Daoud woke to a discreet scratching on the curtains of his bed.
Somewhere in the street a drum was beating, sounding farther, then
nearer again, as the drummer marched up and down the streets of
Benevento, waking the fighting men quartered there.
"I am awake," he rasped.
"May God look with favor on your deeds this day, my lord," came the
voice of his orderly, Husain, through the heavy curtains.
Sophia's back was warm against his chest. His left arm, on which she had
been sleeping, was numb. She wriggled her shoulders and then turned over
to face him. He freed his arm and rubbed his face against hers, his
beard brushing her cheek.
She wrapped one arm around him and twined her legs around one of his.
Her free hand moved down, fondling him. His hands glided over her body,
trying to memorize the feel of her. She murmured with pleasure into his
ear.
She opened her eyes suddenly. "Will it be bad for you to do this with
me?"
"What to do you mean, bad?"
"Deprive you of strength for the battle?"
He chuckled softly. "If you made me stop now, I would be filled with
such a rage that I would slay all of Charles's army single-handed."
Her hand stopped pleasuring him. "That would be good. Then we must
stop."
"No," he said. "I would rather go into battle with a beautiful memory
and a clear head. As for my strength, God will restore it moments after
I spend it. He always has, I assure you."
"Then let us not wait." She pulled him over on top of her and accepted
him into herself, tightening around him. A flood of breathless Greek
endearments filled his ear.
He had never been with a woman who cried out as Sophia did during the
act of love. Try as she might to muffle her sounds, she was certain in
the final surge to lose control. He was sure Manfred's other officers
quartered in this house must hear her.
Well, let them hear her, and envy him.
She let him rest upon her, happily released, until his body withdrew
itself from her.
A shadow crossed his mind.
_That may have been the last time for us._
They lay side by side. A faint light penetrated the bed curtains from
somewhere in their room, and by that light he could see her smiling. He
smiled back, but his body was growing tense. Fear of what he would face
in the hours to come was building inside him.
The face he loved, the warmth of her body so close to his, made him wish
he need never leave this bed. His arms and legs felt heavy, rebellious.
If he commanded them to move away from her, they would not.
_In truth, I would have to be mad to want to go out and butcher infidels
rather than stay here with Sophia._
But he could not stay with her. Today would decide everything. He forced
his reluctant limbs to push him away from her. She did not try to hold
him.
Outside the heavy bed curtains, the air in the room felt cold as death.
Standing alone in the middle of the floor, he felt a sickening void of
apprehension in his belly. As Sheikh Saadi had taught him, he faced his
fear. He was terrified of death and defeat. Probably there had never
been a warrior anywhere in the world who had not felt this way on the
morning of a battle. Probably the Prophet himself, before battle, had
feared for himself and for those he loved.
_I cannot control today's outcome, for myself or for the men I fight
beside. But I can dedicate my mind and heart and will and limbs to God.
I can fight for Him to the uttermost of my strength. Passive toward God,
active toward the world._
Naked, he walked to the door leading to the balcony and pushed it
partway open. A draft of even chillier air made his skin prickle and
fluttered the flame of the candle Husain had lit when he woke them. The
sky was still black and full of stars. Dawn was a long way off.
He was on the third story of this house in Benevento and could see over
the roofs of most of the surrounding houses. Men hurried through the
streets swinging lanterns. The drum was still beating a rapid tattoo in
the near distance, joined now by horses' hooves clattering on the
cobblestones. Here and there a candle glowed behind shutters. Far away,
probably in the main camp of Manfred's army, north of town, a trumpet
called.
He shivered, and closed the shutter against the winter wind.
Sophia had pushed the bed curtains aside and was sitting on the edge of
the bed with a blanket wrapped around her, watching him.
On the bedroom table, Husain had carefully laid out a pitcher and basin
and Daoud's underclothes. Daoud took the tawidh by its thong and tied it
around his neck. Next he picked up the silver locket and turned the
little screw that opened it.
The magic was still working.
But when he looked into the locket, he saw the same face that was
looking at him from across the room. A feeling of happy relief filled
him, driving out the foreboding that had darkened his mind earlier in
bed with Sophia.
He was sure now that whatever connection the locket had with Blossoming
Reed was lost. Love had changed the image. He had been testing it ever
since he arrived at Lucera, and it always showed him Sophia's face. He
could hope that whatever spell Blossoming Reed had placed upon it, when
she warned him, _your love will destroy both her and you_, was now
broken. He closed the locket and set it down on the table.
He had said good-bye in his heart to Blossoming Reed sometime during
these years in the land of the infidel. He had loved Blossoming Reed,
but he had never known love in all its fullness and completion until
Sophia. And, knowing that he had violated the one commandment Blossoming
Reed had laid upon him, and carrying her threat in the back of his mind,
his love for her had withered. She was still as vivid in his mind's eye
as she had been in the locket before Sophia supplanted her. But his
feeling for her now was one of sad renunciation. Whether or not he
survived this war, they must be forever parted.
He filled the earthenware basin with water from the wooden pitcher and
began a ritual washing, first his hands, then his face, then forearms
from wrists to elbows, then his feet up to the ankles.
"How can you stand the cold?" Sophia said.
Daoud shrugged. "I have to." He did not want to talk now. He wanted to
empty his mind for prayer. He tied the drawstring of his braies. Then he
pulled on red silk trousers, flaring below the knee and tight at the
ankles, and drew a cotton shirt over his head.
He went to the balcony again to check his directions. There was Venus.
That was east, then. He took a small rolled-up carpet out of his
traveling chest and laid it over the rug on the bedroom floor. He
oriented the prayer carpet toward the southeast and stood at the end of
it.
He began the salat, bringing his hands up to the sides of his head and
saying, "Allahu akbar, God is great."
He repeated his prayers, the bowing, the kneeling, the prostrations,
with great care and full attention. With his forehead pressed to the
rug, he submitted himself and this day utterly to the will of God.
Finished, he looked over at Sophia. She was still sitting on the edge of
the bed, watching him silently. He looked long at her, drinking her in.
It weighed heavily on his heart that he had to leave her, and even more
heavily that she would be terribly frightened for him until he came
back.
As he feared for her.
_Compassionate God, Cherisher of Worlds, protect her._
He began to dress for battle.
Husain had spread out his armor and weapons on top of his traveling
chest. Daoud's breastplate was made of many rectangular pieces of steel
laced together with leather thongs and overlapping each other. Two
larger plates, side by side, were attached over his heart, inlaid with
the spiraling gold design that marked him a member of the halkha, the
sultan's personal guard. Worked into the design were verses from the
Koran. On the left plate, "He succeeds who purifies the soul," and on
the right, "And he fails who corrupts it." The breastplate was divided
at the sides, where it could be strapped together. Baibars himself,
after Daoud returned to Manfred, had arranged for a bribed Genoese sea
captain to smuggle it to him. Daoud was proud of it, and the men of the
Sons of the Falcon would be proud to see their leader wearing it.
He pulled on a quilted tunic of embroidered red silk, its padding
stuffed with linen. Then he dropped the breastplate over his head. He
heard a movement behind him, and then felt Sophia fastening the
breastplate at his sides.
The storehouse of Manfred's Muslim armorers offered blades of the finest
Hindustan steel, and from it Daoud had selected a saif for himself. It
gleamed in the candlelight as he drew it from its sheath. He examined
with pleasure the gold inlay near the hilt. There was not a nick or a
scratch anywhere on the blade. He took a heavy silk scarf from the
clothing on the table and tossed it in the air. He held the blade under
it, edge up. The scarf fell on the blade and then dropped to the floor
in two parts.
He sheathed the sword and buckled it on. He put on his bayda, his
egg-shaped helmet, and wrapped the silk of his turban around and around
it, and when it was properly tied, pinned it with an emerald clasp.
"Someday you must do that slowly for me, so I can learn how to wrap your
turban," said Sophia. "I would like to do that for you." A pang of
sorrow for her struck his heart as he realized she was speaking of their
future together to convince herself that there would be one. He wished
he could free her from fear.
While he dressed, she had quietly been dressing, too, in a long blue
gown and a fiery orange woolen mantle.
He looked down at the weapons laid out on the chest, selected a dagger,
and stuck it in his belt. Next to the dagger lay the Scorpion, the tiny
crossbow, assembled, with a box of finger-length darts beside it. Surely
not a weapon for a battle, he thought.
"Here." He turned to Sophia and handed her the crossbow. "I know you
have a dagger, but you can use this to protect yourself too. Sometimes I
coat the darts with a drug that makes a man unconscious, sometimes with
deadly poison. These darts are poisoned--be very careful with them. Most
people have never seen a weapon like this, so it will surprise them. And
you do not have to get close to your enemy to use it."
"I do not need protection," said Sophia. "You will be out there
protecting me."
"If you take it, it will put my mind at ease," said Daoud.
"For that reason only," said Sophia, dropping the tiny crossbow and the
box of darts into a leather bag on top of her own traveling chest.
Daoud picked up the locket. Its hammered silver outer surface glowed
softly in the candlelight.
"Please take this too," he said. "You have seen me wear it many times.
After I have left you today, open it. I believe you will see a
picture--an image--of me."
She lowered her head and rested her hands on his armored chest as he
hung the locket on its silver chain around her neck.
He unfolded his forest-green linen cape and draped it over himself,
clasping it at his throat with a gold chain.
He took her in his arms, carefully, so as not to hurt her with the steel
breastplate, and pressed his lips against hers for a long time.
A knock at the door broke their kiss. "My lord, your horse is ready,"
said Husain's voice.
At the door of the house, Ugolini and Tilia, both of them heavily
cloaked against the cold night air, were waiting for them. In the light
of the single small oil lamp burning beside the doorway, they were two
short, bulky shadows, Tilia much bulkier than Ugolini.
"We heard you moving about," said Tilia. "We came down to wish you
victory."
"What do the stars say about today?" Daoud asked Ugolini.
"Yesterday, the twenty-first of February, the sun moved from the house
of Aquarius the water-bearer to the house of Pisces, the fish." Ugolini
shook his head dolefully. "The fish is the sign of Christendom."
"Adelberto, you are a poor astrologer," said Tilia heartily. "A good
astrologer would find something encouraging to say. For example: It
would not be good for Christendom for Charles to win. The French would
dominate the Church and corrupt it. True Christianity will triumph if
Manfred wins."
"Do not use the word 'if,' Madama Tilia," said Daoud with a smile.
"I know Manfred is going to win," said Ugolini. "Otherwise I would not
have followed his army all the way to Benevento. I believe he will go on
to the Papal States and will persuade Pope Clement to restore me to my
rightful position."
"If Pope Clement _waits_ for Manfred after Charles is defeated," said
Tilia dryly.
That was Ugolini's explanation of why he had come north with Manfred's
army. Daoud wondered what Tilia's was. Both risked being imprisoned and
probably executed should Manfred lose and Charles capture them.
"Did you see Lorenzo leave?"
"Moments before you came down," said Tilia. "That big dog of his,
Scipio, is inconsolable. I can hear him keening in the stable. I think
Adelberto and I will take him up to our room and comfort him."
Daoud said, "It is a rare moment when Scipio is not at Lorenzo's side.
And I think, too, he can sense when his master is in danger. As we all
are today. It would be kind of you to care for him."
With a tremulous attempt at laughter, Sophia said, "And who will care
for me?"
Tilia laid her small hand on Sophia's arm. "We will stay with you,
Sophia, if you want, until Daoud returns." She pulled Ugolini inside the
door and it closed behind them, leaving Daoud and Sophia alone.
Sophia moved close in the lamplight outside the entrance of the
merchant's house and looked up at him, her eyes large and solemn.
"Nothing but you matters to me. Come back to me."
Daoud still wished he could convince her that she had nothing to fear.
But that was foolish. She knew all too well that there was much to fear.
"I don't want you to be frightened," he said.
"I will try not to be."
"I will come back." There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he
realized now he had not said about how he loved her as he had never
loved another woman in his life since--
Since his mother.
They were two people who had been utterly alone in the world, who had
both lost everyone precious to them. All they truly had was each other.
_Oh, God, let me come back to her. I ask this not for my happiness, but
for hers._
"I know I will see you again." She smiled suddenly. "Can you find your
way to me?"
He looked up at the building and then at the street. Bulking large
against the stars was the huge square shape of an arch, which had been
built over a thousand years ago, he was told, by a Roman general to
commemorate his conquest of Jerusalem.
With this talk of stars and portents, he felt it must mean something
that this victory arch should be here in Benevento. Were not these wars
of Muslim and Christian that had shaped his destiny wars over Jerusalem?
He said, "I will ride through that arch, and you will be on the third
floor of the house with the carving over the door of San Giorgio slaying
the dragon."
She smiled, her teeth white in the lantern light. "That is the Archangel
Michael overcoming Satan."
"How am I to tell one Christian idol from another?"
She pushed at him. He saw the tracks of tears glistening on her cheeks.
His own eyes burned.
"Go quickly now."
He turned, fearing the sight of his tears might break her heart, as hers
had broken his. He set his foot in the stirrup and vaulted into the
saddle of the brown Arabian Husain was holding. He waited for Husain to
mount his own horse and then started down the street. He kept his face
set toward the triumphal arch. He dared not look back.
* * * * *
In her room, Sophia went through her chest and found her icon of Saint
Simon Stylites. She kept the icon hidden when Daoud was around. He
believed that praying to saints' images was idolatry, and she especially
did not want him to see her praying to a saint named Simon. She knelt,
clasped her hands, and prayed to the desert saint.
_Oh, holy Simon, bring him back to me. You who dwelt in the desert, you
who know what it is to be alone on your pillar, keep safe this man who
came alone out of the desert. Protect him from the swords and spears and
arrows of his enemies. He is not of our faith, I know, but I love him
so, and is not Love another name for God?_
She pressed both hands flat against her belly and doubled over, weeping.
* * * * *
Daoud had just ridden through the northern gate of the town when he
heard his name called from above. He saw a pale blond head, gleaming in
the first rays of sunrise, looking down at him through the battlements
of a square gate tower.
"Up here, Daoud, come up!" Manfred's voice.
"This is the best vantage point we could ask for," Manfred said when
Daoud arrived on the tower platform. "Unless we were to climb those
mountains over there."
Lorenzo was on the tower roof with Manfred, and Landgrave Barth, and six
or so of Manfred's blond young noblemen, all in splendid cloaks of
peacock blue, sunset orange, and blood-red. They wore glossy silk
surcoats over mail that covered them from chin to fingertips. Manfred
was in mail, covered by a knee-length yellow and black surcoat. He held
his bronzed helmet, decorated with three nodding ostrich plumes dyed
emerald green, tucked under his arm.
"Have they come?" Daoud asked.
Manfred nodded, his face sterner than Daoud had ever seen it. "Anjou is
in the valley."
Daoud looked out from the tower. Like a field of wildflowers, hundreds
of their own multicolored tents, each one tall and pointed at the top,
spread out over the rolling brown landscape just beyond the town wall.
In front of the tents the divisions of Manfred's army were forming up in
squares. The faint notes of a military band came to Daoud's ear. It was
European music, which sounded jagged, harsh, and disconnected to him.
He saw the Sons of the Falcon now, over on the left, their rows
straight, sitting quietly on their horses, moving little. They all wore
red turbans wrapped around their helmets; he had insisted that they
dress alike so as to be easily recognizable. They, too, had their band,
a dozen men who played kettledrums, trumpets, hautboys, and cymbals from
horseback. The band was silent now, but would play when the Sons of the
Falcon rode into battle.
"Long ago the Romans called this town Maleventum, bad wind," said
Manfred beside him, "because they believed that the winds from the north
brought pestilence down from the swamps around Rome."
Just the sort of thing Manfred would know, Daoud thought.
"Even though the people who live here chose a more attractive name,"
Manfred went on, "we see that the ancients were not wrong. Look what
plague the wind has blown down from Rome today."
Daoud's eyes followed Manfred's pointing arm to the narrow north end of
the long valley in which Benevento lay. The road from Rome entered the
valley at the north end and ran through it to the gate above which they
were standing. Rows of tents filled the northern opening of the valley,
and the tiny figures of horsemen and foot soldiers were forming dark
lines across the light brown fields.
Last night peasants from that end of the valley had come flocking into
Benevento with cartloads of possessions and stored crops. Even though
they were supposedly supporters of the papal cause, the people who lived
around Benevento felt safer under Manfred's protection.
But this valley was a stone coffin, Daoud thought. Hills on either side,
squeezing together at the top of the valley, the town lying across the
bottom end. In this box, how could he use the Sons of the Falcon well?
He pummeled his brain.
One thing he could at least achieve. He remembered Nuwaihi's report that
the Tartars were with Charles's army. He turned to Lorenzo.
"It falls to you to finish the Tartars. Make your way into Charles's
camp while the battle is on."
Lorenzo's mouth turned down under his thick mustache. "It will take
time. I can take a wagon and go around through the hills and pretend to
be a peasant offering to sell wine and food to Anjou's people."
"Take some men with you."
Lorenzo shook his head. "That would arouse suspicion. If I go alone,
whoever is guarding Charles's camp will see no reason to fear me."
"I went alone into the Palazzo Monaldeschi to kill them, and I could not
do it."
"And I, with my poor Sicilian skills, cannot be expected to succeed
where Daoud ibn Abdallah, who was trained by the Old Man of the Mountain
himself, failed. Is that what you are thinking?"