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

now you have won a victory for a crusade and saved the life of a king."

Yes, but how different those crusades, and how different those kings.

He kept reminding himself that Manfred was an enemy of the pope and Daoud an enemy of Christendom, but the thought haunted him that through him great men and a noble kingdom had fallen. Again and again he tried to push out of his mind the idea that he had been wrong to come here and fight on the side of Anjou. But he knew it would remain with him, troubling him, for the rest of his life.

"If you want to show gratitude to me, Sire, the one favor I ask is that you not press me to stay."

Charles fumbled in a heavy purse at his belt and drew out a long silver chain. He held it out to Simon.

"Here. I want you to have this, at least."[348]

Simon bowed gravely and held out his hand. Attached to the chain was a five-pointed star with a large, round ruby in its center.

"Beautiful. Thank you very much, Sire."

"It was Manfred's. He prized it highly, I am told. Called it his 'star of destiny.' You earned it, I think, by giving me victory yesterday. I hope it brings you a better destiny than it did him."

Uneasily, feeling that the star was property stolen from a dead man, Simon took it. He unbuckled the purse at his belt to drop it in.

"Put it on," Charles urged.

Reluctantly, Simon hung the star around his neck.

"I will treasure it," he said tonelessly.

"It is little enough. If you will only consider staying with me, you will share in spoils that will make that look like a trinket. City by city I am going to take over not just this kingdom but northern Italy too. I will unite all of Italy. The Papacy will be solidly under French control. And then Constantinople. I bought the title of Emperor of Constantinople from Baldwin II when he fled to Paris after Michael Paleologos deposed him."

The name of Michael Paleologos was like a blow to Simon's stomach. Probably it was no more than a name to Charles, but Simon could hear Sophia saying she had been that same Michael's concubine for a time. He suffered again as he had last night when he stood with her on the balcony of that house and she told him at last the truth about herself. He had felt then as if he were drowning in a lake of fire. And added to his own anguish had been the realization that her pain, the pain of the woman he had loved and still loved, had been worse than the worst of what he felt.

Charles was still going on about his accursed ambitions.

"I mean to make that title a reality. Not since Rome will so many lands around the Middle Sea have been united in one—empire."

The vision moved Simon, but not as Charles evidently hoped. It sickened him, and he felt himself in the presence of a monster. Had Charles forgotten already the heaps of corpses strewn on this battlefield at dawn, that only now were being hauled away by the wagonload?

Simon remembered the long list of the Gobignon dead that Thierry had handed him this morning on his return to camp. He thought of the horribly wounded knights and men he had visited, men who, if God was kind to them, would be dead in a day or two. His eyes still burned from all the weeping he had done this barely begun day.

And this man, who had made the rescue of the Holy Land, the[349] defeat of Islam, and the alliance of Christians and Tartars seem all-important to him, now spoke of sacrificing thousands and thousands more lives entrusted to him so that he could realize his dream of being another Caesar.

God grant that he does not get what he wants.

The wind from the north blew steadily down the length of the valley. The pile of rocks over Manfred's body had grown so high the men now had to throw their stones to reach the top.

"What of our plans to liberate the Holy Land, Sire? What about the alliance of Tartars and Christians? That is what I gave the last three years of my life to. Surely that is not dead because John and Philip had the ill luck to get killed on this battlefield."

Charles pulled his purple cloak tighter around him against the wind. "The timing is wrong for an attempt to retake the Holy Land. I have no intention of taking part in a crusade against the Egyptians, with or without the Tartars."

There it was. Charles had confirmed what Simon suspected about him. He felt indignation boiling within him, but he tried not to let it sound in his voice.

"Sire, why did you let the Tartars go into the battle yesterday and lose their lives?"

Charles's eyes narrowed. "I know what grief you must feel, having guarded them so carefully for so long. But they insisted. They had fought against Christians. So now they wanted to see how a battle looks from our side. They knew the risks. They had been warriors all their lives. They were my guests, and I had to let them do what they wanted."

Simon looked out at the valley. The line of men carrying rocks to Manfred's cairn stretched far into the distance, disappearing finally beyond the crests of rolling fields. The line still looked as long as ever. It wound past a long, narrow mound of freshly turned brown earth—the mass grave dug at dawn by prisoners for the dead of Manfred's army. The man called Daoud—Simon still thought of him as David—who for more than two years had fought Simon relentlessly, lay somewhere under that mound of earth. The man Sophia had loved.

Near at hand the soldiers who had added their rocks to the pile were dismantling Manfred's camp. Tents collapsed in flurries of colored cloth.

All these fighting men. And King Louis could have added twice as many to these. What could they not have accomplished if they had invaded Palestine at the same time a Tartar army struck at the Saracens from the east?[350]

He decided to probe further. "Now there can be no planning for a crusade—until the next ambassadors come from Tartary. Is that your wish?"

Charles smiled. "Oh, eventually we will want to make war on the Saracens. After Italy is united, after the Byzantine Empire is ours once more. Toward that day, we want to maintain the bonds of friendship with the Tartars. If they send us more ambassadors, we will treat them royally and shower them with fair words."

"And send them home with nothing," Simon added.

"For now," Charles agreed. "For now, instead of planning war with Egypt, I believe it is more in my interest to do as the Hohenstaufens did when they ruled Sicily—cultivate friendly relations with the Sultan of Cairo."

Simon was silent for a moment, amazed that Anjou could be so open about his lack of principle. He felt his face grow hot and his voice quiver as his anger forced its way to the surface.

"Everything you have done and said has been for one purpose only, to make yourself king of Sicily. I guessed as much, and now I know. And that is why I do not want a dukedom in your kingdom. Because I do not want to be used by you anymore."

Charles drew himself up and fixed Simon with an angry stare. "Curb your tongue, Messire! You may be the Count de Gobignon, but you owe me the respect due a king."

"You are not my king, thank God," Simon retorted. "My king, your brother, King Louis, taught me that each and every man and woman on earth is precious to God. That a king's duty is to care for his people, not use them as if they were cattle."

"A good philosophy for the next world," said Charles scornfully.

"It is the philosophy by which your brother rules in this world," said Simon fiercely. "And that is why everyone loves him. Not just his own French subjects, but all Christians."

Charles's olive skin darkened to a purple shade. "Consider this, Messire—when Louis last went to war he led a whole army to destruction in Egypt. When I go to war, I lead my army to victory and the spoils of a fair and prosperous kingdom. Louis was born a king. I made myself a king. Now. Which of us is the better ruler? Answer me that."

Simon stared at Charles's engorged face and felt dizzy with triumph. Not only had he lost all fear of Charles d'Anjou, but he had broken through Charles's mask of regal authority and had provoked him to reveal his naked envy of his brother.

He answered quietly, "You might conquer this whole world, and[351] my sovereign seigneur, King Louis, would still be a better king than you are. And a better man."

Charles stared at Simon, his eyes huge and thick veins standing out in his temples. Simon stared back, keeping himself outwardly calm, but inwardly exulting in his new freedom.

There is nothing I need prove to this man or to anyone else. I am myself.

The last bond of loyalty between himself and Charles d'Anjou was broken.

The silence stretched on, until it seemed to Simon that this was the longest moment of his life.

Charles blinked and let out several long breaths. "Ah, well. As God is my witness, you and my brother are two of a kind. You deserve each other." He shook his arms, which he had been holding rigid at his sides, and reached up and tapped the crown down more firmly on his head.

He lumps me with King Louis. He does not know the great honor he does me.

Charles said, "I hope, for the sake of what we have been to each other, that you will be discreet about what I have said to you. If you visit my brother when you go back to France, you must not cause ill will between him and me."

"I doubt that even if I wished to I could cause bad feeling between you," Simon said. "He has known you all your life, and if he has not broken with you by now, it must be because he loves you too much."

He turned abruptly and left Charles standing alone on his little hill.

The star swung at his neck, and he thought of going back and throwing it at Charles's feet. But, no, he decided he would keep it, and honor Manfred's memory.

The grief of these two days still darkened his world, but there was one small brightness. He might not have accomplished anything to liberate the Holy Land, but he had freed himself from Charles d'Anjou.

It hurt Simon to see Sophia's face. Her eyelids were red and puffed. Her cheeks were hollow and her lips pale. She was still beautiful, but it was a sorrowful beauty, like that of a grieving Madonna.

"I see you are wearing Manfred's star," Sophia said.

"Forgive me." He felt a flash of hatred for himself. How stupid of him! She must think he was wearing it like a captured trophy.[352]

He said, "Charles gave it to me. I swear to you, I mean no disrespect to Manfred. Just the opposite. It must hurt you to see it. How thoughtless of me! Anjou insisted on my putting it around my neck just now. I am only going to keep it safe in memory of Manfred, not wear it. Let me take it off."

You are babbling, he told himself. Be still.

"No," she said, touching his hand lightly, briefly. "No one has a better right to wear it than you."

Simon said, "I want you to know this—Daoud succeeded."

"What do you mean—succeeded how?"

They stood just outside the walls of Benevento by the side of the road leading to the south. A group of Charles's men-at-arms, past whom Simon had just escorted Sophia and her friends, lounged before the gate.

"Last night I suspected it, but this morning I talked to Anjou, and now I am certain. There will never be an alliance of Christians and Tartars. Anjou never wanted it, and he will do everything in his power to prevent it. It would interfere with his own ambitions."

Her amber eyes looked into his, and he felt the pain she was holding rigidly at bay within herself.

Oh, God, those eyes! How he had dreamed of spending the rest of his life in their gaze. Now, after today, he would never look into them again.

She said, "Does it disappoint you that there will be no alliance?"

"Once it would have. After all, I gave everything I had to trying to make the alliance succeed. But I did that for King Louis and for my own honor more than because