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

the whole world belongs to them remain long at peace with anyone?" asked Daoud. He watched the woman, Ana. If she were to dull the edge of what he said in translating it, his effort would fail. But she seemed unmoved by what he said and repeated it quickly in the Tartar tongue.

But now the two Tartars were glaring at him, Philip in open fury, John with a cold hostility as if Daoud were an insect that needed to be stepped on.

How much farther could he press them, he wondered as he took another sip of wine and stared back.

XXII

Sophia felt cooler here, in the atrium of the Palazzo Monaldeschi, than she had in the sala maggiore. A breeze blew through the archway that led to the rear courtyard of the palace, but it did not blow hard enough to keep the mosquitoes away. Nor did the essence of lemon in the wax candles in lanterns that lit the[255] atrium repel the whining little pests, though it scented the air pleasantly, mingling with the sachet of dried orange cuttings she wore under her gown, between her breasts.

To protect herself from the insects, Sophia wrapped her shawl around her bare shoulders and drew her gauze veil over her face. She thought it made her look more mysteriously attractive as well. Perhaps that was the real reason Muslim women were willing to wear veils. She wondered whether Daoud had a lover or a wife back in Cairo.

Probably half a dozen of each.

She glanced over at the young French count, walking solemnly beside her with his hands clasped behind his back. The mosquitoes did not seem to bother him, or at least he did not slap at them. Well, he was a tall, thin man with sharp features, dark hair, and pale skin. She imagined the blood of such a man might taste sour and not draw mosquitoes. He was good to look at, surely, but there was a bitterness about him. She saw at once that he was not a happy man.

"Perhaps I should not walk alone with you like this, Madonna," he said. Actually, his Italian was not difficult for her to understand; she had criticized it only to throw him off balance when she first met him. Probably her French was no better than his Italian, but he had been too gallant to say so.

"Do you fear for your virtue, Your Signory?" she asked lightly.

He smiled, and even in the dim lantern light his face took on a sweetness that was quite at odds with his previous solemn appearance. "My virtue, such as it is, is yours to dispose, Madonna." She felt warmed within by his words and the beauty of his smile.

They paused by a square pool in the center of the atrium. He bent and dipped his cupped hands, then held them out to her filled with water.

"The contessa has told me that the pool is fed by an underground spring," he said. "The water is the purest I have ever tasted. Try it."

"Do the Monaldeschi keep fish in it?" She hesitated, thinking of Cardinal Ugolini's vivarium.

"No. This is their drinking water. Taste it." She lifted her veil and lowered her mouth into his hands. The water was pure and sweet, just as he had said. As a lover, she thought, Simon would be like this water—sweet, not bitter.[256]

The water was gone and her lips touched his palm. Deliberately she paused a moment before drawing back.

He moved toward her, holding out both hands, but she turned as if she had not noticed and took a step away from him on the gravel, dropping the gauze veil before her face.

"You have not explained to me why you think you should not be walking alone with me, Your Signory."

"Ah—well—" He had to gather his thoughts, she saw. Such a boy. She'd had a middle-aged emperor and a splendid young king as lovers. She now felt herself in love with a strange Saracen warrior, a Mameluke, who was subtle, ruthless, kindly, mysterious, daring—so many things, it dizzied her to think about him.

But Simon's simplicity brought back memories of Alexis, the boy she had loved when she herself was as innocent as Simon now appeared to be.

Simon said, "Because your uncle leads the faction here in Orvieto that opposes the Tartars. And because the chief witness against them has been the merchant David, who dwells, as you do, in the cardinal's house."

He hates David. She heard it in his voice.

"What has that to do with you and me, Simon?" This was the right moment, she thought, to call him by his name. "I care nothing for affairs of state. In Siracusa we have better things to do with our time than worry about alliances and wars."

"Everyone will be affected by what happens here concerning the Tartars," he said. "Even the people of Siracusa."

She tried to look impressed. "If you think it would be so good for Christians and Tartars to fight together against the Saracens, I cannot imagine why my uncle is against it."

"I do not understand that either," said Simon. "Or why he brought this man David to Orvieto to cause so much trouble."

She shrugged. "I hardly ever see the man from Trebizond. My uncle's mansion is so big, people can come and go without ever meeting." She hoped the suggestion would take root. It was vital for him to think there was no connection between David and herself.

"This is a God-given opportunity for us to rescue the Holy Land," he said.

"Perhaps I can help you," she said.

"Would you?" His face brightened.

"I could try to find out why my uncle opposes your cause. If you[257] will tell me why we Christians should ally ourselves with the Tartars, I will repeat your reasons to him. I will not say they came from you. Hearing the arguments in private, coming from a loved niece, he might open his mind to them."

Simon's eyes opened wide in amazement. "You would do all that? But why are you so willing to help me, Madonna, when your uncle is so opposed to my cause?"

"Because I would like"—she hesitated just for a breath, then put her hand on his arm—"I would like to see more of you."

She was on dangerous ground. The tradition of courtly love, in which he had doubtless been reared, called for the woman to be aloof and for the man to beg for meetings. But Daoud had told her she did not have the time to allow this inexperienced young man to proceed at his own pace.

He appeared overwhelmed with happiness. Her answer had just the effect she had hoped for.

"But you must help me," she said with the satisfied feeling that she was now closing the trap. "You must teach me what to say to my uncle. As I said, it would be easy for you to come to me without anyone knowing. Will you visit me when I send for you?"

"Oh, Madonna! Command me." His eyes were huge now, and his smile was like a full moon shining into the atrium.

"I command you to come over here with me," she said.

She took him by the hand, and, as a light rain began to fall, led him into a shadowy corner of the open gallery that surrounded the garden. He pressed her back against a column. She lifted her veil and let him kiss her fiercely as the rain pattered down on the lemon trees.

She became entirely Sophia Orfali and tasted his kisses hungrily, dizzy with joy at having won the love of a splendid young nobleman.

"Of course I fought in Russia and Poland," Ana said, speaking for John Chagan, while the old Tartar threw out his arms in a sweeping gesture. "Everyone went."

Daoud smiled and nodded, leaning back in the chair someone had brought for him, his right leg crossed over the left. He tried to look relaxed, though his heart was beating fast. He felt like a man climbing a cliff, whose slightest misstep might bring a disastrous fall.

He was feeling the effects of the al-koahl—a hissing sound in his[258] ears, a numbness in his face, a difficulty focusing his eyes, an urge, difficult to suppress, to splash the contents of his wine cup in John's ugly face. But his mind was untouched, he knew, and that meant he was under better control than these two savages whom he had drawn into telling stories of their wars.

"Was that your first campaign?" he asked.

John made a lengthy speech in answer to Daoud's question, striking his chest many times and reaching for more wine. Finally Ana translated. She seemed made of iron, this Bulgarian woman. She did not drink, she did not get tired, she did not even sit down, and she did not seem to care what anyone said.

John assured David that as a young man he had participated in the destruction of the Khwarezmian empire. Khwarezmia, Daoud remembered, a Turkish nation, was the first Muslim land to fall to the Tartars.

He glanced around and saw that Ugolini and a number of other cardinals, both French and Italian, had gathered to listen. The contessa was there, too. And even as Daoud looked, the circle parted for Pope Urban. Two servants hurried over, carrying a chair for him, and he sat down heavily.

The Tartars had turned Khwarezmia into a desert, but this audience would not care overmuch about that. Daoud wondered if he could turn the conversation back to what they had done in Christian lands.

"What about Moscow?" he said. His voice sounded to him as if his ears were stuffed with cotton. He worried that John might realize that he was being led to talk about what he had done against Christians.

"Moscow?" said John. "That was much later." Strange, how John's voice seemed to be coming from Ana's lips. "I was in command of my own tuman there, ten thousand men, under our great commander Subotai Baghadur. Ah, yes, we killed off all the people of Moscow."

Daoud felt like leaping from his chair. Just what he had hoped to hear. He made himself slump down still more and look sleepier.

"I never could understand how it is possible to kill off the population of a whole city," he said, affecting a tone of cool curiosity. "It must take days and be very tiring."

Philip Uzbek laughed when this was translated. Clearly he thought it a foolish remark. His round, flat face reminded Daoud[259] of Kassar, and with the thought a red mist of rage passed before Daoud's eyes.

John responded to Daoud's remark. "Not at all tiring. We had five tumans at Moscow. There were about fifty thousand people living in the city, and many had died in the siege. Subotai gave the honor of the killing to the most valorous tuman, which happened to be mine. We just divided them up. Each of us took about five of them. You can kill five people in no time. It is not like fighting. Some we shot with arrows. Others we cut their heads off. The women are especially easy. You just pull their hair to stretch their necks so the sword will go through easier, and chop!" Ana, imperturbable even now, repeated the slicing gesture John made with his hand.

"The children run away sometimes, and you have to chase them," John chuckled. "It is best to use arrows on them. But the adults are so terrified, they just stand there."

Daoud looked again at the circle around them. Several people looked a bit sick. The mouth of the elderly contessa hung open, revealing the absence of two or three lower front teeth. Pope Urban leaned forward in his chair, his face expressionless.

Driven by his growing hatred for the Tartars, he pressed them to reveal more of themselves. He should be pleased, he thought, at this much success, but he wanted to destroy them utterly.

"You do not mind killing children?" he asked.

John seemed puzzled by the question. "What else could we do with them? With their parents dead they would only starve to death. Or if they lived, they would grow up hating us, and we would have to fight them."

You could make slaves of them, said a voice inside Daoud, and the red mist swelled into a cloud of fury billowing up inside him. He had to sit motionless, his fist clenched on the stem of his silver goblet, waiting for the feeling to pass. Thank God for Saadi's teaching. It was painful to look directly with the inner eye at the disorientation of his senses and at the anger surging through his body, but it saved him from any fatal mistake.

Philip said, "At Baghdad I found a whole house full of babies, maybe thirty or forty. I slit all of their throats. Their mothers were dead already. I