XI
Simon was surprised at how young Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil looked. The man who stood with him in a vineyard on the road to Orvieto had a long, fine-skinned face and glossy black hair that fell in waves to his shoulders. If his scalp was shaved in a clerical tonsure, his red velvet cap covered it. His handsome violet silk tunic reminded Simon that his own surcoat was travel-stained and that Thierry had not polished his mail in days.
De Verceuil tossed away the cluster of pale green grapes he had been nibbling and spoke suddenly.
"Count, a report has reached me that you spoke rudely to the doge of Venice." His booming bass voice sounded as if it were emerging from the depths of a tomb. "You do realize that your actions reflect on the crown of France?"
He thrust his face into Simon's as he spoke, which made Simon involuntarily draw back. De Verceuil was one of the few men Simon had ever met who matched his own unusual height.
Simon felt his face grow hot. "Yes, Your Eminence."
"And how could you dismiss the trovatore Sordello from the post to which Count Charles himself appointed him?"
"If Sordello had stayed with us, the Tartars might have taken such offense as to go back to Outremer."
"Do not be absurd. Would they abandon a mission of such importance because of a tavern brawl?"
Simon felt shame, but, deeper than that, resentment. He was the Count de Gobignon, and not since he was a child had anyone chastised him like this.
He heard a rustling as someone came down the row of vines where they were standing. He turned to see Friar Mathieu, and hoped he was about to be rescued.
After the Franciscan had humbly greeted the cardinal and kissed his sapphire ring, he said, "I must tell Your Eminence that what happened was not a mere tavern brawl. Sordello stabbed and nearly killed the heir to the throne of Armenia, an important ally of the Tartars."
De Verceuil stared at Friar Mathieu. The cardinal had a mouth so small it looked quite out of place below his large nose and above his large chin. A mean mouth, Simon thought.
"Your opinion does not interest me," de Verceuil said. "I cannot imagine why King Louis trusted a beggar-priest to conduct diplomacy with the empire of Tartary."
The resentment Simon had felt at the cardinal's harsh speech at his expense now flared up in anger.
I am young and I do make mistakes, Simon thought. But, cardinal or not, this man has no right to stand there in his velvet and satin and jewels and sneer at this fine old man. No right at all.
But the old friar merely stroked his white beard with a wry smile and said, "I said that very thing to him myself, when he ordered me to go."
Still angry, Simon took a deep breath and said, "Since Your Eminence feels I have embarrassed the king and displeased the Count of Anjou, there is only one course open to me. I will resign my command of the ambassadors' guards."
Simon stared into de Verceuil's eyes, and the cardinal's eyelids fluttered. In the silence Simon heard a blackbird calling in nearby olive trees.
I never wanted to come here. I let Uncle Charles talk me into it. I do not mind the danger. And it would be exciting to outguess a hidden enemy who is trying to murder the Tartars. But I cannot endure the way this man humiliates me and my friends. I will go back to Gobignon now.
"You must not let a bit of fatherly correction wound you so deeply, Count," said the cardinal, his voice still deep and dirgelike but no longer full of scorn. "I would never suggest the Count of Anjou had made a mistake in choosing you for this post."
Fatherly! What a disgusting thought!
But Simon could see that his resigning worried de Verceuil. Uncle Charles wanted Simon to guard the ambassadors, just as he had wanted Sordello to head the archers. He had his reasons. And de Verceuil did not want to cross Charles d'Anjou.
Friar Mathieu laughed gently, and patted Simon on the shoulder. "If you please, be kind enough to change your mind about resigning. All of us are aware that you have carried out the task with intelligence and zeal. Is that not right, Your Eminence?"
"Of course," said de Verceuil, his mouth puckered and sour. "Count, I would have you present these Tartar dignitaries to me."
"I will be happy to interpret for you, Your Eminence," said Friar Mathieu. De Verceuil did not answer him.
As they crossed the vineyard, the cardinal stretched out his long arm and said, "I have brought musicians, jongleurs, senators of Orvieto, men-at-arms, two archbishops, six bishops, an abbot, and many monsignors and priests." A long line of men stretched down the road into the nearby woods. Most of them wore various shades of red; a few were in cloth-of-gold or blue. The points of long spears flashed in the sunlight. Banners with fringes of gold and silver swung at the tops of poles. Seeking protection from the mid-August heat, men walked horses in the shade of the woods.
Beyond the treetops rose a distant pedestal of grayish-yellow rock crowned by a city. An astonishing sight, Orvieto.
"The Holy Father will be meeting us at the cathedral and will say a special mass of thanksgiving for the safe arrival of the ambassadors," said de Verceuil. "I want the entry of the Tartars into Orvieto to impress both the Tartars themselves and the pope and his courtiers."
"Monsters!"
"Cannibals!"
Rotten apples, pears and onions, chunks of moldy bread, flew through the air. Small stones that did not injure, but stung. And worse.
The shouts and missiles came from both sides of the street, but always when Simon was looking the other way, so he could not see his assailants. The people crowded in front of the shops were mostly young men, but women and children were scattered among them. They wore the dull grayish and brownish garments of workers and peasants. The street-level windows behind them were shuttered, and the doors were closed tight. That was a sure sign, Simon knew from his Paris student days, that the shopkeepers expected trouble.
From the Porta Maggiore, the main gate where they had entered, the street curved toward the south side of the town. Though the upper stories of many houses overshadowed the street, there was room enough for the procession to move along, four horses abreast, and for the unruly people to gather on either side. Approaching the south wall of the city, the street made a sharp bend to the left, and Simon had lost sight of the Tartar emissaries behind, who were—What a mistake!—being carried in an open sedan chair. Were they being pelted with garbage?
Why were the people of Orvieto doing this? True, everyone in Christendom had heard wild tales of the Tartars. That they were monsters with dogs' heads. That they bit off the breasts of women. That they stank so abominably they overcame whole armies just with their smell. That they were determined to kill or enslave everyone on earth. There were churches where people prayed every Sunday to be delivered "from the fury of the Tartars."
But it had been over twenty years since the Tartars had invaded Europe, and even then they had come no farther than Poland and Hungary. Why should these people of Orvieto turn so violently against them now, when they came in peace?
Undoubtedly someone was stirring them up.
Hang de Verceuil and his orders, Simon thought. I should be with the ambassadors. If someone wants to kill them, this would be a perfect chance.
He tugged on the reins of his palfrey, pulling her head around. "Make way!" he shouted, spurring his horse back the way he had come. Men-at-arms with spears and crossbows cursed at him in various Italian dialects, but they opened a path, pushing back the people. Thierry rode a small horse in Simon's wake.
"Imps of Satan!" came a shout from the crowd. "The Tartars are devils!"
Simon scanned the faces below him. Some looked angry, some frightened, many bewildered. No one looked happy. The cardinal's hope for an impressive entry into Orvieto had been quite dashed, and Simon felt a sneaking pleasure at that.
Passing the corner where the procession had turned, he saw again a building he had passed earlier, a formidable three-story cube of yellow stone with slotted windows on the ground floor and iron bars over the wider upper windows.
And there is a man who looks happy.
He was standing in sunlight, leaning out from the square Guelfo battlements on the roof of the big building. His hair was the color of brass, his skin a smooth brown, such as Simon had seen on pilgrims newly returned from the crusader strongholds in Outremer. The blond man gazed down on the jostling, shouting crowd, smiling faintly.
As Simon rode past him, their eyes met. Simon was startled by the intensity of the other's gaze. It was as if a wordless message had crossed the space between them. A challenge. But then the blond man looked away.
The Tartar ambassadors, seated side by side in a large sedan chair, were farther up the street. Here, Simon noticed with relief, the crowd had fallen quiet. Perhaps curiosity about the Tartars, with their round brown faces and many-colored robes, had overcome whatever had roused these people against them. Then, too, the Tartars were surrounded by their Armenians marching on foot, curved swords drawn, as well as by Simon's knights on horseback, and Venetian crossbowmen. The archers' bows, Simon noticed, were loaded and drawn. Who had ordered that?
De Verceuil on a huge black horse—no palfrey this, but a powerful charger—rode up to Simon. "Why did you not remain in the forefront? What is going on up ahead?"
Without trying to defend himself, Simon described the disturbance.
"Could you not control the rabble?" de Verceuil growled, and turned to take a position beside the Tartars' sedan chair.
Simon's face burned, and his hands trembled as he stared after de Verceuil.
When they passed the yellow stone building, Simon looked up and saw the blond man still there on the roof. The man was staring down at the Tartars with that same burning look he had thrown at Simon, but there were no weapons in the hands that gripped the battlements.
Simon heard a slapping sound and an angry cry. He turned to see de Verceuil, his right cheek smeared brown.
God's death! Someone threw shit at him! And hit him right in the face.
The cardinal, his face distorted as if he were about to vomit, was staring at the stained hand with which he had just wiped his cheek.
There was laughter from the crowd, mixed with angry cries of "Bestioni! Creatures from hell!"
For an instant Simon felt laughter bubbling up to his lips, but cold horror swept all amusement away as he sensed what was about to happen.
De Verceuil turned to the nearest crossbowmen, who had not suppressed their own smiles.
"Shoot!" he shouted. "Shoot whoever did that!"
The smiles remained fixed on the faces of the Venetians as three of them aimed their already-loaded crossbows at the crowd. They did not hesitate. This was not their city; these were not their people. They were fighting men who did as they were ordered.
People screamed and shrank back against the shuttered doors and windows.
Three loud snaps of the bowstrings came at the same moment as Simon's cry of "No!"
He shouted without thinking, and was surprised to hear his own voice. His cry echoed in a sudden and terrible quiet.
Screams of agony immediately followed. People darted away from the place where the crossbowmen had aimed, leaving that part of the street empty.
Empty save for three people. Two of them screamed. One was silent—a young man who half sat, half lay against the stone wall of a house. Blood was pouring out of his mouth and more blood was running from a hole in his chest. Simon saw that the blood was coming in a steady stream, not in rhythmic spurts, which meant the fellow's heart had stopped. A glance at the white face told Simon the dead youth could be no more than sixteen.
Beside the boy, a woman knelt and wept. She was plump and middle-aged, perhaps his mother. Her white linen tunic was bloodied.
"He did nothing!" she cried. "Oh, Jesus! Mary! He did nothing!" There was a plea in her voice, as if she might bring the boy back to life if only she could persuade people of his innocence.
The other cries came from a man who stood about a yard from the dead boy. The bolt had gone through his left shoulder just above the armpit and pinned him to the oaken post of a doorway. He wanted to fall, but he had to stand or suffer unbearable pain.
"Help me!" he begged, casting pain-blinded eyes right and left. "Help me!"
Simon jumped down from his horse, throwing the reins to Thierry, and ran to the man. He put his left hand on the chest and pulled at the flaring end of the quarrel with his right. He could not move it. The bolt was buried too deeply in the wood. The man's forehead fell against Simon's shoulder, and he was silent. Simon hoped he had fainted.
Now Simon saw where the third bolt had gone. Six inches of it, half its length, was buried in a wall a few feet to Simon's right. The wall was made of the same grayish-yellow stone Orvieto was built on.
The crossbow bolt in the man's shoulder was thick and made of hard wood. Simon had nothing that would cut the man loose without hurting him even more. He looked up and down the street. It was quite empty now, except for a few people watching from a distance. The procession had gone on. He glanced up and saw that the blond man had left his place on the roof.
Friar Mathieu knelt beside the dead young man, one hand moving in blessing, the other resting on the shoulder of the weeping woman.
De Pirenne and Thierry, both mounted, the equerry holding Simon's horse, looked at him uncertainly.
"Go, Alain!" said Simon impatiently. "Stay with the Tartars."
He himself was neglecting his duty, he thought, as de Pirenne galloped off. But now that he was trying to help this poor devil, he could not abandon him.
"Can I do anything, Monseigneur?" Thierry asked.
As Simon was about to answer, he saw a middle-aged man wearing a carpenter's apron.
"Messere, can you bring a saw?" he called. "Hurry!"
It seemed hours before the man returned with a small saw with a pointed end and widely spaced teeth. He held it out to Simon.
Simon wanted to shout at the carpenter, but he took a grip on himself and said patiently, "You are bound to be better at sawing than I. Per favore, cut away the end of the crossbow bolt so we can free this man."
Gingerly at first, then working with a will, the carpenter sawed off the flaring end of the bolt with its thin wooden vanes. The pinned man awoke and was sobbing and groaning.
Once the protruding part of the bolt was sawed away, Simon took a deep breath, wrapped his arms around the sobbing man, and pulled him away from the wall. The man screamed so loudly that Simon's ears rang; then the man sagged to the ground. Blood flowed from the wound in his shoulder, soaking his tunic. Blood coated the stump of the bolt, still stuck in the door post. Simon dropped to his knees beside the wounded man. A pool of bright red widened rapidly on the flat paving stones.
Now what do I do with him? I must get back to my duty.
He spoke with the carpenter. "Press your hand on the wound, hard. That will slow the bleeding." Simon took the man's hand and put it on the hole the crossbow bolt had made.
"Here, let me do that." Friar Mathieu was on his knees beside the hurt man, his hand covering the wound. "Messere," he said to the carpenter, "ride my donkey to the hospital of the Franciscans. Tell them there is a man badly hurt here and Friar Mathieu d'Alcon says they are to send brothers to take him for treatment."
Simon stood up slowly as the carpenter climbed on Mathieu's donkey.
"It is not safe for you to stay here," he said to Friar Mathieu. "The people know you were part of the procession and may blame you for what happened."
Mathieu shook his head. "No one will hurt me. Go along now."
Simon jumped into the saddle and spurred his palfrey to a trot. Thierry rode beside him.
"Those two didn't throw anything," Thierry said.
"Of course not." Simon wondered if de Verceuil cared that the Venetians had shot two innocent men.
When Simon caught up with the procession, de Verceuil was still furiously scrubbing his face with his pale violet cloak.
"If you had done something sooner about the rioting, this outrage would not have happened to me," he said, a quaver of anger in his deep voice.
God help me, thought Simon. I could easily grow to hate him. Cardinal or not.
Word of the shootings must have spread through the city, Simon thought, because the twisting street leading to the cathedral was nearly empty.
But the piazza in front of Orvieto's cathedral of San Giovenale was packed with people. Simon's eye was immediately drawn to the top of the cathedral steps. There stood a white-bearded man wearing a red mantle over white robes glittering with gold ornament. On his head a tall white lozenge-shaped miter embroidered with a red and gold cross. In his hand, a great golden shepherd's crook at least seven feet tall. Simon's mouth fell open and he held his breath.
The ruler of the whole Catholic Church the world over, the chosen of God, the anointed of Christ, the heir of Saint Peter. His Holiness, Urban IV, the pope himself. Simon felt almost as much awe as he had that day in Paris when King Louis had let him kiss the Crown of Thorns.
How lucky I am to be here and see this man whom most Christians never see. It is close as one can come to seeing Jesus Christ Himself.
It looked to Simon as if the Holy Father were glowing with a supernatural light. To his left and his right stood a dozen or more men in bright red robes and wide-brimmed red hats with long red tassels dangling down to their shoulders. The cardinals, the princes of the Church. Simon wondered if the Tartars realized what honor this did them.
As soon as their sedan chair was set before the pope, the two short brown men stepped out of it, knelt, and pressed their foreheads to the cobblestones. They stayed that way until the pope gestured to de Verceuil, who bent and touched them on the shoulder and raised them up.
The pope turned and, followed by the Tartars and then the cardinals, proceeded into the cathedral. For this meeting to succeed, a papal mass was the best possible beginning.
So many people were ahead of Simon that Friar Mathieu caught up with him before he was able to enter the door of the cathedral.
"What do you think stirred up the crowd like that?" Simon asked as they pushed through the people standing in the nave of the church.
"In the cities of Italy the mob is always either furious or ecstatic," said Friar Mathieu.
"But to defile a cardinal!" Simon said. "That would never happen in France."
"Italians do not reverence the clergy as much as Frenchmen do," the Franciscan said with a little smile. "They have had to put up with the princes of the Church for so long that they are a good deal less awed by them."
The interior of the cathedral was ablaze with the light of a thousand candles, but Simon was not impressed by the windows, which were small and narrow and filled with dull-colored glass. This was an old church, he thought, remembering the huge windows of many-colored glass in the newer cathedrals of France.
The crowd was so tightly packed that Simon and Friar Mathieu could not get to the front of the nave, where chairs had been set before the altar for dignitaries. They had to be content with standing halfway down the length of the church. Simon thought wryly that he was getting used to being pushed into the background. Perhaps he was accepting it too easily.
Pope Urban, his white hair uncovered, had raised high the round wafer of bread for the Consecration of the Mass, when an angry shout echoed through the cathedral.
A chill went through Simon's body, cold as a knife blade. Using his shoulder as a wedge, he forced his way through the crowd toward the source of the sound, near the front of the church.
"Ex Tartari furiosi!" the man was shouting in Latin. "Libera nos, Domine!" From the fury of the Tartars, Lord deliver us! Cries of dismay rang out near the disturbance, and people began shouting in Italian.
"Stand aside! Let me through!" Simon shouted. If this were an assassin, reverence for the mass, even for the pope, must be set aside. Again and again the shout rose, "Ex Tartari furiosi!" It was harder to move through the crowd. People were struggling to get away from the man making the uproar.
Simon stopped, shoved men right and left to make room, and pulled his scimitar from his scabbard.
People around him turned at the unmistakable rasp of steel on leather, a sound that so often preceded sudden death. They saw the Saracen sword in Simon's hands and drew back. As Simon hoped, more people noticed and fell over one another trying to get out of his way.
Like Moses' rod parting the Red Sea, Simon's scimitar opened a path for him.
Simon saw a young man with a tangled mass of brown hair whipping about his face and a brown beard that spread over his chest. He was big and broad-shouldered, and he wore a plain white robe, ragged and gray with dirt, and sandals. In one hand he held a dagger.
Blood of Jesus! He must have come here to kill the Tartars.
Terrified people had opened a circle around the white-robed man, and as he moved toward the front of the cathedral the open space moved with him.
"Stop!" Simon cried.
Baring greenish-looking teeth in a snarl, the man swiveled his shaggy head toward Simon, then immediately rushed at him.
He's crazy, Simon thought, a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He crouched, holding his sword out before him, diagonally across his chest.
"Do not kill him!" boomed a deep voice that Simon recognized as de Verceuil's.
The man with the dagger hesitated now, just out of reach of Simon's sword.
Am I to risk my life to keep this madman alive?
But de Verceuil's demand made sense. They must try to find out who sent the man.
Simon took a deep breath. He had practiced sword fighting innumerable times, but only twice in his life had he come up against an armed man with a look in his eyes that said he was willing to kill.
But this is no different from practice, he told himself.
He feinted to the white-robed man's left, then jumped forward, lifting his sword high and bringing the flat of it down with all his strength on the hand that held the dagger. The dagger tumbled through the air. Simon saw at once that the man had no martial skill.
The madman darted forward in a crouch to retrieve his dagger, and as he did so Simon kicked him in the chin. The thick beard protected the man's chin from the full force of Simon's pointed leather boot, but he staggered. Before the bearded man recovered himself, Alain de Pirenne charged out of the crowd, seized him in a bear hug, and wrestled him to the ground.
"Ex Tartari furiosi!" The shouts rang out again and again as the pope's guards dragged the would-be assassin out of the church.
Simon saw Pope Urban shake his bare white head slowly, then turn back to the high marble altar and raise the Host overhead once more.
De Verceuil and Friar Mathieu reached Simon at the same time.
The cardinal held out his hand for the dagger, which Simon had retrieved, and studied it. "One could buy a hundred like it in any marketplace," he said, keeping his voice low now that the mass had resumed. He thrust the dagger into his black leather belt with a shrug.
"The white robe and sandals are the mark of the Apostolic Brethren," said Friar Mathieu. "Heretics who preach the doctrine of Joachim of Floris about a coming new age of enlightenment and equality."
"When it comes to heresy," said de Verceuil with an unfriendly grin, "there is little to choose between the Apostolic Brethren and the Franciscans. Many of your brethren are secret Joachimites."
"Of course, he might have been dressed that way only to deceive us," Friar Mathieu went on, ignoring the insult.
"We will find out who he is and whence he comes," said de Verceuil. "When we are through with him he will tell us everything. I have ordered him handed over to the podesta of Orvieto, who will subject him to questioning in his chamber of torment." He turned on the ball of his foot, his violet cloak swinging out behind him, and headed back toward the altar.
And not a word about my disarming the assassin, Simon thought angrily.
Friar Mathieu winced and shook his head sadly. "Then again, that man may not be able to say anything. And the less he can tell us, the more he will suffer. I pity him."
Simon cringed inwardly at the thought that by capturing the mad heretic he was the cause of the man's being subjected to horrible tortures. But greater fears preoccupied him. The Tartars had been in Orvieto only a few hours, and already the people had been stirred up against them and they had nearly been assassinated. Somewhere in this town an enemy lurked, and Simon's body turned cold as he wondered what that enemy would do next.