The Belt of Gold (3 page)

“You are probably right, about Rogerius,” he said to the girl. “Since we saw the places where Christ walked and died, he has been steadily becoming more and more holy. It's getting hard for me to keep company with him.”

“He speaks no Greek?” She peered at Rogerius over his shoulder.

“Very little.”

“Yet he has a kindly face.”

Rogerius looked down over his shoulder at her again, and she smiled at him.

Hagen turned forward again. Rogerius's new saintliness had not extended to a life of chastity. He had always done well with women; he would do well with this one too. Shut out of their company, Hagen cleared his throat, reproved himself for envy, and pointed up ahead of them, where the road wound over the barren hillside.

“That looks like a good place for an ambush. I'll go make sure her friends aren't waiting for us.” With a nudge of his heels, he lifted his horse into a gallop down the road, toward the curve in the distance, where great stones crowded up against the way.

The barbarian knight's cloak was of some coarse stuff that smelled of horses, but his face was noble, almost gentle, although of course not Greek. Theophano trusted him. She liked him better than his brother, perhaps because of his brother's insistence on asking questions. And she remembered how Hagen had caught her and held her against her will.

Now Hagen was going on ahead of them. Theophano slipped her hand inside her cloak, down under the silk of her tunic, and fingered out the list of names.

If John Cerulis's men came back in force, two knights would not stop them, even these two, with their great swords and their air of joy in fighting. She would have to give herself up to save lives. What was important was the list. If Cerulis's men found it, many more would die than Theophano. She leaned forward toward this knight who spoke little Greek and therefore certainly did not read Greek and held out the paper to him.

“Please,” she said. “Hide this.”

His brother had said he was of a holy bent. She had to trust him; she did trust him. He looked down at her, unsmiling, and took the paper.

“Hide it.” She pronounced the words slowly and exactly, nodding to him, and he understood. He understood better than she had hoped; he looked ahead of them toward his brother, now only a speck on the road between the great grey high-piled boulders, and without even unfolding the paper to look at it, he slipped it away inside his tunic.

Theophano sighed, relaxing. She smiled at him, and with the worry eased from her mind she saw that he was a handsome man, in his way, rough and without graces, but full of vigor. His body was pleasantly large and solid under the rough cloak. She leaned her cheek against his back, her arms around his waist.

“Theophano,” he said, caressing her name with his voice, and his hand clasped hers above his belt buckle. She smiled, her face against his back. Love knew all languages. The brother was coming back. She moved her fingers against her new friend's palm, a little promise in the touch.

She had heard that the hair of the western barbarians was blond, and Rogerius's hair was the gold of wheat, Hagen's almost white. As they rode on, they talked back and forth. She learned that they had been on pilgrimage for the better part of two years, going to the holy shrines of Syria and Palestine, and rather timidly she asked what sins they had committed to require so great a penance. That got from Hagen another roaring laugh, but no answer. She remembered the yell with which he had drawn his sword, and shivered. Men like this were best avoided, used only when necessary, paid promptly, dismissed at once. She would have to get rid of them, once she was safe in Constantinople, before they could embarrass her before the Basileus.

As soon as the thought formed, she was ashamed. They had saved her from the despicable Karros—more important than herself, they had saved her mission, however inadvertently. She should not be thinking of getting rid of them, but of rewarding them somehow, for their service to her and to the Basileus.

The road wound down the hillside before them, switching back and forth across the steep slope; the brother on his bay horse was far ahead now, galloping easily along before a plume of dust. She pressed her cheek against the harsh cloak of the man before her. That same rude power and lack of refinement that would have made them into fools at court would save her again if Karros tried to seize her from them. She saw the deeper lesson in that. God measured the value of men; she accepted what God sent to her, gladly and without judgment.

The knight before her murmured something to her. His hand pressed warm over hers. She smiled against his back. God would not mind if she gave this handsome and courageous knight the only reward she had to bestow. He spoke little Greek, but that was no hindrance, once they got past talking. She tightened her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to the warmth of his back.

“Theophono,” he said, crooning out the syllables. She smiled and shut her eyes, feeling very safe, at least for a while.

They stopped for the night at an inn beside the dark sea. The wind out of the west was blowing a storm down on them, and the waves were breaking on the rocks of the shore with a crash and hiss like a great boiling cauldron. The inn stood outside the little white town of Chrysopolis, where the ferry took on passengers for Constantinople, across the narrows that separated Asia from Europe.

Besides the common room, there were several smaller rooms on the second floor, which the innkeeper let out to overnight guests, and this night there were few travellers. Hagen and his brother and the girl Theophano hired a room all to themselves.

It would have mattered little to Rogerius and Theophano if they had been surrounded by strangers. They saw only each other. Somehow over the afternoon's ride their wordless companionship had ripened to a precipitous lust. From the moment he lifted her down from his horse, Rogerius touched her, his arm protectively around her shoulders, his head inclined toward her. Hand in hand, the two stood smiling like idiots while Hagen paid for their room, and, in the room, they leaned together, their gazes locked, almost breathless, until Hagen said something only half-worded and went out and left them alone.

It made him angry. He liked women; he loved his brother; but he had been riding all day long and wanted to get his weight off his feet and rest. Now he had to wander off through the inn looking for something to do, while his brother and this Greek slut bounced the bed around. In a sour mood, he went down to the common room and bought a jug of wine.

The common room was filling up with people—travellers and local folk—drinking, calling for food and for their friends. Alone, lonely, Hagen took the jug and went out behind the inn, off through the sharp-smelling pine trees, down through rocks and beds of fallen needles to the shore.

The wind was blasting in over the water. The sun was going down. Out across the black water, whitecaps danced and leapt as thick as stars in the sky of a clear night. Hagen sat down on a rock and pulled out the cork from his wine and took a long full drink of the wine.

Tomorrow they would take the ferry to Constantinople. That meant they were halfway home, because from Constantinople they could take a boat to Italy, and Italy was in the hands of the Franks. By Christmas they would be back at the Braasefeldt.

He drank more of the wine, remembering the great hall that his grandfather had built, with the skulls of bear and deer nailed to the rafters, the hearth of massive stones, the smell of meat roasting. The sound of Frankish voices. To hear his own tongue again! To taste beer again, real beer and not the thin insipid stuff these Easterners brewed. To eat the bread of home again—

He had plans, for when he reached home again. In alien lands, among strangers night after night, he had talked to Rogerius about Braasefeldt. They would build dikes all along the river, raise a mill, drain the marshes for farmland. No more robbery, no more feuds, no more going around looking for trouble and looking out for it, too, hands ever at their sword hilts, drawing at shadows. If he had not learned to pray as well as Rogerius, he had at least learned not to sin.

The wine tasted bitter but it relaxed him. It fed his lonely melancholy. Looking back, he saw now that he had wasted his youth in drunken brawls and getting revenge on his enemies. Avenging his father's murder had been necessary, although Reynard had been so bad a man it was inevitable that somebody would slay him; but most of the other feuds and quarrels Hagen had pursued with such single-minded devotion had been only excuses for frivolous crimes. Now he was ready for a quiet, honest life, ordering his serfs, protecting his borders, fighting the wars of his king. Marrying. Raising a brood of little boys with white hair and hot tempers, and little girls, too, to marry off into other families, to make alliances against his enemies. He was tired of being an outlaw. He wanted respect, connections, and honor.

The sun was gone. The light was bleeding from the sky. Already the sea was dark as the waters of Hell. He got up and walked unsteadily along the rocky shore, kicking stones into the water. The waves surged up and broke over the teeth of the rocks and spread their sloppy suds out and drew back, rattling and banging the cobbles of the beach. There in the west, pure and bright, the evening star shone like a drop of heavenly fire. The jug was empty. Turning his back to the wind, he trudged onward toward the inn.

He went in through the back of the yard, where cats fought over a mountain of garbage, and circling upwind of the stench, he headed for the side door into the inn. Halfway there, he stopped dead in his tracks. Off in the front of the inn, barely in sight around the corner, stood a man in leather armor, holding the reins of a group of horses.

Hagen recognized him at once: it was one of the Greeks from the little stone church. He broke into a run toward the front of the inn. His room was on the far side, in the second story. Just as he reached the corner of the inn, the other three Greeks from the church burst running out the front door.

The leader, the fat man with the red rosettes on his shoulders, saw Hagen and yelled. He leapt up into his saddle, whipped his reins out of his friend's hands, and charged straight at Hagen. The two men behind him were slower; one was dragging his leg.

The horse bolted down on Hagen, who dodged to one side, coming up against the wall of the inn. Wrenching his mount's head around, the Greek with the rosettes spurred it at a gallop toward the gate, and without waiting around for his men fled away down the road. The others were scrambling into their saddles and turning to follow. Hagen ran into the inn.

The common room was packed with people. He had to fight through the press of bodies to the stairs. There, the crowd eased; he went up the stairs two steps at a time and raced down the narrow corridor. The door to his room stood halfway open. Hagen shouted his brother's name and rushed into the room.

The bed was all pulled apart, the covers strewn halfway across the room, and the window shutters were thrown wide open. The only occupant was Rogerius, who lay naked in the middle of the room on his back, a great puddle of blood spreading across the floor. Hagen knelt down by his brother and lifted him, and from the first touch he knew that Rogerius was dead.

Still, he lifted him up carefully, to keep from hurting him, and held him in his arms, his mind stuck, waiting for his brother to come alive again.

A shadow across the door brought his attention that way. The innkeeper, spitting out an oath, strode into the room.

“Who did this? Who are you people?”

Hagen was struggling with himself; he loved his brother more than any other creature alive. Slowly he got himself to carry Rogerius across the room to the bed and lay him down there. A great wound in Rogerius's chest smeared blood all over Hagen's clothes, and there was a wound in the side of his neck also, a wound given from behind.

The innkeeper was pressing after him, shouting, “Who did this? Who did it?” With a sharp twist of his head Hagen faced him.

“Get out of here.”

“This is my inn!”

“I don't care; get out of here before I kill you.”

The innkeeper's jowls sagged. Slowly he backed up, away from Hagen, into the crowd of curious gawkers that now packed the doorway and the corridor outside. Whirling, the innkeeper drove them all out of the room again. The door shut.

Hagen took the patched and ragged sheet from the floor and laid it over his brother's body, and knelt down and said some prayers for Rogerius's soul, still fresh from life. He imagined the soul a white moth that fluttered up and up toward Heaven, burdened down by the weight of sin, and he sent his prayers to it like helping wings. Slowly, as he ran out of holy words, a red tide of rage drowned the white vision. He began to weep. Clutching his brother's hand, he cried and swore and thought about the four Greeks who had done this.

He thought about Theophano. She had not been with them when they ran out of the inn, and on the evidence, he guessed she had gone out the window.

He mastered himself; he opened the door, and finding the innkeeper outside in the hall he beckoned him into the room.

“What is this?” the innkeeper said. “I keep a decent establishment here. Things like this are very hard to explain to the authorities.”

“You didn't see those soldiers come up here?”

“Of course I did! You can't miss four heavily armed men, tramping into your establishment and—”

“You didn't stop them?”

“I didn't know what they wanted! Obviously they serve someone important, with uniforms like that—”

“Did you recognize their uniforms?”

“I didn't see them for very long—they just walked in and made straight for this room. They must have spied on you, somehow—they came in right after you left, in fact.”

Hagen was breathing heavily. He felt as if a great chunk of his body had been torn out. If he had not left—if he had been here when they came—he could not bring himself to look on his brother on the bed.