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

stronghold. The other eyes were those of a boy named David Langmuir, to whom a Christian castle had been home. And, as always on sensing that inner division, Daoud felt a crushing sadness.

Ahmad took Daoud through a series of small, low-ceilinged rooms in the base of the castle. He spoke briefly to an officer seated at a table, dressed like himself in red turban and green tunic. He gestured to a heavy-looking door reinforced with strips of iron.

"In there, Messer David."

Every muscle in Daoud's body screamed out in protest. As part of his initiation into the Hashishiyya, he had been locked in a tiny black chamber in the Great Pyramid for days, and, except for the deaths of his mother and father, it was the worst memory of his life. Now he ached to strike down Ahmad and the other Muslim soldier and flee.

Instead, he said quietly, "How long will I have to wait?"

Ahmad shrugged. "God alone knows." Ahmad's southern Italian dialect was as heavily accented as Daoud's own.

How surprised he would be if I were to address him in Arabic.

"Who is this man who orders me imprisoned?" Daoud demanded.

Ahmad and the other guard shrugged at the question. "He is Messer Lorenzo Celino of Sicily. He serves King Manfred."

"What does he do for King Manfred?"[14]

"Whatever the king tells him to." Ahmad smiled at Daoud and gestured again at the ironbound door. "Thank you for making the work of guarding you easy. May God be kind to you."

Daoud bowed in thanks. Remembering the proper Christian farewell, he said, "Addio."

The other soldier unlocked the door with a large iron key, and Daoud walked reluctantly into a shadowy room. The door slammed shut behind him, and again he went rigid with his hatred of confinement.

The walls had recently been whitewashed, but the little room stank abominably. The odor, Daoud saw, came from a privy hole in one corner, where large black flies circled in a humming swarm. Half-light came in through a window covered with a black iron grill whose openings were barely wide enough to push a finger through. Noticing what appeared to be a bundle of bedding against a wall, Daoud approached it and squatted down for a closer look. He prodded it, feeling straw under a stained cotton sheet. At his probing, black dots, almost too small to see, began moving about rapidly over the sheet.

Daoud crossed the room, unslung his pack from his back, and dropped it to the floor. He sat down on the flagstones, as far from the bedding and the privy opening as he could get, his back against the wall, his knees drawn up, like a Bedouin in his tent.

I am helpless, Daoud thought, and terror and rage rose up in him like two djinns released from their jars, threatening to overwhelm him. He sat perfectly still. To bring himself under control, he began the contemplative exercise his Sufi teacher, Sheikh Saadi, called the Presence of God.

"God is everywhere, and most of all in man's heart," Saadi had said, his old eyes twinkling. "He cannot be seen or heard or touched or smelled or tasted. Therefore, make your mind as empty as the Great Desert, and you may converse with God, Whose name be praised."

Daoud touched the farewell present Saadi had given him when he left El Kahira to begin the journey to Italy. It was a leather case tied around his neck, and it contained a piece of paper called a tawidh, an invocation whose words were represented by Arabic numerals.

Like the locket, it would arouse curiosity if someone searching him found it. But it could be simply explained as one of those curious objects a traveler from distant places might have about his[15] person. And, like the locket, it was simply too precious not to be worn.

Saadi said the tawidh would help wounds heal faster. Daoud refused to let himself think about wounds. He tried to make his mind a blank, and in the effort he forgot for a time where he was.

II

Messer Lorenzo Celino of Sicily strode into the cell. He held in his hands a large round slice of bread heaped with steaming slivers of meat that gave off an unfamiliar but succulent smell.

Daoud slowly climbed to his feet. The hound Scipio, trailing Celino, watched him, standing in the doorway, as if unwilling to enter the vile-smelling chamber.

Daoud measured Celino. The top of the Sicilian's head would come to Daoud's chin, but the shoulders under his violet tunic were broad and straight, and he moved with menacing grace. Daoud judged that, though Celino must be close to fifty, he would be quick and deadly with hands and feet, and a good swordsman as well.

"God's beard, man, I didn't mean to keep you sitting in this room all day without food or drink," Celino said. "The damned farmers and traders kept coming and coming. But you cannot eat in this stinking place. Come out."

Daoud emerged into the next room, and Lorenzo motioned him to sit at the guards' table. Even though Daoud felt deep relief at being out of the cell, he sensed he was in greater danger than before. His mouth went dry and the palms of his hands turned cold as his eyes scanned the room for weapons or an escape route.

Lorenzo set the trencher and its burden of meat down before Daoud.

"Just butchered. Here, eat in good health. And here is a beaker of our good red wine of Monte Vultura." Daoud heard a false note in Celino's present heartiness and liked it even less than his earlier gruff suspicion.[16]

Wine. An abomination forbidden by the Prophet. As Celino set a pitcher and two cups down on the table, Daoud recalled the nights he had spent with Sheikh Saadi learning to master wine and other drugs.

God prohibits the drinking of wine and the eating of unclean foods, not for His good, for nothing can harm Him, but for our good. Therefore, when a man goes among the infidel as a spy, God permits him to eat and drink the forbidden things lest he be discovered and put to death. You must learn to separate your mind from your body so that what harms your body will not affect your mind.

Daoud raised the cup, wondering if he would have as much power over wine drunk in the land of the infidel as he did when he drank it with his teacher. He sipped. The red liquid was thick and bitter and burned his mouth, but he made himself smile, sigh appreciatively, and sip again. He kept God at the center of his thoughts.

Celino was watching him closely. Raising his cup in salute, he also drank.

"Good, good. Now eat. Fresh roasted. Pork."

Daoud's fingers, poised over the meat, stopped short. Already made ill by hunger, by the vile odor of the room in which he had been confined, and by the wine that made his stomach churn, he felt himself on the point of vomiting. For nearly twenty years the prohibition against eating the flesh of pigs had been impressed upon him until the very thought of pork made him sick. He knew he should have prepared himself by eating it before he left El Kahira, but he had never found time for that. So now, a prisoner of the enemy, he faced for the first time the test of pork.

Celino was watching him with a half smile.

He would not test me with wine and pig's meat unless he suspected I am a Muslim.

Daoud's fingers grasped a slice of the hot meat. He tore it in half, using both his clean right hand and his unclean left as a non-Muslim would.

He stuffed a slice of pork into his mouth. It had smelled good until he found out what it was. Now it seemed slimy and tasteless. His stomach clenched, but he held himself rigid, expressionless. He started to chew, and found that his mouth was dry. His life might depend on his giving a convincing imitation of pleasure. He chewed the meat to fragments and, as though savoring it, swallowed the abomination crumb by crumb.

He realized he was still holding the other scrap of pork in his left[17] hand. To give himself a respite, he tossed it to the flagstone floor before Lorenzo's hound.

Unclean to the unclean, he thought.

Scipio looked at Daoud with an almost human look of surprise, then bent to devour the meat.

"Friday, Scipio," said Celino sharply. "You are forbidden meat."

The dog looked sadly up at Celino, licked its chops, and sat back on its haunches, leaving the meat untouched. In spite of his predicament, Daoud laughed.

"You see?" said Celino. "Even a dog can learn to obey the commandments."

Celino gestured to the dog. "All right, Scipio, the bishop of Palermo gives you a dispensation."

The dog stood and struck at the meat with his long muzzle. It vanished to the accompaniment of loud gulping sounds.

"He likes it better than you do," Celino said. "You do not act very hungry for a man who has not eaten all day. Come on, man, fill your belly."

Realizing that the pork would taste worse as it cooled, Daoud braced himself and stuffed piece after piece into his mouth, chewing and swallowing as rapidly as he could.

"And," said Celino, watching him with narrowed eyes, "a dog can be trained to break the commandments when permitted."

From time to time Daoud threw a scrap to Scipio, grateful for the hound's help. But as he ate, Daoud noticed that the meat began to taste better to him, and the juices of his mouth began to flow. The familiar feeling of sorrow came over him, and he looked around at the white walls and ceiling, the wooden beams overhead painted blue. In his mind's eye he saw in their place yellow stone walls and a vaulted ceiling, and remembered that he had last tasted the flesh of pig at table with his father and mother.

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and sat back. "Thank you. I feel better now."

Celino stood up, took the stale disk of bread, and dropped it to the floor. Scipio picked it up in his mouth.

"Then have the goodness to accompany me to the Hall of Mars, Messer David," he said, and turned.

He shows me that he is not afraid to turn his back, Daoud thought, picking up his pack and following Celino. The Hall of Mars, he remembered, was an indoor exercise hall for Manfred's troops.[18] They climbed stairs and walked through rooms in which Muslim soldiers were cleaning and polishing helmets, coats of mail, and weapons. In one room, men were painting shields. All the shields were yellow and bore the black two-headed eagle of the Hohenstaufens.

Daoud followed Lorenzo into a very large, bare room with a floor of polished hardwood. Ropes and chains hung from the walls and the beamed ceiling. Tall windows cut high up in smooth walls—too high to jump to—let in afternoon sunlight and fresh air that did not quite dispel a heavy odor of sweat. Opposite the doorway through which they passed was another and larger entrance, with double doors. The room was not square; the walls were of differing lengths and set at angles. Daoud recalled the octagonal shape of Castello Lucera's central tower.

He reviewed the plan of the castle he had committed to memory in El Kahira. He was sure that behind the double doors was the great royal audience hall. The wide doorway would allow troops assembled in the Hall of Mars to march into the audience chamber for a review.

Daoud noticed a group of Muslim guards lounging in one corner. At Lorenzo's entrance they touched their hands to their turbans in salute. Lorenzo responded with the same gesture. Scipio carried the trencher in his mouth to a corner of the room, where he lay down and began pushing the hard bread around with his forepaws and, working at it with his formidable teeth, making loud crunching noises.

Celino led Daoud to the center of the room. He turned suddenly on Daoud.

"Now, spy, you will tell me exactly who you are and exactly where you come from," he said rapidly. "You will tell me the truth, or you will die here and now."

Daoud came within a breath of answering, then realized Lorenzo had spoken in Arabic. Relieved laughter bubbled up toward his throat—he had not been caught. He choked it down and assumed a puzzled expression.

"I do not understand," Daoud said in Italian. "What tongue are you speaking, Messer Lorenzo?"

"Liar," said Lorenzo, still in Arabic, his eyes narrowing.

"I understand Italian, Greek, and, of course, the speech of Scythia," said Daoud. "If you would question me, speak in one of those tongues." Daoud sensed that the Sicilian's sudden shifts of[19] mood were calculated. While his mouth uttered accusations, Celino's eyes watched him with