_A.D. April 12, 1264 / 4th day of Jumada, A.H. 662_
Feverish, his arrow-wounded leg throbbing, Daoud ibn Abdallah lies in
bed after a night of battle and defeat. As dawn lights the
eggshell-white windowpanes in his room, he recalls the events that led
him to this bitter hour.
Daoud was born to an English crusading family that had settled in
Palestine. Captured by Muslims as a child, he was taken to El Kahira,
Cairo, chief city of Egypt, and selected for the Mamelukes, the elite
corps of slave warriors gathered from all parts of the Middle East to
serve the sultans of El Kahira.
He became a favorite of a leading Mameluke emir, Baibars. Young and in
need of comfort, he converted to Islam. He came to love the faith of
Muhammad, totally and humbly dedicating himself to its tenets and to the
welfare of the Muslim people. He studied with Sheikh Saadi, a Sufi
mystic, and with the Hashishiyya, the dreaded sect known in Europe as
the Assassins.
In those years the Tartars, invincible legions of mounted barbarians,
had come out of Asia, invading the Islamic world. A huge army led by
Hulagu, grandson of the Tartar conqueror, Genghis Khan, had already
conquered Persia and Syria and was poised to attack Egypt. And Hulagu
was sending ambassadors to the pope to urge Christian Europe to join
with the Tartars in destroying the Muslims.
Should Tartars and crusaders strike at Egypt simultaneously, the people
and faith Daoud has come to love would perish. Daoud has seen with his
own eyes how the Tartars obliterated Baghdad, its 200,000 men, women,
and children slaughtered to the last soul, the city leveled, a
wasteland. He is determined that the same fate not befall his adopted El
Kahira.
Baibars--having made himself Sultan of El Kahira--sent Daoud into the
land of the infidel. Because Daoud is blond and gray-eyed, no one would
ever suspect him to be a Saracen, as Christians call all Muslims.
Daoud's mission was to go to the court of the pope and use every means
necessary--from intrigue and bribery to assassination and outright
war--to stop Christians and Tartars from forming an alliance against
Islam.
He went first to Manfred, king of southern Italy and Sicily. King
Manfred's family, the imperial German house of Hohenstaufen, had been at
war with the popes for generations, and Manfred had among his subjects
many Sicilian Muslims. Manfred agreed to help Daoud. But to protect his
own interests Manfred insisted that Daoud take with him Lorenzo Celino,
a middle-aged Sicilian warrior, and Sophia Karaiannides, a beautiful
Byzantine woman. Lorenzo brought along his huge, formidable dog, Scipio.
Journeying northward, the three rescued Rachel, a Jewish girl, from
tavern ruffians. Daoud agreed, with misgivings, to let her travel with
them.
The pope, threatened by political violence in Rome, had moved his
residence to Orvieto, a strongly walled town built on a huge flat-topped
rock. Here, Cardinal Adelberto Ugolini, a Sicilian churchman who had
long been secretly sending information to Baibars, was horrified to find
Baibars's agent on his doorstep expecting hospitality. But the cardinal
reluctantly agreed to help.
Hulagu Khan's ambassadors to the pope, Christianized Tartars named John
Chagan and Philip Uzbek, arrived in Orvieto two weeks after Daoud. A
young French nobleman, Count Simon de Gobignon, commanded their military
escort. Daoud had arranged for garbage-throwing hecklers to mar the
ambassadors' procession. The arrogant Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil,
accompanying the Tartars, was hit by excrement. He ordered the hired
Venetian crossbowmen to fire into the crowd, killing two innocent
bystanders.
Calling himself David of Trebizond, a merchant from the eastern shore of
the Black Sea, Daoud appeared publicly for the first time at a council
of Church leaders called by Pope Urban. He spoke from firsthand
knowledge of the horrors committed by the Tartars. But Friar Mathieu
d'Alcon, the Tartars' interpreter, testified that in his opinion the
Tartar empire was no longer a danger to Europe.
The Tartar ambassadors and their entourage were guests at the palace of
Orvieto's most powerful family, the Monaldeschi. When Contessa Elvira di
Monaldeschi gave a reception for the emissaries, Daoud drew them into
drunken gloating over their atrocities and boasting of their plans for
world conquest. Pope Urban and many other Church dignitaries were
appalled listeners.
With Ugolini's help, Daoud was able to persuade the influential
Dominican philosopher Fra Tomasso d'Aquino to write and preach against
the alliance. But then, subjected to unknown pressures, Fra Tomasso
suddenly changed his position.
Daoud now felt that he could do no more through intrigue. He had been in
contact with the Filippeschi, an Orvieto clan who were hereditary
enemies of the Monaldeschi family. And through Lorenzo he had been
quietly recruiting a company of bravos--armed adventurers. Offering the
help of his mercenaries, he persuaded the Filippeschi to attack the
Monaldeschi palace. With de Gobignon and the Tartars' other guards
diverted, he could enter the palace and kill the ambassadors.
While the Filippeschi prepared for the attack, Daoud discovered that
Andrea Sordello, one of his hired bravos, had been set to spy on him by
Simon de Gobignon. In Tilia's brothel, Daoud subjected Sordello to a
Hashishiyya initiation, using drugs and women to make the spy his slave.
He implanted in Sordello's mind a command that if he should see a silver
locket that Daoud keeps on his person, he would immediately kill Simon
de Gobignon. And henceforth Sordello was to give Simon only the
information Daoud wanted him to have.
After the initiation Daoud was troubled. He had been taught how to do
this, but had never done it before. Had he truly and completely
subjugated Sordello's soul?
On the night of the attack he was dismayed to discover the Monaldeschi
ready for a siege. But, garbed in black as a Hashishiyya fighter, Daoud
went ahead and slipped into the Monaldeschi palace.
The Tartars, with Simon de Gobignon, Friar Mathieu, and four guards,
were in the most secure room in the palace, the cellar pantry, where
costly spices from the East were kept behind a thick door with a strong
lock.
Trained by the Hashishiyya to use his senses other than sight to fight
in the dark, Daoud forced his way into the spice pantry and put out the
lantern. He struggled with Simon in pitch blackness and came close to
killing him. Swords thrust at him from all directions. He had the
Tartars' lives almost in his grasp, but de Gobignon was thwarting him.
He tried frantically to kill de Gobignon and was no more able to do it
than if the man were a djinn.
Then the old priest escaped from the cellar and came back with a lighted
candle. Gripped by the terrible fear that he would be caught and
exposed, Daoud raced up the cellar stairs. Despair almost killed him
when he felt the searing pain of a Tartar arrow in his leg.
He felt terror when he saw the white-bearded friar on the stairs
blocking his way, even though the old man held no weapon in his
outstretched arms.
He had been about to stab the friar, who was too useful to the Tartars
and the Christians to be allowed to live. But his arm could not move. It
was as if a powerful hand held it, and he seemed to hear a voice booming
in his head, _You dare to murder a priest?_
In his dread he hesitated, but if he did not escape Sophia would die.
The moment of paralysis passed, and instead of killing Friar Mathieu, he
thrust him aside, to fall from the banisterless stairs.
As he lies in bed the following morning in Ugolini's mansion, Daoud
forces himself to think. He has extended himself to the limit of his
powers and failed, but he must try again. He has to find a new plan,
lest his faith and his people, his whole world, meet annihilation.
In a room near Daoud's, Sophia Karaiannides kneels before an icon of
Saint Simon Stylites that she herself painted. She is thankful that
Daoud escaped alive from the Monaldeschi palace. She is glad that Simon,
who coincidentally shares the name of her favorite saint, is alive, too.
But how much longer, she wonders, will she have to live here in the
midst of enemies with the fear of a hideous death as a spy and an enemy
of the Church dogging her day and night?
Sophia was born in Constantinople during the years when it was ruled by
French invaders. As a very young woman she had seen her parents and her
lover slaughtered by rampaging French troops. She went on to serve the
Byzantine general Michael Paleologos, who drove out the French and
became the Basileus, Emperor of Constantinople.
Michael sent Sophia as a confidential envoy to his ally, Manfred, and
she and Manfred became lovers. But when the blond Saracen who called
himself David of Trebizond arrived at Manfred's court, Manfred told her
she must help David in his mission of preventing the Christian-Tartar
alliance. Manfred hinted at danger to her if she stayed with him. Though
heartbroken at being sent away by Manfred, Sophia accepted the
undertaking because another French crusade might well lead to another
French attack on "the Polis," her beloved home city.
When Rachel joined their party, Sophia, remembering her own orphan
girlhood, befriended her. But Daoud insisted, to protect the secrecy of
the mission, that after they arrived in Orvieto, Rachel be sent to the
brothel run by Tilia Caballo, Cardinal Ugolini's mistress.
After a few months in Daoud's company, Sophia felt powerfully attracted
to him. The Saracen admitted that he was likewise drawn to her, but
insisted that they deny any loving feelings, because he must use Sophia
to corrupt and defeat the advocates of the Tartar-Christian alliance.
And he did so at the Contessa di Monaldeschi's reception for the
Tartars, sending Sophia to lure Simon de Gobignon away from the great
hall of the palace while he tempted the Tartars to discredit themselves.
Sophia and Simon went for a walk in the atrium, and in a dark corner she
let him kiss her.
A month after the reception Simon and she had a clandestine tryst in her
room at Ugolini's. Though she was ready to take him to bed, Simon
insisted that they remain chaste, according to the customs of courtly
love, thereby endearing himself to her all the more.
She is surprised to realize that she has come to care deeply for the
idealistic, innocent young Frenchman. But her feeling for the Saracen is
stronger. More than once the ruthless things Daoud has done in pursuit
of his mission have made her almost hate him. Even so, when Sophia is
with Daoud she feels a fire building in herself to match the fire she
perceives behind those gray eyes.
She glances at an hourglass, sighs, and rises from where she has been
kneeling before the saint's icon. It is time to prepare a fresh poultice
for Daoud's wound.
* * * * *
Morning at the Palazzo Monaldeschi. The dead are laid out and wept over,
the debris of the siege cleared away, repairs begun on the damaged
walls. Simon de Gobignon strips off his mail shirt, about to step into a
hot bath. He is profoundly grateful to be alive and relieved that he
successfully protected the Tartar ambassadors from being murdered by the
man in black. But relief turns to anguish each time he is reminded that
his friend and adviser, Friar Mathieu, has been cruelly hurt by his fall
and may yet die.
Count Charles d'Anjou, brother of King Louis of France, commissioned
Simon to guard the Tartar ambassadors. King Louis wants to go on crusade
to win back the Holy Land with the help of the Tartars. Pope Urban,
however, is not interested in a crusade in the Middle East, but wants
the help of the French in wresting southern Italy and Sicily away from
Manfred von Hohenstaufen. He has offered Manfred's crown to Count
Charles, but King Louis so far has not agreed to let his brother make
the attempt. So the two strongest leaders in Christendom are stalemated.
Simon is desperately determined that the alliance of Tartars and
Christians succeed. As he has confessed to Friar Mathieu, he bears a
double dishonor. The world despises him as the son of Count Amalric de
Gobignon, whose treachery caused the disastrous defeat of his king and
the death of thousands of his comrades on crusade in Egypt fourteen
years earlier. But only Simon and his parents know that Simon is in
truth the offspring of an adulterous affair between his mother,
Nicolette de Gobignon, and the troubadour Roland de Vency. Ultimately
Roland killed Amalric in a duel and Nicolette married him. And Simon,
though not Amalric's son, inherited the title and the domain of the
Count de Gobignon. Simon has undertaken the task of guarding the Tartars
as a way of restoring the honor of the name de Gobignon and proving to
himself his right to bear that name.
The cause of the alliance has met with many setbacks in Orvieto, and
Simon suspects a secret enemy is behind them. But in recent months the
influential Fra Tomasso became a vigorous supporter of the alliance. And
Sophia, Cardinal Ugolini's lovely niece from Sicily, responded favorably
to Simon's attentions. Events seemed to be taking a turn for the better.
But then Sordello warned Simon that the Filippeschi were planning to
attack the Monaldeschi palace. Preparing to defend his hostess, the
contessa, Simon insisted that the Tartars, despite their desire to
fight, be kept safe in the spice pantry. Directing the defense of the
palace from its tower, Simon suddenly sensed that the attack must be
only a diversion, that the Tartars were the real target of whoever was
behind the Filippeschi. He abruptly left the tower and rushed down to
the spice pantry.
He had barely gotten there when a man all in black forced his way in and
doused the lights. In darkness the stalker killed two of the Tartars'
guards and almost strangled Simon.
Simon fought off the killer long enough to give Friar Mathieu time to
open doors and let in light. One of the Tartars managed to wound the man
in black with an arrow. The attacker threw Friar Mathieu from the stairs
and vanished into the maze of rooms on the first floor of the palace.
Now, Simon thinks as he eases himself into his bath, he has met the
hidden enemy whose presence he felt ever since coming to Orvieto. Evil
as Satan, powerful enough to throw an army against a fortified palace,
subtle enough to strike at victims no matter how well protected. A
being of almost inhuman strength and skill. Cruel and pitiless, ready to
murder anyone who stands in his way.
Certain as the judgment of God it is that Simon and the man in black
will fight again. This is war to the death.