Behold the Dawn (22 page)

“He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it, Templar.”

Gethin’s brow lifted a bit more.

The Templar shrugged. “As you will. You only make the task easier for us.”

The other man-at-arms began inching forward.

Annan held his ground. “If you’ve not learned your lesson from our last encounter, I’ll be more than happy to teach it again.” He looked at the approaching man-at-arms. “Hold fast, laddie.” The man took another step before stopping uncertainly.

The Templar frowned, then lowered his sword. “All right. Have your say.”

“I’ve come for the monk.”

Gethin remained passive, but Annan thought he saw a flicker of confusion tighten his brow.

“The monk?”

“Aye, grant the monk’s freedom, and we shall all be spared the trouble of killing each other at this late hour.”

“Why should you want him? He told me he was a passing acquaintance, merely a fellow traveler.”

The Frank in his arms twisted his head, and Annan pressed harder with the blade. “What the bishop does with his prisoners is not something I’d wish upon even the most passing of acquaintances.”

The Templar’s head tilted back warily. “The bishop?”

“Aye, I know you answer to Bishop Roderic. If stupidity was a requirement when you hired me that night in Acre, you should have looked elsewhere.”

“I should have looked elsewhere anyway. I had been told you were a man of honor, but apparently I was misinformed. Men of honor do not decamp with their hire jingling in their purses unfulfilled.”

“I promised you only Matthias of Claidmore. The others were not part of my agreement.”

Gethin’s expression froze. He limped forward, his hands dropping from his sleeves and revealing the thick rope that bound his wrists. “With every new discovery, I find you sinking a bit lower.”

“Do I indeed?” Annan didn’t take his eyes from the Templar. “Well, Master Knight, do I regain my fellow traveler, or does the dying begin with this unfortunate fellow?” He bumped the blade against the corner of the man-at-arms’s jawbone.

The Templar’s expression hardened. “I was sent to kill you.”

“So be it.” Annan’s hand tightened on the dagger’s hilt. The Frank stiffened in his arms.

“Wait.” Gethin slid forward between the Templar and the other man-at-arms. “Ask him
why
he was sent to kill you.”

Annan flicked his gaze in the Templar’s direction.

The man shifted, the shadows of the fire catching against his rigid jaw. “Because you betrayed Roderic.”

To that, Annan could only laugh. “Forgive me if I save my surprise for a more worthy occasion.”

Gethin took another step. “Roderic fears you’ve betrayed him to Matthias.”

He glanced at the Templar. “Is that true?”

The knight nodded.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Annan narrowed his eyes.

“I tell you the truth,” the Templar insisted. “He fears him, but why I don’t know. Matthias knows something about his past.”

“How much does he fear Matthias?” Gethin’s question was for the Templar, but his eyes burned into Annan’s.

“More than any man—save the Baptist.”

“And the Baptist he fears
because
of Matthias.” Triumph gleamed in Gethin’s face. “Now what do you say, Marcus Annan?”

For a moment, he wondered how much more self-respect it would cost him to leave Gethin with the Templar. Between Gethin and the money Roderic had offered for him, the gold would certainly be the more agreeable.

He released his hold on the man-at-arms. Keeping one hand choked down on the Frank’s collar, he allowed him to step away to the end of the blade. “I say what I have said from the beginning. Free the monk, and I’ll let you return alive to your unholy master. Else let us end this now.”

Firelight flickered in the Templar’s eyes. “First, I would ask a question of you.” He lowered his sword still more, until its point almost touched the ground. “Do you know why my master fears this Matthias?”

Annan said nothing for a long moment. Gethin stared at him, a silent, mocking challenge burning in his eyes.

“If Father Roderic fears Matthias of Claidmore, it is because he fears judgment upon a soul that is worthy of all the fires of Hell.”

“You are a follower of the Baptist?”

Annan glanced at Gethin. “Nay. But if he is a heretic for such beliefs, then his heresy is also mine.”

A smile flashed across Gethin’s face, but Annan ignored him. “You do not know the man you serve, Templar. You will never win God’s battles so long as your lords are murderers and whoremongers.”

The Templar shook his head. “Bishop Roderic will be
beatified
when he dies.”

“And that makes him less a murderer or a whoremonger?”

“Perhaps he has repented.”

“Then why does he fear judgment?”

The Templar lifted his face, a look of caution in his eyes.

“If you don’t know the answer, ask him. Ask him why such a man as he should wear the holy robes of God’s appointed.” Annan took a step, pushing the man-at-arms along with the point of the dagger. “And ask yourself why you pledge your allegiance to this man when he calls for you to destroy the blood of innocents simply because such are his enemies.”

They stared at each other a long time, until at last a log in the fire crumpled into a sparking, snapping mass of embers. The Templar sighed. “All this from a tourneyer?”

Some of the tautness ebbed from Annan’s shoulders. “Aye. All this from a tourneyer.” He had not spoken convictions such as these for many a long year. Some part of him had forgotten he even believed them.

The Templar turned to the other man-at-arms. “Fetch the monk’s donkey.” He turned back to Annan. “You may have your traveling companion, Master Annan.” He sheathed his sword. “If you turn out to be a messenger of the Most High, I will thank you. If not, then I suspect we will be meeting again.”

Annan shoved his man-at-arms forward. Gethin, his hands freed by the Templar, met him with donkey in tow; they left the camp without a backward glance.

Nothing was said until they returned to Annan’s horse and both had reined their mounts northward.

“Have you changed your mind then, Marcus Annan?” For the first time since they had met in Bari, Gethin’s voice did not bear its hard edge.

Annan rubbed the back of his neck. He wearied of rebuffing the man’s persistence. “The years have not changed me so much as to make me fickle in my decisions.”

Gethin reined his donkey close enough that his knee pressed against Annan’s. “You said he deserved God’s judgment.”

“
God’s
judgment, Gethin! You are mistaken in this belief of yours that there is vengeance yet to be paid out for what happened sixteen years ago. What happened then was wrong. Reconstructing what happened at St. Dunstan’s will not make it right.”

“Won’t it?” His voice was cold, heavy, like the fall of a stone from a battlement. “Sin begets sin. Haven’t you of all men learned that?”

“Aye, and I have paid the price for my sins every day of my life. Who’s to say Father Roderic does not the same?”

“You believe that?”

“Nay.” He sighed from the depths of his soul. “I do not. He is hungry for blood even still.”

“He is hungrier. People die everyday now because Matthias did not exact the full price from him sixteen years ago. No longer is he a mere abbot, able only to squeeze in his fist the lives of monks and penitents and villagers. Now he is a bishop.” Gethin’s voice dropped to a hiss. “Now he holds armies, lords,
kings
in his hand. That kind of corrupt power can be protected against only one way.”

“No.” For sixteen years, Annan had striven to put the distance that only time can bring between himself and the crimes of St. Dunstan’s. He would not be drawn back into them now. “I will not. Besides, you forget—Matthias is dead. He will not be your tool to find vengeance.”

Gethin laughed. “You delude yourself, Marcus Annan. Matthias is not dead. And I
will
find him.” He exhaled, the breath barking in the back of his throat. “Grieve you though it may.”

Annan rode with his back stiff, his fingers so tight on his sword hilt that they trembled from lack of blood.

Gethin reined the donkey aside. “When that day comes, perhaps we shall find that we are once again on the same side. Farewell.”

The donkey lumbered some dozen paces before Annan again forced his tongue to speak. “Gethin.”

The Baptist did not stop.

“What happened to Marek?”

“I know not. The men-at-arms returned empty-handed.”

“What about Lord Hugh?”

“He lives—unhappily for you. He took the other knights and has gone on a mission of his own.” Off to Annan’s right, the shadow of the donkey stopped. “Be wary. Bishop Roderic is most dangerous through his pawns. You may have cooled the Templar’s zeal tonight, but Hugh de Guerrant is a blade of another metal. Perhaps he will yet teach you the truth of my words about the bishop’s ravaging.”

For a moment there was only the silence of night. Then the donkey’s jostling steps resumed, and Annan was left to sit in the dark, alone, until even the hoofbeats were only a memory in the darkness.

Chapter XV

IN THE BLACK depths of midnight Mairead woke with her sweat cold upon her scalp. She had heard his voice. Hugh de Guerrant’s voice. She was certain of it.

She rolled onto her back and lay still, her breath trapped in her chest as she listened. Only the scampering footsteps of a mouse and the night wind purring outside her window marred the silence. She lay back against the pillow, her blankets rolled down to her waist. Had she imagined it? Could it have been only a dream?

Outside, the stamp of a horse’s foot made her heart catch. Carefully, shooting a quick glance at her bedchamber’s closed door, she rolled to the bed’s edge and slid from beneath the blankets. The cold stone of the floor sent an immediate chill up her spine, but she hardly noticed. At the window, she peered around the corner. No moon lit the clouds, but she could see the silhouettes of horses in the yard below. One tossed its head, bit clanking.

“No…” The word was soft, a reflex. She twisted her neck to see the sky, forgetting there was no moon, no stars, no light on the horizon to tell her the hour. But she knew it was too early. The hard, cold knot in the deepest part of her stomach told her it was too early for vassals to be about or for the lord himself to have returned from his trip to Constantinople.

It could be Annan.

The thought seized her, then fled. It was not Annan; it could not be Annan. She would not have confused his voice with Lord Hugh’s.

Muffled footsteps slapped the hall outside her door, and she froze. She should have thought of finding a weapon before this, should have located a
poniard
that could now have been within easy reach. She would not be taken without a struggle, not this time. The price for her soul would be a high one.

But the footsteps did not stop at her door. Farther down the hall, she could hear the rap of a bony hand against a door. Lady Eloise’s door, she guessed.

“Lady—” The voice was that of the servant Ducard.

Again, a horse stirred outside, and she turned her head in time to hear the clank of mail armor and the low voices of men. The coiled tension in her muscles shot loose. She shoved away from the window, her bare feet silent against the floor that lay between her and the chair across which the maidservant had cast her clothes.

She did not know these men or their purpose. Perhaps she had only dreamed Hugh’s voice. But she would not stay here until she knew. She was not safe here. The honor of the nobleman could not protect her so well as the arm of the tourneyer. If she were to die, it would not be defenseless in the silence of night.

With hands as cold as the stone beneath her feet, she dressed herself in the blue gown from the day before and found her cloak folded atop the wooden
coffer
at the foot of the bed. Clutching its rough bulk to her chest, she crept to the door and listened at the crack.

Lady Eloise’s door opened and her footsteps clacked down the hall. “Did you inform him that gentlemen do not rouse ladies from their sleep? Not even in this heathen land is such accepted! Did you tell him that?”

“Yes, mistress. But he said it was urgent.”

Mairead lowered her face to the warm pile of cloak in her arms. It smelled of horse and wind and sun.

“Urgent, my eye.” They passed Mairead’s chamber door.

“I thought it might be about his lordship. The Norman did not say.”

Mairead closed her eyes. Then it
was
him!
Oh God, why?
Was this fate to be her destiny?

The footsteps faded once more into stillness. She inhaled, swelling her lungs, then yanked open the door.

The hall before her loomed silent and blind. Casting her cloak over her shoulders, she threw one searching glance behind her in the direction taken by Lady Eloise and her servant, then fled to the narrow stairwell that would lead her to the cool freedom of the night.

She ran round the back of the keep, the silk and wool of her clothing whispering as she ran. At the west wall, she stopped. The horses were still in the yard, heads low, their riders either inside with their master or slouching in the shadows. She wrapped herself in her cloak and forced herself to creep across the empty ground that separated her from the stables. Neither the horses nor the men-at-arms stirred.

The stable was dark and warm with the heavy smell of animals. “Marek?” she whispered too softly for him to hear, knowing that at least half a dozen others might sleep here during the warm months. Breathing between her teeth, she crept down the row of stalls. Airn lifted his dark head over his door and blew through his nostrils. In the stall beside him, Marek’s palfrey, Duncan, shifted in the straw.

She leaned over the door. “Marek?”

The dark shape at the bay’s hind feet did not move, but she could hear him snoring softly. “Marek.”

Outside, one of the men-at-arms’ voices drifted across the yard. Footsteps sounded against the flagstones, drawing near to the stable.