“Very well,” he said, and he took the slim hand she extended and let himself be led away.
From its perch on a nearby bulrush, the gyrfalcon watched with cold, unblinking eyes.
H ER shelter was cosy indeed, if a timber-framed canvas hut could be cosy. She had salvaged a couple of chests and some cloaks from the wreck; these did duty as furnishings.
She dismissed the maid and hauled off Abeleyn’s bloody, salt-cracked boots with her own hands, tipping a trickle of water out of each; then she ladled out a pewter tankard of the steaming wine. Abeleyn sat and watched the flames of the fire turn from pale transparency to solid saffron as the day darkened. So short, the daylight hours at this time of year. A reminder that this was not the campaigning season, not the proper season for war.
The wine was good. He could almost feel it coursing through his veins and warming his chilled flesh. He recalled Jemilla’s maid and ordered her to take the rest of it to the tents of the wounded. He saw Jemilla’s lips thin as he did, and smiled to himself. The lady had her own ideas of worthy and unworthy, expendable and indispensable.
“Are you hurt, sire?” she asked. “Your doublet is bespattered with gore.”
“Other men’s, not mine,” Abeleyn told her, sipping his wine.
“It was magnificent—all the soldiers say so. A battle worthy of Myrnius Kuln himself. Of course, I only heard it. Consuella and I were crouched in the stink of the lower hold under sacks; hardly a good post to observe the ebb and flow, the glory of it.”
“It was a skirmish, no more,” Abeleyn said. “I was careless to think we would get away so easily from Perigraine.”
“The corsairs were in league with the other kings, then?” she asked, shocked.
“Yes, lady. I am a heretic. They want me dead—it is that simple. Using corsairs to kidnap or assassinate me rather than national troops was merely to utilize a certain discretion.”
“Discretion!”
“Diplomacy has always been a mixture of cunning, courtesy and murder.”
She placed a hand on her stomach, seemingly unaware of the gesture. “What of King Mark and King Lofantyr? Were attempts made on their lives?”
“I don’t know. Possibly. In any case, when they arrive home they will face men of power who intend to take advantage of the situation. As I will.”
“It is rumoured that Abrusio is in the control of the Church and the nobles,” Jemilla said.
“Is it? Rumours are unreliable things.”
“Are we still travelling to Abrusio, sire?”
“Of course. Where else?”
“I—I had thought—” She collected herself, squaring her shoulders like a woman determined to face bad news. “Are you to be married, sire?”
Abeleyn rubbed his eyes with one hand. “One day I hope to be, yes.”
“To the sister of King Mark of Astarac?”
“More rumours?”
“It was the talk of Vol Ephrir when we left.”
Abeleyn stared at her. “That rumour happens to be true, yes.”
She dropped her eyes. There were also rumours that the lady Jemilla had had a low-born lover ere Abeleyn had taken her into his bed. She was not sure if the King had heard them.
“Then what of . . . what of the child I bear?” she asked pitifully.
Abeleyn knew his mistress to be one of the most calculating and accomplished women of his court, the widow of one of his father’s best generals; but with his death, she was unrelated to any of the great families of Hebrion. That was one reason why he had allowed himself to be seduced by her: she was alone in this world, and did not belong to any of the power blocs which wrangled in the shadow of the Hebrian throne. She rose or fell on Abeleyn’s whim. He could call in Orsini and have her run through here and now, and no one would raise a hand to defend her.
“The child will be looked after,” he said. “If it happens to be a boy, and shows promise, then the lad will never lack for anything, I swear to you.”
Her eyes were fixed on his, black stabs of colour in her ivory-pale face. Her hand alighted upon his knee.
“Thank you, sire. I have never been blessed with a child before. I hope only that he will grow up to serve you.”
“Or she,” Abeleyn added.
“It is a boy.” She smiled, the first genuine smile Abeleyn had seen from her since leaving Hebrion. “He feels like a boy. I see him curled in my womb with his fists clenched, growing.”
Abeleyn did not reply. He stared into the fire again, remembering the flame and wreck of the battle lately fought. A skirmish, he had called it, honestly enough. There was worse awaiting them in Abrusio. The Knights Militant would not vacate the city without a fight, and no doubt the personal retainers of the Sequeros and Carreras would stand shoulder to shoulder with them. But he would win, in the end. He had the army and the fleet at his back.
Jemilla’s hand slid slowly upwards from the King’s knee, bringing him out of his reverie. It began to stroke him intimately.
“I thought in your condition . . .” he began.
She smiled. “There are many things a man and a woman can do together, your majesty, even in my condition, and I have not taught you a tithe of them yet.”
It was this quality in her that both pricked his pride and fascinated him. She was older, experienced, the tutor of his bed. But he was too weary. He lifted her hand away gently.
“There are things to do, lady. I do not have the time, even if the inclination is there.”
Her eyes flared for a second: another thing about her which aroused him; she was unaccustomed to not getting her own way—even with a king, it seemed. It took an effort of will for Abeleyn to stand up. Her hand caressed his ankle, the fish-white skin which had not been wholly dry for days.
“Later, perhaps,” she said.
“Perhaps. There will not be much time for it in the days to come, however.”
He hauled on the clammy boots and kissed her.
She turned her cheek aside so his lips met her mouth. Then her tongue was questing like a warm snake over his teeth. She drew away with an arch smile. Abeleyn stumbled out of the hut into the firelit darkness beyond, feeling that once again she had somehow had the last word.
T HE barricades had gone up overnight.
When the deacon led his demi-troop out on their regular patrol of the city in the blue murk of the dawn, they found that the streets were occupied. Carts had been overturned, sacks and crates from the docks piled up and roped together. Even the narrowest of alleys had its obstacle, manned by citizens who had lit braziers against the cold and were standing round them rubbing their hands and chatting good-naturedly. Every street, roadway, avenue and alley which led down into the western half of the Lower City of Abrusio had been blocked off. The place had been sealed as tight as the neck of a stoppered bottle.
The deacon of the Knights Militant and his nine serving brethren sat their heavy horses and watched the Abrusian citizens and their makeshift fortifications with a mixture of anger and uncertainty. True, over the past weeks the Lower City had been an unfriendly place and any Knight who ventured down there was liable to have a chamber pot emptied over his head from an upper window. The Presbyter, Quirion, had ordered his men to stay away from the region whilst the delicate negotiations went on with the Abrusio garrison commanders. But this, this was different. This was open rebellion against the powers which had been ordained by the High Pontiff to rule the city.
The quiet horses with their heavy loads of steel and flesh stood their ground on the cobbles of the street, breathing out spumes of steam into the cold dawn air. It was a narrow place, the closely packed timber-framed houses of this part of the city leaning together overhead so that it seemed their terracotta tiles almost met to form an arch over the thoroughfare below. The citizens behind the barricade left their braziers to stare at the Knights. They were of both sexes, old and young. They carried makeshift weapons fashioned from agricultural implements, or simply hefted the tools of their trades: hammers and picks, scythes, pitchforks, butcher’s cleavers. A weaponry as diverse as the colourful citizenry of Abrusio.
The shape of the city was like a horseshoe, within which was the trefoil outline of a cloverleaf. The horseshoe represented the confining outer walls, curving round to end on the northern and southern shores of the Southern Gulf, or the Gulf of Hebrion as it was sometimes called. The cloverleaf represented the three harbours within the walls. The northernmost blade of the leaf was the Inner Roads which extended into the heart of the city, the wharves and docks lapping at the very foot of Abrusio Hill. To left and right of it, and not so far inland, were the Outer Roads, two later-built harbours which had been improved by the addition of man-made moles. The western Inner Roads housed the shipyards and dry docks of the Hebrian navy and were frowned over by the bulk of Admiral’s Tower. On a promontory to their north, another ageing fortress stood. This was the Arsenal, the barracks and magazines of Abrusio’s garrison. Both fleet and army were therefore quartered in the western arm of the Lower City, and it was this area which had been blocked off by the barricades of the citizens.
But the earnest young deacon was not deliberating on that as he sat his horse in the early morning and wondered what to do. He knew only that a group of rabble had seen fit to deny passage to a demi-troop of the Knights Militant, the secular defenders of the Church on earth. It was an insult to the authority of the Pontiff himself.
“Out swords!” he ordered his men. They obeyed at once. Their lances had been left in their billets as they were inconveniently long to carry when traversing the narrow, packed streets of Lower Abrusio.
“Charge!”
The ten horsemen burst into a trot, then worked into a canter, the shoes of their mounts striking sparks off the cobbles. Two abreast, they thundered down the narrow street like avenging angels, if angels might be so laden with iron and mounted on steaming, wide-nostrilled warhorses.
The citizens stared at the approaching apocalypse for one moment, and then scattered. The barricades were deserted as people took to their heels, fleeing down the street or shouldering in the closed doors of houses on either side.
The deacon’s mount struck the piled oddments which blocked the street and reared up, armour, rider and all, then scrambled over the barricade, tearing half of it down as it did so. The other Knights followed suit. The street became full of the din of nickering animals and the clang of steel. The up-ended cart fell back on to its wheels with a crash. They were through, urging their gasping mounts into a trot again, screaming “Ramusio!” at the top of their purpling lungs.
They clattered onwards. People were trying to dodge the heavy swords and the hooves of the destriers. The deacon clipped one fellow on the back of the head and took a chunk out of the base of his skull. When he went down, the horses trampled him into a steaming pulp.