XII
A letter from Emir Daoud ibn Abdallah to El Malik Baibars al-Bunduqdari, from Orvieto, 21st day of Rajab, 662 A.H.:
Although the central part of Italy, the Papal States, is said to be under the control of the pope, I have learned that his army is barely large enough to protect his person and nowhere near enough to enforce his authority. Manfred could attack the pope whenever he wished, but he does not do so because he fears that the other princes of Europe would then attack him.
The northern part of Italy is divided among a number of cities, each of which is a small independent nation. These cities are often at war with one another. The most important are Venice, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Siena, Pisa, and Lucca.
Within each city there is also constant warfare among various factions. The palaces of the great families are all heavily fortified.
Italy is also divided between two parties, the Ghibellini and the Guelfi. These parties are to be found everywhere, constantly at each other's throats. They arose long ago in the northern part of the Holy Roman Empire, where the German language is spoken. The Hohenstaufen emperors came from the town of Waiblingen. And in the early days of the Hohenstaufens their enemies were a family named Welf. In Italy Welfs and Waiblings have become Guelfi and Ghibellini.
Each day I come to realize more and more how complicated the history of Europe is. It seems that most of Italy has been claimed by the Holy Roman Empire—but Rome itself is not part of that empire. Members of the Hohenstaufen family have been Holy Roman Emperors for over two hundred years, and they have always been at war with the popes. Why the emperor should be called "holy" when he is traditionally the enemy of the pope I do not understand.
Furthermore, at this time there is no Holy Roman Emperor. The last one was Conrad, son of Frederic and half brother of Manfred. He died ten years ago, and then Manfred proclaimed himself king of southern Italy and Sicily. The German part of the Holy Roman Empire is in a more chaotic state than Italy, if my lord can imagine such a thing.
Here in Orvieto, where the pope has settled for his safety, there are no Ghibellini. The townsmen have managed to find other reasons to fight among themselves. The chief rivalry is between two great families, the Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi. Since the Tartar emissaries are guests of the Monaldeschi, I hope to make friends with the Filippeschi.
Seated at a table in his little room at Cardinal Ugolini's, Daoud made two copies of his letter to Baibars on small sheets of parchment scraped so thin as to be almost transparent. He had written the letters in a code using the Arabian system of numbers. Even if the message suffered the unlikely fate of being intercepted and finding its way to one of the few Arabic-reading Christians, it would remain an enigma.
Daoud rolled up the two letters tightly and put them in the leather scrip at his belt. He stepped out of his room into a narrow corridor. Doors on his right opened into rooms for Ugolini's guests and high-ranking members of his staff. On his left, oiled-parchment windows let light into the corridor from the atrium of the mansion.
Ugolini's cabinet, his private workroom, was at the end of the corridor, where it turned a corner. Daoud walked up to the heavy oaken door and raised his fist to knock.
He felt light-headed, as he did when going into combat. This was combat of a kind. He had been a guest in Ugolini's mansion for over two weeks now, and he had already, he thought, hurt the Tartars' prospects for an alliance with the Christians. But he needed to do much more, with help from Ugolini. The cardinal, Daoud knew, would be absolutely terrified at the thought of his Muslim guest appearing before the pope.
And to appear before the pope, with the cardinal presenting him, was precisely what Daoud wanted to do.
He knocked on the cabinet door.
To the muffled query from within he answered, "It is David."
He heard a bolt slide back, and he entered the cabinet. Cardinal Ugolini returned to the high-backed chair at his worktable, which was strewn with leather-bound books and parchment scrolls. In the middle of the table lay a large, circular brass instrument Daoud recognized as an astrolabe. On shelves behind the cardinal, besides many more books and papers, were a stuffed falcon, a stuffed owl, and a human skull with a strange diagram painted on the cranium. Windows of translucent white glass in two walls let in an abundance of light. A good place to work, thought Daoud.
"I hope I do not disturb you, Your Eminence," said Daoud.
"Not at all, David," said the cardinal. "It is very necessary that we talk."
Cardinal Adelberto Ugolini was a short, stout man with long gray whiskers that swept out like wings from his full cheeks. His receding chin was as bare as the bald top of his head, partly covered now by a red skullcap. He wore a plain black robe, like a priest's, but from a chain around his neck hung a gold cross set with five matching blue jewels. Daoud wondered if the cross concealed a poisoned stiletto like Tilia's. Besides books and scrolls, Daoud noticed, there were rows of porcelain jars on the shelves against the wall. Each had a Latin word painted on it. Ugolini might well dabble in poison.
"The man they seized in the cathedral is to be publicly torn to pieces," Ugolini said. "They have been torturing him in the Palazzo del Podesta for three days and two nights, but they have learned nothing from him, except that he is a member of the Apostolic Brethren, a follower of the heretic Joachim of Floris."
If I am to go before the pope, I must learn about the disputes among Christians. It would not do to offend the Christian leaders by accidentally uttering heresy.
"What does this Joachim teach?"
Ugolini waved his hands dismissively. "Joachim died long ago, but his rubbish and madness still stir up the simple folk. The Church is too wealthy. The clergy are corrupt. The Age of the Holy Spirit is coming, in which there will be peace, justice, and freedom and all property will be owned in common."
The doctrines of the Apostolic Brethren sounded to Daoud like the teachings of the Hashishiyya, as told to him by Imam Fayum al-Burz.
Ugolini shook himself like a wet dog. "It is dangerous for you to involve yourself with such people as the Brethren."
It is dangerous for me to be here at all, Daoud thought, irritated at Ugolini's timidity.
"This heretic does not know me, so there is nothing he can tell them that will point to us. You need not fear."
"I feel no fear," Ugolini said grandly. "How did you get that man to draw a dagger in the cathedral?" Ugolini asked. "And the crowd, how did you stir them up?"
Daoud saw the tiny quiverings of Ugolini's pupils, the tightness of his lips, the clenching of his jaws, the signs of a man in a permanent state of terror.
Daoud shrugged and smiled. "Celino found the madman preaching against the Tartars at a crossroads and had men in his pay bring him to Orvieto. We did not tell him what to do. He did what he was moved to do. As for the crowd, all that was needed was for Celino to drop a word here and a coin there. Many people believe the Tartars are demons from hell. Perhaps they are. Anyway, I think we have turned the people of Orvieto against the Tartars."
"You are like a child playing with flint and tinder in a barn full of straw," said Ugolini, blinking his eyes rapidly.
He must be prodded into action, Daoud thought. Tilia said the idea of my appearing before the pope would terrify him. We must settle that today.
Daoud walked to one of the four mullioned windows. The casements swung inward for air. Looking down through the iron bars on the outside of the window, Daoud regarded the street where the Tartars had passed. The pottery maker across the road had washed away the bloodstains and was sitting in front of his shop displaying his brightly colored wares.
What would move this man Ugolini—money, threats, the promise of personal power?
He turned back and made himself smile.
"You do not want me here, Your Eminence."
Ugolini looked at him for a long moment, and finally said, "For over a dozen years Baibars has been a far-off figure who sends me small rewards in return for scraps of harmless information. Now, suddenly, his agent is in my home, demanding that I, the cardinal camerlengo of the Sacred College, risk death by torture to deceive the pope and betray the Church. In a week or two in the cathedral piazza, they will do horrible things to that poor mad heretic. But his sufferings will not be the tenth part of what they will do to me—and to you—if we are found out."
Daoud bowed his head. "The sooner I complete my work, the sooner I am gone."
While he let that sink in, he decided that with his next words he would pit his boldness against Ugolini's timidity.
"So, you must present me to the pope as soon as possible."
Ugolini's eyes grew wide and his mouth trembled. His stare, with his sharp nose, tiny chin, and trembling whiskers, gave him the look of a jerboa, one of those desert rats that Daoud had hunted with hawks in Palestine.
"Tilia told me you had some such mad notion," said the cardinal. "If you speak to the pope and his court, every important man in Orvieto will see you. If you make the slightest slip that could reveal what you really are, they will be on you like hounds on a fox." He laughed nervously. "No, no, no, no. I might as well take you to de Verceuil and say, 'Here is the enemy you are looking for. Behold, a Muslim, even a Mameluke! And, by the way, it was I who brought him into Orvieto.'"
Ugolini covered his eyes with his hand. He did look as if he had been losing sleep, Daoud thought, remembering what Tilia had told him.
Daoud felt his teeth grinding together in frustration. It would be easier to fight a band of Tartars than to try to put courage into this one little man. And he needed more from the cardinal than compliance.
I must make him want, not just to help me, but to lead the opposition to the Tartars. Otherwise this will be like trying to move the arms and legs of a dead man.
"The cardinals speak Latin to one another, do they not?" Daoud asked. "I will say my piece in Greek and you will translate it into Latin for me. So you will have a chance to cover any errors I make."
"Why must you go before the pope?" Ugolini demanded. "It is foolish bravado. Remain in seclusion and tell me what you want done and I will have it done for you."
The thought of keeping himself in hiding while trying to act through others made Daoud's flesh crawl. But there was a bit of hope here. At least Ugolini was offering to do something.
"This is a thing only I can do," Daoud said. "Only I have seen the Tartars, met them in battle. Only I have seen what they do to a conquered city." The sight and smell of those heaps of rotting corpses arose in his mind, and he shut his eyes momentarily. "What I can say is too important a weapon to be left unwielded. I know the Tartars better than any man in Orvieto, except for that priest in the brown robe who came with them. And he is on the other side."
"How will you tell what you know without admitting that you are a Muslim warrior?"
"Many Christian traders now visit the lands occupied by the Tartars. David of Trebizond has been one of them." He spread his arms. "As you see, I now dress like a wealthy merchant."
Celino had gone out with a bag of florins from Ugolini's first sale of jewels, and he had come back with a chest full of new clothes for Daoud. Today Daoud wore a silk cape as red as a cardinal's robe. It was light in weight and came down to his knees, more for display than for covering. Under the cloak he wore a tunic of deep purple embroidered with gold thread.
Ugolini shook his head. "Clothing will not deceive the pope and those around him. You are asking too much of me."
Daoud wished he could give this up. Ugolini was nothing but a sodden lump of fear. But he had no choice but to keep trying. The cardinal was his gateway to the papal court.
"Think of the reward," Daoud urged. "Part of the wealth I have brought with me is already yours. If the pope sends the Tartars away without an agreement, my sultan will give to you with both hands."
Ugolini looked tormented. "But the peril—"
Daoud had been certain that money would not be enough to enlist Ugolini's cooperation. Baibars already had been generous with him.
Bribes alone will not move this man.
As he searched his brain for another approach, his eyes explored the room. The skull, the powders, the brass instruments. Ugolini was a student of many strange things, things verging on magic. Were these not odd interests for a Christian prelate? He knew Greek, which was rare for a Latin Christian. He had spoken of heresy before. Was he not, in his willingness to correspond with Baibars, a heretic of a kind? And perhaps in these studies of his as well.
I must remind him that he sympathizes with us.
"My master sent me to you because he knows you are a friend to Islam."
Ugolini raised a cautioning hand. "Mind you, I am a Christian."
"I do not doubt it," said Daoud.
"Not a very good Christian," Ugolini went on, sighing and looking off into space. "God grant that I make a good confession before I breathe my last. But I am also of the south of Italy, and in my youth I lived side by side with Muslims. I had Muslim teachers, wise men. From them I learned about philosophy, medicine, astrology, alchemy. I learned how much there is to know that I may never know."
Daoud felt his eager heart beat more rapidly. Ugolini was speaking just as he wanted.
"God help me, I yearn so for more worldly knowledge," Ugolini went on. "That was why I studied for the priesthood, so I could go to the University of Napoli. But what one can learn at a Christian university is not enough. I want to know what you Saracens know. And so I long for peace between Christendom and Islam."
Daoud felt excitement surge through his arms and legs. He was exhilarated, as when in battle he sensed his opponent was weakening.
He pressed his point. "You will never possess the knowledge you long for if the Tartars destroy it. Think what was lost when they leveled Baghdad. Think what will be lost if they destroy Cairo, Thebes, Alexandria."
"Oh, God!" Ugolini cried, waving hands bent like claws. "There is so much I could learn in Egypt. If only this stupid enmity between Muslim and Christian did not hold me back. I am tortured like Tantalus."
"As cardinal camerlengo, the pope's chamberlain, you could bring before the pope a traveler from far away whose testimony might influence his decisions about the Tartars. Because of you, all that would be lost might be saved."
Daoud held his breath, waiting for Ugolini's reply.
Ugolini smiled resignedly. "To work for what I believe in, to help my friends. And to be rewarded with riches. How can I refuse?" His expression changed again as he looked earnestly at Daoud. "I do not know as much as your great Islamic astronomers, but I have plotted the courses of some stars, and I know how they rule our destinies. And my recent readings have told me that I will take a risk that will yield me rewards beyond my hopes."
"Then you will present me to the pope as a witness?"
Ugolini first shook his head, but then sighed and nodded. "I can propose a meeting. And may the stars watch over us," he added as his right hand traced the Christian sign of the cross on his forehead, shoulders, and breast.
The stars, your Messiah, and the One God I worship, thought Daoud. He allowed himself momentarily to feel the thrill of triumph. Ugolini had begun to move as he wanted him to. But now he must prepare himself for a much greater trial, his meeting with the pope.
A little while later, walking through a ground-floor doorway into the sunlit atrium of Ugolini's mansion, Daoud saw Sophia and Rachel standing by the fish pond, under orange and lemon trees. The polished dark-green leaves reflected the mid-morning sun upward and cast shade downward on the stone paths and the pool. Reflected sunlight rippled over Sophia's peach-colored gown. A narrow gold bracelet on her wrist flashed as she raised her hand to make a point. The answering smile that lit Rachel's face foretold that she would be a beautiful woman in a few years. She was dressed better than she had been when they first met her, Daoud noticed. That ankle-length blue silk gown must belong to Sophia.
"The cardinal has just had an immense turbot delivered all the way from Livorno, Messer David," said Rachel, her black eyes bright with wonder. "Alive, in a barrel of water. Look, you can see it down there at the bottom."
Daoud looked down into the clear water, saw a tapering dark shape moving gently just above the yellow pebbles lining the bottom of the pool. Smaller brown carp darted this way and that above it.
"The cardinal's gold makes great things possible," he said. "Will you leave us for a while, Rachel?"
Sophia handed a small leather-bound book to Rachel. "You may read these poems of Ovid if you like."
Rachel clasped the book to her narrow chest. "I do not read Latin, Signora, but I will look at the pictures."
"Have a care," said Sophia with a light laugh. "Some of them may shock you."
"Then I will try to enjoy being shocked." Rachel bowed and hurried away.
Daoud listened to the banter between the woman and the girl with mixed feelings. He liked both of them, and he enjoyed hearing them joke with each other. He imagined women must talk that way among themselves back in El Kahira, but if they did, men never had a chance to hear.
He also felt deeply uneasy at the growing closeness between Rachel and Sophia. The two of them shared a room on the top floor of Ugolini's mansion, next to Daoud's and Lorenzo's. His stomach tightened as he thought of the long talks they might have. What if Rachel learned that Sophia was actually a Byzantine woman, when she was supposed to be the cardinal's niece from Sicily? And what if Rachel then let that slip to a servant? Byzantines, Greek Catholics, were hated almost as much as Muslims here in the lands of the Latin Church. One small, seemingly harmless revelation like that could destroy them utterly.
I must get them separated.
Turning to Sophia, Daoud was struck once again that so much beauty should openly display itself outside a harem. A narrow cloth-of-gold ribbon wound around her neck, crossed between her breasts and tied her pale peach gown tightly at the waist. Her lustrous black hair was bound in a net of gold thread.
She looked at him quizzically. Daoud studied her face. Her long, straight nose, dark red lips and delicate chin made him glad that Christian women went unveiled. He could well believe this woman had enjoyed the attentions of an emperor and a king. He himself could not look at her without wishing he might take her in his arms.
"Well, my Frankish-Turkish master-slave, what has your busy mind found for me to do? Do you wish me to get myself shot in the street by Venetians? Or create a disturbance in church and be tortured to death?"
Her thrusts caught Daoud off balance. Feeling a surge of anger, he was silent for a moment.
Then he jabbed a finger at her. "Do you understand what is at stake here?"
Her full lower lip pushed out. "I do not understand why you had to send a pious simpleton to a horrible death."
Guilt twisted in Daoud's guts like a Hashishiyya dagger. Yet he could not admit to Sophia that he regretted what happened to the heretic. She might approve his feeling, but she would also lose confidence in him.
"I will use any weapon I can find," he said. "Even if it breaks in my hand."
Sophia sat down on the marble lip of the fish pond. After a moment's hesitation Daoud sat beside her, smoothing his red cloak under him.
"Where is Lorenzo?" she asked. "I have not seen him since the day the Tartars arrived."
"He visits Spoleto, to find a few bold men for me." Lorenzo would bring back two or three men from Spoleto. Later he would gather more men in Viterbo, Chiusi, and other nearby cities. Imperceptibly over the coming months, bands of armed men—the Italians called them "bravos"—would gather in Orvieto to do Daoud's bidding.
Acting as a go-between for Daoud and the bravos was a mission at which Lorenzo should do well.
"The men Lorenzo brings here will not know my name or my face," he went on. "In a few days Cardinal Ugolini will take me before the pope, and I will warn him against the Tartars from my own true experience of them. I must not be connected with other things done against the Tartars, disturbances among the people, armed attacks. That is why Rachel is such a danger."
She had been looking thoughtfully at the pebbled path. When he spoke Rachel's name, she lifted her head to stare at him.
"Are you going to make me give up Rachel?"
That annoyed him. "You agreed. Have you forgotten?"
"No, but I thought now that she has been with us awhile and there has been no trouble, you might change your mind."
"I do not change my mind so easily." By God, working with this woman was an ordeal. She argued and complained far too much. He wondered whether showing their faces in public made Christian women overbold.
"But where can she go? You would not really cast her out to starve."
"Tilia Caballo will take her in."
"You will force her into that horrible fat woman's brothel? And she only a child?"
"She is nearly thirteen. Many women are married by then."
"She has not even started bleeding yet."
"How do you know that?" Daoud felt somewhat embarrassed.
"She told me, of course."
"She need only be a serving girl at Tilia's."
"No doubt Tilia would find her too precious a commodity not to be sold. There are old men who would give that woman her own weight in gold to get their hands on an intact virgin child. And these high churchmen can afford it."
Daoud remembered the rough hands of the first Turks who captured him and shuddered inside himself. "She does not have to lie with men unless she chooses that life."
"Do you really think you and Tilia would be giving her a choice?" said Sophia angrily.
Again Daoud's feelings struggled against each other. He liked the way she spoke up fiercely for the child. Yet it angered him that she was making it harder for him to deal with the painful problem of Rachel.
"How much choice is anyone in this world given?" he demanded.
"Are you not here by choice, David?"
"I am the slave of my sultan," he said. "That is what the word Mameluke means—slave. He sent me here. But I am also here by choice."
"To save Islam from the Tartars." She reached her fingertips into the water and dabbed the droplets on her forehead.
He caught the note of skepticism in her voice. "Yes. Do you not believe that?"
"Can you see yourself through my eyes?" There was an earnestness in her face, as if she badly wanted not to doubt him.
"No, how do you see me?" he asked gently.
"I see a Frankish warrior, fair of hair and face." She turned and looked directly at him, then quickly cast her eyes down. "Good looking enough, for a Frank." She gestured toward his knee, encased in scarlet silk. "You show a handsome leg in your new hose."
Why, she cares for me! He felt a little leap of delight, and reminded himself that he must not let himself be drawn to Sophia.
"You and the Turks call all men from western Europe Franks," he said. "But my parents were not from France, but of English descent."
"You could go back to France or England with your jewels and buy a castle and lands and an army of retainers and live like a little king. And forget all about Islam and the Tartars."
He did not want to argue with her. He wanted to reach out and touch her lips with his fingertips.
"I consider myself blessed by God to have been raised amid the glories of Egypt rather than in ignorance and dirt among those you call Franks."
She nodded. "We Greeks think the people of Arabia and Egypt are the only other civilized people in the world. Almost as civilized as we Greeks." She said the last with a smile, and he noticed that her cheeks dimpled.
He laughed. "What makes you so civilized?"
She clasped her hands between her knees and cast her eyes upward as if in deep thought. "Ah, well, our churches are huge and magnificent."
"So are our mosques."
"Our paintings and mosaics and statues of saints and angels and emperors are the most beautiful in the world."
"Idols," he interrupted, but he turned to her and smiled as she had. "The Prophet ordered idols destroyed."
"And therefore the art of painting languishes among you," she said, poking her forefinger into his shoulder. "Someday I will show you my paintings if you promise not to destroy them."
His shoulder tingled where she had touched him. She must have been carried away by her feelings about the arts of her homeland to make such a gesture. Surely it could not have been deliberate. His hand rested between them on the edge of the fountain. He moved a bit closer to her so that the edge of his hand nearly touched her thigh.
He nodded. "I will teach you the art of calligraphy as my Sufi master practiced it, and save your soul."
I would really like to do that. Ah, but I cannot teach her to write Arabic. What if someone were to see her practice work?
He sighed inwardly.
"Hm," she grunted. "I doubt that you can save my soul. But as for writing, we are familiar with dramatists like Sophocles, philosophers like Aristotle. We read Latin poets like Ovid, whose book I just gave to Rachel. Here in his native Italy his work is thought licentious."
"I have read Aristotle and Plato in Arabic," he said. "And I have no doubt our Persian poets sing as gloriously as your Greeks and Latins. And for licentious tales, those told in our bazaars would turn your cheeks bright red."
Those cheeks were a smooth cream color, he observed. He looked about him. There was no one but himself and Sophia in the atrium. A multistoried gallery lined with columns and arches ran around all four sides of the central courtyard. There might be servants, spies for the cardinal, watching them, but he could see no one on any of the levels.
To the devil with them all.
For weeks he had been wanting to reach out and touch that unveiled beauty, that ivory skin. Now he did it. Very lightly his fingers traveled from her cheekbone to her jaw.
She reached up and took his hand—not to remove it, as he had momentarily thought she might, but to hold it briefly against her cheek, then let it go.
They sat silently looking at each other. She was so still that she seemed not even to breathe, while he discovered that his heart was beating fast and hard. He wanted to kiss her, but not here, where hidden eyes might be watching.
But kissing her at all would be a mistake.
The thought shook him—the realization that he must not get any closer to her. He felt as if a rope were tied around his neck and a cruel slave master had jerked on it.
She is not for me. She is for my mission.
He turned away from her.
"It is better if we do not grow too close," he said, fixing his eyes on a nearby orange tree. "I must use you. I will send you as my sultan has sent me, and you will lie with the man I choose as my quarry."
He looked back and saw that she was smiling sadly, her eyes clouded with disappointment. It pleased him in a bittersweet way to see that she shared his unhappiness.
"I am your slave, then?"
He shook his head. "I do not know whose you are—King Manfred's, I suppose. Or perhaps Emperor Michael's? You have been given to me in trust, like that emerald I brought here from El Kahira—from Cairo. What you will have to do here will be no worse, I am sure, than what you must have had to do before this."
"I am sure." There was a dark note in her voice now. He wished he could take back what he said and ease her bitterness, but he had spoken truly, and it was needful that she realize it.
"If you serve me well, I will reward you," he promised. "You will be able to do anything in the world you want."
"Of that I cannot be sure," she said.
This time it was he who took her hand and held it tightly for a moment. Her hand felt cool and lifeless in his grasp.
"We may not be lovers," he said, "but perhaps we can be friends."
"Perhaps," she said distantly.
Nettled, he rose and left her. If she would not accept him on those terms, could he trust her? He turned his back on her and left the garden.
He longed to know her thoughts. Could she love him? He knew he should not hope for that, because it would have to come to nothing, but he hoped she loved him at least a little.
It was not until he was back in his apartment, about to begin his noon prayer, facing the charcoal mark he had made on the wall to point out the direction of Mecca, that he realized what she had done to him.
Rachel! We settled nothing about Rachel.
He struck his fist on the wall. He would have to be more careful with Sophia. She could be very difficult. Even dangerous.
It is time I had a woman.
When a man went without the delights of the bedchamber for too long, he became too susceptible to the cleverness of beautiful women.
It had been four months since that last night in El Kahira when his wife, Baibars's favorite daughter, Blossoming Reed, had kept him awake all night with her devouring love, not caring that he must begin a great journey the following day—yes, because he was leaving her.
He remembered the words she had said to him when she gave him the locket just before the battle of the Well of Goliath. Take for your pleasure as many women as you like. But love always and only me. For if you do love another, I promise you that your love will destroy both her and you.
It would be best if he went to Tilia Caballo's brothel and enjoyed a woman he was not so likely to fall in love with.
Daoud strode through the crowded streets at dusk, enjoying the golden light that fell on the upper stories of the yellow houses of Orvieto. His scarlet cape blew out behind him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw heads turn to follow his passage. He walked close to the houses on his right, keeping away from the ruts and the rivulets of sewage in the center of the street. Men stepped into the filth, making way for him. He was bigger and better dressed than anyone he met, and a new sword with a jeweled hilt swung at his belt. The glances he caught from the short, dark men of Orvieto were not friendly.
They think I am a Frank, and like Sophia they hate Franks.
Pigs rooted in garbage in the quintane, the narrow spaces between the houses. Small dogs ran under his feet. What backward, unsanitary people these Europeans were! The sights and smells of Orvieto made him wish for the paved streets of El Kahira, where every day an army of slaves swept and cleared away refuse.
The cardinal had drawn a map of Orvieto for him, showing the principal streets and the way to Tilia's house. Daoud had committed the map to memory, using the concentration technique Saadi had taught him. Most of the streets had no names. He would have to find his way by landmarks. In the days to come, he planned, he would explore and add to the map in his mind until he knew every street in Orvieto.
The house of Tilia Caballo stood on a street that was wider than most at the east end of town. Even though Ugolini had described it as ordinary-looking, Daoud was surprised to see how much it resembled the shabby buildings on either side of it. He had expected some sign of luxury, some flamboyance. He had thought to hear music as he approached, as he would have outside one of the brothels of El Kahira—before Baibars closed them. The house was quiet, unadorned save for a third-floor balcony above the entryway. It gave no sign of who its occupants were. He knew it only by counting—fifth house from the corner, Ugolini had said. Unlike the roof of the cardinal's palace, which was flat, the roof of Tilia's house was sharply peaked.
It looked like anything but a brothel. And though there were enough small houses near it to hold two or three hundred people, the street was not crowded, as were streets everywhere else in Orvieto. He saw a few men lounging in doorways, a pair of men walking arm in arm past Tilia's front door, but that was all. Distinguished churchmen and men of wealth and good family could come here without attracting notice.
Even so, I seem to be the only visitor who comes before dusk. Well, if people see me and think I am a well-to-do merchant who frequents Orvieto's finest brothel, that is exactly what I want them to think.
He felt the heaviness in his groin and the lightness in his stomach that always accompanied his visits to women when he had done without pleasure for a long time. He wondered if the Christian courtesan he picked tonight would be able to match the accomplishments of the women who served the Mamelukes in El Kahira. She would surely not be able to equal the incredible pleasures he had enjoyed with Blossoming Reed.
He knocked at the plain dark-brown door, and it swung open immediately, as if the one behind it had watched him approach. There stood one of Tilia's black men, wearing a turban, robes, and pantaloons that for all the world made him look like a harem guard in El Kahira. The costume made Daoud uneasy. The slave bowed in silence, and with a sweep of his arm bade Daoud enter.
The entrance hall was a surprise. It seemed much too large for the building he had just entered. He stood on a Persian carpet in a wide, high-ceilinged room filled with light. Candles burned in sconces around the walls and in two chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Two tall, thick candles stood in twisting brass stands the height of a man on either side of a marble staircase. A pungent fragrance filled the air, and Daoud realized that the candles were scented. If Tilia could afford to burn this many candles every night, her trade must be profitable indeed.
He understood now why the interior of Tilia's establishment was so different from the exterior. She must have acquired all the buildings side by side along this street and then hollowed them out. He noticed that where the walls of the building through which he had entered should have been, there stood marble Roman columns two stories high. Counting the rows of columns stretching right and left, he estimated that this great hall must be as wide as five of the original houses that had been absorbed into Tilia's mansion.
The black man struck a large gong beside the door, giving off a low, mellow note. Almost immediately Tilia appeared at the top of the staircase. Smiling broadly, she flounced down the steps, the gold and jewels scattered over her person throwing off sparks in every direction.
"I knew you would be coming soon, David," she said in a low voice. "I am glad you came early in the evening. We can talk freely now. If more of my clients were here, we would have to seclude ourselves."
Daoud jerked his head at the black servant. "Why in God's name do you dress your men as Muslims here, where there is so much fear and hatred of 'Saracens,' as they call us?"
Tilia laughed, the pillow of flesh under her chin quivering. "Do you not know that it has long been fashionable among Christians to borrow from the world of Islam? They copy everything from ways of dressing to words and ideas. Most people think the Hohenstaufens have gone too far with their Saracen army, but among the great houses of Italy each must have its Moorish servants with great turbans and sashes and pantaloons. And here in Orvieto, the pope's city, it makes my clients feel especially wicked to enter a house staffed with slaves so dressed."
"I would not enjoy going into a brothel where the servants were dressed like Christian monks," Daoud said scornfully.
Tilia sighed. "I will tell you what seeing these men in Saracen garb does for me. It reminds me of when I was a young woman in Cairo." She looked around at her hall and sighed again. "Young and beautiful and unhappy. Now I am rich and content, but I tell you in all honesty I would give all this up to be young and beautiful."
Daoud was surprised. He had not known that Tilia had once lived in El Kahira. Was that, he wondered, how Baibars came to know her? Was that why, even though Daoud did not fully trust her, he felt oddly comfortable with her?
"And where are the young and beautiful and unhappy women in this house, then?"
She smiled and laid a hand on his arm. "Are you here to avail yourself?"
"First, I want to send a message to my master. Then that."
"Of course. Come with me."
He followed her up the marble steps, idly wondering if her rump looked as huge with her gown off, and whether Cardinal Ugolini actually did go to bed with her, and if so how he could be aroused by such a grossly fat woman. Not that Ugolini, with his rodent's face, was any more attractive than his mistress.
The stairs to the third floor were narrower and darker and more winding, and after that there was a maze of corridors to negotiate. Even with the help of the Sufi mental training for warriors, Daoud knew he would never be able to find his way here again.
Tilia gestured to a trapdoor. "Push that back for me."
Daoud climbed a ladder, raised the heavy door, and found himself on a walkway built over the centerline of a roof. It was wide enough for two men to stand side by side, but there was no railing, and on either side the red-tiled roof sloped down sharply. The walkway led to a small structure made of wooden slats, from which Daoud heard fluttering and cooing. The sight of the dovecote and the sound of the warbling pigeons reminded Daoud of the rooftops of El Kahira, and for a moment he yearned for a sight of the Bhar al-Nil flowing swiftly past the city or the sound of the muezzin's call to prayer.
He stopped to look around. This was an excellent vantage point. From here he could see that Tilia's mansion was actually shaped like Ugolini's, a hollow square around an atrium. The difference was that her establishment was made from the joining of many houses that had once been separate. From here he could also see most of Orvieto. Rows and rows of peaked roofs glowed warm red and orange in the sunset. Off in the northwest corner of the city bulked the great roof of the cathedral, like a galley among rowboats. To the south, the six square turrets of the pope's palace. And on all sides of the city, the rounded green hills of this part of Italy called Umbria.
"The piccioni fly to Napoli," said Tilia breathlessly behind him. Daoud was amazed at how she had managed to climb so many steps and finally a ladder. There must be muscle under all that fat.
He pulled open the whitewashed wooden door of the dovecote. His entry set off a furious flapping of wings, unleashing a storm of feathers in the dark enclosure. The smell of pigeon droppings was heavy in the warm air. He began breathing through his mouth to keep the odor out of his nose. Tilia pushed past him, whistling and clucking to the pigeons and calming them down.
"Who gets the messages in Napoli?" he asked.
She turned to him with a smile. "Another brothel keeper. A man. I will not tell you his name. The wives of my piccioni live in his dovecote. When I release a piccione here, he flies to Napoli and visits with his wife until one of my servants rides there and brings him back. Piccioni are much more faithful to their mates than men and women."
Daoud laughed. He enjoyed Tilia's cynicism. The strong light of the setting sun fell in bars through the slats across her face and body.
"How long does it take for the messages to reach El Kahira?"
She looked at him as if he were a simpleton. "Who can say? From Napoli someone must take the message capsules aboard a ship to a port in Outremer. So, how long it takes depends on whether the sea is angry or calm. Once in Outremer they might go on by piccioni again or by camel caravan. Once I had a reply within two months. The longest I had to wait was a year and three months." She had, Daoud noted, the brothel keeper's good memory for numbers.
"May this arrive sooner than that." Daoud reached into a leather scrip at his belt and drew out the two rolled slips of parchment, each crowded with tiny Arabic characters.
"Two letters? Where is the other one going?"
"Both to Baibars. They are duplicates. We do that in the field whenever possible. Twice as much chance that the message will get through."
"I will send one tonight and the other tomorrow morning. What are you telling him?"
Daoud was not sure Tilia should be asking him that. But as "Morgiana" she had sent Baibars dozens of long letters from Orvieto. Surely no one had a better right to know about this correspondence.
Daoud shrugged. "That I have arrived here safely with two companions sent with me by King Manfred, and that we have been welcomed by the one who was awaiting me. Even though this is written in a cipher, your name and the cardinal's name are not mentioned. I go on to say that we have stirred up the people of Orvieto against the Tartars and that I will soon speak against them before the pope. And I tell him something of what I have learned about Italy. He is very curious about the lands of the infidel."
"The cardinal has agreed to present you to Pope Urban, then?" Her eyebrows twitched and her mouth tightened.
Her look of displeasure irritated him. For all he knew, it was her influence that made Ugolini so difficult. But, he thought with grudging admiration, she herself seemed more resolute than the cardinal.
"He came to see that it was the only course open to us."
"You are persuasive. I see better why your master sent you." She took the parchments from him, rolled them even tighter, and tied each one into a tiny leather capsule. One capsule disappeared into a jeweled purse that hung on her hip. The other she put aside while she reached into a cage, whistling and twittering. Her hand came out again grasping a pigeon.
"This is Tonio. He is ten years old. He always gets through." Daoud was amazed at how calmly the pigeon reposed in Tilia's hand. He was even more surprised when she handed the bird to him, but he quickly took him, holding him around the back with thumb and forefinger behind his head, leaving his chest free so he could breathe easily.
"You've handled birds before," she said, deftly fastening a capsule under Tonio's wing. She took the bird back from Daoud. Outside the coop, she opened her hands and the bird took off with a fanning of wings.
"There now," said Tilia. "With that out of the way, perhaps you would like a piccione of another sort for your pleasure."
"I would indeed," said Daoud, feeling a warmth spread through his body.
"I have just the one for you," Tilia said, patting him on the arm as they returned to the trap door. "Her name is Francesca. She is beautiful, warm-hearted, and very discreet. She will serve you supper, and if you like her, you may spend the night with her. And you need pay me nothing."
"You are too generous, Madama," said Daoud, recovering from a small surprise. He had assumed that Tilia would give him access to her women out of simple hospitality, and it had never occurred to him that he would have to pay.