This woman herself is as dangerous as an asp. But I need her.
He let go of her arm. "Pardon my crudity, Madama."
Tilia pointed her blade straight up and pressed another jewel in the cross. The blade dropped back into the shaft.
"I do not mind crudity," she said, "but I do not like to be manhandled." She smiled slyly. "Unless I've invited it. I had already made my mind up, before you laid violent hands on me, that I would agree to your going at once to the cardinal. I have decided that you may be able to accomplish what you set out to do without getting us all killed. You are brave and intelligent, but you know how to bargain, too. You know when to yield and you know when to stand your ground."
Daoud felt pleasure at her compliments, but even more pleasure that she was going to cooperate with him.
"Then why did you just say we would not be going to the cardinal?"
"I was about to add that first youwillfeed me bread and cheese and the execrable wine of Bagnioregio.ThenIwillgive you a message that will get you into Cardinal Ugolini's mansion."
Daoud laughed. That Tilia had yielded was a great relief. And she was both witty and dangerous, a combination he admired.
Simon was surprised at how young Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil looked. The man who stood with him in a vineyard on the road to Orvieto had a long, fine-skinned face and glossy black hair that fell in waves to his shoulders. If his scalp was shaved in a clerical tonsure, his red velvet cap covered it. His handsome violet silk tunic reminded Simon that his own surcoat was travel-stained and that Thierry had not polished his mail in days.
De Verceuil tossed away the cluster of pale green grapes he had been nibbling and spoke suddenly.
"Count, a report has reached me that you spoke rudely to the doge of Venice." His booming bass voice sounded as if it wereemerging from the depths of a tomb. "You do realize that your actions reflect on the crown of France?"
He thrust his face into Simon's as he spoke, which made Simon involuntarily draw back. De Verceuil was one of the few men Simon had ever met who matched his own unusual height.
Simon felt his face grow hot. "Yes, Your Eminence."
"And how could you dismiss the trovatore Sordello from the post to which Count Charles himself appointed him?"
"If Sordello had stayed with us, the Tartars might have taken such offense as to go back to Outremer."
"Do not be absurd. Would they abandon a mission of such importance because of a tavern brawl?"
Simon felt shame, but, deeper than that, resentment. He was the Count de Gobignon, and not since he was a child had anyone chastised him like this.
He heard a rustling as someone came down the row of vines where they were standing. He turned to see Friar Mathieu, and hoped he was about to be rescued.
After the Franciscan had humbly greeted the cardinal and kissed his sapphire ring, he said, "I must tell Your Eminence that what happened was not a mere tavern brawl. Sordello stabbed and nearly killed the heir to the throne of Armenia, an important ally of the Tartars."
De Verceuil stared at Friar Mathieu. The cardinal had a mouth so small it looked quite out of place below his large nose and above his large chin. A mean mouth, Simon thought.
"Your opinion does not interest me," de Verceuil said. "I cannot imagine why King Louis trusted a beggar-priest to conduct diplomacy with the empire of Tartary."
The resentment Simon had felt at the cardinal's harsh speech at his expense now flared up in anger.
I am young and I do make mistakes, Simon thought.But, cardinal or not, this man has no right to stand there in his velvet and satin and jewels and sneer at this fine old man. No right at all.
But the old friar merely stroked his white beard with a wry smile and said, "I said that very thing to him myself, when he ordered me to go."
Still angry, Simon took a deep breath and said, "Since Your Eminence feels I have embarrassed the king and displeased the Count of Anjou, there is only one course open to me. I will resign my command of the ambassadors' guards."
Simon stared into de Verceuil's eyes, and the cardinal's eyelids fluttered. In the silence Simon heard a blackbird calling in nearby olive trees.
I never wanted to come here. I let Uncle Charles talk me into it. I do not mind the danger. And it would be exciting to outguess a hidden enemy who is trying to murder the Tartars. But I cannot endure the way this man humiliates me and my friends. I will go back to Gobignon now.
"You must not let a bit of fatherly correction wound you so deeply, Count," said the cardinal, his voice still deep and dirgelike but no longer full of scorn. "I would never suggest the Count of Anjou had made a mistake in choosing you for this post."
Fatherly! What a disgusting thought!
But Simon could see that his resigning worried de Verceuil. Uncle Charles wanted Simon to guard the ambassadors, just as he had wanted Sordello to head the archers. He had his reasons. And de Verceuil did not want to cross Charles d'Anjou.
Friar Mathieu laughed gently, and patted Simon on the shoulder. "If you please, be kind enough to change your mind about resigning. All of us are aware that you have carried out the task with intelligence and zeal. Is that not right, Your Eminence?"
"Of course," said de Verceuil, his mouth puckered and sour. "Count, I would have you present these Tartar dignitaries to me."
"I will be happy to interpret for you, Your Eminence," said Friar Mathieu. De Verceuil did not answer him.
As they crossed the vineyard, the cardinal stretched out his long arm and said, "I have brought musicians, jongleurs, senators of Orvieto, men-at-arms, two archbishops, six bishops, an abbot, and many monsignors and priests." A long line of men stretched down the road into the nearby woods. Most of them wore various shades of red; a few were in cloth-of-gold or blue. The points of long spears flashed in the sunlight. Banners with fringes of gold and silver swung at the tops of poles. Seeking protection from the mid-August heat, men walked horses in the shade of the woods.
Beyond the treetops rose a distant pedestal of grayish-yellow rock crowned by a city. An astonishing sight, Orvieto.
"The Holy Father will be meeting us at the cathedral and will say a special mass of thanksgiving for the safe arrival of the ambassadors," said de Verceuil. "I want the entry of the Tartars into Orvieto to impress both the Tartars themselves and the pope and his courtiers."
"Monsters!"
"Cannibals!"
Rotten apples, pears and onions, chunks of moldy bread, flew through the air. Small stones that did not injure, but stung. And worse.
The shouts and missiles came from both sides of the street, but always when Simon was looking the other way, so he could not see his assailants. The people crowded in front of the shops were mostly young men, but women and children were scattered among them. They wore the dull grayish and brownish garments of workers and peasants. The street-level windows behind them were shuttered, and the doors were closed tight. That was a sure sign, Simon knew from his Paris student days, that the shopkeepers expected trouble.
From the Porta Maggiore, the main gate where they had entered, the street curved toward the south side of the town. Though the upper stories of many houses overshadowed the street, there was room enough for the procession to move along, four horses abreast, and for the unruly people to gather on either side. Approaching the south wall of the city, the street made a sharp bend to the left, and Simon had lost sight of the Tartar emissaries behind, who were—What a mistake!—being carried in an open sedan chair. Were they being pelted with garbage?
Why were the people of Orvieto doing this? True, everyone in Christendom had heard wild tales of the Tartars. That they were monsters with dogs' heads. That they bit off the breasts of women. That they stank so abominably they overcame whole armies just with their smell. That they were determined to kill or enslave everyone on earth. There were churches where people prayed every Sunday to be delivered "from the fury of the Tartars."
But it had been over twenty years since the Tartars had invaded Europe, and even then they had come no farther than Poland and Hungary. Why should these people of Orvieto turn so violently against them now, when they came in peace?
Undoubtedly someone was stirring them up.
Hang de Verceuil and his orders, Simon thought.I should be with the ambassadors. If someone wants to kill them, this would be a perfect chance.
He tugged on the reins of his palfrey, pulling her head around. "Make way!" he shouted, spurring his horse back the way he had come. Men-at-arms with spears and crossbows cursed at him invarious Italian dialects, but they opened a path, pushing back the people. Thierry rode a small horse in Simon's wake.
"Imps of Satan!" came a shout from the crowd. "The Tartars are devils!"
Simon scanned the faces below him. Some looked angry, some frightened, many bewildered. No one looked happy. The cardinal's hope for an impressive entry into Orvieto had been quite dashed, and Simon felt a sneaking pleasure at that.
Passing the corner where the procession had turned, he saw again a building he had passed earlier, a formidable three-story cube of yellow stone with slotted windows on the ground floor and iron bars over the wider upper windows.
And there is a man who looks happy.
He was standing in sunlight, leaning out from the square Guelfo battlements on the roof of the big building. His hair was the color of brass, his skin a smooth brown, such as Simon had seen on pilgrims newly returned from the crusader strongholds in Outremer. The blond man gazed down on the jostling, shouting crowd, smiling faintly.
As Simon rode past him, their eyes met. Simon was startled by the intensity of the other's gaze. It was as if a wordless message had crossed the space between them. A challenge. But then the blond man looked away.
The Tartar ambassadors, seated side by side in a large sedan chair, were farther up the street. Here, Simon noticed with relief, the crowd had fallen quiet. Perhaps curiosity about the Tartars, with their round brown faces and many-colored robes, had overcome whatever had roused these people against them. Then, too, the Tartars were surrounded by their Armenians marching on foot, curved swords drawn, as well as by Simon's knights on horseback, and Venetian crossbowmen. The archers' bows, Simon noticed, were loaded and drawn. Who had ordered that?
De Verceuil on a huge black horse—no palfrey this, but a powerful charger—rode up to Simon. "Why did you not remain in the forefront? What is going on up ahead?"
Without trying to defend himself, Simon described the disturbance.
"Could you not control the rabble?" de Verceuil growled, and turned to take a position beside the Tartars' sedan chair.
Simon's face burned, and his hands trembled as he stared after de Verceuil.
When they passed the yellow stone building, Simon looked up and saw the blond man still there on the roof. The man was staring down at the Tartars with that same burning look he had thrown at Simon, but there were no weapons in the hands that gripped the battlements.
Simon heard a slapping sound and an angry cry. He turned to see de Verceuil, his right cheek smeared brown.
God's death! Someone threw shit at him! And hit him right in the face.
The cardinal, his face distorted as if he were about to vomit, was staring at the stained hand with which he had just wiped his cheek.
There was laughter from the crowd, mixed with angry cries of "Bestioni! Creatures from hell!"
For an instant Simon felt laughter bubbling up to his lips, but cold horror swept all amusement away as he sensed what was about to happen.
De Verceuil turned to the nearest crossbowmen, who had not suppressed their own smiles.
"Shoot!" he shouted. "Shoot whoever did that!"
The smiles remained fixed on the faces of the Venetians as three of them aimed their already-loaded crossbows at the crowd. They did not hesitate. This was not their city; these were not their people. They were fighting men who did as they were ordered.
People screamed and shrank back against the shuttered doors and windows.
Three loud snaps of the bowstrings came at the same moment as Simon's cry of "No!"
He shouted without thinking, and was surprised to hear his own voice. His cry echoed in a sudden and terrible quiet.
Screams of agony immediately followed. People darted away from the place where the crossbowmen had aimed, leaving that part of the street empty.
Empty save for three people. Two of them screamed. One was silent—a young man who half sat, half lay against the stone wall of a house. Blood was pouring out of his mouth and more blood was running from a hole in his chest. Simon saw that the blood was coming in a steady stream, not in rhythmic spurts, which meant the fellow's heart had stopped. A glance at the white face told Simon the dead youth could be no more than sixteen.
Beside the boy, a woman knelt and wept. She was plump andmiddle-aged, perhaps his mother. Her white linen tunic was bloodied.
"He did nothing!" she cried. "Oh, Jesus! Mary! He did nothing!" There was a plea in her voice, as if she might bring the boy back to life if only she could persuade people of his innocence.
The other cries came from a man who stood about a yard from the dead boy. The bolt had gone through his left shoulder just above the armpit and pinned him to the oaken post of a doorway. He wanted to fall, but he had to stand or suffer unbearable pain.
"Help me!" he begged, casting pain-blinded eyes right and left. "Help me!"
Simon jumped down from his horse, throwing the reins to Thierry, and ran to the man. He put his left hand on the chest and pulled at the flaring end of the quarrel with his right. He could not move it. The bolt was buried too deeply in the wood. The man's forehead fell against Simon's shoulder, and he was silent. Simon hoped he had fainted.
Now Simon saw where the third bolt had gone. Six inches of it, half its length, was buried in a wall a few feet to Simon's right. The wall was made of the same grayish-yellow stone Orvieto was built on.
The crossbow bolt in the man's shoulder was thick and made of hard wood. Simon had nothing that would cut the man loose without hurting him even more. He looked up and down the street. It was quite empty now, except for a few people watching from a distance. The procession had gone on. He glanced up and saw that the blond man had left his place on the roof.
Friar Mathieu knelt beside the dead young man, one hand moving in blessing, the other resting on the shoulder of the weeping woman.
De Pirenne and Thierry, both mounted, the equerry holding Simon's horse, looked at him uncertainly.
"Go, Alain!" said Simon impatiently. "Stay with the Tartars."
He himself was neglecting his duty, he thought, as de Pirenne galloped off. But now that he was trying to help this poor devil, he could not abandon him.
"Can I do anything, Monseigneur?" Thierry asked.
As Simon was about to answer, he saw a middle-aged man wearing a carpenter's apron.
"Messere, can you bring a saw?" he called. "Hurry!"
It seemed hours before the man returned with a small saw with a pointed end and widely spaced teeth. He held it out to Simon.
Simon wanted to shout at the carpenter, but he took a grip on himself and said patiently, "You are bound to be better at sawing than I. Per favore, cut away the end of the crossbow bolt so we can free this man."
Gingerly at first, then working with a will, the carpenter sawed off the flaring end of the bolt with its thin wooden vanes. The pinned man awoke and was sobbing and groaning.
Once the protruding part of the bolt was sawed away, Simon took a deep breath, wrapped his arms around the sobbing man, and pulled him away from the wall. The man screamed so loudly that Simon's ears rang; then the man sagged to the ground. Blood flowed from the wound in his shoulder, soaking his tunic. Blood coated the stump of the bolt, still stuck in the door post. Simon dropped to his knees beside the wounded man. A pool of bright red widened rapidly on the flat paving stones.
Now what do I do with him? I must get back to my duty.
He spoke with the carpenter. "Press your hand on the wound, hard. That will slow the bleeding." Simon took the man's hand and put it on the hole the crossbow bolt had made.
"Here, let me do that." Friar Mathieu was on his knees beside the hurt man, his hand covering the wound. "Messere," he said to the carpenter, "ride my donkey to the hospital of the Franciscans. Tell them there is a man badly hurt here and Friar Mathieu d'Alcon says they are to send brothers to take him for treatment."
Simon stood up slowly as the carpenter climbed on Mathieu's donkey.
"It is not safe for you to stay here," he said to Friar Mathieu. "The people know you were part of the procession and may blame you for what happened."
Mathieu shook his head. "No one will hurt me. Go along now."
Simon jumped into the saddle and spurred his palfrey to a trot. Thierry rode beside him.
"Those two didn't throw anything," Thierry said.
"Of course not." Simon wondered if de Verceuil cared that the Venetians had shot two innocent men.
When Simon caught up with the procession, de Verceuil was still furiously scrubbing his face with his pale violet cloak.
"If you had done something sooner about the rioting, this outragewould not have happened to me," he said, a quaver of anger in his deep voice.
God help me, thought Simon.I could easily grow to hate him. Cardinal or not.
Word of the shootings must have spread through the city, Simon thought, because the twisting street leading to the cathedral was nearly empty.
But the piazza in front of Orvieto's cathedral of San Giovenale was packed with people. Simon's eye was immediately drawn to the top of the cathedral steps. There stood a white-bearded man wearing a red mantle over white robes glittering with gold ornament. On his head a tall white lozenge-shaped miter embroidered with a red and gold cross. In his hand, a great golden shepherd's crook at least seven feet tall. Simon's mouth fell open and he held his breath.
The ruler of the whole Catholic Church the world over, the chosen of God, the anointed of Christ, the heir of Saint Peter. His Holiness, Urban IV, the pope himself. Simon felt almost as much awe as he had that day in Paris when King Louis had let him kiss the Crown of Thorns.
How lucky I am to be here and see this man whom most Christians never see. It is close as one can come to seeing Jesus Christ Himself.
It looked to Simon as if the Holy Father were glowing with a supernatural light. To his left and his right stood a dozen or more men in bright red robes and wide-brimmed red hats with long red tassels dangling down to their shoulders. The cardinals, the princes of the Church. Simon wondered if the Tartars realized what honor this did them.
As soon as their sedan chair was set before the pope, the two short brown men stepped out of it, knelt, and pressed their foreheads to the cobblestones. They stayed that way until the pope gestured to de Verceuil, who bent and touched them on the shoulder and raised them up.
The pope turned and, followed by the Tartars and then the cardinals, proceeded into the cathedral. For this meeting to succeed, a papal mass was the best possible beginning.
So many people were ahead of Simon that Friar Mathieu caught up with him before he was able to enter the door of the cathedral.
"What do you think stirred up the crowd like that?" Simon asked as they pushed through the people standing in the nave of the church.
"In the cities of Italy the mob is always either furious or ecstatic," said Friar Mathieu.
"But to defile a cardinal!" Simon said. "That would never happen in France."
"Italians do not reverence the clergy as much as Frenchmen do," the Franciscan said with a little smile. "They have had to put up with the princes of the Church for so long that they are a good deal less awed by them."
The interior of the cathedral was ablaze with the light of a thousand candles, but Simon was not impressed by the windows, which were small and narrow and filled with dull-colored glass. This was an old church, he thought, remembering the huge windows of many-colored glass in the newer cathedrals of France.
The crowd was so tightly packed that Simon and Friar Mathieu could not get to the front of the nave, where chairs had been set before the altar for dignitaries. They had to be content with standing halfway down the length of the church. Simon thought wryly that he was getting used to being pushed into the background. Perhaps he was accepting it too easily.
Pope Urban, his white hair uncovered, had raised high the round wafer of bread for the Consecration of the Mass, when an angry shout echoed through the cathedral.
A chill went through Simon's body, cold as a knife blade. Using his shoulder as a wedge, he forced his way through the crowd toward the source of the sound, near the front of the church.
"Ex Tartari furiosi!" the man was shouting in Latin. "Libera nos, Domine!"From the fury of the Tartars, Lord deliver us!Cries of dismay rang out near the disturbance, and people began shouting in Italian.
"Stand aside! Let me through!" Simon shouted. If this were an assassin, reverence for the mass, even for the pope, must be set aside. Again and again the shout rose, "Ex Tartari furiosi!" It was harder to move through the crowd. People were struggling to get away from the man making the uproar.
Simon stopped, shoved men right and left to make room, and pulled his scimitar from his scabbard.
People around him turned at the unmistakable rasp of steel on leather, a sound that so often preceded sudden death. They saw the Saracen sword in Simon's hands and drew back. As Simon hoped,more people noticed and fell over one another trying to get out of his way.
Like Moses' rod parting the Red Sea, Simon's scimitar opened a path for him.
Simon saw a young man with a tangled mass of brown hair whipping about his face and a brown beard that spread over his chest. He was big and broad-shouldered, and he wore a plain white robe, ragged and gray with dirt, and sandals. In one hand he held a dagger.
Blood of Jesus! He must have come here to kill the Tartars.
Terrified people had opened a circle around the white-robed man, and as he moved toward the front of the cathedral the open space moved with him.
"Stop!" Simon cried.
Baring greenish-looking teeth in a snarl, the man swiveled his shaggy head toward Simon, then immediately rushed at him.
He's crazy, Simon thought, a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He crouched, holding his sword out before him, diagonally across his chest.
"Do not kill him!" boomed a deep voice that Simon recognized as de Verceuil's.
The man with the dagger hesitated now, just out of reach of Simon's sword.
Am I to risk my life to keep this madman alive?
But de Verceuil's demand made sense. They must try to find out who sent the man.
Simon took a deep breath. He had practiced sword fighting innumerable times, but only twice in his life had he come up against an armed man with a look in his eyes that said he was willing to kill.
But this is no different from practice, he told himself.
He feinted to the white-robed man's left, then jumped forward, lifting his sword high and bringing the flat of it down with all his strength on the hand that held the dagger. The dagger tumbled through the air. Simon saw at once that the man had no martial skill.
The madman darted forward in a crouch to retrieve his dagger, and as he did so Simon kicked him in the chin. The thick beard protected the man's chin from the full force of Simon's pointed leather boot, but he staggered. Before the bearded man recoveredhimself, Alain de Pirenne charged out of the crowd, seized him in a bear hug, and wrestled him to the ground.
"Ex Tartari furiosi!" The shouts rang out again and again as the pope's guards dragged the would-be assassin out of the church.
Simon saw Pope Urban shake his bare white head slowly, then turn back to the high marble altar and raise the Host overhead once more.
De Verceuil and Friar Mathieu reached Simon at the same time.
The cardinal held out his hand for the dagger, which Simon had retrieved, and studied it. "One could buy a hundred like it in any marketplace," he said, keeping his voice low now that the mass had resumed. He thrust the dagger into his black leather belt with a shrug.
"The white robe and sandals are the mark of the Apostolic Brethren," said Friar Mathieu. "Heretics who preach the doctrine of Joachim of Floris about a coming new age of enlightenment and equality."
"When it comes to heresy," said de Verceuil with an unfriendly grin, "there is little to choose between the Apostolic Brethren and the Franciscans. Many of your brethren are secret Joachimites."
"Of course, he might have been dressed that way only to deceive us," Friar Mathieu went on, ignoring the insult.
"We will find out who he is and whence he comes," said de Verceuil. "When we are through with him he will tell us everything. I have ordered him handed over to the podesta of Orvieto, who will subject him to questioning in his chamber of torment." He turned on the ball of his foot, his violet cloak swinging out behind him, and headed back toward the altar.
And not a word about my disarming the assassin, Simon thought angrily.
Friar Mathieu winced and shook his head sadly. "Then again, that man may not be able to say anything. And the less he can tell us, the more he will suffer. I pity him."
Simon cringed inwardly at the thought that by capturing the mad heretic he was the cause of the man's being subjected to horrible tortures. But greater fears preoccupied him. The Tartars had been in Orvieto only a few hours, and already the people had been stirred up against them and they had nearly been assassinated. Somewhere in this town an enemy lurked, and Simon's body turned cold as he wondered what that enemy would do next.
A letter from Emir Daoud ibn Abdallah to El Malik Baibars al-Bunduqdari, from Orvieto, 21st day of Rajab, 662 A.H.:
Although the central part of Italy, the Papal States, is said to be under the control of the pope, I have learned that his army is barely large enough to protect his person and nowhere near enough to enforce his authority. Manfred could attack the pope whenever he wished, but he does not do so because he fears that the other princes of Europe would then attack him.The northern part of Italy is divided among a number of cities, each of which is a small independent nation. These cities are often at war with one another. The most important are Venice, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Siena, Pisa, and Lucca.Within each city there is also constant warfare among various factions. The palaces of the great families are all heavily fortified.Italy is also divided between two parties, the Ghibellini and the Guelfi. These parties are to be found everywhere, constantly at each other's throats. They arose long ago in the northern part of the Holy Roman Empire, where the German language is spoken. The Hohenstaufen emperors came from the town of Waiblingen. And in the early days of the Hohenstaufens their enemies were a family named Welf. In Italy Welfs and Waiblings have become Guelfi and Ghibellini.Each day I come to realize more and more how complicated the history of Europe is. It seems that most of Italy has been claimed by the Holy Roman Empire—but Rome itself is not part of that empire. Members of the Hohenstaufen family have been Holy Roman Emperors for over two hundred years, and they have always been at war with the popes. Why the emperor should be called "holy" when he is traditionally the enemy of the pope I do not understand.Furthermore, at this time there is no Holy Roman Emperor. The last one was Conrad, son of Frederic and half brother of Manfred. He died ten years ago, and then Manfred proclaimed himself king of southern Italy and Sicily. The German part of the Holy Roman Empire is in a more chaotic state than Italy, if my lord can imagine such a thing.Here in Orvieto, where the pope has settled for his safety, there are no Ghibellini. The townsmen have managed to find other reasons tofight among themselves. The chief rivalry is between two great families, the Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi. Since the Tartar emissaries are guests of the Monaldeschi, I hope to make friends with the Filippeschi.
Although the central part of Italy, the Papal States, is said to be under the control of the pope, I have learned that his army is barely large enough to protect his person and nowhere near enough to enforce his authority. Manfred could attack the pope whenever he wished, but he does not do so because he fears that the other princes of Europe would then attack him.
The northern part of Italy is divided among a number of cities, each of which is a small independent nation. These cities are often at war with one another. The most important are Venice, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Siena, Pisa, and Lucca.
Within each city there is also constant warfare among various factions. The palaces of the great families are all heavily fortified.
Italy is also divided between two parties, the Ghibellini and the Guelfi. These parties are to be found everywhere, constantly at each other's throats. They arose long ago in the northern part of the Holy Roman Empire, where the German language is spoken. The Hohenstaufen emperors came from the town of Waiblingen. And in the early days of the Hohenstaufens their enemies were a family named Welf. In Italy Welfs and Waiblings have become Guelfi and Ghibellini.
Each day I come to realize more and more how complicated the history of Europe is. It seems that most of Italy has been claimed by the Holy Roman Empire—but Rome itself is not part of that empire. Members of the Hohenstaufen family have been Holy Roman Emperors for over two hundred years, and they have always been at war with the popes. Why the emperor should be called "holy" when he is traditionally the enemy of the pope I do not understand.
Furthermore, at this time there is no Holy Roman Emperor. The last one was Conrad, son of Frederic and half brother of Manfred. He died ten years ago, and then Manfred proclaimed himself king of southern Italy and Sicily. The German part of the Holy Roman Empire is in a more chaotic state than Italy, if my lord can imagine such a thing.
Here in Orvieto, where the pope has settled for his safety, there are no Ghibellini. The townsmen have managed to find other reasons tofight among themselves. The chief rivalry is between two great families, the Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi. Since the Tartar emissaries are guests of the Monaldeschi, I hope to make friends with the Filippeschi.
Seated at a table in his little room at Cardinal Ugolini's, Daoud made two copies of his letter to Baibars on small sheets of parchment scraped so thin as to be almost transparent. He had written the letters in a code using the Arabian system of numbers. Even if the message suffered the unlikely fate of being intercepted and finding its way to one of the few Arabic-reading Christians, it would remain an enigma.
Daoud rolled up the two letters tightly and put them in the leather scrip at his belt. He stepped out of his room into a narrow corridor. Doors on his right opened into rooms for Ugolini's guests and high-ranking members of his staff. On his left, oiled-parchment windows let light into the corridor from the atrium of the mansion.
Ugolini's cabinet, his private workroom, was at the end of the corridor, where it turned a corner. Daoud walked up to the heavy oaken door and raised his fist to knock.
He felt light-headed, as he did when going into combat. This was combat of a kind. He had been a guest in Ugolini's mansion for over two weeks now, and he had already, he thought, hurt the Tartars' prospects for an alliance with the Christians. But he needed to do much more, with help from Ugolini. The cardinal, Daoud knew, would be absolutely terrified at the thought of his Muslim guest appearing before the pope.
And to appear before the pope, with the cardinal presenting him, was precisely what Daoud wanted to do.
He knocked on the cabinet door.
To the muffled query from within he answered, "It is David."
He heard a bolt slide back, and he entered the cabinet. Cardinal Ugolini returned to the high-backed chair at his worktable, which was strewn with leather-bound books and parchment scrolls. In the middle of the table lay a large, circular brass instrument Daoud recognized as an astrolabe. On shelves behind the cardinal, besides many more books and papers, were a stuffed falcon, a stuffed owl, and a human skull with a strange diagram painted on the cranium. Windows of translucent white glass in two walls let in an abundance of light. A good place to work, thought Daoud.
"I hope I do not disturb you, Your Eminence," said Daoud.
"Not at all, David," said the cardinal. "It is very necessary that we talk."
Cardinal Adelberto Ugolini was a short, stout man with long gray whiskers that swept out like wings from his full cheeks. His receding chin was as bare as the bald top of his head, partly covered now by a red skullcap. He wore a plain black robe, like a priest's, but from a chain around his neck hung a gold cross set with five matching blue jewels. Daoud wondered if the cross concealed a poisoned stiletto like Tilia's. Besides books and scrolls, Daoud noticed, there were rows of porcelain jars on the shelves against the wall. Each had a Latin word painted on it. Ugolini might well dabble in poison.
"The man they seized in the cathedral is to be publicly torn to pieces," Ugolini said. "They have been torturing him in the Palazzo del Podesta for three days and two nights, but they have learned nothing from him, except that he is a member of the Apostolic Brethren, a follower of the heretic Joachim of Floris."
If I am to go before the pope, I must learn about the disputes among Christians. It would not do to offend the Christian leaders by accidentally uttering heresy.
"What does this Joachim teach?"
Ugolini waved his hands dismissively. "Joachim died long ago, but his rubbish and madness still stir up the simple folk. The Church is too wealthy. The clergy are corrupt. The Age of the Holy Spirit is coming, in which there will be peace, justice, and freedom and all property will be owned in common."
The doctrines of the Apostolic Brethren sounded to Daoud like the teachings of the Hashishiyya, as told to him by Imam Fayum al-Burz.
Ugolini shook himself like a wet dog. "It is dangerous for you to involve yourself with such people as the Brethren."
It is dangerous for me to be here at all, Daoud thought, irritated at Ugolini's timidity.
"This heretic does not know me, so there is nothing he can tell them that will point to us. You need not fear."
"I feel no fear," Ugolini said grandly. "How did you get that man to draw a dagger in the cathedral?" Ugolini asked. "And the crowd, how did you stir them up?"
Daoud saw the tiny quiverings of Ugolini's pupils, the tightness of his lips, the clenching of his jaws, the signs of a man in a permanent state of terror.
Daoud shrugged and smiled. "Celino found the madman preachingagainst the Tartars at a crossroads and had men in his pay bring him to Orvieto. We did not tell him what to do. He did what he was moved to do. As for the crowd, all that was needed was for Celino to drop a word here and a coin there. Many people believe the Tartars are demons from hell. Perhaps they are. Anyway, I think we have turned the people of Orvieto against the Tartars."
"You are like a child playing with flint and tinder in a barn full of straw," said Ugolini, blinking his eyes rapidly.
He must be prodded into action, Daoud thought.Tilia said the idea of my appearing before the pope would terrify him. We must settle that today.
Daoud walked to one of the four mullioned windows. The casements swung inward for air. Looking down through the iron bars on the outside of the window, Daoud regarded the street where the Tartars had passed. The pottery maker across the road had washed away the bloodstains and was sitting in front of his shop displaying his brightly colored wares.
What would move this man Ugolini—money, threats, the promise of personal power?
He turned back and made himself smile.
"You do not want me here, Your Eminence."
Ugolini looked at him for a long moment, and finally said, "For over a dozen years Baibars has been a far-off figure who sends me small rewards in return for scraps of harmless information. Now, suddenly, his agent is in my home, demanding that I, the cardinal camerlengo of the Sacred College, risk death by torture to deceive the pope and betray the Church. In a week or two in the cathedral piazza, they will do horrible things to that poor mad heretic. But his sufferings will not be the tenth part of what they will do to me—and to you—if we are found out."
Daoud bowed his head. "The sooner I complete my work, the sooner I am gone."
While he let that sink in, he decided that with his next words he would pit his boldness against Ugolini's timidity.
"So, you must present me to the pope as soon as possible."
Ugolini's eyes grew wide and his mouth trembled. His stare, with his sharp nose, tiny chin, and trembling whiskers, gave him the look of a jerboa, one of those desert rats that Daoud had hunted with hawks in Palestine.
"Tilia told me you had some such mad notion," said the cardinal. "If you speak to the pope and his court, every important manin Orvieto will see you. If you make the slightest slip that could reveal what you really are, they will be on you like hounds on a fox." He laughed nervously. "No, no, no, no. I might as well take you to de Verceuil and say, 'Here is the enemy you are looking for. Behold, a Muslim, even a Mameluke! And, by the way, it wasIwho brought him into Orvieto.'"
Ugolini covered his eyes with his hand. He did look as if he had been losing sleep, Daoud thought, remembering what Tilia had told him.
Daoud felt his teeth grinding together in frustration. It would be easier to fight a band of Tartars than to try to put courage into this one little man. And he needed more from the cardinal than compliance.
I must make him want, not just to help me, but to lead the opposition to the Tartars. Otherwise this will be like trying to move the arms and legs of a dead man.
"The cardinals speak Latin to one another, do they not?" Daoud asked. "I will say my piece in Greek and you will translate it into Latin for me. So you will have a chance to cover any errors I make."
"Why must you go before the pope?" Ugolini demanded. "It is foolish bravado. Remain in seclusion and tell me what you want done and I will have it done for you."
The thought of keeping himself in hiding while trying to act through others made Daoud's flesh crawl. But there was a bit of hope here. At least Ugolini was offering to dosomething.
"This is a thing only I can do," Daoud said. "Only I have seen the Tartars, met them in battle. Only I have seen what they do to a conquered city." The sight and smell of those heaps of rotting corpses arose in his mind, and he shut his eyes momentarily. "What I can say is too important a weapon to be left unwielded. I know the Tartars better than any man in Orvieto, except for that priest in the brown robe who came with them. And he is on the other side."
"How will you tell what you know without admitting that you are a Muslim warrior?"
"Many Christian traders now visit the lands occupied by the Tartars. David of Trebizond has been one of them." He spread his arms. "As you see, I now dress like a wealthy merchant."
Celino had gone out with a bag of florins from Ugolini's first sale of jewels, and he had come back with a chest full of new clothes for Daoud. Today Daoud wore a silk cape as red as a cardinal'srobe. It was light in weight and came down to his knees, more for display than for covering. Under the cloak he wore a tunic of deep purple embroidered with gold thread.
Ugolini shook his head. "Clothing will not deceive the pope and those around him. You are asking too much of me."
Daoud wished he could give this up. Ugolini was nothing but a sodden lump of fear. But he had no choice but to keep trying. The cardinal was his gateway to the papal court.
"Think of the reward," Daoud urged. "Part of the wealth I have brought with me is already yours. If the pope sends the Tartars away without an agreement, my sultan will give to you with both hands."
Ugolini looked tormented. "But the peril—"
Daoud had been certain that money would not be enough to enlist Ugolini's cooperation. Baibars already had been generous with him.
Bribes alone will not move this man.
As he searched his brain for another approach, his eyes explored the room. The skull, the powders, the brass instruments. Ugolini was a student of many strange things, things verging on magic. Were these not odd interests for a Christian prelate? He knew Greek, which was rare for a Latin Christian. He had spoken of heresy before. Was he not, in his willingness to correspond with Baibars, a heretic of a kind? And perhaps in these studies of his as well.
I must remind him that he sympathizes with us.
"My master sent me to you because he knows you are a friend to Islam."
Ugolini raised a cautioning hand. "Mind you, I am a Christian."
"I do not doubt it," said Daoud.
"Not a very good Christian," Ugolini went on, sighing and looking off into space. "God grant that I make a good confession before I breathe my last. But I am also of the south of Italy, and in my youth I lived side by side with Muslims. I had Muslim teachers, wise men. From them I learned about philosophy, medicine, astrology, alchemy. I learned how much there is to know that I may never know."
Daoud felt his eager heart beat more rapidly. Ugolini was speaking just as he wanted.
"God help me, I yearn so for more worldly knowledge," Ugolini went on. "That was why I studied for the priesthood, so I could go to the University of Napoli. But what one can learn at a Christianuniversity is not enough. I want to know what you Saracens know. And so I long for peace between Christendom and Islam."
Daoud felt excitement surge through his arms and legs. He was exhilarated, as when in battle he sensed his opponent was weakening.
He pressed his point. "You will never possess the knowledge you long for if the Tartars destroy it. Think what was lost when they leveled Baghdad. Think what will be lost if they destroy Cairo, Thebes, Alexandria."
"Oh, God!" Ugolini cried, waving hands bent like claws. "There is so much I could learn in Egypt. If only this stupid enmity between Muslim and Christian did not hold me back. I am tortured like Tantalus."
"As cardinal camerlengo, the pope's chamberlain, you could bring before the pope a traveler from far away whose testimony might influence his decisions about the Tartars. Because of you, all that would be lost might be saved."
Daoud held his breath, waiting for Ugolini's reply.
Ugolini smiled resignedly. "To work for what I believe in, to help my friends. And to be rewarded with riches. How can I refuse?" His expression changed again as he looked earnestly at Daoud. "I do not know as much as your great Islamic astronomers, but I have plotted the courses of some stars, and I know how they rule our destinies. And my recent readings have told me that I will take a risk that will yield me rewards beyond my hopes."
"Then you will present me to the pope as a witness?"
Ugolini first shook his head, but then sighed and nodded. "I can propose a meeting. And may the stars watch over us," he added as his right hand traced the Christian sign of the cross on his forehead, shoulders, and breast.
The stars, your Messiah, and the One God I worship, thought Daoud. He allowed himself momentarily to feel the thrill of triumph. Ugolini had begun to move as he wanted him to. But now he must prepare himself for a much greater trial, his meeting with the pope.
A little while later, walking through a ground-floor doorway into the sunlit atrium of Ugolini's mansion, Daoud saw Sophia and Rachel standing by the fish pond, under orange and lemon trees. The polished dark-green leaves reflected the mid-morning sun upward and cast shade downward on the stone paths and the pool.Reflected sunlight rippled over Sophia's peach-colored gown. A narrow gold bracelet on her wrist flashed as she raised her hand to make a point. The answering smile that lit Rachel's face foretold that she would be a beautiful woman in a few years. She was dressed better than she had been when they first met her, Daoud noticed. That ankle-length blue silk gown must belong to Sophia.
"The cardinal has just had an immense turbot delivered all the way from Livorno, Messer David," said Rachel, her black eyes bright with wonder. "Alive, in a barrel of water. Look, you can see it down there at the bottom."
Daoud looked down into the clear water, saw a tapering dark shape moving gently just above the yellow pebbles lining the bottom of the pool. Smaller brown carp darted this way and that above it.
"The cardinal's gold makes great things possible," he said. "Will you leave us for a while, Rachel?"
Sophia handed a small leather-bound book to Rachel. "You may read these poems of Ovid if you like."
Rachel clasped the book to her narrow chest. "I do not read Latin, Signora, but I will look at the pictures."
"Have a care," said Sophia with a light laugh. "Some of them may shock you."
"Then I will try to enjoy being shocked." Rachel bowed and hurried away.
Daoud listened to the banter between the woman and the girl with mixed feelings. He liked both of them, and he enjoyed hearing them joke with each other. He imagined women must talk that way among themselves back in El Kahira, but if they did, men never had a chance to hear.
He also felt deeply uneasy at the growing closeness between Rachel and Sophia. The two of them shared a room on the top floor of Ugolini's mansion, next to Daoud's and Lorenzo's. His stomach tightened as he thought of the long talks they might have. What if Rachel learned that Sophia was actually a Byzantine woman, when she was supposed to be the cardinal's niece from Sicily? And what if Rachel then let that slip to a servant? Byzantines, Greek Catholics, were hated almost as much as Muslims here in the lands of the Latin Church. One small, seemingly harmless revelation like that could destroy them utterly.
I must get them separated.
Turning to Sophia, Daoud was struck once again that so muchbeauty should openly display itself outside a harem. A narrow cloth-of-gold ribbon wound around her neck, crossed between her breasts and tied her pale peach gown tightly at the waist. Her lustrous black hair was bound in a net of gold thread.
She looked at him quizzically. Daoud studied her face. Her long, straight nose, dark red lips and delicate chin made him glad that Christian women went unveiled. He could well believe this woman had enjoyed the attentions of an emperor and a king. He himself could not look at her without wishing he might take her in his arms.
"Well, my Frankish-Turkish master-slave, what has your busy mind found for me to do? Do you wish me to get myself shot in the street by Venetians? Or create a disturbance in church and be tortured to death?"
Her thrusts caught Daoud off balance. Feeling a surge of anger, he was silent for a moment.
Then he jabbed a finger at her. "Do you understand what is at stake here?"
Her full lower lip pushed out. "I do not understand why you had to send a pious simpleton to a horrible death."
Guilt twisted in Daoud's guts like a Hashishiyya dagger. Yet he could not admit to Sophia that he regretted what happened to the heretic. She might approve his feeling, but she would also lose confidence in him.
"I will use any weapon I can find," he said. "Even if it breaks in my hand."
Sophia sat down on the marble lip of the fish pond. After a moment's hesitation Daoud sat beside her, smoothing his red cloak under him.
"Where is Lorenzo?" she asked. "I have not seen him since the day the Tartars arrived."
"He visits Spoleto, to find a few bold men for me." Lorenzo would bring back two or three men from Spoleto. Later he would gather more men in Viterbo, Chiusi, and other nearby cities. Imperceptibly over the coming months, bands of armed men—the Italians called them "bravos"—would gather in Orvieto to do Daoud's bidding.
Acting as a go-between for Daoud and the bravos was a mission at which Lorenzo should do well.
"The men Lorenzo brings here will not know my name or my face," he went on. "In a few days Cardinal Ugolini will take me before the pope, and I will warn him against the Tartars from myown true experience of them. I must not be connected with other things done against the Tartars, disturbances among the people, armed attacks. That is why Rachel is such a danger."
She had been looking thoughtfully at the pebbled path. When he spoke Rachel's name, she lifted her head to stare at him.
"Are you going to make me give up Rachel?"
That annoyed him. "You agreed. Have you forgotten?"
"No, but I thought now that she has been with us awhile and there has been no trouble, you might change your mind."
"I do not change my mind so easily." By God, working with this woman was an ordeal. She argued and complained far too much. He wondered whether showing their faces in public made Christian women overbold.
"But where can she go? You would not really cast her out to starve."
"Tilia Caballo will take her in."
"You will force her into that horrible fat woman's brothel? And she only a child?"
"She is nearly thirteen. Many women are married by then."
"She has not even started bleeding yet."
"How do you know that?" Daoud felt somewhat embarrassed.
"She told me, of course."
"She need only be a serving girl at Tilia's."
"No doubt Tilia would find her too precious a commoditynotto be sold. There are old men who would give that woman her own weight in gold to get their hands on an intact virgin child. And these high churchmen can afford it."
Daoud remembered the rough hands of the first Turks who captured him and shuddered inside himself. "She does not have to lie with men unless she chooses that life."
"Do you really think you and Tilia would be giving her a choice?" said Sophia angrily.
Again Daoud's feelings struggled against each other. He liked the way she spoke up fiercely for the child. Yet it angered him that she was making it harder for him to deal with the painful problem of Rachel.
"How much choice is anyone in this world given?" he demanded.
"Are you not here by choice, David?"
"I am the slave of my sultan," he said. "That is what the wordMamelukemeans—slave. He sent me here. But I am also here by choice."
"To save Islam from the Tartars." She reached her fingertips into the water and dabbed the droplets on her forehead.
He caught the note of skepticism in her voice. "Yes. Do you not believe that?"
"Can you see yourself through my eyes?" There was an earnestness in her face, as if she badly wanted not to doubt him.
"No, how do you see me?" he asked gently.
"I see a Frankish warrior, fair of hair and face." She turned and looked directly at him, then quickly cast her eyes down. "Good looking enough, for a Frank." She gestured toward his knee, encased in scarlet silk. "You show a handsome leg in your new hose."
Why, she cares for me!He felt a little leap of delight, and reminded himself that he must not let himself be drawn to Sophia.
"You and the Turks call all men from western Europe Franks," he said. "But my parents were not from France, but of English descent."
"You could go back to France or England with your jewels and buy a castle and lands and an army of retainers and live like a little king. And forget all about Islam and the Tartars."
He did not want to argue with her. He wanted to reach out and touch her lips with his fingertips.
"I consider myself blessed by God to have been raised amid the glories of Egypt rather than in ignorance and dirt among those you call Franks."
She nodded. "We Greeks think the people of Arabia and Egypt are the only other civilized people in the world. Almost as civilized as we Greeks." She said the last with a smile, and he noticed that her cheeks dimpled.
He laughed. "What makes you so civilized?"
She clasped her hands between her knees and cast her eyes upward as if in deep thought. "Ah, well, our churches are huge and magnificent."
"So are our mosques."
"Our paintings and mosaics and statues of saints and angels and emperors are the most beautiful in the world."
"Idols," he interrupted, but he turned to her and smiled as she had. "The Prophet ordered idols destroyed."
"And therefore the art of painting languishes among you," shesaid, poking her forefinger into his shoulder. "Someday I will show you my paintings if you promise not to destroy them."
His shoulder tingled where she had touched him. She must have been carried away by her feelings about the arts of her homeland to make such a gesture. Surely it could not have been deliberate. His hand rested between them on the edge of the fountain. He moved a bit closer to her so that the edge of his hand nearly touched her thigh.
He nodded. "I will teach you the art of calligraphy as my Sufi master practiced it, and save your soul."
I would really like to do that. Ah, but I cannot teach her to write Arabic. What if someone were to see her practice work?
He sighed inwardly.
"Hm," she grunted. "I doubt thatyoucan savemysoul. But as for writing, we are familiar with dramatists like Sophocles, philosophers like Aristotle. We read Latin poets like Ovid, whose book I just gave to Rachel. Here in his native Italy his work is thought licentious."
"I have read Aristotle and Plato in Arabic," he said. "And I have no doubt our Persian poets sing as gloriously as your Greeks and Latins. And for licentious tales, those told in our bazaars would turn your cheeks bright red."
Those cheeks were a smooth cream color, he observed. He looked about him. There was no one but himself and Sophia in the atrium. A multistoried gallery lined with columns and arches ran around all four sides of the central courtyard. There might be servants, spies for the cardinal, watching them, but he could see no one on any of the levels.
To the devil with them all.
For weeks he had been wanting to reach out and touch that unveiled beauty, that ivory skin. Now he did it. Very lightly his fingers traveled from her cheekbone to her jaw.
She reached up and took his hand—not to remove it, as he had momentarily thought she might, but to hold it briefly against her cheek, then let it go.
They sat silently looking at each other. She was so still that she seemed not even to breathe, while he discovered that his heart was beating fast and hard. He wanted to kiss her, but not here, where hidden eyes might be watching.
But kissing her at all would be a mistake.
The thought shook him—the realization that he must not get anycloser to her. He felt as if a rope were tied around his neck and a cruel slave master had jerked on it.
She is not for me. She is for my mission.
He turned away from her.
"It is better if we do not grow too close," he said, fixing his eyes on a nearby orange tree. "I must use you. I will send you as my sultan has sent me, and you will lie with the man I choose as my quarry."
He looked back and saw that she was smiling sadly, her eyes clouded with disappointment. It pleased him in a bittersweet way to see that she shared his unhappiness.
"I amyourslave, then?"
He shook his head. "I do not know whose you are—King Manfred's, I suppose. Or perhaps Emperor Michael's? You have been given to me in trust, like that emerald I brought here from El Kahira—from Cairo. What you will have to do here will be no worse, I am sure, than what you must have had to do before this."
"I am sure." There was a dark note in her voice now. He wished he could take back what he said and ease her bitterness, but he had spoken truly, and it was needful that she realize it.
"If you serve me well, I will reward you," he promised. "You will be able to do anything in the world you want."
"Of that I cannot be sure," she said.
This time it was he who took her hand and held it tightly for a moment. Her hand felt cool and lifeless in his grasp.
"We may not be lovers," he said, "but perhaps we can be friends."
"Perhaps," she said distantly.
Nettled, he rose and left her. If she would not accept him on those terms, could he trust her? He turned his back on her and left the garden.
He longed to know her thoughts. Could she love him? He knew he should not hope for that, because it would have to come to nothing, but he hoped she loved him at least a little.
It was not until he was back in his apartment, about to begin his noon prayer, facing the charcoal mark he had made on the wall to point out the direction of Mecca, that he realized what she had done to him.
Rachel! We settled nothing about Rachel.
He struck his fist on the wall. He would have to be more careful with Sophia. She could be very difficult. Even dangerous.
It is time I had a woman.
When a man went without the delights of the bedchamber for too long, he became too susceptible to the cleverness of beautiful women.
It had been four months since that last night in El Kahira when his wife, Baibars's favorite daughter, Blossoming Reed, had kept him awake all night with her devouring love, not caring that he must begin a great journey the following day—yes,becausehe was leaving her.
He remembered the words she had said to him when she gave him the locket just before the battle of the Well of Goliath.Take for your pleasure as many women as you like. But love always and only me. For if you do love another, I promise you that your love will destroy both her and you.
It would be best if he went to Tilia Caballo's brothel and enjoyed a woman he was not so likely to fall in love with.
Daoud strode through the crowded streets at dusk, enjoying the golden light that fell on the upper stories of the yellow houses of Orvieto. His scarlet cape blew out behind him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw heads turn to follow his passage. He walked close to the houses on his right, keeping away from the ruts and the rivulets of sewage in the center of the street. Men stepped into the filth, making way for him. He was bigger and better dressed than anyone he met, and a new sword with a jeweled hilt swung at his belt. The glances he caught from the short, dark men of Orvieto were not friendly.
They think I am a Frank, and like Sophia they hate Franks.
Pigs rooted in garbage in the quintane, the narrow spaces between the houses. Small dogs ran under his feet. What backward, unsanitary people these Europeans were! The sights and smells of Orvieto made him wish for the paved streets of El Kahira, where every day an army of slaves swept and cleared away refuse.
The cardinal had drawn a map of Orvieto for him, showing the principal streets and the way to Tilia's house. Daoud had committed the map to memory, using the concentration technique Saadi had taught him. Most of the streets had no names. He would have to find his way by landmarks. In the days to come, he planned, he would explore and add to the map in his mind until he knew every street in Orvieto.
The house of Tilia Caballo stood on a street that was wider thanmost at the east end of town. Even though Ugolini had described it as ordinary-looking, Daoud was surprised to see how much it resembled the shabby buildings on either side of it. He had expected some sign of luxury, some flamboyance. He had thought to hear music as he approached, as he would have outside one of the brothels of El Kahira—before Baibars closed them. The house was quiet, unadorned save for a third-floor balcony above the entryway. It gave no sign of who its occupants were. He knew it only by counting—fifth house from the corner, Ugolini had said. Unlike the roof of the cardinal's palace, which was flat, the roof of Tilia's house was sharply peaked.
It looked like anything but a brothel. And though there were enough small houses near it to hold two or three hundred people, the street was not crowded, as were streets everywhere else in Orvieto. He saw a few men lounging in doorways, a pair of men walking arm in arm past Tilia's front door, but that was all. Distinguished churchmen and men of wealth and good family could come here without attracting notice.
Even so, I seem to be the only visitor who comes before dusk. Well, if people see me and think I am a well-to-do merchant who frequents Orvieto's finest brothel, that is exactly what I want them to think.
He felt the heaviness in his groin and the lightness in his stomach that always accompanied his visits to women when he had done without pleasure for a long time. He wondered if the Christian courtesan he picked tonight would be able to match the accomplishments of the women who served the Mamelukes in El Kahira. She would surely not be able to equal the incredible pleasures he had enjoyed with Blossoming Reed.
He knocked at the plain dark-brown door, and it swung open immediately, as if the one behind it had watched him approach. There stood one of Tilia's black men, wearing a turban, robes, and pantaloons that for all the world made him look like a harem guard in El Kahira. The costume made Daoud uneasy. The slave bowed in silence, and with a sweep of his arm bade Daoud enter.
The entrance hall was a surprise. It seemed much too large for the building he had just entered. He stood on a Persian carpet in a wide, high-ceilinged room filled with light. Candles burned in sconces around the walls and in two chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Two tall, thick candles stood in twisting brass stands the height of a man on either side of a marble staircase. A pungentfragrance filled the air, and Daoud realized that the candles were scented. If Tilia could afford to burn this many candles every night, her trade must be profitable indeed.
He understood now why the interior of Tilia's establishment was so different from the exterior. She must have acquired all the buildings side by side along this street and then hollowed them out. He noticed that where the walls of the building through which he had entered should have been, there stood marble Roman columns two stories high. Counting the rows of columns stretching right and left, he estimated that this great hall must be as wide as five of the original houses that had been absorbed into Tilia's mansion.
The black man struck a large gong beside the door, giving off a low, mellow note. Almost immediately Tilia appeared at the top of the staircase. Smiling broadly, she flounced down the steps, the gold and jewels scattered over her person throwing off sparks in every direction.
"I knew you would be coming soon, David," she said in a low voice. "I am glad you came early in the evening. We can talk freely now. If more of my clients were here, we would have to seclude ourselves."
Daoud jerked his head at the black servant. "Why in God's name do you dress your men as Muslims here, where there is so much fear and hatred of 'Saracens,' as they call us?"
Tilia laughed, the pillow of flesh under her chin quivering. "Do you not know that it has long been fashionable among Christians to borrow from the world of Islam? They copy everything from ways of dressing to words and ideas. Most people think the Hohenstaufens have gone too far with their Saracen army, but among the great houses of Italy each must have its Moorish servants with great turbans and sashes and pantaloons. And here in Orvieto, the pope's city, it makes my clients feel especially wicked to enter a house staffed with slaves so dressed."
"I would not enjoy going into a brothel where the servants were dressed like Christian monks," Daoud said scornfully.
Tilia sighed. "I will tell you what seeing these men in Saracen garb does for me. It reminds me of when I was a young woman in Cairo." She looked around at her hall and sighed again. "Young and beautiful and unhappy. Now I am rich and content, but I tell you in all honesty I would give all this up to be young and beautiful."
Daoud was surprised. He had not known that Tilia had once livedin El Kahira. Was that, he wondered, how Baibars came to know her? Was that why, even though Daoud did not fully trust her, he felt oddly comfortable with her?
"And where are the young and beautiful and unhappy women in this house, then?"
She smiled and laid a hand on his arm. "Are you here to avail yourself?"
"First, I want to send a message to my master. Then that."
"Of course. Come with me."
He followed her up the marble steps, idly wondering if her rump looked as huge with her gown off, and whether Cardinal Ugolini actually did go to bed with her, and if so how he could be aroused by such a grossly fat woman. Not that Ugolini, with his rodent's face, was any more attractive than his mistress.
The stairs to the third floor were narrower and darker and more winding, and after that there was a maze of corridors to negotiate. Even with the help of the Sufi mental training for warriors, Daoud knew he would never be able to find his way here again.