The Golden Horn by Judith Tarr

saved by anyone.”
Alf examined his laced fingers, seeing a pattern there, clear for his reading. “I’ve
had strange thoughts of late. What arrogant creatures men are, to presume that
they know God’s will. And priests are more arrogant than any, for they
not only purport to know, but presume to execute the commands of divine
Providence. Yet, is it Providence or their own desires? If God places the Holy Land
in the Saracens’ hands, perhaps after all He wants it to be so?”
    “That’s heresy,” Aimery muttered.
    “It is; and I was a priest once. I’m no fit
company for God’s knights.”
    “Is that why you’re not a priest now?”
    Jehan drew a sharp breath. Alf smiled and shook his head. “No.
I was raised in an abbey and took vows there. But I found that I couldn’t
be the sort of priest I wanted to be. I asked that my vows be dissolved. It was
easy enough in the end. There’s a law, you see, that a man raised by
monks must not take full vows before his twenty-fifth year. I was much younger
than that. So, a stroke of the papal pen, and suddenly I was a layman. My mind
marked the occasion by conceiving half a dozen heresies.”
    “That’s not so,” Jehan said hotly, “and
you know it. Here, finish off the wine and stop trying to frighten these poor
boys.”
    “Oh, no,” said a new voice. “I find him
fascinating.”
    They started to their feet. The newcomer stood with hands on
hips: a pleasant-faced young man in clothes as rich as a prince’s.
Although they were of Greek cut and fabric, from round-cut head to spurred heel
he was indisputably a Latin. He regarded Alf with a steady brown stare, head
cocked slightly to one side, lips quirked. “In dress a Greek, in accent a
Latin, in name, if I’m not mistaken, a Saxon. You’re an interesting
man, Master Alfred.”
    The young knights had gone pale. Even Jehan seemed
nonplussed. But Alf returned the other’s gaze with perfect calm.
“It seems I’m known among the high ones, my lord.”
    “How not, when your priestly friend has described you
so lovingly, and told us that you were to be honoring our camp with your presence?
You have a clear eye for all our weaknesses.”
    “And for your strength.”
    “What may that be?”
    “Courage,” Alf answered, “to face so great
a city with so few.”
    “Perhaps, after all, God is on our side.”
    “He may be. Who am I to say?”
    The young lord smiled. “Who indeed? Who is anyone,
when it comes to that? Come with me, wise master. There’s a man I’d
have you meet.”
    Alf bowed his head. As he followed the brown-eyed lord,
Jehan fell in behind, a solid presence, and with him the quicksilver that was
Thea. Her amusement danced in his mind. Another
conquest! And a lofty one, too. There aren’t many men who’d bandy
words with Messire Henry of Flanders.
    I’m old in insolence, he responded coolly, without pausing in his stride.
    In the center of the tent city stood a great pavilion, all
imperial purple with the Lion of Saint Mark worked upon it. Under its canopy in
sweltering shade a number of men sat over wine. Yet Alf saw first not faces but
a cloud of clashing wills. Two men leaned toward one another, one young and one
not so young; although they smiled, the tension between them was solid enough
to touch.
    “So, my lord Boniface,” the younger man said, “you
would ride away to Thrace with young Prince Popinjay and leave the City to its
own devices.”
    The other’s smile neither wavered nor softened. “Why
not? Someone should be with him to pull his puppet-strings; or are you unsure
enough of our position here to be afraid to leave it?”
    “I fear nothing at all. But I see an empire with its
young emperor abroad doing battle with the usurper he cast down, and in the
palace naught but an eyeless dodderer. A fruit ripe for our plucking.”
    “Might not the empire do the same with us?”
asked the man who sat between them. He glowed darkly, dressed in the same imperial
splendor as the