VII
In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
All praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds.
Master of the Day of Judgment.
Daoud stood perfectly still, looking into the violet sky, reciting in his mind the salat, the prayer required of a Muslim five times daily. This was Mughrab, the moment when the last light of sunset had drained away. An evening breeze cooled his face, welcome after a day of traveling under the summer sky of Italy. Oriented by a bright crescent moon just rising, he faced southeast, toward Mecca. His back was to the stone wall of the inn called the Capo di Bue, the Ox's Head, where he and Sophia and Celino had decided to spend the night. On the other side of the wall, loud voices contended for attention, the sound of travelers in the common room settling down to supper.
Praying in the dusk reminded Daoud that he was alone. What would it be like now in El Kahira, the Guarded One? He would be praying with hundreds of fellow Muslimin, standing shoulder to shoulder, all equal before God, in the Gray Mosque, all listening to the call of the blind muezzins from the minarets—"Come to the house of praise. God is Almighty. There is no god but God."—all facing the Prophet's birthplace together in holy submission. Daoud's prayer might be the only one going up to God tonight from anywhere near Rome.
All around him towered ruins. The silhouettes of broken columns rose against the darkening sky, and across the Appian Way the ragged shape of what had once been a wall. Pines stood tall and black where, according to Lorenzo, some wealthy woman of ancient Rome had her tomb.
He tried to forget his surroundings and to think only of the salat. It was hard to concentrate when he could not assume the proper positions for prayer—raise his hands, kneel, strike his forehead on the ground. He fixed his mind on the infinity of God.
"Do not try to see Him," Abu Hamid al-Din Saadi had told him. "If you see Him in your mind, you are looking at an idol."
Daoud did not try to see God, but as he prayed, a Muslim all alone in the heart of Christendom, he could not help but see Sheikh Saadi, the Sufi master who had brought him to Islam.
The face was very dark, the rich black of a cup of kaviyeh. Out of the blackness peered eyes that saw—saw into the very souls of his students.
Often as he sat listening to Sheikh Saadi read from the Koran, the Book to be Read, and explain its meaning, voices from the past reproached him. The voice of Father Adrian, the chaplain of their castle, rang in his mind. The quiet voice of his mother, teaching him the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary, whispered to him. Like thunder his father spoke of war and of what it was to be a knight.
He could escape the torment of these voices only by listening closely to the Sufi sheikh. Saadi was trying to teach him how to be good, and that was the same thing his mother and father had wanted for him. So they would not mind if he learned from Saadi.
Sheikh Saadi, wearing the white woolen robe of a Sufi, sat on a many-colored carpet of Mosul, an open copy of the Koran resting on an ornately carved lectern before him. His hand, as dark as the mahogany of the stand, caressed the page as he read aloud.
"'Such as persevere in seeking their Lord's countenance and are regular in prayer and spend of that which We bestow upon them secretly and openly, and overcome evil with good: Theirs will be the Heavenly Home.'"
Mohammedan dogs! Daoud remembered Father Adrian in his black and white robes shouting in the chapel at Château Langmuir. Satan is the author of that vile book they call the Koran.
By the age of eleven Daoud had already known cruelty and evil at the hands of the Turks who had captured him, kindness with Baibars, and goodness with Sheikh Saadi. The Sufi sheikh had never made any claim, but Daoud had no doubt that he often walked and talked with God.
"Secretly and openly are we to give," the old man was saying. "God has been generous to us, and we must be generous in turn. When you are kind to a bird or a donkey, or even to an unclean animal like a pig or a dog, He loves you for it. He loves you more when you are kind to a slave or to a woman or to one of the unfortunate, like a cripple or an unbeliever."
"Daoud is both a slave and unbeliever," said Gamal ibn Nasir with a faint sneer. "Must I be kind to him?" Daoud stared at Gamal, burning with hatred, all the more because what he said was true.
Gamal was a slender, olive-skinned boy whom no one dared cross, because he was a grandson of the reigning Sultan of Egypt, Al Salih Ayub. Most of Saadi's students were boys of noble family, and Daoud knew that he was permitted to enter this circle only because all men feared and respected Baibars. And even though he studied Islam with them because it was Baibars's wish, Daoud remained fil-kharij, an outsider, because he was an unbeliever.
The boys sat in a semicircle, their rectangles of carpet spread over the blue and white tiles of the inner courtyard of the Gray Mosque, where Saadi had been teaching since long before these students were born. The old black man sat with his back to the gray stones of the western wall, the stones that gave the mosque its name. He taught in the late afternoon, when he and the boys could sit in the shade.
"God is compassion itself, Gamal," Sheikh Saadi said with a smile, "but even He may find it hard to love a mean spirit." The sultan's grandson blushed angrily, and his eyes fell.
Thinking about the compassion of God, Daoud opened his eyes wide as a startling idea occurred to him. But after the insult from Gamal his tongue felt thick in his throat and the palms of his hands went cold at the thought of speaking. He still stumbled over the Arabic tongue in which Sheikh Saadi conducted his lessons.
Saadi looked warmly upon him. "Daoud has a question?"
Daoud stared down at his hands, which seemed very large as they lay in his lap. "Yes, master." Those kindly velvet-black eyes seemed to draw speech out of him. "If God loves the compassionate, how can he look with favor upon the warrior, who wounds and kills?"
Saadi's turbaned head lifted. His grizzled beard thrust forward, and his eyes grew round and serious. He looked, Daoud thought, like a thoroughbred steed pricking up his ears to a trumpet call.
"I say to you, Daoud, and to Gamal and to all of you—the work of a warrior is a holy calling. When the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless and salute him, began to teach, he did not want the believers to be men of the sword. But the pagans beat those who went to hear him, and they would not let him teach. And so he learned that a true man of God must go forth with the Book in one hand and the sword in the other."
Daoud felt a warm pride in his chest. He was not a despicable slave. He would one day be a warrior, in a way a holy man, like Saadi, who helped spread the teachings of God.
But I am an unbeliever.
He listened for the Frankish voices in his mind crying out against the Saracens, against the devilish religion of the one they called Mahound. But the voices were silent.
A pale boy with a grave face asked, "If God made man, how can He love one who butchers His creatures?"
Sheikh Saadi raised an admonishing finger. "The Warrior of God is no butcher. He strikes with sorrow and compassion. He hates evil, but he loves his fellow men, even the one he fights against. The Warrior of God is known, not by his willingness to kill, but by his willingness to die. He is a man who would give his life for his friends."
Saadi went on to speak of other things, but Daoud's mind remained fixed on the words "Warrior of God."
Ever since the day the Saracens carried him off, he had lived without a home. He had drunk from gold cups in the palace of Baibars, had seen that a Mameluke might rise to earthly glory. But such rewards fell to only one in a thousand. For the rank and file, the life of a Mameluke was a hard one, often ending in early death.
Lately Baibars had sent him to live with the other Mameluke boys in training on the island of Raudha in the Bhar al-Nil, the river Nile. Every morning, when he woke to the rapping of the drill master's stick on the wooden wall of his sleeping shed, his first feeling was anguish. Sometimes he prayed before sleeping that he might not wake up again. Only when he journeyed twice a week, by boat and on foot, to sit at the feet of Saadi, did he feel any peace.
But what if God had chosen him to be a Mameluke? Then it was a blessed life, a holy calling, as Saadi had said. There was a world beyond this one, a place the Koran called a "Heavenly Home." All men, Christian and Muslim, believed that. As a warrior he could hope that his hardship would be turned to joy in that Heavenly Home. In that world, not one in ten thousand, but every good man, would dwell in a palace.
Absorbed in his own thoughts, he heard the soft, deep voice of Saadi as one hears the constant murmur of the windblown sand in the desert. The boys around him and the men who came and went in the Gray Mosque—all were believers. As a warrior of God he could be part of that, and not the least part. He would no longer be fil-kharij, a stranger in this world. He would be fil-dakhil, at home.
The lesson was over. The boys stood with Saadi and bowed their heads in prayer. After the prayers they bowed again to their teacher and, alone or in pairs, pattered out of the courtyard of the Gray Mosque.
When they were all gone, Daoud stood alone facing Saadi.
"What does Daoud have to say to me?"
In a rush of love for his master, Daoud threw himself to his knees and struck his forehead on Saadi's red carpet, bumping his head hard enough to be slightly stunned.
"What is it, Daoud?" Saadi's voice was a comforting rumble.
Daoud sat back and looked up. The figure of the Sufi towered over him. But Saadi bent his head, and looking into the dark face, Daoud felt as if someone huge and powerful had taken him into his arms.
"Master, I want to embrace Islam."
Daoud was mentally repeating the salat for the third time when he heard footsteps and the click of hooves coming up the road. He shut his eyes to resist the distraction.
A voice interrupted the fourth repetition. "Peace be unto you, Signore. Can you tell me if there is room at the sign of the Capo di Bue for my son and me and our donkey?"
Daoud was annoyed at having to stop his prayers, but he had to reply or call unwanted attention to himself. He opened his eyes and saw in the shadows before him a short man with a full white beard holding the reins of a donkey that breathed heavily and shifted its feet nervously on the great black paving stones of the Appian Way. A second figure, obscure in the darkness, sat on the donkey. The two seemed heavily dressed for summer. The bearded man wore a round black hat with a narrow brim, of a type Daoud had never seen before.
"It is not overly full," he said impatiently.
But the man with the black hat still stood before him. "Are you sure that we will be welcome, Signore?"
"You can pay for a place in the common bed, can you not?" said Daoud, eager to finish the prayer.
"Oh, we do not require a bed, Signore," said the old man. "We will sleep in the stable, or sit up"—he chuckled—"or even sleep standing up, as our donkey does. It is just that we cannot go farther tonight. Rome has more robbers than a dog has fleas."
Why in the name of God was the man so hesitant? Daoud, seeing no need to continue the conversation, remained silent.
The old man sighed. "Peace be to you, Signore," he said again. "Come, my son."
The man's son climbed down, and the two travelers pulled the donkey through the inn's gate. Leather packs hung from either side of the donkey, and Daoud wondered what was in them. Probably nothing of value, but robbers would attack anyone who looked vulnerable, and the old man's fear was doubtless justified.
Daoud thought of the precious stones he and Celino carried between them. He felt the cold breath of danger on the back of his neck.
Here in this inn they may all be honest men, but if they knew what wealth we had, even honest men would try to cut our throats.
He turned his mind again to his prayers. By the time he finished and turned to go through the gate leading to the courtyard, he sensed a change in the noises from within. Shrill, angry voices had replaced the cheerful murmur of general conversation.
The donkey and the boy who had ridden it huddled in the corner where the stables met the main building.
Daoud stood listening in the center of the inn yard, his hand resting lightly on the dagger at his belt. He faced the two-story main building, the dining hall at ground level, the beds that slept six or more upstairs. Access to the sleeping room was by way of a flight of outside wooden stairs leading to a platform and an upper door. The doors and the window shutters on both levels were open to let in the cool night air. Stables secured with half doors on his left, a storage shed on his right.
As Daoud strode past the old man's son, he caught a glimpse of bright black eyes reflecting the light from oil lanterns hung on wooden pegs set high on either side of the inn door.
Daoud moved to the doorway, and as he looked into the smoky, candlelit hall, his heart sank.
The crowd of men and women in the room were turned toward Lorenzo Celino. He stood against the far wall, the long blade of his sword gleaming in the candlelight, facing six naked daggers.
Beside Celino, the hound Scipio stood stiff-legged, tail whipping from side to side, fangs bared, growling softly. Fear of that dog was keeping Celino's opponents back as much as fear of his sword, thought Daoud.
The bearded old man who had spoken to Daoud was standing to Celino's left and a little behind him. Celino's eyes flicked toward Daoud for an instant, and then quickly away before anyone might notice that he had looked toward the doorway.
Daoud scanned the room for Sophia. She was standing in the shadows, almost invisible in a long, hooded cloak. No one was threatening her.
One of the men facing Celino, Daoud recognized, was the innkeeper himself. He was a huge man with broad, rounded shoulders and a shock of thick black hair cut off at the same length all the way around, so it looked like a bowl. The dagger he held was a long, murderous blade, but his big hand made it look like a toy.
"Give us the Jew," the innkeeper said to Celino. "We have no quarrel with you."
The old man was a Jew? How was it, Daoud demanded of himself, that these people had known that and he had not?
"You do have a quarrel with me," said Celino, "because I do not care to see you torment and rob this old man."
Daoud swore to himself. Was this the kind of madman Manfred had yoked him with? Sworn to the utmost secrecy, carrying a fortune in jewels, and now he brings a whole inn down around his ears by defending some dusty old man?
But does not God love the compassionate?
Give us the Jew, the innkeeper had said. Daoud knew that Christians took delight in mistreating Jews.
And I told the old man to go in there. But I did not know he was a Jew. Or that these people would harm him.
Whether Celino was a madman or not, Daoud would have to get him out of this, because he was carrying half of their supply of precious stones. When they left Lucera, Daoud and Celino had divided the twenty-four jewels Manfred had traded for the great emerald. Each carried half of the precious stones in a pouch hidden under his tunic.
Daoud studied the room. There must be a good thirty people there, most of them men. Aside from the six surrounding Celino, few of them seemed menacing. But if someone jumped in to help Celino, more might join the other side.
What do I have to help me? That boy who came with the old man. Sophia. And Celino and the dog.
If only, he thought, he had the Scorpion. But that was in the dining hall there, with all their other baggage, which Celino—the fool!—was supposed to be guarding.
He backed out into the small courtyard and bumped into the boy, who had followed him to the door. "You. Your father is in danger in there. And my friend has gotten into trouble trying to help him. We must get them out, you and I."
"Why should Christians help us?" The bitter voice was high. The boy must be very young. He was wrapped up like a Bedouin. His head and face were swathed in a dark cloth, his body cloaked. Only those sparkling eyes showed.
"I must help my friend," Daoud said. "If he lives, you can ask him why he chose to defend your father. Are you just going to cower here?"
"What should I do?"
What would make those men leave Celino alone long enough to give him a chance to escape? Standing outside the doorway with the boy, Daoud's eyes searched the courtyard again as his mind tried to fit what he saw into a plan.
Daoud looked up at the lanterns again. Fire was sure to take men's minds off a fight.
"Take the lanterns and run up those stairs. Throw them into the bedding and get a good fire going. Make sure the floor is burning. Then come back down to me."
Daoud took the two lanterns down from their pegs and handed them to the boy, who raced up the stairs that clung to the outer wall of the inn. Daoud went to the stable and opened the doors of the stalls that held their four horses. He dragged out the saddles and bridles and threw them over the horses' backs. Trained with horses since boyhood, he worked with practiced speed. By the time the boy was beside him again, he had two of the horses saddled.
He looked up and saw bright yellow flames flickering in the upper windows.
"You did that well," he said. "You know how to saddle horses?"
"Yes, Messere."
"Get these two ready, then. Do it right; you will be riding one. And hold them here with your donkey."
Daoud turned and shouted, "Fire!"
He ran to the doorway, looked in long enough to see the darkened spot with its glowing center in the wooden ceiling of the dining hall, and gestured toward it as he again shouted, "Fire!" Then he stepped back to let the crowd tumble out past him.
The burly innkeeper was among the first to exit, jamming his dagger back into its scabbard and shouting for help. "Take water from the horse trough. Get buckets, pots, anything!" Waving his long arms, he towered over the men milling around him like a giant commanding an army of dwarves.
When the first rush had pushed through the doorway, Daoud ran into the dining hall. He could see the blackening circle spreading in the ceiling and flames licking around its edges.
Celino and the old Jew were still standing together by the far wall. Only three men faced them now.
"Come on!" Daoud shouted. He strode to the table where they had been sitting and grabbed up their packs.
"Stay where you are!" a woman's voice cried. It was the innkeeper's wife, a gaunt woman nearly as tall as her husband, with bulging eyes and a face as sharp as the carving knife she brandished.
An earthenware jug crashed down on her head. Her eyes rolled up till only the whites showed. As she slumped to the floor, Daoud saw Sophia behind her.
Well done, Byzantine woman.
"Scipio! Spegni!" Celino shouted. With a roar like a lion's, Scipio leapt at the central figure among the three men confronting his master. Scipio's prey screamed, then stumbled over a bench and fell to the floor on his back. The hound sprang onto his chest, snarls of rage all but drowning out his victim's shrieks. The other two men, their mouths gaping, their eyes fixed on nothing, ran past Daoud without seeing him.
"Stop your dog," Daoud called to Celino. "I want no killing." Smoke spreading from above was searing his nostrils.
Daoud, Celino, and Sophia, followed by the old man and the dog, made their way to the door.
Daoud threw saddlebags to Celino and Sophia. Men were dragging their panic-stricken, rearing horses out of the stables and through the gate. The giant innkeeper and other men were racing up and down the outside stairs, which had also begun to burn, dumping buckets of water on the fire. Men were fighting their way through smoke and flame into the bedroom, trying to rescue belongings they had left there.
The boy stood by their horses, exactly where Daoud had left him. Bravely done, Daoud thought. Hastily tying his packs down, Daoud unlaced one. There were two weapons inside—a Scorpion, the miniature crossbow of the Hashishiyya, and a full-size crossbow. Daoud chose the bigger one, a Genoese arbalest drawn by crank, a present from King Manfred. The quarrels were loaded by spring from a chamber within the stock that could hold six at a time, so that the bowman could fire it as quickly as he could draw it.
Holding the arbalest with one hand, Daoud vaulted into the saddle. Celino and Sophia were already up. The old man had clambered onto their spare horse, and his son was on the donkey.
I should leave that old man behind, Daoud thought angrily. Were it not for him, I would be sleeping comfortably right now.
"They started the fire!" It was the innkeeper's wife in the doorway, her tall body and long arms silhouetted by leaping flames. She pointed an accusing hand at Daoud's party. "Stop them!"
The men who had been trying to put out the fire were giving up, and they turned and started for Daoud and his companions.
"Throw them into the fire!" shrieked the woman in the doorway.
Motioning the others toward the gate, Daoud turned his horse sideways and swung the crossbow in an arc to cover the attackers. The men stopped their rush, but the tall woman pushed her way through them, screaming curses.
Her hulking husband joined her, his long arms reaching for Daoud. He looked able to knock a horse to the ground.
Daoud used both hands to aim the crossbow at him, gripping the horse with his knees. He hoped the threat would be enough to stop the man. He did not want to shoot the innkeeper. If anyone were killed, the deed could follow them to Orvieto.
As he hesitated, the huge man drew back his arm and threw the dagger with the force of a catapult. Daoud heard a thump and a groan behind him. Daoud's thumb pressed the crossbow's release, and the string snapped forward with a reverberating bang. The innkeeper bellowed with pain, the cry dying away as he collapsed. The bolt probably went right through him, thought Daoud.
As the man's dying groan faded, his wife's scream rose. She fell on her knees beside him, and the other men crowded around them.
"Blood of Jesus! Pandolfo!" the innkeeper's wife wailed.
Jerking the reins with his left hand, Daoud wheeled the horse out the gate.
God help us, now they will be after us.
Which one of his people had been hurt?
He found himself, in his anger, hoping it was Celino.
The three other horses and the donkey were bunched together outside the gate, on the dirt path that led through trees to the Appian Way. Some of the men from the inn were out there, too, but when Daoud swung the crossbow in their direction, they backed into the inn yard.
"Leave me here," the old man gasped. "I am dying." So it was he the dagger had hit. They would have to leave him, Daoud thought, and his son would insist on staying with him. And the vengeful crowd from the inn would tear the two of them to pieces. All this fighting would have been for nothing.
Celino spurred his horse over to where the old man swayed in the saddle clutching his stomach. "Sorry to hurt you, but we are not leaving you," he said. He pulled the groaning wounded man across to his own horse and swung one of his legs over so that he was riding astride.
Daoud saw blood, black in the faint light of the crescent moon, running out of the old man's mouth, staining his white beard.
"Can you ride a horse?" Celino barked at the son.
"Yes," the boy sobbed.
"Get up on this one." Celino indicated the horse from which he had just dragged the old man. "Take your packs off the donkey and put them on this horse if you want them. Quickly, quickly. Leave the donkey."
Daoud fingered the crossbow as the boy hastily transferred himself and his goods to the horse.
Still Celino risks our lives with his care for these strangers. Damned infidel. I am the leader of this party.
"Here they come!" cried Sophia. Waving swords and long-handled halberds—God knew where they had gotten them—and sticks and pitchforks, the crowd from the inn tumbled through the gate. Some of them were on horses.
"Ride!" shouted Daoud in the voice he used to command his Mameluke troop.
He kicked his spurs into his horse's side and sent it galloping down the road.
He and Celino had not talked about which way to flee, but there was really only one direction they could go—north, toward their destination. That, he knew, would take them straight into the heart of Rome.
There would be a price to pay for the blood they had shed this night.
The great Salah ad-Din had said it:
Blood never sleeps.