Alamut Part 4

The air was stifling- So many human bodies, so many human minds, pressing on him. He rose, not too ungracefully, mur- muring something. The Lady Margaret inclined her head. Her eyes saw too clearly by far. She endured this because she must.

So must he, if he would be courteous, but courtesy was beyond him. He bowed low to her and fled.

The gardcrobc was a brief refuge, but its air was too thick for his senses- He found a courtyard to pace in, not caring what it was, or where, or who saw. Only the thinnest veneer of sanity kept him from launching himself into the sky.

Watchers did not linger long. Perhaps he frightened them.

But one stood in shade, as still as he was restless, and slowly that stillness touched him. A monk, he thought: a Benedic- tine, swathed in black. But under the habit was mail, on the 33.

breast was a cross, not large, of simple shape, stark white against the robe.

The Hospitaller. Gilles, his name was. He was not what Aidan had been led to expect. He was fastidiously clean, his hair cropped short round the tonsure, his beard long but well kept. It aged him, as perhaps he intended: under it he could not have been much past thirty.

His eyes widened a little as Aidan halted in front of him. The glamour had lost itself, baring the truth of what Aidan was; he cared neither to restore it nor to befuddle the man's mind, churchman or no. Gilles had Saracens enough to hunt. This one lone witch-man was no prey of his.

"So," said the Hospitaller without greeting or pretense. "It'strue, the tale I've heard."

Aidan bared teeth longer and sharper than a man's. "What tale might that be. Brother?"

"I think you need not ask, my prince," said the Hospitaller.

He leaned against the wall and folded his arms, at case, half smiling. "They say the king your brother is your very image, as like as man and mirror."

"How not? We're twinbom. That's a power in itself, the old wives say."

"Are you both left-handed?"

Aidan laughed, startled, beginning to tike this soldier-monk.

"Both of us. How did you know?"

The blue eyes glinted. "No magic, my lord. I watched you in hall. You should leam to eat with your right hand if you intend to go among the infidels. They take very unkindly to a man who does not."

"Why is that?"

"A teaching of their Prophet. He ordained every smallest action. The right hand, he decreed, shall be for eating and for cleanly things. The left is for wiping oneself, and for giving the devil his due."

"Do they all fight left-handed, then?"

"Oh, no," said the Hospitaller. "War is holy, as holy as prayer. The blood of infidels is their Eucharist."

"What makes you think that I should care for an infidel's mummery? I came to kill them, not to dine with them."

The Hospitaller's eye rested on the cross that Aidan wore, blood-red on black: the Crusader's sign and seal. "A most de- vout sentiment. You'd make a fine Templar."

"Would they take me?"

34.

"The Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon will take any who hungers after Saracen blood."

He did not, Aidan noticed, say any man. "You of the Hospi- tal, no doubt, are more discriminating."

"Less zealous, perhaps. Our concern is not only with war but with its aftermath. We tend the sick and the wounded; we do what we may to bring the infidels to the light of the true faith."Aidan began to pace again. The Hospitaller followed, shorter by a little but long-legged enough, though he walked lame.

"A wound?" Aidan asked him.

He shrugged, deprecating it. "A small one, inconveniently placed. I mend."

"There's been fighting, then?"

There's always fighting. Syria has a new sultan. We pacred with him for a truce, but-"

"You pacted with a Saracen sultan?"

Gilles laughed, not quite in mockery. "So shocked, prince?

Did you think it was all holy war without respite? The kings of Jerusalem themselves have done more than swear truce with their enemies; they've been known to enter into active alli- ances, pitting Saracen against Saracen and taking the side of the stronger."

Aidan shook it off, enormity though it should have seemed to an innocent from the farthest west. "Kings, yes. Kings do whatever they must. But the Church is the Church, and Saracens are unbelievers."

"They are also men, and they surround us. Vfc do as we must. V/c hold the Holy Scpulcher. We will do anything- anything at all, short of mortal sin-to continue to hold it."

Aidan nodded slowly. That, he could understand.

"And you," said the Hospitaller. "Have you come for the holiness, or for the fighting?"

"Both," Aidan said. "And for my kinsman who went before me."

"You loved him."

That was presumptuous, from a stranger. "He was my kin."

There was a silence. Aidan paced in it, but slower now, calmer.

"Masyaf,** said Gilles, "abuts, and some would say is part of, a fief of the Hospitallers.**

Aidan whipped about. 35.

' i*

;1 Gilles backed a step, but he went on steadily enough. "It stands near the demesne of our fortress ofKrak. Its master has, on occasion, been persuaded to acknowledge our dominion.""What arc you telling me?"

The Hospitaller had paled, as well he might. "The Sheikh al- Jabal is not a va.s.sal of our Order. He pays us no tribute, as the Templars have forced him to do, and thereby won his enmity.

Tfet there may be somewhat that we may do, to win reparation for this murder."

"Why? Are you responsible for it?"

"G.o.d knows," said Gilles, "that we are not. Our way is the dean way, in battle, against proven enemies. And Lord Gcroint was in all ways a friend of the Knights of the Hospital of St.

John of Jerusalem."

Aidan eased by an cfibrt of will: not the feat some might have taken it for, who knew him only by reputation. He could understand goodwill, however much it might owe to expedi- ence. He could not smile, but he could nod, bowing his head to courtesy. "I shall remember," he said.

Gilles looked like a man granted reprieve from hanging. He knew it; he laughed at himself, though his words were somber.

*Tfes; remember us." He paused. His tone changed. "And you, sir? What will you be doing here in our country beyond the sea?"

Avenging Gerdnt. Aidan did not say it. He answered as he had answered every other inquirer, though more warmly to this one than to some. "I came to fight the infidel. It has been in my mind to journey to Jerusalem, to look on its king, and if he will have me"-aw/ if I will have him-"to be his liege man.

What higher lord can there be, than the holder of the throne of David?"

"A worthy ambition," said the Hospitaller. "You've never considered any other of our princes?"

Aidan knew a test when he scented one. He shook it from his shoulders. "Raymond of Tripoli, perhaps: there is a great tottt and gentleman. But he is a count, and I am royal bom. I . Aould look first to a king."

."' "Such a king," said Gilles, sighing. There was no irony in it.

^**lfoung, little more than a child, and yet a great warrior, a /lifted general, a scholar of no small accomplishment, a para- Jffpst of grace and courtesy. And for all of that-" His voice ""*""ght. "For all of that. G.o.d has exacted a price of surpa.s.sing city. He has seen fit to make our lord a leper."

36 "Yet he is king," said Aidan. "No one has ever contested his right to the crown."

"No one is so great a fool. He is king. He was meant for it from his birth. Even when he was grown to boyhood and hismalady was known, he was our king who would be."

"He inspires remarkable devotion."

Gilles shook his head and smiled wryly. "Am I so transpar- ent? So, then: you will go to Jerusalem. I think you will find our lord worthy of your service. He will be most glad of you.

Every knight is precious here on the sword's edge between Christendom and the House of Islam. A knight of your proven skill is thrice and four rimes welcome."

Aidan shrugged. He was not modest; he had never seen the use in it. But he had other purposes that this man could not see. They came clear as he stood there: a bitter clarity.

Its embodiment came toward him across the sunstruck courtyard, slight and dark and fixed on him as a moth on a candle's flame. Thibaut had proper reverence for the soldier of G.o.d, but for the Prince ofCaer Gwent he had his whole heart and soul.

It was not in Aidan to refuse such a gift. The pain was its price. He held out his hand to the boy and smiled, and that smile was the beginning of acceptance.

II.

JERUSALEM.

5.

No city had ever been more holy. Holiness breathed through the very stones; quivered in rhe air; dizzied Aidan's senses that were keener than a man's. The hand of G.o.d was on this place, this loom of walls and towers by the mount of Sion, this City of Peace.

It did not matter what the eyes saw. Bare stony plain rolling into the hills of Judea; bleak dun rock, dust and thorns, the fierce light of the desert. On the hill, a grey wall, and towers in it, and their king above them all, David's great square Tower frowning westward. Grey-green to the north: outriders of the Mount of Olives. Deeper green to the south: terraces planted, said the Lady Margaret's sergeant, with figs. Nowhere a glim- mer of water, and never a moat toward the city, only rhe great empty fosse and the steepncss of its walls. Water here was a precious thing, rich and secret, h.o.a.rded in cisterns and in caverns, or held in guarded wells. Stone was lord; and sun; and sanct.i.ty.

They rode to David's Gate in somber splendor: the lady un- der her banner of black ram on silver, her women in black, her servants, her men-at-arms, her son in black and silver beside the knight all in black. His scarlet and gold lay in the armory of Aqua Bella, forsaken until his vow was fulfilled. His mail was black, his stallion's trappings black with no adornment but the silver of bit and buckle, his helm at his saddlebow all black, his lances on the sumpter mule, his shield without device save the palm-wide, blood-red cross of Crusade. In one respect only he had yielded to eastern sense, and that was in the surcoat overhis mail, long and loose and belted with black, but the heavy silk was white, with the cross on its shoulder.

He was growing accustomed to it; schooling himself not to yearn, shamefully, toward scarlet and blue and gold. Gereint's life deserved no lesser sacrifice.

He resisted the urge to rub his chin, where the new beard was growing, thicker and faster than he might have expected, and fully as fierce in its itching. Vanity, it was not, nor heedless-

40.

Judith Tttfr ness of it, cither. If he would ride into Saracen lands, it might be wise to seem a Saracen.

He had told no one why he did it. They thought it a tribute to grief, and it was that, also. The mcn-at-arms had a wager on how soon he would exchange his red cross for a white one, and turn Hospitaller; or else let the red cross grow to span his breast in the fashion of the Templars.

Margaret watched him and said nothing- She was wise enough to take issue with nothing that he did. Thibaut still walked softly round her, but she had not taken him to task for affixing himself to Aidan's side. While the prince was content to remain near her, she could see as well as know that her son was safe from harm.

What it cost her to keep from clinging to the boy, Aidan well knew. He did not know that there was liking between them, but of respect there was much, and a certain wary accep- tance of what was. Gercint, and now Thibaut, bound them; made them kin.

His stallion came up beside her grey gelding. She glanced at him, unsmiling, yet the air about her was almost light. "Does it disappoint you?" she asked, tilting her head toward Jerusalem.

Here, so close to the gate, the road was choked with people, their progress slowed to a crawl. Other parties rose out of it, armed and mounted, escorting lords, ladies riding in litters, a merchant with his veiled and jeweled wife. Lesser luminaries rode in smaller companies: poor knights fresh from Francia by the raw look of them, their mail worn bare, without the sur- coat to keep the sun at bay; squires who lacked the means or the will to win their spurs; mounted sergeants with their men marching behind them. A great press of people on foot jostled and babbled under the horses' hoofs, pilgrims in sackcloth with mantle and scrip and staff, hats jangling with tokens from every shrine in Christendom, but seeking now the palm of Jericho that was most sacred of all; laborers bent double under the weight of their burdens; slaves and captives in chains with the overseers' whips cracking over them. The lame and the halt and the sick dragging their slow way into the Holy City. Beggars wailing for alms, pi-dogs yapping, lepers crouched on the dunghills in their rags and their hideousness, or cutting aswath through the crowd with bell and clapper. Caravans com- ing to Jerusalem, caravans going out of it, in a roaring of cam- els and a shouting of drivers and a clashing of the arms of their escorts. 41.

Over the gate flew a white banner, the golden crosses gleam- ing on it, sigil of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Aidan breathed deep of sun and dust and humanity, dung, herbs, horses and heated steel, and shook his head. "Disappoint me, lady? Never.

This is Jerusalem,"

A smile flickered, astonishing, for it made her young again.

Then it was gone. The gate was before them, dark after the glare of the plain. Guards idled in its shade, paying little heed to all who pa.s.sed.

No more did the city care. Holy, high Jerusalem: it em- braced any who came to it. Even his kind; even his power, which was the merest feeble glimmer before its great flame of sanct.i.ty. Yet it did not diminish him. He burned the brighter here for that he was so small a thing. He drew a breath, half glad, halfdeliciously afraid, and plunged into the heart of it.

There was no reasoning with stone. Joanna could weep, rage, storm; Ranulf would sit immovable, ignoring her, seeing nothing but what he had set his mind on. When on rare occa- sions he was inclined to speak, it was to dismiss her with a word. "Women," he would say, heaving himself up and leaving her to her raving.

He had taken her son away from her. Aimery would be fos- tered where it would best serve his father's advantage, and that was not at his mother's breast. Ranulf- did not see why she should object. She had maids and pages of her own to train, and he expected her to produce another heir to his house in as short order as G.o.d would allow. Was that not what she was born for? Was that not why he had taken a wife at all?

He had come to do his duty. She was aching in body from so long in the saddle, all the way from Acre to Jerusalem after a hard and housebound pregnancy and a difficult birthing, and aching in soul for Aimery and for the news that had greeted her when she came to the city. Gereint dead at an a.s.sa.s.sin's hand, dead and buried: shock enough to fell her when she heard. It stunned her; she could not even weep.