Rodriga had Marco laid on Landry’s bed, and she and Sir Jehan stripped off what remained of his clothing and washed away the blood. Loss of blood and the weight of his injuries had hold of him now. He was shivering with chill for all the midsummer heat, and they wrapped him warmly in blankets and sent serving-brothers to start up the fire and heat wine. He lay with his eyes shut, a frown of pain between his brows, but now and then he opened them, looked for Rodriga and smiled crookedly at her. The hot wine seemed to restore him. He ceased to shiver, and murmured thanks to the Hospitallers as they departed. Rodriga sat beside him, watching anxiously.
A young knight came in, his countenance subdued to solemn sympathy, to break the news gently to her that the bodies of her father and all his household had been dug up from a shallow common grave in Robert de Veragny’s courtyard, revealed by a prisoner under suitable persuasion. The grim necessities of death were hers to order, and she left Diego at Marco’s bed and stiffened herself to do this last service to her beloved and to bid farewell to their pitiful empty shells. Hurriedly cleansed of earth and blood, their rigid limbs forcibly straightened, they lay wound in sheets in the lower room. Priests flapped their cassocks in and out, and knights and soldiers hurried to and from the Palace, the church where she had attended Mass, the harbour where the Magdalena awaited her captain, even the market, for men must be fed. Feeling was numbed in her by surfeit of shock and horror. Dry-eyed she consulted and arranged, gave orders, identified prisoners to an officer of the Provost Marshal’s and saw those she pointed out led forth to a hanging, and kissed her dead and prayed beside them. Then priests and knights were all about her, the biers were taken up, and Landry de Parolles went forth to the peace he had never found in life.
Noon heat hushed Acre when she returned at last to the upper room. A dozen soldiers remained to guard her, but all the rest were gone, and the house was oddly empty and silent without them. Diego huddled dismally by Marco’s side. He had wept himself to exhaustion, and when she put her arm round his shoulders he clung to her like a child, shuddering with tearless sobs. She comforted him as best she could, promising to keep him with her always, and when he calmed sufficiently, sent him to bed.
Marco was easier. There was a trace of colour in his lips, he was no longer cold, and the tenseness of hard endurance had left his face and body. He smiled at her as she stood over him, oddly breathless and shy, and that ended any doubts she might have had. Nothing else in the world mattered beside Marco. She touched his tangled hair, and the stony shell that had enclosed her emotions suddenly cracked. She fell on her knees and kissed him for the first time, an awkward unpractised kiss hampered by her fear of hurting him. The second did better. It was warmth and great gentleness and a promise of joy to come, a golden light in the darkness of her grief. She lifted her head and gazed at him as if she could never be done with looking on his harsh dark face.
“My maddest of dreams made flesh,” he murmured with his endearing wry smile, “and I without an arm to seize it!”
“But I shall not vanish at daybreak,” she pointed out practically, and sat beside him, slipping her hand under the blankets to find his. His fingers curled loosely over hers, and he lay with his head turned so as to watch her, a contented smile on his mouth, without further talk. Presently his eyelids fell, and his clasp slackened from her hand as he slipped into a light, uneasy sleep. She dared not leave him for fear that a nightmare should seize him and he open his wound by struggling. The guards below could see to their own needs.
Marco did not sleep for long, perhaps a couple of hours, but even so little benefited him. Though still so weak that it took an effort to lift his head, he was no longer utterly pithless and spent. He was a tough and vigorous man inured to hardship, and his old vitality returned to his voice and face. She loosened the blankets, bathed his face with water, and raised him to drink, happy to tend him. He had guarded and succoured her all these days, and now it was her turn.
“Never before let anyone put a knife in me where it mattered,” he said ruefully, adding with a grin, “Most aptly timed. I never before had a dear love to care for me.”
However aptly timed in that respect, his incapacitation was in others little less than disastrous. They discussed it soberly. Immediate marriage and flight from Acre had been their intention, but were now impossible. It would take the better part of a fortnight before he could walk out of this house on his own feet, and she would have only Diego to depend on while he was helpless. King Richard’s ideas of a guardian’s obligations would certainly not allow her to remain in this house without even a woman to wait on her; she could reckon on no more than a day or so of respite before being given firmly and kindly into the care of the Queens. Moreover, a guardian’s prime duty to a marriageable ward was to arrange her marriage. As soon as he could find her a suitable and willing husband the King would hurry her to the altar and congratulate himself on having fulfilled his obligations. Rodriga had no illusions about royal protection.
“I shall contrive to hold off suitors for a fortnight if I have to feign that grief has distracted my wits,” she declared robustly. “But it will not be easy to escape from the Palace. Noble ladies are so hedged about with conventions and circumstances, not to mention guards.”
“Reef sails when the storm starts, my lady. It may not come to that. Consider instead in which port of the world’s end you would drop anchor, remembering that it must be the carrying trade for us, and beyond the length of Melek Ric’s arm.”
“Marco! The Saracen loot! Perhaps those knaves never found it!”
She leaped up and across the room, climbed on the bench and poked eagerly in the crack. It was easier to thrust coins in than to extricate them later, and she gouged vigorously at the powdery mud-brick with her recovered dagger, blinking and shaking her head as the dust flew into her face. Silver and gold bounded over bench and cushions, and a few stray coins circled on the floor. A flash of green and gold leaped and struck a cushion. She pounced and grabbed in triumph, gathering the coins into her skirt, and carried them to him. “Marco, we are not empty-handed! Will not this dower of mine buy a cargo? The emerald must be worth a good price!”
“You will keep that to wear on the gown of coloured pieces, my lady!” he said with odd sharpness. “It was your father’s gift, and you shall not give that up also! For the rest, is it truly your wish to use it so?”
“But it is ours, Marco. What better use could we put it to?” she asked in bewilderment that verged on alarm.
“You forfeit so much,” he said, his voice troubled, “and win but a life of risk and hardship, my lady.”
“And you,” she said swiftly, putting out a hand to his rough hair. “Marco—” She stopped and lifted her head to listen. Something hard was rapping impatiently on the street door. She heard voices in the passage, and hurriedly swept up the loot in her lap and pushed it under the blankets at Marco’s side. Hasty feet came up the stair, and she recognised the confident tread and sprang up in anger and alarm, looking about her for a weapon. The feet crossed the anteroom. An impetuous hand swept aside the curtain, and Piers came eagerly into the room, reaching out his arms to her.
“Rodriga, my dear love!”
“I am not your dear love,” Rodriga declared belligerently, “and if you come to offer me dishonour again, go before I spit on you!”
He glared at Marco, who lay intent and silent against the gay cushions, a curious hard smile on his mouth. He was resplendent in an embroidered silken tunic, freshly shaven, his fair curls combed and anointed into unwonted sleekness, a wooer seeking his lady even to his fine new shoes of black leather. The murderous hatred in his eyes did not suit with the rest of the picture. Instinctively Rodriga stepped between them.
“I know whom to thank for your answer,” Piers said thickly, “and I should have known he would turn you against me! Rodriga, I must speak with you alone! Come up to the roof with me!”
“No! We spoke alone there once before!” And with a sudden sh
ock she realised that that had been no longer than yesterday evening, and all her world had crashed into wreckage since then.
“But Rodriga,” he blurted, starting forward and stretching out his hands, “I come to tell you that I can marry you now!”
For a moment surprise held her dumb and rigid, and then she came to her senses in time to jerk back from his reaching hands. “Marry me?” she demanded incredulously.
He beamed at her like a great urchin, delighted by her astonishment, whose basis he must mistake for pleasure. “It was the King’s thought, and his command, Rodriga!” he babbled happily. “He suggested it, when I told him how I loved you and could not wed you! So he will dower you with my mother’s cousin’s estate, that is escheated because he died without heir, and we are to be wedded tomorrow!”
“No!”
“My dear love, all is well now! I came at once to tell you! Oh, Rodriga, happiness is ours!”
Her anger crystallised to ice in her as again she evaded his clutch. “But consider more carefully,” she recommended grimly. “I am still the Moorish slave-girl’s daughter, bred up among the ribalds of every army’s tail in Christendom, and it would not be to your honour to wed me.”
He gaped at her in shocked surprise. “But it is different now, Rodriga! That is all forgotten!”
“I am still the same,” she pointed out. “It must be the dower makes the difference. Go back to King Richard and tell him I will wed no husband who is bribed to dishonour himself by wedding me!”
“You are distracted by grief, Rodriga! How can there be dishonour when it is the King’s will? Oh, Devils in Hell, how can I talk with you before this renegade? Come up to the roof with me, Rodriga, and I will teach you to love me!”
She backed a little as he held out his arms. This fatuous complacency took a deal of penetrating with refusal. He smiled largely at her.
“You must not be coy, Rodriga, when tomorrow you shall be Lady of Rionart! Yes, the King has already granted me seizin, and promises to knight me! Pretend no more, sweet love! You know this is what your father planned—that he had set his heart on our marriage!”
She lifted her hands to her breast. “God forgive us for our blindness!” she said under her breath.
“As for you, Saracen’s bastard, tomorrow this will be my house, and if I find you in it you die! You have tried to set Rodriga against me, but I spare you your deserts because you saved me this morning!”
“Wherein I greatly erred,” Marco replied dryly.
“But understand, if you approach my wife again I shall slay you without compunction!”
“There is none in you,” Marco agreed.
Piers choked. “God’s Life, if you were not sorely hurt I should run you through!”
“Surely you reckon that an incentive?”
The jibes offered by a defenceless foe fired Piers to murderous fury and Rodriga to protective fierceness. They reached for their daggers in the self-same moment, and she stepped along the bench to shield Marco. “He took those wounds for you, whatever the reason, you base hound! Any nearer, and I knife you! And marriage or no marriage, I will not bed with you!”
He gaped at her, appalled and astonished as though a favourite dog had turned and riven him. He was too startled even to be angry. “But, Rodriga, you have no choice! The King commands it!”
“Melek Ric is no King of mine!” she answered fiercely, in an echo of Marco.
“But his command runs in Acre! Rodriga, you are clean distracted to turn on me so! If I did not love you so—yes, and if I did not know whom to blame! —I could scarce forgive it! But tomorrow we wed, and you will love me as you used to!”
Quick footsteps crossed the outer room, and the young knight who commanded the guards stood hesitating in the doorway, drawn by the angry voices. “Is aught amiss, demoiselle?” he asked sharply, noting her defensive posture by Marco’s side and her hand on her half-drawn dagger.
“This gentleman is on the point of leaving,” Rodriga answered quickly, snatching at advantage. “Will you see him from the house, Sir Geoffrey?”
There was nothing Piers could do but leave, which he did sulkily. “I shall be back tomorrow!” he promised from the doorway.
Rodriga waited tensely until she heard the street door thud, and then loosed her held breath in a gusty sigh of anger and apprehension. She ran her hands through her hair in an exasperated gesture that repeated her father’s. Marco was gazing intently upon her, his haggard dark face unreadable as stone. She knew the rigidity he used to conceal hurt, and flung herself on her knees beside him in a fury of anger and love and bent to kiss him. His eyes checked her. “Marco!” she whispered.
“It was a very fair dream, my lady,” he said steadily through stiff lips.
Cold, appalling dread seized on her midriff and weighted it with ice. The one sure truth in her ruined world was going from her, and beyond her lay a black abyss of desolation. She whispered in horror, “Marco, do you not wish to marry me?”
“You are to consider only your own wishes, my lady. I will not hold you,” said the same stony voice. “You will be a great lady in your own world if you marry him.” His lips closed tightly on the last word, his face was a parchment-coloured mask, but she saw his eyes, and her heart beat again.
“Marry that! ” she cried in magnificent contempt. “Marry that, and be condescended to all my days? Oh, Marco, you blind fool!" She took his face between her hands, saw the mask melt like wax in a furnace, and swiftly bent to still his working mouth with her own, her tears falling upon his face. She lifted her head angrily and dashed them away; this was no moment for dripping tears upon her love. “Oh, you fool!” she cried again, her voice choking in her throat. “Will you not believe that I love you?”
“Truly, my lady?” he whispered, fighting to control himself. “My lady, you do truly love me?”
“Truly, truly! It was always you, Marco, never any other!”
Only when she saw the incredulous awe fill his face did she realise that he never had believed it, never had dared expect their marriage, never had offered her more than courtesy and gentleness. He moved, trying to free his left hand, and as she prevented him, he said wonderingly, “My lady!” He had never yet called her by name. He had been sure that she turned to him in desperation, her only resort when she was left unprotected in Acre where a woman alone was any man’s prey, yet he had unhesitatingly put his life at her disposal.
“I love you, I will marry you and bear your children, and sail with you to the world’s end!” she promised, at once triumphant and humble.
He drew a deep, unsteady breath, and then his voice rang strongly through the room. “Then only death shall part us, my lady— Rodriga!”
At last she steadied herself, sat beside him and reached under the blankets for his powerless hand. “We have to contrive our marriage before Piers returns to claim me.”
“With the might and wrath of Melek Ric behind him,” Marco supplemented, his wry grin returning to his mouth. “Do we summon a priest?”
“He would probably refuse to wed us. But we need only to plight our troth before witnesses.”
“That is marriage, lawful and binding?”
“Yes. But if we marry so and present the fact to Piers—”
“He will dissolve it with one dagger thrust and marry my widow,” Marco finished pleasantly. “What perversity possessed me to meddle this morning with a dispensation of Heaven? Particularly when I knew what manner of splay-hoofed oxen I was dealing with!”
“You did it because you thought I wanted him.”
“I should have put more trust in your good sense!”
Rodriga resolutely refused to go further along that by-way, though she thanked God to hear the old sardonic humour on his lips. “If you are here when he returns he will murder you,” she said soberly, and knew in that moment that only one course was left them.
He nodded. “Get me aboard the Magdalena, my heart, and we will be at sea in an hour.”
&nb
sp; It would be cruelly hard, perhaps risky, to subject him to another move and even a short voyage, but there was no other way. She stood up. For weeks he had watched and shielded her; now he was helpless, dependent on her contriving, and all the dearer for that. She touched his tangled hair with protective tenderness, and his harsh dark face was transfigured with a smile that seemed to melt the bones in her body.
For a moment she stood still, shaken by the force of her own passion; then she clenched her hands and said, “Diego must go first to warn your crew. We have no time to get stores aboard—”
“We will sail to Tyre,” he decided.
“Have you friends there?”
“Enemies in plenty, foremost my mother—”
“She will not seek to harm you again, Marco?”
“She will not be offered a chance, my Rodriga. But in Tyre, Melek Ric’s writ does not run, and there I can buy a cargo for Byzantium or Italy when I am healed. Send Diego.”
She called the boy, and then looked about the room, at the litter of recovered property and all she must abandon. Marco read her mind. “Take what you can carry or pass off as my gear.”
“Diego comes with us,” she said, on her way to the door.
“What else should he do? A ship must have its boy.”
The boy roused and dispatched, she went in open agitation to Sir Geoffrey. The knight was a romantic young man who had been present that morning in the King’s court, and had there conceived a great admiration for Marco’s valour and Rodriga’s spirit. He was hotly indignant to hear of Piers’s threat against Marco’s life, and at once agreed to provide a litter and bearers to remove him to the Magdalena, and any other assistance in his power.
Rodriga bundled into a cloak her father’s hauberk, the three books that he had at odd times looted for her, the Saracen hangings and, at Marco’s insistence, the dress of coloured pieces. The money she secured under her clothes. Landry’s sword, her lute and javelin were too long and awkwardly shaped to go in, but when two soldiers clattered in with an improvised litter and left her to pack it with cushions and blankets, she snatched the chance to thrust them all under the cushions. It cost her a pang to abandon Caliph and Almansor, but there was no other way. Marco had no gear but his dagger and spare clothing. She hitched her sewing-case of worked bronze to her girdle, and was ready when the men came back with Sir Geoffrey and two comrades. They lifted Marco into the litter with clumsy gentleness, and almost before she realised it she had quitted that haunted house for ever, and was pacing beside the litter anxiously watching Marco’s set grey face.
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