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

ago, at the supreme moment of His life—His death.

Still kneeling, Louis slowly drew the reliquary out of the chest, holding it with both hands. His eyes glowed with fervor, as bright as the pearls. Simon prayed he would not open the reliquary. The sight of the actual thorns that pierced Jesus' head would surely be too much to bear.

Louis kissed the lid of the case and held it out to Simon.

"Kiss this relic of Christ's passion, Simon, and beg His blessing on your mission."

Trembling, Simon touched his lips to the cool gold surface. Not one Christian in a hundred thousand had been this close to the Crown of Thorns. He felt ashamed, privileged far beyond what he deserved.

As they walked together out of the chapel, Louis limping and leaning on Simon again, said, "Baldwin, the French emperor of Constantinople, sold us two crowns after Michael Paleologos drove him out. I bought the Crown of Thorns, and my brother Charles bought the title of emperor of Constantinople. Which of us, I wonder, made the better bargain?"

Simon thought, did Count Charles actually hope to conquer Constantinople? And, if so, what did these dealings with the Tartars have to do with it?

"Is it your wish, Sire, as your brother, Count Charles, has told me, that I should guard the ambassadors from Tartary when they arrive in Italy?" he asked.

Louis stopped walking. They were almost to the doorway of the chapel. He turned his round eyes on Simon.

"Oh, yes, it is very much my wish." His thin fingers squeezed[173] Simon's shoulder. "For more than twenty years, ever since I took the crusading vow, I have wanted one thing above all else, to win Jerusalem back for Christendom. I led an army into Egypt, and it was God's will that the Mamelukes defeated me."

God's will and Amalric de Gobignon's treachery, thought Simon.

"Now, with the help of the Tartars, we could wrest the Holy Land from the Saracens' hands," Louis said.

"But if you wish to ally yourself with the Tartars, Sire, should I not bring the ambassadors directly to you instead of to the pope?"

"No, I cannot make a treaty with the Tartars without Pope Urban's permission. Only the Holy Father can proclaim a crusade. If he refuses to do that, I cannot recruit an army to join with the Tartars to rescue the Holy Land. Even if he does declare a crusade, raising an army will be terribly hard. Many of those who went with me last time and endured our terrible defeat and survived with God's help have told me they will not go again—or send their sons. I must have His Holiness's full support."

King Louis turned toward him fully now and put both hands on his shoulders. "You must help me, Simon. I am asking Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil to represent the cause of the alliance at the court of the pope. And Friar Mathieu d'Alcon will be there to testify that the Tartars may yet be won to Christianity. And you, too, Simon, must do whatever you can, seize any opportunity, to further the cause of the alliance."

Simon looked into the king's eyes. Their blue was slightly faded, and age and care had etched red streaks in the whites. Simon's whole frame was shaken by an overwhelming love for the man.

"Sire, I will do anything—everything."

Louis nodded. "I know how you have suffered all your life because of the ill deeds of—one I shall not name. I have tried to shield you from being unjustly punished. But even a king cannot control the hearts of men. In the end only you can win back for the house of Gobignon its place among the great names of France. This alliance with the Tartars, and what follows from it, the liberation of Jerusalem, can help you restore your honor."

Could a man have more than one father, Simon wondered. Surely King Louis had done more than anyone else to make him the man he was today.

"I will work for the alliance, Sire," he said. "Not for my family honor alone, but for you."[174]

For King Louis he would guard the Tartars with his life. For King Louis he would do anything.

His horse slowed down to climb as the road rose along a steep slope opposite Orvieto, green with vineyards. Friar Mathieu had made a better witness than David of Trebizond, Simon thought. But the Italian cardinals remained vociferous in their opposition to the alliance. The pope might be French, but he had to live with the Italians.

Cardinal Ugolini was the key to it. He, it seemed, was the leader of the Italian party in the College of Cardinals. He was the cardinal camerlengo, after all.

Someone must try to reach Ugolini. It could not be de Verceuil, either, with his arrogance and bad manners. Even if the man were to try to talk to Ugolini, which was unlikely, he would doubtless make an even greater enemy of him.

Friar Mathieu should do it. He could speak to Ugolini as one churchman to another. But then Simon shook his head. So many of these princes of the Church looked down on the mendicant friars.

Seize any opportunity.

Simon rode up the hillside, debating with himself. Just before the road passed between two rounded, green-covered peaks, it widened so that carters could pass each other. Simon swung his leg over the saddle and stepped down from his horse to enjoy the view. Against the hillside, under a peaked roof, a statue of Saint Sebastian writhed, his body pierced by arrows. The agony depicted on the saint's face made the countryside look all the more serene.

Oh, patron saint of archers, let no more harm come to innocent people from my crossbowmen.

Simon turned to look at Orvieto. It was like a city from some tale of faeries, a fantastic island on its huge rock. What was it the Italians called that gray-yellow stone? Tufa. Most of the churches and palaces and houses of Orvieto were also built of tufa. Beautiful.

The clatter of hooves interrupted his thoughts. He looked up to see four horsemen approaching from the north, followed by two heavily laden baggage mules.

Simon's mood changed at once from contemplation to tense alertness. His hands moved to check the position of his sword and dagger, making sure he could draw them quickly. You had to be careful of strangers in a strange country. As the men rode closer he saw that they also had short swords and daggers hanging at their[175] sides. Closer still, and he saw long swords slung over their backs, and crossbows hanging from their saddles.

Annoyed with himself for feeling afraid, he yet followed the dictate of prudence and mounted his own horse. He kept his hand near, but not on, the jeweled hilt of his scimitar as the men rode closer. Highwaymen would be willing to kill him just for that precious sword.

The man in the lead wore a soft velvet cap that draped down one side of his head. Under it, Simon saw, was curly black hair shot through with white. The stranger's grizzled mustache was so thick as to hide his mouth. But, courteously enough, he touched his hand to his cap where his visor would be if he were wearing a helmet.

"Buon giorno, Signore," he said in a deep but neutral voice.

Simon returned his salutation and the muttered greetings of the others, thinking he really should ask who they were, where bound, and on what business. In France, especially in his own domains, he would not have hesitated. But then, in France he rarely traveled alone. These men seemed not bent on troubling him, and it seemed wiser not to trouble them.

The other three men in the party looked younger than the leader, and there was insolence, almost a challenge in their dark eyes as they looked him over and rode on. It took an effort of will on Simon's part not to move his hand closer to his sword. But he sat stock-still until they were past and on their way down into the valley.

What business would bravos like that have in Orvieto? Perhaps they had come to join the Monaldeschi or the Filippeschi in their feuding.

Simon felt beleaguered at the thought of more bravos coming into town. Orvieto was already full of armed men serving the local families, as well as others in the retinues of the churchmen who had come here with the pope. Uneasiness made his spine tingle. Anything that added to disorder in Orvieto made it a more dangerous place for the Tartar ambassadors.

We must get this question of the alliance settled quickly.

Someone should speak to Cardinal Ugolini and find out if anything would persuade him to withdraw his objections. Simon wondered why de Verceuil had not already attempted it.

I could meet with Ugolini. He knows who I am. They all do, since the pope greeted me publicly. All I have to do is send Thierry around with a note asking for an audience.[176]

At once he began trying to persuade himself to forget the idea. How could he talk a cardinal into changing his mind about such a great matter? Ridiculous! What could he possibly do or say? And what if this cardinal were one who knew of the shame of the house of Gobignon?

Seize any opportunity.

Cardinal Ugolini shrugged with his bushy gray eyebrows as well as with his shoulders. "The question had been thoroughly discussed, Count. Now it is up to His Holiness. I am delighted to meet you, but what have you and I to say to each other?"

The solar, the large-windowed room on the third floor of the cardinal's palace, was bright with light that streamed in through white glass. The floor was covered with a thick red and black rug, the walls decorated with frescoes of angels and saints lavishly bedecked with gold leaf. Simon's eye kept returning to a voluptuous Eve, no part of her nude body hidden by the leaves or branches artists usually deployed for modesty's sake. She was handing a golden fruit—it might have been an orange or a lemon rather than an apple—to a muscular and also fully displayed Adam. Simon found them disturbingly sensual though they dealt with a religious subject, and he was surprised that a cardinal should have such pictures on his walls.

Ugolini's small, elaborately carved oak table, set beside a window, was polished and quite bare. There were no books or parchments anywhere in the large room. Simon suspected that the cardinal used this room to receive visitors but did little work in it. A five-pointed star was carved in the back of the cardinal's chair above his head. Simon sat in a small, armless chair made somewhat comfortable by the cushion on its seat.

"I have come in the hope of presenting to you our French point of view on this proposed alliance," said Simon. That sounded impressive enough.

"And do you speak for France, young man?"

"Not officially, Your Eminence," said Simon, flustered. "I mean only that I am French, and that both King Louis and his brother Count Charles d'Anjou have deigned to share their views with me."

Ugolini leaned forward. His expression was earnest enough, but there was a twinkle in his eye that gave Simon the uneasy feeling that the cardinal was laughing at him.[177]

"I am eager to hear what you have learned from the king and his brother."

"Quite simply," Simon said, "they look on the advent of the Tartars as a golden opportunity—one might say a God-given opportunity—to do away with the threat of the Saracens once and for all."

Ugolini nodded thoughtfully. "So it is not just a question of rescuing the holy places."

Am I giving away something I should not? Simon asked himself, suddenly panic-stricken. It was Count Charles, he now recalled, who had said that the alliance might make possible the complete destruction of Islam.

I am in this over my head.

But he had to go on.

"The Saracens believe they are called upon to spread their religion by the sword. They will continue to make war on us unless we conquer them."

Ugolini lifted a finger like a master admonishing a poorly prepared student. "The prophet Muhammad calls upon his followers to defend their faith with the sword, but he explicitly states that conversions made at sword's point are worthless and commands that Christians and Jews who remain devoted to their own worship be left in peace." He sat back and gazed as happily at Simon as at some well-fed mouse who had the whole granary to himself.

"I cannot dispute you, Your Eminence. Truly, I am quite ignorant of the Mohammedan faith." Why study false religions?—that had been the attitude of his teachers.

Ugolini nodded, his side whiskers quivering. "You and most of Europe."

"But Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth—those precious places we hear about in the Gospel," Simon argued. "We cannot leave them in the hands of Christ's enemies."

The cardinal shook his head.