The Saracen: Land of the Infidel by Robert Shea (best fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

is why I went to that old man's aid."

Daoud blinked in surprise, then began to laugh.

"You find that funny?"

"I am just as surprised to find out that you are a Jew as others would be to find out that I am a Muslim." Daoud stopped laughing. "I have known many Jews in Egypt. Abd ibn Adam, Sultan Baibars's personal physician, is a Jew. But why do you not wear the required hat?"

"It is not required in Manfred's kingdom. And I would not wear it on this mission any more than you would wear a Muslim's turban." Then Celino laughed. "But if I were to drop my breeches, you would see the mark of Abraham."

"I have that as well," said Daoud with a smile. "Muslims are also circumcised. I was eleven." He remembered with a twinge the old mullah chanting prayers in Arabic, the knife whose steel looked sharper and colder than any he had seen before or since.

"Now that mark is all I have left of the religion I was born into," Celino said.

"What do you mean? Did you convert to Christianity?"

"I told you I am not a Christian. I profess no faith."

Daoud drew back. A man who had no faith at all was somehow less than human.[96]

"You believe in nothing?"

"One of Manfred's Saracen scholars gave me a book by your Arab philosopher Averroës. In it he taught that there are no spirits, no gods, no angels, no human souls. All things are matter only. That is what I believe."

Daoud made a casting-away motion. "I have been taught that Averroës is a great heretic. Now I see how wise we are not to read him."

"It was life that made me a nonbeliever. Averroës only showed me that there are learned men who think likewise."

Daoud shook his head. Baibars would never allow such a man near him.

"Why does your king permit you to have no religion?"

"The truth of it is, he thinks as I do. As his father, Emperor Frederic, did before him. In the kingdom of Sicily under the Hohenstaufens, people may believe as they please, as long as they are discreet about it. Of course, King Manfred must pretend to be a Catholic, or all the hosts of Christendom would fall upon his kingdom and destroy him. As for me, Manfred trusts me because he knows I do not stand in awe of the pope. The same reason he relies on his Saracen warriors."

Yes, Daoud thought, having no religion might make Celino a more useful companion for a mission like this. But how could Daoud trust a man who had no faith in a higher power?

"But why did you try to fight for that old man? Look what you have done to us."

Celino sighed and shook his head. "He was so much like my own father. I could not help myself."

"That is a poor excuse."

Celino looked steadily into Daoud's eyes. "It may seem so to you. It is said that Mamelukes scarcely remember their mothers and fathers."

Daoud's body stiffened with rage. Celino's words were a blow that tore open an old wound.

"You know nothing of that, and for your own safety you had best not speak of it to me," Daoud said in a choked whisper.

Celino inclined his head. "I ask your forgiveness."

"Remember that if we fail in this mission, it will mean great harm to your King Manfred, who has been so good to you and raised you so high," Daoud said.[97]

Celino's head was still lowered in submission. "You are right to remind me of that. I have been foolish."

Daoud gripped Celino's wrist. The Sicilian raised his head and stared into Daoud's eyes.

Daoud said, "I must have your oath that this will never happen again. Should you see a hundred Jews having their throats cut, you will smile like a good Christian and declare the sight pleasing to God."

"I will do my best, Daoud. That is all I can honestly promise you, but I think it will be good enough."

By being honest, as he puts it, he still leaves himself room to defy me.

"And you will obey my commands from now on, as if they came from your king?"

"You have my word of honor."

Whatever the honor of an unbeliever is worth. Manfred, what kind of a crazed camel have you foisted off on me?

Here he was, far across the sea from the only home he had ever known, in the midst of people who would kill him in an instant if they knew who he was. And now he felt he could not trust one of the few men he must depend upon. He felt a coldness beginning in his palms and spreading through his body as he wondered what further calamities like tonight's might lie before them.

IX

The city that founded my city, Sophia thought.

Sophia and David rode along the Tiber as it wound its way through Rome like a brown serpent. Looking up from the riverbank, Sophia saw the peaked roofs and domes of churches, and the battlements of fortified palaces. The houses of the common folk huddled at the feet of the hills, and here and there remnants of old Rome rose like yellowed tombstones. Today's Romans, Sophia thought, built their hovels in the shadows of marble ruins.[98]

Sophia was impressed only by the age of the place. Her own city, the Polis, was everything now that this place had been centuries ago. Rome had possessed civilization and had lost it. Constantinople had it still, on a grander scale.

At dawn David's party had reached the place where the Tiber passed through crumbling city walls. Lorenzo and Rachel crossed the river into the Trastevere quarter, where the Jews lived. Sophia wondered how they would get past the watchmen at the city gate with the old man's body. Would Lorenzo tell a clever story, try bribery, or use his Ghibellino connections? Or would he fail, and he and Rachel be arrested?

David did not seem worried. She had seen his anger at Lorenzo. Perhaps he hoped to be rid of him. For her part, she felt Lorenzo was far more her friend than David. She had known Lorenzo longer, and he had always been kind to her. She prayed he would return safely to them after finding a haven for Rachel among the Jews of Rome.

She and David had entered the city through a gate on the east side of the Tiber without difficulty. Evidently news of the incident at the inn had not reached the Roman watch. In the city she rode beside David along the river's east bank.

She touched David's shoulder and pointed to a hilltop.

"That hill is called the Capitoline," she said. "At one time the whole world was ruled from there."

She supposed David would find that hard to believe, though the hill was still impressive, with a cluster of marble palaces at its top.

They were passing through one of the most crowded parts of Rome. On their left, fishermen hauled their nets out of the river, throwing flopping fish into baskets. On their right, shops in the ground floors of overhanging houses offered fruits and flowers and vegetables, fish, shoes, straw, rosaries, icons, relics, candles. Even at this early hour the street was crowded. Romans jostled the horses David and Sophia rode, but they gave Scipio plenty of room. Lorenzo had given the great boarhound a stern lecture, after which Scipio docilely allowed David to lead him on a leash.

"I have seen two other great imperial cities," said David. "One was Baghdad, before the Tartars destroyed it. It was then much like this city is now—its glory shrunken and faded, but still the center of our faith, as Rome is the center of Christendom."

Sophia was taken aback at his casual error.

"Rome is the center of Latin Christendom," she said sharply.[99]

"Ah, how could I have neglected Constantinople and the Greek Church?" He smiled. The smile lit his deeply tanned face in a way that surprised her, held her gaze. She felt a warmth.

How smooth and brown his skin is.

"You must never forget Constantinople," she admonished him with a small smile.

"I spent a month in Constantinople some years ago—that was the other imperial city—and I shall not forget it." This made her feel warmer still toward him.

Then his smile faded. "Your city, too, has suffered at the hands of barbarians—the Franks, who would destroy us."

Destroy us? she repeated in her mind. Is he not a child of those Frankish barbarians?

On the road from Lucera to Rome, he had told her—in a brusque fashion, as if he were speaking of someone other than himself—the story of his childhood and how he came to be a Mameluke. She found it hard to believe that he spoke of the killing of his parents and his enslavement by the Saracens as if it were some kind of blessing—but she had no doubt that he was a believing Muslim through and through.

"Do you never think of yourself as a Frank, David?"

He smiled again. "Never. And I hope you will not think of me as one either. Because I know you must hate Franks."

Hate Franks? Dread them was closer to the truth. Last night, when they fought their way free of those people from the inn, she had remembered the terror she had known as a girl in Constantinople. It was the return of that terror that had given her the strength to smash a jug over that horrid woman's head.

She was about to reply to David when Scipio broke into loud barking. David frowned at the sight of something ahead. The Tiber made a sharp bend, and beyond that, on the opposite bank, towered a huge fortress, a great cylinder of age-browned marble—Castel Sant' Angelo.

At the base of the citadel was a bridge, and Lorenzo was crossing it. She knew him even from this distance by his purple cap and brown cloak.

Sophia had expected to see Lorenzo return alone. It gave her a little start of surprise to see that Rachel was still with him, still riding their spare horse.

David angrily muttered something that Sophia guessed must be an Arabic curse. He checked his horse. Sophia reined up her gray[100] mare, and they sat waiting for Rachel and Lorenzo to come up to them.

"They want me as far away from them as possible," Rachel said. She climbed down from her mount at once, as if acknowledging that she had no right to be riding it. She looked at David with an expression of appeal.

This was the first time Sophia had gotten a good look at Rachel. The girl had removed the scarf that hid her hair, which was midnight-black and hung in a single braid down below her shoulders. A dusty purple traveling cloak enveloped her slight body. Her skin was white as fine porcelain. The eyes under her straight black brows were bright, but Sophia could see fear in them. She remembered herself ten years earlier, a bewildered, terrified, orphaned girl in Constantinople.

I must help this child.

"Why will your people not take you?" David said gruffly.

"They are afraid," said Rachel. "When we told them what happened at the inn last night, they said we had put them all in deadly danger."

Lorenzo looked up from where he crouched scratching Scipio's long jaw. "And we had better get out of the city quickly, before the rulers of Rome start hunting for us."

Rachel went on. "One of the rabbis took Angelo's body, and promised to bury him at once. That much they are willing to do. But they said they could not protect me if I were discovered. Not only that, but it would bring persecution down on them."

David said, "But did you not appear to be a boy at the inn?"

"The people at the inn saw a young person who could be boy or girl," said Lorenzo. "The Jews here are constantly spied upon. There are malshins, paid informers, among them. Their leaders think keeping Rachel too much of a risk, and knowing how many lives they have in their care, I cannot blame them."

David glared at Lorenzo. "Could you not do more to persuade them?"

Lorenzo spread his hands. "At first they did not trust me because they thought I was a Christian. When I told them I am a Jew, they still distrusted me because I admitted being from Sicily. That must have made them suspect that I am connected with King Manfred. The Jews of Rome live as clients of the pope. They cannot afford to get involved with Ghibellini."

Rachel pressed her hands on David's knee as he sat on his horse[101] looking grimly down at her. "I beg you, let me come with you. There is no place for me here in Rome."

"There is no place for you where we are going," he said gruffly.

Sophia