Hounds of God Read online

  So far, no one had. Thibaut intended to keep it so. Though it meant coming within reach of his mother’s eye, he stationed himself in Aidan’s shadow, armed with a bland stare and an air of squirely watchfulness.

  oOo

  They laid Gereint in his tomb under the chapel of Aqua Bella, and although he might have had a bishop to sing him to his rest, his lady would have none but her own humble chaplain. Old and all but blind, he still had a sweet voice, and his wits did not wander overmuch, although he forgot once and called Gereint by the name of Margaret’s father.

  It was as Gereint would have wished it.

  “He was blessed in the end,” said Margaret when it was over. “He died without pain, in the prime of his life. He had nothing to regret.”

  Hall and solar were full of people who would need, soon, to think that their presence comforted her. But for this little while, in the cool dimness of the crypt, they let her be. Thibaut did not want to be there, but he could not make himself go elsewhere. Under dust and incense and old stone, he thought he smelled death. Foolish. His grandfather’s tomb held naught now but old bones, dry and clean under the effigy. Gereint was sealed tight in the niche that would have been Margaret’s, embalmed in spices and wrapped in lead and laid under a slab that had needed four strong men-at-arms to shift it. Later his effigy would lie there, all in armor, with the cross of Crusade on its breast.

  Aidan knelt by the niche. If he prayed, it was a warrior’s prayer, a fierce intensity. A saint might look like that as he labored to raise the dead.

  Thibaut shivered. That, he already knew, was beyond Aidan’s power.

  Margaret moved slowly through the crypt. Her shadow was huge in the light of the lamp over her father’s tomb. She paused by Gereint’s, and laid her hand on its lid. A tremor rocked her. Thibaut looked at her in something very like horror. Margaret was the strongest person in the world. Margaret never lost her temper, or her composure, or her wits. Margaret never wept.

  It was if the castle itself had begun to crumble and fall. Thibaut was frozen in shock, helpless. Aidan moved as if he had never been rapt in prayer, rising, touching her. And she let him. She came to him as to a haven. He sank down, cradling her as if she had been a child, rocking her, saying nothing. His face was deathly still. His cheeks were wet.

  Thibaut did not know what he did until he had done it. He crept close to them, and huddled by them. There was room for him, and warmth and strength to spare. They held at bay the cold of death. They began, slowly, to heal him.

  4.

  For Aidan there would be no healing while Gereint’s assassin lived unpunished. He worked, ate, spoke, even laughed, but the memory never left him, nor the grief. Even an hour, his heart mourned. Even an hour sooner...

  But beneath that, infinitely darker, infinitely more terrible: I never knew. I in all my power, in my pride, in my certainty that the world was mine to do with as I chose — I was as blind as any mortal worm.

  Gereint had died, and Aidan had had not the slightest suspicion. He had been all joy, looking to the road’s end, knowing how Gereint would be when Aidan came: trying to be a man, to remember his dignity, but damning it all and whooping like a boy. He was dead before he knew it, gone, taken away where mortal men went; where Aidan could never go.

  The hall of Aqua Bella saw a prince at the lady’s table, eating little, but calm, composed. Behind the mask, he wept and raged.

  The Assassin had left no trace, no memory of presence. The cake was gone, cast away in fear. Gereint was in his tomb.

  But Aidan knew where to hunt. Masyaf had sent the murderer out; to Masyaf, inevitably, the murderer must return. Aidan would be waiting for him.

  Aidan stopped pretending to eat. His kind needed little sustenance, and even that, now, was more than he could stomach. The guests were quiet as befit a funeral, but they seemed hungry enough, and thirsty for the wine that came out of Bethlehem. At the high table, Margaret ate and drank sparingly but calmly. Thibaut, who was young enough to find healing in tears and a strong embrace, was eating as if he had had nothing for days. Maybe he had not. He did not often glance at Aidan, but his awareness was palpable, like a hand on Aidan’s shoulder.

  Gereint had been like that. It was not adoration; nothing so foolish. It was kinship, deeper even than blood.

  It was a gift. Aidan did not want it; it did not fill the place that was empty. Yet he could not more refuse it than he had refused Gereint.

  The air was stifling. So many human bodies, so many human minds, pressing on him. He rose, not too ungracefully, murmuring 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 could be courteous, but courtesy was beyond him. He bowed low to her and fled.

  oOo

  The garderobe 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 longer long. Perhaps he frightened them. But one stood in shade, as still as he was restless, and slowly the stillness touched him. A monk, he thought: a Benedictine, swathed in black. But under the habit was mail; on the 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 around his 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’s true, 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 arm, at ease, half smiling. “They say the king your brother is your very image, as like as man and mirror.”

  “How not? We’re twinborn. That’s a power in itself, the old wives say.”

  “Are you both left-handed?”

  Aidan laughed, startled, beginning to like 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 learn 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 devout sentiment. You’d make a fine Templar.”

  “Would they take me?”

  “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 Hospital, 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 pacted 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 alliances, 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. We do as we must. We hold the Holy Sepulcher. 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 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.

  Gilles backed a step, but he went on steadily enough. “It stands near the demesne of our fortress of Krak. Its master has, on occasion, been persuaded to acknowledge our dominion.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  The Hospitaller had paled, as well he might. “The Sheikh al-Jabal is not a vassal of our Order. He pays us no tribute, as the Templars have forced him to do, and thereby won his enmity. Yet there may be somewhat that we may do, to win reparation for this murder.”

  “Why? Are you responsible for it?”

  “God knows,” said Gilles, “that we are not. Our way is the clean way, in battle, against proven enemies. And Lord Gereint was in all ways a friend of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.”

  Aidan eased by an effort 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 expedience. 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. “Yes; remember us.” He paused. His tone had changed. “And you, sir? What will you be doing in our country beyond the sea?”

  Avenging Gereint. 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” — and 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 lord and gentleman. But he is a count, and I am royal born. I should look first to a king.”

  “Such a king,” said Gilles, sighing. There was no irony in it. “Young, little more than a child, and yet a great warrior, a gifted general, a scholar of no small accomplishment, a paragon of grace and courtesy. And for all of that — ” His voice caught. “For all of that, God has exacted a price of surpassing cruelty. He has seen fit to make our lord a leper.”

  “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 his malady was known, he was our king who would be.”

  “He inspires remarkable devotion.”

  Gilles shook his head and smiled wryly. “Am I so transparent? 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 times 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 God, but for the Prince of Caer 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.

  Alamut

  Book View Café edition September 2010

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-026-2

  Copyright © 1989 Judith Tarr

  www.bookviewcafe.com