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

struggling bodies formed a wall that took all his strength to break through. Each man was so intent upon his own desperate need to reach the sultan that none of them seemed to feel Daoud forcing his way past them.

Qutuz saw him coming. The dark brown eyes met Daoud's, questioning, frowning. A Mameluke emir of Daoud's rank did not usually join a crowd of petitioners. The sultan's arms and hands were full of scrolls. His chamberlain had long since been carried away from him in the crush.

"Oh, Sultan, grant my prayer!" Daoud shouted in a loud voice.

For your death.

Qutuz's jaw clenched, and his eyes widened in the beginning of fear as Daoud bore down on him.

Daoud had reached the center of the storm. Color and movement whirled about him. Shouts deafened him. He forced his mind to blot out the chaos all around and to focus totally on Qutuz. He made himself as oblivious to the shrieking men around him as they were to him.

He threw his arms around the sultan, crushing the satin of his kaftan and his armload of scrolls against his body.

When Daoud's arms came together behind Qutuz's back, his right hand reached into his left sleeve and pulled the dagger from its sheath.

Qutuz's hands pushed against Daoud's chest. So tight was Daoud's embrace that he felt the sultan take a deep breath, to cry for help. They were locked together like lovers.

Daoud stretched out his right arm, and then with all the strength in that arm drove the dagger into the sultan's back. He struck for the center of the back, between two ribs, so that the point would reach and stop Qutuz's heart.

His thrust went true. The strong, lean body jerked violently, then went limp in his arms. Qutuz was a weight against him, sliding downward. Daoud was sure he was already dead, because he did not move or cry out.[409]

Triumph blazed up within him. He had done it. He had killed the sultan.

Daoud let go of the dagger, hilt-deep in Qutuz's back. He stepped backward quickly, pressing himself into the crowd around them. His heartbeat was thundering in his ears and his knees were quivering.

Qutuz toppled toward him as he moved back.

"The sultan falls!" a man next to him screamed.

Hands reached out to catch Qutuz as he fell. Cries of "The sultan has fainted!" "God help us!" "The sultan is hurt!" went up all around Daoud.

He continued to back away through the crowd. If attacked, he had decided, he would draw his saif and fight. If he must die, he desperately wanted to die fighting, not on the headsman's block.

He had not truly believed he could strike Qutuz down without being seen, but no one was yet pointing at him.

"Blood!" someone shrieked. "A dagger!" The shrieks and prayers were deafening.

All the men who had clustered around the fallen sultan backed away. Daoud was carried farther from the dead Qutuz by the crowd. Craning his neck over the heads around him, he could see the body lying sprawled face down on the green marble floor, a spreading bright red stain in the black and silver robes around the dagger's hilt.

The babble of voices was so confused that Daoud could no longer tell what anyone was saying. Mansur ibn Ziri, commander of the halkha, and Anis, master of the hunt, pushed their way through to Qutuz's body, while some men still clutching scrolls ran from the chamber. They must fear even being in the room where the sultan was murdered.

I have killed the sultan.

Though his whole body shook with reaction and his limbs felt weak, his heart was full of joy.

His hand on his sword hilt, Daoud surveyed the large chamber. The Mameluke emirs were looking, not at Qutuz's body, but at one another. And they kept glancing at Daoud.

They had seen Daoud throw his arms around Qutuz. They knew who had killed Qutuz. And they knew why he had done it.

Baibars still stood apart in a far corner. His good eye met Daoud's, but his face was a mask.

As the last of the local men fled the place of death, a silence fell[410] over the room. The Mamelukes were alone with the body of their sultan. The men of the halkha, the sultan they were sworn to protect now dead, looked at the emirs. The only voices now were the murmured words of Mansur and Anis as they bent over Qutuz's body.

With an effort Mansur pulled the dagger from Qutuz's back. Anis grunted when he saw the twisting blade.

Heart hammering, Daoud tensed himself. Would Mansur turn and accuse him? He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was behind him and took gliding steps backward until his shoulders were pressed against a pillar.

Mansur said in a voice that carried through the room, "The flame dagger. Our lord has been struck down by the Hashishiyya."

Daoud almost laughed aloud with relief. With an immense effort he held himself rigid, his fists clenched so tightly at his side they hurt. Mansur was telling everyone who knew what had happened what they were to tell everyone who did not know.

Would anyone contradict Mansur? No one did. Relief spread through him.

Carefully, almost delicately, Mansur laid the dagger on the floor beside Qutuz. He stood up, wiping his hands on his mantle.

With rapid strides the commander of the halkha crossed the chamber toward Baibars. To arrest him? What choice had Mansur made?

To bow deeply before Baibars. He made a graceful, sweeping gesture toward the vacant throne.

"My Lord, the power is yours."

Praise to God!

Baibars's single-eyed gaze paused for an instant, Daoud saw, as it fell upon each of the emirs. In the look he fixed upon each there was both question and challenge.

Some of the emirs bowed their turbaned heads slightly. Others, like Kalawun al-Elfi, simply looked back at him in silence, and that was assent enough.

Baibars raised his right hand toward the vaulted ceiling, the wide sleeve of his robe falling away from his powerful arm.

"With Your help, O God." He did not shout, but his deep voice carried through the room.

Slowly but with a terrible firmness he walked across the room. So quiet was the audience chamber that Daoud at the other end of the room could hear the scrape of Baibars's boots on the three[411] marble steps to the throne. Baibars turned and sat on the throne, resting his hands on its arms. He leaned back a little, and his eye seemed to rest on some spot above and beyond the heads of those who watched him.

Mansur ibn Ziri turned to an officer of the halkha. "Let runners be sent to El Kahira. Let them tell the people, 'Pray for God's mercy on El Malik al-Mudhaffar Qutuz. Pray for the long life of your Sultan Baibars.'"

Let me hail him first, thought Daoud. And if he wants to kill me for what I did, let it be now.

Trembling with exhilaration, he strode through the crowd and up the center of the room toward the throne. "Lord Sultan!" he said in a loud voice, "El Malik Dahir! Victorious King!"

He dropped to his knees and prostrated himself, striking his forehead on the hard, cold floor.

Hearing a knock at his chamber door, Daoud rolled up the slip of thin parchment and dropped it into the purse at his belt.

Sordello entered at his command, greeting and saluting him.

"I see you are one of us, Messer David."

"One of who?"

Sordello pointed to the writing desk where Daoud had been standing and the sheaf of quill pens. "One who had his letters. I write down all my songs."

Daoud had no wish to feel kinship with Sordello. The bravo had not bothered to clean the whiskers from his face for several days, and there was untidy-looking gray stubble, like fur, under his nose and on his cheeks and chin. A man should grow a beard, Daoud thought, or keep his cheeks smooth.

"What brings you to me?" Daoud asked curtly.

"The Count de Gobignon sent a message to me by way of Ana, the Bulgarian woman. Would you care to read it?"

De Gobignon's note read: "The lady Sophia, Cardinal Ugolini's niece, has represented herself to me as an honest woman who knows nothing of politics and takes sides neither for nor against the Tartar alliance. Find out if she is telling the truth. Report to me in three days' time."

Daoud felt pleased with himself. Turning Sordello into a spy for himself was yielding useful results. It was not surprising that the Frenchman was suspicious of Sophia. She was so close to the party opposing the alliance; how could he think otherwise? But now,[412] Daoud thought happily, they had the means to put his suspicions to rest.

Daoud handed the note back to Sordello, saying, "That is short and to the point, but he does not tell you how you are to learn whether Madonna Sophia is telling him the truth or not."

"I could tell him that I have sung at dinner for the cardinal's household," said Sordello. "I could report a conversation at table which shows Madonna Sophia to be the innocent he would like to think she is."

"You keep talking about your songs and your singing," Daoud said. "Answer me truly—are you any good at those things?"

Sordello shrugged. "I could claim to be one of the finest trovatores in all Italy, but if I did, you would rightfully ask why I have to make my living as a hired man-at-arms. So I will say only that I am good enough that I wish I could spend all my time making poetry and singing."

A worthy wish, Daoud thought. Hearing his careful self-estimate, Daoud's respect for the man increased a bit.

"Then you will sing at the cardinal's table. Your suggestion is a good one. I will also arrange for you to be with Madonna Sophia at other times as well, so that you can honestly claim to know something about her."

"Very good, Messer David." Sordello turned to go, then turned back again. "Messere?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think you might send me on another trip to paradise sometime soon?" The eager light in his eyes sickened Daoud.

"Do your work well, and I will see that you are properly rewarded."

Sordello left, and Daoud brooded over his shame at what he had done to the man—turned him into something less than human, less than animal, a kind of demon with a single appetite.

After a moment he forced himself to put that out of his mind. A fighter in jihad, holy war, must do many an ugly thing, but all was for the greater glory of God.

[413]

XXXIX

The hymn "O Salutaris Hostia," sung by over a thousand strong voices abetted by several thousand more uncertain ones, echoed from the hillsides. The entire clergy of Orvieto, from the pope down to the lowliest subdeacon, had come out of the city, and so had most of the lay population. But Daoud's attention was drawn, not by the great procession coming down the cliffside road, or by the crowd in the meadow around him, but by the astonishing change that had come over the landscape.

It was as if some devastating disease had struck all the growing things of the region, from the tallest trees to the very blades of grass. The leafless groves raised black, skeletal arms up to the bright blue sky, like men praying. The vineyards on the slopes were gray clumps of shrubbery. The meadow grass on which he stood was yellow and brittle; it broke to bits underfoot.

He had known, of course, that such changes came over the European landscape each winter. But to see such desolation with his own eyes was more amazing, even frightening, than he realized it would be. Soon the Christians would be celebrating the birth of Jesus the Messiah, whom they believed was God. Seeing death in the landscape all around him, Daoud found it easier to understand why these idolators might feel driven to worship a God who rose from the dead.

He hoped it would help his mission that the wave of enthusiasm for the miracle at Bolsena had swept everyone in Orvieto from the pope on down. He hoped they would have neither time to think about the Tartars nor interest in dealing with them.

But this miracle and all the talk about it made him uneasy. The frenzy in the Christian faces around him might be turned, he thought, in any direction. It must be the same frenzy that had driven generations of crusaders to hurl themselves against the Dar al-Islam.[414]

Fra Tomasso was at the very center of the furor. It was he who had sent word from Bolsena that in his judgment the miracle was indeed authentic. Might this new preoccupation distract him from his efforts to prevent the alliance?

And there was something else, something