Behold the Dawn (35 page)

This was the Countess of Keaton. She lay curled beneath the blanket, her face hidden in the dark riot of her hair. Whether her sleep was real or feigned, he had been unable to decide. But the very fact that she was here turned the pit of his stomach cold.

Lord Hugh, standing with hands clasped behind his back, spoke over Roderic’s shoulder, “She’ll live, your Grace. She isn’t hurt so badly as that, and she’s convalescing nicely.”

Roderic whirled past him and stalked into the dark hallway. He waited until Hugh joined him, closing the cell door behind him.

“You fool!” Roderic spat. “It was Veritas’s plan that she die—not that you bring her here as bait in some absurd trap!”

In the flicker of the torchlight, Hugh’s eyes hardened. “Veritas changed the plan.”

“He had no right to change anything! And you had no right to take his advice without consulting me!” He clamped his arms across his chest and groped for the comforting weight of his crucifix. “You don’t even know for certain that this cloaked messenger
was
Veritas. It could have been a drunken Turk for all we know!”

“A drunken Turk who knew of Matthias and Annan and where to find the Lady Mairead? I think not. Besides,” Hugh came forward a step, “his plan is brilliant.”

“Hah!” Roderic pinched the crucifix harder. How could he tell Hugh that the plan’s brilliance was the very thing that left his insides shaking? “Jaffa is about to come under siege again—this time by a force three times our current strength—the Baptist has been seen preaching within these very walls, and now you have the audacity to lure my enemies into my bedchamber!”

Hugh arched an eyebrow. “The Baptist is here?”

“
Yes
.”

Hugh’s lips drew back, parting just enough to show his teeth. It was as close to a smile as Roderic had seen since they had left Normandy. “Then it appears,” he said, “that Veritas has maneuvered all your rats into one fire. Doesn’t it?”

Roderic could only glare as a sudden wave of nausea swept over him, muting upon his tongue the conviction that this fire would burn more than just the rats.

From Stephen’s castle to Jaffa was a ride of six days. Annan made it in little more than four and a half. When he stopped, at last, mere miles from the city, it was only to give way to the infidel hordes encamped in the plains roundabout.

He leaned an elbow against his saddlebow, squinting at the Turkish army. Then he straightened and inflated his chest with the first scent of the evening’s cooler air.

This was the fortress city of Jaffa, its repaired walls dark against the sunset red of the sea, pinpricks of early firelight just beginning to show through the window slits in the wall. Somewhere within those walls was Mairead—and probably Gethin and Father Roderic. All that separated Annan from them was a defeat. And with Saladin’s armies crawling just within sight, Jaffa’s watches would be double. It should be easier than teaching a cod to swim for him to engineer just such a defeat.
His
defeat.

Emptying his lungs, he laid the rein against Airn’s neck and clucked. “Come along then. I’ve it in my mind to reward the first deserving patrol I can find.”

The moon, swollen just beyond half-full and glowing a frothy yellow, hung above its distorted reflection in the sea. Annan wet his lips and tried to keep his breathing even. It was a useless effort. His body didn’t understand that the Frankish-Syrian patrol ambling on the beach below wasn’t yet a target. His limbs quivered in anticipation.

The soldiers’ equipage clanked, just loud enough to be heard above the sweep of the tide as it rose and fell and rose again. Annan touched a spur to Airn’s side, and the horse started forward.
God help me.

The fall of sand from the courser’s sliding hindquarters caught the attention of the Franks before he was halfway down the hill.

“
Arrêtez!
” one of them called, his mail sleeve glinting as he pointed.

The excitement of battle blossomed in Annan’s brain, but he kept his right hand away from his sword. The courser lunged the final steps to the ground and tore across the beach toward the city gates.

“
Arrêtez! Vous êtes en ètat d’arrestation!
” The knights scrambled to follow, the hoofbeats strangely muted against the wet sand. Annan could hear the kiss of battle-honed blades leaving their sheaths.

He clenched his teeth, his hand clamping down on the courser’s mouth, forcing it to slow its pace. The walls loomed before him; he was almost within their shadow. Any nearer and he would be shot by the archers on the embattlements before the knights could arrest him.

Hoofbeats pounded behind him. He waited, feeling the strain in the cords of his neck.
Almost, almost—now!
He grabbed for his sword and whirled the courser.

The nearest knight, little more than a length behind, hauled at his horse’s gaping mouth and slid to a stop in time to engage Annan.

If this had been a true battle, the young Frank’s head would have been rolling in the sand a long eternity before his sword could have met Annan’s. But, for just this once in his life, Annan wasn’t fighting to the death. He parried the youngster’s blow, feinted to the left where he knew his blade would be easily blocked, then spun his horse to face the arrival of the others.

“
Arrêtez là-bas! Se rendre!
”

“Sir Bartholomew, we have him!” cried another.

Annan disengaged his sword and swung it in front of him to guard his face. The dark-haired knight, probably their leader, judging from the way their ranks shimmied apart to let him through, laid the edge of his own sword against the tip of Annan’s. “
Qui vive?
”

“My name is Annan.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. His sword inched nearer. “Marcus Annan? The tourneyer?”

“Mayhap.” He let his lips smile. “If I say yes, does that mean you’ve caught a bigger fish than you’ve net for?”

Bartholomew’s eyelid twitched. “You’re under arrest.”

“What for?”

The squire on Bartholomew’s left tensed to grab Annan’s sword.

“For conspiracy against a holy Father of the Church and for the murder of a sworn knight of the Crusade.”

The squire’s mail-sheathed fingers caught hold of Annan’s blade and tore it from his grip. Neither Annan nor Bartholomew flinched.

Bartholomew kneed his horse forward and leaned the point of his blade against Annan’s heart. He smiled, his eye still twitching. “Come along. I hear the bishop is rather interested in seeing you one more time.”

Bartholomew and two of his knights escorted Annan through the city with exemplary haste. Save for the light from an occasional house of merriment, Jaffa lay in silence. The anticipation of battle and the inevitable fear of a city about to be laid under siege was a dank vapor upon the empty streets and the shadows that swayed like drunkards at every corner.

Finally, after weaving through street after narrow street, they dismounted before a building of three stories. Annan craned his head, trying to see if a light still burned in any of the windows, but the overhang of the second floor and, higher up, that of the third floor, precluded the sight of anything but a sliver of sky and its smattering of white-hot stars.

Bartholomew pounded a fist against the door, and Annan grounded his attention. The other two knights stood on either side of him. They each rested a hand on him, one on his right shoulder, the other on his upper left arm, probably hoping to remind him, by the mere pressure of their hands, that resistance was futile.

They hoped in vain.

He flexed his hand against the bite of the rope that bound his wrists in front of him, then clenched his fingers into a fist, feeling the swell of his upper arm against the rough homespun of his sleeve. They had taken his sword and dagger—as he had expected. And they had bound him tight enough to make his hands throb from lack of blood—something he
hadn’t
planned.

But if they thought he had any intention of continuing this docile act of following them like someone’s pet goat, they were mistaken. They did well to fear Marcus Annan’s reputation. A few minutes more, and they would discover why they feared.

Bartholomew pounded again, and this time the door creaked open. A hunched servant stepped halfway out, lofting a candle with one hand and trying to jam the hem of his tunic into his trousers with the other. “Stop it! Stop your banging! This is the bishop’s house. Ye can’t be banging on his doors!”

Bartholomew hesitated, probably weighing Roderic’s anger at being disturbed against his gratitude for the delivery of such a coveted captive. “I’ve brought him a prisoner.”

The servant, a Londoner from the sound of his accent, shook his head. “What’s his Grace want with prisoners? Take ‘em to the king or the Duke of Burgundy or whoever ‘tis ye answer to. We’ve no want of them.”

“He’ll want this one.”

The servant huffed and lifted his candle the better to see Annan. “Ah, well... Bring him in, then. If ye haven’t already woken his Grace up, we can at least keep your prisoner ‘til morn. Come.”

Bartholomew stepped aside, and the escort pushed Annan into the doorway. He tensed, ready to swing his arms against the servant’s candle and douse them all in darkness.

A voice stabbed across the street. “Wait, wait! Stop a minute! I know that bloke!”

His concentration snapped.
Marek?
He spun, bumping into one of the knights and setting them both off balance. In the flicker of the servant’s candle, he could see Peregrine Marek—in person and in direct defiance to orders—blundering into Bartholomew’s arms.

His fist clamped. What was that scurvy idiot doing here? Was the lad stark, raving drunk?

Marek pushed away from Bartholomew far enough to thump himself on the chest and then wave in Annan’s direction. “I knows him.”

“Do you now?” The Frank’s twitching eye looked him over. “And just how is it you know him?”

“I’m
with
him. Whatever he’s doin’ here—” another thump on the chest “—I’m doin’ it with ‘im.”

Bartholomew frowned, then turned to nod at the knight Annan had bumped against. “Throw him in, just in case the bishop wants to see him too.”

“That’s right. The blinking old bishop wants to see me too.” Marek smiled happily, and then before Bartholomew’s reaching hand could close round his collar, he slammed the hilt of a narrow-bladed dagger into the knight’s chin.

Bartholomew staggered back, and with a cry, the other two Franks lunged at Marek. Annan swung around and battered his bound hands into the stomach of the London servant. The man’s breath rushed from him in a gasp, and he and his candle fell into the mud of the street.

Annan plowed into the scuffle. He found one of the knights’ mail-clad fists and ran his hands down to the blade. The edges bit into the calluses of his palms, but he wrenched it away with a single sweep of his arms and clubbed its hilt against the knight’s face.

The man reeled, leaving only a ghost of movement where he had been standing. Annan flipped the sword around, took one step forward, and swung. He connected with the soft tissue of the man’s abdomen, and the knight fell with a groan.

Sword in front of his face, Annan pivoted toward the sounds of the continuing skirmish. “Marek!”

“I’m busy!”

That was more than enough to distinguish Marek’s voice from his opponent’s furious grunts. Annan tore into the fray, swinging wide to compensate for his blindness. This time the blade crashed against bone. The man stumbled, and Marek tackled him, finishing him with his dagger.

Annan turned in time to hear the old servant picking himself out of the mud. “Saints in Heaven—!”

Annan took one running step, met him before he could rise from his knees, and dealt him a solid blow with the flat of his blade on the back of the head. Behind him, a similar thud told him Marek had remembered to administer the same service to the groggy Bartholomew.

For a moment they listened to their own breath gusting in the sudden silence of the street.

“Think anybody heard us?” Marek asked.

“Would you like to tell me what in the name of the faith you’re doing here?”

“I came to help you, you great troll. Are your hands still tied?”

“What do
you
think?”

They withdrew into the shelter of the doorway, and Marek felt along Annan’s arms for the ropes.

“Where’s Warin?” Annan demanded.

“With Lady Eloise.” Marek inserted his blood-sticky blade between Annan’s wrists and slit the ropes in two quick cuts. “Don’t worry. They’re fine together.”

Rubbing his wrists, Annan growled. “I don’t suppose it even occurred to whatever swims around inside your head in place of a brain that plans are decided upon for a reason?”

“This plan had a fault in it.” Marek ducked his head out the doorway, shot a glance in either direction, then pulled himself back in and eased the door shut. “Most notably, that you’d be dead if I hadn’t decided to come along as protection.”

Annan’s snort wasn’t quite as emphatic as it should have been. Despite its inevitable crooked bent, Marek’s logic wasn’t entirely without truth.

“Besides,” Marek peered up at him, arms slack at his sides, “I had to help make this right.”

Annan sighed. Blood oozed from the cuts in his palms, and he pulled one hand away from the sword to wipe it against the front of his tunic. “Aye. I know you did.”

Somewhere down the passage, footsteps, no doubt of some awakened servant sent to find the meaning of the commotion in the street, creaked against the floorboards.

Annan glanced at Marek and gestured with his chin for the lad to go ahead. “Sheathe the sword,” he whispered.

Marek’s head flashed up and down in a nod. This was a ploy they had used more than once. Annan withdrew to the side of the foyer’s doorway where he would be hidden. The footsteps drew nearer, and Marek straightened the front of his tunic with a jerk before stepping into their path.

“Hallo! You there, is there a physician in the house?”

The glow of a candle fell across the threshold of the door, almost touching Annan’s feet. “What’s happened?” The servant’s voice was that of a young Londoner.