Well satisfied with what Tilia had accomplished, Daoud gazed about at
the frescoed moons, stars, and suns scattered across the dark blue walls
of the apartment. A cool night breeze blew through the rooms from
windows hidden by screens and gauzy curtains. In the large central
chamber an oval pool gave off a scent of roses. Hangings of violet,
silver, and azure turned the rooms into a maze that baffled the eye.
Everywhere Daoud looked he saw beds and divans and cushions. The floors
were covered with soft rugs and the tables laden with pitchers of wine
and plates of peaches, grapes, and melon slices.
In a corner of a smaller room, its walls covered with maroon and black
drapes, the flame of a large candle warmed a solution of wine and
hashish in a green earthenware bowl. A single silver cup stood beside
the candle.
"All this for one lousy traditore?" said Lorenzo.
"After he has experienced what I have prepared for him tonight, he will
no longer be a traitor," said Daoud. "His very soul will be mine, and
that will be worth--all this."
He watched the two silent black men lug in the naked body of Sordello,
and he pointed to a forest-green divan beside the pool. Gently they laid
Sordello there.
Tilia Caballo appeared from behind a curtain. At a gesture from her, the
two black men bowed to Daoud and left.
Three women followed Tilia into the room.
"Goddesses!" whispered Lorenzo, staring.
Daoud, who had chosen them, agreed. Two of them, Tilia had told him,
were sisters whose specialty was working together with one man. They had
hair the color of honey, olive skin, and Grecian profiles. Each had a
gold fillet in her hair and wore a short tunic of pure white linen. Each
tunic left one delicate shoulder and one perfect breast exposed. On
Orenetta the uncovered side was the right, and on Caterina the left.
The third woman was tall, taller than most men, and her bare shoulders
were broad. But her body, tightly wrapped in a gown of black silk that
stopped just above her breasts, was magnificently female. Her long
unbound hair was lustrous and black as her gown, her skin pale as snow.
A gold collar that appeared to be woven of spiral strands encircled her
neck. Maiga, Tilia said, was from Hibernia, an island west of Britain,
and she spoke no Italian and did not need to.
Daoud felt a fluttering in his chest as the sight of the three women,
and the scent of the simmering wine brought back memories of his own
initiation at the hands of the Hashishiyya.
It had been the Tartars, indirectly, who had made it possible for him to
take that training. They had besieged and destroyed Alamut, the great
Persian fortress of the Sheikh al-Jebal, the Old Man of the Mountain,
and kicked him to death after he surrendered. The Old Man's surviving
followers scattered across the lands of Islam. It was inevitable that
some of the highest adepts came for protection to Sultan Qutuz of El
Kahira.
After they were settled, Baibars had gone to them with the proposal that
certain Mameluke emirs be initiated into the secrets of the sect. Fayum
al-Burz, the new Sheikh al-Jebal, saw an opportunity to infiltrate the
highest levels of the Mamelukes and was only too pleased to comply.
And so it had come about that Daoud, already trained by Saadi to resist
the power of hashish, passed through the gates of paradise and learned,
in time, how to administer the same experience to others.
Of course, Sordello, after he went through this, would be no adept. He
would learn no secrets. He would be the lowest of the low--a tool, like
the fedawi, the devoted killers who were the source of the Sheikh
al-Jebal's power.
"This is a lucky man," said Tilia, her big mouth splitting her face in a
lascivious grin. "He will experience delights here tonight that many of
my most distinguished patrons have never enjoyed. His pleasures will be
limited only by what his body can endure."
She walked over to Sordello, asleep on the divan, and ran caressing
fingers down his bare chest and belly. "And he looks to be a strong man
for his age. These scars. Quite the veteran bravo, eh?"
Though the room seemed cool to Daoud, sweat ran over Tilia's bare bosom
down into the deep square collar of her purple gown. Her deadly pectoral
cross lay heavily against the purple satin between her breasts. She
might need that cross tonight, Daoud thought, if anything went wrong
with Sordello.
"I begin to envy the man," said Lorenzo. "Ill-treated as he has been up
to now."
"Surely you are not such a fool," said Daoud brusquely. But then, he
thought, Lorenzo had no real idea what initiation into the Hashishiyya
did to a man.
A few last soft words of instruction to Caterina, Orenetta, and Maiga,
and Tilia led Daoud and Lorenzo to a wall panel which swung open at the
pressure of her finger on a spring. The room they entered was as cool as
the one they had just left, its large open window covered over with fine
netting to let in air and keep out insects. But it was darker. Only a
single fat candle burned in a large stick enameled green, red, and
white.
Francesca, the woman Daoud had lain with on his previous visits to
Tilia's, rose with a smile and came to him. As Daoud took her hand and
kissed it, she squeezed his fingers. The polished, carved beams that ran
up the walls and across the ceiling of this room were the same color as
Francesca's hair, a dark brown. Opposite the window there was a small
fireplace, dark and empty.
"Here, here, and here are the places from which you can watch what goes
on in there," said Tilia, marching along one wall and pointing to tiny
circular openings, each one ringed with a little _O_ of wood. Under each
opening was a couch, and the openings were low enough in the wall so
that one could sit, or even lie down, and still look through them. The
light in this room had to be lower than in the room where Sordello was,
Daoud realized, or the peepholes would be visible on the other side of
the wall.
"Francesca is here for your pleasure, should you find what is happening
on the other side of this wall arousing," said Tilia, dabbing with a
handkerchief at the pool of sweat that kept forming at the top of her
cleavage. It must be her weight, Daoud thought, that made her perspire
so much.
"You have thought of everything, Tilia," said Daoud.
"There is more," she said with a smile, and pulled on an embroidered
strip of purple velvet hanging from the wall. Daoud heard a bell ring
somewhere beyond the wall. Then through the door to the outer gallery
came two more of Tilia's black servants. The first one bore a wide
silver tray, and Daoud smelled a familiar and savory odor that filled
the air of the room. As the servant laid the tray on a round table,
Daoud saw slices of roast kid garnished with shredded cheese on a bed of
rice with peppers.
"Roast yearling!" Daoud exclaimed, delighted.
He bit into a sliver of kid. It was delicious. The meat was accompanied
by sliced boiled lemons sprinkled with nadd and scented with ambergris.
"But where did you learn to prepare such a dish?"
The stout little woman rolled her eyes. "There is much you do not know
about me. If I find you deserving I will tell you, one day. Meanwhile,
partake! And you, Lorenzo. And Francesca. Levantine cookery will not
poison you."
The second servant set a platter of peaches and figs and a flagon of
kaviyeh beside the lamb. A good meal for a long night, thought Daoud.
He sat on one of the couches to peer through a peephole. He could see
the three women gathered around Sordello's inert form. They were
massaging him gently, as instructed.
But it would be a while yet before he woke and found himself with three
beautiful women, every pleasure they gave him enhanced by hashish.
"In the south we know and love Saracen dishes," said Lorenzo with a grin
as he licked his fingers after helping himself to the kid. "But, Madama
Tilia, am I to have food only? Shall I not have a companion to help me
endure this night's work?"
Tilia reached up and pulled at the end of his grizzled mustache. "Only
rarely does a Sicilian bullock set foot in my house. I am saving you for
myself."
"Meraviglioso!" Lorenzo exclaimed. "Instead of one of the handmaidens of
Venus I shall have Venus herself."
Lorenzo's wit was itself meraviglioso, thought Daoud. But for him,
something other than the games of Venus was uppermost in his mind. Ever
since his angry words with Sophia of a few days before, he had been
troubled by the thought of Rachel. And especially tonight when, even as
he passed the time here at Tilia's, Simon de Gobignon was visiting
Sophia. Sophia had been to see Rachel herself, but had refused to talk
about her. He wanted to reassure himself that Sophia had been wrong to
condemn him and that all was well with the girl.
"While we wait, Tilia," he said, "I would have a private word with you."