"The Papal States are surrounded by cities ruled by Manfred's Ghibellino
supporters. The nearest is Siena. With gold and with timely warnings
about the danger from the French, we can persuade Siena to move against
the pope." He held up his fist. "And then we can make sure that the next
pope elected is favorable to Manfred. And through him, well disposed
toward peace with Islam."
It was the same sort of plan, Daoud thought, as inciting the Filippeschi
against the Monaldeschi. But Lorenzo had already visited Siena and made
sure that the Ghibellini of Siena, with Daoud's help, could raise a far
greater army than the pope could muster in Orvieto. This time he would
succeed.
"Impossible!" Ugolini cried. "No king can control the Papacy. The
Hohenstaufen have been trying to rule over the popes for centuries, and
for centuries they have failed."
"Perhaps it takes a stranger to see that where the Hohenstaufen failed,
the French are about to succeed," said Daoud. "France is now the
strongest kingdom in Europe. If Manfred does not get control of the pope
and the cardinals, the next pope will be under the protection of the
French, and will have to do whatever they want."
"Urban is a sick man," said Ugolini. "There is not a cardinal who would
risk a wager that he will live to see the year 1265. He will not call
for the French to save him when he knows the angels are coming to get
him."
"No, there I must disagree with Your Eminence," said Lorenzo, lounging
in a large chair facing Ugolini's table. "Urban is a Frenchman, and he
will work to bring the French into Italy until the moment the angels
knock at his door."
Sophia, who had been sitting quietly in an armless straight-back chair
with her hands folded in her lap, said, "The pope will blame the
Ghibellini for the attack on the Monaldeschi. He will want help, and he
will ask it from the French even if it means Christians joining the
Tartars in a crusade the pope does not really want."
"Very shrewd," said Daoud with a smile in her direction. "Except that
the pope had decided before the attack on the Monaldeschi to approve the
alliance with the Tartars. As we know from his persuading Fra Tomasso to
switch sides. It was because the pope had clearly turned against us that
I planned to kill the Tartars."
Daoud was tired of sitting. Despite the pain in his leg, he used his
stick to push himself to his feet and stepped out of the window recess.
He limped over to Ugolini's table.
"We must send Lorenzo to Siena with enough of our precious stones to
raise an army big enough to overwhelm the papal soldiery and the Orvieto
militia. It may take time to persuade the Sienese to act. It will take
more time to muster an army and march on Orvieto. We must begin as
quickly as we can. With the pope in Ghibellino hands, with the
Ghibellini in a position to sway the outcome of the next papal election,
we may yet keep the French out of Italy."
And that, he thought, would keep crusaders and Tartars out of the Dar
al-Islam.
Ugolini's shrug spoke more of despair than of acquiescence. "Certainly
the French will come if we do nothing. You are right about that. Do as
you will. It is a miracle we have survived this long."
Strange, Daoud thought. Ugolini saw their mere survival as miraculous.
To Daoud, failure so far to put a final stop to the alliance of
Christians and Tartars made him wonder whether God disapproved of him.
* * * * *
Once he accepted the fact that he had to go, Lorenzo had hoped the rain
would continue. Under its cover his leaving the city was less likely to
be noticed or impeded. But by mid-afternoon, the hour of None, when he
was packed and mounted, a spare horse trotting behind him, a bright,
hot sun had come out, and the puddles in the narrow streets were turning
to steam.
At the Porta Maggiore he stopped when he saw two clerks seated at tables
on either side of the gateway, one questioning each person entering the
town, the other examining those leaving. A dozen of the podesta's men in
yellow and blue stood by to keep people in line. Each clerk consulted
what appeared to be a list on a scroll and on another scroll wrote down
the names of those he questioned.
Only two days ago Sophia had told d'Ucello that David of Trebizond and
his man Giancarlo were in Perugia. Now, Lorenzo thought, those damned
clerks were probably watching for their return. They could have been set
at the gate the morning after the attack on the Monaldeschi palace.
He smiled ironically as he remembered how, last summer, he had sat as
these clerks did now, at the gateway to Lucera waiting to catch a
certain Saracen newly arrived from Egypt.
Now, thought Lorenzo, if he tried to leave Orvieto he would not only be
stopped and possibly arrested, he would be as good as telling the
podesta that he and David had never been out of the town at all.
Lorenzo clenched his fists. He felt like a tuna caught in a net.
_And if I stand here much longer staring they'll notice me and haul me
in._
He quickly turned his horses away from the gate and headed back to
Ugolini's mansion.
* * * * *
At the beginning of the third Nocturn, Lorenzo, David, and a servant of
Ugolini's named Riccardo, whom they had chosen for his size and
strength, emerged from an alley near the north side of the city wall.
David wore a hood pulled low over his face. He limped and walked with a
stick. Lorenzo had advised against his being out in the street at all,
but David had answered that the watch did not know he was in Orvieto and
would not be looking for him.
Lorenzo was amazed at how rapidly David had gotten better. He had never
seen a man walking only two days after taking a bad arrow wound in the
leg. The Muslims who taught David the art of healing must be even better
than Jewish physicians.
As they walked, Lorenzo made David recite the names of half a dozen
prominent Perugian merchants who were supporters of King Manfred. If the
podesta were to question David about his whereabouts the night of the
Filippeschi uprising, these men would bear witness that David and
Lorenzo had been in Perugia.
"If d'Ucello does question you, how will you explain that you are back
in Orvieto without having been seen entering through the gate?" Lorenzo
asked him.
"I will tell him--with the greatest reluctance--that the line was very
long when I arrived and that I was in haste to enter, so I bribed the
men on duty to let me by. The more time passes before he discovers my
presence in Orvieto, the more believable that will be."
"If he suspects you of anything, he will arrest you no matter how good a
story you tell him," Lorenzo said.
David stopped walking and rested his hand on Lorenzo's shoulder. "That
is why you must go tonight, my friend. And come back quickly with an
army from Siena."
* * * * *
Lorenzo had a pack over his shoulder and wore a long traveling cloak.
Riccardo carried a coil of rope. Ahead of them was a small stone shed
built against the wall, beside one of the round guard towers.
Lorenzo was not particularly frightened by the ordeal ahead. He had done
enough climbing in his younger days. But he was repelled by the thought
that through the large opening in the floor of the little house the
people of this quarter dumped, not only their garbage, but also the
contents of their chamber pots.
They went quietly to the door of the shed. There was a guard in the
tower above them, though he would have no reason to watch the garbage
chute.
Riccardo put a meaty hand on the rough-hewn door. It gave without a
struggle. Not even locked, thought Lorenzo. He supposed the podesta, may
his ballocks wrinkle up like prunes, had not thought that anyone would
choose this ignominious way to escape from the city.
"Sophia told me to tell you she would miss you," David said.
"Kiss her for me," said Lorenzo.
_Wonder if David has bedded Sophia yet._
Riccardo filled the little room so that Lorenzo felt himself being
crowded to the edge of the chute.
"Hey! Riccardo! Push me down _after_ you have the rope around me."
"Sorry, Messere." The burly man tied the rope tightly around Lorenzo's
waist, just above the belt that held the jewels, and they both pulled
hard on the knot to test it. Tying the knots in the dark, they had to be
doubly careful. Then Riccardo tied the other end of the rope around his
own waist and donned heavy oxhide gloves.
It was a warm April night, and Lorenzo smelled a horrid odor of garbage
and excrement coming up from the pit. It was not actually a pit, but a
crevice in the face of the cliff on which Orvieto was built. Lorenzo had
hoped the day's heavy rain would have washed the cliffside clean. But
the people of Orvieto had been dumping offal here for centuries.
"Your final instructions?" he said to David.
"Ugolini's servant Guglielmo seems to have gotten safely out of the city
with your horses and baggage," said David. "He must not have been on any
list. He will meet you at the shrine of Saint Sebastian on the road to
Siena. From there you know what you have to do."
David grasped him by the shoulders and then patted his back. They had
become good friends, Lorenzo realized. Look how David was trusting him
to ride with a fortune in gems to Siena, meet the right parties, bargain
with them, deliver the gems to them and come back to Orvieto with a
Ghibellino army. That was much to expect of a man. Yet David seemed not
to doubt that Lorenzo would do it.
Lorenzo felt warm when he thought how much David meant to him. He had
come on this mission as King Manfred's man, but he was going to Siena
just as much for David as for Manfred. Bringing the Sienese into the
struggle might keep the French away, though, and that would help Manfred
as much as it would the Muslims.
"Lower away, then," Lorenzo said to Riccardo.
David stepped back. Riccardo and Lorenzo both took hold of the rope.
Lorenzo stepped over the edge of the chute. His legs dangled, and he
tried not to think about how much empty space was between him and the
rocks at the base of Orvieto's mountain. The rope cut painfully into his
waist and back. He gripped it tightly with his gloved hands and wrapped
his legs around it to take some of the strain off the loop around his
waist.
Grunting, Riccardo slowly lowered Lorenzo through the chute. David was
standing beside Ugolini's man and had laid a protective hand on the
rope. The hole in the floor was just wide enough for Lorenzo's shoulders
to pass through. Then he was hanging free below the city wall, his back
to the cliff, staring out at a starry black sky and the silhouettes of
distant hillsides. He felt dizzy and shut his eyes.
"Turn me," he whispered hoarsely up at the opening above him.
After a moment he felt his body rotating, and again he had to fight
dizziness. He was facing in toward the smelly crevice, and he drew up
his legs and planted his feet firmly on its walls. With the help of the
rope he could walk down the cliffside. Riccardo let out the rope a
little more, and Lorenzo's boot sole scraped loudly against the
crumbling tufa surface, releasing a shower of pebbles.
"Who's down there?" a distant voice shouted, and Lorenzo felt as if
someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over him. That was the guard
in the tower high above. He wondered if the guard could see him down
here. He tried to grip the sides of the crevice with his feet and pull
himself closer to the cliff face.
"I am taking a piss, buon'amico!" Riccardo called up to the guard. "Do
you mind?"
"That place is not for pissing," the guard called back.
"Would you rather I sprinkled your tower?"
There was no answer this time, and Riccardo began whistling loudly to
cover any further noises Lorenzo might make. Lorenzo hoped the guard
would not come down to investigate. What if he did, and Riccardo felt he
must let go of the rope?
Riccardo must have had the same thought, because he began paying out the
rope more rapidly, and Lorenzo's feet flew over the crackling rock. He
was like a man running furiously backward. It would be comical, he
thought, were he not in danger of breaking his neck.
This was a time when he wished he had clung to a religion of some sort
rather than abandoning the faith of his fathers and replacing it with
nothing. It would be so comforting to pray to an all-powerful being who
might be kind enough to protect him. Just _hoping_ not to get hurt
seemed stupid and futile.
He felt the cliff wall beginning to slant outward a bit under his feet.
The whistling from the shed had stopped. He looked up and saw that he
was halfway down the side of the cliff. The backs of his legs ached from
the strain of supporting his weight, and his shoulders and arms hurt
too. He began to worry, not so much about whether he would fall as what
he might land in when he reached the bottom.
And the smell of rot and filth all around him might choke him before he
ever got down. He saw directly below him a pit of blackness surrounded
by trees that were only a little less dark. The muck might be over his
head; he might just sink into it.
As he reached the level of the trees he drew his knees up and then
straightened them hard, giving himself a push away from the cliff. He
was still being lowered, so that when he swung back to the cliff he was
much farther down. This time his boots hit a coating of soft stuff on
the rock, and the smell was unbearable.
_I'd rather break my neck than smother in shit._
He kicked again with his legs, and when he hit the end of the outward
swing, the rope feeling as if it would cut him in two, he grabbed for a
tree branch, barely visible in the darkness. It hit him in the stomach
and knocked all the wind out of him, but he clung to it desperately.
Bent double over the tree limb, he looked down and saw shadows that
might be forest floor as far below him as his own height. Then again, he
might be seeing the tops of other trees. He drew his dagger and cut the
rope around his middle but held it with one hand. He took deep, relieved
breaths when the constraint was gone. He gave three sharp jerks on the
rope, the signal that he was down. After a moment all tension left the
rope, and he felt it falling in the darkness. Another moment and he
heard rustlings, thumps, and splashes as the rope landed at the bottom
of the crevice. Tomorrow's dumping, he thought, would quite conceal it.
He wondered briefly if David and Riccardo had safely left the dumping
shed and were on their way back to Ugolini's. He looked down again into
the darkness, realizing that if he jumped from here he might fall far
enough to kill himself. Having swung away from the pile of offal, he was
now more worried about breaking his neck. He pulled himself up,
straddling the tree and facing in toward the trunk. He slid down to the
trunk, then tried to feel about with his foot for another branch.
His feet met nothing. He swung over the side of the branch, feeling the
trunk with one hand and the space below him with his feet. Still
nothing. Now he was dangling from the limb, holding on with two aching
hands. If he had not worn gloves, he would have no skin left on his
palms.
_Well, here goes one hopeful atheist._ He let go.
He fell a short distance, feetfirst, into a pool of water. It came up
over his low boots, soaking his hose. There was no smell; apparently it
was a pure forest pool, probably a puddle enlarged by the recent rain.
Sighing, he sloshed out of it. Small creatures hopped and scurried away
from him.
_It could have been much, much worse._
Glad to feel his feet on the ground, he hoped the rest of his journey to
Siena would be less exciting than the beginning.