A Flame Run Wild (38 page)

Alexandre's patient eyes seemed to reply: You lie, but I can wait.

Raschid moved to the bed. Standing at Alexandre's side, he divined the cause of his uneasiness. Alexandre's body held the tension of an arrow ready to be loosed from a bow. "How does it go?" Raschid murmured to the physician.

Ahmed fixed a grim red-rimmed eye on him. "Would you care to put a dirty finger or perhaps milord's toe on my suture knots? I have so much assistance I cannot concentrate. Please take this edgy young gentleman for a walk."

"We must humor the old man," Raschid gently advised Alexandre, taking his arm. Alexandre did not resist and followed
him quietly out onto the upper patio overlooking the sea. "Have
you slept? Eaten anything?" Raschid inquired of him. Alexandre
merely looked at the water, "I see." Raschid waved down at the
gate guard. "Tell your Yves to send up wine by way of our good
doctor. Hear that, Ahmed? We shall have wine with the special
spices I brought." The only reply from the bedchamber was a
grunt.

Raschid heaved himself up on the wall to smile reassuringly at Alexandre. "Your lady may get well, yet. Old Ahmed's stubborn as a goat. I learned long ago to pay him in advance; then he will lie on nails rather than lose his patient. A matter of professional pride. . . ." He went on chatting until the wine arrived. He poured a gobletful from the pitcher and handed it to Alexandre. "Come on, it will do you good. You may have a very sick patient to look after during me next week or so, you know. You cannot help her if you are laid out flat."

Indifferently, Alexandre drank. Less than a quarter hour later, he was flat on his back. Fleetingly, before he passed out on the rooftop, he remembered that Mohammedans did not touch liquor. Old Ahmed the goat and Raschid the liar had drugged him. Not only that, they kept him drugged until Liliane took a turn for the better.

Three days is a long time for a man to stay drunk; even Yves lacked that much ambition. Though he fussed and fumed about the presumptuous usurpers in his household, he delivered soup with the regularity of an hourglass and went back to brazenly bullying Philip's page, whose inquiries had grown tiresomely pressing.

On the fourth morning, Alexandre awoke with the sun is Ins eyes and his own stench in his nostrils. When he groggily thrust himself up on his elbows, his head screamed like a stabbed gull. With a moan, he fell back down. The padding of sandaled feet sounded by his head. He shuddered and grabbed at an ankle. Raschid danced neatly out of reach. "Good, you're up and about. You look fit enough to be hanged."

"If I ever get my hands on your miserable throat," Alexandre whispered hoarsely, "I am going to throttle you more surely than any rope." He rolled over and vomited, scarcely able to lift his head high enough to keep from choking himself. When he was done, he took a deep, unsteady breath, then abruptly, harshly remembered. "Is Liliane . . . ?"

"See for yourself."

Alexandre dragged himself to his feet and wove to the curtain which was half open to admit a breath of sea air to the sickroom. Liliane lay quietly, her chest gentry rising and falling. "She's asleep," Alexandre muttered unevenly. He absently rubbed the stubble at his jaw; from his beard length, he guessed that three, perhaps four days had passed.

He stumbled forward to take Liliane's hand as if it might break in his fingers; her hand was warm. She stirred, her stupor beginning to lift. Very soon now she would awaken. "Sweet God," he whispered. "Sweet God, bless that toad, Ahmed, for eternity."

"What about me?" prodded Raschid, lounging in the doorway.

"You, I am going to strangle with silver gloves and send to pimp for houris who will make you the richest guttersnipe in heaven."

Raschid laughed. "I want a melon-titted fat one for myself."

Alexandre started to laugh, too, then his expression abruptly altered. He retched again, in dry heaves. "Why," he muttered at last, "when there are a dozen more gentle drugs he might have used, did Ahmed have to poison me?"

"He made the selection at my request. A man whose gut is miserable cannot concentrate upon losing his mind."

"You damned, diabolical ..." Alexandre held his aching head. "I owe you more than my life, Raschid. I am not rich, but I shall try to give you whatever your greedy, magnificent heart desires. Name your reward."

Raschid grinned as he watched Liliane stir again. "Oh, do not worry. You can afford it." Without more ado, he sauntered to the bed, leaned over it, and placed a leisurely, precociously expert kiss on Liliane's lips.

For several moments, Liliane did not move, then her eyelids flickered and slowly opened. Dazedly, she stared up at the boy. "What . . . was that for?" she queried with a faint smile.

Raschid winked, "To demonstrate the advantages of embracing a man rather man a sword, Madame. I hope you have learned your first lesson." Giving an elaborate sigh, he inclined his head toward Alexandre. "With my deepest regrets, this retching, unwashed lout of a Frenchman must conduct the bulk of your studies." He lifted her hand and kissed it.
"Au revoir, Madame la Comtesse.
A pity we did not meet in your youth." With a flamboyant bow and superior smile for Alexandre, he departed.

"In your youth," Alexandre murmured dryly, "he was dragging his diapers and teething on whores' ankles."

He had meant to make Liliane laugh, but she did not. She had not even looked at him. Then slowly her head turned and her lovely eyes met his. "It was you ... in the tunnel."

"Like your laggard but faithful wolfhound." He took her hand. "Saida is gone. I gave her to Philip. She was quite willing to go to his bed, having never known mine. She is with him yet, if he has not tired of her."

"As you have tired of me," Liliane whispered. "Duty is dry fare when one has known feasts." Her hand lay lax in his.

"Do you think I searched all Acre, from the minarets to the very sewers, for you out of duty?" Alexandre kissed her fingers. "Can you imagine how delighted I was to hear that the prestigious Brueil signet was being used to buy milk at a whorehouse?"

"Are the children, safe?"

"They are now in Nahariya." His voice lost its forced levity. "You saved many innocent lives, Liliane. Even Raschid is grateful, for once in his cynical life."

"You saved us. I owe you thanks," she replied faintly.

"Give your thanks to Raschid." He told her of being lost in the cisterns, of the cart and old Ahmed. "Never was there a kiss more unselfishly earned than the one Raschid claimed, and little enough reward for all his brave service."

"Then he has served us more wisely than we serve Philip," she murmured obliquely, "and evaded the chains of gratitude."

Hearing the note of strain and fatigue in her voice, Alexandre stroked her brow. "Sleep now. Forget the war and Philip. Forget everything but that you must rest and heal, and that I love you." He kissed her softly, then began to hum an old French lullaby; whether from the lullaby or her exhaustion, he did not know, but in moments she was asleep.

Chapter 14

~

Golden Earrings

A rooftop in Acre

August 1191

D
uring the next few weeks of convalescence, Liliane could not forget the war. Through her restless dreams swarmed armed men, terrified women and homeless children, as well as her own phantoms of her beloved parents and Diego. Mockingly, Saida danced before her and multiplied into a thousand laughing, triumphant images. Then she saw hard blue sky and the rising sand of a desert storm. The storm spiraled down into a quicksand that was sucking her into its suffocating maw, and Jacques and Louis, Philip and Richard watched her as if she were an unnatural insect being dispatched. About her in the pit, those who had been massacred outside the Acre gates were feebly struggling. She was enveloped in choking blackness that became a cistern tunnel where she fought deadly, hideous shadows that advanced as crawling serpents. No matter how many she vanquished, more appeared until their segments upon the stones were multiplying like maggots. Alexandre fought beside her, but when she gratefully turned to him, she saw that his arms rose and fell as if weighted with lead. His eyes were cold and distant, yet he defended her mechanically. "No, no!" she cried. "Alexandre, it must not be like this!" Then a sword flashed in the darkness, and just before it struck her down, she saw that it was his.

"Liliane!" Alexandre's voice was near her ear, his arms were about her. She struggled, trying to fend him off, but his arms tightened. "Liliane, it is me. You are safe, my darling. You are having a nightmare."

Liliane's head jerked, then she let out a distracted sigh and opened her eyes. Alexandre was cradling her, trying to soothe her. "You see, 1 am here. I shall always be here for you. . . ."

Even if part of you has learned to hate me, she thought dazedly.

At the end of the second week, Liliane's pallet was movedto the awning-covered roof, where she was able to sit propped up on pillows and find relief from the heat that built by noon in the bedchamber. Gratefully, she let the sea breeze wash over her face and throat and arms, bare for once of Jefar's aba in the light of the sun. Bathed and oiled, her body was loosely clad in a sleeveless, white cotton chemise Raschid had brought as a gift from his sister.

With her golden hair hanging in a straight fall down the back of the pillow stack, she felt warm, disembodied, sexless, as if she had ceased to exist; both Liliane and Jefar were gone. They had died in the darkness somewhere beneath Acre. And now, who was this lost and aimless spirit that remained? This walker of gray, drifting clouds that dimmed the sun and shadowed the earth? This shell that belonged to neither earth nor hell nor heaven? Love's, loss had emptied her and set her free . . . now she was without purpose, without anchor.

Where hast thou gone, my heart, that you no longer beat within me? she wondered sadly. My eyes see the sun, yet merely frame its shape. My hands may touch another's flesh, yet feel nothing. Like Diego, I dwell in some other place beyond mourning. My own Alexandre has become a shadow filled with echoes. I would summon him close but cannot, so uncrossable is our distance. I would call to him, yet hear in return only my own despairing voice. I have become like the Greek nymph Echo, whose endless cry must fade unheeded.

Liliane heard Alexandre's familiar footsteps on the narrow stair that mounted the courtyard wall of the villa. Quietly, he walked to the pallet and, seeing she was awake, sat cross-legged beside her. "I have brought you something from the bazaar. A few Saracen vendors are back; it is beginning to look normal again."

"Normal." She spoke the work with quiet puzzlement.

"I know." He stared long into her eyes, then out to the sea. "Storms pass quickly and leave little behind of their passing. The new scars are already fading on the city stones and in the streets; missing faces will soon be forgotten. A mother, a lover, a friend will remember the dead for too short a lifetime."

"History will remember what lies in that ditch beyond the wall," she observed tonelessly. "When lions become jackals, all nature is offended."

"I watched the kill," Alexandre said softly. "Never before have I wished I were of another species," His blue eyes darkened. "For a tine, I feared you were among those massacred." For a moment, he appeared to be about to continue, then he held out a small silk-wrapped parcel. "For you. I hope you like them."

With slow fingers, Liliane undid the wrapping. A pair of golden earrings of fine, gold wire with tiny, ingeniously wrought birds and inlaid flowers of lapis lazuli lay upon the silk. "They are beautiful." She looked at him directly. "Are they to turn me into a woman again?"

His eyes held hers, then he picked up one of the earrings and traced the clever shape of the bird. "Art cannot improve upon nature ... yet artistry has its own rare voice, its strength to outlast wars, religions and epochs. These bits of gold were wrought for an exquisitely feminine woman, that all who see her may remember that great beauty and compassion sometimes grace our grotesque humanity." He lay the earring in her open hand resting upon the pallet. "A thousand years from now, another dusty, disenchanted warrior may so hope to adorn his love with these pretty birds and flowers. In their night, the warrior and his lady will wonderingly muse upon the ancient lovers who first delighted in so fanciful a gift. I have asked much of you; will you yield me yet another boon and wear my tokens?"

"Was ever a gift so beautifully given?" she murmured. "And yet, I fear I may not in honor accept it. In these last months I have done murder in the name of love and loyalty. From this life I sent many a soul with whom I had no grievance. My hour of the sword is done; my penance now begun. "I will not be long before Richard will carry this crusade from Acre and spend it upon the length and breadth of Palestine, but I shall not see it." Her lovely eyes darkened. "You shall have your wish at last, Alexandre. When I am healed, I shall leave the Holy Land."

A mixture of stunned relief and dismay filled Alexandre's eyes. "I know not what to say. I have dreamed of you safe in Provence."

"I shall not return to Provence, but to my own country."

He caught his breath as if it pained him. "To Spain? But why? There is no need ..."

"I have a need to see my home again."

"Provence is your home."

"No. I wanted to make it so, but that was the sweet delusion of a young bride. I am not wanted at Castle de Brueil and I do not feel young anymore, Alexandre, but very old; as old as Diego when he died. Not only my body but my spirit must heal; for that, I must go back to the land and people that offer me honest welcome."

"Am I not part of you?" he asked hoarsely. "Can you not look to me for sustenance?"

Liliane's heart felt as if it were cracking. The part of her that was Alexandre was the only part of her that was cruelly alive, burning as if scourged: The pain would burn with increasing harshness as long as she lived with him and let the remains of their love be stripped away. "No. We must go our different paths, Alexandre; I to Spain and you after Philip. I think destiny laughed the day we met."

Alexandre argued against her going to Spain as Liliane knew he would; he left no tack untried. She was grateful for his determination but remained resolute. Finally, he resorted to her sense of duty. "What of Diego? What of your cousins whom you have resolved to punish? With you in Spain, they will continue their crimes."

"I have learned many hard lessons in Palestine, Alexandre: one is that murder cannot punish murder; another is that you are quite competent to deal with my cousins. For all good intentions, my interference in that area has never been welcome, and in sum, I have proven men; troublesome to you than the Signes themselves. If Philip discovers you have hidden me all this time, your difficulties may become permanent."

"Aye, he might banish me back to France." Alexandre earnestly caught up her hand. "If you were there, I should reckon myself well out of favor and thank him in my heart."

"Philip knows your heart well enough, Alexandre, and he knows best how to keep it. He will have you, willing or not, at his side. He is France, whose lilies frame your soul. True, I might wait, at Castle de Brueil while Philip witches you away, for years . . . withering years of loneliness and loss. But I am not so strong as you may think. For all my parading in a man's guise, I am a woman with a woman's needs. I have found I cannot bear . . . loneliness." She paused, fighting for a steady tone, though her mind was blurring with pain. "I want an annulment, Alexandre. Philip will be only too glad to arrange it with his bishops, as he did his own annulment from Queen Ingeborg to marry Lady Agnes."

Alexandre's face went dead white, but he said nothing. His silence grew frighteningly long.

"Alexandre," she asked at last, "do you agree?"

"Why not?" he replied tonelessly. "I have given you little enough in land and titles, less of happiness, and nothing of security. I can offer no future but my wandering and desertion. One of us must be wise." He glanced down at the earrings. "If you will not wear my gifts for honor, then one day wear them for love remembered." His eyes were inky now as if a dark storm were rising in them. "Upon that day, I will love you as I did the first moment I saw your hair in firelight, heard your first trill of laughter. The night will forever blind me, for in its stars, I shall ever see your eyes when they were full of love for me. This was mine ..." His voice shaking, he abruptly drew away. A moment later, his boots sounded on the stone steps. She heard him call a curt order to the gatekeeper; the bar scraped up to let the gate creak open, then he was gone.

Liliane turned into the pillows and sobbed.

Sometime later, she heard a muted sound. Thinking it was Alexandre, she lifted her head. Raschid's dark eyes studied her with more shewdness than she liked. Kiki, who rode on his shoulder, took dates from him "but kept her soulful eyes on Liliane. "I saw the
comte
in the street. He had all the cheer of gallows bait. Methinks you are well enough to quarrel."

Her face stiffened at the unaccustomed sternness in Raschid's tone; she had become used to his spoiling her. "Alexandre and I owe you much, Raschid, but not explanations for our private life." She gingerly eased herself up on the pillows. "Will you take tea with me?"

"Tea." The word sounded like a click. "A tepid brew, served in your European fashion."

"Shall I stiffen it to rigor mort with honey, as you Saracens like it?"

He caught up a loose pillow, then dropped cross-legged on it.

"A taste of honey might not be amiss around here. And as for rigor mort, why not drop your Alexandre in the cup?"

"Raschid . . ."

He held up a hand. "No lectures, please. If I could bear instruction, I would be in school. Call Yves and order up your vile tea; I have at least learned by now I shall get no wine."

She lifted a tolerant brow. "You have no more religion than learning. Do you never fear for your impious soul?"

"Shall I look to you for catechism?" His eyes were ironic.

She laughed faintly. "No, I suppose not. Still, you may look to me for any help you ever need." She paused and her mood turned a shade shy. "Would you ever consider coming with me to Spain?"

"To flirt with bulls? Why should I?"

"I have no child, Raschid," she replied slowly. "If I were to choose a son, I would choose you."

He gauged her seriousness, then replied quietly, "I am greatly honored, but my home is in the Crescent. One day the death-worshiping Spaniards will force the Moors from Spain and turn the whole country into a bloated corpse; even lice do not love to dwell upon corpses. Besides," he added lightly, "if I were to choose a mother, I would not choose you. My intentions would not be properly filial." He watched her smile sadly, then went on. "Also, a woman unfit to be a wife is unfit to be a mother. A certain generosity is wanting."

Her head turned sharply. "What do you mean by that?"

"What I said. Your husband is not a happy man. I should think that has something to do with you. Don't you love him?"

Abruptly, she rang the brass servants' bell. "Shall we change the subject, Raschid?"

"No, I like it well enough," he replied equably, "and if you are beginning to debate whether to have Yves serve tea or throw me out, be assured I shall raise an embarrassing uproar.''

Liliane sighed. "I do not wish to throw you out, Raschid, but you are infernally impertinent."

He grinned. "It's part of my charm. Would you want a sheep for a son? I am fond of you in my fashion, though I lust for you more than is strictly polite. That Frenchman you married has his faults, but he is not a clod to be trodden underfoot. He is flat this day, I tell you, quite flat. I ask again, with the greatest of delicacy, is your dainty foot to blame?"

She sighed with depressed resignation. "I am returning to Spain, Raschid. Alexandre and I shall live apart until he is able to procure an annulment."

He wrinkled his nose. "Nasty word, annulment. So final."

"Yes," she replied bleakly, "it is that."

"Ah, I understand now"—he nodded sagely, watching her face—"the two of you are going to get an annulment neither of you wants; that sounds quite sensible."

Yves appeared at the head of the stair. "You rang, Countess?"

"We would like tea, please, Yves, with plenty of honey."

Yves closed his eyes in disgust. "As you like, Countess." He trotted down the stairs.