Kingdom of the Grail (20 page)

“They don't know Roland well, then,” Turpin said dryly.

“They think they know enough. They don't trust him.”

“So they should not, if they ask him to do anything dishonorable. But if there is honor in it, and he was chosen, you can believe that he will accept the burden.”

“But if they don't tell him? If that angers him? Is he a man to take revenge for great slights?”

“I've never known him to be vindictive,” Turpin said. “Proud, strong-willed, protective of his honor, but he's never been one for hunting down those who offend him.”

“This will be worse than offense.”

“Is it a very great thing they want him to do? Will it cost him his life?”

The emir's wife lowered her eyes. Her fingers were twisting again, knotting in the folds of her mantle. “He is the champion.”

“And champions fight for the cause. Whatever that cause may be.”

She nodded.

“I would tell him,” Turpin said, “and pray for lenience in the matter of the oath. It seems you know him better than those others, whoever they may be.”

“They think he may be part a demon,” she said. “That frightens them.”

“It is said that his ancestor was a devil's get. But that was long ago.”

“It doesn't matter, if the blood is there. It's strong in him—but not the darkness. Only the magic. And the face. That's what they see, and for them it is enough.”

“I see,” said Turpin. “As, it appears, do you. I can't counsel you—that is for your own heart to do—but I can pray for you, and give you such blessing as in my power to give.”

He laid his hands on her bowed head, and spoke words of blessing and of peace. Then in a lovely small chapel not far from the room in which she had met him, he sang Mass for her and for a handful of her maids. She seemed to take great comfort from it. He was glad. She was a good woman, a loyal daughter of the faith. If she was also a loyal
daughter of Spain, that was as it should be, little as he or his king might wish it.

He would ponder the rest when he was alone, when he could make sense of the things she had said, and the mystery she had hinted at. He thought he knew what it might be. If that was so, then it was a great task Roland was given, indeed. And Turpin could not speak of it. He too was oath-bound, because he had been told in confession, which was sacrosanct.

She was clever, was the emir's wife, and protective after all of her secrets. If she did not tell Roland, then no one would. In her way she had laid on Turpin the burden that was laid on her.

Simple, he thought, and complex beyond understanding. In its way it was a very Frankish dilemma.

CHAPTER 22

I
t was harder to leave Agua Caliente than Roland would have believed possible. Musa in refusing to become Charles' ally had become his enemy, and yet Roland could not help thinking that this had been a place of great joy and friendship. He had found welcome here, gracious manners, praise and admiration, and the arms of a lover.

Now he must return to the siege at Saragossa. He had feared in his heart that Sarissa would not go, but when they readied to ride, Tarik was waiting in his white horse-guise.

Sarissa was not yet in evidence. Roland saw to his men, and greeted Turpin as he came into the courtyard. Musa walked arm in arm with the archbishop, as honored enemies might do: it was a kind of friendship, after all. Musa smiled at Roland and bowed lower than an emir need do to an infidel count. “My lord,” he said, “I wish you well.”

Roland bowed in return. “And I you, my lord, though we may fight on opposing sides of this war.”

“May it not come to that,” Musa said.

Roland bowed again. There was a flurry among the horses, an argument between stallions. When that was settled, Musa turned back to converse with Turpin. And Sarissa came out of the house, walking alone, dressed in her Saracen riding clothes.

Very carefully Roland forbore from his heart's desire, which was to sweep her up in his arms and kiss her till they
both were dizzy. He bowed to her as he had to Musa. She inclined her head. Tarik, wearing again the white stallion's shape, snorted laughter. Sarissa grandly ignored him, springing into the saddle and waiting with conspicuous patience for the rest to follow suit.

How very interesting, Roland thought, that she had done what a king might do, or a queen: come out last, as one who was entitled to do such a thing. Nor did anyone voice an objection.

Royalty indeed. Lesser rank would not dare this, even in an infidel's house.

They were not to ride out, he discovered, without a full farewell. Musa's servants, his men-at-arms, his kin who were in the house, had all gathered. As the Franks rode through the gate, they found the road lined with people.

Those were for Roland. They chanted his name as he rode past, a long roll of sound that seemed to carry them all down the dusty road to Saragossa. He was moved by it to do a thing he seldom did, for then the whole world knew he was there: he set his aurochs' horn to his lips and winded it. Even as softly as he blew on it, the sound shook the earth and trembled in the sky.

His men were grinning. They did love it when their commander was celebrated—and these were foreigners, infidels, which made it all the sweeter. Roland could not but do it justice: keep his head up, his back straight, and acknowledge the people's acclaim with all the grace that he had.

The crowd thinned as they rode on, until there was nothing but open country ahead. Roland found himself riding side by side with Sarissa. “You're a great favorite hereabouts now,” she said.

“Pity it failed to be of any use to my king.”

“Yes,” she said. “Pity.” But she did not seem unduly cast down.

“I half expected,” he said, “that you would stay in Agua Caliente.”

Her eyes flashed on him. “Did you? Why?”

“It's a pleasant place. You're clearly welcome there.”

“I'm welcome among the Franks.”

“More than welcome,” he said. “But it's a siege. There's nothing pleasant in it.”

“You are in it,” she said.

Even now he could blush when she spoke so. “You do this for me?”

She nodded. “Can you think of a better reason?”

“Myriads,” he said.

Her quick smile warmed him. “O modesty! You are enough. Believe that.”

“But when we come there,” he said, “how can we continue as we were? Your honor, your good name—”

“Will yours be harmed by association with me?”

“No,” he said. “But—”

“My honor is my own,” she said. “You can do it no harm.”

He slid eyes at her. “That could almost be reckoned an insult.”

“What, that you have no power to dishonor me? No man's love can do that.”

“You are not . . . of a mind with the rest of the world,” he said.

She did not take the bait. She only smiled her most infuriating smile and wandered off to torment someone else.

The siege was much the same as it had been when they left. The engines battered walls and gate. Both were held fast against the Franks.

After so long away, the stink of siege was overpowering. Roland envied Sarissa the Saracen veil that she drew over her mouth and nose as they passed the outer boundaries of the camp. Even coming from upwind, it was a mighty stench. He breathed as shallowly as he could, and tried not to taste the air that he drew in.

He would learn to bear it again. It was not a choice one had in war.

He had expected the stench, and the spread of trampled, barren land outward from its extent of a dozen days past. So too the toll that sieges took on men: boredom, sickness, quarrels and ill humor that could spread like a pestilence from company to company and nation to nation. But there was something else.

He had hardly looked to be welcomed back with shouts and wild cheering, or with such adulation as had seen him off from Agua Caliente. This was Turpin's embassy, not his; he had gone simply as commander of the guard.

Still, as he rode through the lines to the king's vantage, what began as a prickle in the spine grew to a distinct sense of enmity. It was a stench all its own, black and potent. At first he reckoned that there must be enemies in the camp, envoys from Saragossa perhaps; but he caught a man's eye in passing, and it focused on him. That was hate—clear, direct, and no doubt in it. This man hated Roland. Hated and feared him.

The man was not alone. It was a murmur through the ranks, a shadow passing over them, as word of his coming spread.
The witch. The witch is back.

Roland's shoulders tightened. His skin rippled. If he let go now, he would gratify them all.

He held to his human shape. He rode as he did in battle, as if he knew no doubt, no fear. Those were buried deep.
Never show fear
, Merlin had taught him even before the master-at-arms in his father's house.
Never let them know that they can overcome you.

He thought he knew who it might be, who had done this. The length of his absence would have been long enough if seeds had already been sown—and he did not doubt that they had. Ganelon had had a year to discover both what Roland was and that Roland had slain his demon servant. He had lain low, tutored the king's son, pretended to be no more than he seemed. Now, perhaps, he had begun to move. What was a year, after all, to a man who measured his life in thousands of them?

For the moment Roland had duties, and no proof that Ganelon had begun the whispers against him. He rode through that fog of hate, denser than the reek of men and dung and cookfires. He armored himself against it as he could, and did his best to be glad of one thing: that he would see his king again.

Charles' welcome was as glad as he could have wished, even though the king knew by then that Turpin brought back no new alliance. He greeted both Roland and Turpin with a broad and altogether unfeigned grin, and embraced them heartily, kissing each on both cheeks. He had, as it were by chance, a barrel of good wine for them, new bread and white cheese, and a haunch of roast ox. It was a coarser feast than they had had in Agua Caliente, but it was their own: their own king, their own camp, their own war.

With the king and the Companions, Roland had come as if to haven. But there was a storm without. It showed in the faces of certain of the pages and servants as they waited on the feasters, and in the eyes of courtiers who happened to be about. People were staring at Roland.

Whatever tales were being told of him, they had spread fast and far. He endured for as long as he could, till he had to slip away or leap out of his skin. Then he did a thing he had never yet done in camp among his own people: he kept his head down and altered his gait and let men think he was someone other than Roland of Brittany.

His own tent was waiting as if he had never left it: his belongings, his armor and weapons, his battle-brother Olivier with a jar of hoarded Frankish ale. The flap was tied back, Olivier sprawled at ease in the shade, grinning lazily as Roland slipped round the tent and dropped beside him.

“You owe me a ruby,” Olivier said.

Roland cursed as the hot flush rose to his cheeks. “Pest! Who told you?”

Olivier shrugged. “Everybody knows. But even if they didn't, I would. Her smile is different.”

“She never smiled before.”

“Yes,” said Olivier.

“And they call you a womanizing fool.”

“Why not?” Olivier said. “I am.” He filled a wooden cup and handed it to Roland. His own was empty, but he let it be.

“Tell me what else everybody knows,” Roland said after a swallow of warm brown ale. It was dreadful, but it tasted of home. It comforted him.

Olivier did not try to evade the question. “So you heard it, coming in.”

“I felt it,” Roland said.

“Fair knocked you down, did it?”

Roland shrugged.

Olivier frowned into the glare of daylight. For once he was not wearing the mask of the amiable idiot. “It began as soon as you left. People started whispering. Stories ran round, rumors—like fire in dry grass.”

“But for what? Why, and why just now? I've done nothing but what I always have.” Except, Roland thought, for
the slaying of the bull. But he had done that elsewhere, days after this would have begun.

“God knows why,” Olivier said, “or who started it. Did you do something before you went? Let someone see something he shouldn't?”

“Not a thing,” said Roland.

“Maybe,” Olivier mused, “it needed your absence, somehow. You've been with the king since Paderborn; you've been away at most a handful of days. Someone must be jealous. Or afraid of you.”

“Maybe,” Roland said. “But that much hate, that quickly—someone's been telling the truth.”

Olivier sat up sharply. “Not one of us. I'd swear it on holy relics.”

“I can betray myself well enough,” Roland said, “without help from the rest of you.”

“Not enough for this,” Olivier said. “This is concerted hate. You have an enemy, and he's clever. No one remembers where he first heard the rumors, but everyone has heard them. Everyone's afraid.”

“Tell me which stories they're telling,” Roland said.

“There are several,” said Olivier, “but the meat of them is this: that you come of a long line of Breton witches, that your true father was a devil, and that you can take any shape that suits you. They've been eyeing every creature that runs or flies, and swearing that each of them is you.”

“Ai,”
said Roland.

“Indeed,” said Olivier. “And then the whispers get lower, and people say to one another, ‘He's so close to the king. What's he doing to the king?' There's the hate, brother. There's the fear. A devil's get is the king's Companion, his champion. Add in envy from the court, and there's a fine brew of poison for a summer's siege.”

Roland set down his barely tasted cup of ale, clasped his knees, and rocked as he had done when he was a small feral child. There was comfort in drawing himself in as tightly as possible, as if he could go deeper inside himself and build the walls higher and keep out the world.

The world was calling him. The amulet under his tunic had begun to burn. Durandal was singing, faint but clear.

He unfolded. The sword lay on the cot, sheathed and
wrapped in his war-cloak. He uncovered it, drew it, sat again and laid it across his knees.

Olivier watched him in silence until he had gone still again. Then his battle-brother said, “You don't even look human.”

“I don't think I am,” Roland said, but distantly. He had, until now, used the sword as a sword: weapon of war, sharp and deadly but simple enough. But Durandal was more than a sword. Great power was in it, high magic.