Sophia felt cooler here, in the atrium of the Palazzo Monaldeschi, than
she had in the sala maggiore. A breeze blew through the archway that led
to the rear courtyard of the palace, but it did not blow hard enough to
keep the mosquitoes away. Nor did the essence of lemon in the wax
candles in lanterns that lit the atrium repel the whining little pests,
though it scented the air pleasantly, mingling with the sachet of dried
orange cuttings she wore under her gown, between her breasts.
To protect herself from the insects, Sophia wrapped her shawl around her
bare shoulders and drew her gauze veil over her face. She thought it
made her look more mysteriously attractive as well. Perhaps that was the
real reason Muslim women were willing to wear veils. She wondered
whether Daoud had a lover or a wife back in Cairo.
Probably half a dozen of each.
She glanced over at the young French count, walking solemnly beside her
with his hands clasped behind his back. The mosquitoes did not seem to
bother him, or at least he did not slap at them. Well, he was a tall,
thin man with sharp features, dark hair, and pale skin. She imagined the
blood of such a man might taste sour and not draw mosquitoes. He was
good to look at, surely, but there was a bitterness about him. She saw
at once that he was not a happy man.
"Perhaps I should not walk alone with you like this, Madonna," he said.
Actually, his Italian was not difficult for her to understand; she had
criticized it only to throw him off balance when she first met him.
Probably her French was no better than his Italian, but he had been too
gallant to say so.
"Do you fear for your virtue, Your Signory?" she asked lightly.
He smiled, and even in the dim lantern light his face took on a
sweetness that was quite at odds with his previous solemn appearance.
"My virtue, such as it is, is yours to dispose, Madonna." She felt
warmed within by his words and the beauty of his smile.
They paused by a square pool in the center of the atrium. He bent and
dipped his cupped hands, then held them out to her filled with water.
"The contessa has told me that the pool is fed by an underground
spring," he said. "The water is the purest I have ever tasted. Try it."
"Do the Monaldeschi keep fish in it?" She hesitated, thinking of
Cardinal Ugolini's vivarium.
"No. This is their drinking water. Taste it." She lifted her veil and
lowered her mouth into his hands. The water was pure and sweet, just as
he had said. As a lover, she thought, Simon would be like this
water--sweet, not bitter.
The water was gone and her lips touched his palm. Deliberately she
paused a moment before drawing back.
He moved toward her, holding out both hands, but she turned as if she
had not noticed and took a step away from him on the gravel, dropping
the gauze veil before her face.
"You have not explained to me why you think you should not be walking
alone with me, Your Signory."
"Ah--well--" He had to gather his thoughts, she saw. Such a _boy_. She'd
had a middle-aged emperor and a splendid young king as lovers. She now
felt herself in love with a strange Saracen warrior, a Mameluke, who was
subtle, ruthless, kindly, mysterious, daring--so many things, it dizzied
her to think about him.
But Simon's simplicity brought back memories of Alexis, the boy she had
loved when she herself was as innocent as Simon now appeared to be.
Simon said, "Because your uncle leads the faction here in Orvieto that
opposes the Tartars. And because the chief witness against them has been
the merchant David, who dwells, as you do, in the cardinal's house."
_He hates David._ She heard it in his voice.
"What has that to do with you and me, Simon?" This was the right moment,
she thought, to call him by his name. "I care nothing for affairs of
state. In Siracusa we have better things to do with our time than worry
about alliances and wars."
"Everyone will be affected by what happens here concerning the Tartars,"
he said. "Even the people of Siracusa."
She tried to look impressed. "If _you_ think it would be so good for
Christians and Tartars to fight together against the Saracens, I cannot
imagine why my uncle is against it."
"I do not understand that either," said Simon. "Or why he brought this
man David to Orvieto to cause so much trouble."
She shrugged. "I hardly ever see the man from Trebizond. My uncle's
mansion is so big, people can come and go without ever meeting." She
hoped the suggestion would take root. It was vital for him to think
there was no connection between David and herself.
"This is a God-given opportunity for us to rescue the Holy Land," he
said.
"Perhaps I can help you," she said.
"Would you?" His face brightened.
"I could try to find out why my uncle opposes your cause. If you will
tell me why we Christians _should_ ally ourselves with the Tartars, I
will repeat your reasons to him. I will not say they came from you.
Hearing the arguments in private, coming from a loved niece, he might
open his mind to them."
Simon's eyes opened wide in amazement. "You would do all that? But why
are you so willing to help me, Madonna, when your uncle is so opposed to
my cause?"
"Because I would like"--she hesitated just for a breath, then put her
hand on his arm--"I would like to see more of you."
She was on dangerous ground. The tradition of courtly love, in which he
had doubtless been reared, called for the woman to be aloof and for the
man to beg for meetings. But Daoud had told her she did not have the
time to allow this inexperienced young man to proceed at his own pace.
He appeared overwhelmed with happiness. Her answer had just the effect
she had hoped for.
"But you must help _me_," she said with the satisfied feeling that she
was now closing the trap. "You must teach me what to say to my uncle. As
I said, it would be easy for you to come to me without anyone knowing.
Will you visit me when I send for you?"
"Oh, Madonna! Command me." His eyes were huge now, and his smile was
like a full moon shining into the atrium.
"I command you to come over here with me," she said.
She took him by the hand, and, as a light rain began to fall, led him
into a shadowy corner of the open gallery that surrounded the garden. He
pressed her back against a column. She lifted her veil and let him kiss
her fiercely as the rain pattered down on the lemon trees.
She became entirely Sophia Orfali and tasted his kisses hungrily, dizzy
with joy at having won the love of a splendid young nobleman.
* * * * *
"Of course I fought in Russia and Poland," Ana said, speaking for John
Chagan, while the old Tartar threw out his arms in a sweeping gesture.
"Everyone went."
Daoud smiled and nodded, leaning back in the chair someone had brought
for him, his right leg crossed over the left. He tried to look relaxed,
though his heart was beating fast. He felt like a man climbing a cliff,
whose slightest misstep might bring a disastrous fall.
He was feeling the effects of the al-koahl--a hissing sound in his
ears, a numbness in his face, a difficulty focusing his eyes, an urge,
difficult to suppress, to splash the contents of his wine cup in John's
ugly face. But his mind was untouched, he knew, and that meant he was
under better control than these two savages whom he had drawn into
telling stories of their wars.
"Was that your first campaign?" he asked.
John made a lengthy speech in answer to Daoud's question, striking his
chest many times and reaching for more wine. Finally Ana translated. She
seemed made of iron, this Bulgarian woman. She did not drink, she did
not get tired, she did not even sit down, and she did not seem to care
what anyone said.
John assured David that as a young man he had participated in the
destruction of the Khwarezmian empire. Khwarezmia, Daoud remembered, a
Turkish nation, was the first Muslim land to fall to the Tartars.
He glanced around and saw that Ugolini and a number of other cardinals,
both French and Italian, had gathered to listen. The contessa was there,
too. And even as Daoud looked, the circle parted for Pope Urban. Two
servants hurried over, carrying a chair for him, and he sat down
heavily.
The Tartars had turned Khwarezmia into a desert, but this audience would
not care overmuch about that. Daoud wondered if he could turn the
conversation back to what they had done in Christian lands.
"What about Moscow?" he said. His voice sounded to him as if his ears
were stuffed with cotton. He worried that John might realize that he was
being led to talk about what he had done against Christians.
"Moscow?" said John. "That was much later." Strange, how John's voice
seemed to be coming from Ana's lips. "I was in command of my own tuman
there, ten thousand men, under our great commander Subotai Baghadur. Ah,
yes, we killed off all the people of Moscow."
Daoud felt like leaping from his chair. Just what he had hoped to hear.
He made himself slump down still more and look sleepier.
"I never could understand how it is possible to kill off the population
of a whole city," he said, affecting a tone of cool curiosity. "It must
take days and be very tiring."
Philip Uzbek laughed when this was translated. Clearly he thought it a
foolish remark. His round, flat face reminded Daoud of Kassar, and with
the thought a red mist of rage passed before Daoud's eyes.
John responded to Daoud's remark. "Not at all tiring. We had five tumans
at Moscow. There were about fifty thousand people living in the city,
and many had died in the siege. Subotai gave the honor of the killing to
the most valorous tuman, which happened to be mine. We just divided them
up. Each of us took about five of them. You can kill five people in no
time. It is not like fighting. Some we shot with arrows. Others we cut
their heads off. The women are especially easy. You just pull their hair
to stretch their necks so the sword will go through easier, and chop!"
Ana, imperturbable even now, repeated the slicing gesture John made with
his hand.
"The children run away sometimes, and you have to chase them," John
chuckled. "It is best to use arrows on them. But the adults are so
terrified, they just stand there."
Daoud looked again at the circle around them. Several people looked a
bit sick. The mouth of the elderly contessa hung open, revealing the
absence of two or three lower front teeth. Pope Urban leaned forward in
his chair, his face expressionless.
Driven by his growing hatred for the Tartars, he pressed them to reveal
more of themselves. He should be pleased, he thought, at this much
success, but he wanted to destroy them utterly.
"You do not mind killing children?" he asked.
John seemed puzzled by the question. "What else could we do with them?
With their parents dead they would only starve to death. Or if they
lived, they would grow up hating us, and we would have to fight them."
_You could make slaves of them_, said a voice inside Daoud, and the red
mist swelled into a cloud of fury billowing up inside him. He had to sit
motionless, his fist clenched on the stem of his silver goblet, waiting
for the feeling to pass. Thank God for Saadi's teaching. It was painful
to look directly with the inner eye at the disorientation of his senses
and at the anger surging through his body, but it saved him from any
fatal mistake.
Philip said, "At Baghdad I found a whole house full of babies, maybe
thirty or forty. I slit all of their throats. Their mothers were dead
already. I suppose they left the babies behind when they went out of the
city to be executed, hoping they would survive. But with no one to
suckle them, the babies would have starved to death. Killing them was an
act of mercy."
Remembering what he had seen of Baghdad, Daoud felt his rage grow cold
and towering as the mountains of the Roof of the World. Those were his
Muslim people. He wanted to draw the dagger at his belt and slash the
throats of the two gloating, drunken savages before him. He bit down
hard on his lower lip to keep himself under control.
"When we shot people with arrows," said John, "we went around and pulled
the arrows out of the bodies afterward so we could use them again. We do
not waste anything."
_He is trying to show how admirable they are._
Daoud watched the stout Bulgarian woman Ana speak John's words in
Italian, still expressionless, still standing motionless. But to his
surprise he saw rivulets of tears on her round cheeks.
She had been in Bulgaria when the Tartars came, he thought. She had seen
what Christians called "the fury of the Tartars." She must have been
among the survivors who submitted to their rule, but she had not
forgotten. Perhaps translating John's and Philip's words exactly as they
spoke them was her way of taking revenge.
John held out his goblet, and Ana refilled it. He laughed softly at
nothing in particular and drank more.
"But why do this to city after city?" Daoud asked.
"When we invade a kingdom, the rulers and people are determined to
resist us," said John. "To fight them might cost us the lives of
thousands of our warriors. But when we wipe out one or two whole cities,
they become terrified. They lose their will to fight and surrender
quickly. It saves many lives on both sides."
Philip grinned broadly. "It shows that we have power like no other
people on earth." He shook both fists. "We can level whole cities. This
teaches all men that Eternal Heaven has given us dominion over the whole
earth."
Daoud heard whispers from the people around him, and Pope Urban coughed
softly.
Daoud could hardly believe his luck. Not luck, he thought. God had
delivered the Tartars into his hands.
"The whole earth?" said Daoud. "Even Europe? Even the Christian lands?"
Philip threw out his arms expansively. "The whole earth. All there is.
Every corner."
Daoud's earlier rage had subsided. Instead, he felt wild triumph, and he
had to grip the seat of his chair to hold himself down.
Daoud heard Cardinal Ugolini declare, "You see? Exactly what we have
been saying."
"You say Eternal Heaven gives you the right to rule the world?" Daoud
asked. "Do you mean God?"
John shrugged. "Eternal Heaven is what our ancestors called Him. Now
that we are Christians we call Him God."
Fra Tomasso suddenly cut in. "But surely you realize that the sky, or
whatever you worshiped before you became Christians, is not the true
God."
After Ana translated this, John questioned her, squinting at the
Dominican as he did so, apparently wanting to make sure of Fra Tomasso's
meaning.
"Would God have neglected us before Christian priests found their way to
our land?" John said through Ana. "Of course He has spoken to us. Has He
not made us the most powerful people on earth?"
"Perhaps He has done so in order that you might _now_ hear His word,"
said Fra Tomasso.
"I am not a priest," John said with a sudden broad grin. "But we have
the highest priests of the Christian faith here tonight. Let them say
whether Eternal Heaven and God are the same." He bowed his round head
and held out his hand in invitation.
A silence fell. The little band of musicians playing vielles and
hautboys in one corner of the room suddenly sounded very loud. Daoud
turned to look once again at the audience his dialogue with the Tartars
had drawn. The Contessa di Monaldeschi, Fra Tomasso, at least half a
dozen cardinals. And Pope Urban himself. Their figures swam before
Daoud, and he knew the wine was overcoming him--bodily, at any rate. The
faces of the Christian leaders looked very grave, though, and the
grimmer they looked, the more pleased he felt.
Fra Tomasso especially, he hoped, had heard enough to sway him.
He turned back to the Tartars. They, too, seemed aware of the uneasy,
unhappy silence. The pope appeared not to feel that John's inquiry
deserved an answer. The older Tartar's smile faded, and he carefully set
down his wine cup. Philip's eyes darted this way and that.
John said something to Philip in a low voice, probably a warning to say
no more. John had the look of a water buffalo beset by village curs, his
eyes smoldering, his white-wreathed head turning from side to side.
Daoud sensed, because he often felt the same way himself, how alone John
must feel, surrounded by enemies.
_He does not have ten thousand warriors at his back now._
Daoud heard a stir behind him, and turned to see the crowd parting to
let Pope Urban leave, the broad back of Fra Tomasso following close
behind him. A priest-attendant in black was coming from a corner of the
room with a cloth-of-gold outer mantle for the pope. The contessa
rustled after Urban, who turned and offered her his hand to kiss. As the
aged hostess knelt unsteadily before Urban, Daoud rejoiced at the
troubled, abstracted expression in the pope's aged eyes.
Daoud heaved himself out of his chair and stood, swaying. For a moment
his eyes would not focus, and he thought he was going to fall. Then he
saw John Chagan giving him a look as piercing as a Tartar lance. Now,
Daoud saw, John understood what he had done to him. As for Philip, he
sat slumped, only half awake, his empty wine cup held loosely. The
stout, dark-haired Ana stood impassive, hands clasped in front of her,
as if content to remain there all night. Her cheeks were now dry.
_We defeated your army at the Well of Goliath, Tartar, and now I have
defeated you at Orvieto._
"Monsters!" It was the voice of the contessa, and Daoud turned to see
her, losing his balance and having to put out a foot to catch himself.
He saw de Verceuil as well, coming across the hall almost at a run, just
ahead of the contessa, his aquamarine cloak flying. His eyes were wide,
his little mouth tight with fury. The contessa, looking just as angry,
was hurrying to keep up with him and tell him what she thought.
"You have brought monsters into my house. Everything bad I have heard
about them they have now admitted. In a year or two they will be at the
gates of Rome. They are the Huns all over again." Her eyes were huge,
and her nostrils flared with passion. Daoud suppressed an urge to laugh
aloud with delight.
De Verceuil checked his rush to get to his Tartar charges, and turned to
the contessa. "Your Signory, I beg you to understand. They have been
drinking. They did not know what they were saying. Old soldiers'
boasting. Exaggerated tales of their exploits. The Tartars are given to
that sort of thing."
"It is not exaggerated," the old lady cried shrilly. "We have heard
tales before of their massacres. Now I have heard the same from their
own lips. These very men whom I have welcomed into my house--their hands
drip with the blood of children. One of them told how he slit the
throats of forty babies. And they are proud of what they have done. They
feel no remorse. Old soldiers' boasting? Old soldiers boast of
overcoming strong enemies. These--these bestioni gloat over the
slaughter of the helpless. Perhaps they look at my palazzo and think
that one day it will be theirs. And you have brought them under my
roof."
"Donna Elvira," de Verceuil pleaded, "let me find out the truth about
what has been happening here."
Daoud's heartbeat quickened. He should slip away now. Drunk as he was,
he would be too vulnerable to de Verceuil.
The French cardinal was shouting at the Bulgarian woman. John the Tartar
was smiling as if de Verceuil's appearance were enough in itself to
extricate him from the consequences of his too-free speech. Philip's
fleshy chin rested on his chest and his eyes were fast shut.
Something white moved in the corner of Daoud's eye, and he looked toward
the doorway leading to the inner galleria, where the gaming had been
going on. Lorenzo was just sauntering out. He was all the way across the
room, and Daoud's vision was too blurred to see his expression, but he
was probably smiling. He walked closer, seeming to be looking at Daoud
for a signal, but Daoud could think of none to send.
_Well done, Lorenzo. How badly, I wonder, did you have to play at
backgammon to keep de Verceuil occupied all this time?_
"How could I stop them from speaking, Your Eminence?" Ana was
protesting. "I am here only to translate what they say. This man came up
to talk to them, and I simply repeated what they said to him and what he
said back to them."
"What man?" de Verceuil asked the question almost in a whisper, and
Ana's eyes turned toward Daoud.
_Too late. Now I must face him._
"You," de Verceuil said in the same low voice.
Daoud swayed, and it came to him at once how best to respond. He would
pretend to be too drunk to understand what was happening.
"You provoked these indiscretions," the cardinal ground out. The jeweled
cross hanging on his chest winked and glittered as it rose and fell with
his deep breathing.
Daoud put out a hand to grasp the back of his chair. Smiling at the
cardinal, he leaned heavily on the chair and circled it methodically. He
sat down heavily on the arm, almost tipping the chair over. Then he slid
into the seat with a thump.