The Dagger and the Cross by Judith Tarr Page B

and said something in what
must have been Arabic. She liked the sound of his voice. Warm and deep, with a
ripple of mirth.
    She watched him feed the goat. It was a young one, and
seemed to be someone’s pet: its fawn coat was brushed to silk, its amber eyes
mild, for a goat’s. When he stopped feeding it, it blatted. He answered it in
tones both regretful and firm. The goat butted him peremptorily.
    There was a moment of stunned astonishment; then, a
resounding splash.
    She leaped. Too late by far for his dignity, but she got a
grip on his hand and pulled him, gasping and spluttering, out of the pond.
    He had lost his turban. His hair was in braids, three of
them. His face was as bronze-dark as his arms. Water ran in streams from his
beard. A strand of weed was wound in it. She reached to pluck it loose.
    His eyes opened, blinking through the wet, and froze her in
midmotion. They were blue. Blue as the Middle Sea; blue as a fire’s heart.
    And utterly, devastatingly appalled, as he saw her clearly.
    She finished what she had begun. It was her own kind of
defiance. He stiffened at her touch, as if he could not believe that she would
dare it; all at once he recoiled. She caught him before he fell in again.
    His face went an astonishing shade of grey: bloodless under
the bronze. She wondered if he had hit his head. She was sure of it when he
staggered and, abruptly, went down.
    Not in a faint. He was groveling. Or whatever Saracens
called it.
    It made her angry. She dragged him up. He was taller than
she had thought, almost as tall as Gwydion. “Never,” she said, not stopping to
think if he would understand her, “never do that to me.”
    He flushed. There was nothing subservient in his expression.
From the look of it, his temper bade fair to match hers. “My lady,” he said in
quite passable Frankish. “What would you have me do?”
    “Face me like a man,” she said. “Did you hit your head?”
    He turned it gingerly on his neck and explored it with long
supple fingers. “No,” he said, “my lady.” His black brows met. “May I ask what
my lady is doing here?”
    “Saving your life, I rather thought.” She tossed her head. “I
still think so. Even if you do not.”
    “I thank you for my life,” he said as if he recited a
lesson. “My lady.”
    “Your life, but not your pride. As for your dignity...” She
offered him her veil, and when he would not take it, proceeded to dry him
herself.
    He wriggled like a small child, though the words he
muttered—even in Arabic—did not sound like anything a child would know. “Would
you rather drip?” she snapped at him.
    “Yes!”
    She laughed. That stopped him. Even without those improbable
eyes, he was a handsome man. And young; but not a boy. He was more than
five-and-twenty, less than thirty: a good age for a man.
    She dried him as much as she could, and enjoyed it rather
more than she should. He suffered it grimly. No doubt it was agony to be handled
so by a woman, and a Christian at that. That he was not a gardener nor a
menial, she was beginning to be sure of. That kind of touchy pride never lived
out of childhood, unless its owner ranked high enough to foster it.
    “Are you one of Aidan’s Saracens?” she asked.
    He drew himself up. “I am his mamluk,” he said.
    And proud of it, too. This time he met her grin with one of
his own, though it was brief, a white flash in his dark face. “And I am his
sister’s granddaughter,” she said. “Elen.”
    He inclined his head, gracious, if not quite ready to
forgive her. “Raman,” he said.
    She accepted the gift as courteously as he had, and as
coolly. “You speak the langue d’oeil very well.”
    “My lord taught me.” His tongue stumbled just perceptibly,
as if praise made it awkward. “Strangers are not to know. That we understand
them.”
    “That’s wise. You hear more, that way.”
    His eyes glittered. “Oh, we do, indeed.”
    “Too much?”
    “Never while it serves my lord. He is never