The Dagger and the Cross (13 page)

She glanced once at him, and then away. Shy, now that it was
almost done; or as afraid as he that she could not bear these last few moments’
parting. They could not join hands, nor do aught but stand just out of reach,
until the Patriarch should give them leave. He was in no haste to do it, damn
him. He seemed as staggered as all the rest, to see her face at last, and to
know that she was beautiful.

Aidan almost laughed. A finger’s length of dainty slippered
foot peeped from beneath her gown. It was patently no hoof, nor ever cloven.

Heraclius cleared his throat. The women’s singing died away.
It was silent in the precinct but for the inevitable sounds of folk living and
breathing and doing battle with the flies. Aidan gave them a gift: the flies
departed in search of other prey. Then, for a moment, there was no sound at
all.

“We gather here, O children of Jerusalem, to witness the
binding together of two who are high in your counsels.” Heraclius’ voice did
not quite match the rest of him, being thin and rather high, but it carried
well enough. “Yet, since they are of differing faiths, and she is a worshipper
of the false prophet Mahound, it has been judged advisable to seek the
dispensation of Rome, to remove the impediment which otherwise would sunder
them.”

Morgiana was not pleased to hear herself so described or her
Prophet so named. Gwydion’s hand closed ineluctably upon her arm; she contented
herself with a fierce and carrying whisper. “Muhammad is the Prophet of God!”

Heraclius pretended not to hear. “Therefore,” he said, “before
we begin the rite, his holiness’ reverend legate has instructed that we present
the document as it was given him from the hand of the Holy Father, and that it
be examined and read, so that none hereafter may question the validity of this
marriage.”

Aidan drew taut. Morgiana, he noticed, was whitely intent.
Abbot Leo, for once clad in his proper and princely splendor, came forward on
the arm of a sturdy young monk. The youth carried a coffer of no particular
richness, carved of cedarwood and bound with iron. They halted on the step,
from which Heraclius had perforce retreated. The monk held the coffer; but it
was not Leo who opened it, but the man who had walked behind them, another
monk, older but no less sturdy. Both of them looked as if they would have known
what to do in a fight.

They could also, it was evident, read and write, and do them
well. The elder monk opened the coffer with respect but with dispatch, took out
what was in it, turned it over. “The seal is intact,” he said, “and untampered
with.”

So it was. Aidan was shown it, and Morgiana, and Gwydion who
would speak for her when the dispensation was read and disposed of. So too
Heraclius, and the abbot himself. When they had all seen it, Leo cut the
threads that bound the fine vellum. The monk unfolded it, drew a breath, and
read.

“Urban, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Aidan,
Prince of Caer Gwent in the kingdom of Rhiyana, Baron of the High Court of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem, Defender of the Holy Sepulcher. In that he would ally and
wed with that one called Morgiana, of rank and lineage unknown, servant once to
the Master of Masyaf in the land of Syria, Slave of Alamut, infidel and
unrepentant, we have determined that impediment exists, to wit, disparitas
cultus, disparity of faith. To the petition that such impediment be set aside,
and that the petitioners be joined in holy wedlock with the blessing of Mother
Church, we respond: No.”

The monk read on as if his tongue had outstripped his mind.
Aidan heard him, but did not hear him. He had not said what Aidan had heard him
say. That one word. That one, impossible, unbearable word.

“We deny dispensation. We refuse the sanction of holy
Church. We condemn that one who calls himself our faithful son, who defiles his
bed with the flesh of an infidel, in contravention of all the laws of man and
God. Let him set her aside; let him harken to our pleading; let him turn again
to the faith of his fathers, lest he be cast out into the nether darkness, and
flung into the Pit.”

Aidan shook his head, back and forth, over and over.
Morgiana’s face was very white and very far away. Her eyes were blank, flawed
emeralds, dulled with shock.

The monk read more slowly now, stumbling over the words, but
unable to stop. “...Witchcraft, sorcery, heresy and black enchantment: with
these charges we indict her, and him who would unite with her. For the murder
of Christian souls, the denial of our faith, the bewitchment of our servants,
let her suffer due and proper punishment Only by recantation, by conversion and
by penitence, may she—”

The monk could not go on. His face was ghastly.

Perhaps it was Gwydion who struck such horror in him, for
simple presence before his face; for likeness to Aidan. The king was quiet,
cold, and still. “May I see?” he asked gently, but it was as much as any man
was worth to refuse him. The monk did not begin to try.

Gwydion took the vellum with its pendant seal, and read it
swiftly, in silence. No sound broke in upon him. He looked up. “This is a
forgery.” He turned the terrible calm of his stare upon the pope’s legate. “Father
abbot, it were best that you ascertain the whereabouts of the proper document,
and swiftly.”

Abbot Leo looked wan and old, but his voice was steady
enough. “My lord king, there is no other. That is the coffer which we brought
from Rome, and which has been guarded night and day since it was set in my
hands.” He held them out. They shook, but it might have been only the palsy of
age. Gwydion set the lying thing in them.

Leo looked long at it, and hard. He examined each seal; he
scrutinized every phrase. He passed it to the monk who had read it, who though
nigh prostrate with shock was scholar and theologian and secretary in the papal
chancery. Their eyes met. Wretched; sorely baffled; but agreed.

“I saw it written,” Leo said. “I saw it signed and sealed.
This is not what his holiness commanded to be set down. And yet...”

“And yet,” said the monk, “it is all in order. All is as it
should be. There is no forgery that we can see.”

“You know that it is,” Gwydion said. He took back the lying
thing, turned it. His finger traced the face of Saint Peter upon the leaden
seal.

Paused.

“My lords,” he said. “My lords, what is this?”

Leo stared at him. The monk frowned, wondering transparently
if he had forsaken his wits. “That is the Holy Father’s seal,” the man said, “majesty.”

Gwydion shook his head sharply. “No,” he said. “This.” He
tugged at the cord from which hung the seal, A slender cord, a twisting of
silken thread.

“That is the cord,” said the monk with careful patience, “with
which the Holy Father seals his dispensations.” He stopped. “With—which—” He
snatched the vellum out of Gwydion’s hands, suddenly and utterly forsaking
propriety.

Gwydion came very close to smiling. “The silken cord with
which he seals his dispensations. Anathemas,” he said, “are sealed with hemp.”

Monk and abbot looked again at one another. “A forgery,”
said Abbot Leo in rising joy. “Indeed and certainly, a forgery.”

Gwydion turned upon the Patriarch. “Do you hear, my lord? Do
you see?”

“I see a bit of thread on a seal,” said Heraclius. He might
be struggling to keep the malice out of his voice. If so, he was losing the
battle. The Patriarch took the false anathema from the monk’s slack hands, and
made a show of reading it. Rather a good one, for a man who was not remarkably
fluent in curial Latin. “Here is the seal itself as prescribed, and the
signature, which I know. This surely is what his holiness wishes, though only
God may know why he has done it so.”

“He does not wish it,” said Gwydion, still softly, still
quietly, but his calm was cracking. “I myself saw the words written: the
dispensation granted, the blessing given, the order set down that the rite
should be performed by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, or in his incapacity, by a
priest of his choosing, with the legate’s approval. His holiness was not greatly
pleased, but he was willing, and mindful of my brother’s devotion. He would not
have perpetrated so foul a sleight as this. Nor ever sealed it with a seal that
is a lie.”

“That may be so,” Heraclius said. “I know only what is
written here, and that is clear enough. The dispensation is denied. The
marriage is void. I cannot bless what Rome will not sanction.”

He loved to hear himself say that; he rolled the words on
his tongue, savoring them.

He was not party to the deception. Aidan stabbed deep in his
mind, deep enough to sway him where he stood, and dim his eyes; but there was
no knowledge there, no complicity. For him this was a godsend, and he would use
it with pure pleasure, but he had had no hand in it.

Someone had Aidan by the arms, was shaking him, calling his
name. He shook his reeling head. His hands were clawed. Heraclius cowered
against the doorpost, clutching his throat. Aidan snarled and struggled. “Let
me go. Damn you, let me go!”

Gwydion would not. There were others with him, holding
grimly. Mamluks. Ranulf. Somewhere on the edge of awareness, Aidan laughed. A
dozen men, it took. He was as strong as that.

They had forgotten one who was almost as strong: small as
she was, and female, and seemingly struck down in the wreck of her joy.
Morgiana was Assassin trained, and Assassin still, though she had forsaken it.
She sprang not on the foolish quivering Patriarch but on the monk who had read
the false letter. She did not claw him, or throttle him. She met him eye to eye
and held him till he stiffened and convulsed and fell. Her eyes darted,
glittering. Seized Leo. Drew him stumbling, staring, helpless. She was gentler
with him, or he was stronger. He did not topple. He went down slowly, as if
his
knees had failed him.

“Nothing,” she said, sharp and distinct through the rising
clamor. “They know nothing. Who knows?
Who has done this?”

It was a cat’s scream. She poised to leap again, to strip
another mind bare, to find what she must find before she went truly mad. Aidan’s
captors would not let him go. Would not understand.

Except Gwydion. He left Aidan to the rest, and caught her
before she sprang, and held her. She did not fight him. Her mind was not her
body’s slave; it could move when she could not. He gasped as he felt the power
that was in her, but he stood against her. He swayed her; he turned her aside. “No,
sister. No. This is no time, no place.”

Her every line denied it, but she drew in upon herself. She
ruled her rage; she gave him that gift, because he was her kinsman and her
king.

It should have been joy, that acceptance. Not pain on top of
pain. Aidan shook free of his captors, but he did not go to her. She would have
turned on him.

He faced the Patriarch. The Patriarch blanched, but he was
adamant. “I will not say the words without firm and proven dispensation. Which
this not only denies; it casts out any who dares defy it.”

Lies. All lies. And no mind here that sparked with guilt; no
flicker of betrayal. Some were glad enough, as Heraclius was; some were even
exultant. But none had done it, or would admit to it.

This time he mastered himself. He could hardly rend them all
limb from limb, though he would happily have begun with the king and descended
through the ranks. Guy had all he could do to maintain an expression of shocked
disapproval, and not to laugh aloud. His queen was less delighted. It was a
pity, she was thinking, that that beautiful creature must be denied what he
clearly wanted most in the world; but perhaps it was for the best. She would
find someone for him, she would put her mind to it: someone suitable,
malleable, and irreproachably Christian.

He choked on bile. He wanted no one, nothing, but Morgiana.

Calm, he willed himself. Calm. Whoever had done this had
hoped no doubt to drive him mad. He would not give the satisfaction. He would
find the one who had plotted this, and make him pay, slowly. Then he would find
the true dispensation, and make Heraclius accept it, and wed Morgiana as God
and the Holy Father had ordained.

“I swear it,” he said. “By God and His Son and His holy
Mother, by the stone of Holy Sepulcher, I swear: This shall be traced to its
root and expunged. I will have my blessing and my bride. And if I fail in this,
may the earth gape and swallow me; may the sea rise and cover me; may the sky
fall to crush my bones.”

The great oath thundered into silence. The silence held for
a stretching moment; then burst in tumult.

Aidan did not have to be dragged away. He went under his own
power at speed which nothing human could match, and which nothing inhuman was
minded to stop. He should, no doubt, have stayed and faced the uproar. He dared
not. He had almost killed Heraclius once. He would happily have drunk the man’s
blood and gone after the one who had forged the pope’s decree, but he was too
sensible—little as anyone but his brother would have believed it. Heraclius was
better alive than dead. Alive, he could have his nose rubbed in his own shame
when the dispensation was found.

“We will find it.” Aidan flung the words over his shoulder,
pacing the hall with the fierce restlessness of a leopard in a cage. It was not
his own hall, with the wedding feast spread and now abandoned, all its dainties
given to the poor and the pilgrims. This was a smaller space, and quieter: Lady
Margaret’s house near the Sepulcher, with its peaceful inner courts and its
iron-barred gate.

The others watched him in silence. Margaret herself; her
daughter; Elen; Gwydion; Simeon the Jew with his son and, firmly ensconced upon
a cushion, Ysabel; and Morgiana. Everyone who knew the full truth of what he
was, and what he could do, and how he could do it. His mamluks stood with
Margaret’s guards without, holding off the importunate and the curious. The
city was buzzing with the scandal.