The Dagger and the Cross (9 page)

Aidan loved to look splendid, but he had little patience
with the madder extravagances of court dress. Gwydion had both patience and,
when he chose, the flair to carry it off. Blue and silver were his colors,
eastern silk and western silver, and a great cloak like a field of stars, lined
with ermine, and belt and chain of silver set with sapphires, and a sword in a
damascened scabbard—almost plain, that, wrought for use, its blade forged by
the prince of smiths who had made Aidan’s own—with a sapphire in the pommel,
carved with the seabird crowned. His crown was on his head, the great state
crown of his father, silver and sapphire, with a glimmer of moonstone and
diamond.

Aidan, in the black coat which Saladin had given him, and
all the rest scarlet, and a golden coronet, for once was almost pleased to
efface himself. “You look,” he told his brother, “like the night in full
flower.”

Gwydion was amused, though he tried not to be. The monks who
had failed signally with Aidan had triumphed with him. He was modest. It was
not vanity of his beauty but pride of his kingship that kept his head so high
under the cruel weight of the crown. If he wearied of it on the slow ride from
the Dome of the Rock to the Tower of David, even Aidan was not to know. He
dismounted with a panther’s grace despite all his encumbering splendor, and
waited serenely for the pages to straighten his cloak, smooth his robes, ready
him for the stares and whispers of the court. Both were Joanna’s pups, the
younger hardly less composed than the elder. Aidan would praise them later,
when it would not throw them off their stride.

His eyes flicked over the escort. It was all Rhiyanan today:
another of Gwydion’s courtesies. It would not do to flaunt Aidan’s infidels, or
Aidan’s refusal to swear fealty to the upstart king. One or two of the mamluks
were there, it was true, but Raihan and Conrad looked perfectly at ease in
Frankish dress, like the knights of Outremer which after all they were.

The rest were as they should be. Ysabel was nowhere in
sight, though Aidan did not quite trust her to stay at home where she belonged.
Her mother and her mother’s husband were within at court, as a baron and his
lady ought to be if they were in Jerusalem.

The King of Jerusalem did not come out, which was somewhat
less than proper, but his servants admitted Gwydion with every show of
courtesy. The court, such of it as was not scattered in the castles and
strongholds of the kingdom, awaited him in the great hall and bowed low as he
entered it. There were knights enough, and more barons than Aidan might have
expected outside of a formal court, with their ladies and their kin and their
hangers-on. They made a brave show for the honor of Jerusalem.

The king sat with his queen under the gilded canopy, he in
white and gold, she in imperial purple, which suited her wheat-gold beauty. She
at least had the look of a woman well content with herself and her world: queen
as she was born to be, bereaved of a son but consoled in the daughter who had
not, please God, ruined her figure, and certainly she would be vouchsafed
another son. And meanwhile she had her beloved husband.

Guy de Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, Defender of the Holy
Sepulcher, was the very image of a king: tall, broad-shouldered, ruddily
handsome, with corn-gold hair falling in curls over those splendid shoulders,
and a beautiful golden beard, and eyes as blue as flax-flowers. He was not, for
all of that, a pretty lad. There was a manly light in those clear blue eyes and
a virile grace in that tall body, and his voice when he spoke was deep and
firm, the voice of a man among men.

It was unfortunate that all that virile beauty had no more
wits than Queen Sybilla’s lapdog.

Peace, brother.
Gwydion’s voice in Aidan’s mind,
gently reproving.
Where is your charity?

Where it belonged: and not on the throne of this embattled
kingdom. Aidan set his teeth and kept his thoughts more scrupulously to
himself.

The reality of a king and the image of a king came face to
face before the throne. Winter’s king in stars and darkness, summer’s king in
light and splendor; the pale king and the bronze king, grey eyes meeting blue
with a shock like two blades clashing.

Guy blinked and looked away. “Your majesty is welcome in our
kingdom,” he said as if he meant it. At the moment he did. He rose and came
down, smiling widely, opening his arms for an embrace. Gwydion returned it, and
the kiss of peace that followed it.

Guy stood back, still smiling. “I see that my brother brings
new swords for the defense of the Holy Sepulcher.”

Gwydion inclined his head, turning it into a greeting of the
queen as well. She bloomed under his regard.

He was not half cool enough, to Aidan’s way of thinking.
When Guy linked arms with him, drawing him into the gathering of courtiers, he
went with all apparent willingness. He did not look meek; he looked as a king
does when he is being gracious.

That, when it came to it, was why Gwydion was king and Aidan
was not. Gwydion had a knack for suffering fools.

o0o

Hardly as much a fool as that, Gwydion thought. Aidan had a
propensity for swift and damning judgments; and he had loved the one whom Guy
thought of, when he could stand to think of him at all, as
that stinking
leper.
As indeed King Baldwin had been when Guy knew him: a handless,
faceless, shrouded monstrosity, blind and ravaged with his sickness. Beauty
meant much to Guy, perhaps too much; ugliness revolted him, and sickness
horrified him. That most hideous of sicknesses, in one who was a king, shocked
him out of all charity. He could not see what was in the rotting body. The
brilliance; the bravery; the strength in the face of afflictions that would
have broken another man. Baldwin was hardly more than a boy when he died; king
at thirteen, warrior and general from his crowning, victor at seventeen over
the wily Saladin, leader of his people even when he must lead them, dying, from
a litter, dead at four-and-twenty with as much of life and suffering and
kingship behind him as if he had attained his full and natural span. Guy only
knew that he was a leper, and that he deplored the love match which his sister
had made. Had Baldwin lived, Guy would never have come close to kingship. He
knew it, and he did not forgive it. No more than Aidan forgave him for winning
the crown at last and in despite of them all.

Gwydion forbore to judge. Guy was no marvel of intellect,
but he had charm enough, and a full repertoire of the courtier’s arts. He
presented Gwydion to each of his great lords who were present, and to their
ladies as well.

The latter were quite enchanted with him, even when their
husbands were not. He knew the virtue of a white smile and a limpid stare and a
word uttered sweetly, with fetching sincerity. Every woman was beautiful if Guy
decreed that she was, and every man his loyal servant.

And Gwydion was his dear and loyal brother. “Your strength
will turn the tide,” he said. “Because there will be war, and soon. The Saracen
is readying to march. We’ll give him a surprise, you and I. Two kings where he
looked for one; two armies on the field against him.”

“Hardly that,” Gwydion said. “I came for a wedding, not a
war.”

“Ah,” said Guy, not pleased to be reminded. “Yes. But still,
you have how many knights? Thirty? And men-at-arms enough, and the power of
your name. That’s worth an army in itself.” He paused, struck with a ghastly
thought. “You are going to fight with us, aren’t you?”

“If needs must, yes.”

That was enough for Guy. He clapped Gwydion on the shoulder.
“Of course you are! What was I thinking? Here, you have to meet Lord Balian, he
has a cousin in Rhiyana—yes, Balian?”

No; but the tough old soldier was too polite to say so. His
eyes met Gwydion’s levelly, matching him to the tales and to his brother’s
face, reckoning the years in which he had kept Rhiyana at peace. Looking for
softness. He seemed to find none. He smiled slightly, and bowed. “Sire,” he
said. From him, that was tribute.

o0o

“Remarkable,” said the young lord who stood beside Aidan. He
was not
pullani,
not a halfblood Syrian, but he was dark and slender and
silken enough to be one.

“What a picture they make! Someone should write a song about
it.”

“What, ‘The Hawk and the Peacock’?”

The young lord winced. “I was thinking of something a little
less...satirical.”

Milord Humphrey of Toron was a poet and a scholar, a fluent
speaker of Arabic, and already, young though he was, a skilled master of
diplomacy. He was not, in this nation of warriors, even a passable fighter;
which was the more galling for that he was the grandson and namesake of a
Constable of the kingdom, who had been a warrior of note in his day. Newcomers
from the west, and veterans who had won their titles on the field, despised
him. Older men, high in the counsels of the kingdom, envied him his youth and
his intelligence. Younger ones, with a way to make in the world, objected to
his presence in it. Women admired his smooth dark face but scorned his
ineptitude in a fight.

Aidan liked him. He knew and understood Islam, and he was
always exquisitely courteous to Morgiana.

“They’re a handsome pair, our two kings,” Aidan said to him.
“May I be pardoned if I’m partial to my brother?”

“Surely,” said the man who had married the queen’s sister.
Who could have been king himself instead of Guy, but who, unlike the knight
from Lusignan, knew his own shortcomings. When the crown was offered him, he
had given his oath of fealty to his sister’s husband. “Guy may be no general,”
he had said, “and not much of a king after Baldwin, but he can hold his own in
a battle. Which is more than I can do.”

He smiled now and looked about. “Where are your mamluks, my
lord? Did you actually leave them at home?”

“I actually did.”

“That couldn’t have been easy.”

Aidan bared his teeth. “Easy enough, once I’d knocked a few
heads together. And,” he confessed, “picked out a pair to play at being Franks.”

“So that
is
Conrad,” Humphrey said. “And is that
Raihan? He looks hardly
pullani
at all, outside of a turban. You’d
almost think he was Rhiyanan.”

“Wouldn’t you? Until he opens his mouth. His accent is still
ripe Damascene, even in the
langue d’oeil.
I told him to play mute if he
can.”

Humphrey laughed. “Someday, my lord, the world is going to
wake and find you devious.”

“What, I? I’m as honest as the day.”

“Simple, too, and as harmless as a leopard in a deer run.”

“We’re all predators here,” Aidan said.

“Predators at bay. There’s peace in the House of Islam. You
know what that means.”

“Even his majesty can guess. Saladin has risen to rule two
sultanates, in Egypt and in Syria, for no other cause than this: to drive the
Franks into the sea. Now that his realm is secure, he’ll raise the jihad.”

Humphrey was calm, but he was white about the lips. “This
year, do you think?”

“God grant!” That was a knight from Poitou, a new one, raw
and blistered by the sun and bursting with zeal. “I came for a war. Poor
recompense for my passage if I don’t get one.”

“You will,” Aidan said.

The Poitevin stared at him. “Aren’t you the one with the
paynim wife?”

Aidan smiled sweetly. “Within the week, I shall be.”

“Don’t say it, Gauthier,” said a man who had been a year or
two in Outremer.

Aidan kept his smile till it cloyed.

Gauthier said it. “Which side will you be fighting on?”

“Don’t be a fool, Gauthier,” said the veteran. “He’s one of
us. Ten years’ worth, and then some. He got his castle after Montgisard, for
his bravery in the battle.”

“Ten years?” The Poitevin was hard put to believe it. But
there was Gwydion, whose name and tale were known in Francia, and there was no
mistaking the likeness, even at the hall’s length. Gauthier’s eyes went wild.

It was sorely disappointing how quickly he mumbled an
apology and fled. Gwydion’s presence was going to lose the veterans a few
wagers. Tyros could always be relied on for a challenge or six before one of
them caught on to the jest. They never expected the champion of many battles to
look all of three-and-twenty, with never a mark or a scar, and skin as white as
a maid’s.

“Your reputation goes before you,” said Humphrey, not
without regret. He liked a good wager as much as the next man. He shrugged,
sighed. “Ah well. We’ll all have fighting enough, if the year goes as I
forebode it will.”

“Deus lo volt,”
someone said, softly enough, but
clear as a war-cry: “God wills it.”

o0o

While the king played host to Gwydion, it was left to Queen
Sybilla to make the king’s kinswoman welcome. She was gracious about it,
conducting Elen in the kings’ wake but departing from it soon enough to settle
in an alcove. There was a cushioned divan for their comfort, and a servant with
wine, and a remarkable degree of quiet. The ladies who arrayed themselves about
were as decorative as they were discreet. Sybilla, like her husband, had a
predilection for beauty in her companions.

Intelligence, Elen reflected somewhat uncharitably, seemed
to be no part of it. “Such a lovely gown,” Sybilla said. “Surely that’s Ch’in
silk?”

Elen smoothed the gleaming skirt. It was silver grey,
embroidered with blossoms, white and fragile pink. “It is a gift,” she said, “from
my uncle and his bride.”

Sybilla’s eyes chilled slightly. “Ah. Yes.” Just like her
husband. They were much of a mind, it seemed, when it came to Aidan and his
Assassin.

The queen recovered herself quickly and smiled. “I
understand that you are yourself recently widowed. How unfortunate. Have you
given thought to a new marriage?”

“My husband died scarcely a year ago,” said Elen, carefully
and rigidly controlled. “It would hardly have been proper.”