Lorenzo's eyes ached as he stared through a peephole in the doorway of a
storeroom into the common room of the inn called the Angel. Alternating
his left and right eye at intervals, he stared at a bench by the
opposite wall, where a hooded figure sat alone, holding a cup of wine in
his lap. As Lorenzo had instructed him, the tavern keeper had put a
lighted candle in a sconce near where Sordello was sitting, so that
Lorenzo could watch his quarry.
The candle beside Sordello was one of only four in the common room--just
light enough for the innkeeper to be certain he was paid in honest coin
while making it hard for his patrons to see the color of his wine. It
was early evening, and there were only about six men and women in the
room. All of them except Sordello sat on benches at the one long table
near the wine barrel. Sordello, leaning against the rough-hewn wooden
wall, had to set his cup beside him.
The mercenary's square hand lifted the painted pottery cup into the
shadow of his hood. Lorenzo knew Sordello was under the tightly drawn
hood only because he had followed him diligently through the tangle of
Orvieto's streets from the house where a dozen of the brigosi Lorenzo
had recruited were quartered.
Daoud's secret army was growing. The evening after the contessa's
reception Lorenzo had sealed a bargain with Marco di Filippeschi, who
was ready to help Daoud against the alliance if it meant striking a blow
against the Monaldeschi.
Before any plans were made, though, there remained the question of
Sordello.
A stout woman in a black gown came into the common room of the Angel and
went straight to the hooded man. The lower part of her face was covered
by a black scarf. Anyone watching the hooded Sordello and the veiled
lady would think theirs was just everyday wickedness--an adulterous
couple meeting for an assignation. She sat beside him on the bench.
Their heads drew together, and Lorenzo, behind a door across the room,
was too far away to hear.
Lorenzo heard a scratching behind him. He turned, but it was too dark
even to see movement.
_Rats_, he thought. _This work continually brings a man into the company
of rats. Four-legged rats and men like Sordello._ He put his eye to the
peephole again, just in time to see a slip of paper disappear into the
woman's deep sleeve. Whoever Sordello was reporting to, he was putting
it in writing. Interesting that the man _could_ write. That put him a
cut above the average bravo, in education, at least.
The innkeeper came over to offer the woman wine, but she waved him away
without looking at him. She stood up, brushing the seat of her gown
fastidiously, like one who was used to sitting in cleaner surroundings.
Without a gesture or a handclasp she left Sordello as quickly as she had
come. Nothing loverlike about those two.
Lorenzo decided to follow the woman, and left by the bolthole the tavern
keeper had shown him. He doubted that the old bravo would do anything
other than sit there and get drunk.
He had to run through the alley beside the inn to catch a glimpse of her
going around a corner. She was hard to see. The darkness of night was
made deeper by the jutting upper stories of the houses, and she was
wearing black.
He kept running, his footfalls muffled by the mushy layers of moldering
refuse that paved the streets. A woman going through the byways of the
poorest part of town after dark was taking a great chance with her purse
and her honor. She was either well paid or very dedicated.
Lorenzo, whispering breathless curses, twice had almost lost her in the
maze before she emerged onto a wider street, the Via di San Remo. There,
lights from windows made her easier to follow. Now he was quite sure
where she was going, and was not at all surprised when she hurried up
the stairs leading to the front door of the Palazzo Monaldeschi. The
door opened. There was a blaze of torchlight, and she pulled down her
scarf to identify herself. Even from across the street Lorenzo knew her.
Ana, the woman who interpreted for the Tartars.
* * * * *
Sophia entered Cardinal Ugolini's cabinet holding a letter written by
Simon de Gobignon. It had been pressed into her hand by the French
count's young scudiero when she was out walking. She had read it over
and over again before bringing it to David.
He was alone in the room. As he looked up from his seat on a pile of
cushions on the floor, she caught her breath. In that white light coming
through the translucent glass panes, David's grayish eyes took on an
opalescence.
The cardinal's cabinet on the top floor was the best-lit chamber in the
mansion. When Ugolini was not using the room, David often came here to
study, write, and meditate. And when neither David nor Ugolini was
there, Sophia sometimes came to draw and paint.
She felt as if David were a magician, and that his eyes had cast a spell
on her. In Ugolini's cabinet it was easy to think of magic. She had
always associated magic with darkened chambers and cellars, but Ugolini
practiced his magic at the top of his mansion, in a room with many
windows.
"The long-awaited answer from Simon has come," Sophia said, tossing the
opened scroll down before David.
David spread Simon's letter on his lap and read it, while Sophia looked
around the room. On a table near a window lay that painted skull Ugolini
kept toying with. On one wall were two maps of the heavens. Sophia
recognized the constellations in one of them, but the other was utterly
strange. One arrangement of stars in the second map seemed to take the
form of a Latin cross. She studied with interest the paintings on
scrolls nailed to the walls, of plants and animals so odd-looking that
she thought they might be an artist's inventions. One was a bird without
wings, another a spotted animal that looked like a deer but had an
enormously elongated neck. It might be pleasant to try painting such
creatures herself.
As David's eyes ran over Simon's letter, his lips curled in a faint
smile. Was it a smile of contempt for Simon's passionate outpouring,
which she had, in her delight with it, all but memorized?
Lady, I cry you mercy. You know it not, but your gentle eyes are
more puissant than a mighty host. From those eyes have flown such
bolts as wound but do not kill, and they have pierced my heart. I
will bleed forever within my breast where none can see, and all will
wonder at my pallor and my weakness that have no outward cause.
The physick for any wound or illness, sages tell us, must be like
that which caused the hurt. Thus only you, who have delivered this
wound, can cure it. Let me come to you, I beg, under cover of night.
Let me but adore you in secrecy for a moment, and my strength will
return....
"He is almost as good as an Arab poet," David said mockingly as he
handed her back the letter. Did it bother him, she wondered, that Simon
wrote words of love to her? David, she saw, was working on a letter of
his own on a tiny, thin scrap of vellum on a writing board which he now
laid over his knees. As if to show her that Simon's letter was of no
moment to him, he added to his own, writing rapidly with a quill dipped
in an inkpot--but from right to left.
"You write backwards?" she said, seating herself beside him on the floor
to look at his work.
"No, Christians do," he said with a faint smile. He covered what he was
writing with his hand, but she caught a glimpse of lines that wavered
and curled like tiny black snakes.
"Why bother to cover it? Do you really imagine that I could read that?"
Lightly she touched the hand that covered the writing, noticing the fine
yellow hairs on its back.
"I have to keep up the habit of secrecy." He gave her one of his rare
full smiles, and she wanted to reach out and hold his face between her
hands. They were so close, she thought, sitting side by side here on the
floor. And alone. They had but to stretch out on this thick Arabian
carpet and wrap their arms around each other. But, of course, Ugolini or
one of his servants might come in at any moment. Her longing for David
was a constant ache. She had not thought of Manfred, save as a figure in
the background of their lives, in weeks. And as long as she did not have
to meet with Simon, she was fully Sophia Karaiannides, and not troubled
by the yearning of Sophia Orfali for the young French count.
If only David did not insist on keeping her at a distance.
"Do you still want me to let Simon de Gobignon visit me secretly?" she
asked.
There was a momentary silence between them.
Then, "Have I told you of any change in plans?" he said gruffly. He
looked down at his scrap of parchment with the tiny crawling lines.
"What shall I let him do when we are together?" she asked quietly.
_I know David is jealous, and I am goading him. I want to hear his
jealousy._
He stood up abruptly and put his writing board on a table. He walked to
an open window and stood looking out, rolling his thin parchment tightly
between his fingers.
She hated this conversation. It turned him into a panderer and her into
a whore. And she sensed that he hated it as much as she did.
"Do what you think is necessary," he said coldly.
"_Necessary to what?_" she demanded through gritted teeth.
He turned toward her and held up a finger. "To win his trust." He held
up a second finger. "To hear and remember anything he may let slip." He
held up a third finger. "Most important, to tell him things."
"Tell him what?"
"Tell him that Cardinal Ugolini has persuaded Fra Tomasso d'Aquino to
oppose the alliance of Christians and Tartars."
"And if Simon believes you have won over Fra Tomasso, what will that
accomplish?"
"The unbelievers are already desperate to repair the damage I have done
to the reputation of the Tartars," David said. "If they think they have
lost Fra Tomasso, they may be provoked to do exactly the wrong thing."
"What would that be?" Sophia had heard that Muslims were devious. She
certainly could not follow Daoud's mind in this.
"Not knowing Fra Tomasso is actually trying to remain neutral, they will
use every means they have to try to win him back, as they think, to
their side. I am hoping they will try to bring Cardinal de Verceuil's
influence to bear. If de Verceuil goes to Fra Tomasso--or, even better,
to Fra Tomasso's superiors--he may well drive the learned friar over to
our side."
"What if you are wrong? What if de Verceuil and the other Franks do
persuade Fra Tomasso to support the alliance? Would it not be better to
leave him where he is, neutral?"
Daoud shook his head. "At least this way we are trying to control what
happens."
She smiled. "I thought you Muslims believed in leaving things up to
fate."
"The efforts of men are part of the workings of fate."
She would probably never understand his Muslim way of thinking. Perhaps
he would not accept her love because he saw her as an unbeliever. It
made her angry to think he might hold himself aloof from her because of
her religion, and he not even a Muslim born.
"The Turks killed your parents," she said. "How can you be a Muslim?" It
was something she had never understood and had wanted to know ever since
she learned what he was, but she asked it now to hurt him.
He gave her that silent, burning stare, and she began to wonder, with a
rippling of fear in the pit of her stomach, if she was in danger.
"That was my fate," he said. "I had to lose my mother and father to find
God."
Before she could catch herself, she started to laugh with a kind of
wildness, a touch of hysteria. She had been angry at him and had goaded
him and feared his striking back, and instead he made a statement that
was utterly absurd.
_I lost my mother and father, and I gained nothing from it. I became
nothing, neither daughter, nor wife, nor mother._
At her laughter, he took a step backward, as if she had struck him, and
his tan face reddened. Now she felt terror. This time she had surely
gone too far.
"Forgive me. Your answer surprised me. It sounds so strange for a man of
your profession to talk of finding God."
"What profession?"
"Well, you are a warrior and a spy, not a holy man."
"We do not need to speak of this." He turned away from her to stare out
the window. She looked past him at red-tiled rooftops. A flock of
pigeons circled in the distance.
"No," she said. "And as an unbeliever I suppose I would not understand."
Surprisingly he approached her and looked down with eyes that were
serious and free of anger. "If you ever, in sincerity, want to know
about Islam, come and ask me, and as best I can I will answer your
questions. But do not speak foolishness. And do not laugh."
She thought she understood a bit better. The Muslims had captured his
body, but then in his enslavement he had freely given his soul to their
religion. He did not serve the Turks. He served the God they called
Allah. How this had come about she could not imagine. But she knew a
little better why his sultan had entrusted him with this undertaking. He
was perfect for it.
"I must go," he said, as if eager not to talk anymore.
"To deliver your message?" She gestured toward the clenched fist that
held the fragile parchment. "Is there truly someone in Orvieto who can
read it?"
He smiled again. Oh, that smile! It so easily overcame her anger and
fear.
"There is no harm in my telling you. It goes to my sultan, by carrier
pigeon and ship." He must be proud, she thought, of his swift and secret
courier system.
"And do you get messages back in the same way?"
"It takes over a month each way, so I have received but one message from
the sultan since coming to Italy."
"Does the cardinal keep the pigeons?"
He had taken a tiny leather capsule out of his belt purse and was
inserting the message into it now. "Madama Tilia keeps the pigeons."
"Then are you going to her house?" Sophia remembered with a feeling of
guilt that she had not thought of Rachel in some time. "Please, David,
will you see how Rachel is while you are there?"
David looked at her quickly and glanced away. She felt a coldness in her
chest.
"What has happened to her?" she demanded. She seized David's arm, lest
he turn away from her.
He did not try to pull free. "She is well. She is already wealthy, in
fact." His eyes did not meet hers at all now.
"Oh, my God! A man has had her!" She let go of David and turned her back
on him.
There was another silence while fury churned in Sophia. She wanted to
turn on David, to scratch his face with her nails. She wanted to tear
her clothing in anguish, in mourning for Rachel's lost innocence. She
hated herself for her part in the child's degradation.
"Sophia." David's voice came from behind her, soft, a little uncertain.
"Were you so much older than Rachel when you--became a woman?"
Wrath overpowered her other feelings, and she turned on him. "Do you
think _that_ is what makes a girl into a woman? And you complain about
speaking foolishness?"
"How old, Sophia?" His voice was more confident now, as if her anger had
put him on firmer ground.
She thought of Alexis, the boy she had loved, and the long afternoons
they had spent together hidden under an old broken arch covered with
vines and lapped by waves on the Aegean side of Constantinople.
She shook her head. "Yes, I was her age. But I was in love. Doing it for
money or for my city came later, when I was alone in the world and
older."
There was appeal in his look. "But you know what it is to be alone and
in need. Just as you freely chose to serve the Emperor of Constantinople
with your body, so Rachel freely chose to sell her virginity for a
fortune in gold."
His obtuseness made her more angry than ever. "You know nothing about
freedom or women. Rachel was no more free to keep her virginity than you
were free to remain a Christian after the Turks captured you. As for me,
at least I know enough to hate the murderers of my parents."
His fingers dug into her shoulders until they hurt and the fire in his
eyes terrified her. But she held her face frozen, refusing to show fear
or pain.
"Say no more," he whispered in a strangled voice. "Not another word."
_Saint Simon, protect me._
_Simon._
She could see the struggle in David's face and body. She had enraged him
to the point where he wanted to hurt her. But he was not going to let
himself do it. She thought she must have taken a hundred breaths before
he released his grip on her shoulders, pushing her away a little.
Again she wondered what he had been through that would give him such
iron self-control. She stood looking at him, breathing heavily in the
aftermath of her terror.
_I am a fool to despise anything as powerful as what he has._
He raked her with his eyes, then turned toward the door.
"Do not bother to find out about Rachel for me," she said. "I will go
myself."
He stopped, and the fury in his face made her brace herself again for an
attack.
"You cannot go. You cannot be seen going into Tilia's."
"Do you think I have served great men for years without learning how to
move about a city unnoticed?"
"Go, then." His normally fair face was scarlet with rage. "And learn
from Rachel's own lips what the Tartar did to her."
For a moment she seemed to go blind and deaf. She felt hot and cold at
once. Her body had reacted to the meaning of his words before her brain
understood them.
"_Tartar!_ The man was a Tartar? You let a Tartar have her?" Sophia
seized the first object near her hand and threw it at him. She saw as it
struck him that it was the painted skull. It hit his chest with a thump,
and he took a step backward.
"You filthy bastard!" she screamed. "Pig of a Turk!"
Expressionless, he turned without another word and left her, closing the
door of Ugolini's cabinet behind him.
She sank weeping to the floor.
_Rachel, Rachel, how could they do this to you? With a Tartar. Oh, no!_
She sat there until her tears stopped and her thoughts began to make
some sense. The skull, lying on its side, seemed to look back at her.
_Thank you, David. You have made my decision for me. Simon de Gobignon
shall have me._