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The Saracen: The Holy War

by Robert Shea · English · Gutenberg #28516 · 843,226 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Saracen: The Holy War

Author: Robert Shea


        
Release date: April 6, 2009 [eBook #28516]

Language: English

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                               THE CHARGE
                             TOWARD DESTINY


Daoud slung his bow across his back and drew his long, curving saif from
the scabbard. The noonday sun flashed on it as he held it high. His men
roamed and brandished their own swords.

The band had caught up with them, and the trumpets and hautboys screamed
death to the enemy while the kettledrums rumbled.

There was nothing left to protect Charles d'Anjou now. There was not
even time for the French leader to run. He seemed to know it. He had his
sword out and he held up a white shield with a red cross.

Urging the Arabian on, shouting the name of God, Daoud raced toward
triumph....




_Also by Robert Shea:_

ILLUMINATUS! (with Robert Anton Wilson)

SHIKE: TIME OF THE DRAGONS

SHIKE: LAST OF THE ZINJA

ALL THINGS ARE LIGHTS*

THE SARACEN: LAND OF THE INFIDEL*


*Published by Ballantine Books




        THE SARACEN:
          THE HOLY
             WAR

         ROBERT SHEA


 BALLANTINE BOOKS · NEW YORK




Copyright © 1989 by Robert Shea

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine
Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-92181

ISBN: 0-345-35933-X

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: April 1989




Transcriber's Note:

    Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant
    spellings remain as printed, whilst inconsistent hyphenation has
    been standardised.

    Thanks to Michael Shea for giving Project Gutenberg permission to
    distribute _The Saracen: The Holy War_.




PROLOGUE

A summary of _The Saracen_ Book One, _Land of the Infidel_


_A.D. April 12, 1264 / 4th day of Jumada, A.H. 662_

Feverish, his arrow-wounded leg throbbing, Daoud ibn Abdallah lies in
bed after a night of battle and defeat. As dawn lights the
eggshell-white windowpanes in his room, he recalls the events that led
him to this bitter hour.

Daoud was born to an English crusading family that had settled in
Palestine. Captured by Muslims as a child, he was taken to El Kahira,
Cairo, chief city of Egypt, and selected for the Mamelukes, the elite
corps of slave warriors gathered from all parts of the Middle East to
serve the sultans of El Kahira.

He became a favorite of a leading Mameluke emir, Baibars. Young and in
need of comfort, he converted to Islam. He came to love the faith of
Muhammad, totally and humbly dedicating himself to its tenets and to the
welfare of the Muslim people. He studied with Sheikh Saadi, a Sufi
mystic, and with the Hashishiyya, the dreaded sect known in Europe as
the Assassins.

In those years the Tartars, invincible legions of mounted barbarians,
had come out of Asia, invading the Islamic world. A huge army led by
Hulagu, grandson of the Tartar conqueror, Genghis Khan, had already
conquered Persia and Syria and was poised to attack Egypt. And Hulagu
was sending ambassadors to the pope to urge Christian Europe to join
with the Tartars in destroying the Muslims.

Should Tartars and crusaders strike at Egypt simultaneously, the people
and faith Daoud has come to love would perish. Daoud has seen with his
own eyes how the Tartars obliterated Baghdad, its 200,000 men, women,
and children slaughtered to the last soul, the city leveled, a
wasteland. He is determined that the same fate not befall his adopted El
Kahira.

Baibars--having made himself Sultan of El Kahira--sent Daoud into the
land of the infidel. Because Daoud is blond and gray-eyed, no one would
ever suspect him to be a Saracen, as Christians call all Muslims.

Daoud's mission was to go to the court of the pope and use every means
necessary--from intrigue and bribery to assassination and outright
war--to stop Christians and Tartars from forming an alliance against
Islam.

He went first to Manfred, king of southern Italy and Sicily. King
Manfred's family, the imperial German house of Hohenstaufen, had been at
war with the popes for generations, and Manfred had among his subjects
many Sicilian Muslims. Manfred agreed to help Daoud. But to protect his
own interests Manfred insisted that Daoud take with him Lorenzo Celino,
a middle-aged Sicilian warrior, and Sophia Karaiannides, a beautiful
Byzantine woman. Lorenzo brought along his huge, formidable dog, Scipio.
Journeying northward, the three rescued Rachel, a Jewish girl, from
tavern ruffians. Daoud agreed, with misgivings, to let her travel with
them.

The pope, threatened by political violence in Rome, had moved his
residence to Orvieto, a strongly walled town built on a huge flat-topped
rock. Here, Cardinal Adelberto Ugolini, a Sicilian churchman who had
long been secretly sending information to Baibars, was horrified to find
Baibars's agent on his doorstep expecting hospitality. But the cardinal
reluctantly agreed to help.

Hulagu Khan's ambassadors to the pope, Christianized Tartars named John
Chagan and Philip Uzbek, arrived in Orvieto two weeks after Daoud. A
young French nobleman, Count Simon de Gobignon, commanded their military
escort. Daoud had arranged for garbage-throwing hecklers to mar the
ambassadors' procession. The arrogant Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil,
accompanying the Tartars, was hit by excrement. He ordered the hired
Venetian crossbowmen to fire into the crowd, killing two innocent
bystanders.

Calling himself David of Trebizond, a merchant from the eastern shore of
the Black Sea, Daoud appeared publicly for the first time at a council
of Church leaders called by Pope Urban. He spoke from firsthand
knowledge of the horrors committed by the Tartars. But Friar Mathieu
d'Alcon, the Tartars' interpreter, testified that in his opinion the
Tartar empire was no longer a danger to Europe.

The Tartar ambassadors and their entourage were guests at the palace of
Orvieto's most powerful family, the Monaldeschi. When Contessa Elvira di
Monaldeschi gave a reception for the emissaries, Daoud drew them into
drunken gloating over their atrocities and boasting of their plans for
world conquest. Pope Urban and many other Church dignitaries were
appalled listeners.

With Ugolini's help, Daoud was able to persuade the influential
Dominican philosopher Fra Tomasso d'Aquino to write and preach against
the alliance. But then, subjected to unknown pressures, Fra Tomasso
suddenly changed his position.

Daoud now felt that he could do no more through intrigue. He had been in
contact with the Filippeschi, an Orvieto clan who were hereditary
enemies of the Monaldeschi family. And through Lorenzo he had been
quietly recruiting a company of bravos--armed adventurers. Offering the
help of his mercenaries, he persuaded the Filippeschi to attack the
Monaldeschi palace. With de Gobignon and the Tartars' other guards
diverted, he could enter the palace and kill the ambassadors.

While the Filippeschi prepared for the attack, Daoud discovered that
Andrea Sordello, one of his hired bravos, had been set to spy on him by
Simon de Gobignon. In Tilia's brothel, Daoud subjected Sordello to a
Hashishiyya initiation, using drugs and women to make the spy his slave.
He implanted in Sordello's mind a command that if he should see a silver
locket that Daoud keeps on his person, he would immediately kill Simon
de Gobignon. And henceforth Sordello was to give Simon only the
information Daoud wanted him to have.

After the initiation Daoud was troubled. He had been taught how to do
this, but had never done it before. Had he truly and completely
subjugated Sordello's soul?

On the night of the attack he was dismayed to discover the Monaldeschi
ready for a siege. But, garbed in black as a Hashishiyya fighter, Daoud
went ahead and slipped into the Monaldeschi palace.

The Tartars, with Simon de Gobignon, Friar Mathieu, and four guards,
were in the most secure room in the palace, the cellar pantry, where
costly spices from the East were kept behind a thick door with a strong
lock.

Trained by the Hashishiyya to use his senses other than sight to fight
in the dark, Daoud forced his way into the spice pantry and put out the
lantern. He struggled with Simon in pitch blackness and came close to
killing him. Swords thrust at him from all directions. He had the
Tartars' lives almost in his grasp, but de Gobignon was thwarting him.
He tried frantically to kill de Gobignon and was no more able to do it
than if the man were a djinn.

Then the old priest escaped from the cellar and came back with a lighted
candle. Gripped by the terrible fear that he would be caught and
exposed, Daoud raced up the cellar stairs. Despair almost killed him
when he felt the searing pain of a Tartar arrow in his leg.

He felt terror when he saw the white-bearded friar on the stairs
blocking his way, even though the old man held no weapon in his
outstretched arms.

He had been about to stab the friar, who was too useful to the Tartars
and the Christians to be allowed to live. But his arm could not move. It
was as if a powerful hand held it, and he seemed to hear a voice booming
in his head, _You dare to murder a priest?_

In his dread he hesitated, but if he did not escape Sophia would die.
The moment of paralysis passed, and instead of killing Friar Mathieu, he
thrust him aside, to fall from the banisterless stairs.

As he lies in bed the following morning in Ugolini's mansion, Daoud
forces himself to think. He has extended himself to the limit of his
powers and failed, but he must try again. He has to find a new plan,
lest his faith and his people, his whole world, meet annihilation.

In a room near Daoud's, Sophia Karaiannides kneels before an icon of
Saint Simon Stylites that she herself painted. She is thankful that
Daoud escaped alive from the Monaldeschi palace. She is glad that Simon,
who coincidentally shares the name of her favorite saint, is alive, too.
But how much longer, she wonders, will she have to live here in the
midst of enemies with the fear of a hideous death as a spy and an enemy
of the Church dogging her day and night?

Sophia was born in Constantinople during the years when it was ruled by
French invaders. As a very young woman she had seen her parents and her
lover slaughtered by rampaging French troops. She went on to serve the
Byzantine general Michael Paleologos, who drove out the French and
became the Basileus, Emperor of Constantinople.

Michael sent Sophia as a confidential envoy to his ally, Manfred, and
she and Manfred became lovers. But when the blond Saracen who called
himself David of Trebizond arrived at Manfred's court, Manfred told her
she must help David in his mission of preventing the Christian-Tartar
alliance. Manfred hinted at danger to her if she stayed with him. Though
heartbroken at being sent away by Manfred, Sophia accepted the
undertaking because another French crusade might well lead to another
French attack on "the Polis," her beloved home city.

When Rachel joined their party, Sophia, remembering her own orphan
girlhood, befriended her. But Daoud insisted, to protect the secrecy of
the mission, that after they arrived in Orvieto, Rachel be sent to the
brothel run by Tilia Caballo, Cardinal Ugolini's mistress.

After a few months in Daoud's company, Sophia felt powerfully attracted
to him. The Saracen admitted that he was likewise drawn to her, but
insisted that they deny any loving feelings, because he must use Sophia
to corrupt and defeat the advocates of the Tartar-Christian alliance.

And he did so at the Contessa di Monaldeschi's reception for the
Tartars, sending Sophia to lure Simon de Gobignon away from the great
hall of the palace while he tempted the Tartars to discredit themselves.
Sophia and Simon went for a walk in the atrium, and in a dark corner she
let him kiss her.

A month after the reception Simon and she had a clandestine tryst in her
room at Ugolini's. Though she was ready to take him to bed, Simon
insisted that they remain chaste, according to the customs of courtly
love, thereby endearing himself to her all the more.

She is surprised to realize that she has come to care deeply for the
idealistic, innocent young Frenchman. But her feeling for the Saracen is
stronger. More than once the ruthless things Daoud has done in pursuit
of his mission have made her almost hate him. Even so, when Sophia is
with Daoud she feels a fire building in herself to match the fire she
perceives behind those gray eyes.

She glances at an hourglass, sighs, and rises from where she has been
kneeling before the saint's icon. It is time to prepare a fresh poultice
for Daoud's wound.

       *       *       *       *       *

Morning at the Palazzo Monaldeschi. The dead are laid out and wept over,
the debris of the siege cleared away, repairs begun on the damaged
walls. Simon de Gobignon strips off his mail shirt, about to step into a
hot bath. He is profoundly grateful to be alive and relieved that he
successfully protected the Tartar ambassadors from being murdered by the
man in black. But relief turns to anguish each time he is reminded that
his friend and adviser, Friar Mathieu, has been cruelly hurt by his fall
and may yet die.

Count Charles d'Anjou, brother of King Louis of France, commissioned
Simon to guard the Tartar ambassadors. King Louis wants to go on crusade
to win back the Holy Land with the help of the Tartars. Pope Urban,
however, is not interested in a crusade in the Middle East, but wants
the help of the French in wresting southern Italy and Sicily away from
Manfred von Hohenstaufen. He has offered Manfred's crown to Count
Charles, but King Louis so far has not agreed to let his brother make
the attempt. So the two strongest leaders in Christendom are stalemated.

Simon is desperately determined that the alliance of Tartars and
Christians succeed. As he has confessed to Friar Mathieu, he bears a
double dishonor. The world despises him as the son of Count Amalric de
Gobignon, whose treachery caused the disastrous defeat of his king and
the death of thousands of his comrades on crusade in Egypt fourteen
years earlier. But only Simon and his parents know that Simon is in
truth the offspring of an adulterous affair between his mother,
Nicolette de Gobignon, and the troubadour Roland de Vency. Ultimately
Roland killed Amalric in a duel and Nicolette married him. And Simon,
though not Amalric's son, inherited the title and the domain of the
Count de Gobignon. Simon has undertaken the task of guarding the Tartars
as a way of restoring the honor of the name de Gobignon and proving to
himself his right to bear that name.

The cause of the alliance has met with many setbacks in Orvieto, and
Simon suspects a secret enemy is behind them. But in recent months the
influential Fra Tomasso became a vigorous supporter of the alliance. And
Sophia, Cardinal Ugolini's lovely niece from Sicily, responded favorably
to Simon's attentions. Events seemed to be taking a turn for the better.

But then Sordello warned Simon that the Filippeschi were planning to
attack the Monaldeschi palace. Preparing to defend his hostess, the
contessa, Simon insisted that the Tartars, despite their desire to
fight, be kept safe in the spice pantry. Directing the defense of the
palace from its tower, Simon suddenly sensed that the attack must be
only a diversion, that the Tartars were the real target of whoever was
behind the Filippeschi. He abruptly left the tower and rushed down to
the spice pantry.

He had barely gotten there when a man all in black forced his way in and
doused the lights. In darkness the stalker killed two of the Tartars'
guards and almost strangled Simon.

Simon fought off the killer long enough to give Friar Mathieu time to
open doors and let in light. One of the Tartars managed to wound the man
in black with an arrow. The attacker threw Friar Mathieu from the stairs
and vanished into the maze of rooms on the first floor of the palace.

Now, Simon thinks as he eases himself into his bath, he has met the
hidden enemy whose presence he felt ever since coming to Orvieto. Evil
as Satan, powerful enough to throw an army against a fortified palace,
subtle enough to strike at victims no matter how well protected. A
being of almost inhuman strength and skill. Cruel and pitiless, ready to
murder anyone who stands in his way.

Certain as the judgment of God it is that Simon and the man in black
will fight again. This is war to the death.




                               BOOK TWO

                             THE HOLY WAR

                       _Anno Domini 1264-1266
                     Year of the Hegira 662-664_

 "That which striketh!
 What is that which striketh?
 Ah, who will convey to thee what the Striking is?"
                                            --The Koran, Surah CI

 "How many men have slept in happiness, unaware that sudden death was
 about to strike them?"
                                                    --Hulagu Khan




XLV


Daoud drifted in and out of consciousness for two days after the fight
at the Monaldeschi palace. Sleeping was much better than being awake and
remembering failure.

In dreams he rode once again with his khushdashiya, his brother
Mamelukes.

A yellow silk banner rippled in the breeze before them, declaring, WAGE
WAR UTTERLY ON THE IDOLATORS, AS THEY WAGE WAR UTTERLY ON YOU.

Dust clouds swirled around them as they thundered down upon a row of
Frankish knights. From a distance Daoud sent bolt after bolt from his
compound bow whistling into the dark line of mail-clad men. He saw men
clutch at their throats and topple from the saddle.

Screaming, he charged into the midst of the Franks, whirling his saif
over his head, his lance in his left hand. A knight galloped into his
path, holding up a shield white as an eggshell, emblazoned with a red
cross. Daoud brought the saif down, and the knight raised his shield to
fend off the blow. That left the crusader momentarily blind, and Daoud
thrust under the shield with his lance.

The lance went in as if the knight wore no mail. As the Frank fell
backward from his horse, Daoud saw that it was Simon de Gobignon.

Sophia's light touch on his shoulder woke Daoud. He was lying on his
stomach. He propped himself up on his elbows and saw the glowing,
diamond-shaped windowpanes and the familiar white walls of his room on
the upper floor of Cardinal Ugolini's mansion. He turned his head to
look at Sophia. Her dark eyes comforted him.

"Time for your poultice," she said.

He tried to smile at her. "And something to drink. My mouth tastes dry
and foul."

"Wine?"

"By the Archangel, no! The juice of oranges, and later kaviyeh."

Sophia laughed. "Oranges? In April? You must be dreaming. Trees do not
bear fruit all year round in this part of the world, David. Your bitter
beverage I can supply. But let me see to your wound first." She raised
the blanket that covered his body. He felt his skin grow hot from scalp
to toes. She was gazing upon his nude body. He was glad he was lying on
his stomach rather than on his back.

Did his nakedness mean anything to her? Among Christians, he knew, men
and women often saw each other naked. Not only did women go through the
streets with their faces uncovered, but in warm weather the common folk,
men and women both, walked to the public baths with barely a bit of
cloth wrapped around their loins. And all Christians slept naked. When
Sophia saw his body like this, was it just another unclothed body, like
the many she had doubtless seen in her lifetime? Did she feel any
embarrassment? Or desire? As for himself, his sense of helplessness made
him feel only embarrassed, nothing more.

He turned his head again to look at her. She was intent on administering
the poultice, and that doubtless took her mind off his nakedness. She
had lifted off the old cloth, stained an ugly yellow-brown, and dropped
it to the floor. He got a glimpse of the wound, a red slit about half a
finger's length with black knots of thread in it in the back of his
right leg, halfway between knee and buttock. Gently she patted and
stroked on the wound a paste made of ground rose petals, lime water, and
egg white, the Sufi remedy he had taught her to make.

Lorenzo had used his knife to open the hole made by the arrow so that he
would not tear Daoud's flesh pulling the barbed head out. While Lorenzo
worked over him, Daoud drew upon Saadi's final teaching to him to defend
himself against the pain. In his mind he began to create the drug called
Soma. He envisioned it as a bowl of glowing, silver-colored liquid, and
he believed it could form a capsule around any part of his body where
there was pain and wall it off from the rest of himself, at the same
time filling him with a feeling of well being.

_Once you have experienced the effects of material drugs on your body
and learned to master them_, Saadi said to him, _you have the knowledge
you need to create a drug of the mind, Soma. This is more powerful and
more reliable, and it will not harm your body in any way. Indeed, Soma
will make your body stronger. It will calm your mind, fill you with
peace, sometimes give you visions. But if you should suddenly need all
your faculties, they are yours at once. The drug is gone in an instant._

It was Saadi's teaching that whatever a man could accomplish with
drugs, he could accomplish more effectively and reliably with his mind
alone. A trained man could envision a drug that would serve any desired
purpose. And thus a man could transcend the Hashishiyya reliance on
administered drugs.

While he had drunk from the bowl of Soma and it had flooded through his
body, Daoud's fingers had gripped the little leather case hung around
his neck that contained the Sufi tawidh, the numerological invocation
that he believed would speed his healing. A river of blood had poured
out of his leg when Lorenzo drew out the arrow, and he had fainted.
Sophia had stitched the wound with cotton thread that was now black with
congealed blood.

Now Sophia laid a clean, folded linen cloth over the wound, used another
strip of linen to tie the poultice to his leg, and then pulled the
blanket up over him. Their eyes had not met once during the time she was
caring for him. He found to his surprise that he had to know what she
was thinking and feeling.

As if sensing his need, she spoke. "I have wanted to tell you, but you
were too sick to understand me. D'Ucello, the podesta, came here the
night of the uprising, looking for you and Lorenzo. As we planned, I
told him you had both gone to Perugia."

Daoud's body went cold. He felt as if he were being stalked, and the
hunter was closing in.

"Did he believe you?" he asked.

She shrugged. "He blustered some, but the cardinal ordered him off in
the end. I think he must have hoped to find you among the dead or
wounded at the Monaldeschi palace."

Daoud rolled over in bed, the wooden frame creaking, and the pain tore
through his leg like the slash of a scimitar. He groaned through
clenched teeth. Despite his ability to shield his mind from pain when it
took him unexpectedly like this, it could hurt like the torments of the
damned.

"What are you doing?"

He gasped. "Trying to get up. D'Ucello will be back, and he must not see
me wounded." He tried to sit up, and she laid her hand, firm and cool,
on his forehead and pushed him back against the pillows.

"You are in more danger from fever than you are from d'Ucello," she
said, letting her hand rest on his forehead.

"You will be surprised at how quickly the wound heals," he said,
touching the tawidh at his neck. "As for fever, it is healthy. It burns
out impurities." He laughed bitterly. "I hope it is burning the
stupidity out of me."

"You--stupid?" She laughed.

He did not join her. It pleased him a little, in the midst of his
anguish and self-disgust, to see that she thought well of him. But she
was wrong about him--and her life depended on him, and that thought made
him feel worse.

"De Gobignon was waiting for me. He knew I was coming for the Tartars.
He _knew_."

"How much could he have known?" she asked. "No one knew what your plans
were."

"Sophia, if de Gobignon had not been there, I would have been able to
kill those two barbarian pigs easily. I did my best, with all my skill,
all my training, all my experience, and it went for nothing."

That was a pain Soma would not shield him from, the pain of failure. It
felt like a mace blow to his chest every time he remembered the fight in
the blackness of the spice pantry.

To drive away the damnable memory of being routed by the Christians, he
had to concentrate on the present and the future.

"Send someone to fetch Sordello to me."

"You should be resting."

He laughed and touched her hand lightly. "Resting! Our enemies are not
resting." She sighed, but went.

When Sordello entered Daoud's room, Lorenzo followed him closely, eyes
boring into the back of the mercenary's skull. Sophia entered behind
Lorenzo.

Trembling, Sordello knelt by Daoud's bed. "I feared for you, Messer
David. I am happy to see you looking so well."

Would Sordello give up the pleasures of hashish and the promise of a
paradise with beautiful women? What reward could Simon de Gobignon offer
him that could be more enticing?

_Yet, I have always known that this man was a two-edged sword that could
turn in my hand._

"The Monaldeschi were prepared for us," said Daoud. "They were armed and
on their battlements when we came. Someone warned them."

"You do not suspect me, Messer David?" Sordello, crouched on the floor
by Daoud's bed, looked up slyly sideways at him. "I would be a fool to
injure one who has been so great a benefactor to me."

Daoud felt rage boil up inside him at Sordello's false abjectness. He
glared at the old bravo and saw a faint tremor in his jaw.

Propping himself up on one elbow, he leaned toward Sordello. "Your
fawning insults me. I think you lie."

Hatred briefly twisted Sordello's face. Then a knowing smile made it
even uglier.

"Messer David, if I had told the Count de Gobignon what I know about
you, you would surely be dead by now."

Daoud forced himself to his feet. The pain shot through him like a
lightning bolt, but in his fury he ignored it. He bent down and seized
Sordello's throat with his right hand. He fell back sitting on the bed,
pulling the popeyed bravo toward him so that his good knee pressed into
the Sordello's chest.

Somewhere, nearby, he heard Sophia cry out in protest, but he paid no
attention.

"Confess that it was you, and I will kill you quickly," Daoud whispered.
"I have shown you paradise, and I can show you hell. If you do not give
yourself up now, and I find out later that it was you, I will inflict
torments of mind and body on you beyond your imagining."

"David, stop, you will kill him!" Sophia screamed. She gripped Daoud's
arm, digging her nails into his muscle.

Gradually Daoud released his hold on the corded throat. With his eyes
alone, employing the Hashishiyya "look that imprisons," he held Sordello
fast. The bravo's eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed.

He was glad Sophia had stopped him. She must have realized that he would
regret it if he killed Sordello in a fit of rage. If Sordello had not
betrayed them, his false reports to Simon de Gobignon would still be
useful. And in any case his sudden disappearance immediately after the
attack on the Monaldeschi palace would draw de Gobignon's attention.

"If it is not you, then there is another among us who told Simon de
Gobignon about my plans. If you want to save your life, you will find
out who it is."

"I promise you, Messere." Sordello's voice was a hoarse croak. "Whoever
the escremento is, I will deliver his life into your hands."

Sordello stood up, then turned to Sophia and bowed.

"Madonna," Sordello gasped. "My eternal gratitude--"

"Just get out," Sophia snapped.

Was there a suggestion of a leer in Sordello's lumpy face as he stared
at Sophia? But pain spread from the wound in Daoud's leg in great
ripples through him, and he lay back and concentrated on the Sufi
exercise that detached him from his body.

The heavy oak door closed behind Sordello. They were all three silent
for a moment. Then Lorenzo jerked the door open and looked out into the
corridor. He nodded, indicating Sordello had truly gone.

"It might have been wiser to strangle him," said Lorenzo. "He has all
our lives in his hands."

Daoud held up his hand. "What he said was true. He could have delivered
us to our enemies before the attack. I believe he is still in my power."

       *       *       *       *       *

When alone with Sophia, Daoud lay back on his cushions. She stood
looking down at him, and he wondered if that was pity he saw in her
face.

"You are in such pain," she said.

He shook his head. "It is nothing."

"I do not mean the pain of the body."

She understood, then, what he was feeling. He smiled at her and shut his
eyes.

She sat in silence on the edge of the bed while he lay there, brooding.
Again he escaped into drowsiness. His mind drifted back to the sands of
Egypt. He dreamed again of riding as a Mameluke.

When he woke, a short time had passed, and Sophia was still sitting
there, gazing down at him.

Hints of a new plan began to come together in his mind. As fever purged
him of poison, it had brought him dreams of battle. Not of intrigues
with the priests and bishops around the pope. Not of ambushes in narrow
streets. Rather, open war.

That was the meaning of those dreams. Perhaps God Himself had sent them.
He was called upon to wage jihad against the enemies of Islam as a
Mameluke, on horseback, at the head of an army.

He held out his arm to Sophia. "Help me up. You and Lorenzo and I must
meet with Ugolini."

       *       *       *       *       *

Later that morning, a heavy spring rain hammered on the windows of
Ugolini's cabinet. The storm had so darkened the room that the
cardinal's servants had lit extra candles. Daoud, Lorenzo, and Sophia
sat in a semicircle across from Ugolini's worktable.

The painted glass eyes of Ugolini's stuffed owl glared disapprovingly
down from the bookshelves at Daoud, who had a sense that the cardinal
felt as the owl looked. The skull on the table seemed to be laughing at
him.

He understood now what he had to do, but would the others, especially
Ugolini, go along with it? Over Ugolini's frantic protests he had
insisted on inciting the Filippeschi to attack the Palazzo Monaldeschi.
That attack having failed of its purpose, would the three of them still
accept Daoud's authority? Ugolini, surely, would think that events had
proved him right about the futility of the attack on the Monaldeschi.
How could he be won over to the idea of a wider war? _Make war utterly
on the idolaters_--that, he had decided, was the meaning of his dream.

"Manfred's supporters, the Ghibellini, must take the pope captive," he
said. "I know that you would prefer peace to war, but now that I have
tried to kill the Tartars and failed, we do not have that choice." It
was best, he thought, to admit his failure openly before Ugolini threw
it in his face.

The cardinal's eyes were almost as wide and as stark as the owl's. "You
would plunge the whole of Italy into war?"

"No," said Daoud, "but that is what is going to happen. The one thing
that has kept the French out of Italy is the pope's refusal to give the
Christian kings, especially the king of France, permission to ally
themselves with the Tartars. But now that Urban is ill, he may give King
Louis what he wants. When the pope allows the alliance, Louis will give
his brother Charles permission to attack Manfred. It is not I who will
plunge Italy into war. I am proposing only that we act before the French
do."

Ugolini shook his head. "What do you mean, take the pope captive?"

"The Papal States are surrounded by cities ruled by Manfred's Ghibellino
supporters. The nearest is Siena. With gold and with timely warnings
about the danger from the French, we can persuade Siena to move against
the pope." He held up his fist. "And then we can make sure that the next
pope elected is favorable to Manfred. And through him, well disposed
toward peace with Islam."

It was the same sort of plan, Daoud thought, as inciting the Filippeschi
against the Monaldeschi. But Lorenzo had already visited Siena and made
sure that the Ghibellini of Siena, with Daoud's help, could raise a far
greater army than the pope could muster in Orvieto. This time he would
succeed.

"Impossible!" Ugolini cried. "No king can control the Papacy. The
Hohenstaufen have been trying to rule over the popes for centuries, and
for centuries they have failed."

"Perhaps it takes a stranger to see that where the Hohenstaufen failed,
the French are about to succeed," said Daoud. "France is now the
strongest kingdom in Europe. If Manfred does not get control of the pope
and the cardinals, the next pope will be under the protection of the
French, and will have to do whatever they want."

"Urban is a sick man," said Ugolini. "There is not a cardinal who would
risk a wager that he will live to see the year 1265. He will not call
for the French to save him when he knows the angels are coming to get
him."

"No, there I must disagree with Your Eminence," said Lorenzo, lounging
in a large chair facing Ugolini's table. "Urban is a Frenchman, and he
will work to bring the French into Italy until the moment the angels
knock at his door."

Sophia, who had been sitting quietly in an armless straight-back chair
with her hands folded in her lap, said, "The pope will blame the
Ghibellini for the attack on the Monaldeschi. He will want help, and he
will ask it from the French even if it means Christians joining the
Tartars in a crusade the pope does not really want."

"Very shrewd," said Daoud with a smile in her direction. "Except that
the pope had decided before the attack on the Monaldeschi to approve the
alliance with the Tartars. As we know from his persuading Fra Tomasso to
switch sides. It was because the pope had clearly turned against us that
I planned to kill the Tartars."

Daoud was tired of sitting. Despite the pain in his leg, he used his
stick to push himself to his feet and stepped out of the window recess.
He limped over to Ugolini's table.

"We must send Lorenzo to Siena with enough of our precious stones to
raise an army big enough to overwhelm the papal soldiery and the Orvieto
militia. It may take time to persuade the Sienese to act. It will take
more time to muster an army and march on Orvieto. We must begin as
quickly as we can. With the pope in Ghibellino hands, with the
Ghibellini in a position to sway the outcome of the next papal election,
we may yet keep the French out of Italy."

And that, he thought, would keep crusaders and Tartars out of the Dar
al-Islam.

Ugolini's shrug spoke more of despair than of acquiescence. "Certainly
the French will come if we do nothing. You are right about that. Do as
you will. It is a miracle we have survived this long."

Strange, Daoud thought. Ugolini saw their mere survival as miraculous.
To Daoud, failure so far to put a final stop to the alliance of
Christians and Tartars made him wonder whether God disapproved of him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Once he accepted the fact that he had to go, Lorenzo had hoped the rain
would continue. Under its cover his leaving the city was less likely to
be noticed or impeded. But by mid-afternoon, the hour of None, when he
was packed and mounted, a spare horse trotting behind him, a bright,
hot sun had come out, and the puddles in the narrow streets were turning
to steam.

At the Porta Maggiore he stopped when he saw two clerks seated at tables
on either side of the gateway, one questioning each person entering the
town, the other examining those leaving. A dozen of the podesta's men in
yellow and blue stood by to keep people in line. Each clerk consulted
what appeared to be a list on a scroll and on another scroll wrote down
the names of those he questioned.

Only two days ago Sophia had told d'Ucello that David of Trebizond and
his man Giancarlo were in Perugia. Now, Lorenzo thought, those damned
clerks were probably watching for their return. They could have been set
at the gate the morning after the attack on the Monaldeschi palace.

He smiled ironically as he remembered how, last summer, he had sat as
these clerks did now, at the gateway to Lucera waiting to catch a
certain Saracen newly arrived from Egypt.

Now, thought Lorenzo, if he tried to leave Orvieto he would not only be
stopped and possibly arrested, he would be as good as telling the
podesta that he and David had never been out of the town at all.

Lorenzo clenched his fists. He felt like a tuna caught in a net.

_And if I stand here much longer staring they'll notice me and haul me
in._

He quickly turned his horses away from the gate and headed back to
Ugolini's mansion.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the beginning of the third Nocturn, Lorenzo, David, and a servant of
Ugolini's named Riccardo, whom they had chosen for his size and
strength, emerged from an alley near the north side of the city wall.

David wore a hood pulled low over his face. He limped and walked with a
stick. Lorenzo had advised against his being out in the street at all,
but David had answered that the watch did not know he was in Orvieto and
would not be looking for him.

Lorenzo was amazed at how rapidly David had gotten better. He had never
seen a man walking only two days after taking a bad arrow wound in the
leg. The Muslims who taught David the art of healing must be even better
than Jewish physicians.

As they walked, Lorenzo made David recite the names of half a dozen
prominent Perugian merchants who were supporters of King Manfred. If the
podesta were to question David about his whereabouts the night of the
Filippeschi uprising, these men would bear witness that David and
Lorenzo had been in Perugia.

"If d'Ucello does question you, how will you explain that you are back
in Orvieto without having been seen entering through the gate?" Lorenzo
asked him.

"I will tell him--with the greatest reluctance--that the line was very
long when I arrived and that I was in haste to enter, so I bribed the
men on duty to let me by. The more time passes before he discovers my
presence in Orvieto, the more believable that will be."

"If he suspects you of anything, he will arrest you no matter how good a
story you tell him," Lorenzo said.

David stopped walking and rested his hand on Lorenzo's shoulder. "That
is why you must go tonight, my friend. And come back quickly with an
army from Siena."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lorenzo had a pack over his shoulder and wore a long traveling cloak.
Riccardo carried a coil of rope. Ahead of them was a small stone shed
built against the wall, beside one of the round guard towers.

Lorenzo was not particularly frightened by the ordeal ahead. He had done
enough climbing in his younger days. But he was repelled by the thought
that through the large opening in the floor of the little house the
people of this quarter dumped, not only their garbage, but also the
contents of their chamber pots.

They went quietly to the door of the shed. There was a guard in the
tower above them, though he would have no reason to watch the garbage
chute.

Riccardo put a meaty hand on the rough-hewn door. It gave without a
struggle. Not even locked, thought Lorenzo. He supposed the podesta, may
his ballocks wrinkle up like prunes, had not thought that anyone would
choose this ignominious way to escape from the city.

"Sophia told me to tell you she would miss you," David said.

"Kiss her for me," said Lorenzo.

_Wonder if David has bedded Sophia yet._

Riccardo filled the little room so that Lorenzo felt himself being
crowded to the edge of the chute.

"Hey! Riccardo! Push me down _after_ you have the rope around me."

"Sorry, Messere." The burly man tied the rope tightly around Lorenzo's
waist, just above the belt that held the jewels, and they both pulled
hard on the knot to test it. Tying the knots in the dark, they had to be
doubly careful. Then Riccardo tied the other end of the rope around his
own waist and donned heavy oxhide gloves.

It was a warm April night, and Lorenzo smelled a horrid odor of garbage
and excrement coming up from the pit. It was not actually a pit, but a
crevice in the face of the cliff on which Orvieto was built. Lorenzo had
hoped the day's heavy rain would have washed the cliffside clean. But
the people of Orvieto had been dumping offal here for centuries.

"Your final instructions?" he said to David.

"Ugolini's servant Guglielmo seems to have gotten safely out of the city
with your horses and baggage," said David. "He must not have been on any
list. He will meet you at the shrine of Saint Sebastian on the road to
Siena. From there you know what you have to do."

David grasped him by the shoulders and then patted his back. They had
become good friends, Lorenzo realized. Look how David was trusting him
to ride with a fortune in gems to Siena, meet the right parties, bargain
with them, deliver the gems to them and come back to Orvieto with a
Ghibellino army. That was much to expect of a man. Yet David seemed not
to doubt that Lorenzo would do it.

Lorenzo felt warm when he thought how much David meant to him. He had
come on this mission as King Manfred's man, but he was going to Siena
just as much for David as for Manfred. Bringing the Sienese into the
struggle might keep the French away, though, and that would help Manfred
as much as it would the Muslims.

"Lower away, then," Lorenzo said to Riccardo.

David stepped back. Riccardo and Lorenzo both took hold of the rope.
Lorenzo stepped over the edge of the chute. His legs dangled, and he
tried not to think about how much empty space was between him and the
rocks at the base of Orvieto's mountain. The rope cut painfully into his
waist and back. He gripped it tightly with his gloved hands and wrapped
his legs around it to take some of the strain off the loop around his
waist.

Grunting, Riccardo slowly lowered Lorenzo through the chute. David was
standing beside Ugolini's man and had laid a protective hand on the
rope. The hole in the floor was just wide enough for Lorenzo's shoulders
to pass through. Then he was hanging free below the city wall, his back
to the cliff, staring out at a starry black sky and the silhouettes of
distant hillsides. He felt dizzy and shut his eyes.

"Turn me," he whispered hoarsely up at the opening above him.

After a moment he felt his body rotating, and again he had to fight
dizziness. He was facing in toward the smelly crevice, and he drew up
his legs and planted his feet firmly on its walls. With the help of the
rope he could walk down the cliffside. Riccardo let out the rope a
little more, and Lorenzo's boot sole scraped loudly against the
crumbling tufa surface, releasing a shower of pebbles.

"Who's down there?" a distant voice shouted, and Lorenzo felt as if
someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over him. That was the guard
in the tower high above. He wondered if the guard could see him down
here. He tried to grip the sides of the crevice with his feet and pull
himself closer to the cliff face.

"I am taking a piss, buon'amico!" Riccardo called up to the guard. "Do
you mind?"

"That place is not for pissing," the guard called back.

"Would you rather I sprinkled your tower?"

There was no answer this time, and Riccardo began whistling loudly to
cover any further noises Lorenzo might make. Lorenzo hoped the guard
would not come down to investigate. What if he did, and Riccardo felt he
must let go of the rope?

Riccardo must have had the same thought, because he began paying out the
rope more rapidly, and Lorenzo's feet flew over the crackling rock. He
was like a man running furiously backward. It would be comical, he
thought, were he not in danger of breaking his neck.

This was a time when he wished he had clung to a religion of some sort
rather than abandoning the faith of his fathers and replacing it with
nothing. It would be so comforting to pray to an all-powerful being who
might be kind enough to protect him. Just _hoping_ not to get hurt
seemed stupid and futile.

He felt the cliff wall beginning to slant outward a bit under his feet.
The whistling from the shed had stopped. He looked up and saw that he
was halfway down the side of the cliff. The backs of his legs ached from
the strain of supporting his weight, and his shoulders and arms hurt
too. He began to worry, not so much about whether he would fall as what
he might land in when he reached the bottom.

And the smell of rot and filth all around him might choke him before he
ever got down. He saw directly below him a pit of blackness surrounded
by trees that were only a little less dark. The muck might be over his
head; he might just sink into it.

As he reached the level of the trees he drew his knees up and then
straightened them hard, giving himself a push away from the cliff. He
was still being lowered, so that when he swung back to the cliff he was
much farther down. This time his boots hit a coating of soft stuff on
the rock, and the smell was unbearable.

_I'd rather break my neck than smother in shit._

He kicked again with his legs, and when he hit the end of the outward
swing, the rope feeling as if it would cut him in two, he grabbed for a
tree branch, barely visible in the darkness. It hit him in the stomach
and knocked all the wind out of him, but he clung to it desperately.

Bent double over the tree limb, he looked down and saw shadows that
might be forest floor as far below him as his own height. Then again, he
might be seeing the tops of other trees. He drew his dagger and cut the
rope around his middle but held it with one hand. He took deep, relieved
breaths when the constraint was gone. He gave three sharp jerks on the
rope, the signal that he was down. After a moment all tension left the
rope, and he felt it falling in the darkness. Another moment and he
heard rustlings, thumps, and splashes as the rope landed at the bottom
of the crevice. Tomorrow's dumping, he thought, would quite conceal it.

He wondered briefly if David and Riccardo had safely left the dumping
shed and were on their way back to Ugolini's. He looked down again into
the darkness, realizing that if he jumped from here he might fall far
enough to kill himself. Having swung away from the pile of offal, he was
now more worried about breaking his neck. He pulled himself up,
straddling the tree and facing in toward the trunk. He slid down to the
trunk, then tried to feel about with his foot for another branch.

His feet met nothing. He swung over the side of the branch, feeling the
trunk with one hand and the space below him with his feet. Still
nothing. Now he was dangling from the limb, holding on with two aching
hands. If he had not worn gloves, he would have no skin left on his
palms.

_Well, here goes one hopeful atheist._ He let go.

He fell a short distance, feetfirst, into a pool of water. It came up
over his low boots, soaking his hose. There was no smell; apparently it
was a pure forest pool, probably a puddle enlarged by the recent rain.
Sighing, he sloshed out of it. Small creatures hopped and scurried away
from him.

_It could have been much, much worse._

Glad to feel his feet on the ground, he hoped the rest of his journey to
Siena would be less exciting than the beginning.




XLVI


Friar Mathieu sat in a cushion-lined armchair in the cloistered garden
of the Hospital of Santa Clara, the white wisps of his beard ruffling
like feathers in the morning breeze. The dappled shade of a pear tree
protected him from the June sun.

A young Franciscan, his tonsured head a gleaming pink spot surrounded by
a wreath of close-cropped black hair, stood at a tall desk beside Friar
Mathieu, writing on a piece of parchment.

"All things lead to good if one looks at them aright," Friar Mathieu
said with a chuckle. "That murderer in black gave me the time I needed
to do something needful--get the story of my journey among the Tartars
written before it is lost in my failing memory. A good thing I did not
land on my head."

Despite the pain he felt at Friar Mathieu's injuries, Simon had to smile
at the old Franciscan's little joke. And indeed, he might look small and
fragile huddled in his chair, but he was showing energy and zest for
life. He was pulling through.

"And behold," Friar Mathieu went on, lifting his bandaged right arm, "I
myself am exempted from writing. Friar Giuseppe must do the work while I
sit here and explore my memory. And when I grow tired of even that
little bit of work, Friar Giuseppe reads to me from the newly arrived
manuscript on mathematics, called _De Computo Naturali_, by our gifted
brother Friar Bacon of Oxford. I could almost be grateful to that
Assassin."

Simon stood awkwardly, looking unhappily down at him, till Friar Mathieu
motioned him to sit on the ground beside him. To make room for himself,
Simon moved a pair of crutches out of the way. It was worrisome that so
soon--only a few weeks after the fall that had almost killed him--Friar
Mathieu had started hobbling about on crutches and had begun dictating,
sitting painfully upright, to Friar Giuseppe. Even though one leg was
certainly broken and there were probably a dozen other cracks in his
arms and ribs, Friar Mathieu insisted that he was more likely to die if
he remained in bed than if he was up and moving about.

"You are looking well today, Father." He had to admit it, even though
the old priest was not taking proper care of himself.

"I am lucky this happened to me in the spring," said Friar Mathieu. "The
sun and air help me mend. But I fear you will not see my complete
recovery, since you will have to leave Orvieto shortly."

"Leave? Why, Father? Has something gone wrong?" His first thought, as
always, was for the safety of the Tartars. Ever since that terrible
night in April, he dreaded leaving them out of his sight.

Instead of answering, Friar Mathieu asked Friar Giuseppe for privacy.
The young priest bowed deeply and touched the old man's hand reverently
before gathering up his writing materials and turning to go.

"You have not heard, then? A courier brought the news to the pope's
palace last night. All through the north, the Ghibellini are on the
move. Siena, it seems, has been quietly raising an army to send against
Orvieto. And the Ghibellino party has taken power in Pisa and Lucca. It
appears the Ghibellini have decided to seize all of Italy before the
French come in and take it."

_But we are French_, thought Simon, _and we have no ambitions in Italy_.

_Uncle Charles does._

In this quiet garden it was hard to believe that an army could be
preparing to march against Orvieto. Or even that the attack on the
Palazzo Monaldeschi had happened in the same city. Simon watched a friar
in his brown robe serenely weeding. The rows of plants were already tall
and thick--peas, haricots, lettuce, cabbage, carrots. At Gobignon this
time of year the seedlings would not be half as high.

"Will the Sienese besiege Orvieto?" he asked.

_Another battle? And another attempt on the Tartars?_

"Pope Urban will not wait to see what they do," said Friar Mathieu. "He
feels threatened from both north and south, and intends to move away
from here as soon as possible. There is a rumor that Manfred of Sicily
himself may invade the Papal States this summer."

Simon sprang to his feet and threw his arms wide in astonishment. "And
what about the Tartars?"

"They will certainly go where His Holiness goes."

"God's blood!" Simon struck his forehead with his hand. "Forgive me,
Father. But if the pope has not enough troops to keep him safe in
Orvieto, surely he is in even more danger on the road. And if the
Tartars are with him, we could lose everything."

Friar Mathieu shook his head, absently rubbing his bound right arm with
his left hand. "We can gain everything. His Holiness needs help
desperately. Now he can be persuaded to give King Louis permission to
join with the Tartars." The old Franciscan's eyes fixed on Simon's. "You
must go to the pope."

Simon felt the palms of his hands grow cold. "The pope will not listen
to me, Father."

Friar Mathieu chuckled. "Is he more likely to listen to that fool--God
forgive me--de Verceuil?"

"Yes," said Simon after a moment's thought. "De Verceuil is a cardinal.
And is it not his task to treat with the pope? Mine is to guard the
ambassadors."

"Are you not close to King Louis, Simon? Almost a foster son?"

Simon hesitated. "That is putting it a bit strongly. But he knows me
well."

Friar Mathieu gestured with his left hand. "Then you are the person to
carry His Holiness's appeal for help to King Louis."

The suggestion dismayed Simon. It meant he would have to leave the
Tartars for months. And just when they would be much more vulnerable to
attack, following the pope from one city to another.

"No, Father," he said. "I cannot leave the Tartars."

Friar Mathieu shook his head patiently. "Do you not see, Simon? If the
pope does decide to approve an alliance with the Tartars, John and
Philip's work is done."

Standing on the gravel walk of the Franciscan cloister garden, Simon
felt as if the earth were shaking under him. He could not picture
himself speaking to the pope as one statesman to another. Persuade the
pope suddenly to take a stand, when he had vacillated for nearly a year?
And yet, he told himself, he was the Count de Gobignon, and the lands he
held were larger than some kingdoms.

But that only reminded him that he held the title through a lie.

       *       *       *       *       *

The courtyard before the papal palace was crowded with covered wagons
and open carts, horses and donkeys, men carrying crates and bales. Here
and there, mailed papal archers in gold and white surcoats strode,
crossbows on their shoulders, alert for pilfering. Simon asked a series
of servants for the pope's majordomo and was directed to that official,
clad in a glittering embroidered tunic, who stood at the center of the
papal library overseeing the packing of books and scrolls. Simon
summoned up all his confidence and presented himself to the man.

"The Count de Gobignon of France?" the horse-faced majordomo repeated.
"I will try to find His Holiness for you, Your Signory."

They found Pope Urban in a tiny chamber on the second floor of the
palace, writing furiously at a desk that faced a window opposite the
door. He was wearing a white cassock with a white linen hood drawn up
over his head. On his desk Simon saw a jar of ink, a sheaf of quills,
and a stack of parchment sheets. A wrought-iron stand held a black
earthenware pitcher over a candle flame.

"Holy Father--" the majordomo began, addressing the pope's back. Simon
watched with fascination the rapid movements of Pope Urban's right arm
as his quill raced over the parchment, leaping after each line to the
ink jar and back again.

"Maledizione!" the pope exclaimed. "Not now, Ludovico. God's pity, let
me get at least one letter done without you interrupting me. The
Archangel Michael run you through if you speak another word to me."

Simon was momentarily shocked, but then recalled that the pope was a
shoemaker's son. Once a bourgeois, always a bourgeois, he thought, even
if one becomes God's vicar on earth. But, by God's robe, the man could
write fast. In a moment he had filled a sheet of parchment with the
short, unadorned black strokes of a chancery hand. Simon estimated it
would take him the better part of a morning to write that much. Of
course Pope Urban, being a churchman all his life, had a good deal more
practice at writing.

Urban folded the parchment and poured melted red wax from the black
pitcher to seal it. He took the large gold ring from his finger and
stamped it into the wax. Without looking around, he handed the letter to
his majordomo.

"To Duke Alberto Baglione at Perugia by our best horses," said Pope
Urban. "Have Pietro Pettorini carry it; he is our fastest man."

"Holiness," said the majordomo diffidently, taking the letter, "the
Count de Gobignon wishes to see you."

"Ah!" Urban half turned in his chair to look at Simon. Simon saw that
the pope's wrinkled face was a deep pink, and his eyes glittered. Loose
strands of gray hair escaping from under his hood quivered as his head
shook with a slight, constant tremor. Simon had heard that men sometimes
rallied in the final stages of an illness, before the slide into
darkness. That, perhaps, accounted for the pope's color and energy.
Simon's heart ached for the old man. This was the spiritual father of
the world, and his troubles, troubles Simon had in part brought to him,
were aiding whatever disease was destroying him.

"Simon de Gobignon!" Urban cried, raising bony hands in benediction. "If
you had not come to me, I should have sent for you." His pale blue eyes
shifted from side to side, and Simon felt even more pain for him.

_This man should not think of traveling. It will kill him._

Urban half stood, and his majordomo rushed past Simon to turn his chair
so that the pope could face his visitor. He was sitting in a simple
straight-back chair without arms.

Simon stepped into the room and dropped to one knee. The pope extended
his trembling right hand, and Simon kissed his gold Fisherman's Ring. On
its circular face was an engraving of a bearded man whom Simon guessed
must be Saint Peter, casting a net from the stern of a boat.

Seen close at hand and without the tall tiara and the crozier and the
heavy robes of office, Urban was very short. Simon wondered whether he
had always been a little man or whether age and the strains of his
office had shrunk him.

"Stand up, Monseigneur le Comte, s'il vous plaît," said the pope,
changing to French. "I am sorry there is no chair, but this is where I
do all my real work, and it is best not to encourage visitors to sit.
Ludovico, leave us and shut the door behind you. And do not hang about
in the corridor eavesdropping."

Simon rose, and found himself looking down at the skullcap on top of the
pope's head. Feeling awkward, he took a few steps backward until his
back was against the door of the tiny chamber.

Urban said, "I have long wanted to hear from your own lips what happened
at the Palazzo Monaldeschi."

Simon gave the pope a detailed account of the battle. He ended with his
fight with the man in black. Urban's eyes widened, and the trembling of
his head grew more pronounced. When Simon told how the enemy had
escaped, throwing Friar Mathieu from the cellar stairs, the pope winced
in pain.

"So," Urban mused, "this murderer--doubtless sent by Manfred von
Hohenstaufen--still lurks somewhere in Orvieto."

"We have tried to track him down," said Simon. "But the Filippeschi deny
any knowledge of him, and the podesta, it seems, has not the power to
make them answer our questions." He allowed the contempt he felt for
d'Ucello to creep into his voice.

"Open the door and see if that sneaking Ludovico is listening outside,"
Pope Urban said. His lips twitched under his flowing gray beard in what
was probably a smile.

Simon went to the door, and saw no one in the corridor but a helmeted
man-at-arms standing about ten paces away. Servants with a huge bed
frame struggled past. He closed the door and turned again to the pope.

"Yes," said Urban. "What was I saying? Ah, yes--Simon, I expect to be in
my grave before the year is out."

"God forbid, Your Holiness!"

"God do me that kindness, you mean." Urban raised a deprecating hand. "I
am worn out. I am ready to go home. But I have a last task to do before
I die. I must insure the destruction of the odious Manfred. I must not
let him kill me before my work is done, and I must not fall into the
hands of the Ghibellini. So, though it will shorten my life even more, I
must leave Orvieto. Now that the Ghibellini have stirred up the
Filippeschi to make civil war, I am no longer safe on this mountaintop.
Perugia is more secure. It has a big army, and it is surrounded by a
strong ring of other Guelfo cities and castles. After I am gone, the
cardinals will be safe there while they elect a new pope."

Simon realized that he was indeed looking at a dying man. From here to
Perugia was a journey of at least two weeks, through difficult,
mountainous country. Urban might get there safely, but he would not live
there long. The election of a new pope would take months; it had been
known to take years. And Urban's successor might be even more reluctant
to join forces with the Tartars than Urban had been. What if it were
Cardinal Ugolini--he was as eligible as anyone--or someone under his
influence? The little they had accomplished so far might be wholly
undone.

Time. Time was the most terrible enemy of all. The more time passed, the
less likely that the alliance would be formed, the joint attack on the
Saracens launched. Simon saw time as a black river in flood, sweeping
away everything he had worked and fought for.

_I must prevail upon him to give his permission--now. But how can I sway
a man three times my age--the pope himself?_

The only way to keep from giving in to despair was to plunge in, as if
this were a tournament, or a fight to the death. Simon plunged in.

"Your Holiness, before you leave Orvieto, I beg you to recognize that we
must join with the Tartars to crush the infidel."

Urban sighed. "You think just as your King Louis does." He held up an
admonitory finger. "Europe first, Simon. The Church must be strong in
Europe before our princes go adventuring in Outremer."

"But it was the popes who preached the Crusades in the first place,"
Simon answered, baffled.

Urban's eyes grew wide and he leaned forward. "And I will preach yet
another crusade, Simon. Against Manfred the Antichrist. That is why I
would have sent for you if you had not come here. You must make the
journey to King Louis and tell him that this crusade that I will preach
is the most important war of his lifetime. He must come to my aid. I
will make his brother Charles king of southern Italy and Sicily. I will
write the letter to King Louis, and you will carry it to him."

_Now I must make my effort._

"He will heed your appeal if you give him what he wants, Your Holiness.
Write that letter. But in it give your permission for King Louis to ally
himself with the Tartars and begin preparations for a new crusade."

Urban looked slyly up at Simon. "Surely you suspect that it was I who
persuaded Fra Tomasso d'Aquino to change his colors where the Tartars
are concerned. I saw to it that the possibility of an alliance was kept
alive, so that I might have something Louis and I could haggle over.
Louis is the most stubborn man in the world. If I simply give him
whatever he wants, there is no guarantee that he will give me what I
want."

Simon took a deep breath. What he was about to say might offend the pope
deeply.

"Your Holiness, you have said it yourself. There is no more time for
haggling. You must make your best offer and hope it is enough."

The pope shut his eyes and slumped in his chair. Simon's heart went
cold, thinking for a moment that the old man had suffered a seizure.

But then Urban said very softly, "Help me to turn my chair around."

Now Simon's heart beat faster as he moved the pope's chair so that it
faced his desk. Urban took a gleaming blank sheet of parchment from the
pile on his desk, dipped a quill, shook it, and began to write.

Simon stood by the wall, his heart pounding with exhilaration. Could it
actually be that his words had moved the pope himself? It seemed
impossible, as if he had stood in the path of a mighty river and
diverted its course.

"The Tartars," the old man said with a sigh sometime later, when he had
covered two sheets of parchment. "I hope I am not making a terrible
mistake. I still think Fra Tomasso was right in what he first said about
them." He dropped wax at the bottom of the letter, stamped it with his
ring, and blew on the wax to cool it. Then he folded the parchment and
sealed it again.

"Ride to King Louis as quickly as possible." Urban turned, again half
rising from his chair, and handed Simon the letter.

"Shall I carry the king's answer to Perugia, Holy Father?"

Urban shrugged. "Oh, yes, I shall surely be in Perugia by the time you
come back. But God will take me before the first of Charles d'Anjou's
knights sets foot in Italy." He raised a pale hand to silence Simon's
polite protest, and there was actually a twinkle in his eye. "Whatever
my successor thinks, he will have a hard time undoing the decisions I
have made today. By the time the next pope is elected, he will have a
French army to help him destroy the Hohenstaufen. Whether he wants to or
not."

"What of the Tartar ambassadors, Your Holiness?" Simon asked, thinking
that it would be best to hasten those negotiations, too, lest the next
pope disapprove of them. "Should I take them with me to the king?"

"No," said Urban firmly. "Then you would have to take a troop with you
to guard them. You may have to travel far to find King Louis. He is
setting out on a royal progress through his kingdom. I had a report of
him just two days ago. That is one great benefit of this office--" His
gray beard twitched again, and Simon knew that he was smiling. "News
comes to us from everywhere." Then his eyelids lowered. "That is also
what makes being the Holy Father so wearisome."

Yes, of course, King Louis made a journey of inspection through some
portion of his realm nearly every summer. It might be months, Simon
thought with a sinking heart, before he could find the king, deliver the
pope's letter, and get back to the papal court. So much could happen.

_But the most important thing of all has already happened. We have won.
We have the alliance!_

Triumph rang like cathedral bells in his ears. He was bringing victory
to the king and to Count Charles. And his success would restore honor to
the house of Gobignon.

Simon knelt once again, kissing the Fisherman's Ring and thinking that
the hand that wore it would soon be cold.

But as he hurried down a corridor in the Palazzo Papale, already
planning his route to France, the bells of triumph stopped ringing and
in the silence a face appeared before his mind's eye. Amber eyes, olive
skin, and wine-colored lips.

_Sophia! By all the angels and saints, I may never see her again!_

For a moment he felt torn. Duty and honor demanded that he leave Orvieto
at once. But what of love? Sophia's image smiled, and he decided. He
would need at least a day to prepare for his journey anyway. Before he
left Orvieto he must see Sophia and make sure that the meeting would not
be their last.




XLVII


Fat gray clouds hung low over the Umbrian hills, and Sophia thought she
heard thunder rumbling in the west. As Simon's message had promised, he
was waiting for her by the shrine of the Virgin on the road leading
north from Orvieto. But what was he doing here, she wondered, with spare
horses and a loaded baggage mule?

He waved to her and dismounted, and his scudiero--the same man who had
yesterday delivered Simon's note to her--took charge of the beasts.

Clearly Simon was beginning a journey. He had not simply come out here
to meet her. But he would not go anywhere far with no more company than
one squire. And how could he leave the Tartars when hardly two months
ago he had nearly lost his life protecting them?

Trying to puzzle out what was afoot, she rode with Ugolini's man
Riccardo beside her to the shed-covered shrine where a blue-robed Mary
held a smiling baby Jesus. Riccardo helped her down from her horse and
Simon came forward.

She took Simon's arm, and he led her into the pine forest beside the
road. She studied his face, trying to guess what thoughts were passing
behind his somber blue eyes.

As soon as they were out of sight of their companions, she asked him,
"Are you going to Perugia ahead of the pope?"

He did not answer her at once, so she kept her gaze on him.

Sophia enjoyed looking at Simon as she enjoyed looking at beautiful
icons, jewels, sculptures. Yet his body did not have the fine
proportions she had seen in statues made by Greeks of old. He was very
tall and slender, all sharp lines pointing to heaven. His head, framed
by long dark brown hair, was narrow, the nose and chin angular. His
eyes, set in deep hollows, were bright with candor and intelligence,
though at times she saw in them a haunted look.

She even found his barbaric Frankish garb pleasing. From Simon's narrow
shoulders hung a cloak of rich crimson silk, and he wore a soft maroon
cap adorned with a blood-red feather. The purple surcoat that extended
below his knees sparkled with dozens of embroidered repetitions of a
design of three gold crowns. In Constantinople only the Basileus and his
consort were permitted to wear purple. From Simon's black leather belt,
decorated with silver plates, hung a curving Saracen sword. Precious
stones twinkled in its handle.

Now that she considered it, she recalled that she had always seen Simon
in more subdued colors.

_He dressed this way to please me_, she thought fondly.

He looked away from her, but there was nowhere for him to look. They
were walled in on all sides by a thick growth of pines. The lower trunks
of the trees were straight and clean, like the poles of a palisade,
their branches, which started higher than she could reach, putting out
the bright green needles of new summer growth. Somewhere far above them
was the cloudy, rain-heavy sky, but here they were enveloped in deep
shadow under interlocked pine branches. The forest was so dark and
soundless that she began to feel a little frightened. Simon and she were
enemies, after all, even though she hoped he would never realize it. She
often forgot it herself, when she was with him, liking him as much as
she did.

"I am not going to Perugia," he said.

"Did you have me ride all the way out here to tell me no more than
that?" she demanded.

"I wanted to tell you that I love you," he said hoarsely. He turned
toward her, and his face glowed with adoration.

_Oh, the boy! The dear, beautiful boy! He loves me, and he means it with
every fiber of his being._

She felt a wave of warmth, not love but surely a kindliness, going out
from her to him. He turned and took her shoulders in his big hands. She
liked the feel of his hands on her. If only she could forget about
David, she could happily give herself to him.

But she _was_ acting for David, and she was here to find out what this
Frank was planning. She must make some guesses, and then see if she
could get him to confirm them. Such as, where was he going, and why was
he leaving the Tartars behind?

She had to tilt her head back to look into his troubled face. "Come, let
us sit down," she said. She took his hand and led him to a tree whose
trunk was wide enough to let them rest their backs against it. Her silk
skirt formed a dark green semicircle around her, bordered by an
embroidered orange and red design of flowers.

There was a grace in the way he sat down, despite his long arms and
legs. With a practiced movement he swept his sword back behind him, out
of his way.

"Where were David of Trebizond and Giancarlo the night of the attack on
the Monaldeschi palace?" he asked suddenly. She went cold. Did he
suspect them, and her too? Had d'Ucello told him of his unsuccessful
effort to see David and Lorenzo that very night?

"They had both left the city," she said. "They went to Perugia and
Assisi. David wished to see the wonder-working body of San Francesco at
Assisi."

"I thought he was interested in silk, not saints." Simon glowered at
her.

She made herself laugh. "Surely you do not think David the merchant was
in the streets, fighting, the night the Monaldeschi were attacked?"

She heard a bell ring somewhere in the distance. Some little hillside
church ringing out the hour of Tierce. The chiming sounded clear and
peaceful.

_Dear God, sometimes I wish I could have become a nun._

Simon sighed and took her hand gently and held it resting on his thigh.
"Why does it have to be Cardinal Ugolini who is your uncle?"

"If not for my Uncle Adelberto I would not be here and we would never
have met," she said.

"You are so beautiful," he said.

The adoration in his eyes was like a dagger in her heart. She wanted so
much for it to be for her, and it was for a woman who did not exist.

_I am so far from what he thinks I am. Michael and Manfred treated me
like a whore. David sends me to seduce this man who is his enemy._

And that, she thought, was why she so much hated to see what had
happened to Rachel, and to know that David had done it and that she
herself had a hand in it.

"You will never come back to Orvieto, will you?" she said
disconsolately.

His grip on her hand tightened. "No. That is why I wanted to meet you
today. Tell me--if your uncle goes to Perugia to follow the pope, will
you go with him?"

She let her body lean sideways till she was pressed against him. "Oh, I
am sure my uncle will go. He is the cardinal camerlengo, after all. As
for me, I would go if I thought I would see you there."

His head drew down toward hers. "Do you care for me that much?"

"I have never known love like this, Simon. My husband was kind to me,
and I was sorry when he died, but the way I feel about you is
different. I think I will die if I do not know when I can see you
again."

Joy lit up his thin face, and she despised herself. "I will find you,
Sophia. I will be gone for months. But I will ride like the wind, and
when I come back it will be to Perugia."

_He must be going to France!_ He was traveling with but one man, so as
to go faster. The Tartars had nearly been killed in the Filippeschi
uprising, but he would be leaving them for _months_.

Only one thing could be more important to Simon than the lives of the
two Tartars, and that was what the Tartars represented.

The pope must be offering to approve the alliance. Simon must be
carrying the message.

_When I tell David about this, he will ride after Simon and kill him._

Her thoughts began to race. Even if Simon were stopped, was it not still
too late to keep the Franks and the Tartars from joining forces? No,
probably not, because the pope was dying. If this alliance were not
settled now, the talking and deciding would have to begin all over
again, with a new pope.

Could she seduce Simon into abandoning his mission altogether, running
off with her? No, he would never betray so great a trust, not even for
love of her.

"I swear to you, I will find you, I will see you again, Sophia," he was
saying. "Believe me."

_You will not live long enough._

"I do believe you, Simon." Her loathing for herself grew stronger.

Now his arms were around her, and he was pressing her back, away from
the tree trunk and down onto the soft bed of pine needles.

His open mouth was against hers, his lips devouring hers. His hands
caressed her shoulders and her back, moving ceaselessly. One hand slid
around and held her breast, and she heard his little indrawn breath of
pleasure. It must feel good to him, she thought. It felt good to be
touched there, and she pushed back against his hand. She felt her body
relax and grow warm. It had been so long--nearly a year--since a man had
held her in his arms.

_I need this as much as any man does. Men can go to whores, but where
can I go?_

She loved the feel of his strong arms around her as she lay beside him.
He moved so that his whole length was pressed against her, and now he
did not seem any taller than she was. She felt the hardness at his
groin that he pressed against her leg, and she felt an answering heat
within herself.

_No!_

_I cannot let this man make love to me and then send David after him to
kill him. I cannot, I cannot. I would hate myself forever._

She felt her body opening to him, felt her bone-deep need of him. If
they came together now, it would be love, not the love she felt for
David, but love even so. And if she condemned him to death then, she
would destroy herself. But if she did not tell David where Simon was
going, she would betray him, and bring ruin down on his people and her
own. If she let Simon make love to her, she would be so torn that
afterward she would probably go mad.

He was already partly on top of her, and she wriggled away from him,
pushing at him.

"Stop it!" There was a power in her voice that she had not intended to
unleash. She was no longer Cardinal Ugolini's sweet little niece, Sophia
Orfali from Sicily, but Sophia Karaiannides, the woman of Byzantium.

A hand's width of space separated their faces. Her voice seemed to
freeze him. He stared at her as if he were seeing a stranger.

Then anger blazed up in his eyes. His arms tightened. Those arms seemed
so lean, but the strength in them was like steel chains drawn tight. She
clenched her fists and locked her bent arms in front of her to keep him
away. His lips drew back from his teeth and she felt his hot breath on
her face.

_Frankish barbarian!_ she thought. Where only a moment ago she had
wanted him, now she hated him. He was just like all those mail-clad
savages who had destroyed Constantinople, stolen, raped, murdered her
parents. Yes, and she had helped the Basileus Michael to drive them out,
and she would kill this one too. Never would a union of Frankish and
Tartar barbarians threaten her people. By this one man's death she could
guarantee that.

With all the strength her anger gave her, she straightened her arms,
pushing him away. Her right arm free, she thrust her open palm against
his jaw, forcing his head back.

"Let me go!" And again it was the powerful voice of Sophia Karaiannides.

"God's blood!" His eyes were wide, and there was amazement in them, no
longer anger. He released her so suddenly she fell back, hard, against
the floor of the forest.

Immediately he reached for her, but his hands were gentle once more,
helping her to sit up.

He knelt before her. "Please forgive me." He sounded on the verge of
tears. "Please. I lost command of myself."

Standing up, she brushed pine needles from the back of her skirt and her
shawl. He moved to help her, and she pulled away.

"Sophia, I have never loved any woman as much as I love you."

"Nonsense. Simon, you have far to ride."

He moved around so that he was facing her, his usually pale face
flushed, his chest heaving.

"Marry me, Sophia."

If he had struck her, she could not have been more astonished. But she
quickly recovered herself. He thought he could have his way with her by
offering marriage.

"Simon, I am not a woman whose legs can be parted by a promise of
marriage." The note she heard in her voice distressed her. She was being
too much her true, worldly self with him. If he were not deaf to
everything but his own passion, he would hear it, and he would suspect
that she was not what she seemed to be.

She reminded herself: _I must seem to be awed that this great nobleman
speaks to me of marriage._

"You put it crudely," he said, his eyes narrowed with warmth. "To shock
me, I suppose. But you defend your honor, and you speak plainly. I speak
plainly too--I love you."

The sight of him standing there gazing at her with such yearning in his
eyes was too painful. She kept thinking of herself telling David what
she had learned today. She kept seeing this tall, handsome man lying
dead in a ditch. She had to get away from him.

"The morning is well along," she said. "You had better get started if
you want to cover much distance by nightfall. Where do you plan to spend
this night?" She despised herself because she had asked the question to
make it easier for David to trail him.

He frowned at her. "Sophia, I must have your answer. I mean what I say.
I love you. I want to marry you."

Holy Virgin, would the fellow never give in? Did he really think her
foolish enough to believe he was sincerely proposing to her? Yes,
perhaps he did think that of the Sophia she pretended to be. She must
answer him as that girl would. She cast her eyes down, her hands clasped
before her.

"Simon, do not torment me. I know that you cannot marry me. My uncle has
told me who you are--your ancient noble house, your vast holdings.
Perhaps you mean to be kind to me by speaking of marriage, but a man of
your rank has too many obligations. You cannot marry as you choose. So,
please, speak of it no more."

_But what if we could get married?_

The thought arose unbidden in her mind as she stared down at the brown
pine needles. She wanted to drive it out again, but could not stop
herself from seeing what it might be like.

Marriage, a home, a fixed, secure abode where she might live out her
life in serene, peaceful occupations. Raising children, spinning,
embroidering, managing a household. What so many women, rich and poor,
had. What she had not known since she was a young girl--a _place_, a
_family_. And to be the wife of a man like Simon--kind, brave, handsome,
well spoken.

She understood suddenly why it was always so easy for her to forget
Sophia Karaiannides and become Sophia Orfali. She did what was given her
to do, but in the core of her heart what she longed for was to be
someone like Sophia Orfali, who truly had a place in the world. Sophia
Orfali, for all that she was a mask, was more real than Sophia
Karaiannides.

It was too painful for her, the unexpected longing for the love she
could never have, the grief for Simon, whom she was going to murder.

"Let us get back, you to your scudiero and I to my escort," she said.
She started walking toward the road.

He stepped in front of her. "Sophia, wait."

She felt something in her chest like a ball of iron. She had her tears
well under control for the moment, but she had to get away from him.
Otherwise she would not be able to stop herself from crying.

"Please," he said again. She felt herself forced to look up at him. His
thin face, so grave, so intelligent.

"I beg you to believe me. I do want you desperately. Love is of the
spirit, and it is of the body too. But I am not proposing marriage just
to possess you. I want to marry you because I love you."

She stood looking at this handsome young man and breathing the fragrance
of pine-scented air, and she thought of David. What she felt for David
drew no line between body and spirit. If she had all the things she had
just been longing for--a husband, a family, a home--and David appeared
out of nowhere and looked at her with those glowing eyes of his and told
her to come with him, she would abandon everything for him. When she
looked at David, she saw a pillar of pure fire burning inside him. There
was a power in him that called out to everything that was strong in her
and demanded that she accept no other man for her mate.

"You think that my title, my family, is an obstacle to our marrying,"
Simon said. "But it is not. If you knew who I really am, you might not
want to marry _me_."

She laughed a little at the thought of him not being who he so obviously
was. "Are you some peasant lad who stole the place of the true Simon de
Gobignon, then?"

"It is something like that."

"In God's name, Simon, what are you talking about?"

His nostrils flared. He drew air in a great gulp through his mouth. He
took a step toward her, and she tensed, lest he seize her again, but he
kept his hands at his sides.

"The last Count de Gobignon was a traitor to his king, to his
countrymen, to his own vassals. He betrayed a whole army of crusaders
into the hands of the Saracens. He died in disgrace. His grave is
unmarked. So foul was his treachery that no man of good family in France
will permit his daughter to marry me."

Sophia found that hard to believe. There must be many great barons in
France who would forget the crime of the father, no matter how horrible,
when the son was so attractive and, especially, so rich.

"Simon, you have so much to offer a wife." She would have laughed at the
absurdity of all this, but the tortured expression clearly mirrored a
tortured soul.

"Oh, surely, there are barons who would sell their daughters to the
devil for a bit of land," he agreed. "I meant that I could not marry the
women I chose. But there is worse, Sophia. I could lose everything if
what I am about to tell you were known, but that is the least of it. It
puts my life in your hands and the lives of my mother and--my father."

_Your life is already in my hands_, she thought, her eyes hurting from
looking so intensely into his. But then the full meaning of what he had
said bore in on her.

_His father?_

"Simon, are you telling me that you are not--"

"I am not the son of the Count de Gobignon. My father was a troubadour,
the Sire Roland de Vency, with whom my mother fell in love while Amalric
de Gobignon was still alive. She succeeded in passing me off as the
count's son, but we three, my mother, Roland, and I, know the secret.
And my confessor. And now you."

She shook her head, bewildered. She felt no doubt that what he was
telling her was true. The pain in his face was like that of a man who
had stripped his very skin off to reveal himself to her. It tore at her
heart to see him suffering so much.

"But how could this happen, Simon?"

"It is too long a tale for today. Perhaps one day I can tell you all of
it. But do you believe me now? Truly there is no barrier of family
between you and me, Sophia. Unless you set one there, knowing that I
am--I am a bastard and an impostor. Could you think of marrying me?"

The tears she had been holding back, for an hour it seemed, burst
suddenly from her eyes, as sobs welled up in her throat. And yet, she
wanted to laugh as well, at the irony of it. To think that he was
ashamed of his pretense. If he had any idea of _her_ pretense, and
David's, he would probably kill her on the spot.

His face, coming nearer and nearer. All his finery was a red and purple
blur before her tear-filled eyes. His hands were reaching for her.

_He loves me. He really loves me. He really does want to marry me._

If he had taken that strange Saracen sword of his out and run her
through with it, he could not have hurt her more. She had been thinking
about sending David to kill him, and he had just entrusted all of
himself, his family, everything he possessed, his body and his soul, to
her.

If David went after him, this time one of them--Simon or David--would
surely die. The luck of the Monaldeschi palace encounter could not
protect both a second time.

She felt Simon's hands on her shoulders. She pulled away from him.

"Sophia!" She heard the anguish in his voice.

Tartars and Muslims were a thousand leagues away. If Christians and
Tartars were destined to join forces and destroy Islam, it would happen.
She willed herself to believe that. And if it was not destined, it would
not happen.

David and Simon were here. To say anything to David about Simon's
mission to France was to doom one man, perhaps both. It might be the man
who loved her, or it might be the man she loved. And she did not want
either to die.

"Sophia, I beg you, speak to me! Are you turning against me?"

She wiped her streaming eyes to see Simon standing before her, his arms
hanging at his sides, his face agonized.

_I cannot doom this young man._

She took deep breaths to calm herself enough to speak to him.

"Simon, I pray that God will bless and protect you." She stifled a sob.
"I cannot marry you. You must forget me."

He scrambled to his feet, his arms outstretched. "Do not turn from me,
Sophia. I would rather have you kill me."

"No!" It came out of her as a scream. She turned and started to run,
holding up the hem of her long skirt to keep from tripping. Her anguish
was like a giant's hand that had seized her heart and was crushing it.

She ran like a hunted animal, tripping on rocks, turning her ankle in
hollow places. She could only hope she was running toward the road.

"Sophia!"

She looked back over her shoulder. He was following her out of the
forest, but at a distance. He was walking, staggering like a wounded
man.

"Forgive me, Simon!" She ran on.

A pine branch struck her across the face, and she cried out in pain. But
she felt that she deserved it. She ducked under the branch and kept
running, seeing brighter light among the dark rows of tree trunks now.
The road must be that way.

She forced her way through a tangle of shrubbery and was out on the
road. Simon's scudiero, standing with their string of horses, stared at
her wide-eyed. The huge Riccardo, Sophia's escort, was with him,
talking. They were standing with their backs to a roadside statue of the
Virgin in a little protective shed.

At the sight of Sophia, Riccardo rushed to her, looming over her
protectively. "Madonna! What has happened to you? Dio mio! Did he--"

His eyes were wide with outrage, but there was anxiety in his face too.
He must be wondering whether he would have to fight a nobleman.

"I am not hurt--he did nothing. He did nothing!" Sophia babbled, choking
down sobs. "Mount quickly, Riccardo, and let us go from here."

He held her horse, and she threw herself into the saddle. She spurred on
without waiting to see if Riccardo was ready to follow.

When they came to a turning in the road, she looked back once. The
scudiero stood alone with the horses. Simon had not yet emerged from the
pine forest. She started to cry again. The pain in her chest was worse
than ever. She silenced Riccardo's questions.

"I cannot talk about it. He did no wrong to me. No harm. That is all you
need to know."

_I cannot talk to anyone about it, ever. I am going to betray David. I
pray God I never see Simon de Gobignon again._




XLVIII


Just as Sophia and Riccardo arrived at the Porta Maggiore in the city
wall of Orvieto, the air around them seemed to glow and crackle. A cold
wind blew across the road leading up to the gate. Sophia spurred her
bay, but the horse hardly needed encouragement to gallop the last few
paces to the shelter of the gatehouse. A shaft of lightning dazzled
Sophia, and a mighty thunderclap, loud enough to shake the rock on which
Orvieto stood, deafened her. She and Riccardo were in the shelter of the
gatehouse before the first fat drops began to fall, making craters in
the dust of the road.

They identified themselves to the guards without dismounting. Clerks
were no longer posted at the gates to interrogate and record the name of
every person entering and leaving Orvieto. Evidently the podesta had
given up on that.

Sophia, Daoud, and Ugolini had, even so, been chilled by a polite letter
from d'Ucello to Ugolini requesting that "His Eminence's distinguished
guest from Trebizond" not leave Orvieto without the podesta's
permission. Sophia, on the other hand, seemed free to come and go as she
pleased.

The thought crossed Sophia's mind that she would be soaked as she rode
from the gate to Ugolini's mansion. But the meeting with Simon had left
her in misery, and the storm suited her mood. David knew that she was
meeting Simon outside the town. Now what would she tell David about
where Simon was going?

She was about to ride on into the city streets when a man stepped out of
the crowd that had gathered for shelter under the gateway arch. He
raised a hand.

"Madonna!" It was Sordello. "A private word, I beg of you."

She saw fear in his face, but in his bloodshot eyes burned another
feeling she could not identify. She disliked the man and did not want to
talk to him, especially not now, carrying secrets as she was. But he
served David, and his disturbed look suggested that what he had to say
might be important. Sighing, she dismounted, gave the reins of her
horse to Riccardo, and walked beside Sordello to an unoccupied corner of
the gatehouse.

"You know that Messer David has set me to find the informer among us,
and he says he will kill me if I fail." He had backed her into the
corner and pressed uncomfortably close to her. His breath smelled of
onions, and he was altogether repellent.

"What do you want of me?"

"The one person who might give me a clue is the Count de Gobignon, and
he has disappeared. No one at the Monaldeschi palace will tell me
anything about why he left."

_Does he know that I just met with Simon?_

"Why ask me?"

"I know that it is Messer David's wish that you allow de Gobignon to
court you. If he has left Orvieto, perhaps you have heard where he is
going." He smiled, showing a gap in his upper front teeth. And now she
realized what the hidden feeling was. It was lust. She was disgusted,
and pushed past him to give herself room.

He said, "I saw you ride out earlier today, and I waited here at the
gatehouse for you to come back. You must have met with the count.
Madonna, I do not know what to do. And Messer David will kill me if I do
not tell him something."

She desperately wanted to get away. "I am going to Messer David myself
to tell him that Count Simon has left for Perugia. Where the pope is
going. He is recruiting more guards and preparing a refuge for the
Tartar ambassadors. You'll gain nothing with Messer David by telling him
the same thing."

Sordello frowned thoughtfully. "No, but I might try to catch Count Simon
on the road and talk to him."

Sophia's heart leapt with alarm and seemed to lodge in her throat. What
if Sordello followed Simon and discovered he was on his way to France
and came back and reported _that_ to Daoud?

"You needn't go to all that trouble," she said, keeping a grip on her
voice. "We will all be going to Perugia shortly, and you can question
Count Simon there."

He nodded, as if satisfied with that, and she felt a little better.

He bowed again and again. "Thank you, Madonna, thank you."

In a moment she was on her horse again and riding into the rain. She
wanted nothing more to do with Sordello.

But the encounter had helped her in one way, and now she felt more
confident about talking to David about Simon. Rehearsing the lie with
Sordello had helped.

       *       *       *       *       *

"He is leaving the Tartars behind? After I came so close to killing
them?"

"They will be closely guarded. I do not think you will be able to get at
them again."

There was a bitterness in the small smile that quirked David's thin
lips. "I do not intend to try until the Sienese arrive here. When I seek
their lives again, a whole army of guards will not be enough to stop
me."

What would David do, Sophia wondered, if he learned that the alliance he
had fought so hard to prevent would soon be sealed in France by Simon de
Gobignon?

She looked at David's eyes, the color of the thunderclouds outside. Her
hatred for herself struck her heart with hammer blows.

He stood by the window of his room, straight and broad-shouldered,
wearing a belted gown of black silk with a broad red stripe at the
bottom. His wound no longer required a poultice, and it was almost
healed. The strange Saracen treatment he had prescribed for himself had
worked.

She saw pain in his eyes, a pain of the heart. "No doubt you will miss
the count," he said in a low voice. He turned to look out the window.

He had pulled the leaded pane of glass slightly inward on its hinge,
letting into the room the cold breeze stirred up by the storm. Locks of
his blond hair fluttered around his forehead. She studied his profile,
the nose long and straight, the chin sharp, the brows seeming to frown
even when relaxed.

"You wanted me to make love to him," she said softly.

He kept his face turned. "Yes."

"You did not want me to make love to him."

"Yes."

She stood in the center of the room, about ten paces from him, her hands
clasped before her. Her shawl and her gown were cold and wet. A net of
small pearls held her hair in place, but her hair, too, was sodden with
rain. She felt on the verge of shivering, but she held herself very
still.

White light filled the room. David's body jerked, and his lips
tightened. A long, rolling peal of thunder followed the lightning,
ending in a crash so loud it hurt her head.

He was afraid of thunderstorms. She had noticed that before. There was
little rain in the part of the world where he had grown up. He was
afraid of nothing else, as far as she could see. There was nothing he
would not do, nothing he _could_ not do. If only he were Greek, what a
fighter for the Polis he would be.

But when he winced away from the lightning, she wanted to cradle his
blond head against her breasts.

The rain beat down on the walls and roof of Ugolini's mansion with
redoubled intensity. She saw a small pool of water on the wood floor,
rain blown in through the open window.

"I never did make love to him," she said, raising her voice to be heard
over the wind and rain.

"I know that." He took a step toward her.

_I am doing worse than that now_, she thought with a stab of guilt. _I
am keeping from David something he would badly want to know._

"He put his arms around me and kissed me many times," she said.

David turned fully to look at her, saying nothing.

"Whenever he took me in his arms, I thought of you."

He closed his eyes.

When she was with David she never grieved over the turns her life had
taken. She never felt sorry for herself, as she did with Simon, because
she had not married and could not marry. Simon had actually said he
wanted to marry her, and in the end she had believed him. That seemed
like a dream now. A pleasant dream, but an impossible one.

For an instant she tried to picture herself, a woman of Constantinople
wed to a Frankish lord and living in a castle in the north of France. If
such a preposterous thing should come about, she would be enormously
wealthy and powerful--though she had not really thought about that when
she was with Simon. She was not herself when she was with Simon. And
now, when she _was_ herself and able to see things clearly, the wealth
and power still did not matter, because they would give her no pleasure
if she had to live among barbarians.

When she was with David she never worried or even thought about her
future, what life would be like for her when she was older. With David
she thought only of now.

He had opened his eyes and was staring at her. She looked at him,
standing tall and fair.

_I love you, David. I want you so._

Why had it not happened? Soon it would be a year since they had met at
Lucera, and she had long known that she wanted him, and believed that he
wanted her as well. But something had always held him back.

Her body grew warm inside her cold garments.

_It is not because of me that we have waited this long._

There was a question in his eyes, and she felt something inside her
pulling her toward him. She took a faltering step across the tile floor.
Then another, surer one.

He held out his arms, his harsh mouth softening as his lips parted
slightly.

"Come to me," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

He watched her walking toward him one step at a time, and he thought she
looked like a woman in a trance. Her head was lifted to receive his
kiss.

"How like rose petals your lips are," he said in Greek. He had never
spoken Greek to her before. She stopped her slow march toward him and
gave a long, shuddering sigh.

Then she ran the last few steps and threw herself into his arms. Joy
flooded his chest as he pulled her against him.

_At last, at last, at last!_

He had wanted to hold her like this for so long, and much of the time
had not even been aware that he wanted it.

He had not wanted to be aware of it, he thought, knowing that he must
use her against his enemy. And how he had hated Simon de Gobignon simply
because Simon was to have Sophia.

_I should have known then that my hatred for de Gobignon was a measure
of my love for her._

But he had not wanted to know that either, because Blossoming Reed, the
daughter of the sultan, awaited him in El Kahira, and he had sworn to be
faithful to her all his life.

_Take as many women as you like. But love always and only me._

He felt a chill, and realized that he was feeling cold not merely
because of the memory of Blossoming Reed's warning, but because Sophia
was rain-wet against him. She had ridden through the storm still
thundering away outside, and he felt a cold dampness soaking through his
gown.

"Your clothes are wet," he said, continuing to speak Greek.

She rubbed herself against him. "I am wet to the skin. I need to take
these clothes off."

"Yes. Why not do that?"

Without hesitation she stepped out of the circle of his arms and undid
the brooch that held her printed shawl around her shoulders. She would
not be shy, he realized. There had not been time, in the life she had
led, for hesitation with men. Only, he hoped that she would not, like
some of the experienced women he had known, show little feeling herself
while she let him use her in any way that pleased him.

_She is not that sort. I know it._

Foolish of him to even think it. But some part of him needed to doubt.
This moment was too good to be true.

And too frightening. Because what they were about to do was not just
satisfy their bodies' hungers; it would seal the bond of love between
them. And then he would not be able to send Sophia like a falcon to
strike at his enemies. He would not be the same man when he went back to
Blossoming Reed. What they were about to do would change both their
lives.

Standing in the crumpled heap of orange and green silk that was her
shawl, she turned her back to him.

"Help me with the laces," she said. He saw that her gown laced down the
back.

"One small moment," he said, running his hand caressingly over her back.
He walked to the door. There was still pain in his right thigh when he
moved quickly, but now it was overwhelmed by his body's yearning to have
this woman. He felt the swelling and pressure of arousal in his loins.

He opened the door of his room partway and looked up and down the
shadowy corridor. There was no one in sight. He closed the door firmly
and slid home the heavy iron bolt that would guarantee their privacy.

She was standing where he had left her, watching him, her amber eyes
warm. He went quickly to her and untied the knot in the laces at her
back, marveling at the slenderness of her neck. She could have unlaced
the dress herself, he saw, but she wanted him to.

She wore no belt, and the dress fell away. Under it was a white silk
chemise without sleeves. Still standing behind her, he dropped his hands
gently on her small, square shoulders and slid the chemise down. His
eyes followed its fall, savoring her delicate shoulder blades, the
shadowed hollow of her back. All that remained now were light green hose
attached to a wisp of silk that girdled her hips.

Sophia shivered, and he knew it was not the cold, though the storm was
blowing a strong, moist breeze through the partly opened window.

He put his hands on her shoulders, firmly now, and turned her around.
She threw back her head and laughed as he stared at her breasts and bit
his lower lip.

What Daoud carried under his black gown felt as big and heavy as a mace.

He dropped to one knee before her. He reached around to her buttocks,
his palms tingling at their cool firmness, and he slid down the last of
her garments. She stood, all exposed, before him.

"Will I not see you naked?" she said with a throaty chuckle. "Is that
the Turkish way, for the man to remain clothed?"

"You will soon learn what the Turkish way is, my lady." He leaned
forward, still genuflecting, and dropped a dozen light kisses on her
belly and thighs, and then buried his face in the rich triangle of hair
between her legs and kissed her deeply.

She cried out in surprise and pleasure.

Suddenly he stood up and swung her up in his arms like a Bedouin
chieftain carrying his bride to his tent. She laughed delightedly. She
felt as light as a child. He strode across the room to the bed and laid
her down.

He wrestled his black silk gown over his head and threw it off. Quickly
he pulled off the locket Blossoming Reed had given him and dropped it on
the gown. He stood over her, looking down at her, and letting her look
her fill at him.

"The blond Turk," she said in Greek with a small smile, and moved her
hips from side to side.

Slowly she reached up to her head and pulled free the net of pearls
woven into her hair. Long locks, black as raven's wings, spread out
around her head on the pillow.

"I must look like Medusa," she said.

"Who?"

"A woman with snakes for hair. Men who saw her were turned to stone."

He remembered now: In a bazaar at El Kahira he had listened to the story
of the she-monster.

"The sight of you would bring a stone to life," he said.

"Ah, but part of you is already hard as stone. How long are you going to
stand there? I want you." The yearning in her voice made something
vibrate inside him, as if she had plucked a taut string in his very
soul. He was seized by a violent urge to throw himself upon her and take
her at once. And she would welcome it, too, he knew.

But this moment was too precious to be allowed to pass so quickly.

He sank to his knees and reached out to pull her hips to the edge of the
bed. She squirmed across the bed to help him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just after he grew out of boyhood, when he was very wild and afraid of
nothing, Ayesha, the youngest wife of Emir Faruk abu Husain, discovered
that he existed, and showed him a way to come to her in abu Husain's
harem. He knew he would die writhing on a spike if the emir's slaves
caught him, but he was also quite certain that such a thing could never
really happen to him.

With a boy's eagerness and excitability, he had spent himself an instant
after he joined Ayesha in the darkness on her couch.

"The emir is very old and has many wives," she purred. "Rarely can we
slip a beautiful young man like you past the harem guards. So we must
learn how to pleasure each other. There are many things that will
delight a woman's body besides a man's rumh. Shall I show you?"

He was curious, and at his whispered agreement she pushed his head down
between her legs and told him what to do.

"And put your fingers _here_ at the same time. Ah, that feels very
good."

       *       *       *       *       *

He looked at Sophia lying open before him and said again, "How like a
flower." He saw dew on this flower, and he bent to taste.

He did to her the things he had learned from Ayesha and later on from
other harem women.

As he worked upon Sophia the magic of the harem, he listened to her
breathing as it grew faster and faster. He watched her breasts rise and
fall, her chestnut-color nipples standing up.

She groaned and tossed her head from side to side, the groans turning to
screams as she reached a pinnacle. He brought her to another, and
another.

Panting, almost crying, she put her hand on his head. "No more. This way
of the Turks is wonderful, but I want you inside me now."

He stretched himself full length beside her, put his face, wet with her
own sweet liquor, against hers and kissed her with lips and tongue. She
seized his shoulders, her nails digging into his muscles, and pulled him
over on top of her.

The way was so well prepared that he was within her in an instant. He
knew that he could not hold himself back very long, and he gave himself
up to the floodtide of pleasure. He raised his head a little so that he
could look down into her wide amber eyes, and so that she could see into
his soul at the moment when he gave all his force to her.

Almost at the same moment the muscles in her face tensed and her neck
corded. Through clenched teeth she cried out again and again and again.

Their bodies relaxed together. Daoud felt that now, in the aftermath of
frenzy, their flesh was melting and flowing together and becoming one.

They lay in silence, and a distant growl of thunder told him that the
storm outside had passed. He had not noticed its dying away. He felt a
cool breeze blowing through the windows.

It seemed as if hours passed while they lay there in silence, arms
around each other, legs entwined, and he listened to her breathing
slowly grow calmer.

She stroked his cheek and played with the blond hairs on his chest. "Is
anything changed now?"

"For us, I think, much is changed."

She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I love you. Does love mean
anything to you Muslims?"

He laughed softly. "Of course it does. _In this world, women and perfume
are dearest to me._ So spoke our Prophet, may God commend and salute
him."

She shook her head and ran her finger down his forehead and nose. "I am
glad I am as dear to you as perfume. You say 'our Prophet,' lying there
looking more French than Simon de Gobignon. Of course, that is why your
sultan sent you here. If I, who know what you are, still find it hard to
accept you as a Saracen, those who do not know would never suspect."

As she spoke the name de Gobignon, he felt a twinge of anger. Just his
name, mentioned in their bed, was an intrusion. Her eyes flickered
momentarily away from his, as if she, too, realized it was an error.
Best, he thought, to say nothing about it.

"Yes, I am truly a Muslim, and Muslims know more of love, I believe,
than most Christians." But now he thought of Blossoming Reed.

_Why must these ghosts hover over us?_

She reached out to touch the little leather capsule tied by a thong
around his neck, the only thing he was wearing at the moment. "What is
that?"

"It is called a tawidh. Inside are numbers written on a scroll. It
protects me from death by wounding and causes any wounds I do receive to
heal quickly."

"Tawidh?" She mimicked exactly the Arabic pronunciation. "How can
numbers on a scroll protect from wounds?"

He did not fully understand himself the Sufi belief that all things are
numbers, and that numbers written by a holy man could control objects
and events.

"One must be of my faith to understand it," he said briefly.

She looked at him earnestly. "It is so hard to think of you as a
Mohammedan, David."

"Not Mohammedan--Muslim. And David is not my name. My true name is
Arabic. Shall I tell it to you?"

"Oh, yes, please. I will use it with you when we are alone together."

"I am called Daoud ibn Abdallah. Daoud is Arabic for David."

"Then your name _is_ David."

"No, it is Daoud," he said. "The sound matters a great deal. It is the
sound that God hears."

"You believe that God speaks Arabic?"

"It is the language most pleasing to Him. Did He not give His message to
the Prophet--may God praise and salute him--in Arabic?"

She pulled herself closer to him. "Ah, David--Daoud--do not talk to me
of religion now. Here and now, let us think not of religions and empires
and wars, but only of you and me." She paused and looked at him a little
anxiously. "Do you think the servants or anyone else heard me
screaming?"

"I saw no one outside. Most of them probably suspect that we have been
lovers for a long time. But suspicion is one thing. To confirm it by our
outward behavior could be dangerous. We must continue to act as if this
never happened."

"We will do this again, will we not?"

He touched her dark red lips with his fingertips and said:

    After suffering the joy of love
    I have no abiding place.
    I live only to be
    With the one I love.

"Yes, we will do it again. Very soon now. I feel my strength returning."
He curved his hand around the softness of her breast.

"Ah, good! I did not want it to be over yet--Daoud."

       *       *       *       *       *

In the first days of the Christian month of July the sun grew very
strong, and above the narrow streets and tiny gardens, dust rose. Daoud
found the climate more to his liking. Although he believed he would
never have a true home or enjoy peace in this life, he felt a happiness
such as he had never known before. And this was strange, because Hulagu
Khan's emissaries to the Christians still lived, and al-Islam was still
threatened with destruction, and while he turned many plans over in his
mind, he was not sure what to do next.

But when he and Sophia were together he was able almost entirely to
forget those threats. And when he was not with her, he carried her image
in his heart, and his heart was the lighter for it.

His leg had healed, and it was safe for him to walk the streets now. He
knew the podesta's men must be watching him, but he feared them less
now, because they would not see him limp. They might wonder when he had
returned to Orvieto from Perugia, but they would have to suppose it was
after the podesta took the clerks away from the gates. Each day he
wandered through the town, forming plans, observing.

He sensed a tension in the air, growing a little stronger each day, like
the summer's heat. Around the palace of the Filippeschi on the south
side of the town, in its windows and on its battlements, men stood
watchful, holding crossbows, hands on their sword hilts. They were not
as strong as they had been last April. The bravos Lorenzo had gathered
and Daoud had lent to their cause had quietly left Orvieto. The
Filippeschi had lost many men and were thrown back on their own
resources now. Their grim apprehension was obvious.

Daoud did not speak directly to the Filippeschi. Aside from his one
meeting with their leader, Marco, he had avoided any contact with them
that might compromise him. He wondered whether Marco had given any
thought to a suggestion Lorenzo had made to him: that aid might be
forthcoming if the Filippeschi switched their allegiance to the
Ghibellino cause. Apparently Filippeschi loyalty to the pope went back
centuries, and was not easily changed. That was something to be
discussed when Lorenzo returned.

At the Palazzo Monaldeschi Daoud saw an air of preparation, of forces
gathering, of confidence. One afternoon Vittorio de Monaldeschi, aged
eleven, in full mail--a child's mail shirt and hose must cost as much as
a man's, and be usable for only a short time--wearing an orange and
green surcoat, rode slowly along the length of the Corso with a dozen
horsemen, orange and green pennons on their lances. A show to intimidate
his enemies.

Both sides seemed to be awaiting something, and the air of the city felt
to Daoud as it did when a thunderstorm was approaching.

The petty street wars of Orvieto would mean nothing to him soon, Daoud
thought. Lorenzo had managed to send two messages by way of Ghibellino
merchants passing through Orvieto. He had made his way safely to Siena,
was negotiating with Rinaldo di Stefano, Duke of Siena, and was
recruiting bravos by the hundred. But all was not going quickly enough
for Daoud. With the pope on the verge of leaving Orvieto, it appeared
the Sienese would not come quickly enough. Unless Lorenzo and the
Sienese arrived in time to trap the pope and the Tartars here, he would
have to follow them to Perugia.

Or he could go to Manfred and urge him to make immediate war on the
pope. Every rumormonger in Orvieto claimed that Manfred was on the brink
of marching out of southern Italy to make the whole peninsula his. But
Daoud doubted it. It would probably be difficult to persuade Manfred to
take any action against the pope, unless the French actually invaded
Italy.

Every day he and Sophia spent hours together, sometimes in his chamber,
sometimes in hers. They chose different times of the day, hoping to make
their meetings less obvious.

The best times were the afternoons. Most Orvietans slept an hour or two
after their noon meal, just as most Egyptians did. Sophia and Daoud
would draw the curtains to hold out the heat and dust. They would make
love, their bodies slippery with sweat. Then they would lie side by side
and let themselves cool, talking of what they felt about each other, of
the world, of the mission they had come to Orvieto to accomplish.

They never spent an entire night together. This would cause too much
gossip among Ugolini's servants. For the benefit of the podesta and
whoever else might be watching them, Daoud wanted to maintain the
fiction that he was a trader from Trebizond, far to the east, and Sophia
a Sicilian girl from Siracusa, and they had very little to do with each
other. Alone in his bed at night, Daoud sometimes lay awake thinking
about what Sophia had come to mean to him. He had fallen in love with
her, he realized now, long before he first possessed her body.

If it was their fate to die here in Italy, at least they would have
known this happiness first. But if he succeeded in his mission, and if
he and Sophia were still alive after that, what then? Return to his
emir's palace in El Kahira, to Blossoming Reed, bringing Sophia with
him? A Greek Christian woman entering a Mameluke's harem? And even if
Sophia were willing, Blossoming Reed would try to kill her. But Sophia
would make a formidable enemy for Blossoming Reed.

No, he could not subject either of them to that. Or himself.

But for him what else was there? El Kahira was the only home he knew. He
had left it only to protect it. He must return.

All this thinking, he decided, was foolishness. What would happen was
written in the book of God, and one could be sure only that it would be
very different from what he expected. Let him concentrate on following
the path as far ahead as he could see clearly, and the next stage would
be revealed when God turned the page.

       *       *       *       *       *

An orange radiance suffused Cardinal Ugolini's dining hall, gilding dust
motes that hung in the air. A stout maidservant cleared away the
trenchers, the round slices of bread on which Ugolini had served spring
lamb to Daoud and Sophia. She bundled up the knives and forks in her
apron. Daoud's fork was clean. He preferred, among friends, not to use
the strange implement, which seemed to him a bida, an undesirable
innovation. He ate with the fingers of his right hand.

"His Holiness takes the road for Perugia a week from tomorrow," said
Ugolini. "You have not told me what you intend to do, David."

"We must await Lorenzo's coming. He and the Sienese may be here before
the pope leaves."

"I assure you that if that were possible, the pope would be galloping
out of town right now," said Ugolini. "His information is better than
ours."

Sophia daintily wiped her hands and lips with the linen cloth that
covered the table. "Your Eminence, Messer David, I want to use these
long July hours of daylight for painting. I beg to be excused."

She refused more wine and genially overrode Ugolini's protests.
Carefully keeping his face blank, Daoud watched her walk out of the
room, tall and straight in a cherry-red gown. He found himself picturing
the things they had done not long ago, while Orvieto rested at midday.
He turned back to Ugolini to see the little cardinal was also, with a
lubricious smile, watching Sophia.

Ugolini's long nose twitched with amusement as he turned to Daoud.
"There have been times when I thought there was a chamber of torment on
the top floor of my mansion. The groans, the screams--"

"I have heard nothing, Your Eminence," said Daoud, keeping his face
expressionless.

"I should have been concerned for the lovely lady, except that she is
obviously so healthy and serene. Much more serene, I believe, than when
she first came here. What do you suppose accounts for that?"

Daoud shrugged. "In silence is security from error."

"Is that a saying of one of your Muslim philosophers?"

"Yes," said Daoud, allowing himself the faintest of smiles. "The
Princess Sheherazade."

       *       *       *       *       *

The sun had set by the time Daoud left Cardinal Ugolini, and the
third-floor corridor was nearly dark. Servants had placed small candles
on tables at each end of the corridor. Daoud had allowed himself a cup
of wine with the cardinal because there was nothing else to drink, and
now his face felt slightly numb.

A large figure walked slowly toward him from the opposite end of the
corridor as he approached his room. With the candlelight behind him, the
man's face was in darkness, and Daoud tensed himself.

"Messer David, it is Riccardo."

Now they stood face-to-face, Daoud having to look up a little.

"I searched everywhere. Questioned everyone I know. I would stake my
life that Sordello is not in Orvieto. He went out the Perugia gate after
talking to Madonna Sophia. I do not think he ever came back."

Dismissing Riccardo, Daoud went into his room to think and to pray. He
felt baffled. He would have staked _his_ life that no man bound by the
powers of the Hashishiyya would ever turn against the one who showed him
the delights of paradise.

_But I did threaten him with death, and he saw that I wanted to kill
him. That might have been enough to break the bond._

_And I did wonder, even when I initiated him, whether there might not be
some part of him that remained free._

Daoud bolted the door of his room. He needed to be alone, to think and
to refresh his mind.

He faced the charcoal-marked spot on his wall that marked the direction
of Mecca and, with care and thought, went through the sequence of the
salat, standing, bowing, kneeling, striking his head on the floor again
and again until he was done. He asked God, as he did every night, to
favor his efforts here in Italy with success, out of His love for the
people of Islam.

_I place all in Your hands._

After he was finished praying, he unlocked his traveling chest and began
to take things from it. First came a small grinder box he had bought
from an Orvieto ironsmith, a grinder such as women used to make small
amounts of flour. Next, from a cotton bag he took two handfuls of
roasted kaviyeh beans given him by Ugolini and put them in the top of
the grinder box. He ran the beans through the grinder, rapidly turning
the crank on the box until they were a coarse powder.

He took his old pack out of the chest and found in it the brick of
hashish wrapped in oiled parchment. It nestled in the palm of his hand,
and he weighed it, wondering whether he deserved this pleasure. For that
matter, did he deserve Sophia? His attempt to kill the Tartars had
failed, and now they might be slipping out of his grasp.

With money and the threat of a French invasion, Lorenzo should be able
to persuade the Ghibellino leaders of Siena to follow their natural
inclination and send an army against Orvieto. But that army would not be
enough to counter the forces the pope could gather around himself at
Perugia.

_I must get Manfred to march._

With Manfred's help he could capture the pope and kill the Tartars. And
he saw an even larger vision. Under Manfred, Italy could become a
bulwark against the crusaders from northern Europe. Manfred was not just
friendly to Egypt. He had Muslim officials and soldiers and was not far
from being a Muslim himself.

There was so much to be done. Daoud wanted to go to Siena to hasten the
Ghibellino attack on Orvieto. He wanted to ride to Manfred and urge him
to invade the Papal States. But he had to remain here as long as the
Tartars were here. Were it not for Sophia, these months of inactivity
since that night at the Monaldeschi palace would be driving him mad.

He held the black hashish cake over the grinder, using his dagger to
shave small, coiling peels into the ground kaviyeh beans. Then he filled
a small iron pot from his water jar. He poured the mixture of water,
kaviyeh, and hashish into the pot and set it to boil on a rack over the
flame of short, fat candle.

He smiled and inhaled deeply as the rich, burnt smell filled the room.
Just the smell of kaviyeh could give him visions, making him think of
the gaily lighted streets of El Kahira, of the dome of the Gray Mosque,
of the white arms of Blossoming Reed.

When his brew was ready he poured it into an Orvieto porcelain cup
painted with bright flowers. He carried the cup to his window and pulled
the window open. Even though Orvieto was atop a great rock, the starry
sky seemed much farther away here than when he lay on his back and
looked up at the stars in the desert. He wondered how far it was to the
crystalline sphere in which the stars were set, like jewels. Was it
farther than the distance between Orvieto and El Kahira?

He recited to himself the invocation, _In the name of the Voice comes
the Light_.

Standing at the window, he drank his hashish-laced kaviyeh in slow sips.
When he knew, by a peculiar intensity in the starlight, that the magic
horse had begun its flight to paradise, he started to walk to his bed. A
sudden impulse took him, and he went to his pack again.

Folded inside a square of blue silk he found the silver locket
Blossoming Reed had given him. Since he had started lying with Sophia he
had stopped wearing it. He remembered the suggestion he had planted in
Sordello's mind, that at the sight of the locket he would kill Simon de
Gobignon. With Sordello and Simon both gone, the locket was useless for
that purpose.

As he held it in his hands, he remembered what Baibars's daughter had
said to him:

_I will always know if you are well or ill, alive or dead, and how you
fare and what you feel. And if you would know how it is with me, seek me
in this._

He lay in bed propped up on one elbow and turned the tiny screw that
held the locket closed. He had meant to think about Manfred and Sophia,
to try to catch some glimpse of the future. It troubled him that he had
taken this bypath. He remembered now how troubled he had been when last
he looked into the locket. He had not meant to use it again.

Now, though, it was somehow too late for him to stop. He seemed to have
no will of his own. He raised the lid of the locket and looked down into
it, at the design incised on rock crystal that looked like an
interweaving of Arabic letters with circles and triangles. He waited to
see what visions the locket would give him tonight.

_The knowledge you run from is the most precious of all._

He gasped.

A pool of darkness opened in the center of the design. The network of
straight and curved lines seemed to crumble into it as the pool spread.
And it began to rotate, slowly at first, then faster. He was looking
into a whirlpool of blackness.

It drew him in. He felt as if his eyes were spinning, then his head;
then he fell into the whirlpool and it sucked him down. He could not
breathe. He was drowning in blackness.

At the last moment, when he thought he would die, suffocated, the black
pool released him and flung him back on his bed, contemptuously
rejecting him.

He lay there, gasping, terrified.

_Take as many women as you like. But love always and only me. For if you
do love another, I promise you that your love will destroy both her and
you._

Had he truly heard the voice of Blossoming Reed, burning and cruel in
his mind, coming from as far off as the stars? The locket fell to the
floor with a crash that seemed to shake the stone building in which he
lay. He remained motionless, paralyzed with dread.




XLIX


Feeling as if he would burst into flames with anger, Simon stood under a
bright blue sky dappled with high white clouds on a wooden quay at
Livorno, two weeks after leaving Orvieto. The masts of small boats lined
the waterfront like a forest of tree trunks stripped of their leaves.

_If I were traveling with a proper entourage, a few knights and a troop
of archers, by God's wounds they'd carry me. These shipmasters are too
damned independent._

One large ship, anchored midway between the shore and the arm of the
harbor, looked to Simon like his last chance. Leaving Thierry on the
quay, he dropped a silver denaro into the callused palm of a man with a
dinghy and had himself rowed out to the big ship.

From what he knew of ships, this was a middle-size buss, sitting high in
the water, with rounded prow and stern. The name _Constanza_ was painted
on the stern. Human muscle moved it; Simon counted ten oarholes on each
side.

As he trod the catwalk from the prow of the ship to the stern castle
where the captain stood, Simon saw no one sitting at the oars and no
chains. So the ship must be rowed by its crew, free mariners. A square
sail, furled at present, mounted on a single mast amidships would help
the rowers when the wind was right.

The captain, whose bald scalp was brown as well-tanned leather, bowed
deeply when Simon presented himself. He was half Simon's height, twice
as broad, and all muscle. He smiled, showing a full set of bright white
teeth when Simon explained that he needed passage to Marseilles.

"Bon seigner, you must understand that it is not a simple matter to
engage a ship of this size to carry you wherever you wish to go." The
language the captain spoke was neither French nor Italian. Simon
recognized it at once, and he felt a little inner leap, because it was
the tongue his parents spoke, the Langue d'Oc, the speech of Aquitaine,
Toulouse, and Provence.

"Of course I understand that," Simon replied in the same tongue. "But if
you--"

"Bon seigner," the captain interrupted, "there are no words to describe
how honored I would be to carry you. And no words to describe my grief
that I cannot take you." That could be taken two ways, Simon thought.

"I am prepared to pay prodigiously, Captain," said Simon with sinking
heart.

If the captain noticed that Simon was speaking in his own tongue, he did
not remark on it. "I do not own this ship. That is the point, you see,
bon seigner. The owners have instructed me to wait here for a cargo of
olive oil, which I must take to Cyprus. So I cannot leave now, and when
I do leave, I must sail away from France."

The captain was respectful enough, but Simon sensed a hidden glee in his
refusal.

"But you have not heard how much I will offer you," he said, desperate.

The bald man shut his eyes as if in pain. "It does not matter. Merce vos
quier, forgive me, but I have a duty to those who have entrusted this
ship to me. Surely there must be some other captain in this harbor who
will let you make him wealthy."

"I have been to every other captain," said Simon. "All have refused me
for one reason or another. Yours is the only ship left."

The captain of the _Constanza_ spread his hands. "Ah, well, Pisa is only
a little farther north, and there are many more ships docked at its
quays along the Arno. You are bound to find one that will carry you. Or,
failing that, this is the best time of the year to make the journey to
France overland. The roads are good."

Simon knew that Pisa had been a Ghibellino city for generations. Word of
his coming might even have reached enemies in Pisa. He was sure that he
and Thierry had been followed along the road they had taken up the
Tyrrhenean seacoast. The Pisans would be only too glad to put an end to
his mission, and quite possibly to him. And following the endlessly
winding coastal road--which would require him to pass dangerously close
to Pisa--it would take him a month or more to get to French territory.
He decided that this captain meant him nothing but ill. He broke off
abruptly and made his way back to the rowboat.

A shout of laughter came floating across the water from the _Constanza_
as the boatman rowed him back, putting Simon in an even fouler mood.

Looking toward shore, he saw a man in a short, dark cape standing on the
dock with Thierry.

The boat tied up at a piling, and Simon gave the rower a second denaro
and climbed up a short ladder to the quay. With a jolt of anger he
recognized the man talking to Thierry as Sordello.

_What the devil is he doing here?_

Instantly Sordello was kneeling at Simon's feet, clutching at his hand
and kissing it and weeping copiously.

"I followed you all the way from Orvieto, Your Signory. I did not make
myself known to you before this because I feared you would send me
away."

"Get up," said Simon impatiently. "We thought we were being followed by
enemies. We took unnecessary precautions, thanks to you." This utterly
unwelcome encounter with Sordello, added to the impossibility of finding
a ship, filled him with an almost uncontrollable rage.

"Your Signory, on the roads of Italy there are no unnecessary
precautions." The man's expression shifted in the blink of an eye from
fawning tears to a cocksure grin showing his missing teeth.

"What are you doing here?" Simon demanded. "I did not give you leave to
stop watching Cardinal Ugolini's household."

"Circumstances gave me leave, Your Signory, as I was just explaining to
my good friend Thierry here." Thierry looked startled at being so
described. "The woman Ana who carried my reports to you betrayed me. She
told Giancarlo, the henchman of the merchant from Trebizond, that I was
in your service. That Giancarlo is the sort who opens a second mouth in
your throat before you can explain yourself with the first one."

"Does anyone else in Orvieto know where I am going?"

_Good God, was he lurking about when I was with Sophia?_

Sordello looked at him out of the corners of his eyes. "No one knew,
Your Signory. I had to think it out for myself. I heard you had gone to
Perugia. But, I asked myself, whyever would you do that? There is
nothing in Perugia until the pope moves there. What, then, would be
important enough to make you leave off watching over the Tartars? A
message for Count Charles, I guessed--or perhaps for your king--too
important to be carried by anyone but yourself. Then I had to decide
which road you'd take. Directly north would lead to Siena, and we have
all heard that an army of Ghibellini is gathering in Siena to attack
Orvieto. So, you must be headed for the coast. And, as we see, my
guesses all turned out right." He finished up with a broad,
self-satisfied grin.

How could a man so often foolish also be so shrewd? Simon turned and
stared out at the water of the harbor, a deeper blue than the sky. What
a nuisance this fellow was! Turning up now, when Simon had problem
enough trying to find a way to get to France. Simon momentarily saw
himself running Sordello through with his scimitar and kicking the body
into the harbor.

_And that story about Ana betraying him is almost surely a lie. She is
not at all the sort who would do such a thing. Probably he himself did
something stupid that gave him away._

Sordello broke in on his thoughts. "Thierry tells me you want to sail to
Marseilles, Your Signory." He pointed to the high-sided, round-hulled
ship that Simon had just left. "That buss you were on out there, is that
not the _Constanza_? I think I know the master--his name is Guibert. Did
you arrange passage with him?"

Grudgingly Simon told Sordello of his failure with the captain of the
big ship. Sordello grunted.

"It is not right that a man of your distinction and wealth and gentle
birth should have to go up and down the dockside begging for a ship."
Simon despised the flattery but could not help agreeing with it. His
situation was indeed embarrassing.

"It is past midday, Your Signory," Sordello continued. "Thierry tells me
you are staying at the Hare. A good inn, I know it well. You can get a
decent noonday meal there for a denier or two. Meanwhile, let me try my
luck. I warrant I will find a ship for you before you finish your last
cup of wine."

Tired, hungry, and discouraged, Simon thought: _At least it will give me
an excuse to rest._

And Sordello had not yet asked him for money or employment. That was a
relief, but Simon told himself to be ready; the begging would start soon
enough.

       *       *       *       *       *

Feeling more relaxed, Simon was draining his third cup of red wine when
Sordello reappeared. Bread, cheese, and a stew of goose, onions, and
cabbage for Simon and Thierry had cost twelve denari. Simon suspected
the price had gone up when the host saw the scarlet silk cape and
gold-embroidered purple surcoat he had worn in the vain hope of
impressing the ships' captains.

"Being cheated and lied to is a normal part of traveling," he told
Thierry. "If you wish to avoid it, stay home. One must be philosophical
about it."

"Your Signory!" Simon saw Sordello's burly figure silhouetted against
the blue sky in the open doorway of the inn. He waved him in.

"Success!" Sordello sat down at their table without asking permission.
"We have passage on a large ship sailing north and west along the coast,
and stopping not just at Marseilles, but at Aigues-Mortes, whence we
can travel north through the Rhone valley." Simon noticed the "we" but
said nothing. "It takes on a cargo of woolen cloth and silk and spices
this afternoon, and it leaves tomorrow at sunup. We can board our
animals and sleep on the ship tonight."

"How much will this cost--us--Sordello?" said Simon, his improved mood
making him feel a bit like joking.

A quick glance from Sordello's bloodshot eyes showed he understood that
Simon understood. "Thirty florins, Your Signory. Oh, and I promised him
an additional forty-five florins when we get to Aigues-Mortes. That
little extra after the passage helps guarantee that you get where you
want to go."

Thierry whistled. "Seventy-five florins! We could buy five more horses
for that."

Sordello shrugged. "But more horses would not get you as far and as fast
as that ship will. And it is no more than Count Simon would have had to
pay if he had done the bargaining himself."

"Less," Simon admitted. In his desperation he had actually been thinking
of offering Guibert a flat hundred florins.

_Wait! What is happening here?_ he asked himself suddenly. When he had
first seen Sordello this morning, he had fully intended to turn him away
here in Livorno. Now he was paying his passage to France. Again he was
being taken advantage of.

He leaned forward suddenly, planting his folded arms on the table.

"But why must I take you, Sordello, eh? What further use are you to me?
Can I not save some florins if I leave you on the dock here?"

Sordello looked pained, brushing the curly gray hair back from his
forehead. "What I have just accomplished shows Your Signory how useful I
can be."

"Thus far you have nearly ruined my mission by attempting to murder an
Armenian prince--"

"That was more than a year ago, Your Signory."

"And you have failed to learn anything useful as my agent in Ugolini's
household."

"Your Signory! If not for me, you would have been totally unprepared for
the attack on the Monaldeschi palace."

Simon saw that Sordello's rough skin was reddening. His bad temper was
threatening to break through.

It was true, though, that Sordello's warning about the Filippeschi
attack by itself made up for all the man's misdeeds.

The mention of Ugolini's household brought back the pain of that
parting from Sophia. He pictured again that dizzying moment when he
almost possessed her, remembered how he had poured out all his secrets
to her. He saw again her tears and remembered his own, that he had shed
after she ran from him. The memory made him feel like weeping now.

Hoping to sound casual, Simon said, "The cardinal's niece--I believe her
name is Sophia. Did you see her before you left Orvieto?"

Sordello's discolored eyes met Simon's. "No, Your Signory. I have seen
little of her since the night of the Filippeschi uprising."

_Damn this gap-toothed brigand!_

Simon continued to pretend to be casual. He stood up and yawned. The
wine made him feel less in control of his feelings than he liked.

"Let us go and see this ship you have found for us."

"Your Signory, you have not told me whether you will take me back into
your service."

Simon shook his head, as if tormented by gnats. "After we see the ship."

Sordello sighed and led the way out of the inn. They crossed the
cobble-paved roadway that led along Livorno's waterfront, Simon
breathing deeply of the salt-smelling air to clear his head.

Sordello pointed. "There it is."

He was pointing toward the same big, ungainly buss that Simon had
visited earlier, whose captain had refused Simon.

"But he said he was going to Cyprus!"

"He lied to you," said Sordello. "I know the man. Guibert was shipmaster
for a boatload of us mercenaries in the last war between Pisa and Genoa.
He feared that if you were to travel on his ship, you might find him
out."

"Find out what?"

"He is one of those Languedoc heretics who hate the Church and the
French nobility, a follower of the Waldensian heresy. He was imprisoned
once and sentenced to death in Montpellier. He recanted his heresy and
was released after signing over all that he possessed to the Church. But
then he came to Italy, made a new start, and backslid to Waldensianism.
If the Inquisition got him now, he would go to the stake even if he
recanted a thousand times."

"Then why has he agreed to carry us?" To think, the man had seen Simon
as an enemy. Simon, who had inherited his Languedoc parents' loathing of
the persecution of heretics.

"I told him that if he did not take us where we wanted to go, I would
tell the officers of the Inquisition here in Livorno about him," said
Sordello blandly.

"What!" Simon was outraged.

Sordello looked hurt. "Surely, Your Signory does not see any wrong in
forcing a heretic to do a good turn for the pope and the king.
Especially when it means he gets to go unpunished. So we do our duty,
but with a leavening of charity."

For Simon to say more would reveal too much about himself and his
family. Fuming, he bit his lip. But another objection came to him.

"We will have to take turns standing guard the whole voyage," he said.
"That captain will want to slit our throats to make sure his secret is
safe."

"We would have to stand guard anyway, Your Signory. A sea captain knows
no law but his own greed as soon as he puts out from shore. If you can
pay him seventy-five florins, that tells him you must be carrying a
great deal more money. But I have insured our safety another way. I have
told him that an old friend of mine here in Livorno knows his secret,
and if that friend does not receive a message from me in due course
assuring him of our safety, he will report Guibert to the Inquisition.
Guibert would never be able to come back to Livorno, his home base, and
he would not really be safe anywhere in Italy."

Simon shook his head angrily. "I like none of it."

"Even the greatest barons, even kings, must put up with much they do not
like," said Sordello sententiously, "if they are to get anything done."

"As you said before, Monseigneur," said Thierry in a comforting tone, "a
man must be philosophical."

"Philosophical, yes," said Simon wearily. He could, he supposed, afford
to be philosophical. If the heretic sea captain did not manage to kill
them, in three or four days he would be in France, on his way to find
King Louis. All these unsavory doings, indignities, and discomforts
would mean nothing if his mission ended in triumph.

The thought of the King's gratitude, of Uncle Charles's respect, of the
way the tale would spread among the noblesse of France, bringing him new
honor, sent a thrill of pride through him.

At last he would have proven himself.




L


The sky was iron-gray, and a cold wind, unseasonably cold for August,
blew down from the north. Daoud stood near the entrance to the courtyard
of the Palazzo Papale, facing a row of the podesta's guards, in yellow
and blue, who held back the watching crowd. A troop of mounted lancers
clattered out under the gateway arch. Then, in mule-borne litters, came
the nine cardinals who had elected to go with the pope to Perugia. Each
had his own small procession of clergy and guards. In a sedan chair
borne by six burly men rode Fra Tomasso d'Aquino, reading a small
leather-bound book. Then came a hundred mounted archers, their conical
helmets gleaming dully under the overcast sky.

Finally, as the people threw themselves to their knees, some crying out
and stretching their arms wide, Urban himself, on a litter carried by
eight men-at-arms, with a column of priests on either side, came through
the open gate of the palace. He wore white gloves on the trembling hands
that he raised to bless the people. He was bundled up in a white wool
cloak, and his head was covered by a hood of fur so white that it made
his own hair and his beard look yellowish.

Reluctantly, but knowing it would be dangerous not to do so, Daoud
dropped to his knees as Urban passed him.

"Do not leave us, Holy Father!" a man next to him cried out.

Daoud thought of the whispers he had been hearing in his wanderings
through the streets and marketplaces. People were frightened. Some said
that terrible things would happen after Urban left. There would be new
bloodshed between the Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi. The Sienese would
besiege Orvieto and massacre its people.

Daoud himself believed d'Ucello, the podesta, would use the pope's
departure to try to increase his own power over the city.

_And that bodes ill for me._

The podesta was a clever man. Daoud felt certain d'Ucello suspected him
of the killing of the French knight and of involvement in the
Filippeschi uprising.

Daoud followed the procession along the curving street to the Porta
Maggiore, intending to watch it follow the road to the north, wishing
the Sienese army might appear suddenly in the distance and intercept it.
But at the gate a sergente in yellow and blue stepped into his path.

"I am not leaving," Daoud said, staring at the man. "I want to stand
just outside the gate."

The sergente shrugged. He was a broad-shouldered man with a square brown
face and a mustache cut straight across. As they stood talking, he
darted little glances at Daoud's hands and feet, half smiling. Daoud
sensed that he was ready for a fight, perhaps even wanted one. The
sergente thought, of course, that he was dealing with a merchant, who
would not be as skilled in combat as a professional soldier.

Daoud felt a chill along his spine. D'Ucello was still determined to
keep him prisoner in Orvieto. That confirmed Daoud's suspicions that the
podesta might soon move against him.

"You can watch the procession from the top of the wall," the podesta's
man said. "The view is better from up there anyway. You may not go
beyond the gate, Messer David."

Angered by the feeling of confinement, Daoud thought about throwing the
guard, disarming him, and walking through the gate just to teach him a
lesson. But that was hardly what a trader would do. That would only
bring more suspicion down on him. He nodded curtly and walked away.

       *       *       *       *       *

The following Sunday, Daoud stood at the front of the cathedral,
reluctantly hearing Mass, bodies pressing him from all sides. Four of
Ugolini's men-at-arms, including the massive Riccardo, stood with Daoud.
The little cardinal, required by the etiquette of the Sacred College to
attend but made fearful by the rumors of fighting and killing to come,
had begged Daoud to come with him and stay near him. The noonday heat
together with the heat of packed human flesh turned the interior of the
cathedral into an oven. The reek of sweat mixed with the heavy smell of
incense rendered the air almost unbreathable.

A gilded screen standing on the altar displayed the miraculous linen
cloth of Bolsena, lighted candles massed around it. The pope, at least,
had left that to Orvieto. Ugolini was one of six red-robed cardinals,
half hidden under their huge, circular red hats, who sat in chairs in a
row before the altar. Each one had a cluster of assistants and guards
behind him. Cardinal de Verceuil was among them. Daoud recognized him
from the rear because he was the tallest of the six.

That meant the Tartars were still in Orvieto. If Lorenzo and the
Ghibellino army from Siena arrived in time, there would be a chance to
kill the Tartars before they rejoined the pope in Perugia. It was
maddening, not knowing what Lorenzo had accomplished or where he was.
This was one time he wished Christian armies could move with the speed
and decisiveness of Muslims. Or Tartars.

The elderly Cardinal Piacenza, his arms supported by priest-assistants,
held up the gold cup of wine which Christians believed, in a sense that
Daoud had never been able to understand, to be the blood of Jesus the
Messiah. The cathedral was filled with a reverent quiet.

A burst of angry men's voices from the rear of the cathedral broke the
silence. Shouts echoed against the heavy stone walls. Daoud heard thuds,
scuffling, the clash of steel. A jolt of alarm went through him, and his
hand went to his sword.

Everyone, including Piacenza, turned to stare. The last time there had
been a clash of arms in the cathedral it had been the Count de Gobignon
and that heretic preacher, Daoud thought.

Daoud was amazed that Christians would interrupt the most sacred moment
of their Mass. He tried to see over the heads of the people around him.
One voice, roaring in protest, was raised over the others. It sounded
familiar to Daoud.

People were passing word back from the middle of the nave, where the
struggle was. "It is Marco di Filippeschi," a man near Daoud cried.
"They have come to kill him."

Daoud's body went cold. Might whoever was coming after Marco attack him
too?

The fighting seemed to be moving toward the doors, and the crowd flowed
after it. Mass was forgotten as the congregation, cardinals and bishops
included, rushed to see.

Ugolini hurried to Daoud and took his arm. The two of them were carried
with the crowd toward the rear of the cathedral. Ugolini clutched at
Daoud so tightly that his fingers hurt. The servants, Daoud noticed,
managed to stay with them.

"Stay close to me," Ugolini said.

"You might be safer in the cathedral," said Daoud.

"Outside there is more room to run."

The short-legged Ugolini could not run very far, thought Daoud. He
steeled himself. If they were attacked by a large number of enemies,
they were dead men.

Daoud and Ugolini came through the main door of the cathedral together
and stood on the crowded steps.

"I cannot see!" Ugolini cried. People on the steps below him were
blocking his view.

Daoud was tall enough to see quite well. His heart, beating rapidly,
seemed to be rising from his chest to his throat. Marco di Filippeschi,
his long black hair flying as he jerked his body from side to side, was
struggling with four men who held him, while a fifth wrapped a rope
around his arms. Other men used pikes to push back the crowd, forming a
ring of space around the young Filippeschi leader and his captors.

_Marco is going to die_, Daoud thought, feeling cold sweat all over his
skin.

He looked to the edges of the piazza and the mansions that overlooked
it. He saw crossbowmen in the orange and green livery of the Monaldeschi
on rooftops and in windows, and mounted lancers in the outlets to the
square.

_The Filippeschi should have missed Mass today._

"God damn your puzzolenti souls, you bastards!" Marco roared as he
fought. "May your mothers and fathers burn in Hell!"

Some men were trying to help Marco; Daoud saw little knots of struggle
as his eyes traveled over the crowd. But no one could reach Marco
because the orange Monaldeschi tunics were everywhere.

"What is _happening_?" Ugolini demanded.

"They are killing Marco di Filippeschi," said Daoud, thinking: _He
helped me. He needs help now._ His hand gripped the hilt of his sword
tightly, and he wanted to draw it and rush down the stairs to fight
beside Marco.

But the knowledge that anyone who went to Marco's aid would die with him
held him motionless. Daoud was not free to draw his sword for Marco, not
while the Tartar ambassadors lived and the pope might yet proclaim a new
crusade.

Marco was shouting obscenities so rapidly that Daoud's Italian failed
him and he could not understand. The Filippeschi chieftain was tightly
bound and helpless, and the men around him pushed him to his knees.

_God be merciful to him_, Daoud prayed.

"Lift me up so I can see!" Ugolini cried to his men-at-arms.

"You do not want to see," said Daoud, but Riccardo obediently hoisted
him up to sit on his shoulders. The cardinal looked ridiculous, Daoud
thought, like an overdressed child being carried by his father.

A man holding a long two-handed sword stepped out of the empty space
surrounding Marco di Filippeschi. Daoud drew in a breath. The crowd
gasped. The blade flashed in the sun like a mirror as he swung it up.
Marco struggled, shouting curses, twisting and thrashing to escape the
sword. Blood splashed over the gray-black paving stones as the sword
came down. Marco cried out in agony. It took three strokes to behead
him.

As much death as Daoud had seen, this sickened him. He felt bile
flooding his stomach and rising in his throat.

After Marco's head lay apart from his still-trembling body in a rapidly
spreading pool of blood, the silence was shocking in the piazza that had
an instant before rung with his cries. As shocking as the look of the
bound body without its head.

A woman's piercing scream broke the silence. Holding a baby in her arms,
she burst out of the ring of men who had cordoned off the beheading. She
knelt, screaming and sobbing, and reached out with one hand to touch
Marco's severed head.

Another woman ran out of the crowd with a dagger in her hand. She
pounced on the mother and baby and stabbed and stabbed. A pikeman in an
orange tunic dragged the baby from its mother's arms, tossed it in the
air, and caught it on the end of his pike, spitting it. Some in the
crowd screamed with horror. Others cheered and laughed.

Daoud's stomach lurched. He pressed his hand against his middle and
hoped the mother had not lived to see what had been done to her baby.

He wanted desperately to be away from there, not just because he himself
might be in danger, but because he could not stand to watch.

He looked up at Ugolini. The little cardinal sat rigid on Riccardo's
shoulders, his face white and blank, his whiskers quivering. How foolish
he had been to want to see.

Not far away, de Verceuil's dark face under his wide-brimmed red hat
stood out above the other faces in the crowd on the steps. The little
mouth was set in a satisfied smile. Daoud wished he could slash that
smug face with his sword.

Another Monaldeschi man-at-arms set Marco di Filippeschi's head on the
end of his pike and waved it in the air for all to see. The mob in the
piazza began to boil. It was a chaos that Daoud's eyes could take in
only piecemeal. Men and women fought with swords and daggers and clubs;
masses of people shrieking with terror surged toward the streets leading
off the piazza where mounted Monaldeschi retainers slashed at them with
swords and drove lances into them; crossbowmen fired into the crowd
from balconies.

Now Daoud's heart was beating so hard that the booming of his blood in
his ears almost drowned out the noise in the piazza. This was a war
breaking out all around him.

A continuation, he reminded himself guiltily, of the war he had started.

No, he need not blame himself. He had not started this. These people had
been slaughtering one another long before he came to Orvieto.

How could the Monaldeschi tell their friends, or the innocent, from
their enemies, Daoud wondered. Perhaps, he thought, it did not matter to
them.

He now made out, on a balcony opposite the cathedral steps, the stooped
figure of the Contessa di Monaldeschi. Her cloak glittered with gold
embroidery, and on her gray hair she wore a small silver coronet. She
rested one hand on the shoulder of a boy, her grandnephew Vittorio.

_What a monster that child must be!_

Daoud heard Ugolini's choking whisper from above him: "Get me out of
here."

There was only one way to escape, back into the cathedral and out one of
the side doors. Daoud helped Ugolini down from Riccardo's back, and they
hurried through the center doorway, followed by his men-at-arms.

"Do not draw your weapons," Daoud said to Riccardo and the others. "Or
you might get pulled into the fighting. But be ready to stand and fight
if we must."

The din of the massacre in the piazza echoed within the cathedral, which
was now mostly emptied out. Cardinal Piacenza had brought his Mass to a
quick end. He was sitting in a chair near the altar, looking stricken,
and a young priest was mopping the old cardinal's forehead with a white
cloth. On one side of the nave stood the podesta, d'Ucello, surrounded
by a group of his sergentes in yellow and blue.

_There is murder in the piazza, and the keeper of public order hides in
the cathedral_, Daoud thought.

The podesta's eyes met Daoud's as Ugolini's retinue hurried past him
toward the rear doors of the cathedral. There was a menace in d'Ucello's
set face, but he said nothing as Daoud strode by.

The look in d'Ucello's eyes told Daoud that the moment when the podesta
would strike at him was not far away. Daoud felt as if a ghost had
gripped the back of his neck with an icy hand.

Ugolini, muttering to himself, led the way to the north transept. A
half-dozen men in orange and green tunics, swords drawn, barred the
door.

"Stand aside in the name of God!" Ugolini cried as he approached the
Monaldeschi men-at-arms. "Your damned bloody quarrels have nothing to do
with me."

Daoud was surprised. He had often seen Ugolini frightened, but now fear
seemed to have given him sudden strength. The men guarding the door
stepped aside. The cardinal's servants held the door for him, and in a
moment they were in the narrow street running along the north side of
the cathedral, where they joined a crowd of weeping, shouting people who
had managed to break loose from the piazza. There were splashes of
blood, Daoud saw, on the tunics of many men and the dresses of many
women. Ugolini's servants formed a wedge around him, and in stunned
silence they walked back to his mansion.

Daoud felt shaken and sick. His hands were trembling.

The Filippeschi could have been allies for Daoud against the podesta.
Now he was alone.

Ugolini's small contingent of armed retainers could not resist the town
militia. A cold feeling of helplessness settled over Daoud. If only
Lorenzo would come back.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bars of afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows of Ugolini's
cabinet, giving a fiery tinge to his red rug and glistening in the eyes
of his stuffed owl. Ugolini sat behind his table, holding the painted
skull in both hands and staring intently at it, as if it held the
explanation of what had happened at the cathedral this morning. Sophia
sat in a chair on the other side of the table, and Daoud stood by the
window.

"The Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi are both Guelfo families, and the
Filippeschi have high connections with the Church," Ugolini said. "That
is why the contessa waited until the pope left before taking her
revenge."

"I have seen Christians slaughter Muslims and Muslims massacre
Christians," Daoud said. "But today Christians were killing mothers and
infants that could have been their own. Women were doing some of the
killing."

Ugolini smiled at the skull, but there was no laughter in his round
eyes. "Are not family quarrels the cruelest of all?"

Daoud noticed that Ugolini's hands, fingertips pressed against the
smooth curve of the skull's cranium, were still quivering. As for Daoud
himself, he was quite calm now.

_The last time I was really terrified was when I looked into the locket
and saw whirling blackness._

He was still angry with himself about that, knowing what a foolish thing
it had been to partake of hashish when he was already in a dark mood.
The fear he had felt a month earlier after taking the drug and looking
into the locket remained with him, clinging to his mind like some
parasitic insect. It rose to confront him now, as he looked at Sophia.
Would something horrible happen to her because of him? Blossoming Reed
had threatened just that, and so far Blossoming Reed's magic had worked
well. Since that vision, the joy he felt with Sophia had been chilled
somewhat by fear for her.

"How safe are _we_ now, with the Monaldeschi rampaging through the
streets?" Sophia asked.

Ugolini shuddered. "And the Filippeschi. Those who are left will be
striking back. This city will destroy itself, like a rat eating its own
innards. I say leave now. All of us."

_Leave?_ Daoud thought. He would be less afraid for Sophia if she were
in a safer place. But where should he go?

"Where do you want to go?" he asked Ugolini.

The little cardinal drew himself up. "I am still the cardinal
camerlengo, and will be as long as Urban is alive. I am obliged to
follow the pope as quickly as I can to Perugia. There is peace and order
in Perugia." He looked at Daoud uneasily. "What do _you_ want to do?
Stay here?"

_He is hoping to be rid of me._ Daoud considered Perugia, but there he
would have everything against him and no forces to help him.

He must go to Manfred. Once the pope and the Tartars were safely in
Perugia, only Manfred's army would be powerful enough to get at them.
Manfred might not want to go to war, but war was inevitable. Clearly the
pope was no longer neutral. He favored the Tartar-Christian alliance and
was waiting only for the right moment to announce it. When the pope came
out for the alliance, the French would come into Italy.

The time for Manfred to act was now. If he marched north and seized all
of Italy, including the person of the pope and as many cardinals as he
could capture, the French never _would_ invade, because a Ghibellino
pope would not approve a joint campaign of Christians and Tartars
against Muslims. Then, for certain, there would be no alliance.

"Now that the pope has moved to a place of safety," he said aloud, "only
King Manfred can dislodge him."

Ugolini wrung his hands. "First you incite the Filippeschi against the
Monaldeschi. Then Siena against Orvieto. Now Manfred against the Papal
States? Sometimes I think you are like one of the horsemen of the
Apocalypse, spreading war wherever you go."

All too true, Daoud thought. He turned to Sophia to see whether she
agreed with the accusation. She looked at him somberly, but did not
speak.

He sighed. "I am fighting for my people. For my God."

"I, too, for _my_ people," said Sophia quietly. Her tone told Daoud she
sided with him, and he felt an inner warmth.

"And what have your people to do with this?" Ugolini cried. "Have you
forgotten that you are not Sicilian but Greek?"

"Not at all," said Sophia. "I want to see Manfred in control of Italy.
He is a friend of Byzantium. The Franks are our enemies."

Ugolini shook his head. "I am the only Italian in this room. And I weep
for _my_ people."

Daoud strode over to Ugolini's table, pressed his hands flat on it, and
stared into his eyes.

"Be _strong_ for your people," he said. The hairs on the back of his
neck rose with excitement as he spoke. He had wanted to try to put
strength into Ugolini for such a long time.

Ugolini looked bewildered. "What do you mean?"

"Think what Italy would be with Manfred von Hohenstaufen ruling from the
Alps to Sicily and a pope who supports him."

"A Ghibellino pope?" Ugolini looked surprised, then nodded. "Why not? As
a Ghibellino myself, I would rejoice at that. But it will happen only if
Manfred has the College of Cardinals in his power."

"Yes," said Daoud. "And that is why I must go all the way south to
Lucera, where Sophia and Lorenzo and I started from." Ugolini's eyes
were brighter, and Daoud felt with pleasure that he had breathed new
life into the little man.

"But the podesta won't let you leave the city!" Sophia exclaimed.

Again Daoud felt that cold hand grasp his neck. Perhaps he should have
left long ago. He turned from Sophia to Ugolini.

"You must demand that he let me leave, Cardinal," said Daoud, feeling
less confident than he tried to sound.

Or, he thought, he could escape the way Lorenzo did. He had never truly
been a prisoner here.

"I will order the servants to start packing for me," Ugolini said. "Of
course, I must make arrangements for Tilia to move, too, and that might
take time. Although many of her best clients are gone now." He sounded
like a man who knew what he was doing and Daoud was relieved to hear it.

Daoud turned from Ugolini to Sophia. The knowledge that he would soon
leave Orvieto, where he had seen too much of defeat and slaughter,
lifted his spirits. He smiled at Sophia, and she smiled back. He knew
she was thinking the same thought he was--that they had hours to spend
together this afternoon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Daoud and Sophia lay naked in her bed, legs entwined, her head resting
on his bare chest.

"What about me?" Sophia asked. "Will I go south with you to Manfred, or
north to Perugia with Ugolini?"

"With me, of course," said Daoud. At the mention of leaving her, he felt
as if a cold wind had blown across his naked body. He was surprised that
she was even considering staying with Ugolini.

"I want to be with you," she said, caressing his chest with a circular
movement of her palm. "I hate the thought of our being apart. But with
the pope and the Tartars in Perugia, you need someone there besides
Ugolini. Someone who has an aim in common with yours. I can help him and
make sure that what he does helps you. Helps us."

He ran his fingers through her long, unbound hair. "I will think about
what you've said. But I do not like it."

"Neither do I. But it may be necessary."

A loud knock at Sophia's door interrupted them.

Something in the urgency of the knock made Daoud spring out of bed and
reach for his sword, hanging from a peg on the wall. Putting a finger to
her lips, Sophia got out of bed more slowly and went to the door.

"It is I," the cardinal called through the door in answer to her
question. "I know David is there with you. Let me in. The podesta is
here."

The ghost that haunted him whenever he thought of himself and d'Ucello
seized Daoud's entire body in a cold, paralyzing embrace. His first
thought was of escape. But d'Ucello probably had the mansion surrounded.

Sophia and Daoud dressed quickly and opened the door for the cardinal.

"D'Ucello has come here with twenty or more men-at-arms," Ugolini said.
"He demands that you go with him to the Palazzo del Podesta, David."

"Can you not order him away?" Sophia demanded. "You are a prince of the
Church. You did that before."

"He waited until most of the power of the Church had left Orvieto," said
Ugolini.

"And until the Filippeschi had been crushed, thinking I might call upon
them for help," Daoud said.

"You must try to escape," said Sophia.

"Then what would happen to you?"

"We will escape together!"

Daoud looked at her drawn face, and at that moment he loved her more
than ever. His love warmed him, and freed him from the grip of fear.
This woman--who had spoken a short time ago so calmly of separation--was
ready to run, to dodge arrows, to hide in ditches, to climb walls, to do
whatever she had to, to be near him.

"If he finds out what you are, we are all doomed," said Ugolini. Daoud
saw that the small body was aquiver with fear.

He could imagine what Ugolini was thinking, that the evil he had dreaded
since Daoud came to Orvieto had come upon them at last. Just when he
thought he was about to escape it.

"He will learn nothing," said Daoud.

"He will torture you." Ugolini sat down on Sophia's bed and wrapped his
arms around his stomach. "We will all die horribly--me, Sophia,
Tilia--everyone who helped you." He raised hands curved like claws and
shook them at Daoud. "Oh, God, how I wish you had never come here!"

Sophia sat beside Ugolini and put her hand on his knee. "If we can stay
calm, dear Eminence, we can think of a way out of this."

"Even if he tortures me, I will tell him nothing, except that I am
David, the trader from Trebizond," said Daoud. The methods of resisting
pain that he had learned from the Hashishiyya would serve him now.

"You must not think of going with him!" Sophia cried.

"It is the only way. If I cooperate, it shows my innocence. The cardinal
can use his influence to get me freed."

She jumped up and threw herself against him, weeping. "You are going to
your death!" He held her tightly.

"D'Ucello has nothing to gain by killing me," he said. "And surrendering
to him is the only thing I can do." He looked at Ugolini. "Do you
agree?"

Ugolini sighed and shook his head. "I cannot think."

Gently Daoud freed himself from Sophia's embrace. "Insh'Allah, God
willing, I will return to you."

He turned to the door. Every muscle in his body screamed at him to run,
or to draw his sword and try to fight his way out. He cringed inwardly
from the thought of imprisonment and torture. He remembered the poor
madman whose body they had torn apart with red-hot pincers. He forced
himself not to tremble. He took the first step toward the door, then
another.

_God, make me strong in the face of my enemies._




LI


"Many think I have little power in this city," said Frescobaldo
d'Ucello. He sat in a dark window recess with one foot up on the ledge
and the other dangling, his fingers tapping the raised knee. Lashed to a
chair in the center of the long, narrow chamber, Daoud had to turn his
head to look at him. Daoud's back ached from being held rigid by the
back of the chair, and the ropes bit into the muscles of his arms and
legs.

At the end of the room, a clerk with scalp shaved in the clerical
tonsure sat in the podesta's high-back chair behind a heavy black table,
writing down what was said on a scroll with a feather pen. Four tall
candles set in brass stands formed a square around Daoud, casting a
bright light on him. A row of candles burned in a wrought-iron
candelabrum beside the clerk, lighting a wall hanging behind him that
depicted some idolatrous Christian religious scene. D'Ucello sat in the
shadows that lay upon the rest of the chamber.

Daoud sensed that d'Ucello meant what he had just said as a sort of
challenge.

"All I know is that for my part I have very little power in this city,
Signore," Daoud said with a smile. "I depend altogether on those who
have befriended me." That was the way David of Trebizond should respond.
Not very frightened, because not guilty of anything. Humble,
ingratiating, but retaining some scrap of dignity.

D'Ucello stood up suddenly, strode briskly across the room to Daoud, and
stood over him.

"Do you think your friends will save you from this?" he said tonelessly.
His eyes had an unfocused look, as though they were made of glass.

"Save me from what, Signore?" Daoud put bewilderment and a shade of
anger into his voice.

D'Ucello swung his hand. Daoud felt the sting of a hard palm against his
jaw, and the crack of flesh slapping flesh made his ear ring. The blow
jolted his head to one side.

It was not very painful. It was meant to insult more than to hurt. To
test. And rage did erupt in Daoud like a fountain of fire. His muscles
tensed, the bindings cutting deeper, and the chair creaked.

D'Ucello was trying to break through the Mask of Clay. But the mask held
firm, because the Face of Steel, Daoud's spiritual armor, was beneath
it. The fury of Daoud the Mameluke, who yearned to tear d'Ucello apart,
remained hidden. It was David of Trebizond who blustered at the
indignity of being slapped without cause.

"How dare you strike me, Signore!" he protested. "I have done nothing to
deserve that, nothing to deserve being dragged here in the night and
tied up. I demand to know--what do you want of me?"

D'Ucello sighed like a chess player whose opponent had escaped check,
and went back to his seat in the window recess. Daoud saw the flickering
glow of heat lightning through the thick leaded-glass window behind the
podesta.

"I dislike intensely being made to waste time," said d'Ucello, drumming
his fingers on his knee. "Listen carefully: Every time you force me to
tell you something we both already know, I will prolong your suffering
another hour."

Daoud allowed a note of fear to creep into his voice. "Suffering? I beg
you, Signore, believe me. Even if you torture me, I still cannot tell
you anything different from what I will freely tell you. Ask me whatever
you want."

The Mask of Clay was useless with this man, Daoud saw. The podesta's
mind had pierced it. How had he been able to do that? Because he was a
man who observed much and thought much, unlike most men Daoud had met in
Orvieto, who let their passions rule them.

Yet d'Ucello had passions. He was a proud man, who must hate standing by
helplessly, holding the supreme office in Orvieto, watching the two
great families bespatter his city with blood. If he could not stop the
Filippeschi and the Monaldeschi from murdering each other, at least he
could do _something_.

D'Ucello had seen enough of Daoud's comings and goings to make him
suspicious. Like a hawk soaring above a plain, the podesta might be too
high up to know exactly what he saw below, but he knew when he sighted
prey. And perhaps d'Ucello saw that this prey, if hunted rightly, would
lead him to others.

D'Ucello leaned forward, out of the shadow of the window recess.

"There was a man in black who tried to kill the Tartars the night of the
Filippeschi uprising. What do you know about him?"

"I know little about the uprising, Signore, since I was not here. I was
in Perugia."

"Why Perugia?"

"To speak with several silk merchants."

"Are there those in Perugia who will vouch for you?"

"Certainly," said Daoud, feeling uneasily that d'Ucello was not
deceived.

"I will write to the podesta of Perugia and ask that your witnesses be
examined," said d'Ucello. "Give me their names."

Daoud had a struggle to remember the names of the witnesses. Lorenzo had
given them to him months before, members of the Ghibellino network who
were willing to perform this service for Manfred. The clerk's pen
scratched rapidly as he haltingly brought out the names of five men.

"When did you return from Perugia?"

The clerks, Daoud recalled, had been removed from the town gates at the
end of May.

"Sometime in June," Daoud said. "Forgive me, I did not think to bring my
journal with me, and I cannot tell you the exact date." He tried a weak
smile.

"Where is your man Giancarlo?"

_On his way here from Siena with an army, Insh'Allah._

"I sent him on from Perugia," Daoud said. "He travels to Rimini, then
Ravenna, eventually to Venice, looking for those who would be interested
in receiving shipments of silks and spices from Trebizond. He had not
been punctilious about writing to me, or perhaps his letters have been
lost, so I do not know exactly where he is now."

"I thought you were in competition with the Venetians."

Daoud essayed another smile. "That is why I sent Giancarlo."

"And where were you the night the French cavaliere was murdered?"
d'Ucello asked.

"I was with a woman."

"What was her name?"

"I do not think I ever knew it." He tried a flash of sarcasm. "If I had
known there was to be a murder that night, I would have asked her
name."

"Everyone was with a nameless woman that night," d'Ucello sighed. "Yes,
you should have taken more care to arrange for proof of your innocence,
Messere."

He gestured to the clerk, who picked up a small bell on the table beside
his ink pot and shook it, a silvery clangor.

Two broad, leather-faced men in the yellow and blue tunics of the watch
came into the room. They took a few steps toward d'Ucello and stood
awaiting orders like a pair of mastiffs.

"Take him down," said d'Ucello.

"Wait! Will you torture me? I have tried to tell you the truth. Do not
do this, I beg you."

D'Ucello slid off the window ledge. "I am the sort of man who would
rather spend hours picking a lock than break it open." The smile that
stretched his thin mustache was genuine. "But, as we both know, the
Ghibellini of Siena may be upon us at any moment, and I must break you
open quickly. So now I will sleep. And while I am restoring my strength,
my men will prepare you for our next talk."

Daoud tried to keep the Face of Steel firmly in place while with the
Mask of Clay he feigned helpless terror. But his defense against feeling
seemed to have flaws. Genuine terror of what he was about to suffer kept
seeping through. When d'Ucello's guards untied him and forced him to
stand, his knees nearly buckled under him.

The steps Daoud descended must have been hollowed out by the feet of
hundreds of hapless prisoners and their guards. The wall of the circular
stairwell, which Daoud brushed with his fingertips to steady himself,
was of rough-hewn black stone.

His heart was thudding heavily as he descended the stairs, preceded by
one guard, followed by the other and by d'Ucello's clerk. The thought of
hours, perhaps days, of pain he must undergo made every muscle in his
body tremble. The stairwell, lit at long intervals by torches held by
wrought iron cressets, went down so far it seemed to have no bottom.
Many a prisoner must have felt the temptation to throw himself down from
the stairs and escape suffering.

The chamber he entered through a door of thick oak planks had been
carved from the yellow-gray rock of Orvieto's mesa. The room smelled of
fire, blood, rot, and excrement.

A man slid down from a chair when Daoud entered with his guards.
Standing, his head would have come to Daoud's waist. But he was bent
double and held his arms out from his sides to keep his fingers from
touching the ground, so his head was not even as high as Daoud's knees.

Memories flashed through Daoud's mind: The woodcutter who had blessed
himself when Daoud was arrested at Lucera. The executioner who had
tossed the heretic's cod into the air to the delight of the crowd before
Orvieto's cathedral. Daoud had always wondered how the little man had
come to appear in two such different places. The skin crawled on the
back of Daoud's neck. This creature was uncanny.

"You are to keep him awake all night, Erculio," said the guard who had
followed Daoud into the room.

"Did I not sleep all day today, so that I would be able to properly
entertain our guest tonight?" The little man bustled forward to Daoud,
rubbing his hands. His head was as big as that of a full-grown man, but
his hands and feet were small. His mustache bristled in spikes of black
hair, like a portcullis over his mouth.

"Please, in the name of the mercy of God," Daoud pleaded. "I am a
merchant. I am rich. Do not hurt me. I will pay you well."

"We want to hear nothing from you except frequent screams and answers to
the questions the podesta wants me to put to you," said Erculio in a
cold voice. "What do we want to know, Vincenzo?"

D'Ucello's clerk said, "The podesta believes he is a Ghibellino spy sent
here by the bastard King Manfred. He thinks he incited the Filippeschi
uprising. Also he may have killed the French cavaliere."

Erculio nodded vigorously. "Well, then, Messere. Are you prepared to
admit your guilt, now that you see where you are and realize what is
about to happen to you?"

"These accusations are false!" Daoud cried. "I swear it!"

The tonsured clerk, carrying a handful of quills, a bundle of scrolls,
and his ink pot, seated himself at a table in one corner of the room and
began to write.

To gain time, Daoud looked around Erculio's domain, remembering the
similar room in Tilia's brothel where he had subjected Sordello to the
Hashishiyya initiation. This place was starker and more frightful. It
was large, perhaps fifty paces on a side, divided by two rows of thick
columns holding up the weight of the great stone building above it.
Despite its size, the chamber was well lit. The candle sconces were
lined with sheets of tin to throw extra light.

Daoud recognized most of the implements of torment around the room. A
rack, a tilted wooden table with chains and winches. A sharp-pointed
wooden pyramid over which a victim could be suspended. A chair with
spikes protruding at the joints. A coffin lined with spikes. A brazier
full of pokers and branding irons of various sizes. Weights and pulleys.
Whips and cudgels, hung neatly from pegs that lined the walls. A cage
full of rats. A number of smaller devices to crush fingers or limbs--or
even skulls--laid out neatly on tables beside rows of long needles.

Daoud visualized himself drinking from a bowl of liquid light and felt
the mind-created drug Soma pouring down into his stomach and spreading
to his heart and lungs, through all his veins.

But still he must keep up the Mask of Clay.

"I can say no other than what is true," he cried. "I am David of
Trebizond. I came here to sell silk. I have harmed no one. Please be
merciful."

Erculio grunted. "Strip him and string him up."

Daoud protested weakly, letting his voice tremble as the guards pulled
the clothes from his body. He felt the cool, dank air of the cellar on
his bare skin.

"Be careful," Erculio said. "That is a good embroidered tunic. The hose
and boots are new. Those clothes are my property now." Fussily, he
folded the garments as they fell away from Daoud and laid them on a
chair.

"Will you not return them to me--afterward?" Daoud quavered.

"Afterward?" Erculio laughed.

"What is this?" said one guard as he used his dagger to cut the thong
that held the leather capsule around Daoud's neck. The tawidh, that
healed his wounds and protected him from death.

Daoud said nothing.

_Now they can truly destroy my body._

The guard handed the tawidh to Erculio, who glanced at it and threw it
on his low chair. He frowned at Daoud.

"Put a loincloth on him, fools," he growled. "Did I say to strip him
stark naked? Are we not decent fellows here?" He fumbled about in a pile
of rags and threw one to a guard.

"That's the first time you've complained about a prisoner being naked,
Erculio," the guard grumbled as he wrapped the cloth around Daoud's hips
and passed it between his legs. "Don't you need to be able to get at his
cock?"

"Do not try to teach me my craft," Erculio said snappishly. "Up with him
now."

The guards grabbed Daoud by the arms and pushed him under dangling
chains. They lifted his arms over his head and bound his wrists with
thick leather cuffs. Then they went to a winch with a crank on each
side, next to the wall, and began to turn in unison.

Daoud cried out in pain as his body was jerked into the air. The leather
cuffs cut into his wrists. His shoulders felt as if his arms were being
torn out of their sockets.

He pictured the Soma cascading through his body, and the pain receded.
But he continued to cry out as if in unbearable agony until the two
guards stopped raising him. He hung there, the Mask of Clay sobbing and
whimpering.

Erculio scuttled over to stand under him, holding a thick stick as long
as a man's arm. Daoud's feet were just level with Erculio's head.
Leaning on the stick, Erculio looked up at Daoud, appraising his body,
and a pink tongue tip flickered under the bristling mustache.

"You have a beautiful body, Messere. Well-proportioned, with powerful
muscles. You are un bello pezzo di carne, a fine piece of meat." Erculio
walked around behind him and stopped there for a moment, where Daoud
could not see him.

"Scars from old wounds, too, I see," the little man said.

_Perhaps in this light the scar left by the Tartar's arrow looks old._

Erculio stood before him again. "You look able to endure much, so you
will last longer. You may think when a guest comes down here I just pick
the first instrument that comes to mind. Not so. I follow a strict
order. You will get to know every instrument here, if you live long
enough. This will be very educational for you."

"I have been telling you the truth," Daoud moaned. "Will you not believe
me?"

"Bugiardo! Liar!" Erculio struck him hard on the shin with the stick.
Pain blazed through his leg. Daoud could have remained silent, but he
shrieked loudly, knowing that fear, as much as pain, would make the man
he was pretending to be cry out.

Turning to the others, Erculio said, "What will you wager against these
handsome clothes of his that I get this pezzo di carne to speak the
words our honorable podesta wants to hear? A bet makes this game more
interesting. What say you, any takers?"

"The man is quivering like a frumenty now," said one guard. "He would
have been talking long ago if he had anything to say."

"You think so?" Erculio snapped his fingers. "Good. Bet with me, then."

The guard fumbled in a purse at his belt and drew out a glittering coin.
"There you are. A gold florin, not ten years old and barely worn. I won
it dicing last night."

Erculio examined the coin. "Twenty years old, and the lilies are a bit
wilted. But it's heavy enough, I suppose. Done! Now, Messer
Pezzo-di-Carne--I call you that because I do not know your real
name--you had better tell us what we want to know, or I will _really_
make you suffer." He dropped the coin on top of Daoud's clothing.

Erculio brought the stick against Daoud's shin, in the spot he had
struck a moment ago. The pain shot through Daoud. But Soma turned the
pain to a tingling, and Daoud visualized it as a glow that spread from
toe to hip. He screamed, as he knew he should, but behind the Face of
Steel he felt at peace.

Erculio let out a laugh that sounded more like the clucking of a
chicken. "You see, we do not need elaborate instruments. We can inflict
unbearable pain with the simplest means--like this!" And he swung the
stick to hit precisely the same spot on Daoud's shin he had struck twice
before.

Daoud bellowed and felt the tingling and saw the glow in his leg, and
the Soma, the drug created by his spirit, preserved his sanity.

How small Erculio looked, crouched down on the stone floor. So man must
look to God. God was so infinitely far above man, the miracle was that
God was mindful of man at all. But God was inside of man--inside of each
human being--as well as above him.

_It is blasphemy to liken myself to God._

He called to mind the Koran's admonition, _There is none like unto Him_.

His mind occupied with God, he barely noticed the activities of the
spiderlike creature that crawled about on the floor below him as he hung
like a trapped fly. Erculio worked on his legs for a long time, bruising
the shins with his heavy stick until Daoud thought both legs must be
broken. Then the torturer pressed a red-hot poker against the soles of
his feet.

Erculio had the guards let Daoud down and force him to walk on his
burned feet to the rack table, where they chained him facedown and
stretched him till the ligaments that held his bones together were ready
to snap.

The Mask of Clay screamed and pleaded for mercy and insisted he had
already told them everything. But the pain lay as far from his
consciousness as the sea lies from the desert tent of a Bedouin.

Erculio applied more instruments to Daoud's body, inflicting many kinds
of pain--burning, stabbing, bruising, crushing. He kept Daoud awake, and
Daoud knew that hours must have gone by, perhaps the whole night.

Daoud's outcries grew hoarser and weaker, and at last Erculio's efforts
brought forth nothing from him but soft groans and whimpers.

Daoud saw the clerk, Vincenzo, rise yawning and leave as another clerk,
also shaven-headed, but with a short brown beard, came in to replace
him. He saw the two guards in yellow and blue sit down on the floor,
their backs to the wall, and doze off. He saw after a time the second
clerk lower his head on his folded arms. He saw all this while Erculio
pranced about him, hurting him and hurting him.

Erculio looked around at the others in the chamber. He left off pushing
a needle into Daoud's ankle and rushed over to the guards and shouted at
them to wake up. He poked them with his stick. They cursed him and
kicked at him and went back to sleep. He scurried to the sleeping clerk.

"You are supposed to be writing down everything the prisoner says. Come
now, wake up! Indolento! The podesta will hear of this, I promise you."

The clerk mumbled something without raising his head from his arms.
Erculio nodded with satisfaction and hurried across the chamber to
Daoud. He stood by Daoud's head.

"As-salaam aleikem, Daoud ibn Abdallah," the torturer whispered.

For a moment Daoud could not believe he had really heard it. The drug
that he had brewed in his mind had taken control of his ears. Or else
this was their way of tricking him into talking freely.

_But if they knew my Muslim name and that I speak Arabic, they would not
waste time accusing me of being a Ghibellino._

"Wa aleikem salaam," he replied. The uprush of joy he felt at finding a
friend here in this terrible cellar momentarily shattered the Face of
Steel. What madness this was, that the friend should be the source of
all his torment? He bit back hysterical laughter.

"Like you, I serve El Malik Dahir," Erculio said in Arabic. Hearing that
title, Daoud thought it even less likely that the little man was trying
to trick him.

"I have been watching you since Lucera, My Lord," Erculio went on. "You
have done well, even if it has been God's will that you should not
succeed. You have been clever. But you should have taken the tawidh off
before you surrendered. Do you think there are no Christians who can
recognize Arabic numerals?"

Now Daoud was sure the little man was an ally of some sort.

In Arabic he said, "Does the scar on the back of my leg look fresh?"

"It has healed so completely that no one would believe you got it a few
months ago. They know nothing of our Islamic medicine. You bear another
wound, though, that would have much to say to the observant--your
circumcision. That was why I had them put a loincloth on you and lay you
facedown on this rack."

"Lucky for me you were here," Daoud said.

"Not luck," said Erculio. "El Malik deemed it wise that, should you be
made a prisoner, one of his men ought to be among your captors."

_Even here, Baibars's hand reaches out to me_, thought Daoud, feeling a
rush of gratitude.

"Help me to escape," said Daoud. "The guards and the clerk are asleep."

Erculio brought his small hand downward in a gesture of flat rejection.
"There are a hundred men-at-arms on duty up above. The podesta himself
will be down here in an hour. Why can you not make up a story that will
satisfy him? Say you are a Ghibellino. That is what he believes, and
since it is not true, it will not help him. In a thousand years he would
never guess the truth."

"No. The only way I can protect those close to me is to admit nothing."

Erculio shook his head, and his black eyes were liquid with sadness.
"What a pity. Your case is hopeless, then. Ever since I saw you in
Lucera I have felt sorry for you. How can El Malik expect one man to
change the course of nations? You are like a man trying to hold apart
two ships about to collide." He sighed. "I have done all I can for you.
I have hurt you as much as I can without doing you permanent injury--so
far. There is only one other service I can perform for you."

"What is that?" said Daoud, though he felt sure he already knew the
answer.

"You would not want to reveal under torture that you are an agent of the
Sultan of El Kahira, and provoke the very crusade you were sent here to
prevent. You would not want to give your friends away. If you break, I
will see to it that you die before you might speak."

"I will not break," said Daoud. "And when it is all over, and d'Ucello
has killed me, he will at last come to believe that I was telling the
truth. Because he believes that no one can hold out against torture to
the very end. But promise me one thing."

"Insh'Allah, anything."

"If you must cripple me, see that I do not leave this dungeon alive."

Understanding and respect glowed in the black eyes peering at Daoud over
the edge of the rack. "As you wish, My Lord."

He knew he should be grateful that he had this man here to guarantee him
a decent death. But a great sadness came over him at the thought that
his life must end miserably in this dungeon. He had always hoped that he
would meet his fate amid the glory of jihad, holy war.

_Well, this is jihad of a kind._

       *       *       *       *       *

The respite was over. Erculio fell upon Daoud with renewed vigor,
driving needles under his toenails and fingernails and beating him with
a whip of knotted rawhide cords that tore open his back. Daoud felt the
blood running down his sides and pooling underneath him. The little man
took a red-hot poker and pressed it, hissing, against the scar made by
the Tartar's arrow and Lorenzo's knife. That, Daoud realized, would make
it impossible to tell what sort of wound it had been.

The pain seemed to be happening to someone miles away as Daoud converted
it to ripples of light passing through his body. He understood that
Erculio was applying tortures whose effects could be seen. The podesta
would be satisfied that Erculio had done his work well.

Daoud did his part too. The rest had restored his strength, and now
Daoud screamed so loudly he woke the guards and the clerk. Erculio set
the guards to work replacing the burned-down candles in the sconces
around the dungeon. When Daoud turned his throbbing head to look at the
candles, he saw hazy rings around them and rays radiating from them.
Sweat stung his eyes.

The thick wooden door of the cellar swung inward, and d'Ucello entered.
He walked over to where Daoud lay on the rack, and stood staring at him
with his peculiar, glazed expression. D'Ucello's face was more sour than
usual, and his eyelids were puffed. He looked just awakened from a sleep
that had given him little refreshment. His mouth twitched under the thin
mustache.

Daoud noticed that in one hand d'Ucello held a small silver flask with a
narrow neck and a glass stopper. D'Ucello clenched his hand around it
tightly, as if he feared to drop it.

"What has he said?" he demanded, turning to Erculio.

"Just much screaming, Signore." Erculio looked across the room at the
bearded clerk, who nodded vigorously.

"You have not hurt him enough, then, Erculio," said the podesta. "He
should be offering us _something_ by now. To withstand torture for so
long almost smacks of sorcery."

"Perhaps he really has nothing to tell," Erculio ventured.

"Nonsense!" D'Ucello glared at the dwarf. "Even an innocent man would
make the torture stop, if he had to lie to do it. And this man is not
innocent."

_By that one remark Erculio risks much for me_, thought Daoud, praying
the little man would not again endanger himself.

"Attenzione," said d'Ucello, coming close to Daoud's head and holding
the flask so Daoud could see it. He withdrew the stopper, a long icicle
of glass. He held the flask low over the rack table and tilted it
momentarily. A few drops of dark brown liquid splashed onto the wood. At
once d'Ucello righted and stopped the flask.

A white flash, bright as lightning, burst before Daoud's face, blinding
him.

He jerked his head back and squeezed his eyes shut. He heard Erculio
curse in Italian and the clerk and the guards cry out.

Smoke burned Daoud's nostrils and throat. As he coughed, he opened his
eyes and saw a small fire burning its way into the wood a hand's breadth
from his face. He felt a wave of heat. D'Ucello and his men watched in
silence as the fire ate through the thick planking of the rack table.
Gradually the blaze lost its intensity as the liquid that started it was
used up. It ended in a hole a man could pass his fist through, with
glowing, smoking edges.

"What _is_ that?" said the clerk, tugging nervously at his brown beard.

"Witchcraft," said d'Ucello with a grim chuckle. The clerk and the
guards stared at him. Erculio was expressionless.

In spite of Soma, in spite of his years of training, Daoud felt a scream
of horror rising inside him at the thought of what d'Ucello was
threatening.

"Not witchcraft, but just as evil," d'Ucello went on. "It is a weapon
devised by the Byzantines."

"Ah!" said the clerk. "This must be that Greek Fire I have heard
crusaders tell of. I always thought it another of their lies about the
East."

"It is real," said d'Ucello. "Perhaps our guest, being from the East,
has seen it before. The Turks stole the secret from the Byzantines and
have been using it against the crusaders. It starts burning the moment
it is exposed to air. It clings to whatever it touches, and its flames
cannot be put out. Maligno."

The podesta turned to Daoud. "But in this case we will be using it for a
good purpose. Messer David, do you love your organs of manhood?"

"What are you saying to me?" Daoud cried, determined that he would be
David of Trebizond to the very end. His real terror now matched his
pretended terror, but he managed to keep them two separate feelings. The
scream trying to escape him battered itself like a trapped animal
against the inner wall of the Face of Steel.

D'Ucello bent closer to Daoud, and from his painful position, belly
down, arms and legs stretched taut, Daoud lifted his head to look at the
podesta. D'Ucello glowered at him, his lips tight under his thin
mustache.

"I mean that if you do not tell me who you really are and what you are
doing in Orvieto, I will apply this healing potion to your male member.
It should not take more than a drop to burn away everything you have
there." D'Ucello feinted at Daoud's face with the flask, and Daoud
flinched back and cried out. He strained desperately against the chains
that held him.

Greek Fire--what a cruel turn of fate that a thing invented by Sophia's
people should destroy him. Grief swelled in his throat as he mourned the
end of those hours of delight they had passed together.

But, Daoud thought, d'Ucello did not need Greek Fire to destroy his
manhood. He could burn it with oil and a torch, or he could order
Erculio to slash it away with a knife. The podesta had chosen Greek Fire
because it was strange, hinted of magic--maligno. Daoud remembered what
d'Ucello had said, an eon ago, when they were talking upstairs: that he
would prefer picking a lock to forcing it. Even now the podesta was
trying to use fear rather than pain to make Daoud tell him what he
wanted to know. D'Ucello himself did not really relish inflicting
physical pain; he preferred to work on men's emotions.

D'Ucello peered at him. "Under the appearance of a helpless and
terrified merchant, there is bravado. But now you know what a terrible
thing is going to happen to you if you persist. I will give that
understanding time to ripen."

He drew away and turned to Erculio. "I will return at midday, after my
morning audiences. See that he thinks about what is going to happen to
him."

Erculio bowed. "Signore."

The podesta left the dungeon, still holding the silver flask.

_He has to put off carrying out his threat_, Daoud thought. _Once he has
poured that Greek Fire on my loins, he has done his worst. If the fear
does not force me to speak, the deed is pointless. After it is done I
will have little more to lose. If he were a true torturer, he would have
begun with my toes._

Even so, Daoud was sure d'Ucello would carry out his threat.

_Therefore, I must prepare myself for death._

If d'Ucello used the Greek Fire on him, Daoud would want Erculio to kill
him. And he was sure Erculio would do it.

He turned his mind again to tho

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