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

in his face was like that of a man who had stripped his very skin off to reveal himself to her. It tore at her heart to see him suffering so much.

"But how could this happen, Simon?"

"It is too long a tale for today. Perhaps one day I can tell you all of it. But do you believe me now? Truly there is no barrier of family[40] between you and me, Sophia. Unless you set one there, knowing that I am—I am a bastard and an impostor. Could you think of marrying me?"

The tears she had been holding back, for an hour it seemed, burst suddenly from her eyes, as sobs welled up in her throat. And yet, she wanted to laugh as well, at the irony of it. To think that he was ashamed of his pretense. If he had any idea of her pretense, and David's, he would probably kill her on the spot.

His face, coming nearer and nearer. All his finery was a red and purple blur before her tear-filled eyes. His hands were reaching for her.

He loves me. He really loves me. He really does want to marry me.

If he had taken that strange Saracen sword of his out and run her through with it, he could not have hurt her more. She had been thinking about sending David to kill him, and he had just entrusted all of himself, his family, everything he possessed, his body and his soul, to her.

If David went after him, this time one of them—Simon or David—would surely die. The luck of the Monaldeschi palace encounter could not protect both a second time.

She felt Simon's hands on her shoulders. She pulled away from him.

"Sophia!" She heard the anguish in his voice.

Tartars and Muslims were a thousand leagues away. If Christians and Tartars were destined to join forces and destroy Islam, it would happen. She willed herself to believe that. And if it was not destined, it would not happen.

David and Simon were here. To say anything to David about Simon's mission to France was to doom one man, perhaps both. It might be the man who loved her, or it might be the man she loved. And she did not want either to die.

"Sophia, I beg you, speak to me! Are you turning against me?"

She wiped her streaming eyes to see Simon standing before her, his arms hanging at his sides, his face agonized.

I cannot doom this young man.

She took deep breaths to calm herself enough to speak to him.

"Simon, I pray that God will bless and protect you." She stifled a sob. "I cannot marry you. You must forget me."

He scrambled to his feet, his arms outstretched. "Do not turn from me, Sophia. I would rather have you kill me."

"No!" It came out of her as a scream. She turned and started to run, holding up the hem of her long skirt to keep from tripping.[41] Her anguish was like a giant's hand that had seized her heart and was crushing it.

She ran like a hunted animal, tripping on rocks, turning her ankle in hollow places. She could only hope she was running toward the road.

"Sophia!"

She looked back over her shoulder. He was following her out of the forest, but at a distance. He was walking, staggering like a wounded man.

"Forgive me, Simon!" She ran on.

A pine branch struck her across the face, and she cried out in pain. But she felt that she deserved it. She ducked under the branch and kept running, seeing brighter light among the dark rows of tree trunks now. The road must be that way.

She forced her way through a tangle of shrubbery and was out on the road. Simon's scudiero, standing with their string of horses, stared at her wide-eyed. The huge Riccardo, Sophia's escort, was with him, talking. They were standing with their backs to a roadside statue of the Virgin in a little protective shed.

At the sight of Sophia, Riccardo rushed to her, looming over her protectively. "Madonna! What has happened to you? Dio mio! Did he—"

His eyes were wide with outrage, but there was anxiety in his face too. He must be wondering whether he would have to fight a nobleman.

"I am not hurt—he did nothing. He did nothing!" Sophia babbled, choking down sobs. "Mount quickly, Riccardo, and let us go from here."

He held her horse, and she threw herself into the saddle. She spurred on without waiting to see if Riccardo was ready to follow.

When they came to a turning in the road, she looked back once. The scudiero stood alone with the horses. Simon had not yet emerged from the pine forest. She started to cry again. The pain in her chest was worse than ever. She silenced Riccardo's questions.

"I cannot talk about it. He did no wrong to me. No harm. That is all you need to know."

I cannot talk to anyone about it, ever. I am going to betray David. I pray God I never see Simon de Gobignon again.

[42]

XLVIII

Just as Sophia and Riccardo arrived at the Porta Maggiore in the city wall of Orvieto, the air around them seemed to glow and crackle. A cold wind blew across the road leading up to the gate. Sophia spurred her bay, but the horse hardly needed encouragement to gallop the last few paces to the shelter of the gatehouse. A shaft of lightning dazzled Sophia, and a mighty thunderclap, loud enough to shake the rock on which Orvieto stood, deafened her. She and Riccardo were in the shelter of the gatehouse before the first fat drops began to fall, making craters in the dust of the road.

They identified themselves to the guards without dismounting. Clerks were no longer posted at the gates to interrogate and record the name of every person entering and leaving Orvieto. Evidently the podesta had given up on that.

Sophia, Daoud, and Ugolini had, even so, been chilled by a polite letter from d'Ucello to Ugolini requesting that "His Eminence's distinguished guest from Trebizond" not leave Orvieto without the podesta's permission. Sophia, on the other hand, seemed free to come and go as she pleased.

The thought crossed Sophia's mind that she would be soaked as she rode from the gate to Ugolini's mansion. But the meeting with Simon had left her in misery, and the storm suited her mood. David knew that she was meeting Simon outside the town. Now what would she tell David about where Simon was going?

She was about to ride on into the city streets when a man stepped out of the crowd that had gathered for shelter under the gateway arch. He raised a hand.

"Madonna!" It was Sordello. "A private word, I beg of you."

She saw fear in his face, but in his bloodshot eyes burned another feeling she could not identify. She disliked the man and did not want to talk to him, especially not now, carrying secrets as she was. But he served David, and his disturbed look suggested that what he had to say might be important. Sighing, she dismounted,[43] gave the reins of her horse to Riccardo, and walked beside Sordello to an unoccupied corner of the gatehouse.

"You know that Messer David has set me to find the informer among us, and he says he will kill me if I fail." He had backed her into the corner and pressed uncomfortably close to her. His breath smelled of onions, and he was altogether repellent.

"What do you want of me?"

"The one person who might give me a clue is the Count de Gobignon, and he has disappeared. No one at the Monaldeschi palace will tell me anything about why he left."

Does he know that I just met with Simon?

"Why ask me?"

"I know that it is Messer David's wish that you allow de Gobignon to court you. If he has left Orvieto, perhaps you have heard where he is going." He smiled, showing a gap in his upper front teeth. And now she realized what the hidden feeling was. It was lust. She was disgusted, and pushed past him to give herself room.

He said, "I saw you ride out earlier today, and I waited here at the gatehouse for you to come back. You must have met with the count. Madonna, I do not know what to do. And Messer David will kill me if I do not tell him something."

She desperately wanted to get away. "I am going to Messer David myself to tell him that Count Simon has left for Perugia. Where the pope is going. He is recruiting more guards and preparing a refuge for the Tartar ambassadors. You'll gain nothing with Messer David by telling him the same thing."

Sordello frowned thoughtfully. "No, but I might try to catch Count Simon on the road and talk to him."

Sophia's heart leapt with alarm and seemed to lodge in her throat. What if Sordello followed Simon and discovered he was on his way to France and came back and reported that to Daoud?

"You needn't go to all that trouble," she said, keeping a grip on her voice. "We will all be going to Perugia shortly, and you can question Count Simon there."

He nodded, as if satisfied with that, and she felt a little better.

He bowed again and again. "Thank you, Madonna, thank you."

In a moment she was on her horse again and riding into the rain. She wanted nothing more to do with Sordello.

But the encounter had helped her in one way, and now she felt more confident about talking to David about Simon. Rehearsing the lie with Sordello had helped.

[44]

"He is leaving the Tartars behind? After I came so close to killing them?"

"They will be closely guarded. I do not think you will be able to get at them again."

There was a bitterness in the small smile that quirked David's thin lips. "I do not intend to try until the Sienese arrive here. When I seek their lives again, a whole army of guards will not be enough to stop me."

What would David do, Sophia wondered, if he learned that the alliance he had fought so hard to prevent would soon be sealed in France by Simon de Gobignon?

She looked at David's eyes, the color of the thunderclouds outside. Her hatred for herself struck her heart with hammer blows.

He stood by the window of his room, straight and broad-shouldered, wearing a belted gown of black silk with a broad red stripe at the bottom. His wound no longer required a poultice, and it was almost healed. The strange Saracen treatment he had prescribed for himself had worked.

She saw pain in his eyes, a pain of the heart. "No doubt you will miss the count," he said in a low voice. He turned to look out the window.

He had pulled the leaded pane of glass slightly inward on its hinge, letting into the room the cold breeze stirred up by the storm. Locks of his blond hair fluttered around his forehead. She studied his profile, the nose long and straight, the chin sharp, the brows seeming to frown even when relaxed.

"You wanted me to make love to him," she said softly.

He kept his face turned. "Yes."

"You did not want me to make love to him."

"Yes."

She stood in the center of the room, about ten paces from him, her hands clasped before her. Her shawl and her gown were cold and wet. A net of small pearls held her hair in place, but her hair, too, was sodden with rain. She felt on the verge of shivering, but she held herself very still.

White light filled the room. David's body jerked, and his lips tightened. A long, rolling peal of thunder followed the lightning, ending in a crash so loud it hurt her head.

He was afraid of thunderstorms. She had noticed that before. There was little rain in the part of the world where he had grown up. He was afraid of nothing else, as far as she could see. There was nothing he would not do, nothing he could not do. If only he were Greek, what a fighter for the Polis he would be.[45]

But when he winced away from the lightning, she wanted to cradle his blond head against her breasts.

The rain beat down on the walls and roof of Ugolini's mansion with redoubled intensity. She saw a small pool of water on the wood floor, rain blown in through the open window.

"I never did make love to him," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the wind and rain.

"I know that." He took a step toward her.

I am doing worse than that now, she thought with a stab of guilt. I am keeping from David something he would badly