Rusudan/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
THE WIT OF MESSER ANTONIO
RUSUDAN was restless, and this morning her maids exasperated her until she dismissed them all and snatched up an ermine coat, a green silk kerchief and a pair of shapely morocco boots. The kerchief she bound around her head, knotting it loosely over one ear, and the boots she slipped on with the ease of long practise, first kicking off a pair of slippers embroidered with seed pearls. Though there was a mirror of polished bronze near the door of her chamber, she did not pause to glance into it.
Not many women could have worn so many colors and so different materials to advantage. But Rusudan looked bewitching, and this was because she was excited. Her eyes grew deeper and wider and a half-smile of anticipation touched her lips. The silver heels of her boots clinked merrily on the flagstones of the outer hall.
Rupen of Kag, who had come to Tphilis that morning, was waiting to greet her, and with him she talked earnestly for half the turning of the sand glass in the antechamber.
“Send Messer Antonio to me,” she demanded. “Nay, go and seek him and bid him come to me upon the wall.”
Having rid herself of the Prince of Kag, she went more slowly to the balcony overlooking the great hall, and thence by a dark flight of steps to a certain stretch of the parapet between the two gate towers of the donjon. Here, from the courtyard below, she had often seen the Frank standing.
The door of his chamber opened out upon this part of the wall. And Rusudan, seeing no one here, glanced beyond the wall, down the valley.
It was a clear morning, and every detail stood out against the snow—the gray dome of the great Malaki church beside the castle, the deep gorge to the left where the ice-bound Kur wrestled and tore itself free over the rapids by the lower town. And the twisted streets of Tphilis, sprinkled with red roofs, with ancient stone walls and the bell towers of chapels—all far beneath the castle wall.
Tphilis was in truth the Gate of the Khaukesh, and the castle was the key of the gate. To the right rose a cliff of brown limestone, and across the gorge of the Kur its very twin, a thousand-foot ridge that was dwarfed by the more distant forested slopes rising into the clouds. And above the clouds Rusudan could see the summits of the loftier ranges.
Here, at the castle, the valley narrowed to a gut. Below, it widened steadily, until the Kur appeared to be no more than an inanimate gray serpent stretched in the snow.
To Rusudan the sight was as familiar and as beloved as the icy wind blasts that flushed her cheeks and tore at the mass of her dark hair under the 'kerchief. Before the door of the Frank's chamber she hesitated a moment, and mocked ceremony by knocking upon it vigorously.
The door opened, revealing the crusader, his sheathed sword in his left hand.
“Ai,” cried Rusudan, “do you always bear a weapon?” And then she made shift to speak in the lingua franca that she had picked up from the Greeks. “Sir Hugh, I greet you well. It is time for you to go upon the snow road.”
“Is the constable ready to reply?”
“Yesterday he sent his answer.” Anxiety darkened the blue eyes of the girl, and she motioned the knight to come closer. “It is over—finished. Now you are free to go on to the sea, and the ports of Frankistan. You must go—now!”
Hugh shook his head gravely.
“Nay, Princess Rusudan, I shall bear the answer of your lords to the Mongols.”
“But the—answer is sent, down the valley.” She stamped upon the hard-packed snow impatiently. “O, you are very stupid, Sir Hugh of Taranto. Messer Antonio told me your name. He is ready to depart for Trebizond with a caravan of linen cloth and ivory. He promised he would take you.”
She turned to greet the merchant, who had drawn near and stood waiting to be summoned.
“What message did John the Constable send?” Hugh asked bluntly, and the Georgian lifted her head proudly and not a little defiantly.
“War—without truce or any mercy!”
The crusader nodded.
“My horse has been brought into the castle. Now I must ask your leave to depart, to the Horde.”
Rusudan's expressive eyes looked a volume of questions.
“But why? The caravan would take you, Sir Frank, to your folk. You have been seeking a way out of the pagan land. Why would you ride back?”
And Messer Antonio, whose lean brown face betrayed nothing at all, glanced at the crusader sharply.
“Because, my lady, it was the order of Subotai Bahadur that I should return to the Horde.”
“And do you, a knight of the Cross, obey the commands of a pagan lord?”
“He released me from the Horde, bidding me come back. That shall I do, taking with me the Mongols who await me in the lower valley.”
Rusudan and the merchant were silent, and presently the girl went to the parapet and stood looking down upon a swarm of sparrows that clamored around the niches in the gray stone.
“Is it your wish to leave Tphilis?”
And Hugh made answer gravely.
“'Tis a fair land and—the wine is good.”
Rusudan whirled around and faced him angrily.
“Know, then, that your pagan comrades have been sent to their Khan. But I will not suffer you to leave Tphilis—nay, though it is an ill place, and bleak and barren, and its people barbarians.”
And, having spoken, she was gone into the stair entrance, leaving the crusader astonished and the merchant thoughtful. In no more than a moment Messer Antonio altered his plans and approached his companion pleasantly.
“The wine, you say, is excellent. Sir Hugh, and—the moods of a young girl past understanding. In another hour her Highness will be of another mind. Meanwhile—” his keen eye followed the figures of a group of warriors down the ramp—“let us to a tavern to sup and talk.”
NOW, as they threaded the alleys that led to the tavern at the river's side, the thoughts of both men were on Rusudan. Antonio della Trevisani reflected that Rusudan was no longer a child; she did unexpected and unlooked-for things.
For hours she would sit brooding on the walls or in the forest chapel where her brother lay. The Genoese was a keen observer and he felt sure that Rusudan, who had formerly paid John the Constable the careless reverence of a young animal, now watched him and the strategos with puzzled eyes. She no longer romped with the hunting dogs.
“Eh,” he said to himself, “our maid is growing up. She has wild blood in her, and it angers her now that others should give orders to her people.”
Rusudan smiled upon Choaspes often and led him to talk of the imperial court and the Golden Chersonese. But the shrewd Genoese did not think she had any love for the strategos.
“The maid learns to dissemble,” he meditated. “By the saints, that is nothing strange in a woman, but in a barbarian Georgian it is a miracle.”
And it seemed to Messer Antonio that Rusudan, who had just now stormed at the Frank, had bidden him first to go from her presence and then to stay, was fond of the tall stranger. Messer Antonio glanced up covertly at the dark profile of the crusader, framed in its tangle of yellow curls, at the clear, gray eyes and firm-set lips.
“Eh,” he whispered under his breath, “either he is a very clever spy or he is telling the truth. And he is not clever, because he does not see that Rusudan makes much of him. Hmm.”
The crusader, Messer Antonio decided, would carry out a purpose doggedly, would not be swerved from his determination to go back to the pagans. And this was as unexpected as it was unwelcome to Messer Antonio.
So the Genoese quickened his steps, following with his eyes the tall figure of Rupen of Kag who was bound, no doubt, for his favorite tavern kept by a Bokharian near the street of the leather workers, where the din of the Kur drowned the curses and clatter of all too frequent broils. And Messer Antonio smiled, pre paring to play a delightful little game, in which there was no slightest risk to himself and an almost sure profit in sight.
Striding beside him, Hugh hummed, deep-throated, a snatch he had heard Rusudan sing:
“Arg my falcon is quick to see
Quest and quarry, and swift to go
Beyond the clouds, and back to me—
Does he love me or not?
How do I know?”
In the mind of the crusader was a warm delight. It was pleasant in this mountain hamlet; the sun was bright; the gay surcoats and colored boots of the people struck his fancy. He stared at one of the jolly little priests in sugar-loaf hats and smiled at a ragged girl who was carrying a gilded candle toward the great church of the Malaki. And Rusudan—
He would be well content to abide in Tphilis for a few days. It would not be so pleasant riding back alone, as with that wayward gipsy Rusudan, even in a storm.
“Arg my falcon is quick to see—”
“Come!” Trevisani stooped under the lintel of a clay hut with horn windows, deep in the shadow of the hill. And the merchant shivered as if the breath of the river ice had touched him.
A score of hillmen and Circassians sat on the cushions by the stove against the wall, and no one made way for the twain from the castle. Rupen of Kag paused in the act of casting off his heavy burka and eyed them insolently. Then he threw himself into a chair at the head of the one table, and the men who sat by him greeted him volubly.
But there was silence when Trevisani and Hugh took the two empty chairs beside Rupen, who ordered a great beaker of Shiraz wine from the tavern keeper and lifted it with a stentorian “Hail!”
The Circassians began to whisper among themselves, and an Armenian lad who had been tuning a guitar laid it across his knees and stared at the men around the table. Rupen emptied his beaker, drew his sleeve across his mustache and looked both angry and ill at ease.
“My Lord,” Trevisani whispered to him, “this is scant courtesy. My companion the Frank is a belted knight, and mighty are his deeds. 'Tis said no man can stand against him with the sword.”
“Hide of the devil! What is it to me?”
“True,” nodded the Genoese. “He hath the immunity of his mission. Still, his message was insolent.”
“Tfu! It was answered in the right way.” Rupen surveyed the unconscious crusader with grudged admiration. “Well, his courage is proof.”
He emptied his second beaker with a grunt of satisfaction.
“May we meet when the weapons are at play.”
“By the blessed body of St. Marco, what a pity it is that this Frank should be set free to aid the pagans!”
Rupen ran a calloused hand through the bristle of his hair.
“True, a pity!”
“Better to slay him with the others. Then the pagans would know beyond peradventure that the men of the Khaukesh have no fear of them.”
“That is so, Messer Antonio. And yet the order of the constable—” Rupen slapped his broad belt—“bade me cut off the heads of the two in my charge and send them down the valley. Thus it was done. About this Frank nothing was said in the order.”
“Is it certain?” Trevisani's eyes were fixed on the big mountaineer's belt. “There may have been something said.”
“Nay, by Tamar! And yet a priest read it to me.”
“So? He may have mistaken a word.”
“A-ah!” Rupen pulled forth a scrap of soiled parchment and wrinkled his brow over it, though he could decipher not a word. “Here is the order sent by the constable.”
He watched eagerly while the merchant glanced over the missive.
“True,” murmured Trevisani. “The priest read aright. Surely the constable meant to deal with this traitor in his own way. And yet—”
“What?”
“The Frank is a mhendruli—a sword bearer of prowess—and Rusudan hath befriended him. Who would dare lift hand against him?”
“By the graves of Ani—I dare!”
The thin lips of the merchant puckered; he fingered the slip of parchment and eyed Hugh covertly as the crusader quaffed spiced wine with relish.
“Your companion envoys, my Lord Frank, were well entreated by Prince Rupen. He sent them back to the Horde.
“Aye, so,” Hugh assented.
“He sent their heads in a basket strapped to a donkey's back.”
And quietly Hugh set down his bowl of wine.
“They were slain?”
“Here is proof!” Messer Antonio held out the parchment as if it might be a shield to protect him against the grief and anger that smoldered in Hugh's eyes.
“The Khan of Almalyk,” the crusader whispered, “lord of fifty thousand swords and the other that bore a tiger tablet.”
“The third—the servant—escaped.”
Hugh turned the bowl slowly in his powerful hands. Arslan had fled. He would have stolen a horse from the herd and have gone to the Horde without pause for rest or food—he, the dispatch rider who had carried the post from Kambalu. Ere yesterday he would have reached Subotai's yurta with the news. Hugh had been powerless to prevent the slaying of the envoys, but Arslan could not know that.
“It was easily done,” smiled Trevisani. “They knelt to the sword with empty hands; nor did they defend their lives.”
“By the Cross!” Hugh remembered the order he had given the Mongols, fearing a brawl between them and the Georgians. With two dead, and the manner of their death told to the Horde, his mission was at an end. And there was no slightest doubt that Subotai would require his life as retribution.
Nor could he go now in any case beyond Tphilis to the sea, whither Rusudan—for an instant he wondered whether the maid of Karthlos had known of the slaying of the envoys, and had wished to send him away where safety lay. But no, the girl was heedless. It had been a whim.
Then he looked around the table and was aware that the warriors were staring at him, and Rupen sneering. His lips tightened and his brow cleared. His mission ended, an end there would be also of words. One blow he could strike to justify himself.
Thrusting back his chair, he drew a steel gauntlet from his belt and threw it at the feet of the Prince of Kag. His hand closed on Trevisani's shoulder and the merchant winced.
“Say to this lord,” Hugh bade him, “that he may have my head also—if he lives. Say that I will meet him within the lists afoot or horsed, with whatever weapon he chooses and upon whatever day. Upon his body will I requite a foul wrong and an unknightly deed.”
“God's wounds!” roared the Georgian. “What care I for lists and barriers? Let him look to himself, the dog!”
His right hand whipped free the heavy yataghan and his left hand gripped the table's edge. A heave and thrust, and the table went over, bearing with it a pair of hillmen who were tardy in getting out of the way.
“Stay!” cried Trevisani, dancing with anxiety, and with one eye on the crusader's great broadsword. “Challenge the Frank with axes.”
“Now!” Rupen cried, heeding the advice. “Only let it be now, with axes and shields. Look—the ground is level and the snow is hard.”
“Aye, so,” said Hugh.