The Dagger and the Cross by Judith Tarr Read Free Book Online Page B

occupants. Elen flushed, as ifthat patently
human lady could know what she was thinking.
    “You’re well?” Joanna asked her. Simple courtesy; there
could be no more to it than that. Elen murmured something. The lady nodded, but
she did not withdraw. Such a tall woman, and so strong, with a firm-jawed,
level-browed face. No beauty, but not ugly, either; handsome in an inescapably
Norman fashion. It was hard to believe that her mother was half a Saracen.
    Elen spoke before she thought. “Won’t you sit down? Or do
you have duties?”
    “You were the last of them,” Joanna said, blunt enough, but
with a smile in it. She sat down gratefully on a cushion that Elen had seen no
visible use for, and leaned against the wall. “Ah. That’s better. I’m run off
my feet.”
    Elen smiled. “We’d never have guessed it, as cool as you
were, and everywhere at once. Were those all your children, who sang to us?”
    “Every imp of them,” she said. “And no sour notes, thank Our
Lady. It would never have done to have Conrad throwing things in front of the
king.”
    “Conrad is their tutor?”
    “He’s been teaching them to sing. You’d have noticed him:
the Viking in the turban.”
    Elen most certainly had. “He’s...rather noticeable. Why does
he dress like a Saracen?”
    “He is one.”
    Elen’s disbelief was palpable.
    “He’s a mamluk,” Joanna said. “A soldier-slave. They come as
children from all over the world; they’re bought by the sultan’s men, and
trained as knights are—knights of Islam. Though mamluks from the Rus are rarer
than most; usually they’re Turks, or Tartars like the twins. They’re all Aidan’s,
that lot, though he set them free.”
    “Aidan’s Saracens.” Elen liked the sound of that. “And one a
Viking. Take off his turban, put him ina cotte, and you’d have a
perfect Norman.”
    “So he does, now and then, mostly for mischief. He won one
of his wives that way. It was a terrible scandal. She was a good Christian, a
sergeant’s daughter; he wooed her and won her, and she never seemed to mind
that there were two others before her.”
    “Two...” Elen eyed Joanna narrowly for signs of mockery, but
there were none. “How can a man have three wives?”
    “If he’s a Muslim, he can have four. All that’s required of
him is that he be able to support them, and treat them all alike.”
    “The women don’t mind?”
    “Who asks them?” Joanna’s tone was surprisingly bitter. “It’s
better than lying and sneaking and keeping mistresses on the sly.”
    “I couldn’t do it,” Elen said.
    “Nor I,” Joanna admitted. “Nor, I think, if they had a
choice, most of them. Morgiana would kill before she’d share her prince.”
    She spoke as if she knew it for a certainty. Elen was not
quite bold enough to ask how. Morgiana, Elen was learning rapidly, was strange
even for one of the Folk. Elen had yet to see anything of her but her hands and
her green cat-eyes.
    She shivered a little. “I can imagine that she kills as
easily as she breathes.”
    “No,” said Joanna with startling vehemence. “No, she doesn’t
kill easily. But quickly, yes, and sometimes without stopping to think. She’s
purely like a cat, is Morgiana.”
    “You don’t like her, do you?”
    “Liking has nothing to do with it.” Joanna stood,
straightening with care, bracing her hands in the small of her back. “I was her
prey once. No fault of hers that I survived. Forgiveness is easy enough; it’s forgetting
that I can’t do.”
    Elen bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”
    “For what?” Joanna was sharp, but not angry. She even
managed a smile. “She’s a hunting cat and I’m a dog of a Frank. We’ll never
love one another, but neither need we be enemies. We go our own ways; we cross
as seldom as we can. It works well, all in all.”
    Well, but not entirely comfortably. Elen bit her tongue to
keep it from working any more mischief.
    Joanna left her then, with an embrace that was somewhat