Alamut by Judith Tarr Read Free Book Online

slipped the merest degree, to kill.
    â€œAnd the other saw, and he smile never wavered, but I saw the glitter in his eye. He turned that stroke, and he sent the sword spinning out of Balian’s hands, and he laid his point against Balian’s throat, gentle as a mother’s kiss. ‘You’ll make a swordsman,’ he said.”
    There was a long pause, with breaths drawn sharply in it. Then: “By the Cross! Did Balian kill him for it?”
    â€œBalian? Balian cursed him in three languages, and then asked him if he’d mind taking on a pupil.”
    Thibaut grinned to himself. The tale had won an audience, and they were all trying not to goggle. No one was suggesting, Thibaut noticed, that the young cockerel was not as young as he seemed. Rhiyana was small and very far away, and played little part in western wars and none in those of the east. No one here knew what its king was. And as for his brother...
    People would believe what they wanted to believe. That had always been Gereint’s wisdom and his safety. His lineage was not a thing to speak of where a stranger could hear it. He had been a little afraid, sometimes, when he talked of his uncle’s coming, though he laughed at himself. “He’s older than I, and wiser, and he’s long learned to seem, if not ordinary, at least human. And yet... he is what he is. He never lies about it. If someone asks him direct...”
    So far, no one had. Thibaut intended to keep it so. Though it meant coming within reach of his mother’s eye, he stationed himself in Aidan’s shadow, armed with a bland stare and an air of squirely watchfulness.
    oOo
    They laid Gereint in his tomb under the chapel of Aqua Bella, and although he might have had a bishop to sing him to his rest, his lady would have none but her own humble chaplain. Old and all but blind, he still had a sweet voice, and his wits did not wander overmuch, although he forgot once and called Gereint by the name of Margaret’s father.
    It was as Gereint would have wished it.
    â€œHe was blessed in the end,” said Margaret when it was over. “He died without pain, in the prime of his life. He had nothing to regret.”
    Hall and solar were full of people who would need, soon, to think that their presence comforted her. But for this little while, in the cool dimness of the crypt, they let her be. Thibaut did not want to be there, but he could not make himself go elsewhere. Under dust and incense and old stone, he thought he smelled death. Foolish. His grandfather’s tomb held naught now but old bones, dry and clean under the effigy. Gereint was sealed tight in the niche that would have been Margaret’s, embalmed in spices and wrapped in lead and laid under a slab that had needed four strong men-at-arms to shift it. Later his effigy would lie there, all in armor, with the cross of Crusade on its breast.
    Aidan knelt by the niche. If he prayed, it was a warrior’s prayer, a fierce intensity. A saint might look like that as he labored to raise the dead.
    Thibaut shivered. That, he already knew, was beyond Aidan’s power.
    Margaret moved slowly through the crypt. Her shadow was huge in the light of the lamp over her father’s tomb. She paused by Gereint’s, and laid her hand on its lid. A tremor rocked her. Thibaut looked at her in something very like horror. Margaret was the strongest person in the world. Margaret never lost her temper, or her composure, or her wits. Margaret never wept.
    It was if the castle itself had begun to crumble and fall. Thibaut was frozen in shock, helpless. Aidan moved as if he had never been rapt in prayer, rising, touching her. And she let him. She came to him as to a haven. He sank down, cradling her as if she had been a child, rocking her, saying nothing. His face was deathly still. His cheeks were wet.
    Thibaut did not know what he did until he had done it. He crept close to them, and huddled by them. There was room