_Why did I ever make love to him?_
Sophia had asked herself the same question countless times since that
day by the wooded lake. For two months she had managed to keep away from
Simon. Now he was here, in Ugolini's mansion.
She stood before the door of Ugolini's audience room. The servant who
had come to fetch her was about to open it. Sophia's hands felt coated
with frost. Terrified of being with Simon again, she hated herself for
what she had done. To Daoud, to Simon. And to herself.
The servant opened the door. She stepped through quickly and he closed
it behind her.
And there was Simon de Gobignon, tall and handsome as ever, looking down
at her reproachfully. Tension made her heart beat so hard that she
wanted to put her hand on her chest to still it. Instead, she held her
hand out so that Simon could bend down from his towering height and kiss
it. She was so upset by his unexpected arrival that she did not
comprehend his murmured greeting.
Behind Simon's back Ugolini, sitting at a large writing desk, rolled his
eyes and stretched his mouth in a grimace at her. Simon was still bent
over her hand, so she was able to shake her head slightly in answer to
his unspoken question. Simon must have come here as a last resort,
because after yielding to him in secret she had tried to shut him out of
her life. She could hardly convey that to Ugolini now, even if she
wanted to.
"The Count de Gobignon has come to call on you, my dear," said Ugolini,
his smooth voice betraying none of his anxiety. "I have given my
permission, provided it is also your wish."
"Your Signory pays me too much honor," she said softly to Simon. Her
mind spun. How could she talk to Simon, when she did not understand
herself well enough to know what lies to tell him?
She wondered what Ugolini would think of her if he knew all of what had
happened between her and Simon when they met that day. Would he be
shocked? Contemptuous? Would he tell Daoud? All he knew of her meeting
with Simon in October was that Simon had again proposed marriage to her,
and she had rejected him.
She said, "I find it hard to believe that Your Signory even remembers
me. I do not believe we have seen each other since the reception for the
Tartar ambassadors at the Palazzo Monaldeschi last year. Is that not
so?"
An appreciative smile replaced the somber expression on Simon's face.
His eyes twinkled at her. Doubtless he thought they were conspirators
together.
_The poor, poor boy._
But she could not see that look warming his sharp-pointed features
without feeling it again--that surge of desire that had driven her to
give herself to him two months ago.
_What is happening to me?_
"Many months have passed and much has happened, Madonna," he said,
"but--forgive me if I am too forward--I have found it impossible to
forget you. Now that we are together in a new city, I hoped to renew
your acquaintance."
"This endless moving about will be the death of me," said Ugolini
unhappily. "Papa le Gros no sooner arrives from England and is
officially elected than he tells us he will be crowned in Viterbo and
make that the new papal seat. I have hardly had time to unpack here in
Perugia."
"Your furnishings seem in good order to me, Your Eminence," said Simon
with a smile, looking around the large room with its row of large
windows, its thick carpeting, and its heavy black chairs and tables. A
large shield carved in stone over the fireplace behind Ugolini was
painted with five red bands on a white background.
"These are not mine," said Ugolini, waving a hand dismissively. "Not my
idea of comfortable surroundings at all. No, I simply bought this house
and its furnishings from a Genoese merchant who was using it only part
of the year. I would be ashamed to tell you how much I paid for it--you
would think me a fool. A typical Genoese, he took advantage of my need.
And now I must sell all, probably to the same merchant and probably at a
loss."
"That is another reason why I wanted to see you, Madonna Sophia," said
Simon. "I feared that you, like your good uncle, might find all this
uprooting tiresome and might return to Sicily, and I would be hard put
to find you again."
With an inward shudder, Sophia realized the strength of Simon's resolve
to possess her. Only the truth would kill that determination, and she
would never dare to tell him that. Besides, there was a part of her
that, mad as it was, delighted in seeing how powerfully he was drawn to
her.
"I am thinking of going home myself," said Ugolini. "What need for me to
go with the new pope on this tedious search for ever-safer safety?"
"If you returned to Sicily," said Simon to Sophia, "it might be ages
before I see you again."
His words frightened her. Was he about to ask Ugolini for her hand, and
how would the cardinal deal with that?
"Forgive me if I raise an unpleasant subject," said Ugolini, "but if
your Count Charles d'Anjou accepts the pope's offer of the crown of
southern Italy and Sicily, it may be a long time before any French
nobleman will be welcome in my homeland."
There was no "if" about what Charles d'Anjou would do, Sophia thought.
That was just Ugolini's courtesy.
"I know, Your Eminence," said Simon, looking grim. "I hope you will
still think of me as your friend, despite events. Just as we have been
friends while we disagreed over this matter of the Tartar alliance."
Ugolini clapped his hands suddenly. "Well, it is a happy occasion when
my niece has such a distinguished visitor. Count, this house has a
second-story loggia overlooking the atrium. It is private enough to
shield you from prying eyes, yet not so private as to place you lovely
young people in peril of temptation. Sophia will show you the way."
Bowing and thanking Ugolini, Simon followed Sophia out of the room.
She turned to Simon as soon as the door of Ugolini's audience chamber
had closed behind them and said, "I need my cloak for the cold. Wait
here, and I will go to my room and get it." Without giving him a chance
to answer, she hurried down the corridor, desperately trying to make
sense of her thoughts and feelings.
Their lovemaking had been a terrible mistake. And yet, there had been
times in those two months when the recollection of the two of them,
wrapped in his cloak, lying on a bed of leaves, the depth of his passion
for her and the wildness of her answering feelings, crept up on her
unexpectedly and sent thrills of pleasure coursing through her.
As she rummaged in her chest for a warm cloak, her eyes met those of her
icon of Saint Simon Stylites, and she felt shame wash over her.
_How can I think that I truly love Daoud, when I gave myself so freely
to his enemy?_
But had that not been what Daoud had expected her to do all along? He
had always been jealous, had always made it obvious that he hated the
idea of her letting Simon court her. And yet, from the time he first
encountered Simon, he had made it equally obvious that he expected
Sophia to do whatever was necessary to make Simon fall in love with her.
And from the moment Simon had kissed her in the Contessa di
Monaldeschi's atrium, he had loved her, and never stopped loving her.
But to make him love her, she had pretended to be an innocent young
Sicilian woman who could be overwhelmed by her love for a French
nobleman. Sadly enough, she felt more joy and peace of mind as that
Sicilian girl than she ever had known as a woman of Byzantium. And the
confusion about who she really was had become much worse after she
decided to keep secret from Daoud Simon's destination when he left
Orvieto.
She felt a pounding pain inside her skull, and she pressed her hands
against her bound-up hair. She shut her eyes so tight that she forced
tears from them, and a little groan escaped her.
She was sure of one thing: If she had much more to do with Simon de
Gobignon, the confusion she felt would probably drive her mad.
She fumbled through her chest and found a rose-colored winter cloak
lined with red squirrel fur. She threw it over her shoulders and clasped
it around her neck, the fur collar gently brushing her chin.
Simon was waiting where she had left him. He had allowed his bright blue
cloak to fall closed around his lanky frame, so that he looked like a
pillar. She wrapped her own cloak around herself, and side by side they
walked to the stairs at the end of the corridor.
They said nothing to each other until they were out on the loggia under
a gray sky. A chill wind stung Sophia's cheeks. She looked down at the
rows of fruit trees in the atrium below. Their bare branches reached up
at her like long, slender fingers.
"I cannot understand you," he said. "Why have you been so cruel to me?"
That sounded like typical courtly lover's talk, but she knew he meant
the words literally. She looked at his face and saw the whiteness, the
strain around his mouth, the slight tremor of his lips. He looked like a
mortally wounded man.
"I, cruel to you? Did I not beg you to stay away from my uncle? Look
what you have done today. He will send me to Siracusa for certain."
But she felt something break inside her at the sight of his pain. She
had done this to him. She had hoped to give him something by letting him
possess her one time, to make up for all that she could never give him.
Instead, with the gift of her body she had bound him to her more tightly
than ever. And then, haunted by her own feelings and the memory of what
they had done together, she had simply tried to have nothing further to
do with him. And now her effort to break with him was hurting both of
them far more than if she had refused him that day.
"You drove me to this," he said, his eyes wide with anger. "You did not
answer my letters or acknowledge my poems. When I tried to speak to you
in the street and in church, you avoided me. I sent you gifts, and you
sent them back."
She really would have to get out of Perugia. Back to Daoud. This would
tear her to pieces.
_But what about Rachel?_
If she left Perugia, that would be as good as abandoning Rachel. She had
sworn to herself never to do that.
_Simon guards the Tartars. He must know what has happened to Rachel.
Perhaps he can help her._
She stopped walking and leaned against the stone railing of the loggia.
The leafless branches in the atrium below them rattled in the wind.
"There are many reasons that I did not want to see you. I do not know
whether you would understand all of them. But one is that I have heard
something very ugly about those Tartars of yours." She had decided not
to admit that she knew Rachel. That would take too much explaining and
too many more lies, and the lies would be like hidden holes in a
leaf-strewn path, to trip her up.
"One of the Tartars, those men you guard so carefully, kidnapped a young
girl from Orvieto and is holding her a prisoner now, here in Perugia at
the Baglioni palace. It makes me unhappy to know that you are the
protector of men who would do such things."
Down below, two of Ugolini's servants brought out baskets of newly
washed tablecloths and bedlinens and began spreading them on the
branches of the trees to dry. Sophia spoke in a lower voice, giving
details of the attack on Tilia's house by de Verceuil and the Tartars as
if it were something she knew about only through hearsay, while Simon
looked more and more unhappy.
He frowned at her. "I know of this girl. It is John Chagan who keeps
her. But what is she to you? She is not even a Christian. I am surprised
that a woman of good family like you should worry about a prostitute."
How easy for a count to look down on a girl like Rachel. She felt her
back stiffen with anger.
_How he would despise me if he knew what I was._
_But what am I?_
"Does it lower me in your eyes that I worry about such a girl?"
He waved his hands placatingly. "No, no. Such charitable feelings do you
credit. I _would_ like to help her, and I know Friar Mathieu has already
tried. I just wondered how _you_ came to know and care about this girl's
case." He looked earnestly into her eyes. His eyes were a blue as clear
and bright as that lake where they had lain together.
"The story is talked about by all the servants and common folk of the
town. I feel very sorry for her. She is just a child. I find myself
imagining how she feels--kidnapped, helpless, raped by this barbarian, a
prisoner. Have you not seen her yourself?"
Simon nodded reluctantly, looking away. "Yes, glimpses. She stays in her
room."
"She is forced to stay in her room." Sophia sensed that Simon knew more
than he admitted about what the Tartar had done to Rachel and was
ashamed to be connected with it.
"What has this to do with you and me?" he demanded.
"You are close to the Tartars. You might be able to help her."
Simon glowered. "If I had been there that day in Orvieto, you may be
sure they would not have raided that brothel."
He might be on the enemy side, she thought, but he was not a savage like
the Franks of her childhood. He was a genuinely good man, and that was
what made the hopeless dream of marrying him so painful.
She put her hand on his arm and squeezed. "Will you try to get the
Tartar to release the girl? Cardinal Ugolini will take her in."
When she laid her hand on the hard, wiry muscle in his arm, she did not
want to let go.
_I still want him! My God, what is the matter with me?_
"De Verceuil would oppose me if I tried to take the girl away from John.
Incredible, is it not? A cardinal involved in kidnapping a young girl
for the pleasure of a barbarian?"
Sophia, taught by her Greek Orthodox priests that the Roman Church was a
fountainhead of wickedness, did not think the cardinal's actions all
that incredible. Besides, was she not in league with another cardinal
who was helping the Muslims?
"There _must_ be a way to help Rachel," she said.
He brought his face close to hers. "Sophia, I will speak to Friar
Mathieu. But, as I said, he has already tried to persuade John to let
the girl go free. With no success. And I am sure there is nothing more
Friar Mathieu can do before tomorrow, when I leave Perugia."
She loved that serious, intent look. It was as if light were coming from
his eyes.
But what he had just said took her by surprise.
"Leave Perugia? Where are you going?"