"You did not want me to make love to him."
"Yes."
She stood in the center of the room, about ten paces from him, her hands
clasped before her. Her shawl and her gown were cold and wet. A net of
small pearls held her hair in place, but her hair, too, was sodden with
rain. She felt on the verge of shivering, but she held herself very
still.
White light filled the room. David's body jerked, and his lips
tightened. A long, rolling peal of thunder followed the lightning,
ending in a crash so loud it hurt her head.
He was afraid of thunderstorms. She had noticed that before. There was
little rain in the part of the world where he had grown up. He was
afraid of nothing else, as far as she could see. There was nothing he
would not do, nothing he _could_ not do. If only he were Greek, what a
fighter for the Polis he would be.
But when he winced away from the lightning, she wanted to cradle his
blond head against her breasts.
The rain beat down on the walls and roof of Ugolini's mansion with
redoubled intensity. She saw a small pool of water on the wood floor,
rain blown in through the open window.
"I never did make love to him," she said, raising her voice to be heard
over the wind and rain.
"I know that." He took a step toward her.
_I am doing worse than that now_, she thought with a stab of guilt. _I
am keeping from David something he would badly want to know._
"He put his arms around me and kissed me many times," she said.
David turned fully to look at her, saying nothing.
"Whenever he took me in his arms, I thought of you."
He closed his eyes.
When she was with David she never grieved over the turns her life had
taken. She never felt sorry for herself, as she did with Simon, because
she had not married and could not marry. Simon had actually said he
wanted to marry her, and in the end she had believed him. That seemed
like a dream now. A pleasant dream, but an impossible one.
For an instant she tried to picture herself, a woman of Constantinople
wed to a Frankish lord and living in a castle in the north of France. If
such a preposterous thing should come about, she would be enormously
wealthy and powerful--though she had not really thought about that when
she was with Simon. She was not herself when she was with Simon. And
now, when she _was_ herself and able to see things clearly, the wealth
and power still did not matter, because they would give her no pleasure
if she had to live among barbarians.
When she was with David she never worried or even thought about her
future, what life would be like for her when she was older. With David
she thought only of now.
He had opened his eyes and was staring at her. She looked at him,
standing tall and fair.
_I love you, David. I want you so._
Why had it not happened? Soon it would be a year since they had met at
Lucera, and she had long known that she wanted him, and believed that he
wanted her as well. But something had always held him back.
Her body grew warm inside her cold garments.
_It is not because of me that we have waited this long._
There was a question in his eyes, and she felt something inside her
pulling her toward him. She took a faltering step across the tile floor.
Then another, surer one.
He held out his arms, his harsh mouth softening as his lips parted
slightly.
"Come to me," he said.
* * * * *
He watched her walking toward him one step at a time, and he thought she
looked like a woman in a trance. Her head was lifted to receive his
kiss.
"How like rose petals your lips are," he said in Greek. He had never
spoken Greek to her before. She stopped her slow march toward him and
gave a long, shuddering sigh.
Then she ran the last few steps and threw herself into his arms. Joy
flooded his chest as he pulled her against him.
_At last, at last, at last!_
He had wanted to hold her like this for so long, and much of the time
had not even been aware that he wanted it.
He had not wanted to be aware of it, he thought, knowing that he must
use her against his enemy. And how he had hated Simon de Gobignon simply
because Simon was to have Sophia.
_I should have known then that my hatred for de Gobignon was a measure
of my love for her._
But he had not wanted to know that either, because Blossoming Reed, the
daughter of the sultan, awaited him in El Kahira, and he had sworn to be
faithful to her all his life.
_Take as many women as you like. But love always and only me._
He felt a chill, and realized that he was feeling cold not merely
because of the memory of Blossoming Reed's warning, but because Sophia
was rain-wet against him. She had ridden through the storm still
thundering away outside, and he felt a cold dampness soaking through his
gown.
"Your clothes are wet," he said, continuing to speak Greek.
She rubbed herself against him. "I am wet to the skin. I need to take
these clothes off."
"Yes. Why not do that?"
Without hesitation she stepped out of the circle of his arms and undid
the brooch that held her printed shawl around her shoulders. She would
not be shy, he realized. There had not been time, in the life she had
led, for hesitation with men. Only, he hoped that she would not, like
some of the experienced women he had known, show little feeling herself
while she let him use her in any way that pleased him.
_She is not that sort. I know it._
Foolish of him to even think it. But some part of him needed to doubt.
This moment was too good to be true.
And too frightening. Because what they were about to do was not just
satisfy their bodies' hungers; it would seal the bond of love between
them. And then he would not be able to send Sophia like a falcon to
strike at his enemies. He would not be the same man when he went back to
Blossoming Reed. What they were about to do would change both their
lives.
Standing in the crumpled heap of orange and green silk that was her
shawl, she turned her back to him.
"Help me with the laces," she said. He saw that her gown laced down the
back.
"One small moment," he said, running his hand caressingly over her back.
He walked to the door. There was still pain in his right thigh when he
moved quickly, but now it was overwhelmed by his body's yearning to have
this woman. He felt the swelling and pressure of arousal in his loins.
He opened the door of his room partway and looked up and down the
shadowy corridor. There was no one in sight. He closed the door firmly
and slid home the heavy iron bolt that would guarantee their privacy.
She was standing where he had left her, watching him, her amber eyes
warm. He went quickly to her and untied the knot in the laces at her
back, marveling at the slenderness of her neck. She could have unlaced
the dress herself, he saw, but she wanted him to.
She wore no belt, and the dress fell away. Under it was a white silk
chemise without sleeves. Still standing behind her, he dropped his hands
gently on her small, square shoulders and slid the chemise down. His
eyes followed its fall, savoring her delicate shoulder blades, the
shadowed hollow of her back. All that remained now were light green hose
attached to a wisp of silk that girdled her hips.
Sophia shivered, and he knew it was not the cold, though the storm was
blowing a strong, moist breeze through the partly opened window.
He put his hands on her shoulders, firmly now, and turned her around.
She threw back her head and laughed as he stared at her breasts and bit
his lower lip.
What Daoud carried under his black gown felt as big and heavy as a mace.
He dropped to one knee before her. He reached around to her buttocks,
his palms tingling at their cool firmness, and he slid down the last of
her garments. She stood, all exposed, before him.
"Will I not see you naked?" she said with a throaty chuckle. "Is that
the Turkish way, for the man to remain clothed?"
"You will soon learn what the Turkish way is, my lady." He leaned
forward, still genuflecting, and dropped a dozen light kisses on her
belly and thighs, and then buried his face in the rich triangle of hair
between her legs and kissed her deeply.
She cried out in surprise and pleasure.
Suddenly he stood up and swung her up in his arms like a Bedouin
chieftain carrying his bride to his tent. She laughed delightedly. She
felt as light as a child. He strode across the room to the bed and laid
her down.
He wrestled his black silk gown over his head and threw it off. Quickly
he pulled off the locket Blossoming Reed had given him and dropped it on
the gown. He stood over her, looking down at her, and letting her look
her fill at him.
"The blond Turk," she said in Greek with a small smile, and moved her
hips from side to side.
Slowly she reached up to her head and pulled free the net of pearls
woven into her hair. Long locks, black as raven's wings, spread out
around her head on the pillow.
"I must look like Medusa," she said.
"Who?"
"A woman with snakes for hair. Men who saw her were turned to stone."
He remembered now: In a bazaar at El Kahira he had listened to the story
of the she-monster.
"The sight of you would bring a stone to life," he said.
"Ah, but part of you is already hard as stone. How long are you going to
stand there? I want you." The yearning in her voice made something
vibrate inside him, as if she had plucked a taut string in his very
soul. He was seized by a violent urge to throw himself upon her and take
her at once. And she would welcome it, too, he knew.
But this moment was too precious to be allowed to pass so quickly.
He sank to his knees and reached out to pull her hips to the edge of the
bed. She squirmed across the bed to help him.
* * * * *
Just after he grew out of boyhood, when he was very wild and afraid of
nothing, Ayesha, the youngest wife of Emir Faruk abu Husain, discovered
that he existed, and showed him a way to come to her in abu Husain's
harem. He knew he would die writhing on a spike if the emir's slaves
caught him, but he was also quite certain that such a thing could never
really happen to him.
With a boy's eagerness and excitability, he had spent himself an instant
after he joined Ayesha in the darkness on her couch.
"The emir is very old and has many wives," she purred. "Rarely can we
slip a beautiful young man like you past the harem guards. So we must
learn how to pleasure each other. There are many things that will
delight a woman's body besides a man's rumh. Shall I show you?"
He was curious, and at his whispered agreement she pushed his head down
between her legs and told him what to do.
"And put your fingers _here_ at the same time. Ah, that feels very
good."
* * * * *
He looked at Sophia lying open before him and said again, "How like a
flower." He saw dew on this flower, and he bent to taste.
He did to her the things he had learned from Ayesha and later on from
other harem women.
As he worked upon Sophia the magic of the harem, he listened to her
breathing as it grew faster and faster. He watched her breasts rise and
fall, her chestnut-color nipples standing up.
She groaned and tossed her head from side to side, the groans turning to
screams as she reached a pinnacle. He brought her to another, and
another.
Panting, almost crying, she put her hand on his head. "No more. This way
of the Turks is wonderful, but I want you inside me now."
He stretched himself full length beside her, put his face, wet with her
own sweet liquor, against hers and kissed her with lips and tongue. She
seized his shoulders, her nails digging into his muscles, and pulled him
over on top of her.
The way was so well prepared that he was within her in an instant. He
knew that he could not hold himself back very long, and he gave himself
up to the floodtide of pleasure. He raised his head a little so that he
could look down into her wide amber eyes, and so that she could see into
his soul at the moment when he gave all his force to her.
Almost at the same moment the muscles in her face tensed and her neck
corded. Through clenched teeth she cried out again and again and again.
Their bodies relaxed together. Daoud felt that now, in the aftermath of
frenzy, their flesh was melting and flowing together and becoming one.
They lay in silence, and a distant growl of thunder told him that the
storm outside had passed. He had not noticed its dying away. He felt a
cool breeze blowing through the windows.
It seemed as if hours passed while they lay there in silence, arms
around each other, legs entwined, and he listened to her breathing
slowly grow calmer.
She stroked his cheek and played with the blond hairs on his chest. "Is
anything changed now?"
"For us, I think, much is changed."
She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I love you. Does love mean
anything to you Muslims?"
He laughed softly. "Of course it does. _In this world, women and perfume
are dearest to me._ So spoke our Prophet, may God commend and salute
him."
She shook her head and ran her finger down his forehead and nose. "I am
glad I am as dear to you as perfume. You say 'our Prophet,' lying there
looking more French than Simon de Gobignon. Of course, that is why your
sultan sent you here. If I, who know what you are, still find it hard to
accept you as a Saracen, those who do not know would never suspect."
As she spoke the name de Gobignon, he felt a twinge of anger. Just his
name, mentioned in their bed, was an intrusion. Her eyes flickered
momentarily away from his, as if she, too, realized it was an error.
Best, he thought, to say nothing about it.
"Yes, I am truly a Muslim, and Muslims know more of love, I believe,
than most Christians." But now he thought of Blossoming Reed.
_Why must these ghosts hover over us?_
She reached out to touch the little leather capsule tied by a thong
around his neck, the only thing he was wearing at the moment. "What is
that?"
"It is called a tawidh. Inside are numbers written on a scroll. It
protects me from death by wounding and causes any wounds I do receive to
heal quickly."
"Tawidh?" She mimicked exactly the Arabic pronunciation. "How can
numbers on a scroll protect from wounds?"
He did not fully understand himself the Sufi belief that all things are
numbers, and that numbers written by a holy man could control objects
and events.
"One must be of my faith to understand it," he said briefly.
She looked at him earnestly. "It is so hard to think of you as a
Mohammedan, David."
"Not Mohammedan--Muslim. And David is not my name. My true name is
Arabic. Shall I tell it to you?"
"Oh, yes, please. I will use it with you when we are alone together."
"I am called Daoud ibn Abdallah. Daoud is Arabic for David."
"Then your name _is_ David."
"No, it is Daoud," he said. "The sound matters a great deal. It is the
sound that God hears."
"You believe that God speaks Arabic?"
"It is the language most pleasing to Him. Did He not give His message to
the Prophet--may God praise and salute him--in Arabic?"
She pulled herself closer to him. "Ah, David--Daoud--do not talk to me
of religion now. Here and now, let us think not of religions and empires
and wars, but only of you and me." She paused and looked at him a little
anxiously. "Do you think the servants or anyone else heard me
screaming?"
"I saw no one outside. Most of them probably suspect that we have been
lovers for a long time. But suspicion is one thing. To confirm it by our
outward behavior could be dangerous. We must continue to act as if this
never happened."
"We will do this again, will we not?"
He touched her dark red lips with his fingertips and said:
After suffering the joy of love
I have no abiding place.
I live only to be
With the one I love.
"Yes, we will do it again. Very soon now. I feel my strength returning."
He curved his hand around the softness of her breast.
"Ah, good! I did not want it to be over yet--Daoud."
* * * * *
In the first days of the Christian month of July the sun grew very
strong, and above the narrow streets and tiny gardens, dust rose. Daoud
found the climate more to his liking. Although he believed he would
never have a true home or enjoy peace in this life, he felt a happiness
such as he had never known before. And this was strange, because Hulagu
Khan's emissaries to the Christians still lived, and al-Islam was still
threatened with destruction, and while he turned many plans over in his
mind, he was not sure what to do next.
But when he and Sophia were together he was able almost entirely to
forget those threats. And when he was not with her, he carried her image
in his heart, and his heart was the lighter for it.
His leg had healed, and it was safe for him to walk the streets now. He
knew the podesta's men must be watching him, but he feared them less
now, because they would not see him limp. They might wonder when he had
returned to Orvieto from Perugia, but they would have to suppose it was
after the podesta took the clerks away from the gates. Each day he
wandered through the town, forming plans, observing.
He sensed a tension in the air, growing a little stronger each day, like
the summer's heat. Around the palace of the Filippeschi on the south
side of the town, in its windows and on its battlements, men stood
watchful, holding crossbows, hands on their sword hilts. They were not
as strong as they had been last April. The bravos Lorenzo had gathered
and Daoud had lent to their cause had quietly left Orvieto. The
Filippeschi had lost many men and were thrown back on their own
resources now. Their grim apprehension was obvious.
Daoud did not speak directly to the Filippeschi. Aside from his one
meeting with their leader, Marco, he had avoided any contact with them
that might compromise him. He wondered whether Marco had given any
thought to a suggestion Lorenzo had made to him: that aid might be
forthcoming if the Filippeschi switched their allegiance to the
Ghibellino cause. Apparently Filippeschi loyalty to the pope went back
centuries, and was not easily changed. That was something to be
discussed when Lorenzo returned.
At the Palazzo Monaldeschi Daoud saw an air of preparation, of forces
gathering, of confidence. One afternoon Vittorio de Monaldeschi, aged
eleven, in full mail--a child's mail shirt and hose must cost as much as
a man's, and be usable for only a short time--wearing an orange and
green surcoat, rode slowly along the length of the Corso with a dozen
horsemen, orange and green pennons on their lances. A show to intimidate
his enemies.
Both sides seemed to be awaiting something, and the air of the city felt
to Daoud as it did when a thunderstorm was approaching.
The petty street wars of Orvieto would mean nothing to him soon, Daoud
thought. Lorenzo had managed to send two messages by way of Ghibellino
merchants passing through Orvieto. He had made his way safely to Siena,
was negotiating with Rinaldo di Stefano, Duke of Siena, and was
recruiting bravos by the hundred. But all was not going quickly enough
for Daoud. With the pope on the verge of leaving Orvieto, it appeared
the Sienese would not come quickly enough. Unless Lorenzo and the
Sienese arrived in time to trap the pope and the Tartars here, he would
have to follow them to Perugia.
Or he could go to Manfred and urge him to make immediate war on the
pope. Every rumormonger in Orvieto claimed that Manfred was on the brink
of marching out of southern Italy to make the whole peninsula his. But
Daoud doubted it. It would probably be difficult to persuade Manfred to
take any action against the pope, unless the French actually invaded
Italy.
Every day he and Sophia spent hours together, sometimes in his chamber,
sometimes in hers. They chose different times of the day, hoping to make
their meetings less obvious.
The best times were the afternoons. Most Orvietans slept an hour or two
after their noon meal, just as most Egyptians did. Sophia and Daoud
would draw the curtains to hold out the heat and dust. They would make
love, their bodies slippery with sweat. Then they would lie side by side
and let themselves cool, talking of what they felt about each other, of
the world, of the mission they had come to Orvieto to accomplish.
They never spent an entire night together. This would cause too much
gossip among Ugolini's servants. For the benefit of the podesta and
whoever else might be watching them, Daoud wanted to maintain the
fiction that he was a trader from Trebizond, far to the east, and Sophia
a Sicilian girl from Siracusa, and they had very little to do with each
other. Alone in his bed at night, Daoud sometimes lay awake thinking
about what Sophia had come to mean to him. He had fallen in love with
her, he realized now, long before he first possessed her body.
If it was their fate to die here in Italy, at least they would have
known this happiness first. But if he succeeded in his mission, and if
he and Sophia were still alive after that, what then? Return to his
emir's palace in El Kahira, to Blossoming Reed, bringing Sophia with
him? A Greek Christian woman entering a Mameluke's harem? And even if
Sophia were willing, Blossoming Reed would try to kill her. But Sophia
would make a formidable enemy for Blossoming Reed.
No, he could not subject either of them to that. Or himself.
But for him what else was there? El Kahira was the only home he knew. He
had left it only to protect it. He must return.
All this thinking, he decided, was foolishness. What would happen was
written in the book of God, and one could be sure only that it would be
very different from what he expected. Let him concentrate on following
the path as far ahead as he could see clearly, and the next stage would
be revealed when God turned the page.
* * * * *
An orange radiance suffused Cardinal Ugolini's dining hall, gilding dust
motes that hung in the air. A stout maidservant cleared away the
trenchers, the round slices of bread on which Ugolini had served spring
lamb to Daoud and Sophia. She bundled up the knives and forks in her
apron. Daoud's fork was clean. He preferred, among friends, not to use
the strange implement, which seemed to him a bida, an undesirable
innovation. He ate with the fingers of his right hand.
"His Holiness takes the road for Perugia a week from tomorrow," said
Ugolini. "You have not told me what you intend to do, David."
"We must await Lorenzo's coming. He and the Sienese may be here before
the pope leaves."
"I assure you that if that were possible, the pope would be galloping
out of town right now," said Ugolini. "His information is better than
ours."
Sophia daintily wiped her hands and lips with the linen cloth that
covered the table. "Your Eminence, Messer David, I want to use these
long July hours of daylight for painting. I beg to be excused."
She refused more wine and genially overrode Ugolini's protests.
Carefully keeping his face blank, Daoud watched her walk out of the
room, tall and straight in a cherry-red gown. He found himself picturing
the things they had done not long ago, while Orvieto rested at midday.
He turned back to Ugolini to see the little cardinal was also, with a
lubricious smile, watching Sophia.
Ugolini's long nose twitched with amusement as he turned to Daoud.
"There have been times when I thought there was a chamber of torment on
the top floor of my mansion. The groans, the screams--"
"I have heard nothing, Your Eminence," said Daoud, keeping his face
expressionless.
"I should have been concerned for the lovely lady, except that she is
obviously so healthy and serene. Much more serene, I believe, than when
she first came here. What do you suppose accounts for that?"