Knights of the Black and White (30 page)

St. Omer raised a hand. “Did you remember to ask about the stables?”

“Of course I did, and the Archbishop agreed without the slightest hesitation. The stables will be ours, from the moment King Baldwin concurs and our plans achieve reality. He did not even pause to consider my request before granting it. And why should he? Those stables have lain abandoned and unused for hundreds of years. And now he sees them being put to good use, in a manner that will cost him and the King nothing. So mote it be.”

His companions joined him instantly in the ancient benison of their Order. “So mote it be.”

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Trapped and helpless in her swaying carriage and surrounded by battling, screaming men, Morfia of Melitene had no wish to believe that her life was about to end, but she was too pragmatic to doubt the reality of what was happening to her. It had already happened to her escort, Sir Alexander Guillardame, and now he sprawled inelegantly in front of her, face down on the seat opposite hers, the blood and brains from his shattered head all over the skirts of her gown, the stench of his loosened bowels filling the tiny space of the box in which she was confined. He had been the second of the two young knights in the carriage with her when the attack began, both of them lolling at their ease, their helmets on the floor by their feet and their chain-mail cowls thrust back from their heads as they made pleasant conversation, earnestly trying to amuse and divert her on the 281

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long journey. But then had come a commotion of some kind and the vehicle had lurched, swayed, and tilted dangerously to one side, its panicked horses pulling it off the road and then coming to a halt as the screams and shouts of angry, frightened men sprang up from every direction.

Before any of the three people in the carriage could even begin to comprehend the sudden change, they had heard the thunder of hooves as a large group of horsemen—

Morfia had been too confused and frightened at the time even to wonder who they were—arrived among them, and before she had time even to ask what was happening, her two knightly escorts were scrambling towards the carriage door, blocking each other’s movements in their haste and fumbling for their weapons as they went, their helmets forgotten on the floor.

Antoine de Bourgogne threw open the door and leapt out first, unaware that he had grasped his lady’s arm for leverage as he thrust himself forward. Momentarily aware of the fleeting pain of his wrenching grip, Morfia watched him land on his feet and fall straight to his knees, his hands clawing at the impossibly long spear shaft that had transfixed him as he jumped. As he toppled forward, her view of him was cut off by the bulk of young Alex Guillardame as he, too, fought for balance in the cramped doorway of the swaying carriage. She then heard a short, violent ripping noise that ended in a solid, shocking impact that reminded her, incongruously, of the sound of an axe hitting a tree stump, and then had come a choking grunt from the young knight as he spun quickly back from the door to face her, his entire face ruined, his skull Monks of the Mount

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blown apart by the force of the iron crossbow bolt that had struck the peak of his unguarded forehead.

As her eyes widened in horror, the dead knight kept turning, spun perhaps by the impetus of the missile that had killed him, pulling the door shut again with his sag-ging weight so that the heavy curtains blocked out all sight, but not sound, of what was happening outside.

Petrified, Morfia watched as the dead man’s knees finally gave way and he toppled slowly towards her, the liques-cent mass of what had been the contents of his skull spilling from his head to fall with a wet, slapping sound.

Only then did she react in horror, screaming and kicking out with both feet in the violence of panic and outrage.

Her feet, close together, struck Guillardame’s shoulder with great force, and the impact thrust him upright again and turned him around, so that he fell away from her this time, face down onto the bench where he had been sitting moments earlier. She heard the liquid gurgle as his anal sphincter gave way, and then had come a period of time about which she remembered nothing.

When her senses returned to her, the fighting outside was still going on, and she felt herself overwhelmed by panic once again. This time, however, her presence of mind had returned to her sufficiently to allow her to fight off the waves of helplessness and look about her for some means of defending herself.

The hilt of Guillardame’s dagger was right in front of her, thrusting up from the belt about his waist, and she grasped it and pulled it free just as her carriage was rocked violently by a heavy impact that sent her reeling 284

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against the side of the vehicle. As she sprawled there, arms spread in the angle of the corner but still clutching the dagger in one hand, an arm came through the window across from her and wrenched the curtain from its mounting, revealing the leering, black-toothed face of the man who had leapt up onto the carriage and was now assessing her, savoring his prize.

Morfia pushed herself upright and gripped the dagger more tightly, preparing to launch herself at the fellow the moment he made any attempt to pull open the carriage door or come closer to her, and her breath caught in her throat as she saw his clawed fingers reach for her, even although she knew he could not possibly touch her from where he was. And then, more quickly than it took her to realize what had happened, he was gone, bludgeoned away and ripped backward into death by a trio of small, heavy, spiked metal balls attached to chains that smashed into his head and shoulder with lethal force. She saw the balls strike. One of them crushed the side of his face, another his cloth-bound head, and the third hit high on his shoulder, but they hit as one, producing only a single violent crunching sound. She felt another surge of nausea, but fought it down, grimly determined to do whatever might be necessary to save her own life from then on, and then she saw a gauntleted, mail-clad arm beneath a bright blue surcoat, reaching in to grasp the pillar of her door, and the carriage lurched yet again as another man transferred his weight to her wagon and thrust his head into her window.

He was a young-looking man, wearing a flat metal Monks of the Mount

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helm over a hood of mail that framed a deeply tanned face with a short-cropped dark beard and blazing blue eyes that went wide with shock when he saw her gazing at him. He hung where he was, face to face with her for long moments, then turned away and looked back over his shoulder at what was going on behind him.

“Your horses are dead, my lady,” he said, not quite shouting at her, “so I can’t take you away to some place safer, and it’s too dangerous here to risk your life on my horse’s back, so I will stay here and watch over you for a while. Jubal!” This last was a bellow, accompanied by a sweeping wave of the arm to attract another’s attention, as her savior released his hold on the door and dropped to the ground, his back to her. “Jubal!” It obviously worked, for as she moved forward to look down at him, the knight cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted, “Here, to me, with three others!”

He turned back to where the Queen had approached the window and was gazing out at the carnage surrounding them. The fighting had moved away, but there were still knots of men fighting, it seemed, wherever she looked.

“My man Jubal will be here directly, my lady, and he will see that you are kept safe until we have finished here.” The man came hurrying up as the knight spoke, followed by three others, all of them identically dressed in plain brown fustian over serviceable mail. The blue-coated knight turned to him. “See to the lady, Jubal.

Keep her secure. I’ll be back.” He glanced back at the Queen and raised a knuckle to his helmed forehead, then 286

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swung away and caught his horse’s reins. A moment later he had mounted and was spurring towards the now distant fighting.

Morfia felt empty inside, as though her vitals had been scooped out without warning; her mouth was bone dry, her tongue stuck to its roof. She tried to swallow but could not, and as the first stirrings of reaction welled up in her, the man called Jubal muttered something to his three companions and stepped forward to pull open the door of her carriage. His eyes went wide as he saw the bloody corpse, and his nostrils wrinkled as the smell reached him.

“Ugh!” he grunted, waving a hand in front of his face,

“We’ll have you out o’ there, milady, right this minute.

Take my hand and I’ll help you down.”

Born and raised in Armenia, Morfia had never been to France, but she had been married to a Frank for many years now, and something in the way this man spoke sounded strange to her ears, although his speech was fluent and authoritative. She guessed that he was not originally from France. She grasped his proffered hand, feeling the thick ridges of sword-worn calluses on his palm and fingers and reflecting, almost unconsciously, that she had never in her life taken the hand of an underling so gladly or willingly. She stepped through the door and balanced on the step there for a moment, trying not to look at the body of young Antoine de Bourgogne on the ground, kneeling obscenely forward and prevented from falling by the broken shaft of the spear that had killed him. Feeling the nausea flicker at the back of her throat again, she closed Monks of the Mount

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her eyes tightly, took a deep breath, and then opened them again and stepped down. The big man beside her kept a firm hold of her hand until he was sure she would not fall, and then he released her. His three companions stood with their backs to her, facing outward at different angles, their swords in their hands, shields braced on their free arm.

“Ector, where are the horses?” Jubal’s voice was quiet, but filled with tension, his eyes moving constantly as he squinted into the distance, anticipating a direct attack.

The man he had spoken to raised his shield arm and pointed off to their left, where a knot of four horses stood together, ground-tethered by their trailing reins.

“Aye, right. Well, we’ll just walk over there and get them. Keep your eyes skinned. This would not be a good place or a good day to die, so let us take pains not to do that. Milady, are you able to walk with us, across to those horses yonder?”

Morfia nodded, still not quite able to speak, but she was feeling stronger by the moment. The four men surrounded her, and they began to walk in a tight knot towards the horses, and Morfia was both pleased and surprised to discover that she was still clutching Guillardame’s dagger. She was less pleased to discover that the skirts of her gown were plastered against her legs, cold and wet, rubbing heavily and unpleasantly against her thighs as she walked, and remembering what it was that had landed in her lap, she forced herself not to look down. No matter how steadfastly she tried to ignore the sensation after that, however, her imagination was engaged by it, and she could actually feel the glutinous 288

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mass of bloody matter slipping slowly down towards her knees, until her imagination flashed a picture into her mind and she could bear it no longer. With a moan of disgust, she dropped to her knees, her stomach heaving, and pulled the clinging fabric away from her skin with both hands, dislodging the mass of unpleasantness there and then scrubbing at the stained cloth with handfuls of sandy soil while her four escorts stood gazing steadily down at her.

When she had finally stopped retching, the man called Jubal stretched out his hand wordlessly and helped her to her feet. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and began walking slowly but steadily towards the horses. And as she walked, secure among the four thickset men surrounding her, she set her teeth grimly, reminded herself who she was, and began to reconstruct her normal persona.

She was Morfia of Melitene, now Morfia of Jerusalem, wife of the most powerful man in Outremer: Baldwin the Second, newly crowned King of Jerusalem, who until only a year earlier had been Count Baldwin le Bourcq, lord of the County of Edessa, far to the north of Jerusalem and close to the Armenian city of her birth. The first King Baldwin of Jerusalem had been the brother of Geoffroi de Bouillon, the Champion who had led the victorious Frankish legions in the First Expedition to the Holy Land, and he had ruled for eighteen years, after which, when he had died without an heir the previous year, the kingship had gone to Morfia’s husband, his namesake and closest relative.

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Morfia had married her Baldwin in 1102, soon after he had become Count of Edessa, and had since borne him four surviving children, all of them daughters. The eldest, Melisende, had been born in 1105 and was now fourteen, and the youngest, Joveta, had not yet reached her seventh birthday. Morfia had been a good and loyal wife and mother, and she had greatly enjoyed being the wife of the widely admired Count of Edessa, but no one had been more surprised than she when they offered the kingship to Baldwin on the death of his cousin. And now she was Queen of Jerusalem, consort to an inexperienced but determined King whose realm was being threatened by an alliance of the same Seljuk Turks the Franks had defeated in 1099. Her rank and title were very new to her, and she was acutely conscious of the responsibility that went with them. And now that she had begun to believe she would not be required to die that day, she felt a determination swelling in her to force her husband to do something about the disgraceful situation on the roads of his kingdom.