Alamut Part 5

And Ranulf was there, driving out her maid and her page, not even troubling to take off his shirt. He had not bathed in a ;'- month; even across the room she could smell him. He dropped ^Ais hose and his braies, sparing her not even a glance. She had '^ fcamcd how little good it did to clutch the coverlet and pro- """st.

When they were married, she had thought him a handsome 42man. His features were heavy but well-formed; his hair was thinning a little, but it curled still, and it was the rare, true Prankish gold. His body was thick with muscle, kept strong at the hunt and on the field. And he had an honored name and a substantial property won with his valor in the wars, and no heirs but those which she would give him. It had been consid- ered an excellent match.

His weight rocked the bed. He still had not looked at her.

He had made it clear long since that he did not find her beauti- ful. With her belly still slack from beating and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s still swollen with milk after an unconscionable while, she would be even less to his taste.

He was not brutal. That much, she could say for him. "If this one is a daughter," he said as he parted her legs, "I'll let you keep her."

She struck him backhanded, with all her strength. "Get out of my bed!" she screamed at him. "Get out!"

He did not even give her the satisfaction of rape. His shrug was perfectly indifferent. "Tomorrow, then," he said.

When he had taken himself away, she wept a little, and bat- tered her pillow, and felt no better for it. Her servants had not come back. She lay and stared at the whitewashed ceiling. The smell of him lingered. She gagged on it.

If he would argue with her, reprimand her, even strike her- but no. He left her to her moods, and came back when she was calm, and wore her down by sheer force of indifference. He did not care what she did, if only she kept out of sight and pro- vided him with the offspring he wanted.

Which then he took from her and gave to strangers, and left her empty, womb and heart.

She staggered up. With shaking hands she drew out the first garments that came to her, and put them on. She had to rest between the shift and the gown- Her hair was too much for her. She let it hang. In a voice that, if not loud, at least was steady, she called for her maid.

No one tried to stop her. She took very little: only a single bundle and her chestnut mare, and mute Dura who never ques- tioned her mistress' will. Ranulfwas gone. He had women in the city, Joanna knew that. No doubt one of them was ac- cepting with pleasure what Joanna had spumed.

Joanna wished her joy of it.

For Joanna there would be no more of it. Her refuge was waiting, and it welcomed her with unfeigned gladness, even in 43.

mourning. Her chamber was as she had left it. Cook had dain-ties for her, G.o.defroi the house-steward gave her the word she hoped for. "Tomorrow," he said, "they come."

She did not try to think beyond the moment. She prayed for Gcreint's soul, and then she wept for him, cleanly, in her own narrow bed. Then, cleansed, she slept.

She was ready when they came- She could do little for lank hair or shadowed eyes, but what she could do, she had done.

Her gown was flesh; its somber blue suited her not too badly.

She had found that she could eat, and drink a little wine. She . was still sipping it as she sat on the roof, leaning on its ledge, shaded by the lemon tree that grew in a great basin in the angle of the wall. The street below was its narrow, quiet self. When she looked up she could see the great grey dome of the Church of the Holy Scpulcher.

They came from the other way, from the Tower of David.

Her eyes leaped to their head: the small round figure on the grey horse. There was a young man just behind her: Thibaut, it had to be. He had grown. He had not lost his habit of riding with a hand on his hip, which he thought elegant. It suited him better now that he was almost old enough to carry it off.

There they all were, the servants, the soldiers, dour Brychant in his old scale armor that he had taken from a Saracen. And there was- There was a knight in black on a blood-bay horse, and he was not Gereint. He could not be. That long lean body, so light in the saddle; that sharp hawk-face; that turn of the head as Thi- baut said something-it was not a dead man riding.

And if it was not, there was only one thing it could be.

Her fingers clamped on the bal.u.s.trade. Grimly she pried them free. Her heart was beating hard.

He was not so like his kinsman as he came closer. A family resemblance, that was all. He was certainly much prettier; and yet she was disappointed. Handsome, yes. But where was the beauty that cut like a sword?

He looked up, and she gasped. Oh, indeed, a sword: straight to the heart.

Her mother asked no questions. Thibaut did, but only with ^ his eyes. Prince Aidan, who could not have known that there '; was anything to ask, was courtesy purely. Wu-m fingers lifting 44 Jwtsth Tsar her cold ones; the brush of a courtly kiss. She did not think that anyone saw how she trembled.

His voice was deeper than she had expected, yet clearer, its western lilt stronger even than Gcreint's had been. It made her think of far green places, and of water falling.

It was witchery. She knew it, and she did not care. Thibautwas far gone in it, she could see. Margaret seemed impervious, but Margaret was Margaret. She wore her widowhood as she did all else, with quiet competence.

With greetings disposed of, Thibaut took the guest in hand.

Joanna stayed with Margaret, which meant a detailed inspec- tion of house and servants, and the overseeing of the baggage, and the disposal of a caller or two. Joanna fell into her old place a step or two behind her mother, like a young wolfhound in the wake of a small, rotund, and very busy lapdog.

But she was not the child she had been. She had to sit down, rather abruptly, in the middle other mother's srillroom.

Margaret did not seem to hurry, but she was there very quickly, kneeling on the floor beside Joanna. Her hand was cool on Joanna's brow; her arm was firm. She took no notice of the flutter of servants, except to dismiss them. "Tell me,"

she said.

Joanna shook her head hard. "You have grief enough."

"Let me judge that," said Margaret.

Joanna's teeth set. The dizziness was pa.s.sing. She almost wished that it would not. To run away-that was as simple as taking her horse and riding to her mother's house. To tell her mother why . . . that was harder. Margaret would not have done it. She would have found a way to rise above it.

It came out tail first. "He took Aimery," Joanna said- She surprised herself with how quietly she said it. "He never asked my leave. In the night, while I slept, they took him away.

When I woke he was gone." Her hands were fists. She could not make them unclench. Her heart had been clenched since that bleak waking. "When I asked why-1 tried to be calm; oh, G.o.d, I tried-Ranulf said, 'Does it matter?* And when I asked why he had never consulted me, he said, 'Why should I have consulted you? He's my son.' As if I had never carried him in my body; as if I had never nursed him at my breast. As if I were nothing at all."

"It might have been better," said Margaret coolly, "if you had not insisted on nursing him yourself."

Joanna gasped as if she had been struck. 45.

"But," her mother went on, "to take him without your knowledge-that was ill done."

"It was unspeakable."

Margaret frowned slightly. "Perhaps he meant to spare you pain. A clean cut, all at once-a man would think so, if he were young and rough-mannered and unaccustomed to women."

"He doesn't care enough to spare me anything. I'm no more to him than the marc in his stable. He doesn't consult her,either, when he takes her foal away from her."

"He comes from Francia," said Margaret, "and not from a wealthy house. He knows no better."

"I hate him," gritted Joanna.

Her mother's frown deepened. "What has he done to you, apart from this one misjudgment? Has he beaten you? Dishon- ored you?"

"He has women."

"Men do," Margaret said. "Islam at least admits the truth, and allows concubines: a great wisdom. But beyond that? Has he mistreated you? Has he shamed you before court or pco- pk?"

"He hardly knows I exist."

"I doubt that," said Margaret. She held Joanna's eyes with her level dark ones. "What do you want of me? I have no power to make you a child again."

Joanna flushed. That was exactly what she had wanted. To unmake it all. To take refuge behind her mother's skirts, and forget that she had ever been a woman.

"I won't go back," she said- "I've given him what he wanted.

^ 1 owe him nothing."

*' "Except honor."

"What has he given me? He took my baby."

Margaret sighed. "See how G.o.d has tested me. That child of romc who seems a very son of Islam, is as perfect in forgiveness as any Christian could wish to be. But that one who seems all a Bank ... she neither forgets nor, ever, forgives."

Joanna's chin came up; her back stiffened. "Are you telling me to go?"

"No," said Margaret. She rose, smoothing her skins. "I am idling you to go to bed. You insisted, I suppose, on riding from Acre?"

Ji "You know what a litter does to me."

?^ "I know what the saddle docs to a woman new risen from ^childbed. Now, go."

46 Joanna had wanted to be a child again, and to forget that she was a mother. It was not as blissful as she had thought, to have what she had wished for. But Margaret was not to be gainsaid. Joanna went where she was bidden, and did as she was told. There was an odd, rebellious pleasure in it. She was safe here. No one would lie to her, or betray her, or be indiffer- ent to her. She had come home."Joanna is always angry at something," said Thibaut.

Aidan opened an eye. The eastern habit of drowsing through the heat of midday had struck him at first as sheerest sloth, but he was learning to sec the use in it. Here, in a cool riled room, with a servant snoring softly as he swayed a great water-damp- ened fan, and a scent of roses drifting from the window on the courtyard, it was utter luxury. He who seldom slept had slid into a doze, until Thibaut's voice startled him awake.

The boy perched at the end of the couch, clasping his knees.

His brows were knit. "She's run away from Ranulf, I can tell.

I'm surprised she didn't do it sooner."

"Your sister doesn't look to me like a coward," Aidan said.

"Did I say she was? She doesn't run away because she's afraid. She runs away because she's angry. She'd kill, else."

Aidan raised a brow.

"She would," said Thibaut. "She should have been a man.

She has too much temper for a woman."

"Or too much spirit?"

Thibaut nodded. "Mother says she's the purest Norman in Outremer. She should have been born a hundred years ago; she'd have come on Crusade and carved herself a kingdom."

Aidan could imagine it. She was nothing like her mother or her brother: head and shoulders taller than Thibaut, and ro- bust with it, her brown hair doing its best to curl out of its braids, her eyes more grey than blue, a color that made him think of thunder. Or perhaps that was only their expression.

Angry, yes, and hurt. The world was not going as she would have it; and she was not one to forgive.

"What is her husband like?" Aidan asked, giving up sleep for lost, and rising to prowl. He was aware of Thibaut's amuse- ment; he flashed teeth, at which the boy laughed.

But Thibaut's answer was sober enough. "His name is Ranulf; he comes from Normandy. He's a younger son, as most of them are, but he's done well here. He holds a fief near 47.

Acre; he's rich in spoils from the wars. He's not bad to look at, either. Women like him."

"Your sister doesn't."

"She was happy enough when she married him. He's not much for airs and graces, but he's never minded that her blood isn't pure. She's strong, he says, and sh.e.l.l give him strong sons; and her property is quite enough to satisfy him."

"I see," said Aidan. It was all very good sense. He doubtedthat that would matter to the sullen child who had greeted them with such a mingling of joy and defiance. Who was, he realized, ill in body as in mind. He was no healer; that was his brother's gift. But he could see a body gone awry. She had given her lord a son, it seemed, but she was not as strong as he had hoped. Or as she had expected to be. She would not for- give herself that, either.

"I think," said Thibaut, not easily, but as if he could not keep from saying it, "I think it wasn't good for her-what Mother and Gereint had. That, and listening to songs, and dreaming about love. Love isn't something a woman should be thinking of when she marries."

"Maybe not the first rime," Aidan said.

"That's what Mother always told her. She said she believed it. But Joanna always wants to have everything all at once."

Aidan paused by the window. In the courtyard below, a fountain played, cooling the air. He breathed in roses, water, sunlight. If he willed it, he could stretch out more than hands, sec with more than eyes, hear with more than ears.

They were all here, the three whom Gereint had taken for wife and children. Whom the Master of the a.s.sa.s.sins had marked, and whom he meant to have, whether in life or in death.

Therefore Aidan was hero, and not on the road to Masyaf.

Sinan would surely strike again, and surely it would be soon: too soon for Aidan to dare to leave the house unguarded. The High Court was gathering for the Feast of the Conquest, that high and holy day on which Jerusalem had fallen to the armies of Crusade. Margaret must come before it to proclaim formally the death of the lord of Aqua Bella, and to beg the king's favor in naming a new lord. It would, inevitably, be Thibaut, but he lacked a year and more of his majority. She would stand regent again as she had in his infancy. "And," she had said, "it may keep him safer than if I named him lord. Sinan would kill him surely then."

48 Jwiith Tarr Aidan stretched his more-than-scnses. The city beat upon them. He made of them a shield, and raised them, and set them on guard. They marked who should be in that house, who meant well and who meant ill, who pa.s.sed and who tar- ried.

It was awkward at first, that warding, like new armor: stiff, unwieldy, flexing strangely against his skin. But slowly, with use, it fitted itself to him. Not even armor now, but another skin, a body that encompa.s.sed all within that house.

He leaned against the windowframc, battling the weakness that always struck in the wake of power. It pa.s.sed slowly; he straightened.Thibaut had neither noticed nor understood. He was intent on his own troubles. Yet those ran disconcertingly close to the currents ofAidan's own. "It's as well she's come, isn't it? Then if she's attacked, we'll be here to defend her."

Aidan liked that we. He grinned at the boy and went in search of his cotte. "Well, sir. Shall we see if anyone else is awake?"

6.

Ranulf did not even care enough to send a man to fetch his wayward wife. Nor, at first, could she care that he did not.

With her mother's presence, something in her gave way. Her body, drawn taut for so long in resistance, said of its own will, Enough.

She slept as she had not slept even when she was a child, and ate as she had not eaten since Aimery was conceived. She was let be, and let mend, as much as she might in the grief that was on that house. Even grief was part of her healing. It let her forget what she could not escape: that no word had come from her husband. No pursuit. Not even a rumor of his anger.