The Dagger and the Cross (39 page)

Joanna had no time to spare for grief. She was too busy
keeping the baby from coming in the middle of the hall, and keeping her
audience from guessing it.

The sultan inclined his head to her. He was always a
gentleman, even when he was murdering infidels. “My lady,” he said.

The shadow of a man next to him began to speak in Frankish.
Joanna overrode him in Arabic. “My lord sultan. I am grateful that you would receive
us.”

“It is my belief,” said Saladin, “that the measure of a man
is his conduct in victory.”

“Not in defeat?”

Saladin’s eyes glinted, direct on her for once, and more
amused than annoyed. “In that, too, my lady. You have an admirable command of
our language.”

“No more admirable than yours, my lord. I am kin to the
House of Ibrahim in Aleppo.”

“Are you indeed?” Saladin asked. “I had been given to
understand that you were a baroness of Jerusalem.”

“That, too,” she said. “Your lady, Ismat al-Din Khatun: she
is well, I hope?”

“Well,” said Saladin, “and prospering.” He paused, eyes
opening wide in sudden surmise. “Ah. Would you be the Lady Jahana?”

“So I am known in the House of Islam.”

He smiled. His face was stern in repose, and rather grim;
his smile transformed it, made it seem as lively as a boy’s. “My lady, my lady!
Well met indeed. Come, sit, you should not be standing, where is my courtesy?”

She sat because she did not know if she could go on
standing, but she kept her head up. Akiva stood beside her like a young
guardhound, all bones and fierceness. Ysabel insinuated herself under Joanna’s
arm and glared at Saladin.

Saladin smiled back. “This princess would be yours, I think,
my lady? And the young warrior?”

“The son of a friend,” she said. “As this is the near kin of
one whom you call friend.” She indicated Elen, who had refused to sit. “The
Lady Elen of Caer Gwent in Rhiyana.”

Saladin knew those names. He accorded their bearer deep
respect. “I see your kinsmen in you,” he said. “They are well, and would send
you greetings, I am certain, had they known that I would find you here.”

Elen started forward, caught herself. Joanna asked the
question she would not, or dared not, ask. “They are well? And where would they
be?”

“By now,” Saladin answered, “in Damascus, recovering from
the ravages of their battle.”

“And awaiting ransom?”

“That has been seen to.”

Joanna forbore to press. She had other concerns, for the
moment. “My lord sultan, I hardly came here for the pleasure of your company,
great though that has proven to be. I know that the city has surrendered
according to its own chosen terms. I know also that those terms require
Frankish citizens to take themselves elsewhere. So shall I do, but not, I fear,
for some days yet. Will you grant us leave to remain until my child is born?”

“Allah forbid that I should refuse you,” the sultan said. He
sounded honestly shocked that she should hint at such a thing.

She inclined her head. “Will my lord also allow me the
presence of my household and my kin, undiminished, and our departure unmolested
when I and my child are able to travel?”

He raised a hand. “You have my word on it.”

Again she bowed her head. “The world knows that Salah al-Din
Yusuf is a man of his word. Now it may know that he is also generous and compassionate,
as a lord of Islam should be.”

She was not flattering him emptily, and he seemed to know
it. He offered her food and drink. She did not want them, but she understood
what they signified. She choked down a bit of bread sprinkled with salt, and a
sip of something sweet and redolent of oranges. She made the others share both.
None of them argued, for a miracle.

Saladin watched them in silence. The rest of the hall had
gone back to its own concerns, whether brooding on defeat or celebrating
victory. She wondered if any of them had laid wagers on her dropping the baby
where she sat.

The sultan was not watching her, after all, or even the
beautiful Elen. His eyes kept seeking the children, now narrowing and growing
keen, now dragging themselves away, now flicking back as if they could not help
themselves.

Ysabel spoke before Joanna could stop her, clearly enough
for him to hear, but too soft to be understood at any distance. “Yes, we are.
How is it that you can see?”

Saladin sat very still. He did not look frightened.
Fascinated, more like, and even a little elated. “Would there happen to be more
of you?”

“Three in Damascus,” she answered boldly, “and the two of
us. Aren’t we enough?”

“Quite ample for the purpose,” he said. Yes, he was pleased.
He reckoned Aidan a friend, as much as any Frank could be; that had not
changed, as Joanna had been able to tell when he spoke of the two in Damascus.
He regarded Ysabel in honest delight, and said, “Your princely kinsman tells me
that I have a keener eye than most.”

“He told me. I remember now.” Ysabel was clearly as
fascinated by him as he was by her, if somewhat more defiant than delighted. “He
likes you. He’s sorry you couldn’t have been on his side of the war.”

“As am I,” said Saladin. “But God wills as He wills, and He
has been kind to your kinsmen. When they have had time to rest and restore
themselves, I shall send them back to you.”

“Why not now?”

“It was a hard battle,” he said, “and they fought more
bravely than any. They took no more than a scratch or two, but they are very
tired.”

“You killed my father,” she said. “I saw him die.”

Her voice was rising. Joanna raised her hand to clamp it
over the young imp’s mouth, but paused. Saladin was speaking. He was calm, but
there was steel in it. “Your father, madam?”

Joanna went cold.

“My mother’s husband,” said Ysabel. “His name was Ranulf de
Mortmain.”

Saladin frowned. It was not a comforting thing to see,
though Joanna could detect no anger in him. “I did not kill him, my lady. He
died of his wounds before we could save him.”

“Your battle killed him. Your people cut him down.”

“That is the way of wars and warriors, my lady.”

Joanna could not move, let alone speak. Saladin addressed
Ysabel no longer as a child; he gave her the respect, and the honesty, due a
grown woman.

She gave him implacable will. “You owe us reparation.”

Saladin’s brows went up. “Yes, my lady? On what do you base
that contention?”

“He died by your fault. You kept him waiting too long when
he should have had water and tending. He might still be alive to be ransomed,
if you hadn’t left him dying in the sun. You owe us his blood-price.”

“You know that for a certainty?”

“I saw it,” she said.

He knew how she saw. He sat back, running his finger along
his jaw, tracing an old scar that ran into his beard. Joanna did not think that
he would drive them out and refuse them what he had promised them: he was much
too honorable for that. But Ysabel had gone far beyond what was allowable for a
child who owed her life to his clemency. When Joanna got her wits back, she
would tan the imp’s hide.

Saladin lowered the lids over his fine dark eyes. Ysabel
stood with her chin up, glaring as formidably as ever. He looked her up and
down calmly. “You are a very forward child,” he said.

“I loved my father.”

She did not put any charm into it, and she certainly did not
choke with maidenly tears.

He nodded. “That is evident. Suppose that I were willing to
pay your price. Have you considered that everyone who lost a kinsman in the
battle might ask the same of me? How then would I pay my army?”

“No one else is forward enough,” she said. “No one else saw
her father die.”

“Still,” he said. “Is it fair?”

“War isn’t fair.”

Saladin stared at her. Suddenly he began to laugh. He was
not laughing at her, not exactly. “My lady, you should be a
qadi!
You
argue as irresistibly as one, and rather more cogently.” He sobered; he leaned
forward. “So then, you have your blood-price. But let it be understood that
that removes all obligations between us, except insofar as they touch on my
compact with your mother.”

“I don’t ask any more,” she said.

“You might ask your mother to spare you the rod,” said
Saladin. “Out of the generosity of my heart, and because I reckon you a worthy
opponent, I add my plea to yours. For this time, at least,” he added cannily. “Future
transgressions, I cannot speak for.”

Ysabel’s face was stony, but Joanna could sense her
admiration. It was not often that Ysabel met her match; and never, up to now,
had that been a human man. She curtsied, going down rather deeper than anyone
might have expected. Admiration indeed, and unwilling respect. “Thank you, my
lord,” she said.

Ysabel would have to be punished. But, like Augustine and
sanctity, not yet. The baby, having obliged its mother by holding off until she
was out of the sultan’s presence, now wanted to come all at once. The pains
were coming sharp and close even before the litter rocked and swayed its way
under Joanna’s own blessed roof. She walked away from it; she insisted on that.

Zoe was there, that small dark woman with her astonishing
gift for healing. Her assistant was new, and young. “Demetrios went back to the
City,” she said, meaning by that what every Byzantine did, Constantinople on
the Golden Horn. “It was well past time, I told him. As if he would ever listen.
He insisted that I still had more to teach. Even when he left he dragged his
feet, for fear he might have missed one last, tiny secret.”

Joanna smiled, though a new pain turned it to a grimace. She
was sorry not to see the young eunuch with his great dreaming eyes, but glad
that he had spread his wings at last. The new apprentice looked a little
scared. “Your first birth?” Joanna asked her.

The child shook her head, dumb with shyness.

“Her first noblewoman,” Zoe said. She crooked a finger. The
apprentice ducked her head and scampered, transparently glad to have a signal
to answer and an errand to run off to.

The bedchamber was ready. Dura knew, as she always did;
though mute, she could command the servants well when she chose. The
birthing-stool stood in its accustomed place. There were heaps of clean cloths,
fresh sheets on the bed and fresh sheets waiting, swaddling for the baby and a
cradle to lay it in, and water, and wine laced with poppy if Joanna should need
it. She was not too proud to confess that she well might. William had come feet
first, and nearly torn her in two.

This one was facing as it ought. She could feel it, and
never mind who might call it nonsense. Zoe, searching, confirmed it with a
smile. “All in good order,” she said.

Much of birthing was waiting. The rest was sheer hard work,
and pain, and pain ten times over. Joanna thought in the ever-shortening pauses
of cattle, how easy by comparison it was to birth a calf. If man was wrought in
God’s image, then God was a preposterous, big-headed, totter-balanced, furless
comedy of a creature.

She caught the blasphemy before it ran away.
Father,
she
prayed,
forgive.

There were eyes in the shadows beyond the bed. Joanna took
them for a delusion born of pain, but they did not go away when she bade them.
Eyes. Two pairs of them. One gleamed beast-green; the other, beast-red.

“Ysabel,” said Joanna, low in her throat. “Come out of
there.”

They both came, humble enough to look at, but there was no
contrition in them. Joanna must have been a sight to remember. Her hair
straggled out of its braid; her shift was sodden with sweat; her belly was vast
beneath it, rippling with the birth-spasms. A woman need never have shame of
this that she was born for, but it was not an easy thing for a child to understand.

“We aren’t children.” It was Akiva who said it in his sweet,
unbroken voice. He reached out half boldly, half shyly, and laid his hand on
the summit of her belly. His touch was warm and cool at once. It made her
think, somehow, of the way sunlight felt on her face, when it was still winter
but spring was almost come.

She heard Zoe’s brief, well-chosen words. “Children or no,
you have no place here. Go.”

Neither child deigned to hear her. Ysabel took her mother’s
hand and held it. Akiva seemed rapt in his own hand where it lay on Joanna’s
middle. “I can see it,” he said. “How it all goes together. Why it does what it
does. Why it has to hurt.”

“If you can tell me that,” Joanna gritted, “then you’re even
more than I took you for.”

“It’s to make you push hard enough. Pushing helps it; and
when you push, the baby comes.” He paused. Wonder dawned in his face. “I can
make the hurt stop.”

He could; he did. She breathed a great sigh; then she
knotted with fear. “But if I have to hurt—Bring it back! For the baby’s sake,
bring it back.”

“It’s not the hurt that’s necessary,” Akiva said. His voice
was dry, dispassionate, scholarly. “If your body does what is required of it,
whether it hurts or not is unimportant. Therefore, why hurt?”

She could feel the muscles clench, but that clenching was
without pain. It frightened her. “It has to hurt. God made it so.”

“God made fever, too. Does that mean you have to die of it?”

Damn the boy. She wanted him out. She wanted him there, with
his hand on her, taking away the pain. What would it do to her baby to be
brought into the world without anguish, without taking its mother down to the
borderlands of death? It was against Scripture. It was blessedly, blissfully
easy.

It was still work. She had to push. There was no taking that
away from her.

Akiva stayed, and Ysabel, for once subdued and silent.
Ysabel did not look frightened, even at the blood. Someday it would be she who
labored to bear a child, just as her mother did now.