Kingdom of the Grail

by Judith Tarr

  She nodded. “I saw the hawk and the wolf and the stag. There are others?”

  It was as if she had driven a fist into his belly. He could not breathe. For a long while he could not speak.

  She was patient, after a fashion. She kissed wherever she could reach, till he had to hold her off or he would lose what few wits he had left. “You—you saw—”

  “I saw what all the Companions know. Are you frightened? Do you trust me?”

  “You know what I am,” he said. “Can I trust you?”

  “If you are to be trusted,” she said.

  She was laughing at him—but not, perhaps, entirely. “You know far more of me than I of you,” he said.

  “Do I?”

  “Who you are, where you come from, why you came to us—it’s never quite been spoken of. You were simply there, with the embassy from Spain. Then you were there with the queen. And the sword. I know your name, that you have arts of healing. That a puca is your servant. And . . . that I love you.”

  “That’s not enough?”

  He smoothed her hair back from her face. The curling strands of it caught at his fingers, tangling in them. “Only promise me,” he said. “You will do my king no harm, nor threaten my kingdom. Swear to it by whatever you hold holy.”

  She laid her hand on his breast above his heart. The amulet burned between them. His heart was beating hard. “I swear,” she said, “by the power that rules me. By the light of the sun over me, and the moon and the stars, and the vault of heaven.”

  He shivered in his bones. That was as great an oath as he had sworn to free Merlin. She swore it without a moment’s hesitation, without flinching or fear.

  It was enough. What his heart and his bones knew, what she had sworn, were all he needed. When she was ready to tell him more, she would do it. His bones knew that, too, and his heart was certain of it.

  CHAPTER 21

  They were ten days in Agua Caliente, hunting, riding, being entertained with great honor and courtesy. But for all the pleasure they had of it, not least that of cool bowers, clean beds, and never a clash of battle, they knew soon enough that the embassy had failed. Musa would not give Charles what he asked for through Turpin.

  “The Caliph to whom you professed loyalty,” Turpin said the day before their departure, “asked that we come into this country to drive out those who rebelled against him. We have had little enough aid from those who claim to be his servants, and much opposition. Is that service to your Caliph, my lord? Is that how you obey his command?”

  Musa’s eyes glittered. Those were hard words, however gently spoken. He answered in kind, with grace but without softness. “We do what we must for the protection of our kingdom. The Commander of the Faithful is far away. He has not seen the army that came to invade us, or counted its numbers, or heard the songs it sings. The rebels at least are of our faith, and will not impose another upon us. We will contend with them as we may. You we will not help, except to depart as soon as may be. In that I can promise a safe passage and small opposition. That much power I have, and I will wield it.”

  “You will do no more?” Turpin asked.

  “I can do no more.” Musa spread his hands. “I give you as much as I may—more, some of the emirs protest, than I should.”

  Turpin sighed. They were sitting in the garden near a fountain that sang into its marble bowl. The air was sweet with the scent of blossoms. Tomorrow they would go back to the siege, to dust and heat and flies and the manifold stink of men crowded together.

  He could have been tempted to stay in this place. To seize it and keep it, and make himself lord of it, and no matter that he had come under seal of truce.

  But he was stronger than temptation—and a fool for it, too, if his darker self were allowed to speak. He smiled as he could, returned courtesy with courtesy, and drank in coolness and sweetness and blessed quiet, for they would have to last him until this war was over.

  Musa left him to the garden’s peace, professing some duty that could not be avoided. Turpin was glad enough of the solitude. It was given him so seldom.

  When he returned to Francia, he thought, he would take himself to a monastery. It was time to remember quiet again, and simplicity. To be a priest, who had been too long a lord of the world.

  He prayed for a while, here in this infidel garden, in the sound of water falling. Water was precious beyond imagining in this country. It flowed in rivers, true enough, but it did not rain here as it did in Francia. This was a dry land, a parched land. The sun was like a hammer on the skull, day upon day.

  Voices murmured near him, too soft almost to hear. At first he took them for a trick of the fountain’s song. Then, as he sat still, he saw figures moving slowly through the garden’s greenery. It was not difficult to recognize them. The sun caught the sheen of old gold in a lady’s long plaited hair, and the turn of a head beside hers that Turpin knew as well as any among the living.

  Ah, he thought with a sensation almost of relief. Olivier had won the wager. Roland walked with Sarissa under flowering branches, arm linked in arm, speaking as lovers do, as if nothing mattered in the world but one another.

  Turpin had given that up when he took priest’s vows. Not every priest did, whatever he had sworn before God, but Turpin was a man of his word. However sweet the temptation, he set himself to resist it. And there was great temptation for the king’s battle-brother. For some women, priestly vows were a challenge. They cared little that Turpin had no beauty. He was a strong man, well made, powerful in battle. Whatever his face lacked, his body made up for it.

  As he rose to withdraw, a servant approached him by the path to the colonnade. It was a eunuch, young and shy, with hair the color of new gold, and a fair Saxon face. His Latin was stilted but clear, his message succinct. “Reverend archbishop, the lady Leila would speak with you.”

  Turpin could not say he was astonished. Was she not a Christian, and was he not a priest? But he had been thinking that if she had not sent for him before this, she would not do it. He had been nine days in her husband’s house. There had been ample opportunity to summon him.

  Now she had sent for him. The eunuch led him to the colonnade and round, then up into a part of the house that he had not been admitted to before. It was not the chief entrance to the harem, Turpin thought, but a narrow stair and a postern, and a passage almost too small for his breadth and height. It smelled faintly of cats and more distinctly of some cloying scent, flowers or perfume or both.

  The eunuch opened a door near the end of the passage, into a room that was small but very bright, with a balcony on the garden. It was warm there, almost too much so, but a fan lessened the heat, with a drowsy child swaying it back and forth.

  There was a couch and a table and a pitcher of sherbet, but Turpin stayed on his feet, leaning on the rail of the balcony, drinking in what coolness came from the garden. He could not see the lovers from here, nor hear them, either.

  A soft step sounded behind him. He turned as he had learned to do: swift but quiet, not to alarm one who meant well, but quick enough to catch a dagger aimed at his back.

  It was a woman in veils, alone. Her eyes were young and bright and rather imperious. She held her head high, as a servant would never permit herself to do.

  “My lord archbishop,” she said in lovely Latin, easy as if she spoke it every day. “I bid you a belated welcome to this house.”

  Turpin bowed. She kissed his ring and tilted her head toward the divan. It was large enough for two, with room between.

  He wondered briefly if this was one of those women who were greatly excited by the violation of a twofold vow: that of a priest and that of a married woman. But there was no languor in her look, no suggestion of seduction. For all that he could see, she looked on him simply as a priest from Francia: exotic, interesting, but no more than that.

  When they were seated, she sat for a while in silence, gazing not at him but at the light that poured in from the balcony. He let the time shape a prayer
, until she said, “I should have spoken with you long since. Can you forgive me?”

  “Easily, my lady,” Turpin said.

  “No,” she said. “No, I was a coward. I knew what my husband would have to say to you.”

  “Do you agree with it?”

  She paused. Her fingers smoothed the folds of her mantle. “I . . . can’t disagree.”

  “A woman should be obedient to her husband,” Turpin said.

  Her eyes flashed up. “Certainly she should. But I speak for myself. I do regret it, my lord archbishop. I would help you if I could.”

  “I wish I could understand,” Turpin said, “why Christians will not help Christians to free their land from the infidel.”

  “Because, my lord, it’s never as simple as that. If it were, this war would be won and you would be lords in Spain.”

  “Italy is complicated,” Turpin said. “Rome is beyond complicated. We’ve done well enough there.”

  “There are no Muslims to speak of in Italy.”

  “That makes a difference?”

  She shrugged, tilting her head, turning her hands palm up. “It’s different here. Different worlds, different troubles. If anyone frees us from the infidel, it will be one of our own.”

  There it was, he thought. There was his answer. Christian or no, the Franks were foreigners. The Christians of Spain had suffered invasion enough. They wanted no more of it.

  Charles would not be pleased to hear the outcome of Turpin’s embassy. Still, Turpin thought, the king was no fool. Nor was he inclined to kill a messenger, however ill the news.

  “My lord archbishop,” said the emir’s wife, “it would be a great pleasure for me if you would sing Mass here before you go.”

  “Gladly, my lady,” Turpin said. That was true. He did not fault her for her honesty, nor would he deny her her soul’s comfort.

  She bowed her head. “And . . . would you hear my confession?”

  He regarded her in some surprise. “You have no chaplain or confessor?”

  “My husband allows me the freedom of my faith,” she said, “but he prefers not to support a Christian priest in his house. I go to Mass in the old abbey beyond the village. Father Abbot hears my confessions. But, my lord, he is old and deaf and he grows blind, and he hasn’t walked in the world in longer than he can remember. He’s a good man, a pure spirit. But not—”

  Such irony, thought Turpin, that he had spoken to Roland so recently of purity of heart—and concluded that he was not so blessed. The thought made his smile wry, and made him say, “You have a worldly confession, then, and think a more worldly priest would better hear it.”

  “I don’t mean to offend, my lord,” she said.

  “No, no,” said Turpin. “The holy innocents are much beloved of God, but when it comes to matters of the world, they’re not always able to advise as well as they might.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, my lord. Though it’s simpler than that, maybe. Or so complicated it seems simple. I’ve broken an oath, after a fashion. It’s a great oath and sacred, but what it bound me to—my lord, have you ever questioned the command of your liege lord?”

  “On occasion,” he said.

  Her fingers twisted: a great confession of anxiety in one so composed. “Did you feel that it was an unwise command? That it could do more harm than good?”

  “Sometimes, yes.”

  “Did you act on it? Did you do what you thought was right?”

  “Once or twice.” Turpin kept his voice deliberately soft. She was in great trouble of mind, however quietly she expressed it.

  “I keep a great secret,” she said. “My whole family does. That—that was why I asked my husband to offer your king a chance of truce. He knew that your king would send a wise ambassador. He also knew that the ambassador would have attendants. One of those, I made him ask for.”

  Turpin did not need to ask which one she meant. “You wanted to see who had won the champion’s sword.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did want that.”

  “And the sword means somewhat to you.”

  She drew a breath, as if to steady herself. “It’s not—what he may think it is. What he’s been allowed to think. I told him as much as I dared. It may have been too much—or far from enough.”

  “He’s not to be champion for Spain, is he? That’s not what it was for.”

  She paused, eyes fixed on his face, as if she had not seen him before. “You see very clearly,” she said.

  He shrugged. “It’s not difficult. So this is a great secret, and you fear you’ve betrayed it.”

  “I fear . . .” she said. “I fear that if I don’t betray it, it will be very ill for us all. But if I do, it will be ill for me. And that is cowardly.”

  “I see,” he said, pondering that. “Simple and yet complex. To keep the oath you swore, and do harm; or to break it and pay the consequences. What does your heart tell you?”

  “That I haven’t said enough,” she said, “or broken it far enough. That I should tell more. But if I do, what if that works more harm than good? What if, once he knows, he refuses the task for which he was chosen?”

  “Somehow,” Turpin said, “I doubt that Roland would ever refuse a duty.”

  “Even a terrible one? One that could sunder him from all he knows, and bid him do things that he thought never to do, and force him to service that he would never have chosen if it had not been chosen for him?”

  “Is it service of evil?”

  “No,” she said fervently. “Oh, no. Never. But it is service that gives no choices, accepts no refusal. I was bidden to tell him nothing of it, to let others reveal it to him when the time was fitting. But I think they’ll wait too long. He should know now. He should have time to understand it, to accept—not be forced into it when it’s too late to turn back.”

  “And do you know why you were bidden tell him nothing?”

  “That’s why,” she said. “So that he can’t refuse. They fear that if they give him a choice, he’ll choose to walk away.”

  “They don’t know Roland well, then,” Turpin said dryly.

  “They think they know enough. They don’t trust him.”

  “So they should not, if they ask him to do anything dishonorable. But if there is honor in it, and he was chosen, you can believe that he will accept the burden.”

  “But if they don’t tell him? If that angers him? Is he a man to take revenge for great slights?”

  “I’ve never known him to be vindictive,” Turpin said. “Proud, strong-willed, protective of his honor, but he’s never been one for hunting down those who offend him.”

  “This will be worse than offense.”

  “Is it a very great thing they want him to do? Will it cost him his life?”

  The emir’s wife lowered her eyes. Her fingers were twisting again, knotting in the folds of her mantle. “He is the champion.”

  “And champions fight for the cause. Whatever that cause may be.”

  She nodded.

  “I would tell him,” Turpin said, “and pray for lenience in the matter of the oath. It seems you know him better than those others, whoever they may be.”

  “They think he may be part a demon,” she said. “That frightens them.”

  “It is said that his ancestor was a devil’s get. But that was long ago.”

  “It doesn’t matter, if the blood is there. It’s strong in him—but not the darkness. Only the magic. And the face. That’s what they see, and for them it is enough.”

  “I see,” said Turpin. “As, it appears, do you. I can’t counsel you—that is for your own heart to do—but I can pray for you, and give you such blessing as in my power to give.”

  He laid his hands on her bowed head, and spoke words of blessing and of peace. Then in a lovely small chapel not far from the room in which she had met him, he sang Mass for her and for a handful of her maids. She seemed to take great comfort from it. He was glad. She was a good woman, a loyal daughter of the faith.
If she was also a loyal daughter of Spain, that was as it should be, little as he or his king might wish it.

  He would ponder the rest when he was alone, when he could make sense of the things she had said, and the mystery she had hinted at. He thought he knew what it might be. If that was so, then it was a great task Roland was given, indeed. And Turpin could not speak of it. He too was oath-bound, because he had been told in confession, which was sacrosanct.

  She was clever, was the emir’s wife, and protective after all of her secrets. If she did not tell Roland, then no one would. In her way she had laid on Turpin the burden that was laid on her.

  Simple, he thought, and complex beyond understanding. In its way it was a very Frankish dilemma.

  CHAPTER 22

  It was harder to leave Agua Caliente than Roland would have believed possible. Musa in refusing to become Charles’ ally had become his enemy, and yet Roland could not help thinking that this had been a place of great joy and friendship. He had found welcome here, gracious manners, praise and admiration, and the arms of a lover.

  Now he must return to the siege at Saragossa. He had feared in his heart that Sarissa would not go, but when they readied to ride, Tarik was waiting in his white horse-guise.

  Sarissa was not yet in evidence. Roland saw to his men, and greeted Turpin as he came into the courtyard. Musa walked arm in arm with the archbishop, as honored enemies might do: it was a kind of friendship, after all. Musa smiled at Roland and bowed lower than an emir need do to an infidel count. “My lord,” he said, “I wish you well.”

  Roland bowed in return. “And I you, my lord, though we may fight on opposing sides of this war.”

  “May it not come to that,” Musa said.

  Roland bowed again. There was a flurry among the horses, an argument between stallions. When that was settled, Musa turned back to converse with Turpin. And Sarissa came out of the house, walking alone, dressed in her Saracen riding clothes.

  Very carefully Roland forbore from his heart’s desire, which was to sweep her up in his arms and kiss her till they both were dizzy. He bowed to her as he had to Musa. She inclined her head. Tarik, wearing again the white stallion’s shape, snorted laughter. Sarissa grandly ignored him, springing into the saddle and waiting with conspicuous patience for the rest to follow suit.