The Saracen: The Holy War, Robert Shea [best beach reads TXT] 📗

blue irises pale with age, opened wider. "You have been married?" He shook his head. "People never cease to surprise me. I would like to know you better, child. Will you tell me about your life?"

His gentle tone gave her heart. Not since Sophia had talked to her on the road from Rome to Orvieto had anybody been interested in who she was. Talking to this good priest about her past, she could forget for a while the terror of present and future. She would tell him everything.

LIV

Daoud suddenly realized that droplets of moisture had appeared on the grayish-yellow wall near his face. How long the water had been forming he did not, could not, know. Long enough for some of the droplets to coalesce and run down the wall, where they joined a line of dampness where the floor met the wall.

He wondered where the water was coming from. It might be raining outside, above this dungeon. It would take, he thought, a very great rainstorm for the water to seep through down here.

He lay on his stomach on the rack table, his stretched arms and legs feeling like blocks of wood. He had no idea how much time had passed since d'Ucello left him with the threat that when he returned he would burn Daoud's manhood away with Greek Fire. Most of that time he had been awake, but had been dreaming of the paradise of the Hashishiyya.

Erculio had slept on a pile of rags in a corner of the dungeon, leaving it to the guards to make sure that d'Ucello's order was carried out and Daoud remained awake. The guards were, as Erculio must have known they would be, halfhearted about carrying out their mandate. They poked and struck him with sticks at intervals, but they did not try to injure him. Daoud was even able to sleep for brief periods between their proddings. They let most of[119] the candles in the dungeon go out, leaving the great stone chamber in semidarkness.

Erculio managed to talk to him when the two guards were dozing. He held up what looked like a large pearl.

"There is a swift-acting poison sealed inside this glass ball. When he comes to burn your prickle off, I will slip it into your mouth. When you feel the fire, break the ball with your teeth and swallow. It will look as though the pain killed you. If you can manage it, swallow the glass, too, so they do not find it in your mouth after you're dead."

So calm did Daoud's Sufi training keep him that he was able to wonder where Erculio had got such a thing, and how the poison was sealed inside the ball, and what kind of poison it was. He could even think calmly about what it would feel like when the poison was killing him.

Erculio was taking a huge chance, he realized. D'Ucello might well discover that poison had killed Daoud; the podesta was a very clever and knowledgeable man. And if he did discover the poison, he would, of course, reason that Erculio had done it. In the midst of his calm, Daoud felt admiration for the little bent man's courage.

Inevitably with the passing of so many hours, the pain of the cuts and bruises and burns he had already suffered, and the ache of lying in the same position with his limbs stretched beyond endurance, would at times break through the mental wall he had built up against it. Remembering the words of Sheikh Saadi—If pain comes despite your training, invite it into your soul's tent as you would a welcome guest—he allowed the pain to wash over him. And when the first acute shock of it had passed, he was able to restore the wall.

From time to time he would think of what was soon going to happen to him. And it would be like a spear of ice driven into his heart. Again, he let himself feel the terror, the anguish, the agonized wondering, When will he come? and then, when his mind was numbed by the horror of it, cast it out again.

If he had not had the training of those two great and very different masters, Sheikh Saadi and Fayum al-Burz, he would have been mad with terror by now. Each time the door to the dungeon opened, the spear of ice pierced him again. Would it be now that he would lose his manhood in pain beyond imagining, pain so great that he would gladly die at once?

When no one was nearby, Erculio came close, cursed at him loudly, punched him, and whispered, "He is gone much longer[120] than he said he would be. It is late afternoon. I told you he does not want to do this."

But he will do it, Daoud thought.

Sometime later—Daoud could not tell how long—the door swung open and d'Ucello strode in. Daoud let the cold fear flood into him. He even let himself whimper a bit. The tide of maddening terror reached its height and then receded, and he was in command of himself again.

The two guards snapped to attention, and Erculio scurried over to him. The podesta's face was set, and when he came close to Daoud, there was pain in his eyes.

"Has he spoken?" he said to Erculio.

"Not a word, Signore, and I have made him suffer greatly."

I shall be leaving this world just moments from now. I will fix my thoughts on God.

"I gave you more time than I intended to," d'Ucello said to Daoud. "There was a small battaglia at a bordello on the east side of town. A place you are familiar with. The house run by that fat old whore, Tilia Caballo. Where, according to her testimony, you were when the French cavaliere was murdered outside Cardinal Ugolini's. Your putana friend has been despoiled, I fear, and many of her menservants killed and her women hurt."

Rachel.

He desperately wanted to know whether Rachel had been hurt, and he dared not speak of her to d'Ucello. Anguish for Rachel cracked his armor against fear. He saw what was going to happen to him, felt the liquid fire, saw his death. Cold sweat broke out on his body.

He tried to turn his mind back to Tilia's house.

And Tilia, what of Tilia?

It surprised him that his anxiety for Tilia was so strong. She had come to be his friend without his ever realizing it.

He thought of Francesca, who had comforted him so during his first months in Orvieto. Of the women who had helped him initiate Sordello. All of them no doubt raped, and perhaps hurt in other ways besides.

The savages! This would never have happened in El Kahira.

It was safe enough to ask, "Who did it?"

"The ambassadors from Tartary and their guards, as they were leaving Orvieto to follow the pope to Perugia. The French Cardinal de Verceuil was there and, far from trying to prevent the wickedness, urged them on. It seems you dislike the Tartars with good reason."[121]

The podesta paused. He still hoped, Daoud realized, to provoke or invite him into letting something slip.

If it was the Tartars, they must have come for Rachel.

D'Ucello picked up the flask of Greek Fire from the table, where it had stood these many hours, where Daoud could plainly see it. He had, most of the time, avoided looking at it.

"Were any of the women taken away?" Daoud asked. That, too, should be a safe question. Every moment he and d'Ucello talked, d'Ucello hoping he might yet learn something, was another moment of wholeness and life.

But I must not deceive myself. These are only moments. I affirm that God is One. God be merciful. God receive me. I die as Your warrior.

"Yes," said d'Ucello, eyeing him thoughtfully. "Did you have reason to think someone would be carried off?"

It hurt Daoud's neck to turn and try to look into d'Ucello's face. Daoud let his head fall to the table on which he lay.

"I visited there often. I made friends with some of the women."

D'Ucello snorted. "From now on you will have no need to go to bordellos."

To gain another moment, Daoud said, "I marvel that you possess Greek Fire. The making of it is a great secret, and it is too dangerous to transport far. If a bit of it gets loose on a ship, that ship is seen no more."

D'Ucello squinted at him. "If you were truly only a trader from Trebizond, you would be too terrified to wonder where I got this stuff."

"Allow me at the last a bit of dignity," Daoud pleaded, looking up at d'Ucello. He saw guilt in d'Ucello's shifting eyes.

"A member of the Knights Templar back from the Holy Land let me copy the formula," said d'Ucello. "Out of curiosity, I had an alchemist make it for me."

"Curiosity is a worthier motive than torture," said Daoud, hoping he was undermining d'Ucello's resolution and making the podesta feel ashamed.

But the dark eyes flashed angrily. "That is enough. Turn him on his back, Erculio. You should have done that already."

I pushed him too far, Daoud thought despairingly.

"Yes, Signore." Erculio beckoned the guards. "Here, you two. Help me."

When his arms and legs were untied, Daoud groaned at the sudden release of the tension in stiffened muscles. A savage pain tore through the numbness in his limbs.[122]

"Be still, whoreson!" Erculio snarled, clamping a hand over Daoud's mouth. Daoud felt the glass ball pressed against his lips, and opened his mouth to receive it.

The ball was not large, about half the size of a pigeon's egg, but it felt huge in his mouth. Thinking about the swift death it held within it, Daoud wondered if it would be easy or hard to break the glass.

They were tying his hands again, and he had the ball under his tongue. If he tried to speak now, d'Ucello would know he had something in his mouth. No more delaying by talking to the podesta.

"Strip off his loincloth," said d'Ucello, and Erculio tore it away. Holding the flask in one hand, d'Ucello leaned forward, peering at Daoud's groin. Daoud could feel his penis and scrotum shrinking.

What fools we men are to be so proud of our members, and think them such sources of power. How truly vulnerable is that little bit of flesh.

One moment he was able to think, the next he was adrift on a sea of terror. His naked body shook violently as d'Ucello scrutinized him. He struggled to keep his Sufi training in mind. Only that could help him now to die bravely.

"He is circumcised," said d'Ucello, his black eyebrows twisting in a frown.

Oh, God! Cloud his mind.

"What do we know of that place he comes from?" said Erculio. "Trebizond? Maybe all the men in Trebizond are circumcised."

"Only Jews are circumcised," said d'Ucello. "And Saracens." He brought his face closer to Daoud's. "Speak, man. Why is your foreskin cut off?"

"How could he be a Saracen or a Jew?" said Erculio. "He looks like a Frank."

"Shut up," said d'Ucello impatiently. "I want to hear his answer."

Daoud lay motionless, praying that God would let d'Ucello kill him and be done with it.

"Are you part of some Jewish plot?" d'Ucello demanded.

Daoud almost smiled at that, but he only looked up at the blackened ceiling beam and said nothing.

"Answer me!" d'Ucello growled. He shook the flask at Daoud.

Daoud closed his eyes. Now the fire would come.

He heard a hammering at the wooden door on the other side of the dungeon. One of the guards went to open it at d'Ucello's command.[123]

Another delay! Now he was almost frantic for it to end. He was tempted to bite down on the little glass ball. Why must he wait and wait for that terrible flame to burn away his life?

"Signore!" Daoud turned his head and saw the clerk called Vincenzo in the doorway of the dungeon. Beside him was a man in orange and green, the colors of the Monaldeschi family. Daoud remembered the thick black brows and the stern face, the grizzled hair. He had seen this man the night of the contessa's reception for the Tartars.

"The Contessa di Monaldeschi's steward brings a message from her," Vincenzo said.

With a sigh d'Ucello set the flask of Greek Fire on the table beside Daoud. In the sigh Daoud heard, not impatience, but relief. D'Ucello was glad to put off doing this unspeakable thing, but it meant only that Daoud would have to endure a longer wait.

Because he does not want to torture me, I suffer the more.

D'Ucello was still hoping the waiting would break him. And it might. In spite of all his training, in spite of the Soma that kept him calm and held the pain away, Daoud felt himself at the very edge of his endurance. He just might