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

Italian by now," said Sordello.

Ah, you are very brave, capitano, insulting him in a language he does not understand, thought Rachel contemptuously.[259]

De Verceuil glowered at Friar Mathieu.

"You cannot protect her."

"Protect me from what?" Rachel's voice sounded in her own ears like a scream, and her heart was pounding against the walls of her chest.

"John can protect her," said Friar Mathieu, "if he understands what is happening."

He looked full into Rachel's face, and there was a warning in his old blue eyes. She was almost frantic with fear now. She had not been so frightened since the day John and the rest of them had invaded Tilia's house and carried her off.

What was Friar Mathieu trying to warn her about?

"What do you know of Sophia Orfali, Ugolini's so-called niece?" de Verceuil demanded in his French-accented Italian.

Friar Mathieu has betrayed me!

Rachel looked over at the old Franciscan and saw him close his eyes very slowly and deliberately and open them again. Keep your mouth closed, he seemed to be trying to say to her. She had to trust him. She could not believe he would say anything to turn de Verceuil against her.

"I—I know nothing," she said. "Who is this you are asking about?"

"What happens here?" John asked Friar Mathieu in the Tartar language. "Why are the high priest and this foot archer in my tent? I did not invite them. Tell them I send them away."

Friar Mathieu started to answer in the Tartar tongue. Rachel strained to hear him, but Sordello's ugly laughter overrode the friar's voice.

"I escorted Sophia Orfali to Tilia Caballo's brothel more than once," Sordello said. "And I know she was going to visit you because I overheard her telling that to that devil David of Trebizond."

So it was Sordello, not Friar Mathieu, who had been talking to de Verceuil. She should have known.

Rachel heard Friar Mathieu now. "I am talking to you, not to John," he said in the Tartar's tongue, and she understood that Friar Mathieu meant her. Neither de Verceuil nor Sordello understood the language of the Tartars, or knew that she knew it. As long as Friar Mathieu did not address Rachel by name and kept his eyes on John, who looked confused, it would appear that he was talking to the Tartar and not to Rachel.

De Verceuil strode over to the wine bottle standing on the low[260] table by John's bed. Without asking permission, he picked it up and drank deeply from it.

"The Tartars travel with the best wine in this whole army," he declared. "Better than the cheap swill King Charles carries with him." Sophia glanced at John and saw that he was glowering at de Verceuil.

Friar Mathieu said in the Tartar tongue, "Sordello went to the cardinal with the story that you must be some sort of agent for Manfred and therefore it is dangerous for John to keep you with him."

Why would Sordello do that now, Rachel wondered. He could have accused her anytime in the past year. She could not question Friar Mathieu, though, without giving it away that he was talking to her. Did Sordello have some plan to get the chest away from her and desert?

"They know hardly anything about you," Friar Mathieu said. "Do not be afraid. Admit nothing. Deny everything. I think Sordello knows more about Ugolini's household, and about Tilia Caballo's brothel, than is safe for him to admit. Say nothing, and I believe they will frustrate themselves."

John smiled and nodded at Friar Mathieu. "I see what you are doing," he said in Tartar.

De Verceuil was looming over her. "Speak up! What was your connection with Ugolini's niece? Was she Ugolini's niece?" Even though she was standing up, he looked down on her from an enormous height. His deep voice and great size terrified her.

She said, "I know nothing about any cardinal or any cardinal's niece."

De Verceuil seized her by the shoulders, his fingers digging in so hard she felt as if nails were being driven into her muscles. She was almost dizzy with panic.

"You lying little Jewess!"

Suddenly Rachel felt a violent shove, and she was thrown back against her quilt-covered chest and sat down on it hard. She looked up and saw that John was standing before de Verceuil. It was he who had pushed them apart. His arms were spread wide.

"Do not dare to touch her again!" John shouted in the Tartar tongue. He turned to Friar Mathieu and jerked his head at de Verceuil.

"Tell him!"

When Friar Mathieu had repeated John's command, the cardinal answered, "Tell Messer John that we have reason to believe that this Jewish whore is an agent of Manfred von Hohenstaufen, the[261] enemy we are marching to destroy. She met with Sophia Orfali, Ugolini's niece, and Ugolini and his niece have both fled to Manfred. Manfred has tried before now to harm Messer John, and he could do it through this girl."

John shrugged and glowered at de Verceuil when he heard this.

"Foolishness. Reicho does nothing but read books and comfort me. She has no friends, and no one comes to talk with her. Except you. Go away."

De Verceuil took another swallow from the wine jar.

"Put that down!" John shouted. De Verceuil did not need to have that translated. He put the jar down, frowning at John, offended.

"Sordello is right," de Verceuil said. "The man is a savage."

"Do you want me to tell him so?" said Friar Mathieu.

De Verceuil replied to this with a haughty stare.

"Tell him this," he said. "Tomorrow we march to Benevento. King Charles has sent scouts and spies into Manfred's lands, and they have learned that Manfred is moving in our direction with a large army. Larger than ours, if the reports are to be believed. We would be stronger still if your friend the pusillanimous Count de Gobignon were to put in an appearance."

Rachel remembered the Count de Gobignon, that tall, thin, sad-looking man who had so frightened her with his questions about Madonna Sophia.

Everyone was asking questions about Madonna Sophia. There was no doubt that Madonna Sophia and her friends had some secret. Rachel had always known that, though she did not want to know what the secret was. Whatever it was, Rachel promised herself that no one would get a hint of it from her.

"Count Simon was reported coming down the east coast of Italy," said Friar Mathieu. "He could have joined our army if King Charles had been able to wait for him in Rome."

"King Charles did not choose to wait in Rome," said de Verceuil.

"Oh, I think he did," said Friar Mathieu. "I think he would have been happy to stay in Rome if his supporters, such as his marshals and yourself, had not pressed him to move southward when you heard Manfred was on the march."

"I did not know that you ragged Franciscans were experts on military strategy," said de Verceuil.

"We are not. Indeed, war greatly grieves us. But we do possess common sense."

What if there were a battle and Manfred won? Rachel thought.[262] Would Manfred's soldiers kill John? Would they treat her as one of the enemy? Would they rape her, steal her treasure? She had always hoped to escape to the kingdom of Sicily, and now she was in the camp of Sicily's enemies.

"Will there be a battle?" she asked timidly of no one in particular.

De Verceuil's head swung around toward her. "Do not worry about the battle, little harlot," he said in an unpleasantly syrupy voice. "Yes, I expect we will be too busy tomorrow and the next day to concern ourselves with you. After that, perhaps we will have some Ghibellino prisoners to help us find out what you have been up to. And you will furnish our weary troops with diversion."

Rachel felt as if her body had turned into a block of ice. Was he saying that he would let the troops have her? That would kill her. After something like that, she would want to be dead.

"Please—" she whispered.

"Yes, diversion," said de Verceuil, reaching down to take her face between his hard, gloved fingers. "It has been many a year now since I have seen a Jew burn. And when you go up in flames, it will mark a new beginning for this Sicilian kingdom of heretics, Jews, and Saracens. You will be the first, but not the last."

He let go of her face just in time to avoid being pushed away by John. He took a last swallow of wine and turned and strode out of the tent, followed by Sordello, who turned and gave Rachel a last leering, gap-toothed grin.

"Is that a great man among your people?" John asked Friar Mathieu, his face black with rage. "Among my people he would be sewn into a leather bag and thrown into the nearest river."

Rachel sat on her traveling box, her hand pressed between her breasts to quiet her pounding heart. She could hardly believe what she had heard, that de Verceuil wanted to burn her at the stake as an agent of Manfred's after the coming battle.

Oh, God, let Manfred win, please.

His name was Nuwaihi, and he was so young that his beard was still sparse. He came riding with his two companions out of the blue-gray hills to the north, and brought his pony to a skidding stop beside Daoud. He turned his mount and they rode on together, side by side, in Manfred's vanguard.

"I saw the army of King Charles, effendi, I and Abdul and Said," he said in Arabic, gesturing to include his comrades. "The Franks are on the road that leads from Cassino to Benevento. They are about two days' ride from here. We hid behind boulders close to the[263] road, and we counted them. There are over eight hundred mounted warriors and five thousand men on foot. They have many pack animals and wagons and merchants and priests and women following them. Just as our army does." His breath and that of his pony steamed in the cold air.

Daoud felt a prickling sensation rise on his neck and spread across his shoulders. Two days' ride. The armies could meet tomorrow. Tomorrow would decide everything.

Now, if only Manfred could conceive a plan for outmaneuvering Charles. If only he would take Daoud's advice. He knew Europeans preferred to fight pitched battles, and he prayed that Manfred would not choose that way.

"Did you see a purple banner with three gold crowns?" Daoud asked.

Two weeks ago a courier from the Ghibellini in northern Italy had brought word that Simon de Gobignon's army had passed through Ravenna, on the Adriatic coast. It seemed unlikely to Daoud that de Gobignon would catch up with Charles in time to take part in the coming battle.

"No purple banner. They fly the white banner with the red cross." Nuwaihi turned his head to the left and spat. "And all the soldiers have red crosses on their tunics." He spat again. His fierceness pleased Daoud.

At one time, he thought, he would have been sorry to learn that Simon de Gobignon was not with Charles's army. He would have longed to meet Simon on the field and fight and kill him. But now he understood that he had hated Simon because Simon resembled the Christian David that he might have been. It did not matter to him that he would not meet the French count again. Instead, he could feel relieved that Charles would not have Simon's knights and men as part of his army.

Nuwaihi went on, "Their Count Charles, he who would be king, was at the head of the column. I knew him because he wears a crown on his helmet. His banner is red with a black lion rearing up on its hind legs."

Daoud looked over his shoulder and saw Manfred not far behind him, on a white horse with a black streak running from forehead to nose. The king of southern Italy and Sicily, in a cloak the color of springtime leaves, was the center of a mounted group of his favorite courtiers. One strummed a lute, and they were singing together in Latin.

A brave spectacle. Manfred rides into battle singing Latin sonnets.[264]

A Mameluke army on its way to war would have mullahs praying for victory and a mounted band playing martial music on kettledrums, trumpets, and hautboys.

The young blond men around Manfred, Daoud knew, were nimble dancers, witty talkers, skilled musicians, and expert falconers. How well they could fight he had yet to see. Manfred was the oldest of them, but right now he looked as young as the others. He had on no visible armor, though Daoud knew he regularly wore a mail vest under his lime tunic.

Behind Manfred, all on glossy palfreys and wearing mail shirts, rode his Swabian knights, Lorenzo Celino and Erhard Barth in the first rank. The Swabians' grandfathers had come