by Jack Whyte
Odo, she had said to him, in so many words, this is your last time here. You will not see me again after today—not like this, at least—unless, of course, I change my mind and summon you one last time for nostalgia’s sake. But I will see you are looked after well. I am to wed, soon now, and my betrothed is on his way to Outremer to claim me as his bride. Obviously, therefore, I must mend my ways from this time on, and cast off my bad habits. And you, my sweet, are one of those bad habits.
Betrothed! And to whom? Some popinjay from France or Italy, coming to claim her as his bride! The whore of Babylon herself, and she claimed rights to bridehood? Odo had been so angry that his throat closed up, threatening to choke him, but none of his frantic, screaming questions or accusations had actually emerged from his mouth. Who would wed her? he asked in his mind. What man in his right mind would even …? But at that point he had answered his own question. Any man who thought he might have the opportunity to wed Alice le Bourcq would climb over a mountain of corpses to claim the privilege.
She had sat watching him as he strove to digest what she had said, hungrily following the play of his emotions on his face and in his eyes as he absorbed her tidings, and then she had laughed and stood up and tapped him with the whisk she used against the ubiquitous sand flies. Think about it, she had said. Think about it quietly for a spell, and I will do the same, for I know what you need and I know where to find it. Now stay, if you will, and wait for me. And she had gone, leaving two guards at her door and Odo alone, with nothing but a silken undershirt to cover his nakedness. It was too much to bear.
He heard the door opening quietly at his back and spun on his heel, prepared to rend her with his tongue, but she forestalled him with an upraised hand and waved to the woman Esther who was with her. Wordless, the old woman stepped forward and, with a sweeping movement of her right arm, smoothed the material of Odo’s outer garment as she draped it across a chair.
“There,” Alice said. “No trace of your little accident to be seen.”
Odo opened his mouth to snarl, but then closed it without uttering a sound. He had had a mishap, that was true, but in the light of what had happened since then, he was sure it had been no accident. In the excitement of their first meeting after a separation of several weeks, he had been somewhat over-eager, and in her willingness to accommodate him, Alice had contrived to have him spill his seed on the pale green silk front of his outer clothing. He had paid little attention to it at the time, apart from a passing awareness that he would have to wash out the stains before they set, because Alice had been more than simply amorous that day, she had been all over him. Now he knew why: she had wanted to distract him while the old sow stole his clothing in order to make sure he could not safely leave before Alice wished him to. But why? Why had she not simply permitted him to leave, nursing his anger?
As though she had been reading his mind, Alice held up her hand again to still him, and waved Esther away with the other, watching until the old woman had closed the door solidly behind her. Only then did she turn back to face the glowering bishop, who stood teetering, red faced, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“Danger,” she said. “You thrill to risk and danger, Odo.”
“I—” He swallowed his outrage and forced himself to speak slowly and clearly. “What are you talking about, my lady?”
If Alice noticed the stiffness of his lips or the tight constriction of his speech she gave no sign of it. “Dress yourself first, then come and sit.” She indicated the couch beside her. “Sit, and calm yourself. You are going to enjoy this, I promise you.”
She watched wordlessly as Odo dressed himself, then smiled to herself as he slumped onto the couch head down, like a sullen boy. “You will forgive me, I hope, if I fail to see how,” he growled.
“You will, believe me. Now listen to what I have to say. Shortly before you arrived today, I received an urgent summons, a very urgent summons that I could not ignore. You arrived immediately afterwards, and thus I did not wish to leave.” She flashed him a seductive smile, so unexpected that it disarmed him for a moment, distracting him from the anger he had been nurturing, but she was already talking again, the smile still in place. “And so I stayed with you for as long as I could. But I knew by then that, if I left after giving you the tidings of my wedding, you would be angry and would rush away and simmer yourself to a boil in that stuffy old house of yours where I could not reach you. And therefore I arranged to have Esther steal your clothes. Can you forgive me?”
In mere moments, she had pulled every tooth in Odo’s maw of anger, and he now sat blinking at her. “I still do not understand. Why then did you not simply tell me what you were about? I would have waited.”
“Perhaps you would have, perhaps not, but I did not want you being angry at me from afar. Better, I thought, to have you angry here, where I could explain matters to you once I returned. I had no time to think of anything better or more elaborate to do or to tell you, and besides, I did not know what I would hear when I reached the envoy with whom I had to meet.”
“And what did you hear? Who was this envoy?”
“Do you remember our last discussion of the matter of the knightly monks?”
Odo nodded, frowning slightly. “Very clearly, and I confess I have been wondering why you have said no more about it. It has been several months, but we agreed that I would say nothing to anyone, and you would attempt to find some way to discover what they are about in that cavern of theirs. Have you discovered something?”
Alice shook her head. “Nothing that is certain. Nothing that I can use as a weapon. But there is one of them, the youngest of them, whose activities have begun to interest me. They call him Brother Stephen.”
The name was like a slap in the face, but Odo, by that time, had mastered his emotions well enough to allow no trace of his jealousy to show. “Stephen, the one who disappeared, you mean? I remember the furor surrounding his disappearance. They turned the city inside out looking for him. But then I heard tell he reappeared from somewhere, professing to have lost his memory.” He laughed, a single deep grunt of scorn. “Would he had come to me for his confession! I would have jogged his memory.”
“His brethren believed him,” Alice said soberly. “And I believed that. The two senior men there, the knights de Payens and St. Omer, are no one’s fools. But then the wandering brother disappeared again, less than a month ago, and has not been seen since.”
“Where did he go, do you know?” He saw the flash in her eyes and recognized the banality of his question. “Forgive me, that was stupid. Of course you do not know.”
“No, I do not, neither where he went nor where he has been since. But I now know that he is on his way back here, accompanied by a trusted … associate of mine.”
Odo gave no sign of having noticed the tiny hesitation, a heavy frown already forming between his brows. “How would you learn such a thing, my lady, and why would you even care about the fate of a filthy, scrofulous monk?”
The princess arched her eyebrows as though she could not believe his lack of wit. “Because of who and what he is, of course. Do you not see, Odo? He is the one among them all who travels most and farthest, the only one who ever leaves those stables for any length of time. And when he disappeared a second time I asked myself, where does he go during these disappearances? Who does he visit? With whom does he speak, and what, above all, might he take with him or bring back with him when these events occur?”
She watched Odo’s face as he examined what she had said, and at length he sat back and nodded. “And so you set your spies to look for him?”
“I set one spy to look for him—one spy whose influence extends to every grain of sand in the desert. You do not know the man, nor will you, but he has found the knight monk and he is bringing him back here.”
“To meet with you?”
“No, to rejoin his brethren. After that, I want you to speak with him. I will tell you what to ask him, and you will conduct the inte
rrogation. Then you will bring his information back to me.”
“But you have barely finished telling me I will not see you again.”
“No, not so.” Alice tilted her head slightly to one side. “I told you that our delightful fornications are over—that I can no longer afford to indulge myself with our shared pleasures. It would be far too dangerous now, not to mention foolish. I cannot be betrothed to a powerful prince and risk being caught rutting with a bishop of God’s Church.”
Odo marked the reference to the “powerful prince” and wondered fleetingly who it could be, but for the moment his petulance would tolerate no further distraction. “It never bothered you in the past,” he snapped, furious with himself for stating the obvious, even before the words had left his mouth.
“I was not betrothed to anyone in the past. Now I am to wed Prince Bohemond of Antioch.”
That silenced Odo. Bohemond of Antioch was a powerful and ominous name, even although he knew they were speaking of the son and not the father. Bohemond I’s reputation for prickly honor, ill temper, and drastic, bloody solutions to all kinds of problems had been legendary even in his own lifetime, and Odo had no desire at all to risk the displeasure of his son. He cleared his throat uncertainly and asked Alice how long she had known of this, and she shook her head dismissively.
“I knew nothing of it until recently, but our fathers were friends and I have discovered that we have been betrothed since we were infants.”
Odo had already made his decision to remain prudently clear of the princess from that time on, but for the sake of appearances, he allowed himself one last, disillusioned grumble. “Ah,” he grunted. “I see how it is. So I am now expected to disappear discreetly. This is my thanks for faithful service?”
“No, your thanks for faithful service will be recognized in the fact that I have found a replacement for myself, on your behalf.”
“I—” Odo’s mouth hung open, and Alice laughed. “Come now, I can see you thinking all kinds of things that you ought not to be thinking, but listen to me for a moment. Listen, and then see if I am not right. Will you listen?”
He nodded, still speechless, and the princess knelt in front of him, one hand on his knee as she stared into his eyes. “I said once before that you thrill to risk and danger, and that is why you have enjoyed our liaison so much. I was fourteen when you and I first had each other, and had we ever been discovered, my father would have had your head off your shoulders that same day, bishop or no. And therein lay your pleasure and the thrill of the risk, am I not right? Be truthful.”
“And if you are? I fail to see what my admission will achieve.”
“It will gain you a new mistress, younger than I, and as discreet, surrounded by even more perils and hazards than I pose to you.”
The bishop’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Do I know her? Does she know me?”
“Yes … and no.”
“What does that mean? You tease me with riddles?”
“No, by my soul. Do you recall the night we made a three?”
Odo sat up straighter, for he remembered the occasion very well indeed, the only time he had ever passed an entire night with Alice and the only time she had ever brought a third party to join them, a very young woman, a girl in truth, who had come to them in darkness and had intertwined with them all night, saying no single word but sharing all their debaucheries before vanishing with the approaching dawn. She had been very young, he remembered, her breasts tiny and still unformed, her small body pliant and avid, but as hard and resilient as a street urchin’s. He nodded, swallowing hard.
“She is the one. You have enjoyed her, but not seen her. She has enjoyed you, and would see more of you.”
“She is very young.” His voice was a raspy whisper, so dry was his mouth.
“Barely fourteen. Younger than I was at first, but no less willing and already better trained.”
“By whom?”
“Why, by me, of course.” Her laugh was a tinkling cascade of sounds. “She and I have become great friends.”
“Then what …?” He swallowed again. “Wherein lies the risk you spoke of?”
Alice’s smile faded. “Her name is Arouna. She is Muslim, of good family. Her father, Fakhr Ad-Kamil, is a sheikh, placid and law abiding at this time but noted for his ferocity in times not so long past. Should he ever discover you in this, or have even the most fleeting suspicion that you may have looked sideways at his daughter, he will cause you to die a lingering, agonizing death.” She shrugged. “Against that, you have to weigh Arouna—young, bright, beautiful, passionate, depraved … She has no wish to be who she is, would far rather live among the Franks and enjoy their ways, but she knows that she will soon be called upon, like me, to wed her father’s choice. She will then enter the seraglio of some hawk-beaked old warrior and her life of pleasure will be over. In the meantime, she has her father under her thumb and subject to her every wish, and he permits her, as my special friend, to spend most of her time with me, living here in the palace, a situation she intends to keep unchanged for as long as ever she may.”
“So how long would I have her?”
“A year, perhaps two, then things will change. But what more could you desire? A secret mistress, young and dangerous, with a lust for love—indeed a love for lust—that will fulfill your every wish and fantasy. Would you like to meet her?”
“Aye. When?”
“Soon. I will make the arrangements. But are you completely sure you wish to do this?”
“Of course I am.”
“Even despite the risk that her father, who is a barbarous old villain, will slit your scrotum and cook your testicles before your eyes, then eat them while his men flay you alive? Will you risk all that, simply for the pleasure of having young, tight flesh to pleasure you?”
“Aye, all of it. You know I will.”
“Good.” Alice stood up and clapped her hands to summon Ishtar, then lay one hand lightly on Odo’s arm. “I will call for you as soon as I know anything. In the meantime, be you prepared to question the knight monk Brother Stephen when he returns. Ah, Ishtar. His lordship the Bishop is leaving now.”
TWO
By the time Stephen St. Clair arrived in sight of the walls of Jerusalem again, he had changed greatly, in some ways, from the man he had been when Hassan rescued him from the nomads, because he and the Shi’a had ridden and lived together for several hundreds of miles by then, and the major part of their time together had been spent in talking, once they had begun to grow accustomed to each other. He had learned, much to his surprise, since it went directly against much of what he had been taught, that the Muslims, in their adherence to the religion of Islam, considered both Christians and Jews to be close to equal to themselves, and as fellow worshippers of the One God, referred to them as People of the Book. It was unimportant that each of the three peoples had a different name for the Book; what mattered was that each had a Book, witnessing their involvement with the One God. That idea, that Jews, Christians, and Muslims were interrelated through their God, novel as it was, was none the less logical to a member of the Order of Rebirth in Sion, no matter how close to anathema it might appear to a devout Christian.
He had discovered, too, not only that a Saracen warrior could be an ideal companion in the desert but that he might also possess many of the attributes that St. Clair had found so signally lacking in his own knightly Christian counterparts, such things as dignity, nobility, honor, and an inbred, natural sense of decorum. In fact he had become convinced, purely from watching the behavior and listening to the opinions of the man called Hassan, that those very attributes must be considered commonplace among the warriors of Allah and His Prophet.
They had even talked about religion during their long journey, although St. Clair had presented himself as nothing more than an ordinary Christian knight, and Hassan had taken pains to clarify for St. Clair the differences between the Shi’a Muslims and their more numerous Sunni counterparts, and to explore the
schism between the two Islamic factions. St. Clair had found the explanations interesting, but he had none the less found himself being largely unimpressed by any of it, and because he had wondered why that should be, and had then thought about it afterwards, he knew that his lack of interest had sprung from the perception that Islam’s leading figure was a mere man, the Prophet Mohammed, whereas Christianity had the Christ himself, the living Son of God, at its peak. That realization had dumbfounded him, because it was illogical and, he now honestly believed, blatantly superstitious. The logical part of his mind knew and accepted from his own studies that Jesus, the man of Galilee, had been no more than what that term implied: a human but extraordinary man set apart by Destiny and, at most, a prophet, just as was Mohammed, the man of Mecca, six hundred years later.
The main thing he had discovered, however, was that this enigmatic, black-clad warrior with the exotic chain-mail armor, who ought, by every criterion known to St. Clair, to have been an enemy, had, in the space of a few days’ companionship, become closer to being a real friend than anyone else St. Clair had met since first leaving home as a knight years before. He was unprepared, therefore, when they came in sight of the distant towers of Jerusalem, for Hassan to stop, release him from his obligation not to attempt to escape, and send him on his way alone, while he himself vanished back into the desert behind them. When St. Clair had tried to argue against him, Hassan merely smiled and indicated himself with a downward sweep of his hand. Look at me, the gesture said plainly. I am a desert warrior, a Saracen. I would not survive the day were I to ride into the city.
St. Clair could not gainsay the truth of that, knowing that he himself was incapable of providing Hassan with any kind of protection or any guarantee of safety or immunity from attack by the first person to set eyes on him. Had he himself encountered Hassan mere days earlier, and seen the man dressed as he was, an obvious representative of every threat that existed to the Frankish kingdom, he would have drawn his own blade and attacked him instantly. And so the two men exchanged farewells and parted, Hassan to return to the desert and St. Clair to seek out his brethren on the Temple Mount, in all humility and penitence.