Kingdom of the Grail (13 page)

“Indeed,” said Sarissa, “I believe it did. But very, very small beginnings. Now she's here, and a whole army to yearn after . . .
Ai!
”

“There now,” Roland said. “Put your heart at rest. I sent her exactly where the good abbess knew she would go. She's in Sister Dhuoda's hands now. Sister Dhuoda,” he said with no little relish, “is the sword of the Lord. Strong men quail before her.”

Sarissa eyed him warily. “You're making fun of me.”

“By God and His holy Mother,” Roland assured her, “I am not. Your headstrong little Sister will find she's met her match.”

“I do hope so,” Sarissa said with the fervor of a long journey made even longer by that difficult companion.

Roland should go. Her tent was up; the servants had pitched it while they contended with Sister Rotruda. Her belongings were in it. There was a basin coming at the king's order, a bath and rest for her travel-weary bones. But he could not seem to tear himself away.

The last he had seen of her, she was standing with the rest of the queens' women before the gates of Chelles, watching the king ride off to the muster. He had put her resolutely out of his mind. She was nothing to him, nor he to her. She was no part of his world.

And yet she had come all unlooked for to this untidy tangle of a war, and for no reason at all, he was glad. It was as if—how odd; as if, now she had come, this land of Spain had become less hateful. He had never cursed it as Olivier had, but he did not love it, either. Now she was here, and he was somewhat less inclined to despise it.

Poor lady, she was swaying on her feet. She had traveled
far and fast to bring Charles the first good news he had had since he marched into Spain. With as little thought as when he had steadied her before the king, he swept her up and carried her into the tent.

CHAPTER 14

S
arissa was dizzy, as if she had been drinking a great deal of unwatered wine. But she had drunk nothing but the king's cup of welcome. Nor, despite what this arrogant creature seemed to think, had she taxed her strength unduly on the journey. Sister Rotruda had been a constant irritation, to be sure, but Sarissa had endured worse.

She tried to tell Roland that. He, of course, was not listening. He carried her into the tent as if she had been an invalid, laid her on the cot that the king's marvelously efficient servants had set up for her, and stood over her until she had eaten a sop of bread in watered wine and honey. He even, curse him, greeted Tarik, who sauntered in with grey cat-tail at its most insouciant angle, and said to that spirit of mischief, “Look after your lady, sir, and keep her safe.”

Insufferable. The Spanish war had done nothing to teach him humility. Nor—and that was maddening—had it in any way marred or faded his striking, half-inhuman beauty. She had let herself forget just how odd he was, and how strongly he could shake her composure.

As soon as he took himself away, her strength remembered itself. She settled her belongings to her satisfaction under Tarik's ironic yellow eye. She ascertained that her two young charges were indeed welcomed by the nuns, and that Sister Dhuoda was if anything more formidable than
Roland had foretold. Rotruda was already looking somewhat quenched—and that was a holy miracle.

The war was going poorly. She had known that since she ascended the wall of the Pyrenees and came down past Pamplona. The Frankish king's great triumphant crusade had shrunk and weakened till it was hardly more than the surrender of a few towns and a siege mounted against a city that had promised in the beginning to submit to him.

Neither Franks nor Spaniards were at all enamored of one another. The Franks had not the art the infidels had of conquering gracefully. Even Charles, for all his charm and easy manner, was more at ease with a sword than with the soft words of diplomacy.

It was still an impressive army. It maintained discipline in the face of a land and a climate that were altogether alien to it. The camp was remarkably clean as siege-camps went—the king's influence, that—and the men were not permitted to languish in boredom. Companies that did not man the engines or maintain the camp were detailed to supply duty, or else to keep the land clear of rebels, whether Christian or Muslim.

Sarissa traced the borders of the army, walking wide of the siege-lines and the recalcitrant walls. There were banners from all over the kingdom of the Franks—even half-pagan Saxons, rebel Lombards and Bavarians, and companies of men from Italy, quite like in their dark wiry smallness to the people of Spain. It was marvelous to see so many nations brought together under one king. Small wonder that he dreamed of adding Spain to it—and had leaped at the chance when it was offered.

As she walked the borders of the camp, she took the measure of the spirits within. There was anger in plenty, frustration, outrage. And a dark thing in the heart of it, that fed on ill will.

There was darkness enough in the world, but this was the one she had come to find. Twice now the spirit in her had led her to the royal court of the Franks. Durandal had taken substance there—and so, it seemed, had the power against which it had been made. Both the light and the dark were in this place, in the circle of souls about Charles the king.

Both light and dark could be incarnated in the same
man—the man whom Durandal had chosen to wield it. The nagging of doubt had lessened not at all since the army left Francia. The long quiet months with the queen had nurtured it. There was no threat to that lady or the new lives she had conceived as soon as might be after the loss of her daughter. That shadow had marched away with the king.

As Sarissa circled the camp, she laid down wards. If any dark thing passed them, coming or going, she would know. She would find the master, the enemy. And the second war, the greater war, would begin.

Nine ladies stood round a table of stone, nine enchantresses clad in white. Light poured down upon them through the high dome of a roof. The air was full of singing: a song as pure and high and unearthly as the stars' own music.

The chief of the enchantresses approached the table, an altar of dawn-grey stone unadorned. One thing only lay upon it: a silver shrine. Four fierce winged creatures upheld it, that seemed wrought of silver and gold and gems, until the light caught one wild golden eye. Then it seemed that they lived, but stilled to stone.

The lady in white bowed low before the shrine. The light streamed over her, seeming tangible as water. With great reverence she opened the silver doors.

Light flooded from them, and music so piercing sweet that the nine ladies gasped in unison. All their senses were overwhelmed, inundated, drowned in supernal sweetness. It was beyond mortal bearing; but they were somewhat more than mortal.

She who had opened the shrine lifted from it the source of all that splendor. It was an utterly simple, utterly earthly thing: a wooden cup without elegance or adornment. Its shape was pleasing to the hand, but there was little about it to delight the eye. All its beauty, all its glory, was in what it was, not in what it seemed to be.

She sang the Mass in that shrine of light, but the deity to whom she sang it was Mother and Goddess. The faith she professed, the words with which she professed it, were older far than the cult of Rome.

This, like Rome's rite, was blood-rite: blood of a god, caught in the cup that was called the Grail. The sun bowed
before it. The moon paused in its sphere. The earth lay still, drinking in its blessing.

Sarissa woke slowly. The dream of the Grail slipped away. The last of it was the body's memory: the smooth roundness of the cup in her hands, the light weight, the substance of it, plain olivewood, carved by a poor man for a poor man's supper. Yet it was imbued with the power of heaven.

She sighed and stretched and lay blinking in the dimness of her tent. If she closed her eyes, she could see another place altogether: a high and airy chamber with a window on the sky. That room was empty now, waiting for her to come back.

The edge of homesickness was not as sharp as it had been. Crossing the mountains, she had thought herself likely to die of it; but here on the threshold of the plain, she knew that she would live. And every day that she endured brought her closer to her return.

As she rose and dressed, combed and plaited her hair, she felt out the wards on the camp as if they had been limbs of her body. Small things had come and gone in the night, but nothing strong enough to rouse her. The darkness was still within, nested like a worm in an apple. In the handful of days since she came here it had been quiescent, but this morning it seemed to be stirring. Responding at last to the presence of her wards? Or was it waking for reasons of its own?

She would watch and wait, and attend the king as he had requested, between his morning toilet and his daily swim in the river.

Priests were singing Mass in the camp, if she had been minded to attend. This morning she was not. That other rite, even in dream, had nourished her soul as nothing else could. The strength it brought her, the deep joy even in her yearning to be home again, went with her into the king's presence.

He was seated outside his tent, taking the morning air. The usual flock of attendants surrounded him, though not as many as there would be later in the day. He greeted Sarissa with a vivid blue glance and the sudden brightness of a smile. “Lady!” he cried. “You look splendid this
morning. Glorious—beautiful! Is it good news? Fine weather? A friend?”

Sarissa matched his smile with a smile. “A dream,” she said, “no more. But a very pleasant one.”

“Ah,” said Charles. “You're blessed then. Will it come true?”

“I do hope so, my lord,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “Splendid! Come, sit beside me, and indulge me with patience while I settle a matter or two.”

Sarissa could hardly mistake the several meanings of that. Charles had a famous eye for women. In his queen's presence he kept it in check, confining himself to his mistresses and the occasional willing maid, and of course her majesty if she was not with child. On the march, when the queen was left behind, he indulged himself freely. But never without consent. That, every tale agreed. The king would have only a willing woman—and women nearly always were, with Charles.

Maybe Sarissa would accept the tacit invitation. Maybe she would not. That was not why he had summoned her this morning, though tonight, or another night, might be a different matter. She sat by him in the place of honor while he settled a dispute between a pair of freemen, and sent one of his Companions out with an armed company to replenish the stores of meat and grain, and read over a capitulary that he had had a clerk copy to be sent to Francia. Not even the smallest detail escaped him: a man ill with coughing fever, a need for new privies, an inequity in the distribution of arrows between one wing of the army and another.

Somewhere between the capitulary and the privies, the king's guard changed. The new captain slipped smoothly into the place of the old, just behind the king's chair on his right hand. That happened to be almost directly in back of Sarissa.

She could feel him like a fire on her skin. Perhaps it was the dream of the Grail. Perhaps that reminder of who she was had made her more intensely aware of the power that was in him. Maybe he was stronger himself. He had had a year to hone his strength; and he had Durandal. The sword was wrought of magic, was magic. It could only have heightened what was in him already.

She had done a very dangerous thing in bringing that sword to this man. How dangerous, she had not allowed herself to think. Now she had to think it. She had to consider what it meant, and what would come of it. She had to try—

“Lady,” Charles said, startling her out of her reverie. “I beg your pardon for keeping you about so long. Can you forgive me?”

“Easily, my lord,” Sarissa said, recovering her wits quickly, wrenching her thoughts away from the man behind her. Where, she could not help but reflect, he could with utter ease slip a dagger between her ribs.

Not that one. He would destroy her with magic or cut her down in fair fight. Roland was not a man for the knife in the back.

“My lady,” said Charles, “I have a favor to ask of you. You may refuse it freely. But if you will, I have an offer of alliance. The man who offers it is an infidel emir who professes loyalty to Baghdad. One of his wives is Christian, and comes from Saragossa. I'm sending a man to him with suitably noble escort. It would please me greatly if you rode with them. You speak the languages of this country—none better, I'm told—and better yet, you can speak with the emir's wife as lady to wellborn lady. She has considerable influence with the emir, it's said.”

Sarissa inclined her head. “I'll be honored, sire.”

“Excellent!” said Charles. “It's not much more than half a day's ride to the estate where he's promised to meet my envoy. You'll leave before noon, and be there with the sunset. My chamberlain will fetch whatever you need for the journey.”

Sarissa glanced at the sun. There was precious little time to prepare. But if anyone was hoping that she would refuse on that account, he was disappointed. She bowed, smiled, was dismissed with a blessing on her head.