Looking down at the cobblestones, Lorenzo shook his head. "I made a
terrible blunder, trying to help Rachel and her husband. From now on
things must go as David commands."
If Sophia had been arguing for herself, she could have said no more in
the face of David's fury. But she looked away from him to the small
figure standing by the horses, and her anguish for the child forced her
to speak.
"But, David, what harm can Rachel do?"
Now the burning gaze was bent on her alone. "We will be saying things
about ourselves in Orvieto that she already knows are not true." He
turned to Lorenzo. "You talk of the lives the Jewish leaders have in
their care. You do not understand--you cannot understand--what will
happen to my people if I fail. What is it to you if the Tartars kill
every man, woman, and child in Cairo?"
His voice was trembling, and Sophia realized he must have seen sights in
the East that made the terror of the Tartars real to him, as it could
not be to her.
"I owe the girl nothing," David went on vehemently. "Nothing. It was not
I who caused this."
But a little girl with her whole life before her, hanged or torn to
pieces by a mob-- The thought of it made Sophia want to scream at David.
She remembered the awful, mindless terror when she and Alexis ran
through the streets of Constantinople with a roaring pack of Frankish
men-at-arms hunting them. Last night she had relived that terror when
they fled from the inn. She thought she would rather die herself than
let Rachel be taken by a mob.
_I cannot abandon Rachel. I must try to sway him. Is there any way I can
touch David's heart?_
_Of course. The same thing that moves me._
"David," she said, "years ago, when you were a little boy--when the
Turks killed your parents. Do you remember how you felt?"
David stared at her. So fixed were his eyes that for a moment she
thought he might draw his sword and strike her down. She waited,
trembling.
"You have no right to speak of that to me," he said. His voice was tight
with pain.
"I know I have no right," she said. "Can't you see how desperate I am?"
Hope dawned faintly within her. She had touched him.
His silence stretched on while the turmoil of the city eddied about
them. She waited, trembling.
He spoke. "He who taught me Islam said to me, 'To lift up a fallen
swallow is to raise up your heart to God.'"
Relief flooded Sophia's body. She wanted to weep. Instead, she felt
herself smiling. But David did not return her smile.
"Swear that this girl will learn nothing of our mission from you," he
said. "And you also, Celino. Swear it by all that you hold most holy."
"I swear it by Constantinople," said Sophia fervently and gladly.
"I will swear it on the lives of my wife and my children," said Lorenzo.
"I accept that," said David. "And when we reach Orvieto, the girl leaves
us, even if she starves in the streets."
"I will accept _that_," said Lorenzo.
"Lest you later forswear yourselves, there is one more thing that will
assure your compliance," said David. "Know that if this girl learns a
word of what we are doing, she will die by my hand." He dropped his hand
to the unadorned hilt of his sword.
Sophia felt cold inside. He cared about one thing only, after all.
They turned back. Sophia saw Rachel standing by a straw-seller's shop,
looking anxiously at them, holding the gathered reins of their horses in
both hands. Sophia realized that the girl might be thinking that they
were going to drive her off, and she hurried to Rachel with a smile,
holding out her arms. She hugged Rachel, and tentatively, fearfully,
Rachel smiled back at her.
"You will come with us," she said. "As far as we are going, to Orvieto.
You will have to leave us there, but we will help you find a home."
"Oh, thank you, thank you," Rachel cried, and she burst into tears.
Lorenzo grinned reassuringly at Rachel. "I told you it would be all
right." When he grinned like that, his teeth white under his thick black
mustache, he reminded Sophia of a large and satisfied cat.
Rachel looked up at David. "I thank _you_, Signore. I know this is your
decision. May I know the name of my benefactor?"
David smiled bitterly. "Benefactor? Rachel, if you had not met us, your
protector would still be alive. I am David Burian, a silk merchant of
Trebizond. I go to Orvieto hoping to open trade between Trebizond and
the Papal States, and I have hired these people to help me."
"May I also help you, Signore?" Rachel said. "I learned something of
commerce from my husband."
"I think," David said, looking at Sophia and Lorenzo with sour humor, "I
already have all the help I need."
_At least the man is human_, thought Sophia. _He can joke a bit._
She felt encouraged. She had actually been able to touch the heart of
this man whose life and world were utterly strange to her.
X
There is so much water in this country, thought Daoud. Raindrops
sparkled on every branch and leaf of the trees around him. The sky, once
more a bright blue after the thunderstorm that had passed over them, was
reflected in water that still streamed through the ditches beside the
roadway.
Fortunate that Rachel's husband, a man who had spent many months of the
year on the roads of Italy buying and selling books in the Jewish
communities, had carried a tent with him. Daoud, Sophia, Rachel, and
even Scipio had all crowded into it when they saw the storm coming. The
tent had leaked, but the heat of the August afternoon would soon dry
them.
Daoud hoped none of the others had noticed his fear during the storm. He
had been in the desert when lightning crackled in black clouds and the
wind blew smothering waves of sand. But the thunderstorms they had been
through had seemed to be just overhead, and so much water had fallen
from the sky, Daoud was sure they would soon be drowned. It seemed
almost miraculous to him that he could emerge from Rachel's tent alive
and find the world outside as intact as he had left it. Better than he
left it, because it was now washed clean of dust.
He walked to the edge of the road to see if Lorenzo was returning from
Orvieto.
Orvieto.
Across the valley, out of a deep-green forest rose a gigantic yellow
rock shaped like a camel's hump. Crowning the hump, a wall of gray stone
encircled the peaked roofs and bell towers of churches, the battlements
of palaces and the red-tiled roofs of houses. One narrow road zigzagged
up the steep side of the great rock, sometimes disappearing into clumps
of trees, a white streak against the ocher cliffs. A city built on an
almost inaccessible mountaintop, like the strongholds of the
Hashishiyya.
He spied a horseman in purple cap and brown cloak descending the road
from the city. Celino. Following him was a glittering gilt sedan chair
carried by four bearers.
The breeze that had brought the storm had died away, and Daoud was
beginning to feel the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. A mild
sun compared to that of Egypt, even though this was the middle of the
Italian summer, but he drew up his cotton hood to shade his head. He
glanced over his shoulder. Rachel and Sophia were in the clearing on the
other side of the road, watering the horses in a stream that ran down
the hillside. Rachel was nodding eagerly as Sophia talked. He hoped she
was not telling Rachel too much. Just as he himself might have told
Sophia too much, he thought ruefully.
Celino arrived at Daoud's camp well ahead of the sedan chair. Scipio had
bounded up the road to meet his master, and now licked the hand that
Celino held out as he dismounted.
Celino said, "Cardinal Ugolini sends this messenger, who may surprise
you."
When the sedan chair came to rest on the side of the road, Daoud saw
that the four bearers were black men of Africa. They wore scarlet vests,
and sweat glistened on their bare arms and chests. Sheikh Saadi had been
such a man, and there were many such men in the Egyptian army. Daoud
wondered if these, too, were Muslims. In the city of the pope? Not
likely.
Two of the bearers drew back the curtains of the chair and reached
within. Bejeweled white fingers grasped the bearers' muscular arms, and
a turban brocaded with gold pushed out past the curtains, followed by a
round body swathed in lime-green silk.
Daoud was not surprised. This must be the one who called herself
Morgiana in the letters to Baibars that came regularly from Italy by
carrier pigeon and ship, thought Daoud. Still clinging to the bearers,
the stout woman pulled herself erect. Then she waved her servants away
with a flapping of sleeves and a jangling of bracelets and squinted at
Daoud.
"Is it time?" said Daoud. He spoke in Arabic.
"Not yet," she answered in the same language. "But presently." That
completed their prearranged words of recognition.
"Salaam aleikum, Morgiana," he said, smiling. "Peace be to you." He
pushed back his hood and bowed to her. He had a warm sense of meeting an
old friend. He had read many of her reports on matters of state in
Italy.
"Wa aleikum es-salaam, Daoud," she replied. "And peace also to you. You
will have to know my real name now. Tilia Caballo, at your service."
He had pictured Morgiana as a tall, slender woman of mature years,
darkly attractive. The real Morgiana was quite different. Her eyebrows
were thick and black, her nose a tiny button between round red cheeks.
Her face was shiny with sweat even though she had been doing nothing but
sitting in a sedan chair. Looking at her spherical body, Daoud felt
great respect for the strength of the men who carried her. The silk
clinging to her body outlined breasts like divan cushions, and her belly
protruded in a parody of pregnancy. Could she truly be a cardinal's
mistress? Just as sultans and emirs had chief wives who were old and
honored and younger wives for play, perhaps Cardinal Ugolini kept Tilia
Caballo only as his official mistress.
The clasp on her turban was studded with diamonds. A heavy gold necklace
spilled down the broad, bare slope of her chest. From the necklace
dangled a cross set with blue and red jewels.
_The gold Baibars has sent her helped buy the fortune she wears._ He
wondered, how much did Baibars really know about this woman?
"I saw Cardinal Ugolini for a moment only, Messer David," said Celino.
"As soon as he found out I was from you, he insisted that I go to this
lady's establishment." Celino, speaking the dialect of Sicily, uttered
the word stabilimento with a curious intonation. Scipio stood with his
forepaws on Celino's chest, and Celino scratched the hound behind the
ears.
"He means the finest house of pleasure in all the Papal States," said
Tilia Caballo, smoothing the front of her gown with a self-satisfied
look. "Naturally his eminence Cardinal Ugolini cannot risk meeting
openly with you until I have seen you on his behalf." She had switched
from Arabic to an Italian dialect that was new to Daoud. He had trouble
understanding her.
He did not think it had been mentioned, in her letters or by Baibars,
that she was a brothel keeper. He felt slightly repelled. He wondered if
Baibars knew. He must. Baibars knew everything.
"Take yourself away, Celino," Daoud ordered. "And tell those two to come
no closer." He pointed to the forest clearing where Sophia and Rachel
were already starting toward him. "I must be alone with Madonna Tilia."
"Yes, Messere," said Celino with a bow. Scipio paced ahead of him like a
tame lion as he walked off.
"We expected you to enter Orvieto alone," said Tilia, looking at Sophia
and Rachel, who were staring back at her from across the road. "Why this
entourage?"
_And I expected to meet with Cardinal Ugolini at once_, thought Daoud
with growing irritation. _Has he set this woman up as a barrier between
himself and me?_
He explained briefly how Celino, Sophia, and Rachel came to be traveling
with him. Tilia gazed at him with a falcon's piercing stare. Daoud was
not used to being stared at by a woman, and she made him uneasy. But he
met her eyes in silence until she turned to her slaves and made a
dropping gesture with her hand. The Africans immediately squatted in the
grassy clearing where they had set Tilia's chair. Daoud realized that he
had not heard a sound from them, and suspected they must have been made
dumb.
"Come." Tilia took his arm, again surprising him. In Egypt women did not
touch men they had just met. But she owned a house of pleasure. She was
not a respectable woman.
Why should that bother him, he asked himself. He had spent his share of
time in houses of pleasure along the Bhar al-Nil. What he felt toward
their owners was mostly gratitude.
Tilia drew Daoud with her into the thicket along the hillside, stepping
gracefully, despite her bulk, around shrubs and over rocks and fallen
branches. She led him away from the road and into a grove of pine trees
a little way up the slope. Daoud felt his muscles tightening. He was
going to have to undergo more testing before she would let him meet
Ugolini. Did they really think that Baibars would send a fool to
Orvieto?
"Spread your cloak for me." She pointed to a spot under an old pine
whose trunk rose straight and bare twice the height of a man before the
first branch sprouted. Daoud unclasped his brown cloak and laid it on
the thick bed of brown pine needles. Tilia sat down, smiled, and patted
the place beside her.
"A messenger brought the news to the pope yesterday that the Tartar
ambassadors have landed at Venice," she said. "They are on their way to
Orvieto and should be here in a week or so. They are well protected.
They brought their own bodyguard, which is now reinforced by a company
of French knights and Venetian men-at-arms under a certain Count de
Gobignon."
Daoud felt a tingle of anticipation, as he did when he was about to
close with the enemy in a battle.
"So I will be in Orvieto before them. That is good."
"Yes, but Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil has arrived here before _you_. He
speaks for the King of France, and he has already begun to press the
case for a Tartar alliance before Pope Urban. He has arranged for the
Tartars and their guards to live at the palace of the Monaldeschi
family."
Daoud caught an intonation in Tilia's voice that suggested it was a
great accomplishment for the Tartars to live at the Monaldeschi palace.
Was she trying to discourage him?
"What is this Monaldeschi family?" he asked.
"The oldest and richest family in Orvieto," she said. "Right now the
capo della famiglia, the head of the family, is the Contessa Elvira di
Monaldeschi, who is over eighty years old. But she is more ruthless and
savage than many a younger man. Almost all her menfolk have been killed
off by their blood enemies, the Filippeschi, and she has had many
Filippeschi killed."
"What do they fight about?" said Daoud.
"Who knows? A Monaldeschi kills a Filippeschi, so a Filippeschi kills a
Monaldeschi. It has been going on forever." Tilia went on. "What you
must realize is that the Tartars will be well guarded because the
contessa has more men-at-arms than the pope and a very strong palace."
He turned away from Tilia. Daoud stared out through the screen of pine
branches at Orvieto's sunlit rock platform. A wagon inched its way up
the narrow road.
"Who is this French count who guards the Tartars?" he asked.
"Count Simon de Gobignon. He is very young and very rich. He holds huge
estates in France and numbers his vassals in the thousands. He is close
to the French royal family, even King Louis himself and the king's
brother, Charles d'Anjou."
Charles d'Anjou. Daoud remembered Lorenzo saying that Charles d'Anjou
coveted the throne of Sicily.
A flash of light caught Daoud's eye. A party of helmeted men in yellow
and white surcoats had come out of the main gate of Orvieto, formed a
ragged column and were patrolling along the base of the city wall, led
by a man with a white plume on his helmet.
"Who are those soldiers?" he asked.
Tilia leaned forward to peer through the trees and across the valley,
then resettled herself against the tree trunk.
"Pope Urban has two hundred Guelfo fighting men quartered in Orvieto. In
all honesty, Daoud--"
"Call me David," he interrupted. "Here I must be known by a Christian
name."
"Well, David, I think you had best go quickly back to Egypt. What can
one man do against the French royal family, half the cardinals, the
pope, the Monaldeschi, and the Tartars themselves?"
He felt a quick spurt of anger. He knew as well as she did the odds he
faced. Why was she trying to weaken him by making him afraid?
_Ugolini sent her to discourage me. It is he who is afraid._
He felt more respect for her, coming out and meeting him and trying to
influence him, than he did for this Cardinal Ugolini, who was trying to
protect himself. He knew from having read her letters that she was a
shrewd and brave woman. He had to win her cooperation. There was only
one way he might hope to do that.