Simon told the cardinal he and Alain had been out late and had decided to stay at an inn rather than cross town during the dangerous night hours. Friar Mathieu came and stood beside him, greeting the two priests who had accompanied de Verceuil. They loftily eyed the old Franciscan's brown robe and responded with curt nods.
When Simon finished his recital, de Verceuil leaned forward, hissmall lower lip outthrust. "If you cannot protect your own knights, how can you protect the emissaries from Tartary?"
That was not a question but an assault, Simon decided, and required no answer. "We are doing everything we can to find his killer, Your Eminence."
"By God's footprints, I wish this were my bishopric!" de Verceuil exclaimed. "I would take a dozen men from that neighborhood and I would hang one man a day until the killer was found. I would have the man."
The door to the room where Alain lay swung open, and the stout podesta emerged. He stood silently glowering up at de Verceuil. Simon wondered whether d'Ucello had learned anything from looking at poor Alain's corpse.
"And what, Your Eminence, if the people of that neighborhood truly do not know who killed the Sire de Pirenne?" said Friar Mathieu.
Until that moment Simon had assumed Alain had met his death at the hands of some Orvietan cutthroat. If not such a one, then who? He remembered Giancarlo and the bravos he had met on the road. Alain's money had been taken, but not his weapons. And Giancarlo served David of Trebizond, and David served Ugolini. Was this Ugolini's way of protecting his niece's honor?
If Giancarlo had anything to do with it, Sordello ought to be able to find out.
"If we arrested all the men who live on the street where he was killed," said de Verceuil, "more than likely among them would be the man who did it. These Italians—shopkeepers by day and robbers by night."
The faces of the two priests with him tightened. Simon glanced at d'Ucello, and saw a flush darkening his brown cheeks.
"The people of that street are among the most respectable in Orvieto, Signore," the podesta growled. How delightful, Simon thought, if the odious de Verceuil and the odious d'Ucello were to tear into each other.
De Verceuil stared at the podesta in amazement and wrath, while the two priests turned their heads from one to the other in embarrassment. After a moment, one priest murmured de Verceuil's identity to d'Ucello, while the other softly told the cardinal who the podesta was.
"Forgive me, Your Eminence, if my tone was less respectfulthan you deserve," said d'Ucello, bowing to kiss de Verceuil's haughtily extended sapphire ring.
"I have encountered nothing but disrespect from Orvietans since I came here," said the cardinal, and Simon remembered that vile smear of dung on his cheek the day they arrived. "I had actually thought Orvieto had no governor."
"Forgive me again that I did not pay my respects to you before," said d'Ucello. He did not rise to the bait, Simon noticed. An intelligent man.
"A French knight has been murdered in your city, Podesta," de Verceuil said. "Regardless of your high opinion of the people of the quarter where it happened, I expect you to press them hard until you find the killer. A thing like this cannot happen without someone seeing something or hearing something."
That reminded Simon that no one had come forward to claim the reward he had offered. If someone had heard or seen something, that person was doubtless too frightened to speak of it.
"Your Eminence gives me most valuable advice," said d'Ucello. "I promise you, we shall not rest until the killer is found." His round body bobbed forward in a bow, and he turned on his heel, sword and daggers swinging, and marched away.
"Pompous little man," said de Verceuil. "And doubtless incompetent and treacherous."
The cardinal turned to Simon now. "Do not leave it to that watch commander to find the killer. The knight—what was his name?" Simon told him. "De Pirenne was your man, and you are responsible for his death. Put all the men under you to work hunting down the murderer. Do whatever has to be done. We must not let the death of a French knight go unavenged."
"As Your Eminence wills, so I will," said Simon.
De Verceuil raised a finger. "And we will have a splendid funeral. The pope himself will be present. Let the grandeur of the ceremony show that we French do not take the death of one of our number lightly. Let these sneaking Italians tremble before our wrath."
Again the two priests looked at each other, and one of them shrugged resignedly.
What barbarians we must seem to them.Simon's face grew hot with embarrassment.
"Canaglia! Give way or I will have your heart on a platter!"
Hearing the shout, Simon stifled a curse and turned to see arms waving, a man in helmet and leather chest armor fall back, pushed by another. The man shouting and pushing was Peppino, one of Simon's Venetian crossbowmen. The man Peppino had knocked down was Grigor, one of the Tartars' bodyguards.
No, dear God, not today!
Sunk in grief though he was, he would have to do something. For Alain. That today of all days, the day of Alain's funeral, might not be marred by brawling.
From his seat atop a black-caparisoned stallion in the gateway of the Monaldeschi courtyard, he looked down on a boiling mass of bright conical helmets, all of them now moving toward the action in the center of the yard. He kicked his horse's flanks and drove into the crowd. He had to break up the fight before it started.
The Armenian was on his feet and reaching for his dagger. And Peppino had his hand on the hilt of his own blade. Before Simon could reach them, Teodoro, whom Simon had appointed capitano of the crossbowmen after dismissing Sordello, forced his way between the two men. He turned his back on the Armenian and gave Peppino a violent shove with both hands.
"Stupido! Back in line!"
"What devil's work is this?" Simon demanded.
Teodoro turned and saluted Simon smartly. "Your Signory, Peppino is a fool. But the Armenians provoked him. They insist on marching before us in the cortege. Are we not to march behind the French knights?"
Idiots! What difference did it make? They had forgotten that this parade was for Alain; they thought it was for them. He felt a dull hatred for both the Venetians and the Armenians.
Simon sent for Ana, the multilingual Bulgarian woman, who translated for the Armenians Simon's explanation that the French knights must ride as an honor guard directly behind Alain's bier, and that since the Venetians were directly under the command of the French, they must come next. Also, no one must come between the Tartar ambassadors and their Armenian bodyguards; therefore the Venetians must precede the Armenians.
"Sergentes, get your men back into line!" Simon shouted at the leaders of the hundred Monaldeschi men-at-arms milling about in the courtyard along with the Venetians and the Armenians.
Simon spurred his horse back to the head of the procession, where he took his position just behind Alain's bier, which was already in the street.
The Sire de Pirenne lay upon a huge square of red samite edged with gold, draped over the flat bed of a four-wheeled cart. Red ribbons were woven into the spokes of the wheels. The two farm horses that drew the cart, chosen for their docility, also wore red surcoats. Red, for martyrdom. Red for the blood poor Alain had shed. Simon sighed inwardly and hoped that God considered Alain a martyr and had taken him up to heaven. Had he not died while in the service of the Church? Was this not a crusade in all but name?
Alain was dressed in a white linen surcoat and a white silk mantle. Simon, Henri de Puys and the other four knights had dressed him themselves. What agony! The struggle to get poor dead Alain's big frame into his garments had taken nearly an hour.
Thank heaven de Puys had stopped Simon from trying to dress Alain in his mail shirt and hose, as Simon had originally intended. De Puys pointed out that Alain's family were poor, and that Alain's younger brother would have need of the expensive armor. So the armor would be sent back to the Gobignon domain along with the news that Alain was dead.
Oh, the woe Alain's widowed mother and younger brother would feel when Simon's letter reached them! Friar Mathieu had helped him compose the impossible lines, but Simon still felt they were not gentle enough, not comforting enough. He hated himself for feeling relieved that Alain's family was too far away for him to deliver the news in person. He had done the best he could, sending the letter and Alain's armor to his chaplain at Château Gobignon with instructions to take it personally to the de Pirennes and read it to them, offering them all possible consolation, they being almost certainly unlettered.
Around Alain's waist was clasped his jeweled belt of knighthood, and to his leather boots were fastened his knight's silver spurs. His velvet-gloved hands, resting on his chest, grasped the hilt of his naked longsword. Simon would buy another sword for his brother. His helmet, polished to mirror brightness by his sobbing equerry, rested beside his blond head. His shield, square at the top and pointed at the bottom, blazoned with five black eaglets on a gold ground, lay crosswise at his feet. Those things Alain must take to his final rest.
Simon's stomach was a hollow of anguish. Those splendid arms, and Alain had never had a chance to use any of them.
A breeze stirred the curly yellow locks of the pale head that lay on a red silk pillow. The air of Orvieto had grown chilly in the three days since Alain's murder. The city had enjoyed almost summer weather until late in the fall, but now November had fallen upon it with icy talons. The sky this morning was a heavy purple-gray, and a dampness in the air foretold chill rain.
At the very head of the procession walked Henri de Puys, bareheaded but in full armor, leading Alain's riderless great horse. The cart bearing the body, driven by a servant in orange and green Monaldeschi livery, followed. Then came Simon and the other French knights.
Please, God, let nothing else unseemly happen today. Let us bury your servant the Sire Alain de Pirenne with honor.
He looked back and saw that the two Tartars, wearing their cylindrical caps adorned with red stones and their red and blue silk jackets, had mounted their horses. Because Alain was a warrior and they were warriors, they rode horses to honor him today.
The sight of them was a reproach to Simon. If he had thought only of the Tartars and not become involved with Sophia, Alain would be alive today.
After the Tartars, rows of spear points and bowl-shaped helmets glittered, the Monaldeschi retainers and men-at-arms. Behind the Monaldeschi banner, two green chevrons on an orange background, rose a curtained sedan chair draped with black mourning streamers. In it, Simon knew, were the contessa and her grandnephew.
Simon had been waiting for the contessa to appear. He raised his arm in a signal to de Puys, who began to walk southward, towardthe Corso, pulling the reins of Alain's horse. The wheels of the cart creaked into motion.
As the procession wound its way through the larger streets of Orvieto, the thought occurred to Simon that Alain's killer might be among the onlookers, one of the faces that watched, with little emotion, from the sidelines or looked out of a second-story window.
Sordello had sent word through Ana that among Giancarlo's hired bravos, none had any idea who might have stabbed Alain.
Simon knew what the Orvietans, most of them, must be saying.A French knight goes whoring and gets himself stabbed, and they give him the greatest funeral since Julius Caesar's.
A stab of guilt shot through him. To protect Sophia, he had told de Verceuil and d'Ucello that he and Alain had gone wenching. He had besmirched Alain's reputation.
The cortege stopped at every church in Orvieto, and before each Alain's body was blessed by two or three cardinals, who then with their entourages joined the long line of mourners. Looking back over his shoulder, Simon could no longer see the end of the procession. It disappeared around a distant turning in the street.
Not all Orvietans were without feeling. Many girls and young women wept, waved their handkerchiefs, and threw flowers from balconies to the handsome Frenchman, murdered in his prime. Alain would have welcomed more attention from them when he was alive, Simon thought bitterly.
At the convent of the Dominicans, a collection of brown stone buildings behind a high wall, the rotund Fra Tomasso d'Aquino emerged, followed by two dozen or more of his Dominican brothers, all in white wool tunics with black mantles. Three of the leading members of the preaching friars, the superior general, the father visitor for northern Italy, and the prior of the convent blessed the body. Fra Tomasso was to deliver the funeral sermon, a great honor for Alain. It must be downright painful for the fat friar to walk from his convent to the cathedral; that was an honor in itself.
But the sight of Fra Tomasso made Simon cold with anxiety, remembering how Sophia had told him that the stout Dominican had turned against the Tartars.
The one thing that might, even if only in a small way, make up for the infinite tragedy of Alain's death, was that important piece of information Sophia had unwittingly given Simon. And when Simon had told it to Friar Mathieu, the old Franciscan, feeling hehad no choice, had taken the news to de Verceuil. Simon hated to see him do that, but he had to agree that de Verceuil was the only one in their party whose position was exalted enough to permit him to make demands on Fra Tomasso.
De Verceuil had paid a call on the superior general of the Dominicans, but what went on behind the walls of the preaching friars' convent Simon and Friar Mathieu had never learned. In his usual infuriating way, de Verceuil had refused to talk about it.
At the gateway to his palace, Pope Urban, all in gold and white, met the procession. As Simon dismounted and knelt on the stone street to receive the pope's blessing, he noted that the old man's face was as pale as his vestments, and that his hands were trembling. Had Alain's murder affected him so, or was he ill? Urban was flanked by six cardinals in broad-brimmed red hats and brilliant red robes. On his right were three French cardinals, including de Verceuil. Beside him was Guy le Gros, whom Simon had met at the pope's council.
Le Gros looked angry. Simon hoped he was angry about Alain's murder; every Frenchman in Orvieto should be. But what a shame that Alain had to die in order that all these people care about him.
On Urban's left were three Italians, the diminutive Ugolini standing right beside the pope. The sight of him was a blow to Simon's heart. Simon had been in his mansion wooing Sophia when Alain was murdered. Alain's bleeding body had lain across the street from Ugolini's mansion, for how many hours?
And where was Sophia? Anxiously Simon scanned the crowd for a sight of her. Would she not come? Had Alain's death frightened her? Would he ever see her again?
He despised himself for still wanting to see Sophia, when his tryst with her had caused Alain's death. He should give her up.
I cannot give her up.
After the blessing, Pope Urban took his place, with his escort of cardinals, at the head of the procession. They moved to the piazza before the cathedral, as packed with people as it had been the day the heretic was executed there. Death, death, here they were again, to celebrate death.
When Alain's body reached the cathedral, Pope Urban blessed it once more. Simon and the other French knights raised a pallet that was hidden under the red samite cloth and carried Alain into the cathedral.
The cathedral was a festival of light, and the sight of it madeSimon feel a little better. Simon and de Verceuil had agreed to share the expenses of the funeral, which included the rows of candles lighting the altar, all of the purest beeswax, and the double line of fat candles in tall brass sticks running down the middle of the church. Benches had been cleared from the nave of the cathedral to make room for the funeral procession.
The shadows where the massed candle flames did not reach were illuminated by a dim, underwater glow—faint because the sky was overcast—that seeped in through the narrow stained glass windows, touching a mourner here or there with a spot of red light, or blue or green.
The French knights carried Alain to the front of the cathedral and set his body down on a red-draped platform. Simon took a position to the right of the body. From here he could see rows of cardinals and bishops on either side of him. The cardinals in their red hats sat in the first row, and Simon recognized de Verceuil by his height and by the shining waves of black hair that tumbled from under the wide brim of his tasseled hat.
The Contessa di Monaldeschi walked slowly up the aisle, leaning on the arm of her plump grandnephew. As she neared the altar, Cardinal Ugolini suddenly broke away from his position beside Pope Urban and bustled down to take her other arm. With these two escorts, both the same height, the contessa tottered to a high-backed, cushioned seat on the right side of the altar. Ugolini stroked her hand, whispered to her, kissed her cheek, and went back up the altar steps to stand beside the pope.
I wish he were not so friendly with the contessa. It is a danger to the alliance.
It occurred to Simon suddenly that Alain's death would go for nothing if the pact between Tartars and Christians were not sealed. Now Simon had another reason, beside the restoration of his family honor, beside his love for King Louis, to strive for the alliance.
On the side of the altar opposite the contessa, also in a high-backed armchair, sat a dark young man about Simon's age in a surcoat of blue velvet with a heavy gold chain around his neck. He sat very erect, and his dark eyes burned with hatred as he stared across the altar at the contessa and her grandnephew. He had been pointed out before to Simon as Marco di Filippeschi, capo della famiglia of the Monaldeschi's archenemies.
The contessa herself had suggested that a Filippeschi might have murdered Alain just because he was a guest of the Monaldeschifamily. Simon supposed the Filippeschi chieftain was paying public respect to Alain to demonstrate his family's innocence. The Filippeschi, Simon had heard, were opposed to a French presence in Italy—perhaps simply because the Monaldeschi were friendly to the French.
So opposed that they would murder an innocent young man? Simon burned to seize Marco di Filippeschi and throttle the truth from him.
By turning his head slightly, Simon could see Friar Mathieu on the left side of the church, sitting in the midst of the Franciscan congregation.
Beyond the Franciscans, in the shadow of a pillar, stood a stout man in dark cape and tunic. D'Ucello, the podesta, observing the funeral—thinking perhaps that Alain's killer might attend. He prayed that the podesta would stop wasting his time pursuing the nonexistent women Simon and Alain had been with.
Find Alain's killer, damn you!Simon thought, clenching his teeth.
Simon turned briefly to survey the crowd that filled the nave all the way to the doors. Halfway back, a spot of red light from a window fell on a man's blond hair. Simon was almost certain that was David of Trebizond. He still saw no sign of Sophia, and his heart fell.
As Simon watched the pope celebrate the mass, assisted by the two cardinals, the Italian Ugolini and the French le Gros, he wondered whether Alain was watching from heaven. He must be in heaven. Was he not a martyr?
But did Alain care about what was happening on this earth? Surely a man would want to see his own funeral. For a moment Simon imagined he could speak to Alain, reach out and touch him.
How do you like this, my friend? The pope himself says mass for you.
Simon choked on a sob and had to wipe tears from his face.
The pope sang the Gospel in a quavering voice, and a chorus of stout young priests boomed back the responses. The voices, rising and falling in the chant devised by Pope Gregory the Great, unaccompanied by any instrument, rebounded from the heavy stones of the vaulted ceiling.
Simon swore to himself he would write about this to Alain's mother.
When it came time for the sermon, Fra Tomasso d'Aquino rose from the bench that had been set for him at the front of the cathedral.He turned and bowed to the pope, who sat in a throne on the right side of the altar. Pope Urban's hand twitched in a small gesture of blessing.
Standing at the head of Alain's bier, Simon was close enough to Fra Tomasso to hear the breath whistling through his nostrils as he exerted himself to move his bulk from bench to altar steps. The black rosary around his middle rattled with his steps and creaked with his heavy breathing.
A hush, heavy with the odor of incense, fell over the crowd assembled in the nave. For a sermon by a bishop or even a cardinal, this crowd of high-ranking prelates would probably go on whispering to each other. But all were interested in hearing the philosopher-friar who was famous throughout Christendom, whom some revered as a living saint and a few others considered a subtle heretic.
Fra Tomasso spoke Latin, as was customary before any assemblage of churchmen. His tenor voice sent high-pitched reverberations through the nave of the great church. It is a sad moment, he said, when God chooses to cut off a young man in his prime, yet it happens all too often. I share the sorrow of the family and friends of this excellent young knight, he said, and Simon felt comforted. Indeed, all Christendom must mourn the loss of such a fine young man, killed while performing his duty, far from home, guarding an embassy to His Holiness from the other side of the earth.
And accompanying a friend making a secret visit to a lady.
The stout friar waxed philosophic, as was expected of him, discoursing on the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," using Alain as an example. The Sire de Pirenne's death was murder, ambush out of the dark, he said.
Loud coughing interrupted the sermon. Simon looked and saw that it was Pope Urban, bent double, Cardinal le Gros holding his arm and resting a hand on his shoulder, while Cardinal Ugolini looked alarmed. The coughing had a burbling sound to it, as if the old pope's lungs were full of fluid. A cough like that in November was an ominous thing, thought Simon.
Fra Tomasso resumed when His Holiness had quieted. To kill is not always a sin, he said, but to kill the innocent is. It is not a sin, therefore, to wage war on the Saracens, as pope after pope has called upon good Christian warriors to do, because the Saracens are not innocent. They hold in their clutches the most sacred places of Christendom, the lands where Our Lord Jesus Christ was born and died; they rob and murder pilgrims seeking to visit those holyplaces; and they seek to spread the false religion of Mohammedanism which denies the central mystery of our faith—Christ crucified, dead, and risen again. For all these reasons the Saracens should be fought.
Fra Tomasso paused and looked about him. Simon felt that the pause was intended to be significant, that the great Dominican was about to say something very important. But the silence was disturbed by a whispering. It came from behind Simon and to his right. He glanced in that direction and saw that the Bulgarian woman, Ana, was sitting with the two Tartars and was whispering her translation of Fra Tomasso's sermon to John, the older one, who was immediately on her left.
"We may ask ourselves, why does God permit an innocent young man like this to die?" Fra Tomasso went on. "The answer is, of course, that He permits it to make possible a greater good, the exercise of human free will. I say to you that Our Lord, Jesus Christ, crucified at the age of thirty-three, is the type of all innocent young men done to death by evil. And evil is a necessary consequence of human freedom."
Fra Tomasso looked out over his audience for another silent moment, then said, "God must value freedom very highly if He allows so much evil to occur, just so freedom can exist."
I never thought of that.
But there was very little freedom in the world, Simon thought, apart from the power to sin. Everybody from kings down to the meanest serfs was bound in a net of obligations, duties, laws, loyalties, obedience. Simon remembered what Friar Mathieu had said about using Fra Tomasso's vow of obedience, through de Verceuil's speaking to his Dominican superior, to force him to give up his opposition to the alliance.
And now Simon noticed that Fra Tomasso was looking at de Verceuil.
"Often, all too often, one man will seek to rob another of the freedom to do what is right," Fra Tomasso said. "If a superior commands another to do wrong, and the inferior obeys, the one who gives the wrongful order bears the greater burden of guilt. But some guilt also falls upon the one who obeys. It is only with the greatest reluctance and after the greatest deliberation that one should disobey any order from one of higher rank. But there are times when it must be done."
Again he looked at de Verceuil.
"Thus when we see a mighty nation that again and again does harm to the innocent," said Fra Tomasso, "we are bound in conscience to denounce it."
Simon felt as if he had been struck on the head with a rock. Now he was sure of what was coming. And so, evidently, were others, because a murmuring was arising in the church.
Fra Tomasso blinked slowly, as if to show his calm acceptance of the stir he was causing. "We are obliged to denounce unjust war even when the evildoer offers us the hand of fellowship. When a puissant nation takes up arms against the world, when it makes war its chief occupation, when it attacks peoples that have not harmed it, when it threatens all humanity, we are not permitted to condone such wrongs. When this nation carries war to innocent, unarmed men, women, and children, slaughtering these noncombatants by the tens and hundreds of thousands, we are obliged to condemn it."
Oh, my God! If this is the Church's verdict, all is lost.
Simon looked at the pope on his throne to the right of the altar. He sat slumped, his white mitre tilted forward, his eyes half shut as if in thought. Simon saw no sign that Urban objected to what Fra Tomasso was saying.
The murmur was louder now. Despairing, Simon turned to look back at the Tartars. Little points of candlelight were reflected in their black eyes, and their brown faces were tight. Simon could imagine what would happen to anyone, holy man or not, who spoke out against them so in their own camp.
The stout Dominican stretched an arm in a flowing white sleeve toward the still, mail-clad body on the red bier. "It may be asked, why do I speak of such things on this sad day, when we mourn a young man cruelly struck down in youth? I answer that this young man came here and died here because Christendom is now faced with this great moral dilemma. What we owe this young man, what we owe any man who dies in the performance of his duty, is to do our own duty."
"Enough! Sit down!" came a hoarse whisper from Simon's left, and he turned to see de Verceuil half out of his chair, fists clenched. It had been de Verceuil who had wanted Fra Tomasso, as the most distinguished speaker in Orvieto, to deliver the funeral sermon. And doubtless it was the cardinal's heavy-handed dealing with Fra Tomasso that had provoked this particular sermon. And now deVerceuil was trying publicly to silence Fra Tomasso, making more enemies for their cause.
Fra Tomasso turned in the cardinal's direction, then once again slowly shut his eyes and slowly opened them as he turned away. He went on speaking.
"And perhaps God has taken this young man from us to remind us how many other innocent lives may be lost if we wage war unwisely."
Simon and the other five French knights turned the red-draped wooden pallet so that Alain's head was toward the altar and his feet toward the church door. The weight had not bothered Simon carrying Alain into the church, but now the burden seemed twice as heavy. He was afraid, as he descended the stairs in front of the cathedral, one worn stone step at a time, that his knees might buckle and he might spill Alain to the ground. He would be anxious until he got Alain back on the cart that would carry him to his final resting place in the cemetery on a hill to the north of Orvieto's great rock.
And where will I go?
Trying to get de Verceuil to change Fra Tomasso's mind had been a serious error in judgment. Every important churchman and official in Orvieto had heard the greatest thinker in Christendom attack the plan of Christians and Tartars waging war together on the Saracens. What would happen now?
Nothing.
Nothing would happen, and that was all that was needed for the alliance to fail. The Tartars would go home. They would continue their war against the Saracens, the war they had been losing lately, without Christian help. And eventually the Mameluke waves would roll over Palestine and Syria and the Christian strongholds in Outremer would crumble like sand castles.
And the escutcheon of Gobignon is a little more tarnished. And I have led my dearest vassal to useless death. Whenever the Tartars leave Italy, and it will probably be soon, I will return to Château Gobignon a failure.
He thought back to his meeting with Charles d'Anjou on the wall of the Louvre last July. It had seemed then that helping the Tartars to ally themselves with the Christians was a way to change his whole life for the better. He would take his rightful place in the kingdom as a great baron. He would end the shame and suffering he hadalways lived with. He would hold his head up among the nobility, and King Louis and Count Charles would love and respect him.
Now he would accomplish none of those things. He had been knocked from his horse and was rolling in the dust. He would go back to the living death of being afraid to show his face beyond the bounds of Gobignon, the only place in the world where he was known and respected.
Go back to Gobignon and never see Sophia again? She, at least, would not think less of him because the grand alliance had failed. She probably felt sorry for Alain. Perhaps even felt responsible for his death. Simon should go and reassure her.
And then what? Bid her farewell?
He and de Puys on the other side, two knights behind each of them, slid Alain's body with a dry, rasping sound along the unpainted gray wood of the cart bed. The red ribbons on the four tall cartwheels fluttered in the slight breeze.
A thought that had fleetingly occurred to Simon before now formed itself solidly in his mind.
What if he were to take Sophia back to Gobignon as his bride?
Many there were who would rail against him for doing it. His grandmother in particular, herself the daughter of a king, would be beside herself with fury. King Louis and Uncle Charles might even try to stop him. But he was the Count de Gobignon, a Peer of the Realm, almost a king in his own right, and he had tried to do what his elders expected of him, and he had failed.
Twice he had loved women whose lands and high birth made them proper matches for him in the eyes of the world, and twice he had been prevented from marrying the woman of his choice because of Count Amalric's legacy of wickedness.
Well, the devil take all of them. If they would not accept him as a member of the noblesse, then he was not obliged to behave as one.
Surely his mother and father, considering the way their own marriage had come about, would understand and approve his choice.
And somehow he doubted that Cardinal Ugolini would raise any objection to his marrying his niece, Sophia.
An open letter from Fra Tomasso d'Aquino of the Order of Preaching Friars to the Christian sovereigns of Europe, from Orvieto, 7th day of November A.D. 1263
Let us leave these wild beasts, Tartars and Muslims alike, to devour each other, that they may all be consumed and perish; and we, when we proceed against the enemies of Christ who remain, will slay them and cleanse the face of the earth, so that all the world will be subject to the one Catholic Church and there be one Shepherd and one fold.
Let us leave these wild beasts, Tartars and Muslims alike, to devour each other, that they may all be consumed and perish; and we, when we proceed against the enemies of Christ who remain, will slay them and cleanse the face of the earth, so that all the world will be subject to the one Catholic Church and there be one Shepherd and one fold.
When Simon and Friar Mathieu climbed the stone steps into Fra Tomasso's cell, pushing up a trapdoor to enter, he was bent over a scroll. He held the two rolled-up ends apart with his fingertips, and as he read he very gently pushed down the bottom part of the roll, allowing the part he had read to roll up. The scroll looked very old, and the Dominican friar handled it as if it might fall apart in his hands.
He did not look up at his two visitors. His large head moved ever so slightly from side to side as he scanned the lines of writing, and Simon could hear his loud breathing just as he had a week ago in the cathedral. Simon and Friar Mathieu stood quietly and waited for Fra Tomasso to stop reading and notice them.
It had taken Friar Mathieu's Franciscan superiors a week of delicate negotiations after Alain's funeral to arrange an audience with the Dominican philosopher for Friar Mathieu and Simon. Simon prayed, feeling the sweat break out on his forehead, that their intrusion would not annoy Fra Tomasso. He desperately hoped that they could persuade him to change his mind about the alliance.
It was really up to Friar Mathieu, he thought. That Simon could have any effect on such a brilliant philosopher was unthinkable.
Simon noticed a single deep crease between the great Dominican's eyebrows. His forehead bulged on either side of the crease,as if the muscles that made him frown had grown from much exercise. The brows themselves were so fair and sparse as to seem almost invisible.
Fra Tomasso laid a broad right hand on the scroll to hold it open, picked up a feather pen with his left hand, dipped the sharpened tip into a tiny ink jar, and began making small, rapid marks on a piece of parchment. Simon watched with interest. Since his university days, he rarely saw people reading and writing, and could not remember ever seeing anyone write with his left hand. When the pen ran dry, Fra Tomasso happened to glance up as he dipped it again.
"Dear Lord, forgive me," he said, his eyes round with surprise. "Friends, I did not hear you enter. Please pardon my rudeness." Simon was gratified to hear him speak French and impressed by his fluency.
"It is we who are guilty of rudeness, Fra Tomasso," said Friar Mathieu, "for interrupting your work."
"My brothers in Christ are more important than books," said the stout Dominican, gesturing to them to take seats on his bed.
His cell was a circular room occupying the top floor of a tower in the compound that housed his order in Orvieto. The curved walls of the room were painted as white as Fra Tomasso's robe. A black wooden cross surmounted by a white ivory figure of Jesus hung over the bed. Fra Tomasso sat, his chair hidden by his great bulk, with his back to a window, at a large trestle table with stacks of books and boxes of scrolls on either side of him. His bed was a wide, sturdy wooden platform covered with a straw-filled mattress and a blanket the size of a galley's sail. A giant could lie on that bed, Simon thought.
"I must admit this scroll is a great treasure, and I am reluctant to tear my eyes from it," he said. "A hitherto lost treatise of Aristotle on the composition and movements of the heavenly bodies. This copy might be over six hundred years old. In Greek. You are familiar withthephilosopher?" He looked from Friar Mathieu to Simon eagerly.
"I did study for a year at Père Sorbonne's college in Paris, Your Reverence," said Simon. "We read the works of several philosophers."
Fra Tomasso smiled indulgently. "I always refer to Aristotle asthephilosopher because I can learn more from him than from any other ancient or modern thinker. Do you not agree, Reverend Father?"He turned to Friar Mathieu. "Or are you, like so many of your fellow Franciscans, uninterested in philosophy?"
Oh, God, he scorns Franciscans, thought Simon with dread.We're sure to fail.
"I truly would like to find the time for it," said Friar Mathieu, unruffled. "But I seem to be always traveling."
Fra Tomasso nodded. "You and that merchant from Trebizond are the only two Christians in Orvieto who have traveled among the Tartars. I found your testimony at His Holiness's council quite fascinating."
"But not persuasive?" Friar Mathieu leaned forward intently.
Simon caught his breath. Fra Tomasso had given them an opening.
"I presumed that was why you had come to see me," said Fra Tomasso with a self-satisfied smile. "Let me assure you, good friar and noble count, that until a little over a week ago I had tried to keep to a strict neutrality, feeling that in that way I could be more useful to His Holiness. Even after hearing the Tartars condemn themselves out of their own mouths at the Contessa di Monaldeschi's reception. But then I changed my mind."
"Let me ask you a rather delicate question, Your Reverence," said Friar Mathieu.
Fra Tomasso leaned back and rested his hands, fingers laced, on his huge belly. "Any question at all."
"Did Cardinal de Verceuil's behavior toward you have anything to do with your change of mind?"
The crease in the Dominican philosopher's forehead deepened. Simon winced inwardly. What if, now, they had truly offended Fra Tomasso?
"Surely you do not suggest that I would let personal pique determine my position on a matter so important to the future of Christendom?"
"I am not surprised, knowing Your Reverence's reputation, that you grasp just how important the matter is," Friar Mathieu said.
Neatly sidestepping Fra Tomasso's question, Simon thought.
"Exactly. Thus it was that when Cardinal de Verceuil went to Fra Augustino da Varda, my Superior General, demanding that he order me to change my position on the Tartars, I realized it was time for me to come to a conclusion."
"I made a terrible mistake," said Friar Mathieu as much to himself and Simon as to Fra Tomasso. "May God forgive me."
"What mistake was that?" asked Fra Tomasso.
"Not trying to discuss this with Your Reverence myself, as I am doing now. To be honest, I feared you would not care to meet with a poor Franciscan."
"Again you do me an injustice," said Fra Tomasso. "Thephilosopher tells us that we acquire knowledge first of all through the senses. Therefore, if you would know about something, ask of those who have seen it firsthand."
"Then perhaps you have new questions," said Friar Mathieu.
Simon felt despair pressing on him like a mail shirt that was too heavy. Fra Tomasso was a man whose whole life was argument. How could Friar Mathieu hope to persuade him to change his mind about anything?
His chair creaking loudly, Fra Tomasso leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table in front of him. "I am so sure of my conclusions that I have written to Emperor Sigismund in Germany, King Boleslav in Poland, and King Wenceslas in Hungary—all lands that have suffered from the depredations of the Tartars, urging them to beg His Holiness to repudiate this scheme that will bring the frontier of Tartary so much closer to us. I have written to King Louis of France, your liege lord, too, young Count de Gobignon, even though he is said to be eager for a pact with the Tartars. Furthermore, Father da Varda is considering my proposal that the Dominican order all over Christendom preach against an alliance with the Tartars."
Hearing in Fra Tomasso's words the ruin of all his hopes, Simon could not contain himself. He burst out. "Why?"
Fra Tomasso looked surprised, even a bit affronted. "For all the reasons you heard in church last Friday. They are not simple savages, my young friend. They are diabolical."
It was hopeless. Simon's heart sank lower and lower. The great preacher's mind was made up.
"Yes, but, Your Reverence"—Simon felt driven by desperation to debate with a man whom he knew was invincible in argument—"we all know of many times when Christians and Saracens have been just as cruel."
Friar Mathieu gave a little grunt of agreement.
Fra Tomasso looked down at his thumbs, the tips pressed together as they rested on his wide belly. There was a moment of silence. He was thinking, Simon realized. Hardly ever had Simonseen a man stop to think before speaking in an argument. He began to tremble inwardly, expecting to be crushed.
Fra Tomasso raised a fat finger. "Yes, I know that Christian knights have also committed barbarities. But they did so in mindless rage, and afterward they were ashamed. Even the Mohammedan faith teaches the Saracens to wage only just wars, to be compassionate, to spare the innocent and helpless. I stipulate that neither Christians nor Mohammedans live up to these laws. But theyprofessthem. The Tartars have no such laws. In their bottomless ignorance they think that it isgoodto commit deeds of unimaginable horror, and they do it with calculation. Exemplum: As David of Trebizond has told me, when they wipe out the population of a city, they know there will be a few survivors. So, weeks later, they return to the ruins when the remaining few people have emerged from hiding, and they slaughter them all. That is the worst sort of evil—evil done with utter deliberation."
David of Trebizond, may he roast in hell!thought Simon.
"With respect, Your Reverence," said Friar Mathieu, "the Tartars have lived isolated in their prairie homeland since the beginning of time. But I beg of you to believe that they can be won to the mercy of Christ. I have seen it. I havedoneit."
We are gaining ground, Simon thought. If Fra Tomasso really could be swayed by the testimony of a person who had seen with his own eyes, they had a chance.
A hammering from beneath the floor made Simon start. Someone was knocking on the trapdoor. Friar Mathieu nibbled at his mustache in vexation while Fra Tomasso smiled broadly and called, "Come up."
The heavy door creaked upward, pushed by a hand in a white sleeve. A shiny, tonsured scalp reflected the light from the tower window.
The young Dominican who emerged was almost too breathless to speak. "Reverend Father! News from Bolsena! Un miracolo!"
Fra Tomasso's eyes widened. "Bolsena? Is that near here?"
"So near, Reverend Father, that the miracle happened yesterday and the news reached us this afternoon."
"What miracle?"
"A foreign priest—from some eastern country—was saying mass. And when he got to the consecration and raised the Sacred Host"—the young friar's eyes glowed—"the Host dripped blood!"
Simon's head spun in confusion. Frustrated rage at being interruptedwhen they were so close to victory struggled with amazement at this tale of a bleeding Communion wafer. He looked at Fra Tomasso, and all hope ebbed away. The philosopher's face fairly glowed with relief. Sadness swelled in Simon. They did not have a chance. Perhaps they had never had one.
Before they knew it, it seemed, Friar Mathieu and Simon were walking together out the gate of the Dominican convent. Behind them there were shouts and white-robed friars bustling to and fro like a flock of startled doves. The whole convent, it seemed, was in an uproar over the miracle at Bolsena.
Fra Tomasso had courteously but firmly dismissed Mathieu and Simon, saying that he must question the one who brought the news. He might, he said, be called upon to look further into the event at Bolsena, and he must be fully prepared.
Simon had wanted to protest. If Fra Tomasso would only give them a little more time, he would surely have to change his mind about the Tartars. But Simon sensed that Fra Tomasso did not want to change his mind.
The sky was cold and gray as chain mail. Carters, horsemen, and laborers on foot bustled along, their cloaks pulled tight around them against the chill north wind.
All is lost, Simon thought, as he had after Alain's funeral. Just when they were gaining ground with Fra Tomasso, news of a miracle. Was God Himself against them?
Skulking back to Gobignon. Forever to be known, not as the count who helped liberate Jerusalem, but as the son of the traitor Amalric.
Maybe I should give it all up and become a Franciscan, like Friar Mathieu.
"Where did he get that scroll?" Friar Mathieu wondered.
"What can we do now?" said Simon. He was not really asking; it was only a way of saying he thought nothing could be done. He was in despair over the failure of their mission.
Then he thought of Sophia.
In an instant a light bloomed within him. Skulking back to Gobignon? No, riding back in triumph, with the most beautiful woman in the world beside him as his bride.
He had not yet nerved himself to propose to Sophia, but now that they had failed with Fra Tomasso, he could not wait to see her again.
Friar Mathieu scratched his white beard thoughtfully. "It was de Verceuil who tipped the scales against the Tartars. And it was we who sent de Verceuil. I thought this might be the one time he could be useful to us."
"Fra Tomasso had already sided with Ugolini's faction," Simon said. "That is why we sent de Verceuil."
"He told us today that he had been trying to be neutral," said Friar Mathieu. "But Sophia told you that Fra Tomasso had already sided with Ugolini's party. Do you suppose the great Dominican was not being candid with us? Or was it Sophia who was not being candid?"
Simon gasped at the sudden pain of a blow that was worse than their failure with Fra Tomasso. Sophia not honest? No, he could not live with that.
He stiffened so suddenly that his horse stopped walking. He stared at Friar Mathieu in dismay.
Friar Mathieu reached over and put his hand on Simon's arm. His touch was light but firm.
"Know where you are going, Simon. Do not travel blindly."
Simon nodded. There was a way to find out the truth about Sophia.
He must put Sordello to work. The mere thought of that blackguard spying on Sophia twisted his heart with anguish. But he had to know the truth.
A letter from Emir Daoud ibn Abdallah to El Malik Baibars al-Bunduqdari, from Orvieto, 13th day of Muharram, 663 A.H.: