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

that revived a terror buried deep in Daoud's soul. Jesus, the crucified God of the Christians, stirred in this miracle. As a boy growing up among Muslims, Daoud had renounced belief in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Now he felt again his father's ghostly hand on his shoulder, and the hairs lifted on the back of his neck.

"Look at the sick people and the cripples lining the road," said Lorenzo. "I would not have thought there could be that many infirm people in Orvieto." He and Daoud stood side by side, at a spot where the road between Bolsena and Orvieto passed through a wide valley, their horses tethered in a nearby grove of poplar trees. They had moved back a few paces from the edge of the road to make room for a dozen men and women on stretchers, wrapped in blankets, who had been carried here by Franciscan friars from their hospital.

All around Lorenzo and Daoud stood Cardinal Ugolini's men-at-arms, servants, and maids. Ugolini's entire household was here except for the few of highest rank who would march with the cardinal, who marched behind the pope.

Fearing that Scipio would go uncared for, Lorenzo had brought him along, holding him on a thick leather leash. The gray boarhound paced nervously and growled from time to time.

In the meadow across the road the pope's servants had erected a pavilion without walls—just a roof of silk, gold and white, the papal colors, coming to three points held up by a dozen or more stout poles. There Pope Urban would say mass after receiving the sanctified cloth.

Daoud glanced down the road to where Sophia stood. They had agreed that in public it would be best for them to appear far apart from each other. She was dressed as any well-to-do Italian woman might be, her hair covered with a round, flat linen cap bound under her chin, a midnight-blue chemise with long, tight sleeves, and a sleeveless gown of light blue silk over it. Beside Sophia stood a slighter figure in gray veil and gown. They had their heads close together, talking.

"Who is that with Sophia?" Daoud asked Lorenzo.[415]

"Oh, Rachel, I think." Lorenzo studiously examined Scipio's head for fleas.

"She appears in public with Rachel?" Daoud said angrily.

Lorenzo shrugged. "No one knows who Rachel is." He slapped Scipio's rump. "Sit."

"I did not like Sophia visiting Rachel," Daoud said. "Even less do I like their being seen together in public."

Trumpets shrilled and drums sounded as the hymn came to an end. Daoud looked toward Orvieto. The road that wound down past the gray-yellow folds of tufa was filled with people.

At the head of the procession walked the pope in gold and white, and the cardinals of the Sacred College in bright red. The middle of the long line was bright with the purples of archbishops and bishops and the variegated raiment of the nobility. The rear was dark with the grays and browns of common folk.

From this distance Daoud could not see Pope Urban's face, but there was no mistaking the beehive-shaped mitre with its glittering triple crown.

Lucky for the pope the weather was cold, thought Daoud. Wearing those heavy vestments on a hot day would surely kill the old man. That today he chose to go on foot showed how much this miracle meant to him.

Daoud turned and looked to the west. The marchers from Bolsena were close, and people were falling to their knees all over the meadow.

I will have to kneel, too, and seem to worship their idols. Forgive me, God.

Daoud saw Sophia and Rachel drop to their knees.

Surely they think as little of this as I do.

Coming toward Daoud from the west was a great banner that offended his every religious feeling. Painted on the red cloth were the head and shoulders of a bearded man, Jesus the Messiah, with huge, staring eyes. On his head was a plaited wreath of thorns, and behind it a disk of gold. From the nail holes that pierced his upraised palms fell painted drops of blood.

An idol, such as the Koran forbade and the Prophet had come into this world to destroy.

And then he thought of the great crucifix that hung in the chapel of Château Langmuir outside Ascalon, and his mother taking him by the hand to pray before it.[416]

"Because He lived and died here," he remembered her sweet voice saying, "that is why we are here in this Holy Land."

He felt momentarily dizzy. They, his mother and father and all these people here, thought that the bearded man, with the wounds of crucifixion in his hands, was God. And he had believed it once, too.

No, God was One. He could not be a Father who reigned in heaven and a Son who came down to earth. God was glorious and all-powerful; He could not be crucified. God was the Creator; He could not be part of His creation.

And yet—the cold hand still lay upon his shoulder. A gentle hand, but it frightened him.

All around Daoud the infidels were throwing themselves on their knees, even on their faces, in the road before the advancing banner. A man in a black robe was walking before the banner bearer. Despite his long gray beard there was something about his staring eyes and wide, downturned mouth that reminded Daoud of a fish.

The bearded priest, Father Kyril, was holding up by its corners a white square of linen. That, thought Daoud, must be the altar cloth on which the drops of blood had fallen from the wafer of bread. As he walked he slowly, solemnly, turned from side to side to allow people on both sides of the road to see the cloth.

"Kneel, David, for God's sake!" Lorenzo ground out beside him.

His curiosity had made him forget himself. He dropped to his knees, feeling dry grass prick his skin through his silk hose. Lorenzo knelt beside him, gripping the dog's collar. The sick and crippled people lying beside the road were wailing and holding up their arms in supplication.

Again Daoud asked God's forgiveness for his seeming idolatry.

Father Kyril and the altar cloth were only a dozen paces away, and now Daoud could see the brown bloodstains on the white cloth. Amazingly they appeared to form the profile of a bearded man.

As a cold wind against his spine, he felt his long-buried fear of the wrath of the Christian God.

The big hound, right beside him, let out a thunderous bark. Daoud started with surprise. His heart pounded in his chest.

Scipio barked and barked, so loudly Daoud put his hands over his ears. Father Kyril took a step backward. People who had been venerating the bloodstained cloth turned with angry shouts. The[417] hands of the men-at-arms escorting Father Kyril twitched, groping for the weapons they were not carrying.

"Scipio!" Lorenzo gave the hound a sharp slap on the side of the head. The dog kept up its barking. Father Kyril had stopped walking and looked frightened. He clutched the stained cloth to his breast. At a word from him, Daoud thought, the crowd would tear to pieces the dog, Lorenzo, and perhaps Daoud himself.

Lorenzo grabbed Scipio's muzzle with both hands, forcing it shut. Scipio kept up a growling through his teeth. Lorenzo growled back, "Be still!" He wrestled the dog down until the lean gray head was pressed into the grass.

"Barking is the only way he knows to greet the Savior," said Lorenzo with an ingratiating grin, looking up at the people glaring at him.

"There could be a devil in that dog," a brown-robed friar said ominously. But Scipio relaxed under Lorenzo's hands, and those around Daoud and Lorenzo turned back to the procession.

Daoud was furious. Lorenzo's damned dog had been like a stone in his shoe ever since they set out from Lucera. Lorenzo was a valuable man, but he insisted on attaching others to him who caused endless trouble. Like the dog. Like Rachel.

A scream rose above the music, so shrill Daoud put his hands over his ears again.

"My God! I can see!" A woman was standing, clasping her hands together and flinging them wide again and again. One of the Franciscans threw his arms around her, whether to rejoice with her or restrain her, Daoud could not tell. But she pushed him away and went stumbling after Father Kyril. From the way her hands pawed the air, Daoud suspected she could not see very well, but she shouted with joy all the same.

She joined a crowd of people, many of them waving walking sticks and crutches, others with bloodstained bandages trailing from their hands. One man, Daoud saw to his horror, was missing a foot and was limping along in the dirt road, without the aid of crutch or cane, on one whole leg and one stump bound with a dirty cloth that ended at the ankle. His face was red, sweat-slick, and blindly ecstatic.

Behind the rejoicing invalids walked rows of clergymen from Bolsena. Daoud recognized a familiar figure in the foreground, Fra Tomasso d'Aquino, his cheeks crimson with cold and exertion, his black mantle blowing in the wind. He had spent the last two weeks,[418] Daoud knew, in Bolsena investigating the miracle and overseeing preparations for the altar cloth to be brought to Pope Urban.

What did he think now, Daoud ached to know. Would he still work as hard to defeat the Tartar alliance? Did this miracle mean Daoud had gained ground or lost ground?

A sudden silence fell over the meadow. Pope Urban, with trembling hands upraised, approached Father Kyril, whose back was to Daoud.

Father Kyril went down on his knees before the pope, holding up the white cloth over his head like a banner. Then the pope also knelt, somewhat shakily, with the assistance of two young priests in white surplices and black cassocks. Urban reached up for the cloth and pulled it down to his face and kissed it.

He is seeing that cloth for the first time, and yet he seems to have no doubt that he is looking at the blood of his God that died.

Daoud felt a chill that was colder than the December air.

Daoud pushed his way to the edge of the open pavilion, where the pope, assisted by Father Kyril and Fra Tomasso, was saying high mass. A band of musicians blew on hautboys and clarions, sawed at vielles, stroked harps, and thumped on drums.

The white cloth with its strange rust-colored stain was stretched on a gilded frame above the altar. Daoud felt uneasy whenever he looked at it. Just when it seemed he had found the key to wrecking the union of Tartars and crusaders—a miracle. What did it portend?

Memory showed him his mother and father celebrating Easter, standing hand in hand before the altar at Château Langmuir, receiving Holy Communion—the Sacred Host—from their chaplain. When he was old enough, his mother had told him he, too, would be allowed to take Jesus into his heart by swallowing the Communion wafer. What a strange belief! But at the time it had seemed beautiful.

I bear witness that God is One, that Muhammad is the Messenger of God....

He glanced around the pavilion, and saw many faces he had come to know in the last few months. There was Cardinal de Verceuil with his big nose and small mouth. There was Ugolini, the size of a child, dressed up as a cardinal, blinking rapidly, looking rather bored. In the front row of standing worshipers were John and Philip, the Tartars, in silk robes. Beside them, Friar Mathieu, the[419] Franciscan, cleverest of Daoud's opponents. Daoud gauged him to be a genuinely holy man, if an infidel could be called holy.

And next to him was the pale young face of the Count de Gobignon.

As Daoud looked at him, de Gobignon looked back, and his eyes widened slightly.

One day, Count, you will die by my hand.

The mass began, and even though there must have been five thousand people in the valley, there was complete silence. The quiet was eerie. At a Muslim religious celebration this large, the crowd would be chanting in unison, there would be music, dervishes singing and dancing; impromptu sermons would be delivered in various parts of the crowd by mullahs or by ordinary men moved to speak. Here all was focused on the center.

Pope Urban rose to speak. He had removed his mitre to say mass. His white hair, his long beard, and his trailing mustache seemed much more sparse than they had been when Daoud had first seen the pope, last summer. His face was as pale as his hair, and his hands trembled.

A few months ago Daoud had heard Urban's voice rise robustly from the center of his body. Today his voice was high and thin and seemed to come from his throat. He told the story of the miracle of Bolsena, and explained that Father Kyril was a