“I take payment in advance.”
“Efficiency for you, Rodriga!” He eyed the killer appreciatively. “So ensuring that you are not cheated, eh?”
“The maxim that dead men tell no tales being the one in which my employers place most faith, it is prudent never to return for payment. But I said I come in peace.”
“You could have knifed me at my tent door, so I accept it. Not looking for our young friend of yesterday, were you?”
“No.”
“Then why come at all?”
“First, to thank your daughter for my life. Secondly, to give you my word that you and he are safe, now and always, from me.”
“You were of a different mind when you departed!” remarked Rodriga.
He nodded. “I believed then that you mocked me,” he answered simply, “and that your men would kill me as I went.”
“Are we to take that as an apology?” Landry inquired, grinning widely.
“As you choose. You will get no better.”
Landry chuckled. “You have an insolence that diverts me, so I will accept it instead of running you through.” He slammed his sword back into the sheath, and held out Marco’s dagger, haft-first. Rodriga nodded. She too believed him. If the killer had not been entirely in earnest, he would never have presented himself where he might expect a foot of hard steel through his vitals at sight. She liked him no better, but he did not stoop to lying. “Take it,” said Landry as he made no move, “and go in peace as you came.”
His eyes narrowed in the suspicious glance of an animal that scents peril, and Rodriga realised that he half-anticipated the blade would be reversed as he reached for it and driven into his body. He could not trust any man’s intentions; he who preyed on all men was every man’s prey. Yet his hand closed on the haft without snatching, and pushed it into its sheath. Then he hesitated, and for the first time looked directly at Rodriga. Her response was not encouraging. He might have been some noxious though fascinating reptile by her expression, and she had never done more than lower the point of her javelin.
“One further matter,” he said, halted as though embarrassed, if that were not incredible and reached inside the breast of his dark linen tunic. At once the javelin blade flashed, and checked just above his belt-buckle, the bright steel pricking through the cloth to the firmer resistance of flesh. Rodriga stiffened for a lunge, her heart-beats quickening, her eyes narrowed and deadly. Landry grinned all across his broad red face as he stood with hands on hips and left the choice to her. Marco moved very slowly to offer no excuse for a thrust; only a veritable idiot would have believed that a young girl would not kill when confronted with that resolute young face. His hand came out with a small soft packet, he looked from Rodriga to her father and back, his sudden flush visible even by the feeble lamplight, and then spoke curtly to Landry. “There was a bandage on my arm. Have I your leave to make this recompense to your daughter?”
“I take nothing from your bloody hands!” Rodriga exclaimed in fierce revulsion.
He glanced down at the little packet, and his flush faded as quickly as it had risen. “I wished to repay—” he began, and stopped, for the first time at a loss.
“Shall I accept anything bought with men’s lives? Men you do not hate, do not know, and you boast that you kill them coldly for silver!” Her voice did not rise, but it cut like a northern wind. His steady black eyes fixed on her scornful face, his own unreadable. “Do you think me lower than the vilest of harlots, to offer me the price of blood?”
He drew breath sharply and crushed the packet in his hand, and she knew that her disgust had pierced deeper than her steel. Then he was imperturbable as he had been on the camel’s back, flouting the hatred of the crowd. “I see that I know as little of honest women as you do of harlots, my lady,” he observed wryly, and thrust his gift back into his tunic. “Have I your leave to go?” he asked Landry coolly.
He nodded, and Rodriga withdrew her blade about half a yard from his midriff. Landry stepped to the entrance to pass him through the straining Catalans, and she followed with her weapon ready. All three checked at the threshold. Beyond the fire Diego held a horse’s bridle while Piers de Veragny dismounted. Struck still likewise, he stared at the renegade with his formidable fair eyebrows meeting in one bar of anger across his face.
“You!” he spluttered. “You spawn of Hell, what evil are you devising here?”
“I have not yet determined what will best satisfy my master the Devil,” Marco answered reasonably.
Piers gulped for breath as though that mild reply had been a blow under the ribs. Landry yelped with delight, and Rodriga, out of deference to their guest’s outraged feelings, throttled her own chuckle with difficulty and tried to smooth his temper.
“He came in peace and he goes likewise, Master Piers.”
Her success was that of most peacemakers. Piers spared her a fulminating glare that lost little of its quality by being barely visible in the firelight, slapped his hand to the pommel of his sword and addressed Marco in a half-choked voice.
“By God’s Head, were you not unworthy of a gentleman’s steel, I—I—”
“Have no fear, gentle squire,” Marco said courteously as his eloquence suddenly expired. “Since you had a share in saving my life, I promise that henceforth you are safe from me.”
For a moment comprehension eluded Piers, and Rodriga started to place herself between them, her lips opening on expostulation, before she swiftly realised that Marco needed no one’s protection. Then understanding of the renegade’s magnanimity flooded him with murderous fury, and he forgot that his was a gentleman’s steel and ripped it with one sharp screech from the scabbard. He hurled himself at Marco, swinging up the blade to split him to the belt.
One moment the renegade was standing, alert and amused, under that blacksmith’s stroke; the next he was hurtling forward in a somersaulting dive. The boy’s own blow, encountering nothing, overbalanced him, and Marco’s hand on his ankle completed his overthrow. He fell flat on his belly in a cloud of dust tinged crimson by the fire, his sword flying from his grasp to rip through the rotten canvas of the tent, and lay there crowing helplessly for air to fill his emptied lungs. Marco was on his feet, scarcely ruffled; his black head seemed to have no hair displaced.
Landry was laughing without restraint, while Rodriga, her hand at her mouth, conscientiously tried not to. Then she caught the wicked glint of black eyes in a thin dark face, and failed lamentably. The squire’s downfall had been not only spectacular but to her mind merited, and Marco’s look shared that knowledge and her reprehensible delight. She doubled up in an agony of rib-straining laughter, while her father whooped and bellowed and slapped his massive thigh. When she mopped her face with her sleeve and again possessed her five senses, Marco was gone. She collected her self-control and turned belatedly to succour his victim.
When he had recovered his wind Piers was angry with them on three counts, and declared them forcefully. First they had witnessed his humiliation, secondly they had laughed at it, and thirdly they had failed to apprehend its perpetrator for retribution. He was deeply injured, and required a deal of soothing. However, he was at bottom a good-natured enough lad with a liking for both of them, and a timely reminder from Landry that he had a little news to offer turned him from his resolve to quit their company, and he was persuaded to accept their regrets for the misfortune and a cup of wine.
Rodriga invited him to sup, but he hastily told her that he had supped already, a wise precaution in any visitor of theirs. But the wine of Palestine, even the cheapest such as they could afford, was good. Ale was dear and hard to come by, strange to Western palates when obtainable, and they had not yet descended to drinking water, a perilous necessity in disease-ridden Acre. Piers emerged from a brimming cup, ceased grumbling about unknightly tricks and even commended Rodriga on the steadiness of her nerves.
She answered absently, her own reflections less flattering. Knightly conduct to her mind did not include a
murderous attack with a sword on a man armed only with a dagger and wounded also. It was beside the point that Marco was too competent a craftsman to have been in any danger, and indeed had deliberately provoked him to his overthrow. That fact, without inclining her any more charitably towards the renegade, did not justify Piers. Unless he learned some measure of self-control this young hot-head’s life would be short if eventful, and all her father’s trouble wasted.
Landry chewed doggedly at a mouthful of elderly and athletic goat, helped it down his gullet with a swallow of wine, and laid his heavy hand on his guest’s shoulder. “Hey, lad! When does your lord expect you back in kennel?”
The boy’s eyebrows lifted. “He gave me leave for the evening, and will not look for me before morning.”
“And spent and sore-headed at that, I warrant! What do you say to exchanging the entertainments of Acre for a knock at the Saracens?”
“Saracens?” Piers repeated bemusedly.
“Saracens, Infidels, Turks, followers of Mahound!” Landry said helpfully. “Remember—you came on Crusade to fight them?”
“Oh!” There was a pause while he assimilated that, and then, “Yes, of course I am willing and ready to fight the Infidel! But— but what are you planning to do, Sir Landry?”
“Go up into the sandhills and raid their encampment.”
His jaw dropped. “Raid—raid Saladin’s encampment?” he gasped.
“Being in your company, young man,” declared Landry irascibly, “is like conversing with a talking magpie! Can you do nothing but repeat me? We are going to raid Saladin’s encampment, or at least some outlying corner of it. Will you take a hand, or do you prefer to spend the night among the more risky delights of the wineshops and brothels?”
Piers cast a shamed glance at Rodriga, but she gnawed calmly at a gristly rib-bone without even pretending to blush at her father’s plain words. As for his suggestion about the squire’s choice of pleasures, it was nothing to her whether the common habit of young men were his also.
“Why do you seek to put me in the wrong?” Piers asked aggrievedly. “I will venture with you gladly against the Infidel, but you cannot blame me either for being surprised or wondering why!”
“Knew you would be eager to shed a little blood—have you not just now proved it?” said Landry cheerfully, giving up his shank-bone as a hopeless task and tossing it into the fire, which flared and spluttered greasily around it, lighting up the faces that a moment before had been featureless blurs in the dark. He winked deliberately at Rodriga, who winked back. “As for reasons, I have my vow to fulfil. If the Infidel will not come within sword’s reach, I must seek him out.”
“Must you?” asked the young man, rightly sceptical.
“And if we cannot lay hands on a little legitimate loot, we will have to turn to brigandage, which under King Richard’s command is speedily fatal.”
“Oh!” said Piers again, this time in comprehension. A broad grin transfigured his sulky face. “My lord, I am with you!”
“Thought the enterprise would commend itself at the first whisper of loot,” Landry remarked, and wiped his greasy fingers on the sand. He grinned wickedly at his daughter, hoisted himself rather awkwardly to his feet and began issuing orders to Ramiro. The five sons were already saddling his and Rodriga’s horses and arming themselves. Piers sidled closer to Rodriga and spoke softly in her ear.
“What shall I bring for you, my fair Rodriga? Jewels, gold, Byzantine silk to adorn you?”
“Grab whatever of value is under your hands and take no thought of me,” she answered prosaically.
“But of course my first thought must be of you, my Rodriga! And when I am gone, will you think of me a little?”
“I shall think of all of you, and I am coming too.”
He yelped with real dismay, and began spluttering disjointed protests. “Rodriga, you cannot mean it! It is impossible! A demoiselle —a gentle maiden—are you mad to think of it?” He seized her other arm and swung her round to face him.
“I go always where my father goes,” she told him coolly. “Besides, what man can we spare to hold the horses?”
“But you— a delicate maiden—Rodriga, these perils are not for you! You cannot—you must not!”
Landry stumped towards them, his eyebrows inquiring what was amiss before his mouth opened. Piers swung round on him.
“Sir Landry, you cannot mean to endanger your daughter on this crazy venture! Surely you will bid her remain here in safety?”
“My lass goes with me, save only into battle,” Landry declared. “And with due thanks for your concern, young man, the choice is ours. You need not fear she will hamper us; a valiant knight was lost when Rodriga was born a girl.”
“Hamper us? Is that all your thought? What of the risk to her life and maidenhood?”
“Both a deal safer with her father, than in a camp full of ribalds and routiers with none to protect her but a child and a crone, as we have reason to know. We ride out while the streets are busy, wait in the sandhills while the camp goes to rest, and then seek Saladin.” Piers opened his mouth as though to renounce the whole project and his share in it, and then gulped and nodded. Rodriga took up her javelin, her preferred weapon for close work, tossed her white kerchief into the tent lest it betray them in the moonlight, and found Ramiro woodenly tendering her stirrup and pretending to have heard nothing of his betters’ dispute. He tossed her up into the saddle, helped to arrange her full skirts as deftly as any tirewoman, and relinquished the reins into her grasp with a brief warm clasp as their hands met. Piers loomed on her right hand astride a likely courser shining red-brown in the firelight, and her father on her left. The five Catalans, each carrying a pair of javelins, loped on foot behind, eagerly discussing in low voices their prospects of riding back.
In Acre, where the heat of mid-day induced men of sense to follow the custom of the country and rest until the afternoon was half spent, the streets were alive long after dark. To folk more accustomed to the curfew-deadened stillness of Northern nights, it was strange to pass through streets of lighted tents, past taverns and stews spilling noise and revellers, jostled by torchlit throngs reluctantly giving way to riders. Overhead the sharp clear stars of the East glittered brilliantly, and a silver moon three days short of full had lifted above the tents and set enchantment on them, so that what by merciless day showed stained and patched and shabby was now white and shining against black shadow. The battlements and towers of the beleaguered city were outlined by moving torches that flared past crenels and through loopholes. Then they came to the ditch and found a crossing-place, and were moving gently over the shallow slope, keeping to the cover of the hill Turon as long as possible, until they entered the sandhills.
They drifted like ghosts among the dim dunes, ploughing through the soft sand under the deceiving light of the moon that showed them the tortuous dark ways between the crests that lifted like frozen waves. Presently Landry dismounted, cast the reins of his gaunt destrier Almansor to Pablo, the eldest of the Catalan brothers, and lowered himself to the sand. Piers and Rodriga joined them, Ramiro guarded the horses, and the four young men lay flat, each on one of the surrounding dunes to keep watch.
“Must give these night-owls time to roost,” observed Landry, sprawling at ease with his hands clasped under his head. “So you may have what news I have gathered today. And before aught else, you must have no open dealings with us, so come seldom, and if you must, with care.”
“But I did, Sir Landry!”
“You blundered in on us while that impudent knave Marco was in our tent. What if Robert de Veragny or that white slug his seneschal had been feeling sociable?”
“Oh!” said Piers blankly. “Yes—yes, I will take care.”
“Peril does wonders for the wits if you survive long enough. But enough of that. The company of elderly clerics does not commend itself to me—”
“Though doubtless beneficial,” murmured his dutiful daughter.
“�
��But I have affected it today until my guts gripe. Beneficial, girl? They have but two topics of conversation, preferment and the shortcomings of those who have gained it—more amusement and no less spiritual benefit in an old dames’ sewing-party! I except Father Augustine. Today he made known to me a friend of his. Archdeacon of somewhere or other, but he lived within five leagues of Rionart for the years that matter. Not given to gossip, alas; a man of inconvenient discretion. I shall pry his jaws apart somehow, but I dare not mention Rionart. Twenty years is over-long. Priests die, or gain preferment, and when they reach the years of sense and rheumatism our witnesses needs must have, they do not lightly venture Outremer. The search will take time.”
“But your unrivalled talents for gossip must achieve success in the end,” said Rodriga admiringly. They grinned at each other.
“And I must stand aside and do nothing, while you work to regain my birthright?” Piers protested very properly.
“You behave circumspectly if you would live to enjoy it, and reserve your fury for the Saracens. Also keep Norman company. I am not the only Poitevin in Acre who might recognise Simon de Rionart’s face.”
Piers subsided, turning after a little while to talk with Rodriga about the siege, which he would delight to show her if he were only permitted to escort her abroad. His criticism of King Philip’s errors would doubtless have proved invaluable to that foxy monarch if he could have been present. Rodriga, who had spent all her short life wherever a landless soldier might find employment, knew more than he did and pounced on the flaws in his theory. She had never been taught that a woman’s duty was to pretend ignorance rather than betray superior knowledge to a man, and by seeking instruction gently to guide the conversation towards more personal and pleasing subjects. They wrangled cheerfully about siege-craft, freely abused the abilities and morals of their leaders, and speculated about the probable advance to Jerusalem, without a word of sentiment, until the moon stood almost opposite the north star, and Landry heaved himself to his feet with a grunt.
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