Roman (2 page)

When he was within a stone's throw of the wall, Roman stopped abruptly and, before he could think himself out of it, reached up and gently slipped the leather string from Lou's leg and then the hood from the falcon's head. The bird blinked and tilted its head wildly, seeming to drink in the sight of the wide-open sky.

Roman gave a shrug of his shoulder. “Go on, then.” The falcon flapped its wings for balance and then settled back against Roman's ear. “Go on.” He shrugged again.

This time Lou crouched low and leaped from his shoulder, the quiet whoosh of its wings sending a crisp flip of air across Roman's face. He watched the falcon fly low over the ground for several yards before flapping in earnest and pulling himself up, up, up into the darkening east over the walls of Damascus. The falcon cried out once, and it caused Roman's heart to flinch.

But then he tucked the falcon's hood and tether beneath the flap of his bag and headed into the night himself, his head down, his eyes only on the road. Roman had lost any traces of hesitation he'd felt in the cave. He had set his aim now, freed his obligation, and there was no fear in him of what might happen once he reached the gates, the streets of the city, the prison. His feet fell like hammers beneath his gaze, working to chip away at any obstacles he imagined he might soon face.

So intent was he upon his purpose that it was quite a surprise to realize he had passed through the walls and was in the city. The spicy, fecund smells pressing around him and the sounds of his footfalls muffling gave him a physical start, as did the blaring of a horn that shot the thick, still air, and then another, and the warbling sound of a song in the familiar yet still foreign tongue. Roman glanced sideways and behind him to see the guards closing the gates to the city, not twenty feet beyond his heels, shutting out the last rays of the sun disappearing over the rolling land.

The horns continued to sound, and Roman realized he was caught up in a current of citizens all heading in the same direction. His heart pounded despite himself, and he hunched his shoulders further, crouched lower on bent knees as the slimness of the general population became glaringly apparent. The narrow black space of an alley between sandstone buildings came upon his left side suddenly, and Roman stepped into it as swiftly as a gust of air, slinking back into the deep shadow and straightening his aching back against the wall of the building.

He watched from the shadows as the stragglers, mostly boys and young men, ran down the center of the street, hands clapped down on their caps as they hurried to answer the call to prayer. Another moment and the ruddy street would be deserted.

Then what? He had no idea in which direction to go. Wandering aimlessly through the maze of pathways connecting the straight and orderly streets might only be enough to render him completely lost, and then, when the faithful flooded the city again on their way to their homes . . .

He dared lean toward the opening to glance in either direction. There were no clues whatsoever as to where the city housed its prisoners. He pressed his back against the building once more with a sigh. And then his heart stopped as he caught sight of the woman standing against the wall directly opposite him, so close that he could have touched her without fully extending his arm. The last slash of sunlight slunk away from her face, hidden in veils, as the alley was dipped in indigo. He didn't know how she had come upon him so suddenly, so silently.

“Pardon me, mistress,” Roman said brusquely and looked away, turning toward the street once more. There was nothing for it now but to go. He could not inhabit such a close space with a woman of this culture; it would certainly mean his death, and likely hers, if he were caught.

Not that he thought to be spared if found alone either.

But before he could step from between the buildings, he felt a hand upon his arm, staying him. Roman paused, but dared not turn to look at her.

“What is it you require of me? I do not speak your language.”

“Not to worry—I speak yours,” she replied. “I will not raise an alarm to betray you, you must believe me.” She tugged on his arm so that he turned to face her once more. “We have not much time before it is discovered I am gone.”

“I fear I am unable to give you whatever it is you seek,” he said, feeling her touch conspicuously upon his arm. He could smell the soft, heady, feminine scent of her in the close alley and it made his skin flush beneath his coarse tunic.

“It is I who shall give to you,” she said, and then slid her palm down his forearm to grasp his fingers, stepping backward as she did so, pulling Roman's arm away as if she would lead him.

He understood, then.

Roman pulled free from her grip. “I cannot tarry with you, woman. I am looking for someone in the city.”

She dropped her arm to her side and stared at him for a moment. “I know why you have come. I will take you to your friends, but you must come with me now.”

Roman hesitated. If she was a prostitute, the only place she would likely take him was to her keeper, where Roman would certainly be robbed and probably killed. She couldn't possibly know who he was looking for. But she'd mentioned friends, plural, when Roman had only mentioned he was looking for some
one.
...

“Where is this friend of mine?” he challenged.

“They are still imprisoned, if that is what you are asking.”

A chill shook his spine. This smelled of a trick to Roman. Likely the guards atop the wall had caught sight of him entering the city but lost him in the crush, and had sent this woman to seek him out during the prayer. He couldn't risk it.

“You're wrong,” he said, and began backing away from her, toward the edge of the buildings where ambient light in the sky from over the mountains urged him to quit wasting time and
search now
.

“They die at dawn,” she called after him. “The two soldiers. A Spaniard as well, if you know of him. One may not live to see morning, he has been tortured so.”

Roman paused. “Who?”

“I have heard him called Hails-worth.”

Lord Adrian Hailsworth, Chastellet's architect.

The woman continued, as if she sensed his hesitation. “I can convince you not standing here. You must trust me, and you must follow me now. If you do not, I shall have no choice but to leave you. You will soon be discovered on your own, and they will have no mercy on you.”

“How can I know you will not betray me?”

She shook her head, a rounded shadow in the already dark alley. “We must go now.” She held out her hand.

Roman understood he had two choices: deny the woman and strike out on his own or follow her. If he followed her, she could lead him directly to his own death. If he denied her and she was in league with the guards, she would raise the alarm immediately.

But perhaps the worst outcome of all was if he denied her and she was telling the truth . . .

He stepped toward her suddenly and took her hand. “If you lie, or if we are caught, you will regret it, mistress.”

“That I well know.” She didn't waste time with mincing steps, and soon they were running between the close-set buildings that leaned together like crowded molars in the dark, humid mouth of a beast. She led him around sudden corners, pulled him across wide, deserted thoroughfares until they came to an enormous, long building on the north side of the city, its pitched roofs black and sharp looking in the gloom.

Over the growing sounds of night, Roman could hear the droning prayers emanating from inside the building. The entire male population of Damascus was contained within its walls.

“Are you mad?” he demanded, pulling free from her in the street.

“Do not slow—no! Hurry!” She grasped his hand again and yanked, but she could not move him.

“You lead me here of all places? It can only mean my death!”

“
You
will be the cause of your own death
and
your friends' if you do not come out of the street!” she hissed angrily and then stepped toward him to look up into his eyes. In the next moment, she ripped the veil from her face, and Roman could see the cuts and deep bruises on her delicate cheeks, the swollenness of one eye. “They beat me, tortured me, too! They have killed those whom I love and yet I have no choice but to stay!” She was nearly gasping in her anger.

“Who did this?” Roman queried, shocked at the woman's delicate beauty crushed beneath the heavy weight of the violence visited upon her.

“The prison is below,” she said, ignoring his question and pulling on his arm again as she refastened her veil with her other hand. Roman fell into a trot once more; he had no other option at the moment.

“Follow the corridor at the bottom of the stairs,” she continued as the very building they ran past seemed to watch their flight. “Turn right at your first opportunity. The cell you seek is at the very end—the only one. There should be but a lone guard at this moment. You must dispatch him quickly, though, and do not exit to this courtyard; it is the way the others shall return.”

“Then how are we to escape?”

She pulled him behind a short wall that seemed to enclose a small garden beyond, and also served as the lintel for a black rectangle of doorway that led down into further darkness. The woman was gasping, and Roman could feel her trembling in his grasp. For all her demands and vows of revenge, she was terrified.

“You must pass this entrance and continue on through the entirety of the prison. There is another exit.”

“Only one corridor?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Which one do I take?”

“I know not. I have never been below.”

Roman dropped her hand with a breath of agitation and turned in a short circle until he was once more facing the black doorway. The chanting from the domed building had stopped.

“I thank you for your help, mistress,” he said gruffly. “If, indeed, you are helping me. I will be in your debt.” He stepped toward the descending stairs.

“Wait,” she called, once more laying a hand on his arm. “I have a message for the general.”

Roman felt his eyebrows raise. This woman had a message for Constantine Gerard?

“He must not return to his home. England is against him now, as they are the other one—Hails-worth. The general has been marked a traitor and is wanted by his own crown. His family is being watched.”

Roman nodded. “Very well. Again, I shall be in your debt.”

She let her hand slide from his skin slowly. “Do not forget me, then.”

A screeching cry split the night, and then a dark shadow shot from the sky and lighted upon the wall above the doorway. It sidled awkwardly along the rough surface, bobbing and ducking until it was near enough that Roman could determine its character.

“Lou?” he asked softly.

The falcon flapped-hopped the short distance separating it from Roman, settling on the leather of his hood once more, fidgeting, adjusting, its weight obviously increased.

The woman stepped close to Roman and hesitantly reached up toward Lou with one hand, her wide sleeve sliding up to reveal a slender arm adorned with golden bracelets that tinkled in the thick air. The falcon ducked away at first and then shot its beak forward, nibbling curiously at her fingers.

“Lou,” she whispered. Then she stroked his wing with one finger while speaking a stream of foreign words to the falcon, who seemed to listen intently, swiveling his head to look at her and then the sky with alternating eyes.

The woman abruptly stepped away and began walking backward, looking at Roman as she went, as if she was loath to lose sight of him. “Go now. You have only moments.”

Indeed, Roman heard the distant sounds of a crowd, and although he could see nothing over the wall when he turned his head, he knew the time of prayers was over.

He looked back for one final glance at the beautiful, mysterious woman who had brought him thus far, but the street behind him was empty. She had already disappeared into the city.

Roman ducked through the doorway, pushing all thoughts of her away as he descended the stairs as quickly as he could. A moment later, he had found the right-hand turn, and now he ran through the corridor, his wide shoulders nearly brushing the walls, his hood only inches away from the undulating ceiling. A haze of torchlight shone around the corner ahead, but Roman did not slow.

And so he took the guards by surprise—two instead of one. They rose from their crouched positions before a wrought door, one still rolling the woven mat he had knelt upon. Roman came to an abrupt halt and was unable to stop himself from glancing through the bars to his left.

There, chained by his neck to the back wall, was General Gerard, his tawny mane now long and stringy around his face as he lifted his head to investigate the crashing footfalls. A shadow against the far-left wall of the cell grew taller, and then Valentine Alesander stepped into view, his Saracen robes swinging.

Near the Spaniard's feet lay a long, crumpled pile of rags.

One of the guards shouted at Roman, his foreign words challenging yet hesitant, as if he was unsure what to make of the giant man who had appeared in his prison with a falcon upon his shoulder.

Roman glanced down at the man's waist and saw the ring of keys dangling there. Then he looked both guards in the eye in turn.

“I've come for my friends.”

 

R
oman Berg rather enjoyed being a criminal.

He paused on the steep hillside, one knee cocked to brace his sandaled foot against the slope, his palm pressing the jagged gray bark of an ocher-tinged cedar. He tilted his face up at the faded sky peeking through the tallest branches already stripped by the autumn storms and listened. The cry sounded behind him and Roman turned, scanning the islands of blue within the dark sea of the canopy. A quad-pointed shadow swooped diagonally overhead, soaring toward the river. Roman pushed away from the cedar and sidestepped down the hill to follow the falcon.

The dried leaves scraped and poked his instep, twigs trying to wriggle between his toes. He held out his arms for balance as he leaped over a small outcropping of gray rock, his monk's robe snapping taut with the motion. He was smiling, but that was not unusual. Weren't all criminals as happy with their lot? Roman thought they should be.

He paused against another tree, directing his labored breaths through his nose in order to listen more closely. There! The tinkling of the bells tied to Lou's leg sifted like ghostly music through the breeze. The hunting falcon had landed. Roman turned and set off to the east through the trees, more quietly this time. He directed his gaze to the treetops as he stepped slowly, carefully; he loved to watch Lou at the hunt.

But the rustling of leaves sounded suddenly out of time with his own footsteps, and Roman stopped. There it was again: something rolling in the underbrush. It sounded as though it were being made by a creature too large for even the noble Lou to pursue. A person, then? Few from the village would wander up from the riverbank to scale the steep slope below Melk, and he couldn't think of any of the brethren besides himself who would have reason or desire to take such a laborious stroll.

Perhaps Stan at one time would have, but the general was different since his wife and son had been killed; he had no interest in much of anything anymore. Adrian was continually occupied with his studies and duties, faithfully observing the hours of prayer while Maisie tended a stall in the village. Valentine spent most of his hours gazing rapturously at Mary or little Valentina, nearly four months old now.

The rustling erupted again, loud and frantic and fast this time, and accompanied by what sounded to Roman like gasps for air. Had he heard a word in those breathy gulps? He felt his brow crease and he cocked his head, listening, watching, in much the same manner as Lou. He flinched at the short, shrill scream that filled the humid space between the trees.

It sounded like a woman.

Lou chose that moment to cry out, from the same direction in which the scream had come, and so Roman began walking once more, although not so quietly this time; he didn't want to be accused of being a voyeur should he happen upon two young people from the village seeking the wood for a romantic interlude. He saw a flash of white through the tree trunks ahead, and Roman leaned and weaved, trying to discern its origin. The sliver of brightness stuttered rhythmically and was now accompanied by smacking and thumping sounds.

If Roman hadn't known better, he would have thought perhaps someone was doing a very good job of taking a sound beating.

Lou cried again, and Roman's eyes instinctively went up. He saw the hunting falcon perched on the spindly pinnacle of a dead oak tree, bobbing in the air, the faint sounds of his bells now recognizable behind the rustling below. Lou stretched out his wings as if he was preparing to swoop down on the unseen quarry, but then flapped himself back into place, clutching the tree in an agitated manner before crying out again.

Roman's frown deepened and he headed toward the sounds. “Hello there,” he called out, adopting his Brother Roman persona—which really wasn't much different from his true personality. “Peace be upon you.”

He weaved through the trees, and the white form ahead grew more clear. It was a person, bent over in the underbrush, but Roman couldn't yet tell if it was a man or a woman.

“Have you lost someth—” The friendly query broke as Roman's feet stopped and the figure ahead raised fully.

It was a dark-skinned man—Saracen dark—wearing the flowing costume of his homeland, white except for the bright red splatters adorning its front. His head was wrapped in a close, dark turban and the slender face below it held wild eyes, a mouth pulled wide in either pleasure or fury. The man's hands—slick with blood—went to the sash tied around his robe, where a woven scabbard dangled. In a blink, the man had drawn a curved scimitar and pointed its angled tip in Roman's direction.

“This is none of your concern,” he said with a thick accent. “Go back the way you came, lest you wish this day to end very badly for you.”

Roman got a cold feeling in his chest and took a step closer to the man, peering into the brush at his feet. “No need to threaten me so—what have you there?” His eyes caught sight of a swath of lavender-colored silk; at least, it had at one time been lavender. Now it was mottled with dirt and leaves and wide, wet patches of black.

The Saracen stepped between Roman and whatever lay in the scrub, holding his scimitar in both hands now. “I told you, come no farther. I will kill you.”

Roman held out a supplicating hand. “Listen here, now; I mean you no harm. As you can see, I am but a simple monk, and you seem to have found your way onto abbey land. I have no intention of robbing you, so if there is aught I can do to direct you in the way you mean to go, I—”

“Help,” a choked voice called from behind the Saracen, and Roman was certain it was a woman. “Help me.”

Roman frowned and glanced at the cloth-wrapped bundle again before returning his eyes to the dark man. “What exactly are you doing here?”

Before the Saracen could answer, the voice from the bundle called out again. This time, the plea made his blood freeze in his veins.

“
Roman
.” His name bubbled and cracked in her throat as she gasped.

The robed man cocked his arms so that his weapon was raised near his right ear. “I warned you twice, false priest. Now I shall send you to your judgment and lay up my own reward.”

Roman raised his palm higher. “I wouldn't do that if I were you. Put down your blade and step away from the woman.”

The Saracen rushed forward, drawing back the scimitar even farther.

Roman's vision seemed to tremble, his peripheral sight blacking out until only two tiny pinpricks of light were available to him, both showing the robed man who now seemed to be impossibly small, impossibly far away, and moving so slowly he might be a statue.

The sound of his own breath was a roar in his ears; his arms and legs felt as though they had shimmered away into nothing, leaving only the growl in his head and the tiny vision of the man before him, who meant to end his life. Who had meant to end the life of the woman still lying in the brush, somewhere beyond the terrible thunder that deafened him.

He might just as well be in the Damascene dungeon again.

There should be no Saracens at Melk. Melk was safe. His friends were safe. If they were discovered, Roman's happy existence was over.

He couldn't let that happen.

His vision and hearing came back with a whoosh and the Saracen was upon him now. But it didn't matter, as his hands had already reached out, his arms moving, lifting, twisting, as if of their own accord. The sizzle of cold along his biceps was barely noticed, the crunching sound of bone nothing more than a flinch and a whisper.

And then the Saracen fell to the brush at his feet with a crash of leaves and moved no more. Roman looked down at the man over the heaving cowl covering his chest and then nudged him over with a sandaled foot. Dark eyes stared, unseeing, at the tree canopy.

Ahead, Lou screamed, and Roman looked up to find his falcon still observing the scene below. His attention was drawn by a wet sensation on his hand, and when Roman lifted his right arm, he saw the streams of blood threading from his fingertips. His eyes traveled up to his right biceps, where the brown wool of his habit was slashed open, revealing the gash that split his pale skin from shoulder to elbow.

“This is bad,” he mused aloud. He ripped off the remainder of his sleeve and tied it as best he could around his arm, using his teeth to pull tight the knot. The blood coursing down his forearm barely slowed.

Roman stepped to the bundle of lavender silk, which had not moved or spoken again. He knelt, feeling the slight wobble in his knees, and pulled away a bloodied swath of fabric. His heart seemed to stop beating in his chest.

It was indeed a woman, her face a puffy sea of swollen bruises and trickling blood. Her nose was likely broken, her lips split and crusted, her eyelids fat and prickled with starburst patterns Roman knew would rapidly spread in a deep indigo over her skin like oil on water. Her arm was bent awkwardly behind her body, her bare feet torn and scarred, poking out from beneath the ragged hem of her robes. Roman touched her cheek and she whimpered.

This was not just any woman.

If Roman had thought her injuries dire the first and only time they'd met on that fateful eve in Damascus, her condition now was so much worse. The Saracen had nearly beaten her to death, likely would have achieved that very goal had Roman been a moment or two later in happening upon them.

Had Lou not cried out and led Roman to her.

For all Roman knew, she might yet die, even should he take her to the abbey for care. She was dangerous to the Brotherhood. If she had found them, it meant others could be right behind her—others, like the man who had seemed intent on killing her. Were they from Saladin's camp?

Or Glayer Felsteppe's?

How had she gotten there, and what did she want?

“This is very bad,” he corrected his earlier assessment of the situation as Lou screamed again from his perch.

The woman on the ground had obviously been hunted, chased, tortured. The very woman who had saved his three friends' lives and, in essence, joined the Brotherhood together, for good or ill. Would he now repay her by leaving her to die?

The ground seemed to spin beneath him, and Roman dared a glance at his arm; his brown wool sleeve was now black, glistening. The leaves beneath his sandals were splashed with his own blood. If he didn't do something now, they might both die here in the wood.

He gathered the nearly weightless woman in his arms and stumbled up the hill toward the abbey, one name throbbing in his mind, keeping time with the sloshing, sluggish heartbeat in his ears.

Stan. Stan. He must reach Constantine.

It seemed to take an age to gain the top of the steep slope, and then another still to walk along the lengthy and windowless curtain wall. Roman stumbled around the corner, his sandals no longer able to clear even the meanest pebbles as he dragged his feet along, and at last he saw the tall winged statues guarding the gates. They seemed to meet, trade places, and then multiply before his eyes as the world began to slowly tilt. The woman's arm had fallen from across her stomach and now dangled and flopped as he staggered toward the opening, too weak now to shout, too desperate to stop. His knees were bowing in response to the crazy tilt of the ground.

He made it as far as the gates before he was at last spotted. In a slow, slowing heartbeat, a flood of robed monks rushed toward him from garden beds and dooryards. Roman crashed to his knees as—thanks be to God—Constantine pushed his way to the crest of the wave and was the first to join Roman in the cold dirt of the bailey.

So stupid. He was so stupid. Now everyone would see. Everyone would know. Victor would worry.

“Roman,” Stan said, giving him a shake. “What happened?”

Roman tried to focus on his friend's face. No one could find out about the Saracen. No one could find out about
them.

“Body,” Roman whispered, his nose nearly touching Stan's. “In the wood.”

His world went dark then, and the ground rushed toward him over the woman's limp form. Even in the darkness, he could feel strong hands take him up, could hear Lou crying as he circled overhead.

* * *

Isra came into consciousness with a sob. She hurt so badly—her face, her head, her arm; her lungs felt as though they were being shredded with each shallow breath. She tried to writhe onto her side, but a pair of hands on her shoulders stayed her, pushed her back onto the mattress.

“You canna turn over. Lie still now.”

Isra wanted to open her eyes, see the woman who owned the strange accent and who smelled of flowers, but her lids were so swollen that trying her hardest only rewarded her with a sliver of indistinguishable light. Her head screamed in protest and so she closed her eyes again and managed a thin whimper.

“I'm certain you're in a great deal of pain. Perhaps he'll bring you a draught.”

Who?
Isra wanted to say.
Who are you? Where am I?

The gurgle of water being wrung into a basin filtered through the terrible agony in her head, and a moment later a heavy, icy cloth was pressed to her swollen, throbbing eyes. Isra tried to turn away, but her strength was as that of a newborn babe's against the steely fingertips that held her temples. She thought her mind must be playing tricks on her, for she was certain she heard a beastly roar from beyond the walls of her prison; a chattering; birdsong.

“Shh. Stop that now. I'm trying to help you.”

Isra tried to lie very still while the frigid sodden cloth seemed to push her eyeballs to the back of her skull. The throbbing steadied, but her stomach roiled. She tried to swallow down the pressure in her throat, but her muscles would not obey, and she knew she would choke to death should she vomit.