The Saracen: The Holy War by Robert Shea (best ebook reader ubuntu TXT) 📗

joy to see you!"

"Oh, Sophia! Sophia!"

Rachel was crying, but not for joy. She was sobbing heartbrokenly. What had happened to her?

"How do you come to be with Count Simon?" Sophia asked, hoping that answering would calm Rachel.

But Rachel went on weeping into Sophia's shoulder, and Friar Mathieu spoke for her. "Rachel and I fell in with Count Simon, and we thought it safest to stay with him. And he chose to come here."[327]

"It's all right now," Sophia said, patting Rachel's back as she held her in her arms. "Everything will be all right."

"No, Sophia, no." Rachel, it seemed, could not stop crying. Bewildered, Sophia looked up. Friar Mathieu and Simon were standing side by side in the center of the room. Sordello, his face working with barely controlled fury, had moved to a far corner. His sword still lay on the bed, Sophia noticed, but his hand was on the hilt of his dagger.

Simon and the Franciscan were looking, not at Rachel, but at Sophia.

"David told you I was here," Sophia said. "He must have."

In an instant, she understood why Daoud had told Simon where to find her. And why Rachel kept weeping and weeping.

"Is he dead?" she asked.

They answered her with silence.

A wave of dizziness came over her. She reeled, and Rachel was holding her up. Friar Mathieu took her arm, and they lowered her into the armchair. She knocked the candle to the floor, putting it out. Now the only light in the room was the red glow of the fire.

She felt empty inside.

I am mortally wounded, she thought. I feel now only a shock, a numbness. The pain will come.

The only reason Daoud would tell Simon where to find her had to be that he was dying and wanted Simon to protect her. Daoud truly must be dead.

Simon's anguished look, as if he were begging for something, confirmed it. But to be sure, she had to hear it.

"Has David been killed?"

Simon nodded slowly, his eyes huge with pain. "I was with him when he died. I even know now that he is not David but—Daoud." He hesitated, pronouncing the unfamiliar name.

I was with him when he died.

Daoud!

She wanted to scream, but she hurt so much inside that she could not even scream. She could not make a sound.

Daoud was gone. She had seen him, she had spoken to him, she had loved him for the last time.

But she had to see him again. Her cold hand fumbled at her neck, pulled the locket up from her bosom by its silver chain. She turned the screw that opened it and stared at the spirals and squares.

Nothing happened. The pattern, to her eyes a jumble of shapes representing nothing, remained inert.

Even his likeness was gone.[328]

How had he died? She looked up at Simon to ask him.

And then she did scream.

Sordello crouched in the semidark behind Simon, his two-edged dagger, reflecting red firelight, poised horizontally to slash Simon's unprotected throat. His eyes glittered. His mouth shaped a slack-lipped smile, as if he were drunk, baring his gleaming, broken teeth.

Sordello seemed not even to notice her scream. Without a sound, unseen by the other three, who were all staring at Sophia, he raised his left arm to seize Simon and his right hand to strike with the dagger.

Sophia's hand dove into the bag at her waist. The loose dart could scratch her, and a scratch might be enough to kill her, but that did not matter. Her fingers found the dart. She wrapped her fist around it and flung herself out of the chair, straight at Simon.

Simon tried to fend her off, but she darted under his hands, twisted around him, and drove the dart into Sordello's throat. Blood spurted over her hand.

Sordello seemed neither to see her nor to feel the dart. His eyes stayed fixed on Simon's neck. He slashed at Simon. But Sophia's lunge had pushed the two men apart. Sordello's blade scratched Simon's neck just under his right ear. Then it fell from the bravo's fingers.

Sordello, the dart still hanging from his throat, staggered backward, his knees buckling. His body folded, and he lay sideways on the floor.

The four living people in the room were as still as the dead one. Then Simon touched his fingertips to his neck and winced. Sophia saw a rivulet of blood running down into his mail collar.

Friar Mathieu tore away a piece of the bedsheet and dabbed Simon's wound with it. He took Simon's hand as if he were a puppet and pressed his fingers against the rag to hold it in place. Then he knelt over Sordello's body and whispered in Latin.

Whimpering, Sophia stumbled back to the armchair where she had been sitting. A sob forced itself up from her chest into her throat. She felt Rachel's gentle hands helping her to sit down. Another sob came up, shaking her body. Another followed it, and another. She lost touch with everything around her for a time, buried in a black pit where neither sight nor sound nor even thought could penetrate. She was lost in wordless, mindless grief.

Then, gradually, she began to hear murmurings, voices.

Friar Mathieu said, "She saved your life."

Simon said, "I know. David—Daoud—told me not to take Sordello[329] with me if I went looking for Sophia. As if he knew this might happen. How could that be?"

Rachel was sitting on the arm of the chair, gently stroking Sophia's shoulder.

Friar Mathieu said, "Why would Sordello try to kill you? Because he was about to rape Sophia when you interrupted? Or because he was afraid you would punish him for killing—Daoud?"

Amazement jolted Sophia's body. She opened her eyes and stared at Friar Mathieu.

"Sordello killed Daoud?"

Simon answered her. "I will tell you how he died. I must talk to you. I have waited more than a year, you know, to see you again."

Sobs still shook her, but she nodded and wiped her face with the sleeve of her gown. He reached down. She took his arm, and he helped her up. She saw that he had a bloodstained strip of linen tied around his neck.

"The balcony," she said.

"Good."

As she went to her chest to get her cloak, Sophia looked at the icon of the saint of the pillar and thought how much, even though it had Simon's name, the expression looked like Daoud's.

Simon held the door to the balcony for her. The night was cold and moonless. The bitter smell of burning floated on the freezing air. The shouts of frenzied soldiers and the agonized screams of men and women seemed to come from everywhere. Fires blazed in all parts of the town, their glow and smoke turning the night sky a cloudy reddish-gray. On the plain to the north, campfires twinkled. Somewhere out there Daoud lay dead.

She looked up at Simon. Darkness hid his face. The ruddy glow of burning Benevento haloed his head. In a quiet, even voice he told Sophia how he came upon Daoud fighting side by side with Manfred, and how he fought with Daoud after Manfred was killed. How he lay helpless with Daoud's sword pointed at his face.

"He did not move for a long time," Simon said. "It was growing dark, but I saw the look on his face. A gentle look. He did not want to kill me. I am sure of it."

And then without any warning had come the treacherous crossbow bolt out of the circle around them, and Daoud had fallen.

"It was Sordello. He could not understand my rage at him. He kept protesting that he had saved my life. He had not."

Sophia thought of Sordello's attempt to seduce her. She clutched the wooden railing, choking bile rising in her throat.[330]

"I am glad I killed him," she whispered. "I have never killed anyone before tonight. That I killed him was a gift from God."

Simon did not answer at once.

Then he said, "Tonight, before Daoud died, he told me that you were innocently drawn into his conspiracy against the alliance. He said he took advantage of my love for you, and that you and he were never close. But now that you've heard he is dead, you are like a woman who has lost a husband or a lover."

He stopped. He needed to say no more. She knew what he was asking.

The enormous aching void inside her made it almost impossible to think. Daoud, even as he lay dying, had tried to protect her. Simon might have suspicions, but about who she was or what she had done, he knew nothing. Manfred was dead. Tilia, Ugolini and Lorenzo—wherever they might be now—would say nothing.

She could, if she chose, become the person Simon thought she was—the person who had given herself to Simon in love at the lake outside Perugia. She need only seize the chance Daoud had given her.

In all Italy there was no place for her now. Once again she belonged nowhere and to no one. And she could be a wife to this good young man. She could be the Countess de Gobignon, with a station in life, with power to accomplish things, to change the world.

"You want to know what Daoud meant to me," she said. "Did you tell him what I meant to you?" She was amazed at how level her voice sounded.

"I think he knew," Simon spoke just above a whisper. "I did not feel I had to tell him anything."

Then Daoud had died not knowing that she and Simon had for a moment been lovers. Did it matter? If Daoud had known, perhaps he would have killed Simon instead of just standing over him with his sword.

His not knowing had not hurt Daoud. But it was hurting her.

There was a part of myself I withheld from him. And that was my loss, because much as he loved me, he did not know me fully.

But if she regretted not telling Daoud the truth about that single moment, how could she ever bear to hide from Simon the truth about her whole life?

Could she pretend, forevermore, to be Sophia Orfali, the naive Sicilian girl, the cardinal's niece, with whom Simon had fallen in love? Could she pour all of herself into a mask? Could she live with Simon, enjoying the love and the wealth and power he offered her, knowing that it was all founded on a lie?[331]

No, never. Impossible.

The pain of Daoud's death was nearly unbearable, but it was her pain, true pain. Ever since that night of death in Constantinople—a night much like this—she had not felt at home in the world. Now she saw her place. All she owned in the world was the person she really was, and what she really had done. If she deceived Simon, she would have to deny her very existence.

And I would have to deny the greatest happiness I have ever known, my love for Daoud.

If she lied to Simon, it would be as if Daoud had never been. It would be like killing him a second time. Her heart, screaming even now with her longing for Daoud, would scream forever in silence. Buried alive.

Simon must already suspect the truth. He might try to believe whatever she told him about herself. Still, some awareness of his self-deception would remain with him, even if he refused to think about it. It would fester inside him, slowly poisoning him.

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could see the suffering in Simon's long, narrow face as he waited for her answer. Starlight twinkled on the jeweled handle of the sword at his belt. What she told him might make him hate her so much that he would kill her.

I have never been more willing to die.

"Simon, I promised you that when I saw you again I would tell you why I could not marry you. I hoped I never would have to tell you."

He said, "I had not wanted to fight in this war of Charles against Manfred, or to bring the men of Gobignon with me. When I found that you had fled to Manfred's kingdom, I changed my mind."

Her pain had been like a pile of rocks heaped upon her, and what he said was the final boulder crushing her. Her ribs seemed to splinter; her lungs labored for breath.

So I must bear the guilt for Simon's coming to the war. How many men died today because of me?

She could hardly feel more sorrow, but the night around her seemed to grow blacker. Perhaps it would be best if he did kill her. She would tell him everything straight out, without trying to protect herself from his anger.

"My name is Sophia Karaiannides. I worked as a spy in Constantinople for Michael Paleologos and helped him overthrow the Frankish usurper. I was Michael's concubine