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

can see you again."

Joy lit up his thin face, and she despised herself. "I will find you, Sophia. I will be gone for months. But I will ride like the wind, and when I come back it will be to Perugia."

He must be going to France! He was traveling with but one man, so as to go faster. The Tartars had nearly been killed in the Filippeschi uprising, but he would be leaving them for months.

Only one thing could be more important to Simon than the lives of the two Tartars, and that was what the Tartars represented.

The pope must be offering to approve the alliance. Simon must be carrying the message.

When I tell David about this, he will ride after Simon and kill him.

Her thoughts began to race. Even if Simon were stopped, was it not still too late to keep the Franks and the Tartars from joining forces? No, probably not, because the pope was dying. If this alliance were not settled now, the talking and deciding would have to begin all over again, with a new pope.

Could she seduce Simon into abandoning his mission altogether, running off with her? No, he would never betray so great a trust, not even for love of her.

"I swear to you, I will find you, I will see you again, Sophia," he was saying. "Believe me."

You will not live long enough.

"I do believe you, Simon." Her loathing for herself grew stronger.

Now his arms were around her, and he was pressing her back, away from the tree trunk and down onto the soft bed of pine needles.

His open mouth was against hers, his lips devouring hers. His hands caressed her shoulders and her back, moving ceaselessly. One hand slid around and held her breast, and she heard his little indrawn breath of pleasure. It must feel good to him, she thought. It felt good to be touched there, and she pushed back against his hand. She felt her body relax and grow warm. It had been so long—nearly a year—since a man had held her in his arms.

I need this as much as any man does. Men can go to whores, but where can I go?

She loved the feel of his strong arms around her as she lay beside him. He moved so that his whole length was pressed against her, and now he did not seem any taller than she was. She felt the[36] hardness at his groin that he pressed against her leg, and she felt an answering heat within herself.

No!

I cannot let this man make love to me and then send David after him to kill him. I cannot, I cannot. I would hate myself forever.

She felt her body opening to him, felt her bone-deep need of him. If they came together now, it would be love, not the love she felt for David, but love even so. And if she condemned him to death then, she would destroy herself. But if she did not tell David where Simon was going, she would betray him, and bring ruin down on his people and her own. If she let Simon make love to her, she would be so torn that afterward she would probably go mad.

He was already partly on top of her, and she wriggled away from him, pushing at him.

"Stop it!" There was a power in her voice that she had not intended to unleash. She was no longer Cardinal Ugolini's sweet little niece, Sophia Orfali from Sicily, but Sophia Karaiannides, the woman of Byzantium.

A hand's width of space separated their faces. Her voice seemed to freeze him. He stared at her as if he were seeing a stranger.

Then anger blazed up in his eyes. His arms tightened. Those arms seemed so lean, but the strength in them was like steel chains drawn tight. She clenched her fists and locked her bent arms in front of her to keep him away. His lips drew back from his teeth and she felt his hot breath on her face.

Frankish barbarian! she thought. Where only a moment ago she had wanted him, now she hated him. He was just like all those mail-clad savages who had destroyed Constantinople, stolen, raped, murdered her parents. Yes, and she had helped the Basileus Michael to drive them out, and she would kill this one too. Never would a union of Frankish and Tartar barbarians threaten her people. By this one man's death she could guarantee that.

With all the strength her anger gave her, she straightened her arms, pushing him away. Her right arm free, she thrust her open palm against his jaw, forcing his head back.

"Let me go!" And again it was the powerful voice of Sophia Karaiannides.

"God's blood!" His eyes were wide, and there was amazement in them, no longer anger. He released her so suddenly she fell back, hard, against the floor of the forest.

Immediately he reached for her, but his hands were gentle once more, helping her to sit up.[37]

He knelt before her. "Please forgive me." He sounded on the verge of tears. "Please. I lost command of myself."

Standing up, she brushed pine needles from the back of her skirt and her shawl. He moved to help her, and she pulled away.

"Sophia, I have never loved any woman as much as I love you."

"Nonsense. Simon, you have far to ride."

He moved around so that he was facing her, his usually pale face flushed, his chest heaving.

"Marry me, Sophia."

If he had struck her, she could not have been more astonished. But she quickly recovered herself. He thought he could have his way with her by offering marriage.

"Simon, I am not a woman whose legs can be parted by a promise of marriage." The note she heard in her voice distressed her. She was being too much her true, worldly self with him. If he were not deaf to everything but his own passion, he would hear it, and he would suspect that she was not what she seemed to be.

She reminded herself: I must seem to be awed that this great nobleman speaks to me of marriage.

"You put it crudely," he said, his eyes narrowed with warmth. "To shock me, I suppose. But you defend your honor, and you speak plainly. I speak plainly too—I love you."

The sight of him standing there gazing at her with such yearning in his eyes was too painful. She kept thinking of herself telling David what she had learned today. She kept seeing this tall, handsome man lying dead in a ditch. She had to get away from him.

"The morning is well along," she said. "You had better get started if you want to cover much distance by nightfall. Where do you plan to spend this night?" She despised herself because she had asked the question to make it easier for David to trail him.

He frowned at her. "Sophia, I must have your answer. I mean what I say. I love you. I want to marry you."

Holy Virgin, would the fellow never give in? Did he really think her foolish enough to believe he was sincerely proposing to her? Yes, perhaps he did think that of the Sophia she pretended to be. She must answer him as that girl would. She cast her eyes down, her hands clasped before her.

"Simon, do not torment me. I know that you cannot marry me. My uncle has told me who you are—your ancient noble house, your vast holdings. Perhaps you mean to be kind to me by speaking of marriage, but a man of your rank has too many obligations. You cannot marry as you choose. So, please, speak of it no more."

But what if we could get married?[38]

The thought arose unbidden in her mind as she stared down at the brown pine needles. She wanted to drive it out again, but could not stop herself from seeing what it might be like.

Marriage, a home, a fixed, secure abode where she might live out her life in serene, peaceful occupations. Raising children, spinning, embroidering, managing a household. What so many women, rich and poor, had. What she had not known since she was a young girl—a place, a family. And to be the wife of a man like Simon—kind, brave, handsome, well spoken.

She understood suddenly why it was always so easy for her to forget Sophia Karaiannides and become Sophia Orfali. She did what was given her to do, but in the core of her heart what she longed for was to be someone like Sophia Orfali, who truly had a place in the world. Sophia Orfali, for all that she was a mask, was more real than Sophia Karaiannides.

It was too painful for her, the unexpected longing for the love she could never have, the grief for Simon, whom she was going to murder.

"Let us get back, you to your scudiero and I to my escort," she said. She started walking toward the road.

He stepped in front of her. "Sophia, wait."

She felt something in her chest like a ball of iron. She had her tears well under control for the moment, but she had to get away from him. Otherwise she would not be able to stop herself from crying.

"Please," he said again. She felt herself forced to look up at him. His thin face, so grave, so intelligent.

"I beg you to believe me. I do want you desperately. Love is of the spirit, and it is of the body too. But I am not proposing marriage just to possess you. I want to marry you because I love you."

She stood looking at this handsome young man and breathing the fragrance of pine-scented air, and she thought of David. What she felt for David drew no line between body and spirit. If she had all the things she had just been longing for—a husband, a family, a home—and David appeared out of nowhere and looked at her with those glowing eyes of his and told her to come with him, she would abandon everything for him. When she looked at David, she saw a pillar of pure fire burning inside him. There was a power in him that called out to everything that was strong in her and demanded that she accept no other man for her mate.

"You think that my title, my family, is an obstacle to our marrying," Simon said. "But it is not. If you knew who I really am, you might not want to marry me."[39]

She laughed a little at the thought of him not being who he so obviously was. "Are you some peasant lad who stole the place of the true Simon de Gobignon, then?"

"It is something like that."

"In God's name, Simon, what are you talking about?"

His nostrils flared. He drew air in a great gulp through his mouth. He took a step toward her, and she tensed, lest he seize her again, but he kept his hands at his sides.

"The last Count de Gobignon was a traitor to his king, to his countrymen, to his own vassals. He betrayed a whole army of crusaders into the hands of the Saracens. He died in disgrace. His grave is unmarked. So foul was his treachery that no man of good family in France will permit his daughter to marry me."

Sophia found that hard to believe. There must be many great barons in France who would forget the crime of the father, no matter how horrible, when the son was so attractive and, especially, so rich.

"Simon, you have so much to offer a wife." She would have laughed at the absurdity of all this, but the tortured expression clearly mirrored a tortured soul.

"Oh, surely, there are barons who would sell their daughters to the devil for a bit of land," he agreed. "I meant that I could not marry the women I chose. But there is worse, Sophia. I could lose everything if what I am about to tell you were known, but that is the least of it. It puts my life in your hands and the lives of my mother and—my father."

Your life is already in my hands, she thought, her eyes hurting from looking so intensely into his. But then the full meaning of what he had said bore in on her.

His father?

"Simon, are you telling me that you are not—"

"I am not the son of the Count de Gobignon. My father was a troubadour, the Sire Roland de Vency, with whom my mother fell in love while Amalric de Gobignon was still alive. She succeeded in passing me off as the count's son, but we three, my mother, Roland, and I, know the secret. And my confessor. And now you."

She shook her head, bewildered. She felt no doubt that what he was telling her was true. The pain