O Pillar of the Faith, the gift of the ancient scroll to the Christian scholar Tomasso d'Aquino has served our purposes beyond my expectations. At the same time that I delivered the scroll to him, I arranged for the allies of the Tartars to be deceived into thinking that the priest Tomasso was already in our camp. They chose the arrogant Cardinalde Verceuil, of whom I have told you, to bring his influence to bear on the priest Tomasso. The cardinal's treatment of Tomasso so offended him that he was driven to take the side we wished of him.This Tomasso has turned the clouds Ugolini and I stirred up into a veritable thunderstorm. The pope cannot proclaim a crusade unless he has the support of the Christian kingdoms and peoples. Otherwise, they will support him only halfheartedly or not at all. I confess I am surprised at how often the Christians of Europe choose to neglect or even refuse to do what the pope demands of them.As we know, the Christians of today have not the zeal to make war on us that their forefathers had. Let time pass, and Hulagu Khan will lose patience and recall his ambassadors. The Christians will fight among themselves here in Europe. And, if God wills it, Islam will know peace. Such is my deepest desire.Time, O Malik Dahir, is our ally.
O Pillar of the Faith, the gift of the ancient scroll to the Christian scholar Tomasso d'Aquino has served our purposes beyond my expectations. At the same time that I delivered the scroll to him, I arranged for the allies of the Tartars to be deceived into thinking that the priest Tomasso was already in our camp. They chose the arrogant Cardinalde Verceuil, of whom I have told you, to bring his influence to bear on the priest Tomasso. The cardinal's treatment of Tomasso so offended him that he was driven to take the side we wished of him.
This Tomasso has turned the clouds Ugolini and I stirred up into a veritable thunderstorm. The pope cannot proclaim a crusade unless he has the support of the Christian kingdoms and peoples. Otherwise, they will support him only halfheartedly or not at all. I confess I am surprised at how often the Christians of Europe choose to neglect or even refuse to do what the pope demands of them.
As we know, the Christians of today have not the zeal to make war on us that their forefathers had. Let time pass, and Hulagu Khan will lose patience and recall his ambassadors. The Christians will fight among themselves here in Europe. And, if God wills it, Islam will know peace. Such is my deepest desire.
Time, O Malik Dahir, is our ally.
Daoud stood at his writing desk, smiling at the tiny Arabic characters with which he had covered the thin square of parchment.
El Malik Dahir—the victorious king. How well Daoud remembered the day Baibars had, with his help, assumed that title.
Riding back from the victory at the Well of Goliath, the Mameluke army was camped outside Bilbeis, two days' ride northeast of El Kahira. Tomorrow Sultan Qutuz would hold audience at Bilbeis, and soon after he would ride into El Kahira in triumph, a triumph Baibars had earned for him.
Baibars was alone in his tent when Daoud answered his summons. His blue eye glittered out of deep shadows cast on his face by a small oil lamp that hung in the center of the tent. With his own hand Baibars served Daoud kaviyeh from a pot on a brazier, and the two men sat side by side, turned toward each other.
"Again he refused me," Baibars said. "I have given him every chance, Daoud."
Baibars's face was calm, but Daoud knew that the fury of a Tartar was boiling within him.
A reddish haze obscured the tent for Daoud as he fought back his own rage at the injustice to Baibars.
"He thinks I want to be governor of Aleppo merely out of ambition," Baibars said.
"The sultan is a fool," said Daoud.
The single sighted eye transfixed him. "No, not a fool. He played the game of power well enough when he made himself sultan. No one could blame him for the murders of Ai Beg and Spray of Pearls.He restored order to El Kahira. His mistake now is in not trusting me. And that is an understandable mistake." Baibars stretched his thin lips in a sudden grin.
"Understandable how?" Daoud experienced that unsettling sense he often had that the one-eyed emir was always two or three jumps ahead of him.
"It comes of too much cleverness," said Baibars. "He does not believe me when I say I want to be governor of Aleppo because it is the first city Hulagu Khan will attack. He suspects me of a hidden motive. He thinks that if he gives me Aleppo I will break with El Kahira and claim all of Syria for my own, because that is whathewould do. But Hulagu Khan, seeking vengeance for the Well of Goliath, is coming from Persia with all his power. May God send to the eternal fire a commander wicked enough to divide the kingdom at such a time."
The kaviyeh Daoud held had cooled. He drained the glazed earthenware cup and put it down beside him.
"The sultan himself divides the kingdom," said Daoud, "by dishonoring you."
"It is more than dishonor. It is war. If he thinks me too dangerous to be ruler of Aleppo, it means that he thinks me too dangerous to live."
Daoud felt as if his heart had dropped into the cold, black bottom of a well. If Qutuz destroyed Baibars, he would destroy Islam and El Kahira and all of them. Daoud's whole world.
"What will you do?" said Daoud.
"I do not know what I will do," said Baibars, fixing his one eye on Daoud. "But you know that if he kills me, he will kill all close to me. What willyoudo?"
Daoud felt the edge of the headsman's blade on the back of his neck as he had not felt it since that day Qutuz demanded his death. The thought of being executed at Qutuz's command outraged him. It was one thing to die as a mujahid, a martyr in holy war for Islam, destined to be taken at once into paradise. But what a shameful fate, to be murdered because your own sovereign lord did not trust you.
"I am your slave, Effendi."
"Not slave, Daoud. You are as near a son to me as a Mameluke can be. Are you not the husband of my favorite daughter? I speak now with you because I must speak, and in all this camp you are the only one I can rely on absolutely."
Daoud felt tears coming to his eyes. He was embarrassed, even though he knew it was a manly thing to weep easily. For him crying was rare.
Baibars rested a large, strong hand on Daoud's arm.
"Never to know any brothers but our khushdashiya, our barracks mates, never to know any father but the emir who trained and freed us, it makes us the hardest, the finest warriors in the world. But we long for the loving families we never had."
Daoud wiped his face with the sleeve of his robe.
They sat in silence for a long time, while Daoud, stroking his thick blond beard, grappled with what Baibars was asking of him. Asking, not in words, but in the spaces between the words.
Baibars spoke. "Remember what the Tartar general, Ket Bogha, called Qutuz? The murderer of his master. The world belittles us because each sultan has climbed to the throne over the murdered body of the last sultan. Turan Shah, murdered."
He held up his left hand, his sword hand.
"I myself killed Turan Shah because he betrayed the Mamelukes. Next, Ai Beg, murdered. The Sultana Spray of Pearls, murdered. Ali, son of Ai Beg, murdered. Each murder weakens the throne itself."
"The throne is as strong as the man who holds it," said Daoud.
Baibars continued to look at his left hand, his head turned to the side in his one-eyed way. "Even so, Ai Beg did not himself kill Turan Shah and Qutuz did not himself kill Ali. If I kill Qutuz and take the throne with his blood on my hand, I am inviting every other Mameluke emir to kill me when my back is turned. The title of El Malik, the sultan, chief sovereign of Islam, will be like a ball in a game of mall, flying this way and that."
Daoud felt as if he were standing at the mouth of an enormous black cave. It was one thing to know that Qutuz was not fit to rule. It was another thing to think of striking down the sultan, the anointed of God. If Daoud entered this cave, he might never come out again. He might leave it only to fall into the flames of hell. He seemed to see stars in the depths of the cave, as if he were looking into the world beyond the world. Somewhere among those stars, God dwelt in His paradise with those He loved around Him, the Archangel Gabriel, and the Prophet, and Abraham and Jesus, and the saints and martyrs of Islam.
Is it God's will that I kill the sultan? How can I know?
He could not know. But he did know that second only to hissubmission to God, the most important thing in his life was devotion to his emir. As Baibars said, his khushdashiya and his emir were all a Mameluke had.
He leaned closer to Baibars.
"Whoever dishonors my lord Baibars deserves instant death at the hands of my lord's servant."
Baibars closed both eyes with a look of satisfaction.
"Have I asked you to kill—anyone?" he said.
"No, Effendi."
They sat in silence again. The desert wind hummed in the ropes of Baibars's tent, and the poles shifted and creaked.
"If someone wished to kill Qutuz," said Baibars, "he should recall that we are now very close to El Kahira. Once Qutuz rides on streets festooned with silks and carpeted with flowers, once people see him as the victor of the Well of Goliath, they will love him too much. They would never accept his being taken from them. We could not control their fury."
Daoud said, "Tomorrow, when he holds audience at the palace of the governor of Bilbeis, men from all over the district with requests for favors, with claims, with grievances, will surround him, clamoring. Anyone could easily approach him."
Baibars nodded. "Let him be struck down before the eyes of many. Let it be like a public sacrifice. I would rather see it done so than by poison or ambush." His thin lips curved in a smile. "I seem to recall that you, too, have a preference for taking vengeance in public."
"If the other emirs demand that he who killed the sultan be punished," said Daoud, "you will have to sacrifice your servant."
Baibars's face tightened. "They will not. They will accept what you and I do."
"Nevertheless, if it seems needful to secure your place on the throne, you must give the killer up. You will not have to explain that to me. And you will still be my lord. My father."
"Ah, Daoud," Baibars said. Daoud saw a wetness in both Baibars's eyes now, the sighted and the blind.
Daoud stood beside a spiral pillar near the front of the audience hall of the governor of Bilbeis. It was a small chamber, but an elegant one. The floor was of mottled green marble, and pink columns lined the approach from the front door to the massive gilded throne on its dais.
Merchants and small landholders, officials in red fezzes, Bedouin sheikhs in black robes and burnooses, crowded the hall. Each man held a petition scroll for the sultan.
Daoud carried no petition, but the sleeve of his left arm hid, strapped to his wrist, a scabbard holding a twisting dagger—a flame dagger, the weapon of the Hashishiyya.
He longed for Qutuz to come into the hall, for the dance of death he had rehearsed a thousand times in his mind, to begin.
He had prayed this morning longer and with greater fervor than he had for many years.
Whenwould Qutuz come?
At the doorways and around the edges of the room stood warriors of the halkha, the sultan's bodyguard, their steel helmets and breastplates inlaid with gold, their tunics bright yellow. What would they do when they saw him strike at Qutuz? They were Mamelukes. They had seen Qutuz's fear at the Well of Goliath and his pretensions afterward. But it was their duty to protect him. Daoud could not guess what feelings would move them.
Here and there around the room rose the spherical white turbans of the Mameluke emirs who had been at the Well of Goliath. There was Kalawun, called al-Elfi, the Thousander, because his first master had bought him for the incredible price of a thousand gold dinars, there Bektout, beside a blue-white pillar, another Kipchaq like Baibars. Six or so others talked quietly under the pointed arch of the public entrance to the audience chamber. None of the emirs paid attention to the petitioners who streamed past them into the room.
In the corner of the room farthest from the dais, Baibars stood alone. A head taller than anyone around him, he swung his white-turbaned head from side to side so that he could survey the room with his one good eye. His glance seemed to pass over Daoud without seeing him.
A side door to the throne room from the governor's private apartments swung open, and two officers of the halkha strode through.
One of the officers drew himself up and shouted, "The Beloved of God, the Victor of the Well of Goliath, El Malik al-Mudhaffar Qutuz!"
The buzz of conversation in the room at once stilled, and Daoud's heartbeat filled his ears.
Then a roar arose as Qutuz entered briskly, arrayed in a bejeweledgreen turban and a black and silver robe of honor. His chamberlain, a stout man carrying a basket, followed him.
The petitioners rushed forward, clamoring and waving their scrolls. The men of the halkha made no attempt to hold them back. A merchant in a blue robe was the first to reach Qutuz, and he hugged the sultan, weeping. He first thrust a small silk bag into Qutuz's hand, which disappeared quickly under the sultan's black robe, then pressed a scroll upon him.
Qutuz handed the scroll to his chamberlain, who put it into the basket.
The petitioners were the people of Islam, and it was their right, as it had been since the days of the Prophet, to clamor for their ruler's attention. And though they might shout and beg and even manhandle the sultan, he must endure it, because these were the richest men of the district, the men of highest rank, those on whom the sultan's power in this place depended.
Qutuz enjoyed, Daoud knew, playing father to his people. And though one might think the Sultan of El Kahira had wealth enough, he was not averse to increasing it with the gifts of gold and jewels offered him on occasions like this.
Qutuz moved slowly through the petitioners, head high, his oiled beard pointed like the prow of a majestic ship. A small, indulgent smile played about his lips. He allowed them to impede his progress to the throne. The petitioners crowded around him, some plucking at his sleeve, some falling at his feet, some pulling at the hem of his robe, even kissing it in their urgency.
Another man, this one a sheikh in desert robes, seized the sultan in an embrace, bellowing his entreaty. This time when Qutuz stopped he disappeared behind a forest of upraised arms.
The babble of voices, each one trying to outshout the other, made Daoud's head ache. Men elbowed those beside them and pushed their hands into one another's faces. Daoud even saw one man claw his way up the backs of two who stood in front of him and climb over their shoulders to get closer to Qutuz.
From his position near the front of the hall Daoud could catch only glimpses of the sultan's green turban from time to time and follow his progress by watching where the turmoil was fiercest. The melee was like one of those towering dust storms that whirl across the desert, and Qutuz was at the center.
When Daoud judged that Qutuz was halfway to the throne, he began to move.
He plunged now into that black cave where God dwelt somewhere in infinite spaces. Doubt and fear he left at the mouth of that cave. He must give all his strength and will to what he was about to do.
He charged into the storm around Qutuz. Though these magistrates and merchants were feeble compared to him, their frenzy and the mere weight of their struggling bodies formed a wall that took all his strength to break through. Each man was so intent upon his own desperate need to reach the sultan that none of them seemed to feel Daoud forcing his way past them.
Qutuz saw him coming. The dark brown eyes met Daoud's, questioning, frowning. A Mameluke emir of Daoud's rank did not usually join a crowd of petitioners. The sultan's arms and hands were full of scrolls. His chamberlain had long since been carried away from him in the crush.
"Oh, Sultan, grant my prayer!" Daoud shouted in a loud voice.
For your death.
Qutuz's jaw clenched, and his eyes widened in the beginning of fear as Daoud bore down on him.
Daoud had reached the center of the storm. Color and movement whirled about him. Shouts deafened him. He forced his mind to blot out the chaos all around and to focus totally on Qutuz. He made himself as oblivious to the shrieking men around him as they were to him.
He threw his arms around the sultan, crushing the satin of his kaftan and his armload of scrolls against his body.
When Daoud's arms came together behind Qutuz's back, his right hand reached into his left sleeve and pulled the dagger from its sheath.
Qutuz's hands pushed against Daoud's chest. So tight was Daoud's embrace that he felt the sultan take a deep breath, to cry for help. They were locked together like lovers.
Daoud stretched out his right arm, and then with all the strength in that arm drove the dagger into the sultan's back. He struck for the center of the back, between two ribs, so that the point would reach and stop Qutuz's heart.
His thrust went true. The strong, lean body jerked violently, then went limp in his arms. Qutuz was a weight against him, sliding downward. Daoud was sure he was already dead, because he did not move or cry out.
Triumph blazed up within him. He had done it. He had killed the sultan.
Daoud let go of the dagger, hilt-deep in Qutuz's back. He stepped backward quickly, pressing himself into the crowd around them. His heartbeat was thundering in his ears and his knees were quivering.
Qutuz toppled toward him as he moved back.
"The sultan falls!" a man next to him screamed.
Hands reached out to catch Qutuz as he fell. Cries of "The sultan has fainted!" "God help us!" "The sultan is hurt!" went up all around Daoud.
He continued to back away through the crowd. If attacked, he had decided, he would draw his saif and fight. If he must die, he desperately wanted to die fighting, not on the headsman's block.
He had not truly believed he could strike Qutuz down without being seen, but no one was yet pointing at him.
"Blood!" someone shrieked. "A dagger!" The shrieks and prayers were deafening.
All the men who had clustered around the fallen sultan backed away. Daoud was carried farther from the dead Qutuz by the crowd. Craning his neck over the heads around him, he could see the body lying sprawled face down on the green marble floor, a spreading bright red stain in the black and silver robes around the dagger's hilt.
The babble of voices was so confused that Daoud could no longer tell what anyone was saying. Mansur ibn Ziri, commander of the halkha, and Anis, master of the hunt, pushed their way through to Qutuz's body, while some men still clutching scrolls ran from the chamber. They must fear even being in the room where the sultan was murdered.
I have killed the sultan.
Though his whole body shook with reaction and his limbs felt weak, his heart was full of joy.
His hand on his sword hilt, Daoud surveyed the large chamber. The Mameluke emirs were looking, not at Qutuz's body, but at one another. And they kept glancing at Daoud.
Theyhad seen Daoud throw his arms around Qutuz. They knew who had killed Qutuz. And they knew why he had done it.
Baibars still stood apart in a far corner. His good eye met Daoud's, but his face was a mask.
As the last of the local men fled the place of death, a silence fellover the room. The Mamelukes were alone with the body of their sultan. The men of the halkha, the sultan they were sworn to protect now dead, looked at the emirs. The only voices now were the murmured words of Mansur and Anis as they bent over Qutuz's body.
With an effort Mansur pulled the dagger from Qutuz's back. Anis grunted when he saw the twisting blade.
Heart hammering, Daoud tensed himself. Would Mansur turn and accuse him? He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was behind him and took gliding steps backward until his shoulders were pressed against a pillar.
Mansur said in a voice that carried through the room, "The flame dagger. Our lord has been struck down by the Hashishiyya."
Daoud almost laughed aloud with relief. With an immense effort he held himself rigid, his fists clenched so tightly at his side they hurt. Mansur was telling everyone who knew what had happened what they were to tell everyone who did not know.
Would anyone contradict Mansur? No one did. Relief spread through him.
Carefully, almost delicately, Mansur laid the dagger on the floor beside Qutuz. He stood up, wiping his hands on his mantle.
With rapid strides the commander of the halkha crossed the chamber toward Baibars. To arrest him? What choice had Mansur made?
To bow deeply before Baibars. He made a graceful, sweeping gesture toward the vacant throne.
"My Lord, the power is yours."
Praise to God!
Baibars's single-eyed gaze paused for an instant, Daoud saw, as it fell upon each of the emirs. In the look he fixed upon each there was both question and challenge.
Some of the emirs bowed their turbaned heads slightly. Others, like Kalawun al-Elfi, simply looked back at him in silence, and that was assent enough.
Baibars raised his right hand toward the vaulted ceiling, the wide sleeve of his robe falling away from his powerful arm.
"With Your help, O God." He did not shout, but his deep voice carried through the room.
Slowly but with a terrible firmness he walked across the room. So quiet was the audience chamber that Daoud at the other end of the room could hear the scrape of Baibars's boots on the threemarble steps to the throne. Baibars turned and sat on the throne, resting his hands on its arms. He leaned back a little, and his eye seemed to rest on some spot above and beyond the heads of those who watched him.
Mansur ibn Ziri turned to an officer of the halkha. "Let runners be sent to El Kahira. Let them tell the people, 'Pray for God's mercy on El Malik al-Mudhaffar Qutuz. Pray for the long life of your Sultan Baibars.'"
Let me hail him first, thought Daoud.And if he wants to kill me for what I did, let it be now.
Trembling with exhilaration, he strode through the crowd and up the center of the room toward the throne. "Lord Sultan!" he said in a loud voice, "El Malik Dahir! Victorious King!"
He dropped to his knees and prostrated himself, striking his forehead on the hard, cold floor.
Hearing a knock at his chamber door, Daoud rolled up the slip of thin parchment and dropped it into the purse at his belt.
Sordello entered at his command, greeting and saluting him.
"I see you are one of us, Messer David."
"One of who?"
Sordello pointed to the writing desk where Daoud had been standing and the sheaf of quill pens. "One who had his letters. I write down all my songs."
Daoud had no wish to feel kinship with Sordello. The bravo had not bothered to clean the whiskers from his face for several days, and there was untidy-looking gray stubble, like fur, under his nose and on his cheeks and chin. A man should grow a beard, Daoud thought, or keep his cheeks smooth.
"What brings you to me?" Daoud asked curtly.
"The Count de Gobignon sent a message to me by way of Ana, the Bulgarian woman. Would you care to read it?"
De Gobignon's note read: "The lady Sophia, Cardinal Ugolini's niece, has represented herself to me as an honest woman who knows nothing of politics and takes sides neither for nor against the Tartar alliance. Find out if she is telling the truth. Report to me in three days' time."
Daoud felt pleased with himself. Turning Sordello into a spy for himself was yielding useful results. It was not surprising that the Frenchman was suspicious of Sophia. She was so close to the party opposing the alliance; how could he think otherwise? But now,Daoud thought happily, they had the means to put his suspicions to rest.
Daoud handed the note back to Sordello, saying, "That is short and to the point, but he does not tell you how you are to learn whether Madonna Sophia is telling him the truth or not."
"I could tell him that I have sung at dinner for the cardinal's household," said Sordello. "I could report a conversation at table which shows Madonna Sophia to be the innocent he would like to think she is."
"You keep talking about your songs and your singing," Daoud said. "Answer me truly—are you any good at those things?"
Sordello shrugged. "I could claim to be one of the finest trovatores in all Italy, but if I did, you would rightfully ask why I have to make my living as a hired man-at-arms. So I will say only that I am good enough that I wish I could spend all my time making poetry and singing."
A worthy wish, Daoud thought. Hearing his careful self-estimate, Daoud's respect for the man increased a bit.
"Then youwillsing at the cardinal's table. Your suggestion is a good one. I will also arrange for you to be with Madonna Sophia at other times as well, so that you can honestly claim to know something about her."
"Very good, Messer David." Sordello turned to go, then turned back again. "Messere?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think you might send me on another trip to paradise sometime soon?" The eager light in his eyes sickened Daoud.
"Do your work well, and I will see that you are properly rewarded."
Sordello left, and Daoud brooded over his shame at what he had done to the man—turned him into something less than human, less than animal, a kind of demon with a single appetite.
After a moment he forced himself to put that out of his mind. A fighter in jihad, holy war, must do many an ugly thing, but all was for the greater glory of God.
The hymn "O Salutaris Hostia," sung by over a thousand strong voices abetted by several thousand more uncertain ones, echoed from the hillsides. The entire clergy of Orvieto, from the pope down to the lowliest subdeacon, had come out of the city, and so had most of the lay population. But Daoud's attention was drawn, not by the great procession coming down the cliffside road, or by the crowd in the meadow around him, but by the astonishing change that had come over the landscape.
It was as if some devastating disease had struck all the growing things of the region, from the tallest trees to the very blades of grass. The leafless groves raised black, skeletal arms up to the bright blue sky, like men praying. The vineyards on the slopes were gray clumps of shrubbery. The meadow grass on which he stood was yellow and brittle; it broke to bits underfoot.
He had known, of course, that such changes came over the European landscape each winter. But to see such desolation with his own eyes was more amazing, even frightening, than he realized it would be. Soon the Christians would be celebrating the birth of Jesus the Messiah, whom they believed was God. Seeing death in the landscape all around him, Daoud found it easier to understand why these idolators might feel driven to worship a God who rose from the dead.
He hoped it would help his mission that the wave of enthusiasm for the miracle at Bolsena had swept everyone in Orvieto from the pope on down. He hoped they would have neither time to think about the Tartars nor interest in dealing with them.
But this miracle and all the talk about it made him uneasy. The frenzy in the Christian faces around him might be turned, he thought, in any direction. It must be the same frenzy that had driven generations of crusaders to hurl themselves against the Dar al-Islam.
Fra Tomasso was at the very center of the furor. It was he who had sent word from Bolsena that in his judgment the miracle was indeed authentic. Might this new preoccupation distract him from his efforts to prevent the alliance?
And there was something else, something that revived a terror buried deep in Daoud's soul. Jesus, the crucified God of the Christians, stirred in this miracle. As a boy growing up among Muslims, Daoud had renounced belief in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Now he felt again his father's ghostly hand on his shoulder, and the hairs lifted on the back of his neck.
"Look at the sick people and the cripples lining the road," said Lorenzo. "I would not have thought there could be that many infirm people in Orvieto." He and Daoud stood side by side, at a spot where the road between Bolsena and Orvieto passed through a wide valley, their horses tethered in a nearby grove of poplar trees. They had moved back a few paces from the edge of the road to make room for a dozen men and women on stretchers, wrapped in blankets, who had been carried here by Franciscan friars from their hospital.
All around Lorenzo and Daoud stood Cardinal Ugolini's men-at-arms, servants, and maids. Ugolini's entire household was here except for the few of highest rank who would march with the cardinal, who marched behind the pope.
Fearing that Scipio would go uncared for, Lorenzo had brought him along, holding him on a thick leather leash. The gray boarhound paced nervously and growled from time to time.
In the meadow across the road the pope's servants had erected a pavilion without walls—just a roof of silk, gold and white, the papal colors, coming to three points held up by a dozen or more stout poles. There Pope Urban would say mass after receiving the sanctified cloth.
Daoud glanced down the road to where Sophia stood. They had agreed that in public it would be best for them to appear far apart from each other. She was dressed as any well-to-do Italian woman might be, her hair covered with a round, flat linen cap bound under her chin, a midnight-blue chemise with long, tight sleeves, and a sleeveless gown of light blue silk over it. Beside Sophia stood a slighter figure in gray veil and gown. They had their heads close together, talking.
"Who is that with Sophia?" Daoud asked Lorenzo.
"Oh, Rachel, I think." Lorenzo studiously examined Scipio's head for fleas.
"She appears in public with Rachel?" Daoud said angrily.
Lorenzo shrugged. "No one knows who Rachel is." He slapped Scipio's rump. "Sit."
"I did not like Sophia visiting Rachel," Daoud said. "Even less do I like their being seen together in public."
Trumpets shrilled and drums sounded as the hymn came to an end. Daoud looked toward Orvieto. The road that wound down past the gray-yellow folds of tufa was filled with people.
At the head of the procession walked the pope in gold and white, and the cardinals of the Sacred College in bright red. The middle of the long line was bright with the purples of archbishops and bishops and the variegated raiment of the nobility. The rear was dark with the grays and browns of common folk.
From this distance Daoud could not see Pope Urban's face, but there was no mistaking the beehive-shaped mitre with its glittering triple crown.
Lucky for the pope the weather was cold, thought Daoud. Wearing those heavy vestments on a hot day would surely kill the old man. That today he chose to go on foot showed how much this miracle meant to him.
Daoud turned and looked to the west. The marchers from Bolsena were close, and people were falling to their knees all over the meadow.
I will have to kneel, too, and seem to worship their idols. Forgive me, God.
Daoud saw Sophia and Rachel drop to their knees.
Surely they think as little of this as I do.
Coming toward Daoud from the west was a great banner that offended his every religious feeling. Painted on the red cloth were the head and shoulders of a bearded man, Jesus the Messiah, with huge, staring eyes. On his head was a plaited wreath of thorns, and behind it a disk of gold. From the nail holes that pierced his upraised palms fell painted drops of blood.
An idol, such as the Koran forbade and the Prophet had come into this world to destroy.
And then he thought of the great crucifix that hung in the chapel of Château Langmuir outside Ascalon, and his mother taking him by the hand to pray before it.
"BecauseHelived and died here," he remembered her sweet voice saying, "that is why we are here in this Holy Land."
He felt momentarily dizzy. They, his mother and father and all these people here, thought that the bearded man, with the wounds of crucifixion in his hands, was God. And he had believed it once, too.
No, God was One. He could not be a Father who reigned in heaven and a Son who came down to earth. God was glorious and all-powerful; He could not be crucified. God was the Creator; He could not be part of His creation.
And yet—the cold hand still lay upon his shoulder. A gentle hand, but it frightened him.
All around Daoud the infidels were throwing themselves on their knees, even on their faces, in the road before the advancing banner. A man in a black robe was walking before the banner bearer. Despite his long gray beard there was something about his staring eyes and wide, downturned mouth that reminded Daoud of a fish.
The bearded priest, Father Kyril, was holding up by its corners a white square of linen. That, thought Daoud, must be the altar cloth on which the drops of blood had fallen from the wafer of bread. As he walked he slowly, solemnly, turned from side to side to allow people on both sides of the road to see the cloth.
"Kneel, David, for God's sake!" Lorenzo ground out beside him.
His curiosity had made him forget himself. He dropped to his knees, feeling dry grass prick his skin through his silk hose. Lorenzo knelt beside him, gripping the dog's collar. The sick and crippled people lying beside the road were wailing and holding up their arms in supplication.
Again Daoud asked God's forgiveness for his seeming idolatry.
Father Kyril and the altar cloth were only a dozen paces away, and now Daoud could see the brown bloodstains on the white cloth. Amazingly they appeared to form the profile of a bearded man.
As a cold wind against his spine, he felt his long-buried fear of the wrath of the Christian God.
The big hound, right beside him, let out a thunderous bark. Daoud started with surprise. His heart pounded in his chest.
Scipio barked and barked, so loudly Daoud put his hands over his ears. Father Kyril took a step backward. People who had been venerating the bloodstained cloth turned with angry shouts. Thehands of the men-at-arms escorting Father Kyril twitched, groping for the weapons they were not carrying.
"Scipio!" Lorenzo gave the hound a sharp slap on the side of the head. The dog kept up its barking. Father Kyril had stopped walking and looked frightened. He clutched the stained cloth to his breast. At a word from him, Daoud thought, the crowd would tear to pieces the dog, Lorenzo, and perhaps Daoud himself.
Lorenzo grabbed Scipio's muzzle with both hands, forcing it shut. Scipio kept up a growling through his teeth. Lorenzo growled back, "Be still!" He wrestled the dog down until the lean gray head was pressed into the grass.
"Barking is the only way he knows to greet the Savior," said Lorenzo with an ingratiating grin, looking up at the people glaring at him.
"There could be a devil in that dog," a brown-robed friar said ominously. But Scipio relaxed under Lorenzo's hands, and those around Daoud and Lorenzo turned back to the procession.
Daoud was furious. Lorenzo's damned dog had been like a stone in his shoe ever since they set out from Lucera. Lorenzo was a valuable man, but he insisted on attaching others to him who caused endless trouble. Like the dog. Like Rachel.
A scream rose above the music, so shrill Daoud put his hands over his ears again.
"My God! I can see!" A woman was standing, clasping her hands together and flinging them wide again and again. One of the Franciscans threw his arms around her, whether to rejoice with her or restrain her, Daoud could not tell. But she pushed him away and went stumbling after Father Kyril. From the way her hands pawed the air, Daoud suspected she could not see very well, but she shouted with joy all the same.
She joined a crowd of people, many of them waving walking sticks and crutches, others with bloodstained bandages trailing from their hands. One man, Daoud saw to his horror, was missing a foot and was limping along in the dirt road, without the aid of crutch or cane, on one whole leg and one stump bound with a dirty cloth that ended at the ankle. His face was red, sweat-slick, and blindly ecstatic.
Behind the rejoicing invalids walked rows of clergymen from Bolsena. Daoud recognized a familiar figure in the foreground, Fra Tomasso d'Aquino, his cheeks crimson with cold and exertion, his black mantle blowing in the wind. He had spent the last two weeks,Daoud knew, in Bolsena investigating the miracle and overseeing preparations for the altar cloth to be brought to Pope Urban.
What did he think now, Daoud ached to know. Would he still work as hard to defeat the Tartar alliance? Did this miracle mean Daoud had gained ground or lost ground?
A sudden silence fell over the meadow. Pope Urban, with trembling hands upraised, approached Father Kyril, whose back was to Daoud.
Father Kyril went down on his knees before the pope, holding up the white cloth over his head like a banner. Then the pope also knelt, somewhat shakily, with the assistance of two young priests in white surplices and black cassocks. Urban reached up for the cloth and pulled it down to his face and kissed it.
He is seeing that cloth for the first time, and yet he seems to have no doubt that he is looking at the blood of his God that died.
Daoud felt a chill that was colder than the December air.
Daoud pushed his way to the edge of the open pavilion, where the pope, assisted by Father Kyril and Fra Tomasso, was saying high mass. A band of musicians blew on hautboys and clarions, sawed at vielles, stroked harps, and thumped on drums.
The white cloth with its strange rust-colored stain was stretched on a gilded frame above the altar. Daoud felt uneasy whenever he looked at it. Just when it seemed he had found the key to wrecking the union of Tartars and crusaders—a miracle. What did it portend?
Memory showed him his mother and father celebrating Easter, standing hand in hand before the altar at Château Langmuir, receiving Holy Communion—the Sacred Host—from their chaplain. When he was old enough, his mother had told him he, too, would be allowed to take Jesus into his heart by swallowing the Communion wafer. What a strange belief! But at the time it had seemed beautiful.
I bear witness that God is One, that Muhammad is the Messenger of God....
He glanced around the pavilion, and saw many faces he had come to know in the last few months. There was Cardinal de Verceuil with his big nose and small mouth. There was Ugolini, the size of a child, dressed up as a cardinal, blinking rapidly, looking rather bored. In the front row of standing worshipers were John and Philip, the Tartars, in silk robes. Beside them, Friar Mathieu, theFranciscan, cleverest of Daoud's opponents. Daoud gauged him to be a genuinely holy man, if an infidel could be called holy.
And next to him was the pale young face of the Count de Gobignon.
As Daoud looked at him, de Gobignon looked back, and his eyes widened slightly.
One day, Count, you will die by my hand.
The mass began, and even though there must have been five thousand people in the valley, there was complete silence. The quiet was eerie. At a Muslim religious celebration this large, the crowd would be chanting in unison, there would be music, dervishes singing and dancing; impromptu sermons would be delivered in various parts of the crowd by mullahs or by ordinary men moved to speak. Here all was focused on the center.
Pope Urban rose to speak. He had removed his mitre to say mass. His white hair, his long beard, and his trailing mustache seemed much more sparse than they had been when Daoud had first seen the pope, last summer. His face was as pale as his hair, and his hands trembled.
A few months ago Daoud had heard Urban's voice rise robustly from the center of his body. Today his voice was high and thin and seemed to come from his throat. He told the story of the miracle of Bolsena, and explained that Father Kyril was a priest from Bohemia who had developed doubts about whether Christ was really present in each and every consecrated Communion wafer. Could a small piece of bread really become the body of Jesus when a priest said a few words over it?
Where is the illness?Daoud's Sufi-trained eye told him it was deep within Pope Urban; it had sunk its claws into his chest.
I do not think this pope has long to live.
Ugolini had told Daoud that Urban wanted desperately, before he himself died, to strike a death blow against the Hohenstaufen family. He wanted Count Charles d'Anjou, brother of the King of France, to wrest the crown of Sicily from Manfred, but King Louis had thus far forbidden his brother to make war on Manfred.
King Louis wanted a different war, a joint war of Christians and Tartars against Islam. Thus far, the pope had withheld his approval of any Christian monarch's allying himself with the Tartars.
As Urban heard the approaching wings of the Angel of Death, might he be more inclined to grant Louis what he wanted?
The crowd was no longer silent. Daoud heard waves of murmuringrun through it as people relayed the pope's words to those who were too far away to hear him. He noticed now the hawklike profile of the Contessa di Monaldeschi. She was seated in a chair in front of the worshipers on the side of the pavilion opposite Daoud. A plump young boy in red velvet stood beside her.
Seeing her, Daoud looked for Marco di Filippeschi. He could not be sure, but the back of a dark head on this side of the pavilion looked like that of the Filippeschi chieftain. Those organizing this ceremony would, of course, be careful to separate the leaders of the two feuding families.
Pope Urban continued: Father Kyril, realizing that he was doomed to eternal damnation if he did not overcome his doubts, had set out on a pilgrimage to Rome. But Rome had fallen on evil days, its streets turned into battlefields by the Ghibellini followers of the vile Hohenstaufens, and Father Kyril found no peace there. He decided to ask the prayers of the pope himself at Orvieto. That decision was rewarded before he even reached here. Two months ago, while saying mass at Bolsena, on his way to Orvieto, and praying that his doubts be resolved, Father Kyril raised the Sacred Host over his head after the Consecration, and hundreds of witnesses saw drops of blood fall from it to the cloth spread on the altar.
And now—Pope Urban gestured to the cloth spread above the altar—we can behold with our own eyes the blood of Christ Himself and see this proof—which, having faith, we should not need to see—that Jesus lives in the Blessed Sacrament.
"We propose to offer triple thanks to God for His generosity in granting us this miracle," said Pope Urban. "First, let the day on which Father Kyril saw the Host bleed be celebrated henceforward as the feast of the Body of Christ, Corpus Christi. Let this be proclaimed throughout Christendom.
"Second, to house and display this most sacred relic, the blood of Our Savior Himself, let a great and beautiful new cathedral be built here at Orvieto, which will forever be the center for the veneration of the body of Christ."
Daoud sighed inwardly at the thought of still another great building dedicated to idolatry.
Yet the chapel at Château Langmuir had been such a lovely and quiet place.
As the pontiff's words were repeated, the murmuring grew louder.Someone near Daoud said, "But the miracle happened in Bolsena." Someone else hushed the person who protested.
I should not wonder if these cities went to war with each other over such a relic, thought Daoud.
"Finally," said Pope Urban, oblivious of the discontent his previous proclamation had caused among the citizens of Bolsena, "we command that all priests of Holy Church shall read a special office on the feast of Corpus Christi of each year, commemorating this miracle. God has willed that there should be dwelling with us here at Orvieto the most gifted scholar and writer of this age, Fra Tomasso d'Aquino."
Daoud saw that Fra Tomasso's face was almost as bright a red as a cardinal's hat.
"And we charge our beloved and most gloriously gifted son, Fra Tomasso, with the duty of writing this office."
D'Aquino rose heavily from a bench on the right side of the altar. Puffing, sweating despite the chill of the day, he bowed to the pope with hands clasped before him.
A great honor, that must be, Daoud thought. Fra Tomasso was silent for the moment, but he would write words that would be repeated by thousands of priests all over the world as long as Christians celebrated this feast. D'Aquino was more than ever indebted to the pope. If the pope were to want d'Aquino's help in persuading the French to go to war against Manfred, he would collect that debt.
Looking at Fra Tomasso as he sat listening to Pope Urban talk on about his plans for the feast, for the cathedral, for the office, Daoud saw a glow on those rounded features that made him uneasy. Daoud had felt that with Cardinal Ugolini and Fra Tomasso stirring up opposition to the alliance throughout Christendom, he had but to wait for the plan to die of old age.
He could no longer be sure of that. Fra Tomasso's opposition to the alliance had a fragile basis at best, and this miracle might have shattered it.
The blood of the Messiah had power to change the course of events. Daoud felt himself trembling.
Daoud's hands were cold and his heart was racing. He had been waiting all morning for Ugolini to come back from the Dominican convent.
He sat at Ugolini's worktable, trying to read. He had found an old book in Arabic in Ugolini's library, theAphorismsof ibn Zaina, a book Saadi had often praised. At another time he would have devoured it, but his mind refused to follow the words. Sending Ugolini to Fra Tomasso was his final effort to learn what had gone wrong and to see what might be saved.
What would Fra Tomasso say to Ugolini? At least Ugolini could be trusted not to make things worse, as de Verceuil had for their opponents.
This was the Christian month of February, and the chill that pervaded Daoud's body came from the air around him as well as from his troubled spirit. The small wood fire that burned on the hearth beside the table did little to dispel the cold in the room.
In the two months that followed the coming of the bloodstained altar cloth to Orvieto, Tomasso d'Aquino had gradually, but completely, reversed himself. According to a Dominican in Ugolini's pay, the philosopher had sent new letters to the European kings confessing that his opposition to an alliance between Christians and Tartars had been an error. At least three Italian cardinals had told Ugolini that Fra Tomasso had come to them personally with the same message. Cardinal Gratiano Marchetti whispered that Pope Urban, who did not expect to live through the winter, had promised the stout friar a voice in the election of the next pope. Where Urban had been neutral toward the alliance, perhaps even opposed, something now caused him to favor it. Just as the tumbling of a single grain of sand could bring a whole dune crashing down to bury a caravan, so those drops of blood at Bolsena had been the start of an avalanche of reversals.
Daoud awaited Ugolini's coming, and the message he bore, as a man accused of a capital crime awaits the verdict of his judge.
And if it was true that Fra Tomasso had irrevocably turned against them? Daoud must begin all over again with a new plan to stop the alliance.
The fire gave off the sour odor of strange substances Ugolini had previously burned on the hearth. Daoud pushed himself out of the cardinal's chair and went to get a breath of fresh air. He opened the casement window and saw Ugolini's sedan chair, borne by four servants, turning in toward the door of the mansion.
The cardinal's chair passed the shop across the street, where rows of large and small pots, brightly painted with floral designs, were laid out on a large blanket. The potter and his wife, bundled up in heavy cloaks, were calling out for the cardinal's blessing. Daoud saw a tiny hand emerge from the curtains of the sedan chair, closed against the February cold. The hand shaped the sign of the cross in the air as the shopkeepers fell to their knees.
Daoud wondered whether the potter and his wife felt they had an unlucky spot to offer their wares. That was where, last August, de Verceuil's archers had shot down two men in the crowd when the Tartars were entering the city. And it was in front of that shop, shuttered then for the night, that Alain de Pirenne's body had been found. Had the shopkeeper or his wife seen anything, and were they keeping silent only out of fear? Months had gone by, but the podesta, d'Ucello, was still investigating the killing, questioning and requestioning everyone who might know something about it.
Daoud paced the room anxiously until Ugolini came in, throwing his fur-trimmed cape and his wide-brimmed red hat to a servant. He sat down in the chair Daoud had been using. Daoud closed the door.
As a man dying of thirst begs for water, Daoud prayed for good news.
But Ugolini's pale face, haggard eyes, and downturned mouth told a different tale. Daoud's heart plunged into despair.
"Has he turned against us?" He hated the note of pleading he heard in his voice.
Ugolini went to his worktable, sighed, and sat down heavily. His eyes seemed to be crossed, staring down his pointed nose at the painted skull that grinned back at him. His restless fingers found the dioptra lying on the table, and he started to roll the brass tube in his hand.
"I used every argument I could think of," he said. "I even repeated back to him the arguments he used in the letters and sermons he wrote against the Tartars."
"Arguing with Fra Tomasso is like trying wrestle a djinn," Daoud said. "I admire your courage in even trying."
Ugolini raised a finger. "I thought I was getting somewhere with him. He kept trying to change the subject. He kept asking me, if the earth moves while the sun stands still—he seems to be convinced that is what happens—then what path does the earth follow? I told him that the Greeks"—he stopped and stared at Daoud—"Oh, never mind the Greeks. The point is, he was mocking me."
"Mocking you?"
"Yes, talking about the heavenly bodies. He was referring to that scroll you gave me to present to him, that work of Aristotle. What a waste, giving that to him. What would I not give to have it myself."
"Why did he keep changing the subject? Did he never tell you where he stands on the alliance?"
Ugolini closed his eyes and nodded. "Yes, finally. He said he made a grave mistake opposing the alliance. He said that if Christians do not seize this chance, the Tartars may be converted to the religion of Mohammed, as those in Russia already have been, which would be the worst of all possible disasters." He opened his eyes and looked at Daoud. "We have lost him."
"Is there nothing we can do to change his mind?"
"I truly believe it is hopeless."
Hearing those words, Daoud felt drained. He sagged against the wall of Ugolini's cabinet, wanting to sit on the floor but unable to do so because then he could not see the cardinal.
"It is Urban who has done this to us," said Ugolini. "He must have decided that supporting the alliance is the only way he can get French help against King Manfred. He tempted Fra Tomasso with something far more valuable to him than an old scroll. He offered him greater glory and power in the Church."
The Angel of Death, thought Daoud, had done it. Feeling himself mortally ill, the pope had realized he could no longer bargain with the King of France on an equal basis. He would have to offer Louis what he wanted, permission to ally himself with the Tartars.
"Will the pope now support the alliance openly?" If Daoud chose to fight, he thought, he would have to strike hard and fast. He would have to strike at the Tartars.
Despite the downward turn of his fortunes, Daoud felt a strange lightness of heart as he considered the prospect. He had tried every other way of preventing Tartars and Christians from forming an alliance—persuasion, bribery, the spreading of lies.
Now he could turn to the way he was best at. War.
"Urban will not come out for the alliance at once," said Ugolini. "Before Bolsena, Fra Tomasso and my Italian colleagues in the Sacred College stirred up so much feeling against the Tartars that Urban would lose support all over Europe if he were to call now for a pact between Christians and Tartars. So he must move slowly, with Fra Tomasso now working with him, winning approval for the alliance."
"What if the French sent an army to him now?" Daoud asked.
Ugolini laughed. "Do you think King Louis of France can sow dragon's teeth and have an army spring up in his fields overnight? He would have to summon the great barons of France. They would have to decide whether they support his cause, then assemble the lesser barons and knights. Supplies must be gathered, money found to pay the knights and men-at-arms. It can take years to raise an army big enough to wage a war."
The Mamelukes would be ready to ride in a day.
How had the crusaders managed to make any inroads at all in the Dar al-Islam?
"If the pope is not ready to declare for the alliance, there is time," said Daoud. "Nothing is settled yet."
"Time for what? What will you do now?"
He pushed himself away from the wall, went to a mullioned window, and pulled open one of the casements. To the northwest a tower of orange brick with square battlements looked arrogantly down upon the huddled masses of peaked red roofs. From the tower fluttered the orange and green banner of the Monaldeschi. There the Tartars were.
He turned from the window and moved slowly toward Ugolini's table.
"I am sorry," he said as gently as he could. "This is not ended."
Ugolini had been playing with the dioptra. He dropped it with a clank.
"What do you mean?" Fear made his voice shrill and quavering.
"I mean, I must attack the Palazzo Monaldeschi."
"Attack the Monaldeschi!" It was almost a scream.
Daoud spread his hands. "I have no choice."
Ugolini sprang to his feet. "Pazzia! You are mad!"
It is you who are almost mad, with terror, Daoud thought. He was going to have trouble with Ugolini, no question.
Aloud he said only, "We will discuss it. You can help us plan. Pardon me, Your Eminence, while I send for Lorenzo."
"It will have to be late at night, of course," said Lorenzo. "And I would think a Friday evening would be best, when the men-at-arms will be off their guard and many of them out carousing. But it finally depends on when Marco di Filippeschi says his family's men can be ready. They need to buy weapons."
Daoud and Lorenzo stood by the cardinal's table while Ugolini paced with many short steps between the windows and the hearth. He muttered to himself, and his hands trembled as he ran them through his tufts of white hair.
"What of our men?" said Daoud.
"We have over two hundred now, scattered throughout the city," said Lorenzo.
If I could be in the palazzo before the fighting begins ...
Ugolini stopped his pacing and faced them. "You talk like moonstruck men! You would unleash a civil war right here in Orvieto?"
"Not us, Your Eminence," said Lorenzo. "Have not these two families been fighting for generations?"
"What is your objection?" said Daoud gently.
Ugolini fixed them with a ferocious glare. "For six months, half a year, I have lain awake imagining arrest, disgrace, torture, execution. Through miracles you have managed to carry out your plans without being caught. Now you want to launch still wilder plans—incredible, fantastic things. I have had enough. God has kept me alive this long. I will not tempt Him further."
"My dear Cardinal," Daoud said, "once the Tartars are dead, this will all be over. I will go back to Egypt. Lorenzo and Sophia will return to Manfred's kingdom. You will have nothing further to fear."
"You could have tried to kill the Tartars at any time since they came here," said Ugolini. "Why now?"
"I needed to create as much ill will as possible between Christians and Tartars," said Daoud. "If I had killed the Tartars at once, I could not have had them discredit themselves out of their own mouths. Fra Tomasso and your colleagues among the Italian cardinals could not have stirred up so much fear and hatred towardthem. Now, though, I have done all I can along those lines, and Fra Tomasso is already undoing what together we have accomplished."
"And why involve the Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi?" Ugolini pressed him.
"To make it seem that the Tartars have been killed by feuding Italians. Then Hulagu Khan will think again about whether he wants such people as his allies."
Ugolini shook his head. "I do not have to tell you, of all people, what war is like. And I think Messer Lorenzo, by the way he carries himself, has known battle more than once. You both know that chance rules every moment in war."
"True," said Daoud.
And if chance decided against them? For a moment he saw Sophia naked, being torn apart by the torturers' pincers. He almost shuddered, and had to hold himself rigid.
"I take it you intend to be part of this attack on the Monaldeschi," Ugolini went on.
"I do," said Daoud.
Ugolini threw up his hands as if Daoud had already proved his case for him. "Well then, what if someone recognizes you attacking the palace?"
"I will not openly lead. I will enter the palace and kill the Tartars."
"So," said Ugolini. "You will not just be somewhere in the street outside the Palazzo Monaldeschi. You will bein the palace. In the midst of all your enemies. Alone. Attempting to assassinate the Tartars. Tell me, does that sound like the plan of a reasonable, cautious man to you?"
Daoud thought it sounded as if he were, to put it as Ugolini had, tempting God. But Ugolini did not understand that Daoud had not only the skills of Mameluke, but had also received the secret training of the Hashishiyya fighters, the fedawi, whose powers many in the lands of Islam thought magical.
"I will be masked. I will be dressed in garments that will make it almost impossible to see me. I will not expose myself. I will move in darkness. I have been trained to find my way in darkness as surely as if it were sunlight."
Ugolini shook his head. "Understand me. I would not go on arguing with you like this did I not feel I am arguing for my life. And Tilia's, and the lives of those who depend on you. You mustadmit that you might be captured or killed. My house guest, found trying to murder the Tartar ambassadors."
Daoud spread his hands. "You would then denounce me. You say you never knew what a demon you had taken into your home."
Ugolini laughed loudly and bitterly. "Are our opponents fools? Do you really think they would believe me, even for a moment? After perhaps hundreds of people have been killed, after a civil war in Orvieto, anyone who is even suspect will die. The Monaldeschi, the French, the Church authorities, all will take their revenge. Surely you understand that."
Daoud's heart grew cold as he looked along the road Ugolini was describing and saw defeat, massacre, the hideous deaths of his comrades, and beyond that iron waves of crusaders and endless columns of Tartar horsemen sweeping over the Dar al-Islam. And he could not look into Ugolini's eyes and declare that all would turn out well.
But what would happen if he did nothing? He looked down that path and saw the same masses of crusaders and Tartars, saw the burning mosques, the emptied cities, the heaps of corpses. He saw the Gray Mosque in El Kahira ruined, his teacher Saadi hacked to pieces by crusader swords.
Then he heard words Saadi had spoken:We are God's instruments, by which He brings about that which He wills. The fool does nothing and leaves the outcome to God. The ordinary man acts and prays that God will grant a good result. The wise man acts and leaves the outcome to God.
He would act.
He turned to Lorenzo, standing near him by the cardinal's table.
"Your life is at stake in this. What do you think?"
Lorenzo's face was as grave as Daoud had ever seen it. "If the Filippeschi attack the Palazzo Monaldeschi, they will be driven off. But with more than five hundred men attacking the palace, it will be impossible for the French to guard the Tartars adequately. If you get in, kill them, and get out safely, I think we can hide our part in the fighting. If you are caught or killed, I think it is as the cardinal says. We are all doomed."
"Exactly!" cried Ugolini from where he stood behind his table. "Then why risk it?"
"Because we must," Lorenzo said to him. "If we do not stop the alliance by force, the pope will strike a bargain with the King of France. There will be a French army marching against my KingManfred, and after that crusaders and Tartars will fall upon Messer David's people."
Ugolini uttered a deep groan and sank into his chair.
Relief swept over Daoud. He had already decided to make the attempt on the Palazzo Monaldeschi even if Lorenzo opposed it, but to have Lorenzo side with him gave him more confidence that he could carry it off.
Lorenzo turned those somber eyes to him again. "It all depends on you. I am gambling that you can do it."
Daoud felt a powerful warmth toward the Sicilian. There were times when he had wished Lorenzo were not with him, times when he distrusted him. The foolishness of involving them with Rachel and her husband. The fact that Lorenzo was a Jew who had abandoned his religion. Even his dog was a nuisance. But at this moment to have Lorenzo's support made him feel as strong and confident as if the Mameluke orta he commanded had suddenly appeared in Orvieto.
He grinned at Lorenzo. "You proved how good a gambler you are by losing to de Verceuil."
Lorenzo chuckled. "What must we do first?"
Daoud said, "Arrange for me to meet secretly with Marco di Filippeschi. And send word to King Manfred that the pope and the French are about to reach agreement on the Tartar alliance, and when they do the French will come pouring into Italy. Tell him now is the time for his Ghibellino allies in the north to march on Orvieto."
Lorenzo nodded. "I will send one of my men to Lucera." He shook his head. "My God, how I wish I could go myself!"
"Once the Tartars are dead," Daoud said, "we will all go home. Now, find Sordello and send him to my room."
As Daoud left Ugolini's cabinet, he glanced back to see the little cardinal slumped over the table, knotting his fingers in his fuzzy white hair. He would have to spend more time with him, to build up his courage.
Sophia was standing in the hallway when Daoud emerged from his room that night, on his way to meet with the Filippeschi chieftain. He was not surprised to see her. Someone, Ugolini or Lorenzo, would have told her about his new plan. He beckoned her into his room and closed the door.
Each time the thought of defeat arose in his mind, he had felt thegreatest anguish over what it would mean for Sophia. That forced him to admit to himself how much he cared for her. Now that he looked into her amber eyes and told her what he intended to do, the pain he felt was sharper than ever. He wanted to persuade her that she had nothing to fear. But he knew that would be a lie.
He tried to keep what he said simple, practical. "You, like Sordello, will bear witness that Lorenzo and I had gone to Perugia while the Monaldeschi palazzo was under siege. Lorenzo has allies in Perugia who will confirm that."
Sophia stared at him with wide, solemn eyes. "You are risking everything." She reached out and seized his hand, gripping it urgently. "If they find out who you are while you are in the Monaldeschi palace, it will be the end for all of us."
He felt the strength in her fingers, the softness of her palm, and wanted to take her in his arms, but he held himself in check. There could be nothing between them as long as de Gobignon was alive.
"I know a hundred ways to get into a castle and out again," he said, wishing there had been time to share with her more of his life. "Once I am inside, I will search out and kill the two Tartars while all the armed men are occupied with the fighting outside. And then I will leave." He spread his hands to show how easy it would be.
Inwardly he was ashamed. He was preparing to sacrifice this woman's life, knowing that she might die a terrible death—rape, torture, mutilation, public execution. How could he face her at all? That he had made his decision in order to save hundreds of thousands of his people from slaughter, his faith from destruction, was no comfort at this moment alone with Sophia.