The Belt of Gold (2 page)

“Where in the hell is she?”

The soldiers were tearing apart the packs from Targa's horse. Karros bellowed to them to strip the other prisoners, to search their horses. Restlessly he walked up and down the road, his mind on the boil. It was hot and he hated riding, but if he came back without that list, his master John Cerulis would deal with him harshly. How had she escaped? She had to have the list—the money proved it, surely, that she had exchanged it for the list. His gaze traveled slowly over the bleak brown hillsides. She had to be out there somewhere.

He turned to his horse. “You, you, and you, come with me. The rest of you know what to do.” Four men ought to be able to handle a single girl. In fact, he could imagine some very satisfying ways in which four men could handle a single girl. He waved to the others to keep on with their search, and with the three soldiers on his heels trotted away down the road, looking for some sign of where she had gone.

Theophano's clothes were ripped from the thorny brush and her feet hurt. She struggled on up the slope and over the top, panting at the effort.

From this high point, she could see down the road a good long way; she stopped, catching her breath, and straightened up to look around her. The road would take her off to Constantinople, if she followed it in this direction.

If she went back, within a few hours she could reach Chalcedon. In Chalcedon there would be food, water, wine, fresh clothes, and a way to make her plight known to the Basileus, who would then rescue her. Perhaps. But she dared not take that chance, not with the precious list now safe within the bosom of her dress, against her skin. She pressed her hand against it, glad. She had done what her Basileus had ordered. That lifted her heart like a jolt of strong wine.

She had to get back to Constantinople. She would lay the list into the Basileus's hands herself, or die in the attempt.

That gave her strength, and she started away down the slope again. Unfortunately the strength did not last very long. As she clambered downhill, the bleak, sunblasted slopes rose up around her as if they would swallow her entirely; the road disappeared; the flat, leathery-leafed brush tripped her and caught at her clothes and clogged her path. At the bottom of the hill she sat down, exhausted.

For a moment she was still, limp and empty of thoughts. The dust smelled bitter. Behind her something rustled in the brush, and she heard a twittering of birds.

She longed for Constantinople. For the comfort of her place in the Palace, her silken sheets and her bed, clean clothes. To bathe; to drink cool wine. Something good to eat. She imagined a baked fish on a bed of spinach and eggs. Her mouth watered.

Why had she ever come out here? Irresistibly tears drew into her eyes.

She cursed herself. She was a fool, a silly girl, as the Basileus often called her, and she deserved no pity. She had wanted this. A woman born of her rank was offered few choices in her life: she could become a nun and pray all her life, or she could marry and bear babies, immured as surely as a nun in the women's quarters of her husband's house. She could wait upon the Empress. That was Theophano's choice, and she had seen that as the opportunity to do other things as well, to serve the Basileus, to do deeds of great import. She had asked for this.

Do it, then, she told herself. Do it, and do not cry, and do not yield. What can happen to you, after all? You will be uncomfortable for a while, but in the end, if you persevere, you will be home again, your task fulfilled. Do it.

She got up, squared her shoulders, and faced the countryside. That way was Constantinople. All she had to do was keep walking.

Yet as she looked on the barren hills her heart sank again, and she felt again the shameful burning of her tears. Her hand rose to her breast. Even the soft crumple of the paper there could not spur her forward. She could not go on.

She started down again, to sit some more, and weep. But as she sank down her eyes detected a sort of smoke climbing into the sky, from beyond the hill she had just descended. It was a plume of dust. They were chasing her.

She sprang up. She knew who it was who chased her: the wretched Karros, surely, John Cerulis's bully boy. If Karros caught her, she would suffer a good deal of indignity. Lifting her skirts up out of the brush, she raced away toward the next slope, toward the road and Constantinople and safety.

2

“God, I hate churches,” Hagen said. “When we get home again, I'm never going inside another church. I've earned so much absolution, anyway, these two years, that when we get home, I'll sin for free the rest of my life.”

“Be quiet,” Rogerius said.

They had left their horses in a grove of trees at the gate, and now, approaching the little stone church, they unbuckled their sword belts and laid their weapons down on the uncovered porch at the door. Hagen went first into the church. He pushed back the hood of his cloak; inside the church, the jingle of his pilgrim's bells sounded noisy and irreverent.

The church was very small, six steps from door to altar. Fresh whitewash covered the walls and the dome. Disappointed, he saw that there were none of the magnificent pictures here that he had gotten used to finding in such places in the Holy Land. On the curved wall behind the altar was a plain cross of wood. With his brother beside him, Hagen knelt down to pray.

Rogerius crossed himself, pressed his palms together, lowered his head, closed his eyes, and gave himself up to devotions. Hagen shifted his weight from knee to knee, already restless. It was part of their penance that they could not pass by any church on their road without stopping to pray, and he was heartily sick of it. It irritated him that his brother, who had done the deeds for which they were now repenting with as much initial enthusiasm as Hagen, had become so passionately godly as a result. In as few words as possible Hagen asked for God's protection on their journey—they were still half the world away from home—and began to look curiously around him.

This church was little different from dozens of others they had seen in the twenty months they had been on pilgrimage. The ceiling was domed, and two little windows cut the side walls. A few stubs of candles were stuck onto the altar rail a few feet from him. This close to Constantinople, many palmers probably came by this way, going to and from Jerusalem. He wished there were some pictures to look at. His knees already hurt.

Then the door behind them opened and a single figure hurried into the church, and Hagen glanced keenly around.

He did not want either his horse or his sword stolen while he was reconciling himself to Heaven. But the hooded figure kneeling down at the altar was a woman.

A pretty woman. She tipped up her face toward the cross; her skin was smooth and pale, her cheeks brushed with color that had not come from God; her black hair swept back under her hood from a deep peak above her brow. She crossed herself in the Greek fashion and, turning, cast a look back over her shoulder at the door.

As she did so, she saw Hagen staring at her, and swiftly she lowered her eyes, and the color on her cheeks took on more the hue of nature. But she did not pray. Instead, crouched forward, she twisted to look behind her again, back toward the way she had come in.

Hagen looked where she was looking, and Rogerius nudged him hard in the side with his elbow. “This is a church,” his brother said. “Pray.”

Hagen ignored him. The door stood halfway open, and through the gap he could see several men on the porch and hear their muttered voices. He shifted his attention to the girl again; she was biting her lip, staring straight ahead of her, her hands tightly gripped together, and once again, while he watched, she threw a look of fear behind her at the door.

“What are you doing?” Rogerius asked.

With a nod of his head, Hagen indicated the girl; he got up and walked back through the church to the door.

He was a tall man, Hagen, even for a Frank, and when he went out the door, the several men standing there on the porch backed up quickly to let him through. They were Greeks, by their beards and leather armor. There were four of them. Hagen kept his eyes on them, reaching behind him for his sword belt on the porch, and standing there to buckle it on. The weight of his sword made him smile. He put his hands on his hips and smiling faced the four Greeks, who edged together into a tighter pack and pretended not to notice him.

“Here to talk to the Lord?” he said; he had learned a lot of Greek, in the course of the pilgrimage.

The four men shuffled their feet. One of them, a fat man who wore rosettes of red-dyed leather on his shoulders, turned his head and without meeting Hagen's eyes said, “On your way, barbarian.”

“Oh, no,” Hagan said. “You go on yours.”

The Greeks moved, their feet crunching on the stone porch and the single step, their leather armor creaking. The man with the red rosettes turned to one of his fellows and said, “Go in and get her.”

That man started toward the door. Hagen took a step after him, and the other Greeks swung to face the big Frank, and the door flew wide open and Rogerius stood there.

Shorter than Hagen, stockier, he filled up the doorway, and seeing his brother involved in this dispute, he put his shoulder to the door frame and looked the Greeks before him up and down.

“What's this?”

Hagen reached behind him for his brother's sword, the belt wrapped around the scabbard, and held it out to him. “These city people are after that girl in there.” He spoke Frankish.

“Oh,” Rogerius said, and glanced over his shoulder into the church. He slung the heavy brass-studded belt around his waist. “Well, that's too bad.”

“Look,” said the man with the red rosettes on his shoulders. “You two don't know what you are doing. Don't get yourselves into trouble here. That woman is no concern of yours.”

“Walk,” Hagen said, and put his hand to the hilt of his sword.

“I'm warning you—”

“I'm warning you, fellow. I've been all the way to Golgotha and I have a lot of currency with God, and I don't mind spending a little of it to rid the world of a few of you backwards-signing Greeks.”

Rogerius was looking at him, his forehead creased; he did not speak the language as well as Hagen. Behind him, suddenly, the girl appeared.

The Greeks saw her just as Hagen did, and as one man they lunged toward her. She was behind Rogerius, and when the Greeks jumped toward him, he stepped sideways, blocking their way. His sword leapt out of its scabbard with a clash of iron. Hagen swung around, putting the four Greeks between him and his brother. He whipped his long sword free, and as ever when he felt its power in his hands a heady passion filled him and he roared with exultation.

The Greeks scattered, two to the left, two to the right. The man with the red rosettes cried, “Away! Stand off—” None of them drew a weapon. Still backing away from the two Franks, they circled off the porch and banded together again in the churchyard.

“We'll get her later,” the fat man with the red rosettes said to the others, and herded them swiftly away. Looking back over his shoulder, he shouted, “And you, too, barbarians! Don't think you've gotten away with anything.”

Rogerius laughed. “What cowards.” His sword slithered back into its scabbard.

Hagen watched the Greeks, who were leaving the churchyard; there were several horses tied to the trees a hundred yards away, in the opposite direction from the two Franks' horses, and the Greeks mounted up and rode off at a brisk trot. Slowly Hagen put his sword up. He disliked drawing it without bloodying it; he imagined the sword to go hungry. Turning, he looked beyond his brother at the girl.

She was gone. “God's bones,” he said, and pushed past Rogerius into the church.

At the side of the church, the girl was struggling to climb out the narrow window. Her cloak hindered her and she flung it down, and Hagen bounded across the church and caught her around the waist.

“Let me go!” She twisted violently in his grasp and tried to hit him. He held her arms down against her sides; she was light as a child, and he held her without effort. She smelled wonderfully of roses. Rogerius picked up her cloak from the floor.

“What is happening here? Hagen, put her down. She won't go anywhere.”

“You think so?”

“Put her down,” Rogerius said.

Reluctantly Hagen lowered the girl down onto her feet, and Rogerius hung the cloak around her shoulders again. She looked from one to the other of them. In spite of the thick paint on her eyes and lips and cheeks, she was very pretty, and rich, too, by the weight of metal in her ears and around her neck. Her clothes were torn and filthy but her skin was white as cream, and her hair black as ebony.

She said, “I suppose I should thank you for saving my life.”

“I suppose you might want to,” Hagen said. “Were they trying to kill you? Why?”

“I don't know,” she said.

“You're lying,” Hagen said.

Swiftly he translated what she had said into Frankish, and Rogerius shook his head, exasperated. “She's lying.”

“See? He agrees with me,” Hagen told the girl, “and he's nowise as clever as I am. Come along with us. A church is no place to talk about things like this, and we are armed men now.”

The girl looked from him to his brother, and under her silk bodice her breast rose and fell in a deep noisy sigh. She walked toward the door with an air of being taken prisoner, and the two Franks followed her out.

They crossed the open yard toward their horses. The girl looked keenly down the road in both directions, obviously searching for the four Greek soldiers; she held her cloak tight over her breast with both little fists. Hagen wondered how she had come here. Her thin embroidered shoes, battered now, were worthless for walking. Probably the four Greeks had made off with her mount.

He said, “My name is Hagen, and this is my brother Rogerius. Our father was Reynard the Black. We are from the Braasefeldt, in Frankland, and we have been on pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher.”

“Tell her we mean her no harm,” Rogerius said, “and that God must have sent us to help her, because clearly those other people did mean her harm, and so she should be forthcoming with us.”

Hagen repeated this in Greek. The girl listened with no warmth in her expression, but when he was done, she put up her hand and brushed back a stray tress of her hair from her forehead and nodded to them both.

“Very well. I owe you my life—perhaps a good deal more than my life. My name is Theophano. I am a handmaiden of the Basileus Autocrator, whom God protects.”

Hagen looked at his brother. “She says she's a servant of the Empress.”

“Well, she's rich enough, look at the jewels around her neck.”

Hagen had already assessed her jewelry; he had killed people, during his bad days, for less than she was wearing, although of course he killed no women. He said, “What are you doing out here by yourself, Theophano? Why were those men after you?”

“I can't tell you,” said Theophano. “But I will pay you to take me to Constantinople. I'll pay you splendidly.”

“We are going to Constantinople anyway,” Hagen said.

“I'll pay you,” she said again.

Rogerius swung up into his saddle. Hagen said, “You would pay us best by telling us why you are in trouble.” His hands on her waist, he lifted her up behind his brother.

“You must believe me. I have done nothing wrong. Those men are enemies of the Basileus, whom God protects.”

Rogerius was looking impatiently at Hagen, and obedient to the look on his face Hagen told him what the girl was saying. Turning to his own horse, he stepped up into the saddle and gathered his reins, and side by side they started along the road.

“Don't harass her,” Rogerius said. “She's been through enough difficulties, can't you see that?”

The girl sat behind him, her arms around his waist, her breast against his back. Hagen saw that his brother's sympathies were engaged—Rogerius was quick to defend small, weak creatures. Hagen licked his smile maliciously wide.

“Do you want me to carry her?”

“No, no,” Rogerius said.

“Then you could look at her all you will. As it is, only I can see her.”

“I will carry her,” Rogerius said firmly.

“She's very pretty. Much prettier than the one in Bethlehem.”

“What do you think her trouble is?”

“Us, now.”

“Do you think she's really one of the Empress's women?”

Hagen shrugged. They had come through Constantinople on their way into the Holy Land, and he had learned there of the Empress Irene, who ruled in the Greek lands, alone, with no husband, although she kept the man's title of Basileus Autocrator. She had the reputation of being a she-wolf. She had taken the throne by force from her own son, whose eyes had been put out.

He turned to Theophano again. “Whose men were those who were after you?”

She looked gravely at him, her arms around his brother's waist, her wide blue eyes candid as a baby's. “I cannot tell you. Please, trust me.”

“We saved you, didn't we? Now the master of those men will bear us a grudge. We have to protect ourselves.”

“Such heroes as you must have no fear of anything,” she said.

Hagen put back his head and laughed a loud laugh. He told Rogerius what she had said, and Rogerius smiled wide and glanced over his shoulder at her, chuckling.

“Why are you laughing at me?” she asked, her pride clearly touched.

“Heroes we are not, my lady,” said Hagen. “We came on this pilgrimage because otherwise we would have been hanged, in Frankland.”

Her eyes grew wider. She shrank back away from Rogerius. “But you are men of gentle birth.”

“Our blood is as noble as any family's in Christendom—the King is our kinsman. That was why we had the choice between hanging and pilgrimage.”

“Then you have chosen wisely. God will save you. God will help you cleanse your souls.”

Hagen shrugged; he was keeping watch around them, as they travelled, for the four Greeks. He decided he liked her. In spite of the paint and the lies and her being Greek to begin with, he saw something honest and solid in her. He told Rogerius the trend of their conversation and his brother looked over his shoulder at her with a protecting and tender expression that made Hagen snort.