The Dagger and the Cross (55 page)

Her departure was graceful, queenly, and rather more
precipitous than it looked. Aidan knew what she did once she was past the door:
fell into Raihan’s arms, choking with mingled laughter and tears.

Raihan would look after her. Aidan thought well of that pairing,
now that he had seen them together. Christian marriage, no, they could not have
that while Raihan held to his faith, but it would hardly stop them.

Elen, bless the child, had a wise head on her. If she was
discreet and played her widowhood to its best advantage, she would serve the
kindred nigh as well as if
she had never taken a lover at all. She could
play suitors like the lady in the story, who held off a pack of them for years,
weaving on her loom all day and unraveling all night, and promising to choose a
husband when the tapestry was done: thereby preserving alliances and
appearances and some measure of peace.

Meanwhile there was Amalric, whom she had discarded rather
more gently than Aidan would have been capable of. He stood where she had left
him, mute and slightly stunned, and growing angry.

Aidan yawned, showing more teeth than humans liked to see.
It drew Amalric’s attention. Aidan held it with a sigh and a shake of his head.
“My condolences, messire. The lady was quite fond of her husband; she took his
death hard. You’ll not fault her for it, I hope?”

“No.” It was not quite a growl. “If I may have your leave,
sire, my lord? I’ve things to see to.”

“In a moment,” Aidan said. He rose, wandering as he liked to
do, but thinking of it more than he usually did. It kept Amalric’s eyes on him.
The wall was higher than ever about the man’s mind.

Aidan paused. He drew his dagger, inspected his nails, pared
a rough edge. The blade shimmered. It was damascene steel, Assassin steel,
narrow and wicked and deadly sharp, patterned like wind-ruffles on a calm sea.
Morgiana said that Aidan’s eyes were the precise color of that steel. No doubt
they were now. Gwydion’s were.

“You know how I’ve been gladdened, surely,” Aidan said,
turning the dagger idly in his hands, playing a small perilous game with it,
tossing and spinning and catching, tossing and spinning and catching. “My lady
and I will have our blessing at last, with the pope’s decree to hallow it. As
to where we found it...we would never have guessed. It was a monk in the legate’s
own train who did it, with a man or three of Outremer abetting him. Can you
credit such perfidy?”

“Shocking, my lord,” said Amalric.

The buzzing of the wards mounted to pain. Aidan set his
teeth against it. “They had defenses against us, if
you can believe it.
An eastern art, I understand; a discipline for thwarting witches. It has a
slight disadvantage. Once known, it is as distinct as a beacon in the dark.”

Amalric glanced swiftly, all but invisibly, toward the door.
Morgiana was in it in turban and trousers, smiling very faintly.

“You wanted to sail west, my lord brother tells me,” Aidan
said, “thereby breaking your word to the sultan and leaving your brother to his
fate. Is that entirely wise, messire?”

“My brother is safe enough,” Amalric said. “My lord.”

“He would be safer, I think, if you returned to him and
waited for your ransom, and rejoined the war at his side.” Aidan smiled. “The
Crusade has ample messengers to preach it. I shall go, and my royal brother,
and Archbishop William who will be sailing on our flagship, and the Holy Father’s
legate returning to his duties in Rome. The west will not fail you, messire.
The Crusade will come to set your kingdom free.”

Amalric had the look now of an animal in a trap. “The more
messengers there are, the faster the news will travel.”

“No doubt,” Aidan said. “But you are needed here. What is
the kingdom, after all, without its Constable?”

“The kingdom barely has a king.” Amalric bit off the words.

“That is hardly any fault of mine,” said Aidan gently. “Tell
me, messire. What did you hope to gain from the disruption of my wedding?”

Amalric drew breath, perhaps to deny the charge. But he did
not say it. He sat instead, stretched out his legs, folded his hands over his
middle. “So. It’s that obvious, is it?”

“I’m ashamed to tell you how long it took us to notice.”

Amalric smiled thinly. His ease ran hardly deeper, but it
was impressive to see. “All I wanted was to keep the kingdom safe. I wasn’t at
all sure it could be that, with infidels so close to all its counsels.”

“Prudent,” Aidan said. “Wise, after a fashion. Did you know
that you were shielding the king, the morning before Hattin, when my brother
would have talked him out of it?”

Amalric flushed, then paled. “I was guarding myself.”

“Too well,” said Aidan.

“God’s bones,” said Amalric. He straightened in his chair as
if to shift his body with his mind, away from guilt and from the shame that
rode with it. “You did nothing to the others—the ones who hatched the
conspiracy. Why? Were you saving it for me?”

“No.” Aidan caught his dagger by the hilt, slid it into its
sheath. “I’m not going to do anything to you, either.”

“Why?”

“I don’t need to.” Not precisely true, but true enough.
Aidan looked Amalric up and down. “You and your precious brother led this
kingdom as badly as it could possibly have been led. The Crusade may win the
kingdom back, but it will never be what it was before. Your fault, messire.
Your brother can talk himself out of accepting the blame. You have no such
fortune.”

“Are you laying a curse on me?”

Amalric’s voice was thick, torn between anger and fear.
Aidan smiled. “You laid it on yourself in the king’s tent at Cresson. What can
I do to you that would be worse than that?”

“You share the blame, my lord. You were at Cresson. You
fought at Hattin.”

Aidan shook his head. “No, Amalric. My guilt is of another
order altogether. I am removed from this war and this kingdom. You are bound to
it. While it stands, you stand. When it falls, so shall you fall. There is no
escape for you. The west will offer you no haven.”

“A threat, my lord?”

“A promise.”

Amalric stood. His mind was no more penetrable than it had
ever been. His eyes were almost laughing. “My brother is right. You have no
power to touch any of us. Mockery, illusion, sleight of hand—that’s all you can
offer.”

“We never claimed to be gods.” Aidan moved aside from the
path to the door.

Amalric paused in taking it. “I’d hoped for more from you.”

“What, hellfire and brimstone?”

“Something befitting your reputation.”

Aidan laughed and called up the fire.

Amalric slitted his eyes against the pillar of flame that
had swallowed Aidan’s fleshly semblance. “Trickery,” he said.

“If you wish,” Aidan said. He quelled the fire; Amalric blinked,
dazzled. “Or perhaps this body is the trickery. You saw me then as my own kind
see me.”

“What does seeing matter? I know what’s real. You are
nothing but the devil’s lies.”

“Not the devil,” Gwydion said. He sounded ineffably weary. “Messire,
I tire of you. Sister...?”

“Brother,” said Morgiana with profound pleasure.

Amalric had his marvel. He was there; and then he was not.

Aidan burst out laughing, though he knew that he should not.
“Morgiana! Before the whole army of Islam? Naked? Backward on an ass?”

“It is,” she admitted, “an insult to the ass.”

“And I,” said Gwydion, “am weary of kingly restraint.” He
rose and stretched and smiled at them both: as good as laughter in another man.
“So then, my brother, my sister. Shall we see to the ordering of your wedding?”

Patriarch Heraclius was not at home to visitors. He was, in
brief, indisposed. Very happily so, in the arms of his handsome mistress.

“Ah,” said Morgiana, revealing herself in a lull. “Madame la
Patriarchesse. I trust I find you in good health.”

Madame la Patriarchesse, whose title was reserved strictly
for tavern gossip, screeched and snatched at coverlets. His excellency the
Patriarch, laid out like an effigy on a tomb but quite as bare as he was born,
dived after his paramour.

He was rather a disappointment, after all the tales. But then,
Morgiana reflected, size was not everything. Or beauty, either. She looked at
him and remembered her hawk of the
desert, and thought of clabbered
milk.

He seemed determined to burrow through the featherbed and
into the floor beneath. She plucked him out, blankets and all, and set him
upright. Robbed of flight, he began to bluster. “Who are you? How dare you?
What do you think—”

She shook her head at his obtuseness. Surely he of all
people should know what and who she was, from her mode of ingress if nothing
else. She pulled off her turban and shook down her hair.

Its improbable color and her inarguable gender enlightened
him remarkably. His bluster turned to fear; his crimson cheeks went white.

She smiled sweetly at him. “Good morning, lord Patriarch. And
a fair morning it is. Would you not agree?”

Clearly he would not. She would have been pleased to change
his mind for him, but her prince was waiting. “Come, sir,” she said. “Would you
be so good as to dress? We have need of you in Tyre.”

“In—” He scrambled his blankets about him. He looked quite
odd with his shaven crown and his straggling hair, his beard all fallen out of
its curls. “The sultan has taken Tyre?”

“The sultan has nothing to do with it. We have our
dispensation to marry; my lord has a mind to act on it. Will you dress
yourself, or shall I do it for you?”

Heraclius dug in his heels. “The country is at war. I cannot
leave Jerusalem.”

“Or your paramour?” Morgiana glanced at the woman, who was a
properly wedded wife, but not to the Patriarch. The woman regarded her with the
calm of perfect horror. “We shall not keep you long. An hour only; surely you
can spare us that.”

“Nothing can take us there and back again so swiftly,” said
Heraclius.

“I can.” Morgiana looked about. There was a chest at the bed’s
foot; it was, as she had hoped, full of clothing. Aidan would want him in
vestments. There were none here.

She cast her power like a net, closed it about a glimmer of
gold, gathered it in. Heraclius jumped and gasped as it fell at his feet. Alb
and chasuble, the latter of cloth of gold. Miter, crozier, odds and ends of
silk and cord for which Morgiana had no name.

But Heraclius was no docile sheep. Even taken by surprise,
he mustered a core of resistance. “I will submit to no witchcraft. No; not
though you kill me for it.”

“I have no intention of killing you,” Morgiana said. “I will
bring you to Tyre, where my lord is. You will say the words to marry us. Then I
shall return you as I found you.”

Heraclius’ head sank between his shoulders. His jaw set, obstinate.
“No.”

“The pope commands you.”

“Prove it.”

“Come to Tyre and you will see.”

“No,” said Heraclius.

Morgiana drew a long slow breath. She did not want to abduct
him. Aidan would not approve; and this day of all days, she wanted to please
her prince.

Heraclius was not about to budge. Her clemency emboldened
him; he stood straighter and glowered at her. She saw how he glanced at his
mistress to see if she marked his courage.

Madame la Patriarchesse was oblivious. “For God’s sake,” she
said. “Give her what she wants.”

“She is a devil,” said Heraclius. “She’ll snatch me away to
hell.”

“Then go,” said his ladylove. “It’s only for an hour. Didn’t
you hear her?”

Heraclius gaped like a fish. Morgiana plucked the blankets
from him and held up a garment at random. “Put it on,” she said.

He put it on in its proper order, if slowly and with many
pauses. Morgiana advanced toward him. He quickened then. He hated her. That was
no novelty; if anything, it pleased her. She folded her arms and tapped her
foot. His hands shook as he took up the miter and set it on his head.

He could have done with a comb, and a servant to curl his
beard for him. But Morgiana was in no mood for trivialities. She thrust the
crozier into his hand and swept him otherwhere.

o0o

Joanna was almost glad that it was over. The dispensation
was found, the wedding begun. And so swiftly: so utterly like Aidan. Royalty
was given to expecting the impossible of its servants, but Aidan knew what he
himself could do. He never truly understood the limits of human capacity.

She was up well into the night, and up again well before
dawn, mustering the family, rounding up the servants, setting the cooks to
conjuring a feast out of air. She gave Aidan his due: he was quite as
preoccupied as she, and she did not think that he slept. When she staggered
half-blindly to bed, he was still awake; when she staggered more than half
blindly out of it, he was up, lending a hand with the tables in the hall.

Now, for better or for worse, it was done. The children were
clean, properly clad, and somewhat damp about the edges. The household, all
that could be spared, made a suitably royal escort, even without the growing
crowd of onlookers. Rumor traveled fast in Tyre, and a wedding was worth the
running to, the more for that the bridegroom was a prince and his bride an
Assassin.

Tyre’s cathedral raised its dome sturdily to the sky. In the
space before its door they gathered as they had in front of Holy Sepulcher.
There were fewer of them now who were truly guests, but oglers enough. Some of
them even comprehended that the figure with the miter, resplendent in cloth of
gold, was not Archbishop William. One or two might have begun to suspect that
it was Heraclius of Jerusalem. A very stiff, thoroughly browbeaten, slightly
wild-eyed Heraclius, who no doubt would remember this as a particularly vivid
nightmare. It had not been kind of Aidan to send Morgiana after the Patriarch,
even if there was no one else who could have done it.