Obviously aware of his hesitation, Manfred took his arm. "Listen to me, Mameluke. You will be wise to accept every bit of help that is offered to you. I have powerful allies in northern Italy, in Florence, Pisa, Siena, and other cities. But you do not know them and they do not know you. Lorenzo speaks for me. He knows who the key Ghibellini are in the north, and they know him. Do not object to taking him with you."
Manfred would not let him go, Daoud realized, unless Celino went with him. And the argument that Celino could put him in touch with the Ghibellini of the north was a strong one.
Lorenzo is perhaps twenty years older than I, but he is quick-witted and quick on his feet. And, yes, I would rather not go alone. I could easily make a mistake from ignorance. I am better off with a man like this to guide me.
A tentative smile played under Celino's grizzled mustache. "My royal master is determined in this. What do you say?"
Daoud bowed. "I accept. With gratitude. We shall travel this road together."
"Whatever happens to the two of you," Manfred said, "no one must ever know that I am involved."
"I guarantee that, Sire," said Celino.
Manfred rubbed the palms of his hands together. "There is one other person I propose to send with you. She can be a great help to you."
Celino turned quickly to Manfred. "I do not advise it, Sire."
"Why not?" said Manfred. "She will be perfect."
"Because she will not want to go." There was censure in Celino's dark stare—and a boyish defiance in Manfred's answering look.
"Do not question me," said Manfred. "I have no choice. For her good and for my own, she must leave here. And shewillbe useful to you."
Instead of replying, Celino only sighed again.
"A woman?" Daoud was thunderstruck. In El Kahira women left their homes only to visit other women. He felt anxiety claw at his belly. Any mistake in planning might wreck the mission and doom him, and Celino, to a horrible death. And to send a woman to the court of the pope on such a venture seemed not just a mistake, but utter madness.
"A very beautiful woman," said Manfred, a grin stretching his blond mustache. "One who has had a lifetime's schooling in intrigue. She is from Constantinople, and her name is Sophia, which means wisdom in Greek."
There are no more treacherous people on this earth than the Byzantines, Daoud thought,and they have ever been enemies of Islam.
Argument surged up in him, but he saw a hardness in Manfred's eyes that told him nothing he might say would sway the king. He looked at Celino, and saw in the dark, mustached face the same reluctant acceptance he had heard in the sigh.
Whoever this Sophia might be, he would have to take her with him.
Sophia pressed her head back against the pillow and screamed with pleasure. Her loins dissolved into rippling liquid gold. Her fingers dug into the man's back and her legs clenched around his hips, trying to crush him against her.
"Oh—oh—oh—" she moaned. The warmth spread to her toes, her fingertips, her scalp, filling her with joy. She was so happy that she wanted to cry.
As the blaze of ekstasia died down, she felt Manfred driving deep inside her. She felt his hardness, his separateness, as she could not feel it a moment ago when she was at her peak and they seemed to melt together, one being.
His rhythm was insistent, inexorable, like a heartbeat. His hands under her back were tense. He was fighting for his climax.
She delighted in the sight of his massive shoulders overshadowing her. It was almost like being loved by a god.
Manfred's face was pressed against her shoulder, his open mouth on her collarbone. She turned toward him and saw the light in his white-gold hair. She slid one hand up to his hair and stroked it, while with the other she rubbed his back in a circular motion.
She felt the muscles in his body tighten against her. He drew in a shuddering breath.
"Yes—yes—good," she whispered, still stroking his hair, still caressing his back.
He relaxed, panting heavily.
He never makes much noise. Nothing like my outcries.
They lay without moving, she pleased by the warm weight of him lying upon her, as if it protected her from floating away. The feel of him still inside her sent wavelets of pleasure through her.
Still adrift on sensations of delight, she opened her eyes to stare up into the shadows of the canopy overhead. On the heavy bed curtains to her left, the late afternoon sun cast an oblong of yellow light with a pointed arch at the top, the shape of an open window nearby. She knew well the play of light in this unoccupied bedchamber in an upper part of the castle. Manfred and she had met here many times.
They rolled together so that they lay side by side in a nest of red and purple cushions. The down-filled silk bolster under them whispered as they shifted their weight, and the rope netting that held it creaked. Manfred propped his head up with one arm. His free hand toyed with the ringlets of her unbound hair. She slid her palm over his chest.
She remembered an ancient sculpture she had seen in a home outside Athens. The torso of a man, head missing, arms broken off at the shoulders, legs gone below the knees, the magnificent body had survived barbarian invasions, the coming of Christianity, the iconoclasts, the Frankish conquest, to stand now on a plain pedestal in a room with purple walls, the yellowish marble gleaming in the light of many candles. Her host showed it only to his most trusted guests.
"Which god is this?" she had asked.
"I think it is just an athlete," said her host. "The old Greeks made gods of their athletes."
Manfred's naked torso, pale as marble, seemed as beautiful. And was alive.
She sighed happily. "How lucky I am that there was time for love in my king's life this afternoon." She spoke in the Sicilian dialect, Manfred's favorite of all his languages.
How lucky, she thought, that after all her years of wandering she had at last found a place in the world where she was loved and needed.
His lips stretched in a smile, but his blue eyes were empty. Uneasiness took hold of her. She sensed from the look on his face that he was about to tell her something she did not want to hear.
In memory she heard a voice say,Italy was ours not so long ago and might be ours again. So Michael Paleologos, the Basileus, Emperor of Constantinople, had introduced the suggestion that she go to Italy, and at just such a moment as this, when they were in bed together in his hunting lodge outside Nicaea.
She had felt no distress at the idea of being parted from Michael. He was a scrawny man with a long gray beard, and though she counted herself enormously lucky to have attracted his attention, she felt no love for him.
She had come to Lucera acting as Michael's agent and personal emissary to Manfred—and resenting Michael's use of her but feeling she had no choice. She was a present from one monarch to another. She ought to be flattered, she supposed.
She had walked into Manfred's court in the embroidered jeweled mantle Michael had given her, her hair bound up in silver netting. Lorenzo Celino had conducted her to the throne, and she bowed and looked up. And it was like gazing upon the sun.
Manfred von Hohenstaufen's smile was brilliant, his hair white-gold, his eyes sapphires.
He stepped down from his throne, took her hand, and led her to his eight-sided garden. First she gave him Michael's messages—news that a Tartar army had stormed the crusader city of Sidon, leveled it, and ridden off again—a warning that Pope Urban had secretly offered the crown of Naples and Sicily, Manfred's crown, to Prince Edward, heir apparent to the throne of England.
"Your royal master is kind, but the pope's secret is no secret," Manfred had said, laughing and unconcerned. "The nobility of England have flatly told Prince Edward that they will supply neither money nor men for an adventure in Italy. The pope must find anotherrobber baron to steal my crown." And then he asked her about herself, and they talked about her and about him.
She had thought all westerners were savages, but Manfred amazed her with his cultivation. He knew more than many Byzantines, for whom Constantinople—which they always called "the Polis," the City, as if it were the only one—was the whole world. In the short time she and Manfred strolled together that day, he spoke to her in Greek, Latin, and Italian, and she later found out that he knew French, German, and Arabic as well.
He sang a song to her in a tongue she did not recognize, and he told her it was Provençal, the language of the troubadours.
He undid the clasp of her mantle and let it fall to the gravel. He kissed her in the bright sunlight, and she forgot Michael Paleologos. She belonged altogether to Manfred von Hohenstaufen.
Now, with a chill, she remembered that she did indeedbelongto Manfred. She was not his mate but his servant.
His fingertips stroked her nipple lightly, but she ignored the tingle of pleasure. She waited for him to say what he had to say.
He said, "Remember the fair-haired Muslim who came to the court today?"
"The man from Egypt? You had him killed?"
"I changed my mind," Manfred said.
She felt relief. She was surprised at herself. She had wanted the man to live. She remembered her astonishment when, with a gesture like a performing magician's, Manfred threw open the doors of his audience hall and the entire court saw the blond man with his dagger at Celino's throat.
She had been surprised when Manfred told her that this man, dressed in a drab tunic and hose like a less-than-prosperous Italian merchant, was the awaited Saracen from the Sultan of Egypt.
The sight of him as he passed through the audience hall had left her momentarily breathless. He looked like one of those blond men of western Europe the people of Constantinople called Franks and had learned to hate at sight. His hair was not as light as Manfred's; it was darker, more the color of brass than of gold. Manfred's lips were full and red, but this man's mouth was a down-curving line, the mouth of a man who had endured cruelty without complaint and could himself be cruel. She wondered what he had seen and done.
As he had passed her, his eyes caught hers. Strange eyes, she could not tell what color they were. There was a fixity in them akinto madness. The face was expressionless, rocklike. This, she was sure, was no ordinary man, to be disposed of as an inconvenience. She was not surprised Manfred had decided to let him live.
"Why did you change your mind?"
"I think this Mameluke can help me," Manfred said. "Therefore I am going to help him. He is going to Orvieto on a mission for his sultan. I am sending Lorenzo with him."
"What did you call him?"
"A Mameluke. A slave warrior. The Turks who rule in Muslim lands take very young boys as slaves and raise them in barracks to be soldiers. They forget their parents and are trained with the utmost rigor. They are said to be the finest warriors in the world."
What does a life like that do to a man? It must either destroy him or make him invincible.
"The man looks like a Frank," she said.
"He comes of English stock," said Manfred. "You Byzantines lump all of us together, English and French and Germans, as Franks, do you not? So you can call him a Frank if you like. But whatever he looks like, he is a Turk at heart. I've learned that from talking to him. It's really quite amazing."
They were plunged into deep shadow as the arched golden shape on the bed curtain disappeared, a cloud having passed over the sun. Despite the summer's heat she felt cold, and even though she did not trust Manfred she reached for him, wanting him close.
But Manfred drew away from her, preoccupied. She pulled a crimson cushion from behind him and hugged it against her breasts.
How alone the Mameluke must feel. Even here, where Muslims are tolerated, they have tried to kill him. And when he is in the pope's territory, every man will be his enemy.
She remembered the harsh face with its prominent cheekbones and gray eyes and thought, Perhaps being alone holds no terror for him.
After all, I am alone, and I have made the best of it.
"What is his mission in Orvieto?" she asked.
She listened intently as Manfred told her a tale of trying to prevent the great powers of East and West from joining together to crush Islam between them.
Manfred continued, "David hopes to influence the pope's counselors to turn against the Tartars, that they may sway the pope himself."
"How can one man attempt such a huge undertaking?"
"He brought me an exceedingly valuable stone, an emerald, which I will trade for jewels he can carry to Orvieto and exchange for coins. It pleases me greatly that the sultan would entrust me with such a gem. That helped to change my mind about this David. The Saracens are men of honor in their way." He smiled at her, looking pleased with the situation and pleased with himself. But she was quiet, unmoving, waiting for him to say the thing she feared to hear.
"But you are right," Manfred went on. "He cannot do it alone."
Warm yellow light once more filled their curtained cubicle. The cloud had passed away from the sun. But her heart froze.
"I have decided I must entrust my own most precious jewel to David." He put his hand on hers.
Oh, no!she thought, anguish tearing at her heart as his words confirmed her guess. She felt a terrible pain, as if he had run her through with a spear. She wanted to clutch at him, hold him in spite of himself. She had not felt so lost since her mother and father and the boy she loved were killed by the Franks.
She studied his face to memorize it, because soon she would leave him and probably never see him again. It would do her no good to let him see how she felt. She must decide what face to show him.
I am a woman of Constantinople, alone in a country of strangers. And we are an ancient people, wise and subtle, and we bide our time.
She sat up in the bed, hugging her knees, thinking.
"How will my going with him help you?"
He grunted softly, and she looked at him. He appeared relieved. She was making it easy for him. She felt the beginning of dislike for him stirring within her.
"I thought you would be perfect for this. And you are."
His words puzzled her, and she almost let her growing anger show. "I do not see what you see, Sire."
"We are in bed. You may call me Manfred."
But I do not want to call you Manfred.
"What is it you think I would be so good at?"
"You can mask your feelings," he said with a smile. "You are doing it now. You are very good at it."
"Thank you, Sire."
He shook his head, sat up beside her, and put an arm around her shoulders. "I meant it when I said you are precious to me. But youmust go with this man. I cannot tell you all my reasons, but it is for your own safety as well."
No doubt he was being honest with her, though he was not telling her everything. Just the other day one of Manfred's servants, whom she had cultivated with gifts, warned her that Manfred's queen, Helene of Cyprus, was demanding that Manfred break with Sophia. Of course, Manfred would never be willing to admit that his wife could force him to do such a thing.
She wanted to get off by herself and think this out, and cry, let tears release some of the pain she felt. This curtained bed confined her like a dungeon cell. She found her white shift amid the rumpled bedclothes. Getting up on her knees, she raised the shift over her head and struggled into it.
"Where are you going?" Manfred asked.
She crawled around the bed to look for her gown and her belt. "I have arrangements to make. Packing to do."
"I have not dismissed you," he said a bit sullenly.
"Yes, you have," she said, deliberately making her voice so low that it would be hard for him to hear.
"You have not heard everything." He took her arm. She wanted to pull away, but she let him hold her.
"I need your help," he went on. "You see, if David fails, in a year or two I may be dead."
He let go of her. She picked up the blue gown she had so eagerly thrown off an hour ago. Her fingers crushed the silk. She wanted to be alone, but she needed to learn more. She paused, kneeling beside him.
"God forbid, Sire! Why should you be dead?"
"This time the pope is offering my crown to the French."
Sitting down, laying the gown in her lap, she sighed and turned all her attention to him.
"Why can you not make peace with the pope? Why is he so determined to dethrone you?"
"Like all storied feuds, it goes back so far that no one can remember what started it," said Manfred, smiling with his lips but not his eyes. "At present the pope refuses to recognize me because my father promised to give up the crown of Sicily."
He paused a moment, and fixed her with a strangely intent stare. "And because my father did not marry my mother. Even though he loved her only, and never loved any of his three empresses."
He is trying to tell me something, Sophia thought.
But before she could reply, he went on with his tale of the Hohenstaufens and the popes. "As the popes see it, to have a Hohenstaufen ruling southern Italy and Sicily is like having a knife at their throats. This pope, Urban, is a Frenchman, and he is trying to get the French to help him drive us out."
The French. It was the French who, over fifty years ago, had stormed Constantinople, looted it, and ruled over it until driven out by Michael Paleologos.
And now the French threatened Manfred.
From his island of Sicily, how easy to launch another invasion of Constantinople.
In memory she saw Alexis, the boy she loved, fall as the French crossbow bolt hit him. She heard him cry out to her.
Go, Sophia, go!
Why was I saved that night if not that I might help to stop the French from conquering Constantinople again?
"I cannot send an army to Orvieto to stop the pope's intrigues against me," Manfred said. "That would turn all Christendom against me. But I can send my two best people, my brave and clever Lorenzo and my beautiful and clever Sophia. Together with David, you two perhaps can turn my enemies against each other. You may be gone six months or a year. And afterward you can come back."
He did not take his eyes from hers as he said it, but there was a flickering in their depths that told her he was not being honest with her.
"When will I meet this—Mameluke?"
"Tomorrow we go falconing. The forest is a good place to talk freely." He paused and grinned at her. "But do not dress just yet. This may be my last chance to enjoy your lovely body."
She looked away. She felt no desire for him. She was sick of being enjoyed.
"Forgive me, Sire, I have much to do," she said. Before he could object, she had slipped through the curtains around the bed and was pulling her blue gown over her head. She had left half her clothes behind with Manfred, but that did not matter. Her own quarters were near, and later she could send a servant for her things.
As she hurried out the door, she pretended not to hear Manfred's angry cry, muffled by the bed's thick curtains.
Sophia wrapped in white linen the satin mantle in which she had been presented at Manfred's court. She laid it in her traveling chest,then brought her jewel box from the table on which it had stood since she'd arrived here, and laid it on the mantle.
Manfred would gladly have ordered servants to do this packing for her, but it was easier to preserve her privacy when she did for herself.
She looked down at the polished ebony box with the double-headed eagle of Constantinople in mother-of-pearl inlay. A gift from the Basileus when he sent her to Sicily. The eagle of Constantinople, tradition said, was the inspiration for the two-headed Hohenstaufen eagle.
She folded a green woolen tunic and laid it over the jewel box. As she stood with her hands pressed on the tunic, sorrow welled up within her.
Was there ever a woman more alone in the world than I am?
In one night made hideous by the flames of the burning city and the screams of the dying, she had lost her father, Demetrios Karaiannides, the silversmith, and her mother, Danuta, and her two sisters, Euphemia and Eirene. The people of the Polis had risen against the Franks, and the Franks had retaliated by killing everyone they could lay hands upon.
The boy she was going to marry, the boy she loved, had fled with her to the Marmara waterfront. There they found a small boat, and then the crossbow bolt had torn through his back. Dying, he cast her adrift.
Go, Sophia, go!
From then on she was alone.
What am I? What is a woman alone?
Not a queen or an empress, not a wife or a mother, not a daughter, not a nun. Not mistress, now that Michael and Manfred had each sent her away. Not courtesan or even harlot.
Crossing the Bosporus to Asia Minor, she had survived. She did not care to remember the means by which she survived. Of all of them, the least dishonorable was theft.
She let herself be used, and she could be very useful. She found her way to the Byzantine general Michael Paleologos, who wanted to take Constantinople back from the Franks.
Her help had been important to Michael, and he had rewarded her after he reconquered the Polis and made himself its Basileus by keeping her as his favorite for a time. And she had rejoiced to see Constantinople liberated from the barbarians, even though no one she loved was left alive in it.
Then Michael had made her leave the one place she loved, sending her to Manfred in Italy.
And now, just when she had begun to lose the feeling of not belonging anywhere, just when she felt she had found safe harbor with Manfred, she was cut loose again.
She felt the tears coming, and fought them. She turned her mind away from the questions that plagued her and thought about her packing.
Saint Simon should go into the chest next.
In the center, where clothing above and below would protect him.
She went to the table by the window, where the small icon stood between two candles in tall brass candlesticks. She picked up the saint and reverently kissed his forehead, then held the icon out at arm's length to look at it. The eyes dominated the portrait, transfixing her with a blue stare.
She had painted it herself a few years before, copying another, larger icon that belonged to the Basileus Michael. Simon's cheeks were hollow, his mouth a tight line, his chin sharp. His hair hung brown and lank to his shoulders, framing his face.
She had used real gold dust in the paint for the halo. Michael was generous to her, and he laughed when she told him that she spent some of the money he gave her on expensive paint for an icon. The idea of a woman who painted amused him, like the bear that danced in the Hippodrome.
Beyond the gold of the halo was the ocher of the desert and, standing lonely over the saint's right shoulder, the pillar on which he had lived in penance for fifteen years, the pillar that had given him his name—Simon Stylites.
Why do I reverence this saint? Because he knew how to endure alone, and that is what is most important.
Rest well, dear saint, she prayed as she lowered the icon into the cedar chest. She closed the gilded wooden doors that protected the painting, breaking the grip of Simon's staring blue eyes.
She next opened a small box of dark, polished wood, its lid inlaid with bits of mother-of-pearl forming a bird with swirling wings. A dozen small porcelain jars lay in velvet-lined recesses shaped to hold them. Each jar was ornamented with the same floral pattern in a different color, each color that of the powdered pigment the tightly corked jar contained. Take a pinch of the powder, add water and the clear liquid from a raw egg, and you had a jewel-brightpaint. Wrapped in linen at one end of the box were her quill pens, brushes, and charcoal sticks.
As always, the sight of her materials made her want to stop what she was doing and paint. She closed the lid gently, stroking its cover, remembering the merchant from Soldaia in the Crimea who had sold her the box outside the Church of Saint John in Stoudion, telling her it came from a land far to the east called Cathay.
The Cathayans must be as civilized as we are to make such a thing, she thought as she put the box in her chest.
This blond Saracen—this Mameluke—whom she had seen briefly and would meet again tomorrow, would not be a civilized man. He was both Turk and Frank—barbarity coupled with barbarity.
"Kriste eleison!" she whispered. "Christ have mercy." Until this moment she had been able to stave off her fear of the danger she was going into. Now it struck her full force, leaving her paralyzed over her traveling chest, her trembling hand still resting on her box of paints as if it were a talisman that could protect her.
She was going among the worst enemies her people had on earth, more to be feared than the Saracens—the Latin Christians of the West. The floor seemed to shake under her, and her body went cold and then hot as she thought of what she must face. If they found out that she was a woman of Constantinople, they would tear the flesh from her bones.
A woman of Constantinople helping a Saracen to plot against the pope!
Fear was like a cold, black ocean, and she was drowning in it. She dared not even let herself imagine the horrors, the torments that would end her life if those people in Orvieto found her out.
She did not have to go through with it. Once she and Lorenzo and this David—this Mameluke—were on the road, she could slip away. Manfred had said they would be carrying jewels. Perhaps she could take some, use them to buy passage for herself.
Passage to where?
There was no place in the world she belonged but Constantinople. And her place in the Polis was dependent on the basileus, Michael. If she angered Manfred, she could not dare go back to Michael.
To be forever exiled from Constantinople would be a living death.
In her mind she saw the Polis, glowing golden at the edge of the sea. She saw the great gray walls that had protected Constantinople against barbarian invaders from East and West for a thousand years.She saw the gorgeous pink marble of the Blachernae Palace of the Basileus, the statue of Justinian astride his horse, his hand raised toward the East, the great dome of Hagia Sophia, her namesake saint, that seemed to float over the city, held in place by an army of angels. She heard the roar of the crowd watching chariots race in the Hippodrome and the cries of the merchants from their shops along the arcaded Mese. The Polis was the hub of the world, the fulfillment of all desires.
The vision sent strength and purpose surging through her body, and she straightened up, took her hand from the paint box, and began moving around the room again, collecting her possessions.
She would go with Lorenzo and the Mameluke and do, as she had always done, whatever was necessary. She would see this thing through. With the help of God, she might prevail.
And after that?
What future for a woman as alone as Sophia Karaiannides?
She shrugged. Time enough to think about the future after she had been to Orvieto and lived through it.
Of one thing she was already sure. She would not come back to Manfred.
She went back to her table. From a reading stand at its side she picked up her leather-bound book of parchment sheets and opened it to a page marked by a ribbon. She studied the portrait of Manfred she had begun only two days before. Most of it was still rough charcoal strokes, but she had colored his beard in a mixture of yellow and white paints, because it was the most important color and she wanted to get it down first so it could control her choice of the other colors. The eyes would be last, because when she painted in the eyes the picture would, in a sense, come to life.
Even with the eyes blank the portrait seemed to smile at her, and she felt a ripple of remembered pleasure. Grief followed almost at once.
Shall I try to finish this tonight and give it to him as a parting gift?
After a moment's thought her fingers clawed at the parchment and tore it free of the stitches that held it in the book. She rolled it up and held an end to a candle flame.
Keeping his face severe, Simon de Gobignon walked slowly past the six knights lined up on the wharf. The men's faces were scarlet and glistening with sweat under their conical steel helmets. Simon felt rivulets running down his own back, under his padded cotton undershirt, mail hauberk, and surcoat.
Gulls screamed overhead, and the smell of the salt sea and of rotting fish hung heavy in the warm air.
Venice in July, Simon thought, was no place to be dressed in full battle gear.
The two banners held by men-at-arms at the end of the line hung limply: the royal standard of France, gold fleurs-de-lis on an azure ground, and that of Gobignon, gold crowns on purple.
Simon reproached himself. He had brought his company down to the waterfront too early, as soon as he had word that the galley bearing the Tartar ambassadors from Cyprus was in the harbor. It was there, sure enough; he could see it, a long, dark shape a few hundred feet from shore. But it rode at anchor while officials of the Most Serene Republic inspected it for diseases and registered its cargo, a task that had already taken hours while Simon and his men sweltered onshore.
Behind the knights stood a lance of archers, forty men in four rows. They were talking and laughing among themselves in the Venetian dialect, which Simon could barely understand. While growing up he had learned the speech of Sicily, but that was nearly a different language.
The crossbowmen should not be chattering, Simon thought. It was unmilitary. Besides, it irritated him and added to the tension of this endless waiting.
He took a step back and shouted, "Silencio!" The archers looked up, and he saw more surprise and annoyance than respect in their faces. Some eyed him expectantly, as if they thought him about tomake a speech. He glared at the archers for what he felt was a suitable interval, then turned away and walked out to the edge of the jetty, his thumbs hooked in his sword belt. He ignored the muttering that arose the moment he turned his back.
"Scusi, Your Signory," said a rasping voice at his elbow. Simon turned.
Andrea Sordello, capitano of the archers, smiled broadly at him, revealing a gap where one of his eye teeth should have been. The bridge of his nose was smashed flat.
"What is it, Sordello?" The capitano had met him in Venice with a letter of recommendation from Count Charles d'Anjou, brother of King Louis of France, but a not-quite-hidden insolence in the manner of this bravo made Simon uneasy.
"If Your Signory wishes to command the crossbowmen, perhaps it would be better to transmit your orders through me. The men do not understand why you silenced them just now. They are not used to being told to stand like statues for no reason."
And you would like to make yourself popular with them by disputing my order, would you not?
"Tell them they have entered the service of the kingdom of France," he told Sordello. "It is customary for French soldiers to maintain a military bearing and discipline."
"Forgive me, Your Signory, but that may offend them."
"It is not my duty to tell them what they want to hear but what theymusthear," said Simon.Rather well put, he thought to himself.
"Sì, Your Signory." Sordello walked away. He had a slight limp, Simon noticed. The man had certainly been battered. Even so, Uncle Charles's letter said he was a fine troubadour. Or trovatore, as they called them in Italy.
"Monseigneur!" A shout broke in on his thoughts. Alain de Pirenne, his closest friend among the six Gobignon knights he had brought with him, was pointing out at the harbor. The two rows of oars on either side of the long-delayed galley were in motion. Even at this distance Simon could hear the drumbeat and the overseer calling count. Simon had heard songs comparing the oars of galleys to the wings of birds, and he could see the resemblance as the rows of oars, looking delicate as feathers from this distance, rose and fell over the water in unison.
"Thank heaven," said Simon.
"Indeed," said Alain. "I am starting to feel more like a baked pigeon than a man."
As the galley swung in to the wharf, ropes flying through the air to make her fast to shore, Simon heard a sudden outcry behind him and jerked his head around.
"Make way for the most serene! Make way for the doge!" runners shouted. Musicians blowing oliphants, cranking hurdy-gurdies, and pounding on drums led a bright procession along the wharves. Two men in knee-length scarlet tunics stiff with gold braid held poles between which swung a huge banner. On the banner a winged lion in gold strode across a green background. Simon saw rows of gleaming helmets and naked swords held upright, followed by ranks of men in glittering brocaded robes, emerald and silver, maroon and gold. Towering over all was a huge sedan chair with a gilded roof and cloth of gold curtains, followed by a troop of men with tall spears. A crowd of men and women in bright silk tunics and satin gowns, laughing and chattering, brought up the rear.
A man in an ankle-length gown, his cap heavy with gold thread, confronted Simon. He was, Simon recalled, a camerlengo who had been present two weeks before when he had his brief audience with the doge and presented his charter from King Louis.
"Count, your troops are occupying the place needed by the doge, that he may properly greet our guests. Move them, if you please." The "if you please" was uttered in a tone so perfunctory as to be almost insulting. Simon's face burned and his muscles tensed, but when the ruler of Venice demanded that he give way, he was in no position to quarrel. He bowed curtly and turned to order his men to vacate the wharf.
And so, after waiting for hours, Simon suddenly found himself watching the arrival of the ambassadors from behind ranks of Venetian archers far more smartly turned out than his own mercenaries.
Why, Simon wondered, had the doge not made a place for him in this welcoming ceremony? The slight made him feel angry at himself as much as at the doge.
It is me. Uncle Charles should have sent an older man, more able to command respect.
First to come down the boarding ramp of the galley from Cyprus was a friar in a brown robe with a white cord wrapped around his waist. The crown of his scalp was shaved, and his beard was longand white. He threw himself on the ground and kissed it with a loud smacking sound. He rose and bowed to the doge's sedan chair.
The doge of Venice, Rainerio Zeno, emerged through curtains held for him by two equerries in purple. Zeno was a very old, toothless man whose black eyes glittered like a raven's. His bald head was covered by a white cap bordered with pearls. His gold-embroidered mantle looked stiff and hard as the shell of a beetle. Pages stood on either side of him, and he leaned heavily on their shoulders, using them as crutches. The friar bent and kissed Zeno's ring.
Simon could not hear what the doge and the friar said to each other. The friar gestured toward the ship. Armed men—Simon counted ten of them—tramped down the boarding ramp and formed two lines leading to the doge. They were short and swarthy, wearing red and black breastplates of lacquered leather and round steel helmets polished to a dazzling finish, topped with spikes. Bows were slung crosswise over their shoulders, and long, curved swords hung from their belts. Were these Tartars, he wondered.
Their swords looked very much like the one Simon wore. Simon's was an Egyptian scimitar, one of his most precious possessions, not because of its jeweled hilt—a pearl set just behind the guard, a ruby at the end of the hilt, and a row of smaller precious stones all along the grip—but because of the one who had given it to him. And yet, much as he prized it, the scimitar hurt him each time he looked at it, reminding him of his darkest secret, a secret known to only three living people. Simon's whole life, the scimitar reminded him, was built on a lie.
And he had accepted this mission, in part, to expiate the shame he felt when he remembered that.
Now Simon, feeling very much out of his depth, touched the hilt of his scimitar for reassurance. But as he recalled that the sword had once belonged to a Saracen ruler, his heart leapt in fear.
One never knows when or how the Saracens may strike, Count Charles d'Anjou—Uncle Charles—had warned him.The arrow from ambush ... the dagger that cuts the throat of a sleeping victim ... poison. When they cannot kill they try to corrupt, with gold and lies. And they have allies in Italy—the Pope's enemy, Manfred von Hohenstaufen, and his supporters, the Ghibellini. You must be on guard every moment.
Simon's eyes swept the row of stone palaces that overlooked this part of the waterfront, their battlements offering hundreds of finehiding places for killers. An enemy had only to gain surreptitious entrance to one of those great houses—not hard to do when everyone's attention was turned toward the galley bringing the Tartars.
What should I do? The doge's men-at-arms outnumber mine, and look to be better soldiers. And it seems the Tartars have brought their own warriors. Perhaps I am not needed now.
The thought brought him momentary relief. But then Simon realized that he was yielding to the temptation that had assailed him throughout his life, the urge to conceal himself.
But did I not undertake this task to uphold my family's good name and my right to bear it? And besides, it is not only my dignity that must be upheld here, but the honor of King Louis. If anything happens to the Tartars now that they are on Christian soil, I will have failed my king.
Simon was about to push forward to demand room for his men when the friar who had just disembarked raised his arm. Simon's gaze followed the direction of the gesture, and came to rest at the head of the boarding ramp.
There stood two of the strangest-looking men Simon had ever seen. Their faces were the deep brown of well-tanned leather. The eyebrows were little black banners flying above black, slitted eyes that peered out over the battlements of jutting cheekbones. Their mustaches were thin and hung down in long strands below small chins adorned with sparse beards. One man's beard was white, the other's black. But even the black-bearded man was not young; there were deep creases in his face. Both men wore cylindrical caps, each topped with a polished, spherical red stone. Their ankle-length robes were of maroon silk, brocaded with gold thread, and they wore short jackets with flowing sleeves. From the neck of each man hung a rectangular tablet on a gold chain.
Simon's wonder turned to fear as he realized what perfect targets the Tartar ambassadors were making of themselves.
He threw his weight against the men and women in front of him, forcing his way through the crowd—and found himself facing one of the doge's archers. The man raised his crossbow threateningly, but Simon saw immediately that it was not loaded. Fine protection for the emissaries.
"De Pirenne! De Puys!" Simon called to the two French knights nearest him. "Follow me." He turned back to the Venetian crossbowman and shouted, "Stand aside!" in his loudest voice. "I am the Count de Gobignon."
As he had hoped, the sound of his command carried to Doge Zeno, whose face, wrinkled as a yellow raisin, turned in Simon's direction.
"Serenity!" Simon called, using the customary form of address for the doge. "It is my duty to guard these ambassadors."
Sordello, at Simon's elbow, said in a low voice, "You are a great lord in your own land, Your Signory, but it would be best if you did not arouse the wrath of the doge of Venice."
"Be still," Simon snapped.
Helmeted archers moved in on Simon from all sides, but Simon saw the doge give an abrupt hand signal to their capitano. At a shouted order from the capitano, the men-at-arms fell back, letting Simon through.
"Why do you disturb our ceremonies, young count?" The doge's voice was a hoarse whisper. He smiled faintly, but his eyes were cold as winter. Simon felt painfully embarrassed. The ruler of the mightiest city on the Middle Sea was, after all, as puissant as any king on earth.
Simon fell to one knee before the doge. "Forgive me, Serenity. I only wish to aid you in protecting the emissaries from Tartary, as my king has commanded me." His knees trembled, and he felt as if his heart were hammering hard enough to break his ribs.
The smile faded and the aged eyes grew icier. "Does the Frankish count think Venice too feeble to protect her distinguished visitors?"
"Not at all, Serenity," said Simon hastily. "Only let me add my strength to yours."
"Say no more," said the doge in a voice as sharp as a dagger.
By now the two Tartars had descended the ramp and were standing before the doge. For a moment Simon's eyes met those of the white-bearded Tartar, and he felt a new, inexplicable, and powerful fear. He took a step backward, almost as if he had been struck a physical blow, and he gripped his sword hilt for reassurance.
The Tartar turned his gaze to the doge, and Simon's fear faded, leaving him to wonder what there was in this little brown-skinned man to inspire it. What he had seen in those eyes? A hardness, a gaze as empty of concern for Simon de Gobignon as the cloudless blue sky overhead.
The friar said, "Serenity, this is John Chagan Noyon," indicating the older Tartar. "A noyon among the Tartars is equal in rank to a prince in our lands. The Khan Hulagu sends you a prince toshow how earnestly he wishes to ally himself with Christendom to destroy our mutual enemies, the Muslims. This other gentleman is Philip Uzbek Baghadur. 'Baghadur' means valiant, and he is a tuman-bashi, a commander of ten thousand. He holds high place in the councils of Hulagu Khan." Each Tartar clasped his hands before him and bowed low to the doge as his name was spoken.
"How is it that they have Christian names?" asked the doge.
The Franciscan friar smiled. "John Chagan comes of an old Christian family, formerly subject to the great Christian King of Asia, Prester John. And Philip Uzbek was baptized in his youth by the Bishop of Karakorum."
The doge waved his bony hands, making his heavy garments rustle. "Christian Tartars! Prester John! The Bishop ofKarakorum? This is too much for an old man to grasp all at once. But surely I can learn much from you and these noble gentlemen that will be good for Venice. Tell them that I invite them to bear me company to my palace, where we will dine together tonight and I will learn more of the marvels of the empire of Tartary."
Simon knew that the doge's palace was more than half a mile down the avenue along this bank of the Grand Canal, and the prospect of the ambassadors parading that distance alarmed him again. His fear of disaster came back full force, driving him once again, against all courtesy, to speak out.
"Serenity! I beg the privilege of joining forces with you to escort the ambassadors to your palace."
Anger blazed in the gaze the doge turned upon him this time. "Young man, if you speak out of turn once more, I will have you thrown into the canal."
Simon had no doubt that the doge would enjoy making good on his threat. But would the ruler of Venice allow an undignified scuffle on the waterfront in the presence of two ambassadors? Simon doubted it, and decided to stand his ground.
"Forgive me, Serenity," he said, inclining his head. "It is my concern for these precious lives that urges me to speak out."
The doge took a deep breath. Then his small mouth twitched in a smile.
"Very well, Count. You may follow after us."
While the doge presented the assembled Venetian dignitaries to the Tartars, Simon ordered Henri de Puys and Alain de Pirenne to draw up the knights and Sordello to form up the archers and be ready to follow the ambassadors' train.
Bearers brought a sedan chair for the Tartars, who climbed into it with bows and smiles. To Simon's distress, the conveyance was open, naturally enough, since the Tartars would want to see Venice and the Venetians would want to see them. But it meant still more danger.
The Franciscan friar came over and put his hand on Simon's arm. "You are very brave, young man, to speak up to the ruler of Venice as you did. And who might you be?"
Simon introduced himself, and the friar bowed and addressed him in French. "How good to speak the language of my homeland again. I am Mathieu d'Alcon of the Little Brothers of San Francesco, and I was born near Limoges, which is not far from your estate, Count. Of course, no place in France is far from Gobignon lands." His broad smile told Simon the remark was meant in friendly jest. "It was our good King Louis who sent me to the Tartars years ago. I am glad we will be in French hands after we leave Venice." He gave Simon's arm a squeeze and returned to the doge's procession.
Simon had begun to think the whole world had turned against him, and Friar Mathieu's friendly words cheered him immensely. He watched the white-bearded friar with a warm feeling as he shook his head at the attendants who held a sedan chair for him. As befitted a good Franciscan, sworn to poverty and dedicated to simplicity, the friar would allow no one to carry him but insisted on walking on his own sandaled feet behind the Tartars' chair.
Simon and his men followed the last contingent of the doge's foot soldiers along the waterfront. Ahead, a stone bridge arched over one of the many Venetian canals.
The procession was moving slowly now. After crossing the bridge, Simon saw the ambassadors' sedan chair swing around a corner, and his pulse quickened because those he was to protect were out of his sight.
He wanted to hurry to the corner, but the street narrowed here, with the windowless white ground floor of a palazzo on one side and an iron railing on the other. There was no room to bypass those ahead. Simon hurried his pace until he was all but treading on the leather-shod heels of the spearman in front of him.
He turned the corner into the small square in front of the doge's palace. He saw the doge's sedan chair and that of the Tartars pass through the gateway between the palace and the great basilica of San Marco.
Then he stopped short, feeling as if he had crashed headfirst into a wall. The tall gates leading into the palace swung shut, and facing him was a triple line of men-at-arms of the Most Serene Republic, in green and gold tunics and armed with long spears.
"Mère de Dieu!" he whispered.
He could not force his way into the palace. If he even tried, he would only look ridiculous. Indeed, he doubted that his men would fight. The ill-disciplined mercenaries were Venetians, too, and why would they obey the command of a French seigneur, who had hired them only yesterday, to fight their own countrymen?
"It appears we are not welcome at the palace, Your Signory," said a voice at his side. Simon turned and glared at Sordello, whose weather-beaten face seemed to mask amusement.
Simon tried to think of a way to rescue his dignity. "Find the leader of the palace guards and tell him I want to speak to him."
Sordello shrugged. "As you wish, Your Signory."
Alain de Pirenne, his gauntleted fist clenched on the hilt of his sword, blustered out, "Damned Italian discourtesy! It would serve them right if somebody did slip a dagger into those Tartars while we stand out here."
God forbid!thought Simon.
Sordello came back with a Venetian man-at-arms, who touched the brim of his polished kettle-helmet respectfully.
"This sergente has a message for you from His Serenity, the doge, Your Signory."
"Let him tell it."
Simon's command of the Venetian dialect was not good enough to follow what the man in the kettle-helmet said, and to make it harder, he spoke in what appeared to be an embarrassed mumble.
"What did he say, Sordello?"
"Forgive me, Your Signory," said Sordello. "The message may offend you. I will repeat it only if you wish it."
"What did he say?" said Simon again in a tight voice.
"The doge says you are to wait in quarters of your own choosing until the ambassadors from Tartary are ready to travel. At that time he will place them in your keeping. Until then you are to trouble him no more, unless you are a very good swimmer."
Simon felt rage boil up within him. He clenched his fists and fought it down.
"Tell him I thank His Serenity for his courtesy and will forever honor him for it."
Sordello nodded, and there was a look of respect in his craggy face.
As Sordello repeated Simon's words to the sergente of the doge's guards, Simon wheeled and strode back the way he had come, to stare out to sea. Tears of frustrated fury burned his eyes. He could feel hot blood beating in his temples. The doge had treated him like a small boy. That old gargoyle had insulted him, had insulted the house of Gobignon, had insulted King Louis.
And there was nothing Simon could do about it. He felt furious and miserable. A failure, at the very start of his task.
Crushed, Simon decided that at least he would quarter his French knights and the Venetian archers as near to the doge's palace as possible. The doge alone would be protecting the Tartars for the time being, and Simon had no choice about it.
With Sordello's help he found lodgings for his men at the outrageous price of two deniers a night per man—not all the thieves were on the highways—at the nearest inn to the Piazza San Marco, just a short distance down a side street. How much of what he paid the innkeeper, he wondered, would end up in Sordello's purse?
Then, accompanied by Alain de Pirenne, he walked back to the entrance gate to the doge's palace, a long three-story building that stretched from the waterfront to the basilica. He sent a message in by way of a guard, asking Friar Mathieu to meet him in the piazza. The kindly Franciscan was, he suspected, the most important person in the Tartars' entourage.
Simon and Alain had taken off their mail and were more comfortably dressed in silk tunics, short capes, and velvet caps. Each still wore his weapons belt, with longsword hung on the left and dagger on the right. The leather heels of their point-toed boots rang on the stones of the piazza as they paced, waiting to see if Friar Mathieu would come out.
Alain was still indignant.
"They have no idea who you are, Simon. Why, you could take this whole city and set it in one corner of the Gobignon domain and it would never be noticed." Normally ruddy, Alain was even redder with anger. His blond mustache bristled.
As much as Paris goes unnoticed in the midst of the Île de France, Simon thought with a smile.
Now that his armor was off and an hour or more had passed, Simon felt more at ease and was inclined to accept the situation. After all, if he could not get into the doge's palace, he might reasonably hope that neither could anyone who would want to harm the Tartars.
"It is wealth and ships that make this city great, Alain, not its size."
"That is all these Venetians care about—money." Like any proper knight, Alain despised money and those who loved it. In the course of learning to manage his estate, Simon had acquired more respect for money.
"Even Paris has no beauty to rival this," said Simon, feeling a shade disloyal even as he said so. "Look at those horses." He pointed to the façade above the central doorway of the cathedral of San Marco, where four gilded bronze horses pranced, so proud and energetic as to seem almost in motion.
Alain whistled in appreciation. "What wizard wrought them, I wonder."
Simon, who had been asking questions in the week they had been there, said, "They come from Constantinople. About sixty years ago the Venetians paid an army of French crusaders—our forefathers—to turn aside from the Holy Land and conquer Constantinople instead. The Venetians took those horses and set them here to proclaim their triumph."
"Diverting a crusade is surely a great sin," said Alain. "And theft is theft. But none of my forefathers had anything to do with the foul deed you tell of."
"No, nor mine," said Simon. "The French knights who conquered Constantinople were our forefathers only in a manner of speaking."
But my predecessor, Count Amalric de Gobignon, did fouler things by far. As Alain well knows, though he is too good a friend to mention it.
"Still, the good taste of the Venetians is admirable," Simon said aloud, still gazing at the horses.
"For all I know, this could be the richest city in the world," said Alain, missing the point. "But what matter, Simon, if its riches are stolen goods?"
"Venice is by no means the richest city in the world, Messire," someone beside them said.
Startled, Simon turned to see Friar Mathieu, who had fallen into step with them, his eyes warm and friendly. Simon wanted to throw his arms around the old man and hug him.
"There are cities in the Far East so big and so rich they make Venice look like a fishing village," Friar Mathieu went on, his long white beard blowing gently in the breeze from the waterfront.
"People love to tell wild stories about the East," said Alain skeptically. "I've heard of cities of solid gold, birds as big as an elephant, and so on and on."
But this man has been there!Simon wanted to shout. Much though he liked Alain, Simon was discovering in his friend a narrowness that made him a frustrating traveling companion. With Alain here, the conversation with Friar Mathieu would plod, and Simon wanted it to gallop.
"Sire Alain," he said, "I fear our hired men-at-arms may get into trouble drinking, fighting, and wenching unless someone keeps a sharp eye on them. Will you see to them, please?"
De Pirenne held up a broad hand. "I will slap them down for you, if need be, Monseigneur." Now that a third party was present, he addressed Simon formally.
"Travel is said to open a man's mind," said Friar Mathieu when de Pirenne was gone. "But some minds are like country châteaus. Let anything strange approach, and the doors and windows slam shut."
He took Simon's arm and steered him over the flagstones of the piazza toward the cathedral. The many-columned façade of pink, white, and green marble, sculptures, and mosaics filling the spaces between them took Simon's breath away. There was an opulence to the five great domes that seemed to Simon to speak of the storied wealth of the East. They were so different from the pointed spires of the cathedrals newly built in France.
"I am very grateful to you, Simon, for trying so hard to protect us today," Friar Mathieu said. "The doge's discourtesy to you wasthe worst kind of rudeness, the rudeness of one who thinks himself more refined than all others."
Simon felt better, but he wondered if the friar was speaking so only out of kindness to him.
"It is good of you to reassure me," he said, "but the doge seems to be guarding the ambassadors well enough."
"All show," said Friar Mathieu. "The Venetians are not alert enough. The doge has no idea that we are in any danger. Nor does he seem to care. I believe he has not decided whether he has anything to gain from an alliance between Christians and Tartars. After all, the Venetians trade quite happily with the Muslims these days."
Simon was shocked. "Is that not a sin?"
"Against God, perhaps, but not against profit. And the common heading on your Venetian merchant's account book is 'For God and Profit.' Young Seigneur de Gobignon, you do not know how happy I am to talk to a Frenchman again after so many years."
"How long have you been among the Tartars, Friar Mathieu?"
The old Franciscan sighed. "Long enough to learn the Eastern peoples' way of counting the years in twelve-year cycles. They give each year the name of a certain animal."
"A strange system."
"A sensible system. It is easier to remember beasts than numbers. Let me see, this year, Anno Domini 1263, they call the Year of the Sheep, and when I first entered the camp of Hulagu Khan the Tartars told me it was the Year of the Dragon. From Dragon to Sheep there are"—he counted on his fingers while muttering the names of beasts under his breath—"seven animals. So, seven years since our good King Louis sent me to bear his messages to the Tartars."
"Then you went in 1256?"
"Anno Domini 1256. That is right."
Simon wanted very much to know more about life among the Tartars. But he and the old friar could have long talks on the road to Orvieto. For now there were more pressing questions.
Just as he was about to speak, the friar pointed to the gateway between the basilica and the doge's palace. "There go the Armenians."
Simon saw six of the swarthy men crossing the piazza in a line. Short-statured though they were, there was a swagger in the way they walked. They had doffed their leather armor and wore tunics of white silk with billowing red trousers over short black boots.Their tunics were cinched at the waist with black leather belts, and in each belt was thrust a curving saber in a jeweled scabbard. Their bows were slung across their backs, along with black leather quivers.
"Four of them stayed behind to guard the Tartars," Friar Mathieu said.
Simon had been wondering just how his knights and archers would share with the Armenian guards the responsibility of protecting the Tartars.
"Why did the ambassadors bring Armenians, and not their own Tartar warriors?" he asked Friar Mathieu.
"Because the Armenians are Christians and are more like Europeans than themselves. The Armenians are allies, not subjects of the Tartars. These ten who travel with us are great men among the Armenian people. One of them, Hethum, is in line to be King of Armenia some day. One feels safer, traveling with such men."
Simon watched the half-dozen Armenians disappear down a narrow side street leading off the piazza. He felt a twinge of worry, seeing that they were heading toward the street in which his own men were quartered. He wanted to follow after the men from the East, but he did not want to interrupt his conversation with Friar Mathieu. Feeling pulled in two directions, he held himself to the friar's slow, thoughtful pace as they approached the cathedral.
"Even some Tartars are Christians, I have heard," Simon said.
"There are many religions among the Tartars." They had reached the front of San Marco, and Friar Mathieu, still holding Simon's arm, wheeled them around and started them walking back toward the doge's palace. "Hulagu Khan's wife, the Khatun, is a Christian, although he is a pagan. But what all Tartars really worship is strength. In their own language they call themselves 'Mongols,' which means strong." Simon looked at the friar and saw a faraway, awe-struck look in those old eyes. "One wonders why God created them. To punish us for our sins? Or to rule the world and to bring order to all mankind?"
"Rule the world?" said Simon. He thought about the two slit-eyed men in silk robes he had seen disembarking from the galley a few hours before. He remembered the look the older Tartar had given him, so unfeeling, as if looking down upon him from a vast distance.
"They think it is their destiny to rule the world," said Friar Mathieu. "And it is not a foolish dream. They have already conqueredmuch of it. You might sneer at me as your skeptical knight did, Monseigneur, if I told you how vast the Tartar empire is. Take France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire together, and they would be swallowed up in the lands ruled by the Tartars."
"Please call me Simon, Father, if you will. It embarrasses me to be addressed as monseigneur by one such as you."
Friar Mathieu patted Simon's hand. "Very well, Simon. That is kindly spoken. It will be good for us to be friends, because we have a very difficult and doubtful mission."
"Why doubtful?"
"We cannot be sure we are doing the right thing. These two men, John and Philip, command great armies in the Tartar empire. Watch them, Simon. Notice how they observe fortifications and weapons. The same monks who made Christians of them also taught them how to write. Many times at day's end in Syria and on Cyprus I have seen them talking together, making notes, drawing maps. Whether they form this alliance or not, they will have much useful knowledge to bring back to their khan."
Then might it not be better for all of us if I fail to protect the Tartars, and some enemy of Christendom succeeds in killing them?
Simon felt an aching tightness in his forehead. He desperately wanted the alliance to succeed, and thereby show the nobility of France that neither he nor his family any longer deserved their scorn. If the alliance failed, he failed, and the house of Gobignon would sink deeper into dishonor.
Let others worry, he decided, about whether it was right or wrong to protect the Tartars.
"Monseigneur!"
There was urgency in the voice that hailed Simon from across the square, and a feeling of dread came over him. He turned to see his equerry, Thierry d'Hauteville, his wavy black hair uncovered, running across the piazza.
"They are fighting, Monseigneur!" Thierry panted. "Our Venetian archers and those men from Tartary. You'd best come at once."
"Jesus, save us!" Simon heard Friar Mathieu whisper beside him.
Staring into Thierry's anxious eyes, Simon felt himself getting angry. Six knights he had brought with him. Any knight worthy of his spurs should be able to stop any pack of commoners from fighting.And if they could not, he thought with a sudden shift from anger to anxiety, what more could he do?
There was no time to think. "Father, will you come, please?" he said to Mathieu, and without waiting for a reply struck Thierry on the shoulder and began to run with him.
"I follow, as quickly as I can, my son," he heard from behind him.
"Could you not stop them?" he demanded of Thierry as they headed down a narrow cobblestoned street at a dead run.
Dread made his legs heavy. De Puys, a veteran of the last crusade, de Pirenne, a strong and well-trained knight—theyhad sent forhim. For Simon de Gobignon, twenty years of age, who had never in his life been in a battle.
Breath of God, what did they expect of him?
"There was nothing we could do without killing the Tartars' bodyguard," said Thierry. "You will see how it is when you get there."
The inn was a stone building with houses on either side. The lower half of the divided door was shut, but the upper half was open, and Simon heard shouts from within. Thierry, ahead of him, yanked the door open for him.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness of the large room. Shadowy figures jostled him as he pushed his way through. A little light came from the grilled windows and from a single huge yellow candle burning in a candlestick on a table. The room reeked of sweaty bodies and old wine.
"Make way for Monseigneur le Comte!" Thierry called uselessly as the Venetian mercenaries jabbered angrily in Italian.
Simon pushed his way into the corner of the room lit by the candle and found himself facing a scowling, dark-skinned man pointing a gleaming sword at him. Five of the Armenians, sabers out, had formed a protective ring.
Within the ring, the sixth Armenian had a man bent forward over a table. The man's arms flailed feebly and his eyes bulged. Even in the poor light Simon could see that his face, turned on its side toward him, was purple. The Armenian was holding his bow behind the man's neck and was turning it slowly. Now Simon saw the string cutting into the neck.