A Flame Run Wild (37 page)

"If we are stuck here long enough, you will find out." He briefly held his nose. "No air after a few hours. Less with so many people. The air shafts must have stopped up with debris after a few centuries.'' He jerked his head toward a pile of crumbling bones in a dark corner. ' 'When I found him, I knew something was wrong with the place. The problem wasn't the sealing block, so ..." He sidled over to peer at Liliane's wound with the practicality of one accustomed to death. "Nasty." Liliane's hair fascinated him. "She is as much Turk as you. Why would she dress like a man to live in a sewer and look after a raggedy bunch like us?"

"She was weary of war and did not want anyone else to die."

"She is a little crazy, isn't she? In war, it is a lot easier to kill than save lives. Wars are for killing." He sat back on his heels. "She could fight, though. I never thought a woman could really fight." His head jerked around as one of the babies whimpered. "Shut that brat up! Give it some more wine."

They waited two hours; the air was becoming unbearably close. At length, Alexandre stood up. "I must go outside to see if our friends have left."

His savier, who called himself Raschid, jumped up. "No, that's my job. I know the mosque and all the streets around here. I'll be less easy to spot than you."

Alexandre smiled. "Perhaps I should come along to guard your back."

"No, you should stay here and look after the children. If I do not come back, it will be up to you to get them out." He issued orders with the superior authority of one confidently aware he has saved another's life. His head lifted. "And do not worry. If they catch me, I shall not tell them anything."

Alexandre's smile softened. "I know." He tossed Raschid his dirk. "You may need this."

Raschid thumbed the jewel-studded hilt, then ran his thumb critically along the fine blade. "Not bad. We Saracens make better, of course, but this will do." He thrust the dirk in his sash. "Douse the light." When the candle went out, he opened the door, letting in a breath of fresh air, then the block closed behind him with a whisper.

Alexandre sat with Liliane and the children in the silent, stifling dark. A half hour passed; the air grew unbreathable again. He opened the block and peered into the darkness. Only rats rustled across the old mosque floors. Cautiously, he ventured out and checked the rubble at the rear of the building. Moonlight shone on the mounds as if they were dunes in the midst of the city. A scratch of stone sounded behind him. He whirled, his sword half drawn. "Hey!" came a rough, familiar whisper. "It's me. I've snitched a wagon. Bring your lady and the kids."

Alexandre wasted no time. No doubt about it, Raschid was a marvel. Commandeering a wagon must have been as easy as conjuring up a flying carpet.

"Got any place to take this bunch?" the boy queried when everyone was aboard his conveyance, a canopied contraption mounted on a ramshackle wagon pulled by a donkey.

"My villa. I will drive."

A few streets from the Street of Clouds, Alexandre jumped down from the driver's seat. "Take over,
mon
brave. I had better make sure we do not have company." He trotted toward the villa. Sure enough, at the villa gates Louis blustered with the remains of his cesspit crew. Yves was pale but determined. Atop the villa walls poised Brueil men-at-arms with crossbows.

Using his rooftop route, Alexandre slipped into his bedroom, rapidly stripped and pulled on a loose robe. As an afterthought, he hastily dunked his dirty face in the washbowl and wiped it on his sleeve. Then he adopted a sickly appearance and wandered out upon the villa roof to peer down at the crowd in the street. Startled, they stared up at him, Louis's black eyes filling with confusion, then anger.

"You are making a damned pest of yourself with your concern for my health, Louis," Alexandre called down querulously. "Enough racket is coming up to raise Lazarus. As you can see, I am up and about, so have the civility to be off."

His face nearly black, Louis started to say something, then thought better of it. "My apologies, my lord," he gritted. "Perhaps you had best have a talk with your steward about using your signet ring to run up his dairy accounts. Tis likely to cause peculiar rumors."

Alexandre casually held up his ring. "Never listen to gossip, Louis." He strolled from the rampart, leaving the muttering crew below to disperse. Looking down into his own courtyard, he summoned up three bowmen and a pikeman. He had redressed by the time they reached him. "Come with me."

He led them over the roofs to where the cart waited on the street. "Escort this cart to the harbor at cost of your life. The occupants will embark to Nahariya. Draw no attention to yourselves and their boarding. You, pikeman, climb in; that pike is conspicuous."

The pikeman pulled back the canopy, then started. Dark eyes stared at him in fear and hostility. "Milord," he stammered, "these are beggar brats!"

"Each worth his weight in gold." Alexandre ruffled a child's hair. "The little ones will be wanting their milk before they leave. See to it." Then, with the children's help, he carefully eased out the limp form of Jefar el din, whose telltale fair hair had been discreetly retucked into the stained
haik
. Her white face fell toward his chest, and the children, eyed her with sad resignation.

"Hey!" Raschid called as Alexandre started to turn away. "You forgot your dirk!" Reluctantly, he thrust it forth.

"Keep it, but pry out the jewels, else they tempt unsavory characters."

"Huh, these baubles will be better than an invitation to a party." Raschid grunted in derision. "I am as unsavory as they come." He grinned and flicked the dirk tip. "Point taken, though. A jewel or two ought to set me up with my sister and a few likely wenches. Pity that blonde of yours is not in business; she would be a plum draw." He sobered. "A man with any stomach to him would not mind wedding a woman like her"— his eyes narrowed sternly—"and if you have not, you ought. I shall be back in a week to see if she is all right."

"Point taken," Alexandre replied softly. He waited, watching until the cart rattled to the end of the street and rounded the corner. A few small, tentative hands waved from the canopy's back slit. His throat tightened as his eyes dropped to Liliane: If you must die, my love, you could have chosen no better cause, no better inheritors of all you valued in life. For these, Christ went to the cross with love and self-sacrifice. Who am I to judge, where He and you did not?

He carried Liliane to the main gate of the villa, and with a terrible sense of loneliness, waited for the servants to admit them. She was so quiet—Liliane, who had rarely been quiet. She had been filled with energy, never waiting for events to shape her, but rather shaping them. Had she never seen a sword, she would have been a fighter. She had gone on fighting until she had been beaten down more by him than by any enemy. She had lived for justice, and he, whom she loved most, had given her little, for pride had been his icy, faithless paramour. Now, for the rest of his life, he might lie with pride and find it bloated, mocking company.

The retainers were much startled and dismayed to see Jefar el din again. Having never trusted the Saracen, they also feared that Richard's favor would only decline further if Alexandre's harboring of Jefar were known. Yves fretted all the way up the stairs to the bedchamber. "If the Signes find out about this, they will squeal like pigs to Richard. They are just looking for something . . ."

Alexandre ignored him. He laid his burden down on the bedchamber pallet. "Close the door and curtains," he ordered.

With a sigh, Yves swept them closed and turned back to the bed to see Alexandre remove Jefar el din's
haik
. He gasped. "Mother of God! My lady! No, it's not possible! What demon has done this?"

"Demon, Yves? You have scant knowledge of women if you underestimate their capacity to change themselves from one form to another. They will do it on a whim, for revenge, for love"— he stroked Liliane's cheek—"and this one has proven particularly willful."

"Milady followed you from France." Yves sat weakly upon the end of the pallet. "When I think ..."

"Do not think. And do not talk—to anyone. Liliane has saved my skin from the Signes more than once in Palestine; they would kill her if they realized it."

Yves's homely little face became long. "In a whistle, they would." He flicked a glance at the blood staining Liliane's aba; from the expanse of the blotch, he feared that the Signes might be spared any future effort in dispatching their disloyal cousin. "Shall I send for a Hospitaler?"

"No, he would report to Richard and the news would leak; even Philip must not know that Liliane is here. Send me Vincent; he's done enough patching and stitching in his time."

Not enough for this, predicted Yves, but went along as he was bid.

Vincent was equally unoptimistic. "I've done my best," he said quietly when he was finished tending to Liliane's wound, "but, my lord, the cut is deep. I doubt your lady will toe. Even a Hospitaler could not save her now, after such loss of blood.''

"She will live," Alexandre said flatly. "Providence would not let me find her, only to have her die."

Providence is mysterious, thought Yves, particularly when one presumes to know its course. He and Vincent discreetly took their leave.

Alexandre tried to make Liliane more comfortable. She was beginning to stir restlessly as the pain of her wound penetrated her deep sleep. Though nearly as tall as he, she looked small now, as if shrunken in upon herself. Nights without sleep in the tunnels had told upon her; anyone who saw her beauty now must do so through the eyes of love. She was pale with the sickly cast of ivory; her eyes were stained beneath with shadow.

Alexandre was deeply troubled for want of a trained physician; but he knew that Louis would have the villa watched and be suspicious about the visit of a Hospitaler knight; also, Hospitalers commonly bled their patients, which from Alexandre's observation, commonly led to the patient's direct demise. Practical Vincent had better sense than the Hospitalers, but little knowledge of fine surgery. Liliane was still bleeding and in need of internal stitching beyond Vincent's skill. Also, in this climate, wounds festered quickly; a mere blister could turn deadly. With haunting doubts he would not voice aloud, Alexandre lay down beside Liliane and, for the first time since childhood, prayed.

Exhausted, Alexandre fell asleep, only to awaken perhaps an hour later to feel blood seeping between his fingers. Liliane was so terribly still that he feared she was dead. She must have stirred violently for the bandage was partly dislodged. Fighting panic, he applied a new bandage; in less than ten minutes, it was nearly as sodden as the first. The wolfish phantoms in his mind now snarled like fiends. She was going to die! His prayers were as ashes, and no sun would rise for Liliane to end this dark night.

Her last memory of him for eternity would be his desertion. ... He sank to his knees, feeling nothing, her lax wrist caught in his hand as he slumped against the bed. His mind blackened as the stain upon the bed linen widened. Her pulse was fading. She was going . . . where?

Shall I go before thee to that unknown? He wondered in despair. Shall I await thee with some candle burning to light thy way? He groped for the oil light upon the stone, then for the dirk, only to remember it was gone. Where was his sword? His fingers white on the clay lamp handle, he rifled the room for his sword with increasing impatience. I must find it, he thought tensely. She is leaving so quickly . . . where is the damned thing? It has always been ready enough to snatch a life! Yves . . . blast him, Yves must have taken it!

With a raging cry on his lips, he jerked open the door curtain ... to see Raschid and a wizened Saracen. Raschid held up the dirk to show a gap in the jewels of its handle. "Old Ahmed does not work cheap on an infidel, but he is worth a small ruby. I thought you might be needing a physician, so I brought him in the cart."

Alexandre stared at them for a moment, then stepped back into the bedchamber. "Liliane is bleeding to death," he muttered vaguely, "and I have need of my sword. Yves has it. If you will excuse me, I must find him."

Raschid and the old man exchanged looks, then the physician went directly to the bed. "Never mind, I'll fetch your sword," Raschid soothed Alexandre, catching his arm as he started to leave. "You stay here. Ahmed may need your assistance." He propelled Alexandre toward the bed; then scurried out of the room to find Yves.

Yves was sitting morosely in the kitchen, applying himself to a large wine fiacon. "Have you got your master's sword?" Raschid demanded in gutter French.

"Who the hell are you, you dirty twerp?" slurred Yves over the flacon.

"Im not a drooling drunk neglecting his duties," Rase hid cut back.

"Who's neglecting his duties?" Yves unsteadily waved Alexandre's sword with a regal air. "Everything is in control."

"Good lad," Raschid approved archly. "I suppose you can even boil water."

"Naturally."

"Then apply yourself to a pot, man! Your lady is in need of it." He strode off.

When he reached the master bedchamber, Raschid cast a sharp look at Alexandre, who hovered at Ahmed's elbow while he plied his needle. Alexandre had a curious air of calmness now, which Raschid was not sure he liked. He smiled at Alexandre reassuringly. "Yves is cleaning your sword. When you want it, just sing out and I'll bring it up to you."