by Jack Whyte
Thus there was something unwholesome, or at least mystifying, about the period of his abduction. There was no connection, for example, and no transition between his memories of the sexual lust he enjoyed in the purple bedchamber and the torture he had undergone in the place where they had chained him to a bed. And he had no knowledge of how he had arrived in either place, or of how he had escaped, other than the vaguest memory of the unknown, half-seen woman who had pulled him along behind her with a strong grip on his injured wrist, apparently leading him to freedom and then leaving him there alone.
And then, just as he was beginning to believe that there might be a glimmer of light in the darkness that surrounded him on all sides, he became aware of the blue jewel that hung from the string around his neck. He had reached up almost unconsciously to take it between his finger and thumb, in a movement that had become habitual over the past few weeks, and with that simple action unleashed an entirely new set of revelations and self-recrimination. He had retained—and he immediately corrected himself ruthlessly, emphasizing the truth—he had kept, secreted and in fact stolen the bauble, uncaring of its true value, whether it be jewel or worthless glass, on a purely personal whim, and in his determination to keep hold of it simply because he wanted to keep it, he had broken another of his vows, the one that was not quite a vow of poverty but rather a promise to hold all things in common with his brethren and to keep nothing for himself.
He felt the weight of that realization settling about his shoulders like a millstone, and if he had been capable of tears by then, he would have wept. But there were no tears within him, and he felt his self-loathing multiply. The blue jewel was worthless, a mere piece of stone, prettily shaped and pleasant to touch, deceptively soft-seeming in its hardness and smoothly warm in a way that reminded him of the inner intimacies of Alice le Bourcq’s flawless thighs. And with that association newly sprung to mind and instantly acknowledged, he ripped the thing from his neck, breaking the string, and threw it away, seeing its flight clearly against the dawn sky and noting where it fell against a good-sized boulder. He sat there staring at the place where it had fallen, unable to see the blue stone itself, but thinking of other things, of how that tiny piece of blue stone had been involved in his triple dereliction, the breaking of the only three sacred vows he had ever made, to God or man. Chastity, poverty, and obedience. He was thrice damned and undeserving of life, and the thought came back to him that all that was left for him to do now was to ride out and sacrifice his life in battle against the Infidel.
And so Sir Stephen St. Clair, Brother of the Order of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, climbed down from his saddle and retrieved the bauble he had just thrown away, then, with the string that was still attached to it, he tied it carefully and tightly about the cross-guard of his sword. That done, he sheathed the sword, gathered up his reins, secured the butt of his spear in the holder by his stirrup and, with his shield slung over his left arm, spurred his horse again and rode defiantly eastward into the new day, resolved to die quickly and bravely in the name, and for the glory, of his God.
TWO
The word of St. Clair’s disappearance reached the princess before the supper hour of the second day after he left the city, for his brother monks, remembering his earlier abduction, were determined that he should be found this time, no matter where he had gone or who might have abducted him again, and for several days all eight of the remaining brothers were out and about in the streets of Jerusalem, along with all the sergeants of the Order, questioning everyone on the whereabouts of the heroic Brother Stephen.
On the morning of the third day, an envoy appeared at the entrance to the stables, asking to see Brother Hugh, and some time after that, looking distinctly mystified, Brother Hugh handed over his duties to Brother Godfrey and departed with the envoy, having said only that he was summoned to the royal palace on some matter to do with Brother Stephen’s disappearance.
On his arrival there, he was escorted directly to a private audience with the princess, in her own rooms, where she was accompanied only by two of her ladies. Hugh de Payens, amply accustomed to commanding and controlling men, was completely out of his depth with women, and within a very short time he had been stripped of everything he knew or suspected about the disappearance of his youngest knight monk. He told the princess that Brother Stephen had vanished once before, abducted, evidently without any reason that made sense, by persons unknown, and that he had been increasingly troubled, recently, by memories of tortures he had undergone in the course of that abduction.
Alice had been all concern, asking for more and more details on what had happened to the young monk, and fishing for details of the memories that had been troubling him, for she had not expected to hear anything resembling that. She was feeling the first stirrings of anxiety over St. Clair’s apparent recall of the tortures she had had her people inflict upon him months before, for she had been assured that the drugs he had consumed would make it impossible for him to remember anything. The tortures had been mild—barely tortures at all. She had ordered him confined in such a way that his wrists and ankles would show clear signs of manacling, and she had ordered him flogged once, simply to break the skin upon his back and create scabbing, if not lasting scars, for she had known how strange it would have been to release him unharmed. She had also had him scrubbed down during that “torture” period with animal dung and filth, to disguise the fact that he had been regularly bathed and kept clean throughout his captivity. That he remembered anything at all about that time worried her deeply.
She had been curious, but no more than that, when she heard, the previous evening, about the knight’s second disappearance, but she had quickly ruled out the possibility of someone else’s having abducted him, either for information or for sexual pleasure. The only person she could think of who might do such a thing was Bishop Odo, and she knew Odo had neither the will nor the courage to defy her. Her father would have taken direct action had he wished to have anything to do with the monk, as would the Patriarch Archbishop. Neither of those two had any need to deal in subterfuge. She had considered going to de Picquigny at first, to find out what he knew or suspected, but she had quickly given up on that as a bad idea, knowing that the Patriarch Archbishop had no time for her and would do nothing for her that he thought might assist her in anything. And so she had gone to the source, approaching de Payens himself, offering to help find his missing monk.
After questioning de Payens extensively, however, and discovering that he really had no faintest idea of how to go about finding the missing man, she sat silent for a long time, debating with herself, before telling the senior monk that she might be able to help him. She had a friend among the Muslims, she told him, who had extensive and far-reaching connections throughout Outremer. She would talk to this friend and ask him what he might be able to do, and she would send word to de Payens as soon as she had anything to report.
De Payens bowed deeply and thanked her once again for her generous offer. And as soon as the door of her chambers had closed behind him, Alice summoned her factotum, Ishtar, and sent him to find Hassan the horse trader and bring him to her.
Ishtar was slow to return, and when he did arrive back, late in the afternoon, it was to bring word to his mistress that Hassan the Syrian was not in the city, and that no one knew where he was. He had been on his own premises the night before, apparently conducting his affairs as usual, after a successful day that had seen the sale of four fine animals, and he had spoken with his head groom just at dusk, supervising the feeding and grooming of his stock in his normal fashion, but he had been gone before dawn and had left no word with anyone of where he had gone or when he might return. The head groom, whose name was Nabib, questioned by Ishtar, had suggested three possible places where his master might have gone, all of them in or close to the city, but a search had turned up no trace of Hassan, and Ishtar had finally returned to leave instructions with Nabib to have his master come to speak with the princess on
a matter of great urgency as soon as he returned.
Alice was not at all pleased with Ishtar’s tidings, unaccustomed to having people place themselves beyond her instant call, but there was nothing she could do other than fume impotently and cause all her attendants to find good reasons to stay far away from her until her mood should improve. Fortunately for all of them, however, Hassan himself came in answer to her summons a mere hour after Ishtar’s return, and Alice’s fury diminished instantly, for she knew well that she could not turn the cutting edge of her tongue on the Assassin. They spent an hour cloistered together, during which Alice outlined in detail the requirements she had in mind for Hassan, and he left on the verge of nightfall. St. Clair had been missing for three full days by that time.
Mere moments after Hassan’s departure, with the bar not yet lowered into place on the courtyard gates to the princess’s quarters, another man, this one elderly, glided through the darkening shadows in the courtyard and made his presence known to Alice’s guards. The Captain of the Guard came to attention and led the newcomer indoors, straight to the main reception room where his mistress preferred to meet her official visitors, for this particular visitor was highly official. It was the knight Sir Bertrand de Perigord, a renowned warrior who had waded through infidel blood at the sack of Jerusalem in 1099 and was now a senior adviser to its King. Perigord, a grim, humorless martinet who was there solely because the King had dispatched him in person, refused to sit and remained standing, drumming his fingers impatiently against the heavy, beaten silver cross on his breast until the princess arrived. She paused imperiously on the threshold of the room, scowling at Perigord, who glowered back at her with a dislike to match her own, and informed her brusquely that her father the King required her presence at once. His message delivered and his duty done, the veteran warrior turned his back on her and left without another word.
Alice spat at his retreating back as the door closed behind him, but then she wasted no time. She clapped her hands for Ishtar and sent him to summon her hand-maids to aid her in changing her clothing and preparing herself for the meeting with her father. As she surrendered herself to their ministrations, she tried to recall who was here in court at this time, and which of them might have occasioned this summons to her father. She had no concerns, for once, about being the subject of the King’s displeasure, because her conscience was absolutely and unusually clear, but she was intrigued about what her father could want. He seldom summoned her privately and he never did so at night, so close to the main mealtime of the day, because that was invariably when he was most deeply involved with the constant progression of guests who came and went without respite, from the other counties and territories of Outremer, and with almost equal frequency from Rome and the many royal courts of Christendom. As monarch of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, her father was ten times busier than he had ever been when he was merely Baldwin le Bourcq, Count of Edessa.
Half an hour later, when the royal guards admitted her to the audience chamber, she was greatly surprised to find her father waiting for her, not merely alone but in high good humor. He stood up as soon as he saw the doors opening, but by then she had already seen him perched inelegantly on the arm of the great, gilded chair and reading a parchment, holding it up with both hands to the flaring torch that burned in a high bronze stand behind his head. He released the scroll as she entered, allowing it to roll itself up again as he stepped quickly down from the dais to greet her, his face wreathed in a broad smile.
Returning his smile, albeit tentatively, Alice curtsied rapidly, then kissed him on both cheeks, calling him Papa as she always did, and using all her skills to keep her looks modest and decorous. No one looking at her, including her father, would have thought that she saw anything out of the ordinary in meeting her august parent without a surrounding throng of courtiers, supplicants, and sycophants constantly coming between the two of them and making real conversation impossible. This easy, informal encounter was the way she remembered meeting her father daily, once upon a time long years before.
Now he squeezed both her hands gently within his own, raised them to his lips and kissed them before releasing her and turning away to a table against one wall, where a profusion of documents and packages showed that Baldwin was a working king. He hesitated for a moment, scanning the piles in front of him, then picked up a small, leather-wrapped object, hefting it speculatively in one hand as he looked back at her over his shoulder.
“Are you aware of the envoys who arrived from France today, my dear?”
Alice shook her head, genuinely surprised, for there was little that escaped her attention in the comings and goings of her father’s court. “No, I had no idea there were any. When did they arrive, Papa?”
“This afternoon, early. They came from Jaffa, and had to wait for a caravan to assemble, to be sure of safe passage. For more than a week they waited. Eight days to assemble their party, then three more for the journey here. Far, far too long.”
“Is the Jaffa road still that dangerous? I thought the knight monks were taking care of that now.”
“They are, my dear, they are, but they are not super-human. They have a firm pattern of regular patrols on the roads from here to Jericho and Jaffa, but of the two, the Jaffa road is altogether longer and more difficult to police, and it carries fewer pilgrims.”
“Since when are pilgrims more important than regal and vice-regal envoys from Christendom?”
Her father smiled fondly at her. “That depends upon whose eyes are doing the looking. The Patriarch, along with Brother Hugh and his excellent brethren, is most intimately and consistently concerned with the welfare of the pilgrims. There is little we can do to change that now. Anyway, my dear, the envoys arrived, and they brought this for you.”
The package, slightly larger than her open hand, was flat, rectangular, and quite heavy, and at first she could not make her fingers work at undoing the intricate knot that held the decorative leather wrapping in place. She could have cut the thong easily, she knew, but for some reason she instead worked doggedly and delicately to unravel the knot until it came apart in her fingers. She unwrapped the package quickly then and stood staring wide eyed at the miniature portrait she held, painted on a small panel of densely grained wood and edged with an elaborately carved and gilded border of what she recognized as classical acanthus leaves. The subject of the portrait was a young man, with curling golden hair and bright blue, smiling eyes. Even allowing for the natural exaggeration of a painter unwilling to offend his subject, it was plain to Alice that if the artist’s abilities were one tenth as skilled as they appeared to be, the man in the painting must be remarkably comely and well made.
At first glance, she had thought that she was looking at a portrait of the Angevin Count Fulk of Anjou, who had become betrothed to her elder sister, Melisende, two years earlier, while on a brief visit to the Holy Land. Some anomalous and illogical impulse suggested, although for no more than the briefest of moments, that her father had erred and had sent for her instead of Melisende. She knew within the same heartbeat, however, that the error was wholly hers and that the man in the picture resembled Fulk of Anjou in no way. Where this man was golden blond, Fulk was swarthy and dark and a full decade or more older. Alice knew Fulk well, but as a rival for her father’s crown and kingdom, not as an admired brother-to-be. She felt a surge of detestation for the Count and his empty-headed wife-to-be, and then a corresponding surge of curiosity about the stranger in her hand. She finally looked up at her father.
“Who is he, Papa?”
The King’s smile grew broader. “His name is Bohemond, Prince of Antioch. His father, Bohemond I, was my friend. His son, now Bohemond II, is to be your husband.”
“My husband.” The words came out sounding flat, but then her head snapped back and her eyes flared. “My husband? I will have no husband, Papa. Have you gone mad, expecting me to wed this wretch? I have never even heard of him.”
“You had no need to, until this moment. No
r have you any need to risk my anger by being provocative.” The words were spoken mildly, but Alice required no reminder of the razor’s edge of her father’s impatience, and she bit the inside of her lip in fury, forcing her face to show nothing more of her thoughts as he gazed levelly into her eyes, searching for further defiance. Finally he nodded, and continued in the same gentle tone. “Be at peace, Daughter. He will suit you well.”
Reacting sweetly to such an obvious inanity strained every fiber of Alice’s patience, but she succeeded somehow, and when she spoke again there was nothing but meekness in her response. “But how can you be sure of such a thing, dear Papa? How can you know, beyond doubt, that this man will not break my heart with sadness? I have never been to Antioch, so how may I hope that he will suit me well, a complete stranger? Has he ever seen me? Does he know who I am?”
“He has seen as much of you as you have of him.” The King gestured towards the miniature she held. “I sent him one of those, two years ago. You must surely recall sitting for the painter. The boy is nineteen now, almost the same age as you, and he lives not in Antioch but in Italy, where he has spent his life to this point. He is Prince of Taranto, as was his father before him, and he is a cousin to the King of Italy. He is also the grandson of the King of France, and now that he is come of age he is on his way here to assume his place as Prince of Antioch, next to our own holdings, the richest seat in all of Outremer. He may be here within the month, and then again, he may be here within the year. It all depends, as such things ever do, upon winds and weather and the vagaries of Fortune. When he does arrive, however, you will be wed and become his queen as soon as may be. You and he have been betrothed since you were children, the agreement witnessed by the Pope himself.”