrying on.