She clasped her hands between her knees and cast her eyes upward as if
in deep thought. "Ah, well, our churches are huge and magnificent."
"So are our mosques."
"Our paintings and mosaics and statues of saints and angels and emperors
are the most beautiful in the world."
"Idols," he interrupted, but he turned to her and smiled as she had.
"The Prophet ordered idols destroyed."
"And therefore the art of painting languishes among you," she said,
poking her forefinger into his shoulder. "Someday I will show you my
paintings if you promise not to destroy them."
His shoulder tingled where she had touched him. She must have been
carried away by her feelings about the arts of her homeland to make such
a gesture. Surely it could not have been deliberate. His hand rested
between them on the edge of the fountain. He moved a bit closer to her
so that the edge of his hand nearly touched her thigh.
He nodded. "I will teach you the art of calligraphy as my Sufi master
practiced it, and save your soul."
_I would really like to do that. Ah, but I cannot teach her to write
Arabic. What if someone were to see her practice work?_
He sighed inwardly.
"Hm," she grunted. "I doubt that _you_ can save _my_ soul. But as for
writing, we are familiar with dramatists like Sophocles, philosophers
like Aristotle. We read Latin poets like Ovid, whose book I just gave to
Rachel. Here in his native Italy his work is thought licentious."
"I have read Aristotle and Plato in Arabic," he said. "And I have no
doubt our Persian poets sing as gloriously as your Greeks and Latins.
And for licentious tales, those told in our bazaars would turn your
cheeks bright red."
Those cheeks were a smooth cream color, he observed. He looked about
him. There was no one but himself and Sophia in the atrium. A
multistoried gallery lined with columns and arches ran around all four
sides of the central courtyard. There might be servants, spies for the
cardinal, watching them, but he could see no one on any of the levels.
_To the devil with them all._
For weeks he had been wanting to reach out and touch that unveiled
beauty, that ivory skin. Now he did it. Very lightly his fingers
traveled from her cheekbone to her jaw.
She reached up and took his hand--not to remove it, as he had
momentarily thought she might, but to hold it briefly against her cheek,
then let it go.
They sat silently looking at each other. She was so still that she
seemed not even to breathe, while he discovered that his heart was
beating fast and hard. He wanted to kiss her, but not here, where hidden
eyes might be watching.
But kissing her at all would be a mistake.
The thought shook him--the realization that he must not get any closer
to her. He felt as if a rope were tied around his neck and a cruel slave
master had jerked on it.
_She is not for me. She is for my mission._
He turned away from her.
"It is better if we do not grow too close," he said, fixing his eyes on
a nearby orange tree. "I must use you. I will send you as my sultan has
sent me, and you will lie with the man I choose as my quarry."
He looked back and saw that she was smiling sadly, her eyes clouded with
disappointment. It pleased him in a bittersweet way to see that she
shared his unhappiness.
"I am _your_ slave, then?"
He shook his head. "I do not know whose you are--King Manfred's, I
suppose. Or perhaps Emperor Michael's? You have been given to me in
trust, like that emerald I brought here from El Kahira--from Cairo. What
you will have to do here will be no worse, I am sure, than what you must
have had to do before this."
"I am sure." There was a dark note in her voice now. He wished he could
take back what he said and ease her bitterness, but he had spoken truly,
and it was needful that she realize it.
"If you serve me well, I will reward you," he promised. "You will be
able to do anything in the world you want."
"Of that I cannot be sure," she said.
This time it was he who took her hand and held it tightly for a moment.
Her hand felt cool and lifeless in his grasp.
"We may not be lovers," he said, "but perhaps we can be friends."
"Perhaps," she said distantly.
Nettled, he rose and left her. If she would not accept him on those
terms, could he trust her? He turned his back on her and left the
garden.
He longed to know her thoughts. Could she love him? He knew he should
not hope for that, because it would have to come to nothing, but he
hoped she loved him at least a little.
It was not until he was back in his apartment, about to begin his noon
prayer, facing the charcoal mark he had made on the wall to point out
the direction of Mecca, that he realized what she had done to him.
_Rachel! We settled nothing about Rachel._
He struck his fist on the wall. He would have to be more careful with
Sophia. She could be very difficult. Even dangerous.
_It is time I had a woman._
When a man went without the delights of the bedchamber for too long, he
became too susceptible to the cleverness of beautiful women.
It had been four months since that last night in El Kahira when his
wife, Baibars's favorite daughter, Blossoming Reed, had kept him awake
all night with her devouring love, not caring that he must begin a great
journey the following day--yes, _because_ he was leaving her.
He remembered the words she had said to him when she gave him the locket
just before the battle of the Well of Goliath. _Take for your pleasure
as many women as you like. But love always and only me. For if you do
love another, I promise you that your love will destroy both her and
you._
It would be best if he went to Tilia Caballo's brothel and enjoyed a
woman he was not so likely to fall in love with.
* * * * *
Daoud strode through the crowded streets at dusk, enjoying the golden
light that fell on the upper stories of the yellow houses of Orvieto.
His scarlet cape blew out behind him, and out of the corner of his eye
he saw heads turn to follow his passage. He walked close to the houses
on his right, keeping away from the ruts and the rivulets of sewage in
the center of the street. Men stepped into the filth, making way for
him. He was bigger and better dressed than anyone he met, and a new
sword with a jeweled hilt swung at his belt. The glances he caught from
the short, dark men of Orvieto were not friendly.
_They think I am a Frank, and like Sophia they hate Franks._
Pigs rooted in garbage in the quintane, the narrow spaces between the
houses. Small dogs ran under his feet. What backward, unsanitary people
these Europeans were! The sights and smells of Orvieto made him wish for
the paved streets of El Kahira, where every day an army of slaves swept
and cleared away refuse.
The cardinal had drawn a map of Orvieto for him, showing the principal
streets and the way to Tilia's house. Daoud had committed the map to
memory, using the concentration technique Saadi had taught him. Most of
the streets had no names. He would have to find his way by landmarks. In
the days to come, he planned, he would explore and add to the map in his
mind until he knew every street in Orvieto.
The house of Tilia Caballo stood on a street that was wider than most
at the east end of town. Even though Ugolini had described it as
ordinary-looking, Daoud was surprised to see how much it resembled the
shabby buildings on either side of it. He had expected some sign of
luxury, some flamboyance. He had thought to hear music as he approached,
as he would have outside one of the brothels of El Kahira--before
Baibars closed them. The house was quiet, unadorned save for a
third-floor balcony above the entryway. It gave no sign of who its
occupants were. He knew it only by counting--fifth house from the
corner, Ugolini had said. Unlike the roof of the cardinal's palace,
which was flat, the roof of Tilia's house was sharply peaked.
It looked like anything but a brothel. And though there were enough
small houses near it to hold two or three hundred people, the street was
not crowded, as were streets everywhere else in Orvieto. He saw a few
men lounging in doorways, a pair of men walking arm in arm past Tilia's
front door, but that was all. Distinguished churchmen and men of wealth
and good family could come here without attracting notice.
_Even so, I seem to be the only visitor who comes before dusk. Well, if
people see me and think I am a well-to-do merchant who frequents
Orvieto's finest brothel, that is exactly what I want them to think._
He felt the heaviness in his groin and the lightness in his stomach that
always accompanied his visits to women when he had done without pleasure
for a long time. He wondered if the Christian courtesan he picked
tonight would be able to match the accomplishments of the women who
served the Mamelukes in El Kahira. She would surely not be able to equal
the incredible pleasures he had enjoyed with Blossoming Reed.
He knocked at the plain dark-brown door, and it swung open immediately,
as if the one behind it had watched him approach. There stood one of
Tilia's black men, wearing a turban, robes, and pantaloons that for all
the world made him look like a harem guard in El Kahira. The costume
made Daoud uneasy. The slave bowed in silence, and with a sweep of his
arm bade Daoud enter.
The entrance hall was a surprise. It seemed much too large for the
building he had just entered. He stood on a Persian carpet in a wide,
high-ceilinged room filled with light. Candles burned in sconces around
the walls and in two chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Two tall,
thick candles stood in twisting brass stands the height of a man on
either side of a marble staircase. A pungent fragrance filled the air,
and Daoud realized that the candles were scented. If Tilia could afford
to burn this many candles every night, her trade must be profitable
indeed.
He understood now why the interior of Tilia's establishment was so
different from the exterior. She must have acquired all the buildings
side by side along this street and then hollowed them out. He noticed
that where the walls of the building through which he had entered should
have been, there stood marble Roman columns two stories high. Counting
the rows of columns stretching right and left, he estimated that this
great hall must be as wide as five of the original houses that had been
absorbed into Tilia's mansion.
The black man struck a large gong beside the door, giving off a low,
mellow note. Almost immediately Tilia appeared at the top of the
staircase. Smiling broadly, she flounced down the steps, the gold and
jewels scattered over her person throwing off sparks in every direction.
"I knew you would be coming soon, David," she said in a low voice. "I am
glad you came early in the evening. We can talk freely now. If more of
my clients were here, we would have to seclude ourselves."
Daoud jerked his head at the black servant. "Why in God's name do you
dress your men as Muslims here, where there is so much fear and hatred
of 'Saracens,' as they call us?"
Tilia laughed, the pillow of flesh under her chin quivering. "Do you not
know that it has long been fashionable among Christians to borrow from
the world of Islam? They copy everything from ways of dressing to words
and ideas. Most people think the Hohenstaufens have gone too far with
their Saracen army, but among the great houses of Italy each must have
its Moorish servants with great turbans and sashes and pantaloons. And
here in Orvieto, the pope's city, it makes my clients feel especially
wicked to enter a house staffed with slaves so dressed."
"I would not enjoy going into a brothel where the servants were dressed
like Christian monks," Daoud said scornfully.
Tilia sighed. "I will tell you what seeing these men in Saracen garb
does for me. It reminds me of when I was a young woman in Cairo." She
looked around at her hall and sighed again. "Young and beautiful and
unhappy. Now I am rich and content, but I tell you in all honesty I
would give all this up to be young and beautiful."
Daoud was surprised. He had not known that Tilia had once lived in El
Kahira. Was that, he wondered, how Baibars came to know her? Was that
why, even though Daoud did not fully trust her, he felt oddly
comfortable with her?
"And where are the young and beautiful and unhappy women in this house,
then?"