Behold the Dawn (14 page)

“Do you…” Mairead took a step. “Do you think it was one of Roderic’s men?”

“Nay.” He tightened the girth strap, then turned to look over his shoulder. “Roderic has no reason to think we’re alive.”

He ran a hand over the saddle, checking the Baptist’s flat-bladed sword where it lay snug in its fastenings on the near side. “Fetch the food purse.” She had kept it near her during the night, and he hadn’t asked for it. What he had told her about having nothing to fear from him would sink in better if he stayed away from her.

He gave the cinch a final check and tossed another glance at the sky. With blessings from both the weather and the saints, he and the lady could be in Orleans within the month—if the horse held out that long. He patted the courser’s shoulder. The horse blew through his nostrils and tossed his head. He was a far cry from the bay destrier Annan had lost outside Acre, but then the bay’s stamina probably wouldn’t compare with the courser’s on a trek of this sort.

Without looking at him, Mairead handed him the heavy leather purse. “The horse should have a name.” It was the first offhand comment she had offered since he had met her two nights ago.

“I don’t name my animals.”

“Why not?”

He tightened the knot that would hold the purse to the saddlebow, then turned to where she stood fondling the courser’s dark head. Why indeed? The last animal he had named was the charger Lord William had gifted him with a few years before St. Dunstan’s. He had called the big stallion Caird. Since then, he had owned and lost countless beasts, some through the tourneys, some to pay his debts. Marek named them all, but Annan never paid him heed.

Mairead looked at him, and he straightened. “Animals without names are easier to watch die.” It was as good a reason as any.

“Oh.” Her mouth set in a firm line once more. “I see.”

She didn’t see, but he hadn’t expected her to. She had known the shelter of her father’s and then Lord William’s castles for too long; she couldn’t realize that the pain and the death that filled a man’s life were bearable only when kept at arm’s length.

She didn’t look at him until he had lifted her onto the pillion, and then her eyes met his only for a moment. But it was an unguarded moment. And in it, he sensed again a flash of pain—raw and burning—and he was reminded that perhaps Lady Mairead of Keaton was a woman who knew pain all too well.

He could guess at the cause. He could piece together the import of her fear and of Lord William’s words and of everything left unsaid in her own statements.

But, that too, like all the horses he had seen fall beneath him in battle or forfeited for melee ransom, was something he needed to leave unnamed, lest he open himself to the realization of what had been done to her. Were he ever to allow a crack to open in the mental barrier of sixteen years, that would be all the gateway his own pain and fear and anger would ever need.

He mounted, wincing at the groan of his old hip wound. Reining the horse around, he headed for the riverbank where the going would be smooth. Mairead did not brace herself with her arms around him as she had yestermorn during their escape from the prison camp.

He urged the horse into a trot to loosen its muscles. The courser stumbled, then righted itself, ears pointed ahead, hooves crunching in the pebbles.

Annan glanced to his left. By now, the stranger on the donkey should be too far away to hear them. He rubbed the horse’s rough mane with his knuckles.
Let the horse hold out.
It was as close to a prayer as he had come in a long time.

The lady didn’t speak until the campsite had almost disappeared around the river’s bend. “He deserves a name,” she said.

The breeze, cool and still heavy with the damp of night, slid across the thickening stubble of his cheek, whispered secrets in his ear, then blew past him to caress the countess’s long hair.

Lines knit themselves deep in his forehead. He touched the horse’s belly with his heel, and the animal leaned into a canter. “Then name him.”

Chapter IX

“WHERE ARE WE going?”

It was the first thing Mairead had said since Annan had passed her the limp wineskin some hours ago. It had been midday then; now it was waning afternoon.

Beyond the shade of mushrooming yew trees, the mountains loomed green against the sky, save where the silver heat shimmered. Mairead had spread her linen shawl above their heads to shade them from the unrelenting ball of fire that filled the pale blue sky. But even through it, Annan could feel his lips drying and cracking. He licked them before speaking, and they began to burn.

“Orleans,” he said.

“I meant today. Where will we stop?”

He shifted, ignoring the dull ache in his seat bones. “I don’t know. I didn’t come here by land, so I’m not familiar with the precise location of cities. Probably somewhere between Tripoli and Marqab.”

The courser plodded onward, hide roughened with sweat but not dripping. Annan reached down to pinch a fold of shoulder skin. It stood for only a moment after he let it go, then flattened. The horse seemed to be maintaining a steady level of moisture. He straightened, drawing his hand back under the shade of the shawl. He would stop in another half-hour or so, and let the animal drink again.

“How long until we reach Constantinople?”

“A week, or a
fortnight
maybe.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.” If his long years of traveling from tourney to tourney and battle to battle had taught him anything, it had been that any number of things could happen to lengthen a journey such as this—including pursuit by a variety of assailants. With one hand, he held the shawl aside and swiveled to look over his shoulder. Roderic, Hugh de Guerrant, Gethin, Saladin’s cavalry… any one of them might appear over the nearest hill before the gray courser could carry them to a Byzantine port. And he wouldn’t be happy to see any one of them.

He flipped the edge of the shawl up onto the sagging portion that rode between his head and Mairead’s like the drop between a camel’s humps.

He wouldn’t be happy, but he would be a long way from surprised.

“Excuse me…”

He swiveled to look her in the face. “Countess, the heat hasn’t got to me so much that I’m engaging in anything nearing an interesting conversation with the courser. Don’t excuse yourself.”

She blushed, a dusky rose blooming on either cheek. He almost smiled. His first assessment of her, as he had laid on his back letting her bandage his shoulder, had been correct: much of the child still remained in this widowed noblewoman.

She looked away, and he turned back to the horse’s bobbing ears and the path before them. “I apologize, lady. The years have made my tongue blunter than it ought to be.”

“No… you were right. I… wasn’t sure how to address you.”

“What’s wrong with Master Knight?”

“It seemed formal. I mean—” The breathlessness began to creep back into her voice.

He let the silence linger a moment. “What did you call William?”

“I called him my lord.”

If her tone were any indication, she must have loved the old man more than even most marriage alliances warranted. Had William returned the affection with the same fervor? The earl had called her my child, not my wife or my beloved, his tone more that of a father to a daughter than a man to his bride.

The countess and her unfounded fears irritated Annan, even vexed him at moments. But they also stirred the compassion he strove so often—usually with too little success—to bury deep within his heart. He had the urge to break through her walls of fear and grief, and know the truth of her pain.

Weep with those who weep…
The whisper of Scripture, one from the long-ago days of St. Dunstan’s before the storm, wafted through his mind. He grimaced and shoved the thought back deep into the dark pocket of his soul, where he kept all his secrets, all the emotions and ideas that would be dangerous to a man of the sword… a man of the damned.

“When did he marry you?” he asked.

“I don’t know… I don’t know the days that have passed. Eight months—nine, I don’t know. Not long enough.” The breath she exhaled was pregnant with all the meaning the words could not convey. Desolation permeated that breath with an intensity that turned the back of his neck cold.

They were silent for a long time. Finally, he reined the courser in nearer to the riverbank and drew to a halt. Mairead slid to the ground without awaiting his help. He hesitated only a moment before unlocking his own stiff limbs and swinging to the ground.

As the horse drank, Annan knelt upstream and diluted the meager remains of their wine with the river water. He stood and approached Mairead, where she stood a few feet off, having splashed her face and arms and soaked the shawl. She met his eyes without flinching and stood her ground until he was near enough to hand her the wineskin.

“I have been called by the name Marcus Annan for a long time now, Countess. My lord doesn’t seem appropriate somehow.”

The smile she gave him was fleeting, tinged with sadness, but she held his gaze for its entirety.

He did not watch her drink. To watch the gentle bob of her white throat, to watch the way her hair left her neck as she tilted her head back—somehow it seemed too intimate, as if to watch her in these mundane tasks of life would be to see past the vulnerability and into the realness of her being.

He went back to the horse, and his smile turned mocking. It was not like him to be concerned with the vulnerability of a woman—any woman. The priests avowed that they were the souls of evil, better left to the lechers and whoremongers. He glanced back. She had corked the skin and turned to where the distant hills burned like green fire from between the twisted shelter of the cedars and the upright oaks.

Of course, it had never been his practice to believe what the priests avowed.

It was the
Church
who sinned in its demand for celibacy. If St. Dunstan’s had proved nothing else, it had proved that. The bastards of the Church—Father Roderic’s among them—screamed their defiance in the face of every sanctimonious decree issued by the holy Fathers.

He turned back to the courser, pulled his girth tight, and led him to Mairead. Before he reached her, she spun around, a sudden urgency in the rigid lines of her body. “May I ask you something, Marcus Annan?”

“You may.” He stopped the horse and held out a hand for the wineskin.

She handed it over and even took a step toward him. A small bare foot, the white nails lined with dirt, flashed once before withdrawing again beneath the hem of her gown. He flicked his eyes back to her face. He hadn’t realized she was without shoes. Here was yet another reason they couldn’t afford to have the courser give out on them.

“You said you knew a man named Matthias of Claidmore?”

Her bare feet forgotten, he narrowed his gaze. “Aye. I did.”

“I have heard the Baptist tell Lord William that this Matthias will come to Acre to mete justice to Bishop Roderic and… his followers.”

“I told you before, it is not justice the Baptist seeks.”

“What does Matthias seek?”

“Matthias is dead.”

She stopped, and two little lines pursed the skin between her eyebrows. “The Baptist said he was in Acre.”

Gethin’s delusions were more dangerous than he had guessed. “The Baptist was mistaken.”

“I don’t believe you. You know Matthias, you told me so.”

“I said I
knew
him, lady.” He knelt at the water’s edge to refill the wineskin, then tied it fast to the saddlebow. When he turned back to her, she was watching him, a strange intensity in her face. His eyes grew a little harder. “Why should it matter to you? You’ve never even met the man.”

“The Baptist said he would kill our enemies.” Her eyes were liquid brown, her voice the tremble of a highland stream.

So that was it. She believed Matthias was coming to slay Roderic—and Hugh de Guerrant along with him.

“The Baptist said he would bring justice onto the heads of the guilty,” she said.

Annan snorted. “You speak of the Baptist as though he were a prophet. But, mark me, if that is what he prophesies, then he is false. Matthias of Claidmore is dead.”

“How do you know?”

He took the wet shawl from her and slung it across the courser’s withers. “Matthias couldn’t have brought you justice. He was misguided, fanatical.” He looked her in the eye, wanting to drill this knowledge into her brain so that she would never ask these questions again. “His hands bore the blood of innocence.”

A flash of irritation, even anger, sparked in her eyes. Her shoulders squared. “Like you?”

He didn’t flinch. “Aye, like me.” He held out a hand to help her onto the pillion. “Come.”

She didn’t move. “How do you know?”

Inwardly, he cursed Gethin and his cryptic messages for churning these questions up from the dead past where they belonged. Gethin had known, better even than Annan himself, that the wounds of St. Dunstan’s were yet unhealed.

Yes, he cursed Gethin. He cursed Father Roderic and the Norman Hugh de Guerrant. And he cursed his own stupidity for accepting Gethin’s bait.

“I know, lady, because I killed him.” His gaze did not soften at the horror that seeped into her eyes, the return of the fear that had abated for a little while. She had asked, and he had told her the truth.

“Come.”

She balled her hands at her sides. Her nostrils flared. “The Baptist said he lived. He vowed he would come.”

“The Baptist was mistaken. Mount the courser, Countess.”

She recognized the iron in his voice; there was no way she could have ignored it. She put her hand in his, and he lifted her onto the courser yet again. And yet again her eyes would not meet his.

He bit back the growl that rumbled in his throat. Were all women so difficult? Or was it only his bad fortune that Lord William had married an inscrutable wench? He had told her she had nothing to fear from him. He had sworn to protect her with his life. Why should she care if he had killed a penitent she had never met, never even heard of, save in Gethin’s twisted stories?

Were she Marek, he would have left her in silence to sulk all she pleased—and were she Marek, she would no doubt sulk aplenty.