Alamut Part 53

^ Margaret did not know of that. He kept his smile and his air ,^ of lightness as she said, "You are an ally worth having. I, in ^ return, can aid you in quelling the whispers against you."

'? "Bargains, madam?"

I "Bargains." She matched his wry face. "Let us say that I '*, prefer to settle now all that should be between us hereafter. I " consider us to be kin. I know that you intend to be a power in ^ this realm; I believe that we can profit one another."

"I would rather regard it as friends.h.i.+p."

"The folk of Islam," she said, "must have found you refresh- ' '"S ".

378 Judith Ton- "Shocking, more like," he said. He offered his hand.

"Friends.h.i.+p?"

She took it. Her clasp was firm. "Friends.h.i.+p," she said, The barons, deprived of a spectacle, had long since returned to their own concerns. Aidan's return roused barely a ripple. It was the delicacy of courts; and the fickleness of courtiers.

The king came in quietly while Aidan exchanged courtesies with a baron from Tripoli, and sat without fanfare. For a long while no one noticed him.

Aidan knew him the moment he pa.s.sed the door. The sick- ness was stronger in him, but he had grown as if to fit it. He was an image of a king, though a king without a face, veiled in the kaffiyah. His eyes were all but hidden in it, yet they fol- lowed Aidan, bridling impatience, glinting as they reckoned the mood of the court.

Aidan met them across the hall. The gladness in them was all the more splendid for that it did not diminish itself with words.

A tilt of Aidan's head brought his mamluks to order behind him. They were goggle-eyed at all the brazen, veillcss women.

The king at least distracted them: a leper, and a king, and no one shrank from him or thought the less of him for what G.o.dhad inflicted upon him.

Aidan took the straight path to the king. In front of the throne, he halted. The court had stilled anew. The king waited in thrumming silence. As Aidan bowed, his Saracens went down, offering their own reverence to this one whom their master would call master.

The king rose. Aidan straightened. Baldwin had grown in- deed: they were almost eye to eye. The king neither asked nor offered, except with his eyes.

Aidan kissed the Jeweled glove. The hand within, the good hand, was thinner even than it had been, the fingers drawn into claws with the sickness; but it was steady. The voice was soft, neither deep nor light, simply itself. "My lord. Well met again."

"Wdl met indeed, sire," Aidan said. "I've come to serve you, if you will have me."

"Have you?" Baldwin's voice went up an octave. "You do wish it, then?"

"With all my heart."

The king's eyes shone. They leaped past Aidan to the row of 379.

rusws and turbans, and began to dance. "Would this be your knight's fee?"

"If your majesty will accept it."

"Does it agree to be paid?"

"It will hear of nothing else."

It most certainly would not, from the flash of eyes under the turbans. Aidan's h.e.l.lions had judged this king, and found him worthy of their notice.

Baldwin sat, not weary, not quite, but careful of his Strength. There was a smile in him, a glint of wickedness. "This , u scandalous."

- "Isn't it?"

Baldwin laughed. "It's been dull without you, my lord."

"A rather lively tedium, I should think," Aidan said, with a s glance at the court.

4- "Lively," said Baldwin, "but never outrageous."

"Ah. A definite lack. I do like to know I'm useful."

^ "Always, my lord." The king was grinning, Aidan suspected.

llHe was transparently delighted. "I'm glad you came today.

J:Therc's nothing interesting happening, now that my sister is ^Wedded and bedded. Shall we turn dinner into a celebration of ^jfour victory?"

^ "My lord is generous," Aidan said.

^ "You really do mean it, then. You'll enter service in Jerusa-^fcm."

,'* "With you, my lord, and no other."

^ Baldwin was king; he did not protest his unworthincss. But 4 fac was glad, and proud, and a little afraid, as one is when one *K docs something irrevocable.

> Aidan knew. It was the same with him. He knelt suddenly, I'and held up his hands palm to palm, offering his homage.

I, Baldwin looked at them. Aidan gave him gladness, and r pride, the free surrender of a va.s.sal to his chosen lord. "You are ^ my king," Aidan said, "my lord and my liege. I serve you of my i. own will. I grant you the reverence of liege man to liege lord."

d "That is high honor," Baldwin said, "and a royal gift." His ^ gloved hands settled lightly over Aidan's bare ones; he drew I- breath to begin the oath of fealty - Aidan was aware of little beyond the king; but his senses kept * a watch of their own. He knew that the hall had stilled in a long ripple from the center to the walls. The last of his collo- quy with the king had fallen in silence.

As Baldwin's hands came together over Aidan's, the quality 380 of the silence changed. Something had come into it; some- thing unwonted. As the king moved to speak, a clear cold voice forestalled him.

40.

"Lord king, if you would take yon knight into your service, will you take also his debts?"

The echoes ran up to the roof and faded. No one said a word.

Aidan knelt immobile. His heart had done an appalling thing: it had leaped up and begun to sing.

He marked her pa.s.sage in murmurs, and in the gleam of the king's eyes. In a moment he would break, and turn, even know- ing what he would see. No escort at all, no mark of station, only the lone slender figure bom out of air, swathed in veils and speaking, defiantly, in the langue d'ool. Her accent was enchanting.

Morgiana halted close behind him. Her presence throbbed like pain; her shape was drawn in fire on his skin. To human eyes she was a human woman, a Saracen of rank in gold and silk, wrapped and shrouded in veils.

She bowed to the king: a swelling murmur, as she went down among the mamluks and showed them all both her grace and her foreignness. The murmur followed her back to her feet, but died as she spoke. "My lord of Jerusalem, this man will tell you that he comes unenc.u.mbered, freed of all debts and promises. I submit that he does not."Aidan's hands dropped from the king's clasp. He turned, but slowly.

Her veils were green. They enveloped all of her but one white hand.

"Did you plot this from the beginning?" he asked her.

She took no notice of him. "He owes me a debt, lord king, which he may do well to discharge before you accept his fe- alty."

"I paid it," Aidan said, "in every particular." d.a.m.n you, he cursed her where only she could hear. d.a.m.n you for doing this to me. 381.

He might not have been there at all. She sank to her knees and bcsecched the king. "Lord, will you hear me?"

Baldwin glanced at Aidan. Aidan kept his eyes on Morgiana.

"I will hear you," the king said.

She bent her head. "You are gracious, lord, to one who was a slave. I am called Morgiana; I served the masters ofAlamut, and after them the lord ofMasyaf."

The court had been diverted by her presence. Now it was fiercely intent. Aidan tensed. Not, G.o.d help him, for himself.

Could even Morgiana escape, if the High Court rose up against her?

She was not aware of them at all. "I was the Slave of Alamut," she said. "Now I am free, and in part I owe it to this knight. We struck a bargain. I brought him before my master, and protected him, and won for him all that he sought, and my freedom with it."

"And the prince?" the king asked. "Dare I ask what he gave in return?"

"No," Aidan said.

"Yes," said Morgiana, "lord king. I am but an ignorant Sara- cen, yet I know somewhat of your knights. Their honor; their loyalty; their prowess in the field. Their mastery of the arts of love."

Aidan's cheeks flamed. G.o.d be thanked that he had kept his beard; it hid the worst of it.

She could see. He felt her mockery.

"I thought," she said, "that I would find myself a knight, for surely he would honor me, and serve me in all humility. And lo! Allah sent me not any knight, but a flower of chivalry, a truebom prince, a moon among the stars of his firmament. Ilaid my nets for him, I confess it. I took him captive, not in my master's name, but in my own."

"Yet serving your master, surely," Baldwin said.

It was a little uncanny to be caught between them: veiled ifritah and veiled king, voices without faces, masks about the glitter of eyes. Morgiana answered strongly, with a toss other shrouded head. "By then I had no master, except in name.

What I had done for the one who held my oath, I now re- pented. But my knight would not believe me, nor forgive me, on my simple word. I undertook to prove it to him. I offered to give him his vengeance on my master, but for a price."

"Was that honorable, to ask for payment?"

382 "It was necessary," she said. "I loved him, you sec. I had loved him since first I saw him. He would not permit himself to love me. I saw that he never would, unless I bound him to it."

"Therefore you bargained," said the king.

"Therefore I bargained. He would have his revenge. I would have him."

"Until I satisfied you," said Aidan. "No longer."

"And no shorter," she said.

No one laughed, or even smiled. No one dared.

"I gave you what I had to give," Aidan said. "I took the freedom which I had won. There is no debt owing."

"You never asked if that were so."

He swallowed, dry-throated. His voice came hard and harsh.

"I had reason to believe that it was."

She shook her head. "You never listened, did you? Or thought. Or did anything but run, and pray that I would not follow."

"Are you calling me a coward?"

"No," she said. Simply, as she always did. She had no artifice at all. "I call you thoughtless. Obstinate. Cruel, perhaps. A man can be cruel, when his selfishness is threatened."

He drew a deep, steadying breath, and made himself speak calmly. "My lady, part of our bargain was my freedom. From you, as from your master. Have you forgotten?"

"Cruel," she said, as if to herself.

"Are you any less? To come to me now, to shame me before the chivalry of Outremer-are you content? Will you let mego?"

She swayed a little under the force of his temper. She said, "I am not content."

He flung up his hands. "Then what will satisfy you?"

"You."

His hands clenched into fists.

He was not dismayed. He was not angry-not any more than he should be, in such a time and such a place as she had chosen to call him to account. What was welling up in him was shockingly close to joy. The hawk, netted at last, found himself longing for the Jesses.

But he was a wild thing still. He would not submit, even to Morgiana. "You have had me," he said, and no matter what their avid audience made of chat. "Did I fail to please you?" 383.

**You pleased me," she said. "Too well. Did you truly believe that fire could quench fire?"

**I was a greater fool than that. I thought that a woman could be satisfied."

She laughed, light and piercingly sweet. "Oh, my lord! You arc growing wise."

His temper snapped. He sprang. He meant to rend her veil, to do to her precious modesty what she had done to his pride, but his hand would not obey him. The silk was cool; her eyes were burning. Veil and headdress slipped free and fell. He heard the long sigh as her hair tumbled down; and, behind him, the catch of the king's breath. Aidan was not breathing at ^ all. His only thought was a dim surprise. She was eerily, im- ^ probably beautiful.

'1 His hand knew where it belonged: fitted to the curve other "'' check. He stared at it, willed it to fall. "We don't even believe in the same G.o.d," he said.