an intricate variation of the Arab zajal. Reynaud struggled to close his ears to the entrancing sound.
He leaned against the hard stone wall at his back, shut his eyes and steeled his spirit to listen to the seductive rise and fall of Leonor’s voice. Her final song cut deep. The heartrending melody full of longing and passion wound its way into his gut. His throat closed suddenly into an aching knot.
And then a line of verse leaped into his consciousness. ‘Know you the silver swan?’
Instantly, his entire body stiffened, his heart plunging into an irregular thumping. He stared across the room at Leonor. By all that was holy, she had sung the coded words de Blanquefort had entrusted to him.
Thunderstruck, he could not make a sound.
Benjamin looked up from his writing table as the sound of Leonor’s harp, and then cheers, drifted to him from the hall below. He cocked his head, listening with undisguised pleasure.
Good. She had been accepted. Nay, revered, by the sound of shouts and the din of banging cups. Excellent! If she wished, his precious lamb could make her way from castle to court with her art. Now the whole world lay at Leonor’s fingertips.
A shadow fell across the open doorway. Benjamin started, and a blot of ink fell on the page before him. ‘Who comes?’ His voice grated in the silence.
The Templar stepped across the threshold. The knight’s wintry green eyes flicked to meet Benjamin’s gaze. ‘Shalom.’
Benjamin blinked. ‘And to you, peace also.’
Reynaud studied his old tutor, his lips widening into a broad smile. ‘Greetings, Benjamin. Alea jacta est.’
Benjamin’s black eyes snapped. ‘What’s that you say?’
‘That was the first Latin sentence you ever taught me. Do you not remember?’
Benjamin half-rose from his seat. His gaze travelled from Reynaud’s face to the scarlet cross stitched on the front of his surcoat, then dropped to his sword belt.
‘So I see,’ Benjamin murmured. ‘Truly, the die is cast.’
He stood and clasped Reynaud in an embrace so tight the old man wheezed for breath.
‘Gently, my son, gently. Your mail shirt cuts the skin. It is like grasping a tree to one’s breast!’
Reynaud laughed. ‘A tree, am I?’
Benjamin beamed up at him. ‘Very like. Thou art a man, in esse. Now I wish to hear what you are doing here in Moyanne? I know about Hassam asking protection for Leonor…now I would know the rest of it. The truth.’
‘I was sent. By the Templar master, Bertrand de Blanquefort, in Acre.’
‘Acre,’ Benjamin breathed. He raked crabbed fingers through his thick grey beard. ‘And how goes it in Acre?’
‘Well enough,’ Reynaud answered. ‘Christian fights Christian for power in Jerusalem. How goes it in Granada?’
The old man smiled. ‘Well enough. Brother fights brother, as you well remember. Arab fights Christian and Arab as well. Al-Andalus cannot long survive with such division.’
‘Nor can Jerusalem.’ Reynaud eyed the older man. ‘The pomegranate will be devoured, seed by seed. Think you that men are greedy for power, or just fools?’
‘Fools. Greedy for power, yes, but fools. And that is dangerous.’
‘I fear you are right,’ Reynaud said on a sigh. ‘Hassam taught me to think first and draw my blade second. But in Outremer, one does not long hold to that philosophy and live. Now I strike first and ask afterwards.’
Benjamin said nothing. Gesturing for Reynaud to sit, he blotted up the spilled ink and quickly poured two cups of wine from the wooden pitcher at his elbow. He handed one across the writing table to Reynaud. ‘To your health.’
Reynaud lifted his cup. ‘And yours.’
The two men studied each other. At last Benjamin cleared his throat.
Reynaud rose, set his wine cup on the table and bent close to the older man. ‘Know you the silver swan?’ he enunciated carefully.
‘Eh? What? What are you talking about, a swan? What has a swan to do with anything?’
Satisfied, Reynaud patted the man’s bony shoulder. Benjamin knew nothing about de Blanquefort’s coded phrase. For the first time in his life he felt he was the teacher and Benjamin the student.
Deliberately he changed the subject. ‘Tell me of Leonor.’
Just speaking her name brought an unexpected rush of warmth to his chest.
‘Leonor? Ah, yes, Leonor. Well, no doubt you have heard her sing tonight?’
Reynaud nodded. Would that he had not. Her image, and the sound of her low, melodious voice, remained indelibly stamped on his heart.
‘So,’ Benjamin continued. ‘It is obvious, is it not? She is beautiful. Like her mother. Her music, her poems, her…’ His voice trailed off, then he gazed at him with watery black eyes. ‘How impressed she must be at what you have become! You were always a fine-looking boy, but as a man— ay de mi! The ladies must all fall in—’
Reynaud laughed. ‘She was not impressed,’ he said shortly.
Benjamin smiled. ‘As Hassam will tell you, she is a handful. That one has a mind of her own, I fear. Also like her mother.’
‘You must bear part of the blame for that, old friend,’ Reynaud said with a chuckle. ‘Her education was your doing.’
‘And her mother’s,’ Benjamin amended. ‘But, yes, I admit it. Since the day of her birth I have loved Leonor as if she were my own daughter. Old men grow more foolish with the years.’
Reynaud sobered. A Templar, too, could be foolish. And to be foolish was dangerous. There was no room in the life of a spy for the distraction of a woman. He would need all his wits about him in the days to come.
With a gesture, he refused the older man’s offer of more wine. ‘She may be in danger. Hassam fears she may be kidnapped.’
Benjamin’s thin shoulders twitched. ‘Kidnapped!’
‘Calm yourself. I do not think that is what my uncle fears most. I think Hassam knows of some other threat in Navarre, a danger which he did not share with me.’
Benjamin quailed. ‘Danger? What kind of danger?’
‘I know not, at the moment. I mean not to offend you, old friend, but I am suspicious of Leonor.’
At Benjamin’s thoughtful nod, Reynaud pressed the issue a step further. ‘“Know you the silver swan” is a coded message. She sang those very words in the hall just now.’
The old man’s head snapped up. ‘Coded message?’
‘Ben, is it possible that Leonor could be a spy?’
‘What? Leonor? ’ The old man’s black eyes blazed. ‘Have you left your wits in Acre? Think, man. She is a woman! At the moment, bent on being a minstrel. Is that not worrisome enough?’
Reynaud laid his forefinger against his old tutor’s lips. ‘We shall keep silence, then, you and I. I will protect her.’
Benjamin hugged him hard. ‘Guard her well, my son.’
Reynaud knew the links of chainmail under his surcoat pressed into the old man’s flesh, but the strength of Ben’s embrace did not falter. Again he had to smile. In addition to Leonor, Benjamin loved him as well.
Reynaud re-entered the great hall just as