Beloved Pilgrim Page 18

  Maliha had been drifting into slumber but woke now at the mention of her child. "He is here. He will live with me here."

  Elisabeth lifted her head so she could look into the honey-colored eyes that were mellower now. "He will live with you? But I had not had a chance to ask it!"

  The woman in her arms shrugged. "Just after you left, the manservant here came to where I live and asked me to bring my child and come back here. He said you wanted me."

  Smiling broadly, Elisabeth said, "Oh I do, I do. Over and over and over." She pressed her mouth on Maliha's again.

  "What is his name?" she asked when she came up for air.

  "Tacetin. He is just three years old."

  Elisabeth's face grew more somber. "And his father?" There was a tinge of fear in her voice.

  Maliha sighed. She touched her lover's cheek, brushing the shorn locks from her temple. "His name is Yakup. Or was. I really don't know. He went to join Kilij Arslan's fighters just before Tacetin was born. That was his mother you saw, screaming at me. It is her house."

  In the dimming light of long-burned candles, Elisabeth looked into Maliha's eyes. "I see. So she saw you kissing me and to her you were betraying her son."

  Maliha nodded. "She will not admit that he may be dead."

  "Was she not aware of the expectations of you in this house?"

  "She condemned me for that as well, but she did not condemn the coins I was able to take her for our lodging and her care of Tacetin. But seeing me in the arms of a Frankish knight and clearly loving it was too much. If the man the master sent had not come just then, she may have called for me to be stoned."

  "My God, how close that came." She clasped the woman to her tightly. Then hesitantly she went on. "Did . . . do you love him? Yakup, I mean?"

  Maliha took Elisabeth's face in her hands and looked stormily into her brown eyes. "I love you. I have never loved anyone until I met you. You are my beloved."

  Elisabeth gazed back. "Marry me," she said almost desperately.

  Maliha smiled ruefully. "I do not see how we two can do that."

  "There must be a way. I love you and don't want to have anyone else but you in my life and me in yours."

  Maliha was thoughtful. "You could buy me. I am not a slave, but I could become one."

  The shorn head drew up abruptly. "No, I don't want you to be my slave or anyone else's. We will find a way to be together." Suddenly her face paled. "God help us," she moaned.

  Maliha pulled herself up on her elbows. "What is it, my love? What is wrong?"

  Elisabeth's face was pained where it had been tender before. "I have to leave in a couple weeks. The pilgrims are leaving by the end of this month for the Holy Land. I have to go with them. I have no choice. I am pledged."

  Searching her lover's face, Maliha frowned. She drew the precious head to her breast. "Then you will leave, I will stay here in this house, the master said I may, and then you will come back to me." Her voice broke. "Please tell me you will come back to me."

  Chapter Ten ~ First Contact

  The two pilgrims from Winterkirche rode along the dry, dusty road with faces so long their chins almost scraped another rut. The three knights, Black Beast, Alain and Gerhardt, hurried their mounts to ride up alongside them.

  "I know why Elias looks like someone died, but your squire, why does he?" Alain prodded, a playful look on his face that was repeated on the other two knights'. "Lovers' quarrel?"

  Elisabeth gave Alain a baleful look. Albrecht would not meet the man's eyes.

  "Ho, calm yourself. Nothing meant by it." Alain's hands were up, one with his mount's reins draped between the fingers loosely.

  Black Beast rode closer to the Frank. Slapping him on the back, he bellowed, "Come now, mon ami, you must remember what it is like to be so young and in love for the first time."

  Gerhardt counseled, "Leave them alone. We have enough misery to deal with ahead of us. Why start it out worse than it already is?"

  For an answer, Elisabeth called, "Come, Albrecht. The wind is too hot here." She urged Gauner into a trot and moved away from the knights. Albrecht followed.

  "I was just trying to get them to lighten up." Black Beast frowned. "He doesn't really think he is in love, does he? She was just a kept whore."

  Alain studied his fingernails.

  Gerhardt quipped, "Better not say that to Elias. You will be sorry you taught him so many of your fighting moves."

  "Hmmm," the big man acknowledged. "Say, did you hear he clobbered one of the guards on the gate?"

  Alain looked up at that. "It was when he went to find that wench. I understand that Andronikos smoothed it all over. And lo and behold the girl was back and with a brat in tow."

  Riding along further up the column, Elisabeth shook her head. "They can be such arse holes sometimes."

  "Sometimes?" Albrecht responded.

  The two settled into the companionable silence of a long day's journey, each lost in thoughts of his or her own.

  Thoughts of Maliha lying beside her, so soft, so fragrant and so loving filled Elisabeth's mind. They had done their best to make what they could of the few days they would have together. To her joy, Elisabeth was able to spend time with Tacetin, who was shy at first. They decided he should not see her as anything but a man, if only to avoid slips of the toddler's tongue. The boy with his tousled dark hair and huge black eyes studied her from the safety of Maliha's arms until finally he reached out a small hand and touched Elisabeth's cheek. He said something in baby Turkish. Maliha replied in Greek, "Yes, Mama loves Elli."

  Elisabeth looked up questioning. "Elli?"

  "That is what he called you. It's rather nice, isn't it? It can be for Elias or Elisabeth. I think I would like to call you that." She smiled into her lover's eyes.

  Elisabeth put her arms around them both. She nestled her head so that both Maliha's and Tacetin's foreheads touched hers. "I should like that. I will love being your Elli."

  If it had been up to her, the pilgrim knight would have spent all day and all night closeted in her chamber with those honey-colored eyes to gaze into. Andronikos made no demands of either of the women. They were as free as they could be for a time, considering all the preparation that went into the impending departure of the pilgrims.

  The two women did have their evenings and nights to themselves. They remained in bed, touching, kissing, tasting. They played a game of "twins," taking turns comparing parts of their bodies, and then applying the desired attention to them. It was hard to keep at bay the awareness of being separated almost as soon as they had come together, but each did her best to distract herself and the other.

  It took Elisabeth a couple of days to realize that she had hardly seen her squire since Maliha's return. She happened to see him and the eunuch arm in arm on their way to the pavilion where the Byzantine had made his advances on her and understood. She let a brief thought of her brother cross her mind, and then decided that Elias would have wanted this. She let Albrecht have his time with a new lover, knowing she could ask him how it had all come about later.

  On one languid evening Elisabeth tried to explain why she just did not leave the crusade and stay in Constantinople. "I have three reasons," she began.

  Maliha replied, "You have two to stay, and three if you count the fact that Albrecht seems to want to stay as well."

  Elisabeth's eyes begged her lover to allow her to go on. "There is my vow made in Mölk to make my way to Jerusalem. . . . "

  "You can still do that. Later. And take Tacetin and me."

  "Let me go on. Part of that vow is to help keep the Holy City from being retaken by the Paynim. I am also fulfilling my brother's vow."

  Maliha knew all about Elias now. She started to say that Elisabeth could fulfill Elias's vow later, too, but she thought better of it.

  "And there is one more reason, even more important than those." Elisabeth paused until Maliha looked up and into her eyes. "I must find our father or what happened to him." She put a finger to
the woman's full lips to silence her for just a little longer. "No, no one else can do that. I know his knights. If I find them between here and Jerusalem I will hopefully find Father or some news of him. If he is missing or dead or being held, it will most likely be in Turkish hands. Andronikos is influential and powerful, but not outside this empire."

  Maliha took Elisabeth's hand and pressed a kiss into its palm. "I understand. You must find him. Just promise that when you do, you will come back to me. Promise you won't be killed."

  Elisabeth leaned to put her own lips to the lips turning salty with newly shed tears. "I promise not to be killed and to come back to you."

  However much the two jealously guarded their time alone, the Christian forces were preparing for their journey to the Holy Land. She was forced to participate in a most unpleasant task, visiting the Lombard camp to get the unruly mob into some sort of order.

  Less than a month since she had first seen the camp she found it more crowded, filthier and more fractious. She knew more about the disturbances that had forced the Basileus to pen up the mix of pilgrims. All the way from where they first set foot in Byzantium to within sight of the imposing walls of the Sublime City, the rougher elements had run amok. Their winter journey had been miserable. They were only welcome at arm's length as they traveled en masse through the Balkans. The months dragged by; the food was unreliable; there was the inevitable outbreak of illness in such a multitude. Once in the empire they appeared to believe that they were in Paynim land and that plunder and rampage were authorized. It was all Anselm, the Archbishop of Milan and their leader, could do to get them to understand that they were yet in Christian territory and the plunder they stole was from Christians like themselves.

  Emperor Alexios was infuriated by the human pestilence. He had petitioned the Pontiff and the Church of Rome for knights to come to help him hold off Kilij Arslan and his Turkish allies. Instead the first arrivals proved to be rabble, poor, rowdy, not skilled at arms, and ignorant. At best he would have to house and feed them, at worst he had to defend his people and territory from them. He sent soldiers to escort them to a camp built near the city walls. Under watch they could wait for the more formal knightly forces to arrive and then go on their way.

  The various firebrands were incensed at being imprisoned in the inadequate camp. All Anselm and his clerics and the few nobles with them could do was try to counsel calm and patience. One night they overwhelmed the guards and broke through one of the great gates and poured into the city. They tore through the streets breaking into shops and even churches, stealing and smashing what they could not carry. They made their way to the great stone edifice of the Blachernae Palace. It took all the palace guards to subdue them and herd them out beyond the walls. Many of the people who had left Lombardy to make their way to the Holy Land never got any farther than the paupers' graveyard in Constantinople.

  It was said that after the rampage Alexios knelt by the body of one of his precious lions. He could not even imagine the set of circumstances that had ended in the big cat's killing. As he stroked the tawny face, it took all his restraint not to order the massacre of the Lombards, each and every one of them.

  Instead he commanded Anselm's presence in one of the looted churches. One of Andronikos's friends told Elisabeth what happened next as he sat with his goblet of wine on one of the eunuch's brocade couches. "The arrogant Archbishop nonetheless paled at the sight of the destruction as he entered. Not only were the precious and holy items stripped, the vessels containing sacramental wine lay strewn and empty and mostly shattered on the floor, the floor was further covered in refuse and human waste, and figures and decorations on the silent tombs of the dead were hacked off or simply obliterated."

  The Basileus would not speak, but his first lord spoke for him. "How will you pay for this destruction, your Grace? How will you compensate the families of the dead who just yesterday enjoyed breathing the fragrance of life? Did your people forget where they were? Did they think they were in the palace of the Turk? Did they not know they were in the principal city of Christendom, greater even than Rome?"

  Elisabeth could guess that any impulse to abase himself fled from Anselm's mind when he heard the last words. He had nothing to say.

  A few days later the Archbishop took to his sickbed and left punishment and reparations to the military leaders of the Lombard contingents.

  In the end the Lombards found themselves in worse conditions in a camp in Nicomedia, far enough away from the city gates to make their return unlikely, and guarded by far more than a few guards. There the men, women and children waited in the filth and degradation. Hundreds lay dead of knife fights, murder and disease in a makeshift bone-yard within the fence.

  The greatest shock was that in spite of the Emperor's promises, no new camp had been provided for the soldiers and their families from the contingent with which Elisabeth and Albrecht had traveled. The press of misery was simply pressed further.

  With her nose and mouth covered with a scented scarf and her eyes averted from the worst of the filth, Elisabeth marshaled a mostly dispirited mob into a semblance of order. As she went through the camp she was surprised to hear her brother's name called. She looked up to see Ranulf, the mercenary who had bought her night with the delicious Giuliana, sitting on a stack of crates smiling at her.

  "They held you in here?" she exclaimed, shocked. Her eyes surveyed the others nearby and picked out the three other mercenaries. "How did you know it was me?" she asked, pushing down the scarf and wincing at the rank odors.

  "I didn't. I recognized Gauner. So I take it you have been in swankier quarters." Ranulf hopped down from his perch and approached her. She tried not to let it show when his stench reached her nostrils.

  "We'll be heading out in a day or two, east to Dorylaeum." She thought a moment. "I am trying to make some order out of this chaos. If you and the others would help me, I will see what I can do to get you released and into some sort of lodgings in Nicomedia." She eyed Ragnar, Thomas and Ruggiero who had come to stand arrayed behind Ranulf. "But you have to swear not to make any trouble."

  Ragnar turned away in disgust. Ruggiero swore in Italian. Thomas fixed a baleful eye on her. Ranulf leaned his head on one side with a look of pure condemnation on his face. "My Lord Elias, you wound us. Have we not won your trust after all we have been through already?"

  She was ashamed. "I-I am sorry. You are right. I will go immediately and arrange for your release to help us." She saluted sharply and turned and rode away.

  Now on the road to Dorylaeum, Elisabeth looked up to see a smiling Ranulf riding alongside her. "Finally on our way. Where are your shepherds?" the mercenary asked.

  She scowled at him. He simply smiled the broader. "Hello, Albrecht. Happy to be back on the road? Ah, I see not. Losing heart, are we?"

  "Left their hearts behind, I would guess." It was Ruggiero's rough voice.

  The look on Elisabeth's face seemed to confirm the supposition. Ranulf's face softened. "Tough break, lad," he said. "It happens to us all."

  Ragnar snorted. "Speak for yourself. The heart not given is never broken."

  She knew now what had transpired between Albrecht and Andronikos. Just before they left Constantinople, she spotted her squire sitting alone in the fragrant garden just at dusk. She smiled at him as he sat wistfully sniffing some exotic flower. "So," she led, "Got anything you want to share with your lord and master?"

  His sardonic look quickly changed to a meaningful sigh. "Yes, and it is apparently something we truly share. Your eyes glow whenever the Turkish woman enters a chamber. You are truly in love, are you not?"

  She cast down her eyes over reddening cheeks. "Yes, I am. I never thought this would happen to me. But," she inserted as she looked into Albrecht's face, "I think you may have found love . . . again."

  He nodded. "I have. Like you I never thought it would happen to me, not a second time." He smiled at a memory. "The very night your Maliha was brought back and you were in the tub,
I went to leave you two alone."

  Elisabeth gave him a playful shove. "Yes, without telling me! How did you know she had guessed my little secret? We could both have been undone, you, me, both of us."

  Albrecht grinned. "I just knew. Trust me."

  "Never again," she laughed.

  He resumed his story. "I found Andronikos in the corridor, looking at me. He said something about whether my young lord was happy now. I almost said, 'She is,' but caught myself. He approached me and said in a soft voice, 'I cannot help but think you are not so happy. You have a grief, a loss. I would like to help you heal. May I be so bold as to ask you to come to my private chamber? We can speak there with no prying ears.' Of course I assumed he planned a seduction."

  "When is he not," she retorted, but seeing a cautionary look on Albrecht's face, she became serious and attentive again.

  "I told him that I had lost someone dear to me, and I said it would take a great deal of healing for me to get involved with anyone new. He assured me he only wanted to hear about me and my sorrow, so I took his arm and we went to his chamber."

  She waited for more details, but Albrecht remained silent. "Well?" she prodded curiously.

  "Let me just say that Andronikos is a deeply caring man who understands loss and has waited a long time himself to find a new love."

  "And, I take it, you are that new love?"

  His radiant face was his answer. "Funny, you know I have been in love before. I am learning now that there are all kinds of love, even within the boundaries of carnal attraction. I loved . . . your brother . . . deeply. I always shall. But with Andronikos it's different. The passion is there, but it's a mellower passion. It does not steal any territory from Elias in my heart."

  She put her hand on the man's arm and squeezed. "I guessed it had happened. And I will tell you that I did think about Elias but decided he would want this for you."

  Albrecht's voice broke as he said, "He would like Andronikos, don't you think?"