Free The Dagger and the Cross by Judith Tarr Page A

that is not my own.”
    “He can’t touch you,” said Aidan. “Or fault you for wanting
a day to settle yourself. He’d do worse than that ifhe were the
stranger in the city.” He leaped up from his seat and began a circuit of the
roof, skirting the orange trees in their basins, the rose-briars that twined
into a bower for summer evenings, the jasmine waking with the sunset to send
forth its sweet strong scent. He plucked a handful of blossoms and scattered
them on his brother’s head. Gwydion made no move to shake them off; made no
move at all. “Gwydion bach, our noble king is just capable of doing up
his own hose, ifsomeone shows him how. He’s no match at all for you.”
    “What is he for Jerusalem?”
    The pain in Gwydion’s voice gave even Aidan pause. He
dropped down at his brother’s feet, took the white cold hands in his. “I saw,
too,” he said. “I saw Jerusalem fall. But I won’t believe that it must be. Not
while we live to forestall it.”
    Gwydion shuddered once, deeply. His hands tightened on Aidan’s
with sudden, bruising force. “Would to God I had your faith.”
    “It’s not faith. It’s blind obstinacy.” Aidan grinned up at
the face that was his own. The stars of jasmine were caught in the blue-black
hair. They were not, somehow, incongruous, even as grim as he was, even as
fiercely inhuman as those bones were, with no glamour to soften them.
    “This kingdom was founded on the sword’s edge,” Aidan said. “It
has endured a hundred years against odds no sane man would contemplate. One
thin line of fortresses from Kerak to Banias: that is all that stands between
us and the infidel. More than any kingdom in the world, this is a camp of war,
held by folk to whom war is their life’s breath. They will not yield while
there is strength in them to fight.”
    “God grant,” said Gwydion.
    o0o
    “Would it be so terrible if he saw true?”
    Aidan raised his head from Morgiana’s breast. “How can you
say that?”
    “You can ask?”
    Their eyes met, clashed, disengaged. He sat up. She lay
unmoving, slender ivory body, cloak of wonderful, improbable hair. In lamplight
it was almost black, with ruddy lights; in sunlight, the color of wine. She was
heartbreakingly beautiful.
    And utterly maddening. “We are,” he said, “defenders of this
kingdom.”
    “You are. Are you going to swear fealty to Guy, after all?”
    “Not if I can help it.”
    She stretched, sinuous, and coiled on her side, head propped
on hand. The lamplight struck fire in her eyes. “Well then. Suppose that the
sultan takes Jerusalem. He’s a better king by far than Sybilla’s fancy man.”
    “He’s an infidel,” Aidan said.
    “So am I.”
    “I’m not marrying him.”
    “I should hope not.” She traced an idle, tingling pattern on
his thigh. “Why should it matter which God a man prays to, if he rules well?”
    “It does matter,” he said. “Here of all places in the world.
This is our holy land; our Christ who lay in the Sepulcher. We defend it for
his sake.”
    “What of us? That is our Dome out yonder, which your
Templars have outraged by setting a cross atop it; our Rock from which the
Prophet, on his name be blessing and peace, went up to heaven. It’s our land,
too, our holy place.”
    “And Simeon would tell you that your Dome is built on the
Temple of Solomon. Maybe we should give all this country back to the Jews, and
have done.”
    “God forbid!”
    “God probably will. Allah, too. If He’s all the same, who’s
to say that even He knows which of us has the most right to this city?”
    “You are appalling,” she said.
    He bent to kiss her. She caught him as he drew back, wound
her fingers in his hair. “Uncounted multitudes of Muslims,” she said, “and any
one of them more than willing to taste my sweet white body; and with what
should I fall in love? A howling infidel.”
    “Whereby we know that God can laugh.”
    Her fingers unwound from his hair, traced the shape of