Behold the Dawn (34 page)

His lungs, his heart, and whatever else made its home within his chest collapsed with the weight of the knowledge. Hugh had found her again… He slammed his spurs to Airn’s sides, and the horse leapt into a headlong gallop. He pulled his sword as he rode, but he knew by the smell of the smoke that whoever had set the fire was long gone ere now.

At the brow of the hill, he reined to a stop. The move was reflex, a futile attempt to make good the hope that this was all a dream.

But it was not.

The walls of thick, square-cut stone stood as erect as ever, stolid and stalwart and stupid in their inability to know that a reason for them to stand no longer existed. Smoke trickled from the windows, from the arrow slits, from the tower
crenellations
, shadowing the courtyard under its film of gray and blurring from sight the possibility that Hugh de Guerrant—for who else could it be?—had left anyone living to tell the bleak tale. A groan built up inside, swelling his ribs, aching to be released. But he wouldn’t let it go.

He would not find Mairead. If Hugh had not at last taken her as his prize, then he would undoubtedly have made certain she was dead this time.

Warin reined up beside him. “Blessed Mary…” His hand moved to cross himself, his eyes on the shell of Stephen’s home. “These are the people you spoke of?”

Annan pricked Airn forward, his hand heavy on the reins, controlling the horse’s jitters. He had come here to find Mairead, to see if she still lived. But Gethin and his minions—his deceived and twisted minions—had bested him yet again.

They trotted through the gates. Burnt down to hardly more than the blackened iron hinges, they hung wide open on the gateposts. As they entered the courtyard, dodging the bodies of fallen men, none of whom were enemies, the wind shifted, blowing eastward into the red of the rising sun. The courtyard cleared, but there was nothing to see, save more bodies.

He reined to a stop and swallowed past the dryness of his throat. His eyes lifted of their own accord to find the window from which, a lifetime ago, Mairead had bid him farewell. It was empty, as he had known it would be.

He started to turn away, but the sound of a cry—high, shrill and unearthly, but definitely that of a woman—chilled his flesh upon his bones.

Warin’s horse spooked, half-rearing and running backward. “In the name of the saints—”

Another scream shivered in the morning air, but this time it was mostly inarticulate words. And this time, Annan could tell the voice was not Mairead’s.

Lady Eloise, then?

Sword still in hand, he dismounted and handed the reins to Warin. “Wait for me.”

He entered the foyer through gaping doors and stood for a moment, sword held before his left shoulder. The fire here had not burned as intensely as in the outbuildings. Perhaps someone had been able to put it out before it had properly started. Thin sunlight, choked with the smoke, trickled through the windows to either side of the door. The wooden furniture—chairs, tables, and coffers—bore the unmistakable black scars of the flames.

Relaxing his arms, he took a step forward. No one came to challenge his entry. No one seemed to know of it at all. Did that mean they were all dead? His stomach, empty since the repast of the night before, twisted.

The circular stairway at the far end of the passage had burned more thoroughly than much of the house. From what he could see around the curve of the wall, the steps had crumbled into cinders in as many as half a dozen places. Footprints not quite small enough to be a woman’s showed where someone had climbed through the soot. He stared at them. Mairead’s? His stomach cramped. It was a false hope. He knew it was a false hope.

The stairs groaned under his weight, the boards straining and cracking, but they held. He reached the top and turned the corner—right into the point of a blade.

“Stop!”

His left hand snapped up to thrust the blade away, even as his right hand brought his own sword swinging against his attacker’s neck. Before the blade could connect, his eyes found the other’s face, and he jerked both hands back as though they had been burnt. “Marek—”

“Annan—oh, God…” Marek swayed where he stood, and his free hand crept up to hold his shoulder. Blood, most of it dried deep red, stained his face, starting at a gash on his brow and streaking like angry fingers down across his cheek. Beneath the blood, his face was splotched purple, one cheek swollen and blackening with bruises.

“Mairead— What’s happened to Mairead?” Annan came forward, his heart thumping loud enough to drown his own thoughts. He reached to grasp the lad by the shoulders, but Marek fended him off.

“Don’t. My shoulder came out.” Marek closed his eyes, and his brow creased as though he were an old man. “I got it back in.”

“
Marek
.” Annan’s voice rumbled. “
What’s happened?
”

He just stood there, swaying. “They took her.”

Annan’s hands fell to his sides. Marek had allowed them to take her? He had stood here, alive, while Hugh de Guerrant committed God knew what atrocities against the woman whose life Annan had trusted to him? “You let them take her?”

Marek’s eyes snapped open, his pupils tiny against the red veins of his eyes.

“I trusted you!” Annan said. “I trusted you to die for her!”

“I tried.” He closed his eyes again, his voice hoarse.

Annan took a step closer, looming over the lad, the strength of his arms trembling. “Not hard enough.” And then he pushed past, suddenly wishing with all his heart that he had left Peregrine Marek to rot in that Glasgow dungeon.

In her chambers, he found Lady Eloise sitting in a half-burnt wreck of a chair, wrapped to her chin in a dirty gray blanket. Her eyes were closed, her silver hair falling around her face like a veil. She was shaking with more than cold.

Annan came farther into the room, and his rage turned chill within him. What had they done to her? But he knew. Another step showed him the body of Lord Stephen, a black hole in his stomach, eyes staring at the ceiling.

“Lady.” His voice cracked.

Her eyes flew open. They were glassy, unseeing. But she recognized him. “Master Annan.”

He came closer and knelt on one knee at her side. “Lady, I’m sorry. I brought this on your house.”

Her eyes focused with some difficulty, and she curled herself tighter into the blanket. “It was the will of God.”

And that made it less his fault? He swallowed past the thickness of his throat, and his eyes shifted to Stephen’s body. The man had been a friend. One of few. “We’ll bury him.”

She shook her head, and one arm emerged from the blanket and groped to find his shoulder. “Your boy… they dropped him over my balcony.”

His neck muscles spasmed. They dropped Marek from the balcony? Marek—his son, his brother, his friend? Marek, who
had
given his life for Mairead. Was the lad to be blamed if Heaven hadn’t been ready to take him?

Behind him, the frame of the door creaked, and he turned to see Marek leaning there, his swollen face damp. “Annan—”

“Never mind.” The words came out in the reflexive growl that had for so long frightened Mairead. He rose to his feet. “What about your shoulder?”

The lad looked at the floor. “It’ll be fine.”

“We’re leaving.” He turned back to Lady Eloise. She stared at him, waiting. He couldn’t very well abandon her here, no matter how desperate his need to pursue Mairead. “Where can I find you a haven?”

“Nowhere.”

“Lady, I can’t leave—”

She lifted her hand from her lap in a wave full of weariness. “Find Mairead. Ducard went for help. He’ll be back before the night falls. And if he is not...” She shrugged.

The scar on Annan’s cheek quivered. “Lady Eloise.”

She dragged her eyes up to his face.

“I’ll find them. Where, I don’t know. But I
will
find them.”

“I know where,” Marek said.

Annan turned. “What?”

Marek tilted his head up, and his shaggy hair fell over his eyes. “They’re taking her to Jaffa.”

“Jaffa…”

Marek lifted his head a bit more. “They said, to get her back, you have to bring Matthias of Claidmore in exchange.”

Annan froze. So
this
was Gethin’s master stroke.

“Annan!”

His senses jerked back into focus, and his hand scrambled for his sword, even as Marek leapt into the hallway to engage Warin.

“Stop!” Annan crossed the room and jerked the lad back by the hood of his jerkin. Marek grunted his pain, and Annan immediately regretted the act.

“It’s all right,” he said, as much to Warin as to Marek.

“But it’s him! The Templar!”

“It’s all right, lad.” Warin lowered his sword. “I’ve no notion of fighting you any longer.”

“And why’s that?” The swelling of Marek’s face stretched tight.

Annan didn’t let him answer. “Hugh’s taken her to Jaffa,” he told Warin.

“How do you know?”

He nodded to Marek. “How many hours head start have they?”

Marek lowered his sword slightly. His eyes remained flinty with suspicion. “Maybe five.”

“Five hours. If we take the time to bury Stephen and see Eloise to safety in the nearest Christian city, we could give pursuit in less than a day.”

Warin shook his head. “If the countess is still alive, Hugh will have to protect her fragile condition, and since time is short that would mean traveling by sea.”

Annan was silent, figuring in his mind. “Then they could already have reached port in St. Symeon.”

“Aye. Which means we wouldn’t be able to overtake them before they reach Jaffa itself—
if
Jaffa isn’t under siege by then.”

“Siege?” Marek’s frown burrowed deeper. “I thought peace negotiations were under way.”

Annan had heard rumors of the renewed siege while still in Antioch. It seemed the Turks couldn’t resist one more strike upon the Christian army. They had attacked Jaffa once already, within the last week, and the city had been saved only by Richard’s hasty intervention. “Sometimes the best peace is when there is no longer an enemy with whom to negotiate.”

“If Richard’s stuck in Jaffa, the Moslems could stamp out the whole Crusade in one more battle.”

Warin shook his head. “Richard’s summoned troops from Caesarea.”

“The battle could be over and done with before they get there.”

“They’ll get there.” Warin looked at Annan. “But if the Turks have the city surrounded how do you propose to get in?”

Annan rubbed the lines in his forehead. They were deeper than he remembered. “I don’t know.” His hand slid down his face. A prayer welled in his heart, and for the first time in sixteen years he didn’t crush it into silence.
Christ in Heaven, I am unworthy... but show me. Show me the way.

“If the Moslems don’t capture you, the Christians probably will. You realize that?”

His hand dropped from his face. He cocked his head. “That’s a bad thing?”

“It is if you’re a marked man, and after what happened in Antioch you undoubtedly fall into that category.”

Marek spoke, “Even after we gain entrance to the city, we’ll still have to find a way past the bishop’s personal defenses.”

“Maybe—” Annan pressed his lips together, staring at the ash-streaked stone of the passage wall. Warin was right. Besieged cities lived and died on their alertness. Anyone trying to gain entrance to Jaffa would probably be put under arrest until his identity could be ascertained.

But once Annan’s identity was known was it not likely he would be taken directly to Bishop Roderic as a prisoner?

“I’m going to let them capture me.”

Marek’s gaze sharpened. “What?”

“Once they’ve taken me to Father Roderic, I can escape.” He turned back into Eloise’s room. “Lady, I’m going to Jaffa. Marek and Brother Warin will stay here with you until I can return. Do you understand?”

Her shoulders lifted beneath the gray blanket, but her eyes stayed on the floor. “Go, Marcus Annan. If you can find the Lady Mairead, perhaps you deserve her after all.”

None of Stephen’s horses remained within the smoldering stable, so Annan tightened Airn’s girth once more and accepted the wallet of food Warin had scraped together from somewhere. The Templar looked him in the face, his gaze frank. “Good luck, Master Knight. God help you.”

“And you.” Annan’s gaze wandered to where Marek waited a pace off, his body rigid, his head down. Marek and his gentle heart. The guilt was killing him... guilt that Annan’s unthinking condemnation had only strengthened. “Laddie?”

Marek whirled. His eyes flashed in their hollow sockets. “Let me come with you.”

“Nay—”

“Annan, please. I need to come with you.”

“I said nay. You’ll stay with Brother Warin and Lady Eloise. They need you more than I do.”

Marek’s shoulders dropped.

“Marek.” Annan stepped closer and grasped the boy’s uninjured shoulder. “Listen to me.”

The lad looked up. The knot of muscle at the corner of his cheek worked itself back and forth.

Annan stared him in the eye, wanting to bore this into his brain more deeply than any message about swordsmanship or wisdom or keeping his confounded mouth shut. “I’m not sorry.”

“What?”

“That Hugh didn’t kill you. Don’t think I’m sorry you’re still alive.”

The smoke against the sun made shadows of Marek’s unruly hair, and Annan couldn’t see into his eyes enough to tell if that knowledge made any difference. The knot in the lad’s jaw didn’t relax.

At the other end of the courtyard, the shattered gates groaned in the wind.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Annan said. He gave Marek’s shoulder a squeeze, then turned to accept his reins from Warin. He mounted and paused to look over at the lad who had been his only companion for nigh on three years. “If you get out of Palestine alive, you go back to Maid Dolly.”

Marek’s head came up, his mouth opening. That was all Annan had time to see before he reined his courser around and spurred him into a run. They galloped through the broken gates, past the crumbled walls, into the gray-green of the hills.

Chapter XXV

RODERIC STOOD AT the mouth of the dark cell and stared at the woman upon the pallet. His heart pounded so hard it pained him to breathe, much less speak the fury tumbling in his brain.