He shrugged and nodded. "Take this from me at least--a warning to your
emperor. Charles wants Constantinople. He has a claim to the crown of
Byzantium. He told me just today that he means to do to Michael what he
did to Manfred."
Sophia gave him a crooked little smile. "Michael will never let him even
get near Constantinople. I hope I can help with that."
"If ever I can do anything for you--"
Her smile grew wider. "Do not be too quick to promise that, Simon. If we
ever meet again, we may be on opposite sides." In a softer, sadder tone
she added, "Again."
He took a step closer to her. "If so, I will not be so easily deceived.
Now I know the real Sophia, the one who did not love me."
Her smile fell away. "I think the real Sophia did love you, Simon. Every
time you told me how you loved me, it was as if you were taking me up to
a mountaintop and showing me a beautiful land I could never enter. And
the worst of it was that because I could not enter, neither could you.
We were both barred forever from happiness."
The look on her face made him want to burst out weeping. He held his
breath and pressed his lips together hard to stifle the sob.
When he was able to speak, he said, "I think I would have loved the real
Sophia if I could have known her."
She shut her eyes as if in terrible pain and pressed the palms of her
hands against her stomach.
He reached out to take Sophia in his arms, but she stepped back from
him, and he saw that the tears were streaming down her pale cheeks. She
held out her hand.
He clasped her cold hand in both of his and said, "I will never forget
you."
* * * * *
The sun was setting in the desert to the west of El Kahira, the Guarded
One, giving a red tint to the white dust that drifted above the many
roads that led to this city. Tilia Caballo sat on a silk cushion by the
pool in the vast interior garden of the palace of the sultan, known as
the Multicolored Palace because its walls and floors were inlaid with
many different kinds of marble and its ceilings painted in azure and
gold. Tilia dabbled her hand in the pool and breathed deep of the scent
of jasmine. A fountain threw white water high in the air, and orange and
black fish circled in the rippling pool. In the shadows nearby a peacock
screamed.
She heard footsteps behind her. The merest glance over her shoulder told
her who it was, and she swiftly turned and knelt, pressing her forehead
and the palms of her hands against the cool blue tiles.
She saw the pointed toes of scarlet boots before her. She raised her
head a bit and saw the boots themselves, gem-encrusted leather.
"Tilia." The voice made her shiver.
"El Malik Dahir," she addressed him. _Victorious King._
"God blesses our meeting, Tilia."
She sat back, and he lowered himself to a cross-legged position facing
her. In the ten years since she had last seen him, he had aged little.
He had won the battle of the Well of Goliath, had made himself sultan,
and had reigned over a kingdom threatened from East and West. Yet his
yellow face was unlined, and there was no gray in his drooping red
mustache. She looked at the white scar that ran vertically down his
blind right eye; then she looked at his good left eye, and saw that it
was still bright blue and clear.
"Forgive me, Tilia, for not being able to greet you when you arrived in
El Kahira. I was inspecting the crusaders' defenses at Antioch--from the
inside."
She laughed. Amazing that such a striking-looking man should manage
again and again to move among his enemies in disguise. But he had been
doing it most of his life.
"My lord travels far and fast, as always."
"You have traveled farther. You are comfortable?"
"Who could fail to be comfortable, under Baibars's tent?"
"And Cardinal Ugolini? Will he be happy here?"
"The happiest he has ever been. He spends his days in your Zahiriya,
reading ancient manuscripts, talking to the scholars, working with the
philosophical instruments. He hardly sleeps, the sooner he might return
to the house of learning you built."
"Ah, we must find a strong young slave to comfort you if your cardinal
does not spend enough time in your bed."
"I am not the voracious woman you bought from a brothel so many years
ago, my lord. Adelberto can satisfy my waning desires."
Baibars laughed, a rumbling sound. "Anything you want, Tilia, in all the
sultanate of El Kahira, is yours. You have served me well."
"You took a prisoner and a slave and trusted her. You sent her jewels
and gold in a steady stream. You helped her to achieve riches and power
in the very heart of Christendom. Why should I not serve you with all my
might? Since you sent me from here long ago I have not had the chance to
see you with my own eyes and speak aloud my gratitude to you. And now
that I am face-to-face with you, words fail me. If I spoke for a
thousand and one nights I could not say enough to thank you. To praise
you."
Baibars shrugged. "Do you not regret losing it all? You cannot open a
brothel here in El Kahira, Tilia. I have closed all the brothels." His
eyelids crinkled humorously. "I am a very strict Muslim these days."
"I am ready to retire, my lord. Ready to drop all pretense and come back
here, just to be myself."
Baibars's wide mouth drew down, the lips so thin that the line they drew
seemed just a slash across the bottom of his face.
"Now that you are here, Tilia, now that we are face-to-face, I want to
hear from you the story of Daoud. I want to hear all of it, all that you
had no room to tell me in your carrier-pigeon messages. Take as long as
you like. Ask for anything that will make you comfortable. My ears are
for you and for no one else."
"I am my lord's slave. I shall tell it to you as it happened to me." She
settled herself on the cushion. "I first met Daoud ibn Abdallah in the
hills outside Orvieto on an afternoon in late summer, three years
ago--"
Tilia stopped her tale twice, so that she and Baibars could pray when
the muezzins called the faithful to prayer at Maghrib, after the red of
sunset had left the sky, and again at 'Isha, when it was dark enough
that a white thread could not be told from a black thread.
After the final prayer of the day, a servant brought an oil lamp.
Baibars waved the lamp away, then called the servant back and asked for
kaviyeh. Tilia drank the sweet, strong kaviyeh of El Kahira with Baibars
and devoured a tray of sticky sweets, and then went on with her story.
By the time she was finished, the moon had risen above the courtyard.
She sat back and looked at the Victorious King.
"He was to me like my firstborn son." Baibars took a dagger from his
sash, held open his shimmering silk kaftan, a costly robe of honor, and
slashed a great rent in it.
Tilia wondered what to say. How could she comfort him?
_Comfort him? How can anyone offer comfort to a man like Baibars?_
"We are Mamelukes," he said. "Slaves. We are slaves of God. We are His
instruments. His weapons. I shaped Daoud to be a fine weapon against the
enemies of the faith. And it is even as this Simon de Gobignon told the
Greek woman Sophia--Daoud succeeded. Abagha Khan still seeks an alliance
with the Christians, as his father Hulagu did. But many Tartars have
already converted to Islam, and the next Tartar khan of Persia may be a
Muslim. I am working to make that possibility a certainty. As for the
Christians, my informant at the court of Charles d'Anjou, a certain
dwarf named Erculio, tells me that now Charles desires to extend his
empire across the Middle Sea into Africa. King Louis is already
gathering ships and men for a crusade. But Charles is trying to divert
Louis's crusade to Tunisia, which would make it harmless to us. He is a
very persuasive man, and I think he will succeed. Truly, this Charles is
God's gift to me. He does just what I want. And I do not have to pay
him."
Tilia heard no mirth in Baibars's deep laughter.
"And so," Baibars said, "Daoud has won for us the time we needed and
changed the fate of nations. And he will be avenged."
"I do not think he would feel a need to be avenged, my lord. He would be
happy just to know that he saved his people from destruction."
Baibars nodded. "True. But I, too, am a sword in the hands of God. And
if it pleases God to wield me, then in a generation there will not be a
crusader left anywhere on the sacred soil of al-Islam. That will be
Daoud's vengeance and his monument. Hear me, O God."
By the light of the crescent moon hanging over the Multicolored Palace,
Tilia watched the Mameluke sultan raise his right hand to heaven. Tears
ran down his jutting cheeks. Baibars's tears, she saw, ran as freely
from his blind eye as from the eye that could see.