Rogue Sword Read online

  “I suppose they will someday,” he mumbled.

  “I’d gladly be a Turk. We used to hear from men who’d been across the strait, in Anatolia, not all Turks are bad. They leave Christians in peace. Only taxing them, I hear. Less tax than we pay to an Emperor who can’t even protect us! But I would be a real Turk. I would raise my son to fight for Mohammed. How else will I ever get revenge on the Franks?”

  “Yes, yes. Now, I beg you of your mercy, I’m three parts dead and one part sick. Let me sleep! “

  He awoke much later. Dusk hung blue in the smokehole. The infant slumbered. The woman squatted over the fire, stirring a pot. Lucas’ body was one lump of stiffness and pain. But after he had exercised and drunk half a gallon of water, he began to feel a little like himself.

  “That stew smells good,” he said wistfully.

  “You swore you wouldn’t harm me,” she said. “I can barely make milk for Doukas. Would .you rob me of the means?”

  “No.” He sighed. “Give me another hour and I’ll be on my way.”

  She looked at him closely. “Where will you go?”

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps to Maditos.”

  “They take no one in. They want to keep their supplies against a siege. I tried.”

  He lacked heart to tell her he might have a special entree. “Have you any suggestions?”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  He thought about it. “West and south,” he decided. “I have a friend on Cyprus who might give me some employment. But I fear that’s too long a swim.”

  The dark head cocked, studying him. “My father once visited Cyprus. They have Latin kings, don’t they? He said the Greeks there are oppressed. But surely no worse there than here, today. Do you know?”

  “I don’t suppose one is set upon and ravished, or killed, or sold as a slave. More than that I can’t say.”

  “What is your name?” she asked abruptly.

  “Lucas. And you?”

  “Xenia.” She stirred the pot with more energy than was needed. All at once, rising and handing him a bowl: “I know where a boat is hidden. Could you sail it alone, with me to help a little?”

  Joy sprang in him, but he answered cautiously, “The autumn storms will soon be upon us.”

  “If we sink,” she said, “have we lost very much? I often thought of taking the boat myself, but I could never rig the mast. None of the few people left hereabouts could handle a boat of that size. All our men and youths are gone. Only a few women and aged ones are left. So I kept my knowledge secret, always hoping--”

  “Given your own food supplies to start with.” he said, “I think we might catch enough fish to keep alive. I’m a fisher lad myself.”

  “Oh, blessed Mother Mary! That I should be granted this!”

  Having slept so much already, he tossed wakeful after dark. Sometime toward midnight, he heard a rustling from Xenia’s pallet. He sat up. By the last light of the banked fire, he saw her beckon him and crept across the floor.

  The thin arms closed around his neck. “Lucas,” she cried softly. “The world is such a terrible place. Help me forget.”

  Chapter XV

  On the slopes of the Troodos Mountains, along a road which wound red and dusty among pines, now and again opening on a wide view of peaks, plains, hills whose vineyards and orchards were blurred by distance into shadings of autumn color, Lucas fell in with a band of muleteers. They were bringing wood down to Limasol, and glad of a stranger’s company.

  “What may your business be?” asked the leader, a burly black-whiskered man called Petros. “Who’s your master?”

  “None,” said Lucas.

  They looked so shocked that he hastened to add: “Oh, I’m no outlaw.” Not on Cyprus, he thought, and then, wryly: Not yet. “I came here in search of work.”

  “Hm.” Petros scratched his head. “You’ve not found so good a place, then. Some Frankish lord may well lay hands on you as a masterless man and make you a slave in all but name.”

  Lucas scowled. This was not the first time he had heard from Cypriotes of the harshness under which they lived. The island was rich, a crossroads of trade, mild of climate and beautiful to behold. But it was also the last remnant of the Crusader kingdoms. The French dynasty of Lusignan and their barons ruled with high-handedness, exacerbated by the fact that the serfs, peasants, and workmen under them were Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians. The native hierarchy had been made subject to a Roman archbishop; their churches were small and poor, deliberately made inconspicuous, and the life of the people followed the same pattern.

  By contrast to their brethren under the Catalans, or even under the Empire, the Cypriotes were fortunate. But it was only the difference between slaughterhouse and shearing shed.

  God of justice, thought Lucas, have You brought the Turk down on us because we forgot to honor our fellow Christian?

  “Did you hear what I said?” asked Petros impatiently.

  Lucas started out of reverie. He was glad to bring his mind back to the chilly sweet air under the pines. “Oh,” he said. “Yes. I knew that danger. But I’m not afraid of their bailiffs. Not after eluding so many others.”

  “How so?” The nearer men edged closer, eager for any story that would break the tedium of their lives. Then, as the mules began lagging and straying, they returned to apply the whip. Oaths rolled richly through the forest shadows.

  “I fled from Gallipoli peninsula,” Lucas said. Those who could hear him looked rather blank. Only the dimmest rumors of the Grand Company had reached these folk, rooted like plants to their patches of soil. Few of them even knew the geography beyond this island; it was a wide, vague world, filled with heathen, monsters, and Franks. Better stay safe at home! Lucas spent so much time explaining matters known to any Venetian sailor that he had little left for his own adventures.

  That suited him. He had to leave out all the truth about himself anyhow, posing as a common Byzantine fisherman, lest he start gossip which would draw unwelcome attention. The simple fact of his Latin father might have cost him the friendship of these men.

  What he could tell was picturesque enough in retrospect, though it had been miserable while it happened. Xenia’s shallop was too big for him to row. Sculling, he could barely move it along. They were therefore dependent on sail, and the lateen rig made heavy labor for a single man who must also take the steering oar. The woman was too frail to help, and preoccupied with her infant, which sickened horribly at first.

  The lack of a periplus added hundreds of miles. Once they had gotten through the narrows, at night, they had to pass among the Dodecanese, with no other guide than the Asiatic shore itself. Often they lost this, when weather or the sight of a ship (which in the Aegean Sea, where all government had failed, was likely a pirate and certainly not a friend) drove them west. Then Lucas beat back as well as he could, inquiring at dagger point of lonely islanders where he was. He took only as much food from them as he believed they could spare, and even so he cursed himself. But the thin crying of the child gave him no freedom in that matter. His trolling for fish had not proved very successful.

  He did not even want to remember the gales they encountered.

  Toward the end, though, luck turned. The last few days brought slow but steady airs, pushing them east under a mild sun and a big yellow moon. He had robbed a cask of salt pork and another of wine. An occasional pilchard on the hooks helped fill shrunken bellies. Doukas became less fretful, gained weight, crowed at the sea birds and went quietly to sleep on his mother’s breast. Beyond the archipelago, this late in the year, they were not frightened by other vessels. At night, moonglow on the water, land hazy and unreal to larboard, a thousand stars, the lapping and swirling of wavelets under the bows ... it had been sweet.

  Perhaps the hardest task of the whole voyage had come on shore, when he made himself ignore the wistfulness in Xenia’s eyes and left the convent which had given her shelter.

  “Where was your landfall?” inquired Petros.


  “On the north coast, near Kyrenia,” said Lucas. “I sold my boat to a fisher for enough money to buy a clean outfit and get me to Limasol.” He spat. “The vessel was worth a good deal more, but he could see I dared not offer it openly, lest I attract the notice of the damned Frankish baron.”

  “What hope brought you walking all the way across the island, then?”

  “I think I can find employment which would not be too onerous with the knightly Order.”

  “What? Great stinking horse apples!” Petros gestured violently. “You’ve no idea what you speak of. Go to Famagusta. There’s work on the docks, however ill-paid. But bind yourself not to those friars of Satan.”

  Lucas stopped in his tracks. Understanding came. “No, wait, what I meant was--”

  Petros growled on, red-faced, too angry to have heard. “Listen. When the knights came here, the king gave ’em right to buy broad lands. They’d wealth enough, and they soon showed us Cypriotes how they got it. Usury, rack-renting, fines, taxes, extortion! Oh, they’ll hire you with scant questioning, my friend, but you’ll soon find why they only keep their serfs. Blows, curses, a pittance of wage--gouged back into their coffers on any pretext--wretched huts to live in, sour Romish rantings: that’s all you’ll get from the Knights Templar!”

  “But I meant the Hospitallers. Everyone has told me they’re honest.”

  Petros fell silent. Only the crunch of feet and hoofs, a breeze that made sunflecks dance on the brown forest floor, a starling far off across the dale which the path overlooked, were heard. Then the muleteer slapped an animal’s rump with a shattering noise, and laughed.

  “Name of a blue-bellied hog! I’ll wager my mucking manhood against a clipped Venetian quattrino you’ve heard only good of them. But how could I tell you meant the Knights of St. John? No use hunting employment there. Too many others have grabbed the chance to work for such masters. They’ll give you a doss and a meal, aye, without asking you to do more in return than chop some wood or hoe some furrows. If you’re sick, they’ll nurse you to health, and send you off with a Godspeed so hearty you’ll forget its Popish. They’ll even try to get a decent master for you. But hire you themselves? Where’d they find the room?”

  “No harm in asking.”

  “Well--” Petros gave Lucas a shrewd look. “Perhaps. I’ve begun to think there’s more to you than you admit. No simple fisherman walks so swingingly, with head so high . . . yes, and your hands aren’t misshapen from drudgery. So be it. I can keep a closed mouth. I’ve scars of the lash to remind me.”

  He paused, hesitant. “If you should find favor, Lucas--if you should see a place for one more--would you tell them my name? I’d work my butt off! “

  They trudged on. Recalling Hugh de Tourneville, Lucas had guessed the Hospitallers would be less odious than others. But when he started his leisured ramble and cautious inquiries, from Kyrenia across the mountains, down through the royal city, Nicosia, and on over the plain to the Troodos range, he had not expected the Cypriotes would with one voice praise the gentleness, open-handedness, justice, tolerance, and wisdom of these warrior friars of the hated Roman Church. The news was immensely cheering.

  If only they were not mere tenants in a misruled kingdom--

  If only Djansha were here!

  Brother Hugh tugged his beard and limped up and down the room for what seemed a long while. Finally he stopped, but his squinting gaze pinned Lucas before he spoke.

  “What did you hope of me?” he asked.

  The tone was no less friendly than that with which he had first welcomed his acquaintance, when, after endless arguing, the impoverished unknown was brought inside to see the Knight Companion of the Grand Master. But he had lost effusiveness. The calculations of a leader were again running through that narrow skull. And the most generous chieftain in the world, Lucas thought, must learn how to make harsh decisions.

  As if reading Lucas’ thoughts, Hugh said with care: “I hope you realize I’m no longer in the position of an English noble. Once I could grant you anything within my means, simply because we spent a few hours in comradeship. Now I am an instrument of the Order.”

  Lucas leaned his elbow on the windowsill and looked past a thick mass of wall toward daylight. The Commandery stood outside Limasol, which raised its battlements in the east above an argent gleam of sea. Down below, a pair of brothers, mere sergeants, but bearing the same black mantel and white cross as his exalted friend, crossed a paved courtyard. A native workman bowed to them and was answered with a grave nod: neither servility on the one side nor haughtiness on the other. A horseman on patrol duty rode by. His armor was unadorned, but burnished to brilliance; the surcoat made a brave red splash. He was the only warlike token in all that landscape.

  “I didn’t come to beg,” said Lucas, abashed. “I offer my services.”

  “Ah . . . judging from your narrative, I doubt if you have a call.” Hugh’s dryness removed the sting. “Do you really wish to vow poverty, chastity, and obedience?”

  “Faith, no!” Lucas wheeled about. The plain whitewashed room echoed with his loudness. The two men regarded each other and broke out laughing.

  “Well-a-day, that was nothing but a tease,” said Hugh. “We do indeed have use for a variety of skills, and often hire them outside the brotherhood.” An enigmatic expression came over him, which Lucas remembered from Constantinople. “Within the next few years, God willing, there’ll be places for many.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucas’ heart thumped.

  Hugh waved the question aside. “But then is not now,” he said. “At the moment--Well. Look you.” He began to pace again, hands behind his back, eyes to the floor.

  “When Acre fell,” he said, slowly and with a pain that grew as he spoke, “an age ended. You’re too young to understand. No one who was not there can understand. Did you ever lose a much-beloved child? No? In all events, you’ve worked and failed. So it was with us. Those who were not blind knew that the end of the Christian dominion in the Holy Land was upon us . . . even before the last day had come. We knew it had been a cruel reign. The final assault on Acre was provoked by wanton Christian persecution of peaceful Moslem subjects. God took away from us what we had ceased to merit. And yet we fought. We fought like demons. Even after the final retreat, we strove to come back, by that grotesque alliance with Ghazan of Persia . . . and God in His mercy vouchsafed an instant more. But no matter. For us as men, a lifetime of losing struggle was brought to a close. For the Order, for our sister Order of the Temple, nearly two centuries of hope and prayer and bloody toil ended in failure. In my own heart I think it almost blasphemous that the King of Cyprus also claims the crown of Jerusalem. No Christian banner will fly above those walls, ever again. Unless, long after you and I are dust--

  “Well.” He cleared his throat. “I digress. I ask you only to imagine the weariness, more of soul than of body, which came to us when we had escaped to Cyprus. This is a strange land. ‘The luxury of France, the softness of Syria, the subtlety and guile of Greece,’ as has been written. We still had riches, not only brought with us from Acre but in broad estates throughout Europe. The care of them inevitably entangled us in worldly concerns. The Lusignan court made us welcome. Oh, very welcome, in a thousand brightly colored ways. Can you imagine the temptation? Can you forgive those brothers who strayed from their vows?”

  Lucas grinned. “I find it harder to understand those who did not.” Seriously: “That must be why the Templars are so abhorred.”

  “Peace!” commanded Hugh. “Speak no evil of others.” But he shook his head. “They have surely provoked much hostility,” he said unwillingly. “Now the Pope has summoned their Grand Master to reply to certain grave charges--But no matter. I can say for the Hospitallers that we also fell into softness and luxury. Not entirely, I trust. We never forgot . . . ahem! We did maintain our prime purpose, to guard and care for Christian folk. From this island base, we built up a war fleet which escorts travelers and is slowly roo
ting out the corsairs. And in recent years, under a younger and more vigorous Grand Master, the vice within the Order has been (God grant) eradicated.”

  He contemplated Lucas more somberly than before. “D’you take my meaning?” he asked.

  “Why--no. I fear not.”

  “To be blunt, we’ve no place for you as a laborer. Even if we had not a superfluity of natives who need such posts more than you, I hope we’d be wiser than to hitch a warhorse to the plow. You could only be used for your subtler abilities. As swordsman, of course, where needful; as ancillary ship’s officer; as a man who can read and write and calculate; as an interpreter; as a far-traveled advisor in our dealings with alien peoples. In short, a position of importance.”

  At any other time, Lucas would have felt pleased. Now he said, low and afraid, “Why can I not serve?”

  “Perhaps you can. Perhaps you can.” Brother Hugh struck the trestle table with his fist. “And yet . . . can’t you see, we who are so close to temptation--which many of us succumbed to in the near past--we dare not make a confidant of someone who has, well, has lived by those very vices. The upshot would harm us and destroy you.”

  Lucas felt himself flush. “That charge of witchcraft--”

  “Oh, that!” Hugh brushed it away like an unclean insect. “Have no fear. Plainly enough, false witness was borne against you. The Aragonese Inquisition knows better than to meddle with our people!” Quickly curbing himself: “No, I mean this whole wild adventuring you’ve related. No doubt you softened it much for my ears.”

  “Frankly,” said Lucas, “yes.”

  Hugh struggled with a smile and lost. After getting back his gravity, he said, almost pleading, “In large part you were the victim of circumstance. But not an unwilling victim . . . most of the time . . . were you? Interrupt me not! I know very well how many fanatical sophistries the Hispanic mind can produce to justify its own darkest wishes.