"When you broke the ring, that was a miss," said Nicetas. "You lost. The shirt is mine."
"You will have to take it from me," said Kassar with a grin. "Come to my tent and you can wrestle me for it." Now he made the gesture encircling his forefinger that Nicetas had made before.
What would Nicetas do, Daoud wondered. He was not big enough to hurt Kassar—but if he yielded, Kassar would make a slave of him and subject him to abominations.
"I had heard that a Tartar never goes back on his word," said Nicetas. "I see now that at least one Tartar is a lying jackal."
Good!Daoud thought fiercely. In a battle of insults, he felt sure, the talkative Greek would have the upper hand over the dour Tartar.
Kassar reddened, and he smashed his fist into Nicetas's jaw. The Greek boy fell to the ground, and Daoud saw that his eyes were blank, dazed. But Nicetas shook his head and forced himself to his feet.
"Your fist can't restore your honor, Kassar. You have fucked it too many times."
Loud laughter burst out from the watching boys, choked off as again the Tartar swung, hitting Nicetas in the mouth. The boy wasthrown back against the onlookers, and blood ran from his nose and mouth.
Daoud felt the blood pounding his temples as his anger grew. As long as it was just Kassar against Nicetas, he could not get into the fight. But if Kassar's friends joined in, he promised himself he would help Nicetas.
"Take back what you said," Kassar growled, advancing on him.
Daoud could not see Nicetas behind Kassar's bulky form. But suddenly Kassar's head snapped back and his white cap fell off into the sand. The Kipchaq fell back, and Daoud saw that Nicetas was on his feet, grinning through the blood and rubbing his knuckles.
"Yah, Nicetas!" he shouted, but he was alone in cheering. He sensed others looking at him. May they burn in the flames if they did not see that Nicetas was the better man.
Kassar plowed into Nicetas, pummeling him with both fists. When Nicetas collapsed under the punishment, Kassar kicked him in the head, sending him flying backward. Kassar's friends shouted encouragement. Daoud felt his whole body growing hot with anger.
Nicetas rolled over on his stomach, raised himself on hands and knees, and spat blood. His eyes searched the crowd of boys watching him and Kassar, and Daoud knew that he was looking for a friend.
"Nicetas!" Daoud cried, and the Greek boy's dazed eyes found him and his bloody mouth stretched in a grin.
But if Nicetas did not give up, Kassar would kill him.
Suddenly Daoud turned and pushed his way through the crowd and hurried to where Mahmoud was still sitting.
"Why do you not stop this?" he demanded. "It is your duty to keep order among us."
"Do not tell me my duty," said Mahmoud. "Have you forgotten what my cane feels like?"
"You would use the cane onme?" Daoud exclaimed, outraged. "When Kassar is cheating?"
There were a thousand tiny wrinkles around Mahmoud's blue Circassian eyes, from a lifetime of squinting into the sun.
"Daoud, I will tell you what my duty is. My duty is to take miserable julbans and make Mamelukes of you. When you are a full-fledged Mameluke, there will be no naqeeb over you to right your wrongs. Among Mamelukes, he who is strongest rules. If Kassar is the strongest among you, you must be ruled by him."
Daoud growled with disgust and ran back to the fight.
Nicetas had somehow gotten back on his feet, though his face was a mass of blood and dirt and his breath was coming in gasps. His eyes were glazed, but he managed to stagger forward and hit Kassar in the nose with his fist. Blood began to flow from the young Tartar's wide nostrils into his mustache.
Kassar put his fingers to his upper lip, took them away and stared at the blood. His eyes widened in fury. His head swung right and left; then he sidestepped to a boy in front of the circle. From the boy's sash he pulled a dabbus, a fluted iron cylinder mounted on a wooden staff.
Swinging the dabbus so it whistled through the air, Kassar charged at Nicetas. The boys fell back, opening the circle wider.
For the first time, Daoud saw fear in Nicetas's eyes. He ducked as Kassar swung the mace at his head, but his movements were slow and awkward. He had been hit too many times. He fell, stood up, and staggered backward.
The naqeeb would not interfere. This could end only one way.
And Daoud knew that he did not want to see Nicetas die before his eyes.
He would not allow it.
Only moments ago rage had raised a great storm within him, but now his mind was like the desert after the storm has passed, still and empty. Like the desert, he felt himself full of a terrible power.
Without any more thought he stepped out into the ring behind Kassar and shouted, "Kassar! Enough!"
The Tartar whirled, holding the dabbus at shoulder height.
"Stay out of this, pigshit Frank."
"Let him be, Kassar." Almost all Daoud's attention was on Kassar, but a part of his mind was free to wonder why he felt no fear at all. Somehow, he was not sure how, the hours with Saadi had something to do with it.
"Put that down," Daoud said, pointing at the dabbus.
"In your head!" Kassar shouted, and charged at him.
Daoud kept his eyes on Kassar's, but in the edge of his vision he saw the ridged mass of iron, heavy enough to crack a steel helmet, rushing toward his head—his head protected only by a cloth cap.
At the last possible moment he threw up his hand and caught Kassar's wrist. He stepped back out of the path of the dabbus and jerked downward on Kassar's arm. The weight of the mace helped throw Kassar off balance, and he landed on his chest with a grunt, the air driven out of him.
Daoud stamped on Kassar's forearm and yanked the dabbus out of his grasp. He flung himself down on Kassar and pinned him to the sand.
Though all his attention was on Kassar, there was room in his mind for a triumphant surprise.
Allahu akbar! God is great! I never thought I had the strength to throw the Kipchaq.
"Nicetas won the contest. Admit it, or I'll break your skull," he growled, holding the dabbus over Kassar's head.
Kassar remained silent. Daoud lowered the dabbus and tapped the Tartar's round skull through his mop of straight black hair. He hit Kassar just hard enough to let him feel the weight of the dabbus.
"Admit that Nicetas won."
"All right," Kassar grunted, his face in the sand. "He won."
"Swear by the Prophet you will leave him alone from now on."
"I swear," came the muffled voice.
"By the Prophet."
"By the Prophet."
Daoud stood up warily and handed the dabbus back to the boy Kassar had taken it from.
Kassar rose slowly, wiping sand from his face. His eyes seemed to spark with hatred.
This is not finished yet, Daoud thought.
He looked for Nicetas. The Greek boy was on his feet. He was wiping the dirt and blood from his face with the hem of his robe. He looked at Daoud, and there was something bright and solemn in his eyes. No one had ever looked at Daoud like that before.
Daoud felt a great rush of gratitude to God for giving him the strength to save Nicetas's life.
If I had not fought Kassar, Nicetas would be dead.
That clean-lined face so full of warmth and wit would be so much lifeless clay. Daoud felt a lightness in his heart and a smile bubbling to his lips. He was proud of his strength. He had used it to save a precious life. He was a warrior of God.
Smiling, he went to Nicetas and threw his arm around his shoulders.
He should force Kassar to give Nicetas the mail shirt. But he had done enough fighting for one day. Nicetas did not need the damned shirt. Let the Tartar keep it.
"Now then, you wretched sons of desert rats!" came Mahmoud'svoice. He pushed his way into the middle of the ring, coin necklace glittering, eyes flashing in anger.
"Fighting, eh? Trying to kill each other? Save your fighting for the emir's enemies. You are khushdashiya, brother Mamelukes of Emir Baibars. If again I see one of you raise a hand against his brother, I swear I will stake him out on the sand." He raised his right hand to heaven. "Hear me, God!"
The naqeeb had a strange way of making Mamelukes out of them, Daoud thought. But perhaps he knew what he was doing.
That night, without anyone's saying any more, Nicetas brought his tent and his bedding to Daoud. They compared tents and decided that Daoud's was the larger. They would sleep in it.
After they had tended their ponies and joined with the rest of the troop in the final prayer of the night, they crawled into the tent and spread their bedding side by side. Daoud felt Nicetas moving in his half of the tent and heard a rustling, as if his new tent mate were shedding his clothes. Why would he do that on such a cold night?
Nicetas pulled his blankets over both of them and rolled toward Daoud. The Greek boy's skin felt warm and silk-smooth. Nicetas wriggled even closer and stroked Daoud's chest, arousing pleasant tingles. Daoud felt, keener than ever, the powerful longings that had been troubling him. But then he remembered cruel Turkish laughter and rough hands, the unbearable pain and shame of his first nights of captivity. He struggled to free himself from Nicetas's arms.
All at once Nicetas let go of him and turned over, leaving a small space in the tent between them.
"Sleep well, Daoud." There was hurt in the soft voice.
Remorseful, Daoud reached for his friend. When his hand grasped the bare shoulder, his fingers tightened of their own volition. Nicetas drew closer again, until their bodies were pressed together.
"Ah, Daoud!" Nicetas whispered.
After they had made love, Daoud thought,Perhaps God sent Nicetas to me.
Fearing that the thought might be blasphemous, he put it out of his mind and fell into a sated sleep.
Daoud, Sophia, Celino, and the boy came to a riverbank. They had ridden in silence for so long that the moon's crescent hung low in the western sky, casting a glow on rippling water. Daoud calleda halt and sat gazing at the Tiber.Next to the Bhar al-Nil, the river Nile, this is the most famous river in the world.
It was wide and flowed fast, judging by the ripples, and looked deep. Looking upriver, he saw that it followed a winding course leading toward black bulks, lit with yellow lights here and there, that must be great buildings. Rome.
They laid the old man's body down on a cracked marble platform beside the river. Celino had long since pulled the dagger out of the old man's flesh, and now he handed it to Daoud. The dagger was a well-balanced throwing knife of good steel, stained with a film of dried blood. Daoud knelt, washed it in the Tiber, and wiped it with the hem of his cloak. He held it out to the boy.
"I do not want it." The boy's face was still wrapped in a blue scarf, but Daoud could see tears glittering on his cheek.
"It is a good knife. You may have need of it now that you have no father."
"It is the knife that killed him." The boy hesitated. "All right, give it to me."
Daoud handed it to him, and the boy turned and hurled the knife out over the river. It flew a short distance, and the splash threw off light like a handful of pearls.
"Well," Daoud said, "no one had a better right to do that than you." He smiled to himself. He could understand quite well the lad's feelings.
But there was something odd about the way the boy's arm had moved when he threw the knife. Daoud recalled a phrase that he had heard in memory while they were riding toward the river.
You throw like a girl.
That had not been true of Nicetas, but it was true of this boy.
And his voice, though high, was not as light and clear as the voice of a child. Moved by a sudden suspicion, Daoud reached out too quickly for the boy to draw away and pulled loose the scarf.
He leaned closer for a good look. He heard Celino, standing behind him, grunt with surprise. Revealed in the moonlight was, not a lad whose voice had not yet changed, but a girl. Her eyelids were puffy from her weeping, but the eyelashes were long and thick, her nose delicate, her lips full. The eyes that looked back at him with a mixture of fear and defiance were, in this light, black as obsidian. Her hair was coiled in a thick braid at the back of her head, where the scarf had hidden it.
He did not have to ask the reason for the pretense. Traveling with only an aged father to protect her, she was far safer as a boy.
Sophia pushed past Daoud and put her arms around the girl, who began to cry again. "You poor child, are you all alone now? There, it's all right. We will help you."
"Who was your father?" said Celino in an equally kindly voice.
"He was not my father," the girl whispered. "He was Angelo Ben Ezra of Florence, a seller of books, and he was my husband."
Sophia drew back in surprise, then hugged the girl tighter. "Oh, poor little one. So young, and wed to such an old man. How could your parents do that to you?"
The girl angrily drew back from Sophia. "Do not speak so! My parents were good to me—and my husband was. He never touched me. When my mother and father died of tertian fever, he took me in, and he married me so as not to give scandal. He taught me to read."
"What is your name, girl?" Celino asked.
"Rachel." She dropped to her knees beside the body stretched out on the marble, and her tears splashed on the white face. She bent over and kissed him.
"He is so cold."
"We must wrap him quickly and be on our way," said Daoud. "We have killed three people and burned down an inn. I assure you, they have stopped chasing us only for the moment. Celino, I want a word with you. Sophia, help the girl wrap her husband's body so we can travel on."
"I do not need to be commanded," said Sophia sharply as Daoud turned his back on her, motioning Celino to follow him.
What in the name of God am I to do with these people?
Daoud strode across the marble platform and picked his way down a flight of cracked stairs to the edge of the Tiber. He followed a line of tumbled stones, once part of an embankment, until he felt sure Sophia and the girl could not hear them.
Then he whirled, bringing his face inches from Celino's.
"You fool! I ought to kill you for what you have done."
He heard a soft growl to his right.
"Send your damned dog away," he said, without taking his eyes off Celino.
"Of course," said Celino calmly. "Scipio!" He snapped his fingers. "To the horses. Go!"
The hound turned, head and tail lowered, and walked away. Buthe swung his long muzzle around to glance back at Daoud as he moved off. His pupils reflected the moonlight like two silver coins.
"Give me the jewels you're carrying," said Daoud.
"Of course," said Celino again, promptly unbuckling his belt. Daoud tensed himself in case the Sicilian should go for his dagger. But Celino held the belt up so that the twelve unset stones—rubies, pearls and amethysts—could roll out of the hidden pocket into Daoud's palm. Daoud added them to the twelve already in his pouch.
"There, now you have the stones back. And now are you going to try to kill me?"
There was a hint of challenge in that wordtry.
"If I had had all these jewels at the inn, I would have left you for that crowd to kill. How could you be so stupid as to involve us in a tavern quarrel?"
"I am no man's slave," Celino growled. "Not Manfred's, and surely not yours."
But I am a slave. That is what the very word Mameluke means, and I am proud to be a Mameluke.
"Do you think, Celino," Daoud said softly, "that you are a better man than I?"
"I think myself better than no man, and no man better than me."
Daoud looked away.Madman's talk.
Gazing up the river, he noticed a huge round shape bulking against the horizon, a fortress of some kind. There might be danger from that direction.
"Celino, you and Sophia and I are a little army in the land of our enemies. An army can have only one leader."
Celino nodded. "I know that. But you must understand that if I accept you as our leader, it is of my own free will. I am still my own master."
Daoud felt a strange mixture of admiration and uneasiness at this. He was painfully aware that among Mamelukes a warrior of Celino's age would be treated with great respect. Indeed, King Manfred clearly held Lorenzo in high esteem. His effort to save the old man had been noble in its way. But an impulse at the wrong time, even a noble impulse, could mean death for all of them.
"Does that mean you feel free to disobey me?"
"I have done whatever you wanted up to now. Except for what happened at the inn. That was different."
"Why different?" Daoud demanded. "You are not a stupid man, Celino. Why did you do such a stupid thing?"
Celino shook his head and turned away. "Angry as you are at me, Daoud, you cannot be angrier than I am at myself. If I had not intervened, that man Angelo Ben Ezra might yet be alive and his child-wife not widowed. They might have been hurt, and they surely would have been robbed. But I do not think those tavern louts would have gone so far as to kill them."
Daoud was astonished that Celino did not even defend his actions.
"Any more than we meant to kill any of those men," Daoud agreed. "But a man of your experience knows that once the sword is drawn, only God knows who will live or die. Yet you drew your sword against them."
"The old man wandered in out of the night seeking hospitality. Instead, they were beating him, and they were going to take his donkey and everything he owned and cast him out. Because he was a Jew."
"Yes, you Christians are very cruel to Jews. It is not so in the lands of Islam. But you should be used to seeing such things."
"I am not a Christian, Daoud. I am a Jew myself. And that is why I went to that old man's aid."
Daoud blinked in surprise, then began to laugh.
"You find that funny?"
"I am just as surprised to find out that you are a Jew as others would be to find out that I am a Muslim." Daoud stopped laughing. "I have known many Jews in Egypt. Abd ibn Adam, Sultan Baibars's personal physician, is a Jew. But why do you not wear the required hat?"
"It is not required in Manfred's kingdom. And I would not wear it on this mission any more than you would wear a Muslim's turban." Then Celino laughed. "But if I were to drop my breeches, you would see the mark of Abraham."
"I have that as well," said Daoud with a smile. "Muslims are also circumcised. I was eleven." He remembered with a twinge the old mullah chanting prayers in Arabic, the knife whose steel looked sharper and colder than any he had seen before or since.
"Now that mark is all I have left of the religion I was born into," Celino said.
"What do you mean? Did you convert to Christianity?"
"I told you I am not a Christian. I profess no faith."
Daoud drew back. A man who had no faith at all was somehow less than human.
"You believe in nothing?"
"One of Manfred's Saracen scholars gave me a book by your Arab philosopher Averroës. In it he taught that there are no spirits, no gods, no angels, no human souls. All things are matter only. That is what I believe."
Daoud made a casting-away motion. "I have been taught that Averroës is a great heretic. Now I see how wise we are not to read him."
"It was life that made me a nonbeliever. Averroës only showed me that there are learned men who think likewise."
Daoud shook his head. Baibars would never allow such a man near him.
"Why does your king permit you to have no religion?"
"The truth of it is, he thinks as I do. As his father, Emperor Frederic, did before him. In the kingdom of Sicily under the Hohenstaufens, people may believe as they please, as long as they are discreet about it. Of course, King Manfred must pretend to be a Catholic, or all the hosts of Christendom would fall upon his kingdom and destroy him. As for me, Manfred trusts me because he knows I do not stand in awe of the pope. The same reason he relies on his Saracen warriors."
Yes, Daoud thought, having no religion might make Celino a more useful companion for a mission like this. But how could Daoud trust a man who had no faith in a higher power?
"But why did you try to fight for that old man? Look what you have done to us."
Celino sighed and shook his head. "He was so much like my own father. I could not help myself."
"That is a poor excuse."
Celino looked steadily into Daoud's eyes. "It may seem so to you. It is said that Mamelukes scarcely remember their mothers and fathers."
Daoud's body stiffened with rage. Celino's words were a blow that tore open an old wound.
"You know nothing of that, and for your own safety you had best not speak of it to me," Daoud said in a choked whisper.
Celino inclined his head. "I ask your forgiveness."
"Remember that if we fail in this mission, it will mean great harm to your King Manfred, who has been so good to you and raised you so high," Daoud said.
Celino's head was still lowered in submission. "You are right to remind me of that. I have been foolish."
Daoud gripped Celino's wrist. The Sicilian raised his head and stared into Daoud's eyes.
Daoud said, "I must have your oath that this will never happen again. Should you see a hundred Jews having their throats cut, you will smile like a good Christian and declare the sight pleasing to God."
"I will do my best, Daoud. That is all I can honestly promise you, but I think it will be good enough."
By being honest, as he puts it, he still leaves himself room to defy me.
"And you will obey my commands from now on, as if they came from your king?"
"You have my word of honor."
Whatever the honor of an unbeliever is worth. Manfred, what kind of a crazed camel have you foisted off on me?
Here he was, far across the sea from the only home he had ever known, in the midst of people who would kill him in an instant if they knew who he was. And now he felt he could not trust one of the few men he must depend upon. He felt a coldness beginning in his palms and spreading through his body as he wondered what further calamities like tonight's might lie before them.
The city that founded my city, Sophia thought.
Sophia and David rode along the Tiber as it wound its way through Rome like a brown serpent. Looking up from the riverbank, Sophia saw the peaked roofs and domes of churches, and the battlements of fortified palaces. The houses of the common folk huddled at the feet of the hills, and here and there remnants of old Rome rose like yellowed tombstones. Today's Romans, Sophia thought, built their hovels in the shadows of marble ruins.
Sophia was impressed only by the age of the place. Her own city, the Polis, was everything now that this place had been centuries ago. Rome had possessed civilization and had lost it. Constantinople had it still, on a grander scale.
At dawn David's party had reached the place where the Tiber passed through crumbling city walls. Lorenzo and Rachel crossed the river into the Trastevere quarter, where the Jews lived. Sophia wondered how they would get past the watchmen at the city gate with the old man's body. Would Lorenzo tell a clever story, try bribery, or use his Ghibellino connections? Or would he fail, and he and Rachel be arrested?
David did not seem worried. She had seen his anger at Lorenzo. Perhaps he hoped to be rid of him. For her part, she felt Lorenzo was far more her friend than David. She had known Lorenzo longer, and he had always been kind to her. She prayed he would return safely to them after finding a haven for Rachel among the Jews of Rome.
She and David had entered the city through a gate on the east side of the Tiber without difficulty. Evidently news of the incident at the inn had not reached the Roman watch. In the city she rode beside David along the river's east bank.
She touched David's shoulder and pointed to a hilltop.
"That hill is called the Capitoline," she said. "At one time the whole world was ruled from there."
She supposed David would find that hard to believe, though the hill was still impressive, with a cluster of marble palaces at its top.
They were passing through one of the most crowded parts of Rome. On their left, fishermen hauled their nets out of the river, throwing flopping fish into baskets. On their right, shops in the ground floors of overhanging houses offered fruits and flowers and vegetables, fish, shoes, straw, rosaries, icons, relics, candles. Even at this early hour the street was crowded. Romans jostled the horses David and Sophia rode, but they gave Scipio plenty of room. Lorenzo had given the great boarhound a stern lecture, after which Scipio docilely allowed David to lead him on a leash.
"I have seen two other great imperial cities," said David. "One was Baghdad, before the Tartars destroyed it. It was then much like this city is now—its glory shrunken and faded, but still the center of our faith, as Rome is the center of Christendom."
Sophia was taken aback at his casual error.
"Rome is the center ofLatinChristendom," she said sharply.
"Ah, how could I have neglected Constantinople and the Greek Church?" He smiled. The smile lit his deeply tanned face in a way that surprised her, held her gaze. She felt a warmth.
How smooth and brown his skin is.
"You must never forget Constantinople," she admonished him with a small smile.
"I spent a month in Constantinople some years ago—that was the other imperial city—and I shall not forget it." This made her feel warmer still toward him.
Then his smile faded. "Your city, too, has suffered at the hands of barbarians—the Franks, who would destroy us."
Destroy us?she repeated in her mind.Is he not a child of those Frankish barbarians?
On the road from Lucera to Rome, he had told her—in a brusque fashion, as if he were speaking of someone other than himself—the story of his childhood and how he came to be a Mameluke. She found it hard to believe that he spoke of the killing of his parents and his enslavement by the Saracens as if it were some kind of blessing—but she had no doubt that he was a believing Muslim through and through.
"Do you never think of yourself as a Frank, David?"
He smiled again. "Never. And I hope you will not think of me as one either. Because I know you must hate Franks."
Hate Franks? Dread them was closer to the truth. Last night, when they fought their way free of those people from the inn, she had remembered the terror she had known as a girl in Constantinople. It was the return of that terror that had given her the strength to smash a jug over that horrid woman's head.
She was about to reply to David when Scipio broke into loud barking. David frowned at the sight of something ahead. The Tiber made a sharp bend, and beyond that, on the opposite bank, towered a huge fortress, a great cylinder of age-browned marble—Castel Sant' Angelo.
At the base of the citadel was a bridge, and Lorenzo was crossing it. She knew him even from this distance by his purple cap and brown cloak.
Sophia had expected to see Lorenzo return alone. It gave her a little start of surprise to see that Rachel was still with him, still riding their spare horse.
David angrily muttered something that Sophia guessed must be an Arabic curse. He checked his horse. Sophia reined up her graymare, and they sat waiting for Rachel and Lorenzo to come up to them.
"They want me as far away from them as possible," Rachel said. She climbed down from her mount at once, as if acknowledging that she had no right to be riding it. She looked at David with an expression of appeal.
This was the first time Sophia had gotten a good look at Rachel. The girl had removed the scarf that hid her hair, which was midnight-black and hung in a single braid down below her shoulders. A dusty purple traveling cloak enveloped her slight body. Her skin was white as fine porcelain. The eyes under her straight black brows were bright, but Sophia could see fear in them. She remembered herself ten years earlier, a bewildered, terrified, orphaned girl in Constantinople.
I must help this child.
"Why will your people not take you?" David said gruffly.
"They are afraid," said Rachel. "When we told them what happened at the inn last night, they said we had put them all in deadly danger."
Lorenzo looked up from where he crouched scratching Scipio's long jaw. "And we had better get out of the city quickly, before the rulers of Rome start hunting for us."
Rachel went on. "One of the rabbis took Angelo's body, and promised to bury him at once. That much they are willing to do. But they said they could not protect me if I were discovered. Not only that, but it would bring persecution down on them."
David said, "But did you not appear to be a boy at the inn?"
"The people at the inn saw a young person who could be boy or girl," said Lorenzo. "The Jews here are constantly spied upon. There are malshins, paid informers, among them. Their leaders think keeping Rachel too much of a risk, and knowing how many lives they have in their care, I cannot blame them."
David glared at Lorenzo. "Could you not do more to persuade them?"
Lorenzo spread his hands. "At first they did not trust me because they thought I was a Christian. When I told them I am a Jew, they still distrusted me because I admitted being from Sicily. That must have made them suspect that I am connected with King Manfred. The Jews of Rome live as clients of the pope. They cannot afford to get involved with Ghibellini."
Rachel pressed her hands on David's knee as he sat on his horselooking grimly down at her. "I beg you, let me come with you. There is no place for me here in Rome."
"There is no place for you where we are going," he said gruffly.
Sophia felt herself melting within as she saw the misery on Rachel's face. Swinging her leg over her mare's back, she slid down, rushed over to the girl, and put her arms around her. She looked up at David.
"David, please."
David looked down at her, his face hard, as if carved from dark wood, the eyes glittering like shards of glass. She could not read his expression.
How can I know what is in the mind of a Frank turned Turk?
David got down from his horse and beckoned to Sophia and Lorenzo. They followed him a short way along the street. When he turned to face them, Sophia saw fury in his eyes, and her heart fluttered like a trapped bird.
He spoke softly, through tight lips, and his voice was as frightening as the hiss of a viper. "I begin to think King Manfred is my enemy, and the enemy of my people, sending the two of you with me on this journey. From now on both of you will do as I command, and you will not question me."
Desperately Sophia turned to Lorenzo. "Can you not speak to him?"
Looking down at the cobblestones, Lorenzo shook his head. "I made a terrible blunder, trying to help Rachel and her husband. From now on things must go as David commands."
If Sophia had been arguing for herself, she could have said no more in the face of David's fury. But she looked away from him to the small figure standing by the horses, and her anguish for the child forced her to speak.
"But, David, what harm can Rachel do?"
Now the burning gaze was bent on her alone. "We will be saying things about ourselves in Orvieto that she already knows are not true." He turned to Lorenzo. "You talk of the lives the Jewish leaders have in their care. You do not understand—you cannot understand—what will happen to my people if I fail. What is it to you if the Tartars kill every man, woman, and child in Cairo?"
His voice was trembling, and Sophia realized he must have seen sights in the East that made the terror of the Tartars real to him, as it could not be to her.
"I owe the girl nothing," David went on vehemently. "Nothing. It was not I who caused this."
But a little girl with her whole life before her, hanged or torn to pieces by a mob— The thought of it made Sophia want to scream at David. She remembered the awful, mindless terror when she and Alexis ran through the streets of Constantinople with a roaring pack of Frankish men-at-arms hunting them. Last night she had relived that terror when they fled from the inn. She thought she would rather die herself than let Rachel be taken by a mob.
I cannot abandon Rachel. I must try to sway him. Is there any way I can touch David's heart?
Of course. The same thing that moves me.
"David," she said, "years ago, when you were a little boy—when the Turks killed your parents. Do you remember how you felt?"
David stared at her. So fixed were his eyes that for a moment she thought he might draw his sword and strike her down. She waited, trembling.
"You have no right to speak of that to me," he said. His voice was tight with pain.
"I know I have no right," she said. "Can't you see how desperate I am?" Hope dawned faintly within her. She had touched him.
His silence stretched on while the turmoil of the city eddied about them. She waited, trembling.
He spoke. "He who taught me Islam said to me, 'To lift up a fallen swallow is to raise up your heart to God.'"
Relief flooded Sophia's body. She wanted to weep. Instead, she felt herself smiling. But David did not return her smile.
"Swear that this girl will learn nothing of our mission from you," he said. "And you also, Celino. Swear it by all that you hold most holy."
"I swear it by Constantinople," said Sophia fervently and gladly.
"I will swear it on the lives of my wife and my children," said Lorenzo.
"I accept that," said David. "And when we reach Orvieto, the girl leaves us, even if she starves in the streets."
"I will acceptthat," said Lorenzo.
"Lest you later forswear yourselves, there is one more thing that will assure your compliance," said David. "Know that if this girl learns a word of what we are doing, she will die by my hand." He dropped his hand to the unadorned hilt of his sword.
Sophia felt cold inside. He cared about one thing only, after all.
They turned back. Sophia saw Rachel standing by a straw-seller's shop, looking anxiously at them, holding the gathered reins of their horses in both hands. Sophia realized that the girl might be thinking that they were going to drive her off, and she hurried to Rachel with a smile, holding out her arms. She hugged Rachel, and tentatively, fearfully, Rachel smiled back at her.
"You will come with us," she said. "As far as we are going, to Orvieto. You will have to leave us there, but we will help you find a home."
"Oh, thank you, thank you," Rachel cried, and she burst into tears.
Lorenzo grinned reassuringly at Rachel. "I told you it would be all right." When he grinned like that, his teeth white under his thick black mustache, he reminded Sophia of a large and satisfied cat.
Rachel looked up at David. "I thankyou, Signore. I know this is your decision. May I know the name of my benefactor?"
David smiled bitterly. "Benefactor? Rachel, if you had not met us, your protector would still be alive. I am David Burian, a silk merchant of Trebizond. I go to Orvieto hoping to open trade between Trebizond and the Papal States, and I have hired these people to help me."
"May I also help you, Signore?" Rachel said. "I learned something of commerce from my husband."
"I think," David said, looking at Sophia and Lorenzo with sour humor, "I already have all the help I need."
At least the man is human, thought Sophia.He can joke a bit.
She felt encouraged. She had actually been able to touch the heart of this man whose life and world were utterly strange to her.
There is so much water in this country, thought Daoud. Raindrops sparkled on every branch and leaf of the trees around him. The sky, once more a bright blue after the thunderstorm that had passed over them, was reflected in water that still streamed through the ditches beside the roadway.
Fortunate that Rachel's husband, a man who had spent many months of the year on the roads of Italy buying and selling books in the Jewish communities, had carried a tent with him. Daoud, Sophia, Rachel, and even Scipio had all crowded into it when they saw the storm coming. The tent had leaked, but the heat of the August afternoon would soon dry them.
Daoud hoped none of the others had noticed his fear during the storm. He had been in the desert when lightning crackled in black clouds and the wind blew smothering waves of sand. But the thunderstorms they had been through had seemed to be just overhead, and so much water had fallen from the sky, Daoud was sure they would soon be drowned. It seemed almost miraculous to him that he could emerge from Rachel's tent alive and find the world outside as intact as he had left it. Better than he left it, because it was now washed clean of dust.
He walked to the edge of the road to see if Lorenzo was returning from Orvieto.
Orvieto.
Across the valley, out of a deep-green forest rose a gigantic yellow rock shaped like a camel's hump. Crowning the hump, a wall of gray stone encircled the peaked roofs and bell towers of churches, the battlements of palaces and the red-tiled roofs of houses. One narrow road zigzagged up the steep side of the great rock, sometimes disappearing into clumps of trees, a white streak against the ocher cliffs. A city built on an almost inaccessible mountaintop, like the strongholds of the Hashishiyya.
He spied a horseman in purple cap and brown cloak descending the road from the city. Celino. Following him was a glittering gilt sedan chair carried by four bearers.
The breeze that had brought the storm had died away, and Daoud was beginning to feel the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. A mild sun compared to that of Egypt, even though this was the middle of the Italian summer, but he drew up his cotton hood to shade his head. He glanced over his shoulder. Rachel and Sophia were in the clearing on the other side of the road, watering the horses in a stream that ran down the hillside. Rachel was nodding eagerly as Sophia talked. He hoped she was not telling Rachel too much. Just as he himself might have told Sophia too much, he thought ruefully.
Celino arrived at Daoud's camp well ahead of the sedan chair. Scipio had bounded up the road to meet his master, and now licked the hand that Celino held out as he dismounted.
Celino said, "Cardinal Ugolini sends this messenger, who may surprise you."
When the sedan chair came to rest on the side of the road, Daoud saw that the four bearers were black men of Africa. They wore scarlet vests, and sweat glistened on their bare arms and chests. Sheikh Saadi had been such a man, and there were many such men in the Egyptian army. Daoud wondered if these, too, were Muslims. In the city of the pope? Not likely.
Two of the bearers drew back the curtains of the chair and reached within. Bejeweled white fingers grasped the bearers' muscular arms, and a turban brocaded with gold pushed out past the curtains, followed by a round body swathed in lime-green silk.
Daoud was not surprised. This must be the one who called herself Morgiana in the letters to Baibars that came regularly from Italy by carrier pigeon and ship, thought Daoud. Still clinging to the bearers, the stout woman pulled herself erect. Then she waved her servants away with a flapping of sleeves and a jangling of bracelets and squinted at Daoud.
"Is it time?" said Daoud. He spoke in Arabic.
"Not yet," she answered in the same language. "But presently." That completed their prearranged words of recognition.
"Salaam aleikum, Morgiana," he said, smiling. "Peace be to you." He pushed back his hood and bowed to her. He had a warm sense of meeting an old friend. He had read many of her reports on matters of state in Italy.
"Wa aleikum es-salaam, Daoud," she replied. "And peace also to you. You will have to know my real name now. Tilia Caballo, at your service."
He had pictured Morgiana as a tall, slender woman of mature years, darkly attractive. The real Morgiana was quite different. Her eyebrows were thick and black, her nose a tiny button between round red cheeks. Her face was shiny with sweat even though she had been doing nothing but sitting in a sedan chair. Looking at her spherical body, Daoud felt great respect for the strength of the men who carried her. The silk clinging to her body outlined breasts like divan cushions, and her belly protruded in a parody of pregnancy. Could she truly be a cardinal's mistress? Just as sultans and emirs had chief wives who were old and honored and younger wives for play, perhaps Cardinal Ugolini kept Tilia Caballo only as his official mistress.
The clasp on her turban was studded with diamonds. A heavy gold necklace spilled down the broad, bare slope of her chest. From the necklace dangled a cross set with blue and red jewels.
The gold Baibars has sent her helped buy the fortune she wears.He wondered, how much did Baibars really know about this woman?
"I saw Cardinal Ugolini for a moment only, Messer David," said Celino. "As soon as he found out I was from you, he insisted that I go to this lady's establishment." Celino, speaking the dialect of Sicily, uttered the word stabilimento with a curious intonation. Scipio stood with his forepaws on Celino's chest, and Celino scratched the hound behind the ears.
"He means the finest house of pleasure in all the Papal States," said Tilia Caballo, smoothing the front of her gown with a self-satisfied look. "Naturally his eminence Cardinal Ugolini cannot risk meeting openly with you until I have seen you on his behalf." She had switched from Arabic to an Italian dialect that was new to Daoud. He had trouble understanding her.
He did not think it had been mentioned, in her letters or by Baibars, that she was a brothel keeper. He felt slightly repelled. He wondered if Baibars knew. He must. Baibars knew everything.
"Take yourself away, Celino," Daoud ordered. "And tell those two to come no closer." He pointed to the forest clearing where Sophia and Rachel were already starting toward him. "I must be alone with Madonna Tilia."
"Yes, Messere," said Celino with a bow. Scipio paced ahead of him like a tame lion as he walked off.
"We expected you to enter Orvieto alone," said Tilia, looking at Sophia and Rachel, who were staring back at her from across the road. "Why this entourage?"
And I expected to meet with Cardinal Ugolini at once, thought Daoud with growing irritation.Has he set this woman up as a barrier between himself and me?
He explained briefly how Celino, Sophia, and Rachel came to be traveling with him. Tilia gazed at him with a falcon's piercing stare. Daoud was not used to being stared at by a woman, and she made him uneasy. But he met her eyes in silence until she turned to her slaves and made a dropping gesture with her hand. The Africans immediately squatted in the grassy clearing where they had set Tilia's chair. Daoud realized that he had not heard a sound from them, and suspected they must have been made dumb.
"Come." Tilia took his arm, again surprising him. In Egypt women did not touch men they had just met. But she owned a house of pleasure. She was not a respectable woman.
Why should that bother him, he asked himself. He had spent his share of time in houses of pleasure along the Bhar al-Nil. What he felt toward their owners was mostly gratitude.
Tilia drew Daoud with her into the thicket along the hillside, stepping gracefully, despite her bulk, around shrubs and over rocks and fallen branches. She led him away from the road and into a grove of pine trees a little way up the slope. Daoud felt his muscles tightening. He was going to have to undergo more testing before she would let him meet Ugolini. Did they really think that Baibars would send a fool to Orvieto?
"Spread your cloak for me." She pointed to a spot under an old pine whose trunk rose straight and bare twice the height of a man before the first branch sprouted. Daoud unclasped his brown cloak and laid it on the thick bed of brown pine needles. Tilia sat down, smiled, and patted the place beside her.
"A messenger brought the news to the pope yesterday that the Tartar ambassadors have landed at Venice," she said. "They are on their way to Orvieto and should be here in a week or so. They are well protected. They brought their own bodyguard, which is now reinforced by a company of French knights and Venetian men-at-arms under a certain Count de Gobignon."
Daoud felt a tingle of anticipation, as he did when he was about to close with the enemy in a battle.
"So I will be in Orvieto before them. That is good."
"Yes, but Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil has arrived here beforeyou. He speaks for the King of France, and he has already begun to press the case for a Tartar alliance before Pope Urban. He has arranged for the Tartars and their guards to live at the palace of the Monaldeschi family."
Daoud caught an intonation in Tilia's voice that suggested it was a great accomplishment for the Tartars to live at the Monaldeschi palace. Was she trying to discourage him?
"What is this Monaldeschi family?" he asked.
"The oldest and richest family in Orvieto," she said. "Right now the capo della famiglia, the head of the family, is the Contessa Elvira di Monaldeschi, who is over eighty years old. But she is more ruthless and savage than many a younger man. Almost all her menfolk have been killed off by their blood enemies, the Filippeschi, and she has had many Filippeschi killed."
"What do they fight about?" said Daoud.
"Who knows? A Monaldeschi kills a Filippeschi, so a Filippeschi kills a Monaldeschi. It has been going on forever." Tilia went on. "What you must realize is that the Tartars will be well guarded because the contessa has more men-at-arms than the pope and a very strong palace."
He turned away from Tilia. Daoud stared out through the screen of pine branches at Orvieto's sunlit rock platform. A wagon inched its way up the narrow road.
"Who is this French count who guards the Tartars?" he asked.
"Count Simon de Gobignon. He is very young and very rich. He holds huge estates in France and numbers his vassals in the thousands. He is close to the French royal family, even King Louis himself and the king's brother, Charles d'Anjou."
Charles d'Anjou. Daoud remembered Lorenzo saying that Charles d'Anjou coveted the throne of Sicily.
A flash of light caught Daoud's eye. A party of helmeted men in yellow and white surcoats had come out of the main gate of Orvieto, formed a ragged column and were patrolling along the base of the city wall, led by a man with a white plume on his helmet.
"Who are those soldiers?" he asked.
Tilia leaned forward to peer through the trees and across the valley, then resettled herself against the tree trunk.
"Pope Urban has two hundred Guelfo fighting men quartered in Orvieto. In all honesty, Daoud—"
"Call me David," he interrupted. "Here I must be known by a Christian name."
"Well, David, I think you had best go quickly back to Egypt. What can one man do against the French royal family, half the cardinals, the pope, the Monaldeschi, and the Tartars themselves?"
He felt a quick spurt of anger. He knew as well as she did the odds he faced. Why was she trying to weaken him by making him afraid?
Ugolini sent her to discourage me. It is he who is afraid.
He felt more respect for her, coming out and meeting him and trying to influence him, than he did for this Cardinal Ugolini, who was trying to protect himself. He knew from having read her letters that she was a shrewd and brave woman. He had to win her cooperation. There was only one way he might hope to do that.
Daoud smiled at her. "Does not great wealth give one great power?"
She smiled back. He noticed that she had rubbed some kind of red coloring on her cheeks to make herself look healthier. And she had painted blue-black shadows around her eyes, as Egyptian women did. But here and there her sweat had made the paint run in rivulets.
She said, "Only faith is more powerful than money."
"Then here is power." Daoud unbuckled his belt and let the jewels spill out of its hollow interior into his hand. He heard Tilia gasp. When the glittering stones filled his hand, he dropped them gently to the thin woolen cloak he had spread on the ground and shook the rest out of the belt. In the shadow of the pines the jewels seemed to give off their own light from their polished, rounded surfaces, red and blue, green and yellow. A sapphire, a topaz, and a pearl were each set in heavy gold rings. The others were loose. Some were so small that three or four of them would fit on the tip of Daoud's finger. One, a ruby, was the size of a whole fingertip. There were too many of them to count quickly, but Daoud knew that Manfred had given him twenty-five, and one had gone to equip them for the journey.
"Sanctissima Maria! May I touch them?"
"You are welcome to," he said, smiling, "but make sure none of them sticks to your fingers."
She plucked some of the jewels from the cloak and let themtrickle through her fingers, catching the light as they tumbled to the cloak. She held the big ruby up between thumb and forefinger and studied it, turning it this way and that.
"A drop of God's blood."
"You should have seen the single emerald I traded to King Manfred for these smaller stones. There was beauty. A few at a time, these can be turned into gold."
She looked into his eyes. She took him more seriously now, he thought. He was not just some strange Muslim whose rashness might get her killed. He was a source of wealth.
"They must be sold carefully, or their sudden appearance will be noticed," she said. "After all, even the princes of the Church would have to stretch their purses for these."
"I have it in mind to buy princes of the Church, not to sell jewelry to them."
"We can sell some of these gems to the Templars. They have enormous wealth and they are very discreet."
Noting that she had said "we," Daoud smiled at the thought of those ferocious enemies of the Mamelukes, the Knights Templar, helping to provide the financing that would weaken their foothold in Islamic lands.
"Now," he said, "do you think we can accomplish something to keep Tartars and Christians apart?"
"Yes—something. Used wisely, these jewels—or their worth in gold—will gain you influence among the men around the pope. You might even pry a few of the French cardinals loose from their loyalty to King Louis."
Daoud began scooping up the stones and funneling them into the hidden pocket of his belt. "You must help me to use them wisely."
"Exactly what do you have in mind?" she asked, her eyes fixed on the jewels as they disappeared.
"I expect Cardinal Ugolini to take some of the gold and use it to build a strong party in Orvieto that will oppose the alliance." He eyed her, trying to see into her heart. "Can he manage such a thing?"
"Oh, Adelberto is an old hand at intrigue. How else do you suppose he got to be a cardinal? Indeed, he is the camerlengo for the College of Cardinals."
"What does that mean?" Daoud asked as he buckled his belt.
"He acts as a kind of chancellor to the pope, making announcements,calling the College together, conducting ceremonies—that sort of thing."
Daoud nodded. "Good. It is my hope that he can use this money to draw cardinals and Church officials to him, one way or another. And they will join together to turn the pope against the Tartars."
"With all the money those jewels will bring, you can indeed create such a faction, but I don't know what effect it will have on the pope. The Tartars offer the pope a chance to wipe out Islam once and for all."
"Yes, and then after that the Tartars will wipe out Christianity," Daoud said. "I can tell those who will work with us what the Tartars are truly like. I have seen them, fought against them. I have seen what they have done to those they conquered." Like a cloud passing over the sun, a memory of ruined Baghdad darkened his mind.
Tilia's eyes opened wide. "You intend to meet and talk—to bishops, to cardinals?"
He touched his face with his fingertips. "This is why Baibars sent me—because I can go among Christians as a Christian. I will be David of Trebizond, a silk merchant who has traveled in the lands ravaged by the Tartars."
"Trebizond?"
He could see the doubt in her face. He must seem confident to her. He must not let her know that he himself wondered how he, a warrior from a land utterly strange to these people, could make the great ones of Christendom listen to him and believe in him. He could do it only with the help of Tilia and Cardinal Ugolini—and they would not help him unless they believed he could do it.
"Trebizond is on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. Far enough away that I am not likely to meet anyone in Orvieto who knows anything about it."
"Do not be too sure. The pope makes a point of seeing people from everywhere."
"Then he will probably want to meet me, since I am from a strange and faraway place."
Her eyes widened and her full lips parted. Her teeth were small, bright, and widely spaced.
"You even want to meet with thepope?"
He knew the enormity of what he was proposing. But he fought down the doubt that her evident horror had aroused in him. He made himself sound absolutely sure when he answered.
"Certainly. Cardinal Ugolini will arrange an audience for me. Ifthe pope has not yet made a decision, he will want to listen to one who has seen with his own eyes what these Tartars are. I will tell him that an agreement with them would be like a lamb allying itself with a panther."
"Talk to the pope! How would you know how to behave before the pope?"
"Among my people, Madonna, I am not just a warrior. I stand high in the highest councils. I have met with kings and great men of religion. As for the details of etiquette of an audience with the pope, as a traveler from Trebizond I might be expected to make mistakes."
Daoud saw that her olive skin had turned a yellowish-white. "Do you want to be torn to pieces by teams of horses?" she whispered. "I do not, and neither does Cardinal Ugolini. We cannot risk your being found out."
He must overcome her doubt of him by seeming supremely confident.
He said, "Then, for your own protection, you will teach me everything I need to know."
And if Christians moved closer to Tartars despite intrigue and persuasion, he and Baibars had already considered more desperate measures. The risk of failure would be greater and the consequences more dire. He would not tell Tilia about these more drastic steps. If his presence and intentions already frightened her and Ugolini, it was best they not know the lengths he was prepared to go to.
He hoped he would not have to attempt such things. The complexities and difficulties of making them happen, the likelihood of things going disastrously wrong, all made these courses too daunting.
Insh'Allah, if it be God's will, he would manage, with the help of such allies as he found in Orvieto, to oppose and obstruct and delay the alliance until the project died of old age, or the Tartar ambassadors themselves died.
Time fights for Islam, Baibars had told him.The Tartar empire is beginning to break apart, and the Christians are losing their eagerness for crusading. Only delay this alliance long enough, and their opportunity to destroy us will be lost.
Tilia broke in on his thoughts, holding out her hands to him. "Help me up. My legs are getting cramped. I feel hungry. Do you have anything to eat?"
He was not surprised that she asked for food. Mustapha al-Zaid, the chief eunuch of Baibars's harem, was monstrously fat, and was always eating.
He sprang to his feet and pulled her up. The cross on her bosom swung and flashed. The top of her head came only to the middle of his chest, but he suspected that she weighed as much or more than he did.
She smiled at him. "You are strong, and you move like a warrior."
Ignoring the flattery, he said, "Sophia has bread and cheese that we bought at a village called Bagnioregio. And some red wine to wash it down."
Tilia laughed. "Bagnioregio? Then you must have passed near the ruins of Ferento—the town that was destroyed for the heresy of displaying a statue of Christ on the cross with open eyes."
"What? I saw no ruins. Open eyes?"
"The ruins are off the road. But that will give you an idea of how careful one must be where religion is concerned. I cannot imagine that anyone makes decent wine in Bagnioregio. There is another town near here, Montefiascone, where they make the best wine in the world. Wait until you taste that."
"I drink wine only to deceive Christians," he said gruffly. "I do not like it. Let us finish this conversation before you refresh yourself. I do not want those two to know any more than I tell them."
Annoyance flickered in her face. She was not used to being denied, Daoud thought. But she shrugged. "I presume you plan to use that beautiful woman who travels with you as bait to win over some of the high-ranking churchmen."
To Daoud's surprise, the thought pained him.
"She is a skilled courtesan and was Manfred's mistress," he said. "And before that, King Manfred told me, she was a favorite of the Emperor of Constantinople. We will want to keep her in reserve. I have in mind that she could live with the cardinal, pose as his niece."
"Hm. And the other girl? She is very pretty and very young. The older and more powerful churchmen are, the more they are drawn to youth."
"We owe Rachel a debt. We have promised to find a home for her among the Jews of Orvieto."
"Oh, is she a Jew? But there are no Jews in Orvieto."
"Somewhere nearby, then."
"The nearest Jews live in Rome."
Rome—where the Jews had already turned Rachel away. "She cannot go to Rome."
"Well, the girl would find working for me far more rewarding than living on charity."
"I am sure of it," said Daoud. But a dark memory from long ago rose to trouble him.
He fixed his eyes on hers. "You would not force her into whoring, would you?"
Tilia pressed her hand to her bosom in mock horror. "Force! Womenbegto be accepted into the family of Tilia Caballo."
A terrible thing to do to the child, but it would solve my problem, thought David.Rachel already must be aware that Sophia and Lorenzo and I are involved together in some secret enterprise. It would be best to keep her where we can watch her.
"For the time being, Rachel will stay with us at the cardinal's mansion, serving Sophia as her maid," he said.
Tilia looked up at him, startled. "Youallintend to live with the cardinal?"
Her surprise, in turn, startled Daoud. But then he saw that her eyes were too firmly fixed upon him, and knew that she was dissembling.
"As Morgiana, did you not approve this arrangement with my lord the sultan?"
She shrugged. "That was when we thought you were coming alone."
"Sophia and Lorenzo will be of great help to us. We will give it out that I am the cardinal's guest. Lorenzo will be my servant, Giancarlo. And Sophia will be the cardinal's niece."
"Hm." Tilia frowned. "I amveryhungry. Let me sample the delicacies your Greek woman bought in Bagnioregio. Then I will go back to the city and send word to the cardinal of what you have told me."
Daoud heard the false note in her voice and bristled with suspicion.
And you would keep me waiting out here while you warn him of what a danger I am to him.
"I will tell him everything myself."
Her eyes clouded over. "The cardinal will send for you when he has heard my report."
"Great God, woman!" Daoud's voice rasped in his anger. "Doyou expect me to wait out here until the Tartars come to Orvieto? I am sent by the sultan, I bring great wealth to you and your master, I am fighting for my faith,and I will not wait!"
Tilia patted his arm placatingly. "Look here, Daoud, in all honesty, Cardinal Ugolini is terrified. When he first got Baibars's message about you, he wept for hours, cursing himself over and over for a fool. Imagine the outrage if the Christians were to discover that a Muslim agent has come so close to their pope. The cardinal would never have taken the first denaro picciolo from your sultan if he had ever known that it would lead to this—a Turk at his door demanding his help in a plot against the pope."
"I am not at his door," said Daoud pointedly.
"No, and before you arrive there, you must give me time to assure him that you know what you are doing, that you do not look anything like a Turk, and above all that you bring him such great wealth as to make the risk worthwhile. If you just appear at his palace when he has insisted that you wait here, it might throw him into a panic. He might do something very foolish."
Anger flared up in him. She was obstructing him and threatening him, and he had had enough.
She means he might expose me. Or order his men-at-arms to kill me. This is Manfred's indecision all over again.
He seized Tilia's arm, his fingers sinking into soft flesh under her silk sleeve. "I am going to the cardinal, with my party. And you will equip me with a message for him, telling him you feel assured it is safe for him to admit us."
She stared up at him, expressionless, for a long time. He sensed that she was trying to see into his heart, to weigh his will.
"No," she said. "You are not going now. First—"
His grip on her arm tightened, and in his anger he was about to shake her, when her hand darted to lift the pectoral cross from her breast. Her thumb pressed a dark red carbuncle between the arms, and a thin blade sprang out of the shaft.
"Please notice that the cross is attached to my neck by a chain, David. I cannot hurt you unless you come too close to me. I have no wish to attack you. There is asp venom on the blade, by the way."
His anger turned against himself. It was foolish to try violence on a woman like this. Had he not told himself he could not force Tilia and Ugolini to do anything, that he must persuade them?