"I do not mean the pain of the body."
She understood, then, what he was feeling. He smiled at her and shut his
eyes.
She sat in silence on the edge of the bed while he lay there, brooding.
Again he escaped into drowsiness. His mind drifted back to the sands of
Egypt. He dreamed again of riding as a Mameluke.
When he woke, a short time had passed, and Sophia was still sitting
there, gazing down at him.
Hints of a new plan began to come together in his mind. As fever purged
him of poison, it had brought him dreams of battle. Not of intrigues
with the priests and bishops around the pope. Not of ambushes in narrow
streets. Rather, open war.
That was the meaning of those dreams. Perhaps God Himself had sent them.
He was called upon to wage jihad against the enemies of Islam as a
Mameluke, on horseback, at the head of an army.
He held out his arm to Sophia. "Help me up. You and Lorenzo and I must
meet with Ugolini."
* * * * *
Later that morning, a heavy spring rain hammered on the windows of
Ugolini's cabinet. The storm had so darkened the room that the
cardinal's servants had lit extra candles. Daoud, Lorenzo, and Sophia
sat in a semicircle across from Ugolini's worktable.
The painted glass eyes of Ugolini's stuffed owl glared disapprovingly
down from the bookshelves at Daoud, who had a sense that the cardinal
felt as the owl looked. The skull on the table seemed to be laughing at
him.
He understood now what he had to do, but would the others, especially
Ugolini, go along with it? Over Ugolini's frantic protests he had
insisted on inciting the Filippeschi to attack the Palazzo Monaldeschi.
That attack having failed of its purpose, would the three of them still
accept Daoud's authority? Ugolini, surely, would think that events had
proved him right about the futility of the attack on the Monaldeschi.
How could he be won over to the idea of a wider war? _Make war utterly
on the idolaters_--that, he had decided, was the meaning of his dream.
"Manfred's supporters, the Ghibellini, must take the pope captive," he
said. "I know that you would prefer peace to war, but now that I have
tried to kill the Tartars and failed, we do not have that choice." It
was best, he thought, to admit his failure openly before Ugolini threw
it in his face.
The cardinal's eyes were almost as wide and as stark as the owl's. "You
would plunge the whole of Italy into war?"
"No," said Daoud, "but that is what is going to happen. The one thing
that has kept the French out of Italy is the pope's refusal to give the
Christian kings, especially the king of France, permission to ally
themselves with the Tartars. But now that Urban is ill, he may give King
Louis what he wants. When the pope allows the alliance, Louis will give
his brother Charles permission to attack Manfred. It is not I who will
plunge Italy into war. I am proposing only that we act before the French
do."