“But here I hold you talking! Is there anything you require, Marco?”
He glanced down at his dusty clothing. “Water to wash in, my lady, if you please.”
She summoned Diego and went back to her father, dropping the curtain over the doorway. Landry was still deeply asleep, his brow shining faintly with a film of perspiration. The sheet hung by his bed was already dry; she dipped it afresh. The snow was half-melted in the basin of icy water, but Urraca had set two jugs of wine and a basin of lemon-juice in it to cool. She was lying asleep on the other side of the room. Rodriga yawned, suddenly aware that she was desperately tired. Beyond the curtain she heard quiet movement, a rustle of cloth and then the tinkle of water. She dipped a little of the melted snow and drank from her cupped hands, held them to her hot face for a blessed moment of coolness, and then flung off her gown and lay down on her own cushions in her smock. Sleep swooped upon her while she was still addressing a thankful prayer to God for His great mercy.
She woke very suddenly and sat upright, her heart thumping, knowing that some alarm had roused her. She was sliding from the bench and reaching for her gown as the sound came again, a scuffle and a muffled cry from the outer room. She dropped the gown and launched herself across the room, sending the curtain billowing with one wild sweep of her arm as she thought of a misguided fool’s murdering Marco as he slept. Then she checked, three paces through the doorway; there was only Marco, sprawled across the heap of cushions with the sheet twisted about him. She looked about, her brows drawn together in a puzzled frown; then she slipped back for her gown and emerged again to see whether Diego had found himself mischief to commit in the courtyard.
Marco, who had been lying on his back with one arm outflung, his head towards her, twisted violently over onto his face, sending a cushion to the floor with a soft flop, and gasped something in rapid Italian, writhing in actual struggle. “No, no, no!” he cried, and at that Rodriga ran to him. One glance at his closed eyes and distorted face told her what was amiss; this was no more than a nightmare, though an uncommonly acute one. For a moment she hesitated, and then remembered Landry, still sleeping in the next room where every sound in this was clearly audible, and laid her hand firmly on his bare shoulder.
He leaped under her touch like a spurred horse, and she dodged back swiftly from an aimlessly flailing arm. He flung away with a hoarse cry, rolling onto his back, and his eyes opened in a face twisted with panic terror. For the space of a heartbeat he stared at her with unrecognising eyes, shuddering and sweating from the grip of his dream. He drew a deep hard breath, and loosed it on a sigh of thankfulness.
“I was back on board—” he began, his voice shaking, and then checked himself, staring at her. A crimson flush rose up his throat to his hair. He sat up abruptly, the sheet sliding to his waist, and leaned forward over his updrawn knees. He thrust both hands through his disordered hair.
Rodriga looked down at his bent black head and a little smile curved her mouth. “You were riding the nightmare, and crying out in your sleep, so I woke you,” she explained baldly. “I am sorry to have startled you.”
“You did me a service,” he answered, his voice a little muffled from stooping. His shoulder-blades moved under his skin in an odd gesture of revulsion. He ran his hands again through his hair and then clasped them about his knees. He lifted his face, smiling wryly but composed again.
“Nightmares are terrifying,” said Rodriga in practical sympathy. No man could control his dreams, and he must not reckon himself shamed in her sight.
“Are they not a just retribution for unrepented sins?” he asked, in his usual mocking manner.
“For three days and nights in the saddle, I think,” she answered, regarding him very straightly He leaned back, still clasping his knees, and shrugged. He was more impressive stripped than clothed; his shoulders were broader than she had thought, and his light bones overlaid with fine muscle. Even in the dim light of that shuttered room it was plain that his body was as deeply tanned as his face. The wound that she had bound up that morning of their first meeting, which now seemed so long ago, was a dark line down his left arm, all but healed. It drew her eye, and as he half-turned to face her she saw that he bore other, older scars. All his skin was scored with long white lines and claw-marks, thickest on back and shoulders.
He too glanced down at his arm and then smiled crookedly at her. “We need neither regret your madness that morning by the seashore, my lady.”
“Marco, whatever I did you have repaid tenfold!” she declared fervently, yet remembered to keep her voice low. “All my life I must thank God for you, and how I am ever to thank you I know not! This last—this last great service—my father’s life—” Her voice faltered, and tears filled her eyes. She gulped childishly and wiped them on her sleeve. Marco put out his hand as though to touch hers, and then drew back.
“My lady, I have told you before that my life is at your service.”
“But God knows that you have repaid the debt, Marco! Over and over, indeed! And for so little!”
“Granted that my life is worth nothing,” he observed, smiling wryly, “but it was not that, my lady.”
“Marco, I did not mean—it was that I aided you for—for my own sake, not yours, and so grudgingly!” She gazed down desperately into the lean dark face which was no longer mocking, earnestly and touchingly trying to disabuse his mind of his mistakenly exalted opinion of her.
“My lady, what mattered was that even when you knew who I was, you were kind to me,” he answered simply.
She stared at him in sudden appalled realisation that robbed her of speech for a moment. “Marco, you—you said that—as though no one had ever been kind to you before!” she whispered, and knew that she was right when his face hardened into the impassive mask again. “Oh, Marco, surely—your mother—”
“My mother?” he repeated, surprised. “She hated me as much as I hated her.”
“Hated—” This was beyond belief, and she shuddered as she stared into his hard black eyes. “She bore and bred you, Marco!” For she had known of desperate sluts who destroyed or abandoned their infants, but surely there must be some shred of affection needed to rear a child?
A grim little smile twisted his mouth, but his eyes rested on her with an odd rueful gentleness. “My very innocent lady, a brat can be a profitable asset—in this land a marketable one.”
“Marketable?”
“She would have sold me to a slave-dealer to be gelded for the Byzantine market.”
Rodriga, who had been surrounded all her life by love and protection, stood like a block of ice, chilled to the marrow in the burning heat of the day. This was horror monstrous beyond her imagination, but Marco did not lie. She stared at him white-faced, her dark eyes enormous, her lips slightly parted, her wits completely frozen. He moved as though to leap up, recollected that under the sheet he was naked, and instead put out his hand to touch her dress. At that she came to her senses with a shiver of revulsion.
“I should not have told you, my lady. It was not fit hearing for you.”
“It was true, and I asked you,” she answered, and suddenly sat down by his feet, because her legs felt as if they were melting under her. He hugged his bent knees to his chest and gazed at her with the first show of compunction she had seen in him. “It—I should not—”
“My lady, you may ask whatever you please and be answered. A unique privilege,” he added mordantly, “which I doubt is to your liking.”
But he was wrong; it did her honour which she valued greatly. In that moment she knew that the renegade trusted her absolutely, and that she was the only person on earth for whom he felt real regard. And all for that unwilling, begrudged and once-regretted kindness! She was at once proud and humble, and her sudden smile showed her pleasure. “But, Marco—” she began impetuously, and then checked herself; a privilege was one thing, to abuse it another.
His answering smile was the first true one she had seen from him, warm with unde
rstanding amusement. “Oh, she made the mistake of boasting that my price was all that she needed to set up on her own account, and a wench who owed her several ill turns warned me. So I fled.”
“How old were you, Marco?”
“Nine or ten. Old enough to find my own bread, my lady, so let your tender heart be easy.”
She nodded rather doubtfully, though there was no doubt whatever that the forlorn urchin started on his outcast road would have fared better alone than with his unnatural mother. She would have liked to ask for the whole story, not from mere curiosity but because she was deeply interested, but that would have been trespassing on her privilege, and the memory was not one he would wish to evoke. She looked at his face, and at the scars on his body, and was certain of it. Moreover, by the shadows at the door it still lacked a couple of hours to noon; he had had no more than four hours’ sleep, and his eyes were still heavy with weariness. She stood up decisively, picked up the fallen cushion and tossed it to him.
“Sleep again,” she commanded briskly.
“I should go—” he began to protest, and spoiled it with a yawn he was too late to smother.
“You do not leave this house until my father has had speech with you,” she declared firmly. “If you left before he could thank you he would be grievously offended.”
“My lady, I require no thanks.”
“We require to make them, which is what matters.” She grinned suddenly at her own high-handed dealing, but she had him at a disadvantage; she was between him and his clothing. Also she was no more in the least awe of him; she could not be in awe of a man she had seen struggling in the throes of nightmare. Neither did he appear at all reluctant to be over-ruled; he shoved the cushion under his head, stretched out with another yawn, rolled onto his side and closed his eyes.
“If I dream again, smother me,” he advised, and was asleep on the last word.
Landry had not stirred; the disturbance and the low-voiced conversation beyond the curtain had not penetrated his slumber. Urraca though had roused; she looked suspiciously at Rodriga and demanded in a venomous whisper who had been talking with her in the next room. When she learned, suspicion changed to active condemnation.
“And what chance will you have of wedding your hot young squire if he discovers you have admitted that Infidel’s by-blow to the house?” she demanded pertinently.
“After his service, should I have cast him into the street?”
“Christian duty,” pronounced the old harridan grimly, “is seldom to your worldly advantage, little fool. And there are seemlier ways of doing it.”
Rodriga restrained the impulse to slap the sneering face, and was inspired to a sweeter retaliation which would also benefit Marco. “You may wash and dry his clothes while he sleeps, since you talk of Christian, duty!”
Urraca glared malevolently and shuffled out like a broken crone of four-score years to demonstrate her mistress’s brutality, though for want of an audience the gesture was wasted on one who knew her for a vigorous sixty. Rodriga sat down among her own cushions and frowned at the floor. The warning had been genuine enough. Association with Marco would antagonise Piers more surely than anything else; he hated the renegade venomously. Yet Marco, who had saved Landry, could not in Christian decency be denied consideration. She tugged thoughtfully at the twin ropes of black hair that fell over her breast. Even worldly advantage had two faces; what had Piers done for them compared with the oddly motived renegade? Finally she shrugged; only Landry could advise her, and she must wait on his decision.
Landry woke, weak but perfectly sensible, just after mid-day. He grinned at Rodriga, who promptly carried his limp hand to her breast in both her own, and remarked in a surprisingly normal voice, “Not bound for Paradise this time, lass.” He blinked about him, his brows rising, and commented, “Never so well housed these ten years. How long have I lain here, Rodriga?”
“This—this is four days.”
He moved experimentally, and grimaced. “Feeble as a new-born babe,” he grumbled. “Have you a drink there, lass?”
She nodded, biting at her lip to keep it steady, and managed a tremulous smile as she offered the ice-cold sherbet, sliding her arm under his head and shoulders. He swallowed, and spluttered with surprise.
“Lord Above! Is that stuff cold! How do you come by anything cold in this suburb of Hell?”
“Marco brought snow from the far mountains to cool your fever,” she explained baldly. Her lips quivered again, and tears stood in her eyes. “You—without it you would have died.”
“Died, eh?” He drained the cup, and she laid him back against the cushions. “No end to the scoundrel’s benefactions, it seems. Where is he?”
“Asleep in yonder. He was three days and nights in the saddle.” Landry grimaced in sympathy, and nodded. “Bring him to me when he wakes. And now, lass, what may I have to eat?”
Truly he was on the way to recovery, and she went down to the courtyard rejoicing and giving thanks to God and His most unlikely instrument. She looked at Marco as she passed through the anteroom; he had scarcely stirred, and lay with his face half-buried in a bright green cushion and one arm thrown up before it. Urraca had removed his dusty clothing, but his belt lay beside his shoes on the floor, with his dagger still in its sheath, and that was the astonishing measure of his confidence in her and her household. Was there any other place, she wondered, where this renegade dared sleep naked and weaponless?
Landry disgustedly swallowed the broth and bread which was all she would allow him, fortified himself thereafter with half the amount of iced wine he would have liked, and passed the afternoon between dozing and waking, weaker than he cared to admit. Rodriga sat happily beside him, patiently stitching together rose and green and white lozenges of silk with hands that left damp smudges on the shining stuff. She was wearing nothing but an ungirdled smock, and the fierce heat sucked perspiration from her skin, but in the lee of a soaked sheet, with the bowl of snow-water beside him, her father seemed comfortable enough. No sound came from the anteroom, and when she slipped to the curtain and put her head round it, Marco was still deeply asleep. From the courtyard rose a muted clatter of utensils and the occasional murmur of voices, and beyond the house all Acre seemed to drowse in the afternoon hush of high summer, waiting for evening’s faintly cooler air to rouse brothel and wineshop into roaring life.
Urraca padded in and glared at Rodriga. “How long is that carrion to taint your house, lady?” she demanded, jerking her head back at the doorway.
“What is that to you? And is there no work for you in the kitchen?”
She picked up an empty brass bowl and deliberately dropped it. It rang louder than Saracen cymbals, clattering across the floor in a noisy arc and toppling to the tiles with a final clang. Landry started and swore, Rodriga exclaimed in anger and let fall her sewing, and the old woman loosed her snarling laugh. “That should rouse King Arthur himself! Now do your part and bid that renegade to the Devil who got him!”
There was an appreciative chuckle from the outer room. “As courteous hints go, that one has the merit of being unmistakeable!” said Marco’s pleasant voice.
Landry uttered an outraged oath and struggled up on one elbow. “You old viper, out of my sight! Marco! Pay her no heed!”
“I let every man speak for himself,” Marco answered, sounding more amused than annoyed. Rodriga had remarked before that insult had that effect on his perverted sense of humour.
“Come here!” shouted Landry.
Rodriga dived into her gown, pulling a wry face at her thoughtless sire, and was hitching her girdle about her middle, conscious of disordered hair and dress when Marco lifted the curtain. He was trim in newly laundered garments, his hair and pointed beard smooth as the silk she had spilled for all the haste of his dressing, and she envied him the gift. His face was sober, but as his eyes met hers for a brief instant she recognised the amusement lurking at their corners and was relieved. Landry’s imperative gesture sent the old woman
scuttling, glaring at him as she passed.
Landry grunted and lapsed back upon his cushions. “Come here!” he repeated irritably. “Cannot yell across the room for that old shrew to listen!”
The renegade obeyed, crossing the room to stand by his head. “You disavow her sentiments?” he asked coolly, and Rodriga noted that he never entitled any man.
Landry scowled, and then changed the scowl to a wintry grin.
“God’s Life, that one would curdle vinegar! Sentiments, eh? My lass tells me I should have died but that you fetched snow. I am grateful. I will not insult you with any offer of reward. Such service may not be paid.”
Marco nodded, his eyes widening a little at the compliment. Landry drew fresh breath. “Call upon me and mine in need—any need, you understand? For by involving yourself with us you are very likely thrusting your neck into a noose.”
“That is the usual state of my neck, so you need not suffer from scruples,” Marco told him, his teeth flashing briefly in a grin that transfigured his wary dark face. He looked at Landry with the same marvelling disbelief he had shown before, and she knew that no man had ever before expressed any concern for the state of his neck.
Landry grunted, and tried to heave himself up. “Here, lass, shove another cushion behind me!” he ordered irritably. “Cannot talk laid out like a corpse on a bier—feel too much like one!”
She hesitated, for the effort was visibly telling on him, and then packed three or four cushions under his matted greying head. He ran a shaking hand through his thatch until it stood on end like a hedgehog’s quills, and then grinned wryly.
“I have a deal to say to you, Marco,” he began, and then blinked and screwed his eyes up as though dazzled. “Lord Above, I am as dizzy as a drunkard!” he muttered.
Rodriga snatched away the cushions and eased him down. He blinked again, opened his eyes and swore under his breath.
“Let it wait until morning,” Rodriga advised. “You are weaker than you thought.”
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