XVIII
A swollen yellow moon appeared over the treetops, and Simon was grateful for its light. Now they would have less trouble following the road.
Friar Mathieu said, "It is not an easy thing for so young a man to match wits with two powerful churchmen skilled in dialectic. I congratulate you on doing it at all."
Simon felt a hollow in his stomach. He saw himself going back to France, sneered at not only for his family's disgrace but for his own incompetence.
"Our mission must succeed," he said, clenching his fist. His voice rose above the creak of the wagon wheels, surprising even himself with his vehemence.
"God has His own ideas about what ought to succeed or fail," said Friar Mathieu. "Do not try to take the whole burden on yourself."
"I must," said Simon, feeling tears burn his eyes.
The voice in the semidarkness beside him was soft, kindly. "Why must?"
"Because of who I am," Simon said in a low voice.
"What do you mean, Simon?"
Can I tell him, Simon wondered. Ever since, seven years ago, his mother and Roland had told him the secret of his birth, questions of who he really was, questions of right and wrong, had assailed him, and there had been no one to ask. He loved his mother and he admired Roland, but they were too close to it all. But to tell anyone else would bring calamity down on all three of them.
There had been times during the years Simon had lived with King Louis that the king had seemed ready to listen. But Simon had also known that King Louis believed in doing right no matter whom it hurt.
Friar Mathieu, though, seemed to have more of a sense that life was not a matter of simple rights and wrongs. He could see the Tartars for the ferocious creatures they were, and yet feel kindly toward them. His wisdom and worldly experience could help Simon sort things out.
Then, too, there was a way to bind Friar Mathieu never to speak of this to anyone.
But when Simon tried to speak, his chest and throat were constricted by fear, and his voice came out in a croak. He felt as if he were under a spell to prevent him from uttering his family secrets.
"Father, may I confide in you under the seal of confession?"
The old Franciscan tugged on the reins of his donkey, so that they fell farther behind the rest of the party. Simon slowed his palfrey to fall back beside Mathieu.
"Is it truly a matter for confession, or just a secret?"
Simon's hands were so cold he pressed them against his palfrey's neck to warm them. How could he tell everything to this priest he had known only a few months? Perhaps he should just apologize and say no more.
But he thought a little longer and said, "It is a question of right and wrong. And if I am doing wrong, I am committing a terribly grave sin."
Friar Mathieu looked around him. "Very well, then, what you tell me is under the seal of the sacrament of confession, and I may repeat it to no man, under penalty of eternal damnation. Make the sign of the cross and begin."
Simon touched his fingertips to forehead, chest, and shoulders. For a moment he hesitated, his mouth dry and his heart hammering. He had promised his mother and Roland never to tell anyone about this.
But I must! I cannot have it festering inside me for the rest of my life.
What, though, if Friar Mathieu disappointed him? What if he had nothing useful, or even comforting to say on learning Simon's secret? Well, there was a way to test him.
The secret was really twofold. One part of it was terrible enough, but already known to the king and queen and many knights who had been on the last crusade. Simon could tell Friar Mathieu the lesser secret safely enough, then weigh his response and decide whether to tell him what was known to only three people in the world.
"I said I must make this mission succeed because of who I am. What have you heard about the last Count de Gobignon?"
By now the moon had risen high, and Simon could see the old Franciscan's face quite clearly. Friar Mathieu frowned and stroked his long white beard.
"Very little, I am afraid. He was a very great landowner, one of the five Peers of the Realm, as you are now, and he was zealous in putting down the Cathar heretics in Languedoc." He cast a pained look at Simon. "I spent the years when your father was prominent wandering the roads as a beggar, then studying for the priesthood, and I am afraid I paid very little attention to what was happening in the world."
Friar Mathieu's reply brought a sad smile to Simon's lips.
"That you, like most people, know so little of Amalric de Gobignon I owe to the generosity of King Louis and those close to him. The man whose name I inherited was a murderer, an archtraitor, a Judas. But when King Louis came back from that failed crusade in Egypt, he decreed that Count Amalric's deeds not be made known."
"I well remember my horror when I heard that the king was captured and his army destroyed," said Friar Mathieu. "I fell on my knees in the road, weeping, and prayed for him and the queen and the other captives. What joy when we learned they were ransomed and would be coming back to us."
"It was Count Amalric's treachery that caused the calamity." It seemed to Simon that Nicolette, his mother, and her husband, Roland, had told him the story hundreds of times. They wanted him to know it by heart.
"He believed that the Cathars had murdered his father, Count Stephen de Gobignon, my grandfather," Simon went on. "King Louis advocated mercy toward heretics. Count Amalric had a brother, Hugues, a Dominican inquisitor, who was killed before his very eyes by an assassin's arrow in Béziers while he was presiding over the burning of Cathars."
"Ah, those heresy-hunting Dominicans." Friar Mathieu shook his head.
"When Hugues was killed, Count Amalric blamed the king's leniency toward heretics. After that, it seems, a madness possessed the count. He came to believe he could overthrow the king and take his throne."
"He must have been mad," said Friar Mathieu. "Never has a King of France been so loved as this Louis."
"Count Amalric went on crusade with King Louis, taking my mother, Countess Nicolette, along with him, even as King Louis took Queen Marguerite. I was a very young child then. They left me in the keeping of my mother's sisters. The crusaders captured Damietta, at the mouth of the Nile, left the noncombatants there and marched southward toward Cairo."
Simon hesitated, feeling himself choke up again. These were the crimes of the man everyone believed was his father. It was agony to give voice to them.
But he plunged on. "At a city called Mansura, Count Amalric led part of his own army into a trap, and most were killed. He tricked the rest of the army, including the king, into surrendering to the Mamelukes. He alone escaped. He went to Damietta, supposedly to take charge of the defense. He made a secret promise to the Sultan of Cairo to deliver Damietta, together with the ransom money, if the sultan would slay the king and all the other captive crusaders."
Friar Mathieu gasped. "Why in God's name would a French nobleman do such dreadful things?"
"With the king and his brothers dead, he would be the most powerful man in France," said Simon. "He might have succeeded, but for two things. First, the Mameluke emirs, led by the same Baibars who now rules Egypt, rose in revolt and killed the sultan with whom Count Amalric was bargaining. Baibars and the Mamelukes preferred to deal honorably with their prisoners."
"Ah, yes, Baibars," Friar Mathieu nodded. "The Tartars hate him and all of Outremer fears him."
"And then a knight-troubadour captured along with the king, one who had an old grudge against the Count de Gobignon, offered to go to Damietta and meet the count in single combat. After a fierce combat he slew Count Amalric. The king and the surviving crusaders were saved and they ransomed themselves. The troubadour's name was Roland de Vency."
"I never heard of him," said Friar Mathieu.
"No, just as you never heard of Count Amalric's treason. The king wanted the whole episode buried in an unmarked grave along with the count."
There was silence between them for a moment. Simon listened to the cart wheels creak and looked up at the moon painting the Umbrian hillsides silver. Soon they would round a bend and see the lights of Orvieto.
Simon, torn by anguish, wondered what Friar Mathieu thought of him. Did he despise him, as so many great nobles did? He remembered that Friar Mathieu had once been a knight himself. How could he not hate a man with Amalric de Gobignon's blood in him? His muscles knotted as he waited to hear what Friar Mathieu would say.
He looked at the old Franciscan and saw sadness in his watery eyes.
"But what happened does not lie buried, much as the king and you would wish it to."
Simon felt tears sting his eyes and a lump grow in his throat. He remembered the sneers, the slights, the whispers he had endured. Such heartbreaking moments were among his earliest memories.
He shook his head miserably. "No. What happened has never been forgotten."
"You are ashamed of the name you bear." The kindness in Friar Mathieu's voice evoked a warm feeling in Simon's breast.
I was not mistaken in him.
"You are—how old—twenty?"
Simon nodded.
"At your age most men, especially those like you with vast estates and great responsibilities, are married or at least plighted."
Pain poured out with Simon's words. "I have been rebuffed twice. The name of de Gobignon is irrevocably tainted."
Friar Mathieu rubbed the back of his donkey's neck thoughtfully. "Evidently the king does not think so, or he would not have honored you with so important a task."
"He did everything possible to help me. When my mother and my grandmother fought over who should have the rearing of me, the king settled it by making himself my guardian and taking me to live in the palace. Then his brother, Count Charles d'Anjou, took me for a time as his equerry."
"Why did your mother and grandmother fight over you?"
The hollow of dread in Simon's middle grew huge. Now they were coming to the deepest secret of all.
"My mother married the troubadour, Roland de Vency. My grandmother, Count Amalric's mother, could never accept as a father to me the man who slew her son."
He felt dizzy with pain, remembering his grandmother's screams of rage, his mother's weeping, Roland facing the sword points of a dozen men-at-arms, long, mysterious journeys, hours of doing nothing in empty rooms while, somewhere nearby, people argued over his fate. God, it had been horrible!
Friar Mathieu reached out from the back of his donkey and laid a comforting hand on Simon's arm. "Ah, I understand you better now. Carrying this family shame, fought over in childhood, no real parents to live with. And the burden of all that wealth and power."
Simon laughed bitterly. "Burden! Few men would think wealth and power a burden."
Friar Mathieu chuckled. "No, of course not. But you know better, do you not? You have already realized that you must work constantly to use rightly what you have, or it will destroy you as it destroyed your father."
Yes, but ...
Simon thought of the endless fields and forests of the Gobignon domain in the north, what pleasure it was to ride through them on the hunt. How the unquestioning respect of vassals and serfs eased his doubts of himself. He thought of the complaisant village and peasant girls who happily helped him forget that no woman of noble blood would marry him. He reminded himself that only three or four men in all the world were in a position to tell him what to do. No, if only the name he bore were free of the accursed stain of treachery, he would be perfectly happy to be the Count de Gobignon.
Friar Mathieu broke in on his thoughts. "You feel you must do something grand and noble to make up for your father's wickedness. Listen: A man can live only his own life. The name de Gobignon, what is it? A puff of air. A scribble on a sheet of parchment. You are not your name. You are not Simon de Gobignon."
Simon's blood turned to ice. Does he know?
But then he realized Friar Mathieu was speaking only figuratively.
"But men of great families scorn me because I bear the name de Gobignon," he said. "I will have to live out my life in disgrace."
"God respects you," said Friar Mathieu quietly and intensely. "Weighed against that, the opinion of men is nothing."
That is true, Simon thought, and great chains that had weighed him down as long as he could remember suddenly fell away. He felt himself gasping for breath.
Friar Mathieu continued. "The beauty of my vows is that with their help I have come to know who I truly am. I have given up my name, my possessions, the love of women, my worldly position. You need not give up all those things. But if you can part with them in your mind, you can come to know yourself as God knows you. You can see that you are not what people think of you."
Tears of joy burned Simon's eyelids. Thank you, God, for allowing me to meet this man.
"Yes," Simon whispered. "Yes, I understand."
"But," said Friar Mathieu, a note of light reproof in his voice, "I know you have not told me everything."
Caught by surprise, Simon was thankful that the lantern up ahead started swinging from right to left, a ball of light against the stars.
De Pirenne's voice came back faintly to Simon. "Orvieto!"
From the cart in front of Simon, the one carrying the Tartars, came the sound of loud snoring. An Armenian chuckled and said something in a humorous tone, and the others laughed. Simon pretended to be intensely interested in what the Armenians were saying and in the view up ahead.
"Simon," said Friar Mathieu.
If he has relieved me of one burden, can he not take away the other, the greater?
"Patience, Father. We are coming to the spot where the road bends around the mountain, and we will be able to see Orvieto. Everyone will be gathering to rest a bit. Let us wait until we are spread out on the road again."
Friar Mathieu shrugged. "As you wish."
Across the valley the silhouette of Orvieto loomed like an enchanted castle against the moonlit sky. The yellow squares of candlelit windows glowed among the dark turrets and terraces. The tall, narrow windows of the cathedral church of San Giovenale were multicolored ribbons of light. Simon found himself wondering where Sophia, the cardinal's niece, was right now, and what she was doing.
When they were stopped by the shrine of San Sebastian, Simon took the lantern and peered down at the Tartars. The stench of wine and vomit hung heavily over their bed of straw, and both of them were snoring loudly. Aside from being in a stupor, they seemed well enough. The stringy black beard of the younger one, Philip, was clotted with bits of half-digested food. Friar Mathieu produced a comb from his robe and cleaned the beard. Simon rode to the head of the party.
"What are you and the old monk gabbling about back there?" asked Alain.
"He is hearing my confession," said Simon lightly.
Alain laughed. "If you have done anything you need to confess, you've been clever about hiding it from me."
When they were back on the road, Simon and Friar Mathieu took up their position at the end of the line.
"How did you know there was more, Father?"
"You asked me to keep what you have told me secret under the seal of the confessional," said Friar Mathieu. "But you have told me nothing that is a sin on your part."
Guilt pierced Simon's heart like a sword, twisting in the wound as he thought how he was betraying his true father and his mother.
I have sworn to Nicolette and Roland never to tell this to anyone.
He took a deep breath.
But I may never again have a chance to talk about it with a wise person I can trust.
Another deep breath.
And then: "The truth of it is, Amalric de Gobignon was not my father."
Friar Mathieu was silent for a moment. "The man who slew Count Amalric. The man your mother married soon after the count was dead." His voice was soft and full of kindness.
"Yes," said Simon, almost choking. "And now you know my sin. The world thinks I am the son of a traitor and murderer, which is bad enough. But I am not even that man's son. I am an impostor, a bastard, and I have no right to the title of Count de Gobignon."
Simon flicked the reins, and his palfrey started picking her way down the road into the Vallia de Campesito. Mathieu clucked to his donkey and kept pace with him.
"Do you believe that you are committing a grave sin by being the Count de Gobignon?"
"My mother and Roland say no, but I do not think they are very good Christians. They are full of pagan ideas. I am Count Amalric's only male heir. And the blood of the house of Gobignon does flow in my veins. I am not the son of Count Amalric de Gobignon, but I am the grandson of his father, Count Stephen de Gobignon."
Friar Mathieu clapped his hand to his forehead. "I am lost in the tangle of bloodlines. What in heaven's name do you mean?"
Simon's entire body burned with shame as he thought how accursed his family would seem to anyone hearing this for the first time. The bastard son of a bastard son. The usurper of his half uncle's title. Tangled, indeed. Twisted was a better word for it.
In his agony he whispered the words. "Roland de Vency, my true father, is the bastard son of Count Stephen de Gobignon, sired by rape in Languedoc. Roland and Count Amalric were half brothers."
"God's mercy!" exclaimed Friar Mathieu. "But then you do have some claim by blood to the title. To whom else could it go?"
"I suppose the fiefdom could go to my oldest sister, Isabelle, and her husband. He is a landless knight, a vassal of the Count of Artois. My three sisters married far beneath their stations—because of what Count Amalric did."
Friar Mathieu sighed. "Would any great evil come of it, do you think, if you were to give up your estate?"
"My mother and father—my true father, Roland de Vency—would be exposed as adulterers. We would all be charged as criminals, for defrauding the kingdom and the rightful heirs, whoever they might be." He saw his mother kneeling with her head on a chopping block, and a chill of horror went through him.
"Simon, this is no easy question you have set before me this night. The lives of thousands of people, even the future of the kingdom, could be determined by who holds the Gobignon domains. I think it is not so important that the Count de Gobignon be the rightful person as that he be the right person. Do you take my meaning?"
"I think so," said Simon. What Friar Mathieu was saying gave him a faint feeling of hope.
"I know you well enough to know that the people of Gobignon are blessed to have you as their seigneur. When a bad man inherits a title, we say it must be God's will, and those who owe him obedience are bound to accept him. Might we not say that when a man like you is invested with a title, regardless of how he came by it, that is God's will, too? In any case, Simon, we cannot settle this question tonight. There is too much at stake, and we must proceed thoughtfully."
"But what if—if something happens to me while I am in sin?" Simon pictured himself lying in a street in Orvieto, blood streaming from his chest as Sophia watched, weeping, from a distant window. And then he saw grinning Saracen-faced demons in hell jabbing him with spears and scimitars.
"I can give you absolution conditional on your desire to do whatever is right," said Friar Mathieu. "Promise God that you will make all haste to determine His will in this matter and that when you know what He wants, you will faithfully do it, whether it be to give up the title or to keep the title and the secret. I need hardly remind you that God sees into your heart and knows whether you truly mean to set things right. Say an Act of Contrition."
The weight of shame seemed as crushing as ever, and Simon did not think Friar Mathieu's speaking Latin words while he himself spoke the formula of repentance would take the burden away. But he began the Act of Contrition.
His voice as he uttered the prayer was barely audible over the clicking of the horses' hooves on the stony road, the rumbling of the two carts and the rustling of the pines on the hillside. He repeated what Friar Mathieu had said to him about being ready to follow God's will. Then the old Franciscan made the Sign of the Cross in the air.
The road narrowed now so that there was not enough room for horses side by side. Simon fell behind Friar Mathieu.
Roland and Nicolette need never know I told anyone.
The only way they would find out would be if he felt called upon to reveal the secret to the world.
He felt as if his whole body were plunged into icy water. He realized that by his promise to Friar Mathieu—to God—he was embarked on a course that could end in ruin or worse for his mother and father as well as himself. Their pretense that Simon was Amalric's child was a crime. He saw them all brought as prisoners before King Louis.
How could he bear to face the king, whom he admired more than any other man in France, even more than his own true father?
What punishment would the king mete out to them? Would they spend the rest of their lives locked away in lightless dungeons? Would they have to die for their crime?
Surely God would not ask that of him.
And then, Simon might decide, with God's help, that he had the best right of anyone to the count's coronet. If he kept it, and kept the secret of his parentage, it would be through his own choice. No mortal would thrust that choice upon him.
He began to feel better. He started humming a tune, an old crusader song Roland had taught him, called "The Old Man of the Mountain."
Until now other hands had shaped his life. From this moment on he would hold his destiny in his own hands.
"May I disturb you for a moment, Your Signory, before you retire?" The Contessa di Monaldeschi's chief steward was a severe-looking man with long white hair streaked with black.
Simon had just set foot to the steps leading to the third story of the Monaldeschi palace, where his bedchamber waited. He most definitely did not want to be disturbed this evening. But the steward had shown gravity and discretion arranging for the drunken Tartars to be bundled off to bed, and Simon felt that whatever he might say would be worth listening to.
"Late this afternoon a vagabondo came to our door. He claims to be a former retainer of yours. He begs an audience with you—most humbly, he says to tell you. He waits in the kitchen. We can keep him till tomorrow. Or we can put him out in the street. Or you can see him. Whatever Your Signory desires."
A former retainer? A sour suspicion began to grow in Simon's mind.
"Did he at least tell you his name?"
"Yes, Your Signory. Sordello."
Simon felt hot blood pounding at his temples in immediate anger.
Has that dog had the temerity to follow me all the way to Orvieto?
"Send him away," he said brusquely. "And do not be gentle about it."
The steward's stern face remained expressionless. "Very good, Your Signory." He bowed himself away. A good servant, thought Simon. He showed neither approval nor disapproval. Simon started up the stairs.
What the devil could Sordello have to talk to me about?
Do not call upon the devil. He may hear you and come.
Halfway up the stairs Simon felt the itch of curiosity growing stronger and stronger. Perhaps Sordello had been to see Count Charles and had some word from him. The feeling was like a scab Simon knew he should not pick but could not let alone.
He turned. The steward was almost invisible in the shadows at the end of the long hallway.
"Wait. I will go to him."
In the kitchen on the bottom floor of the Palazzo Monaldeschi, under a chimney in the center of the room, a cauldron big enough to hold a man simmered over a low fire. From it came a strong smell of lamb, chicken, onion, celery, peppers, garlic, cloves, and other ingredients Simon could not identify. Beyond the cauldron a trapdoor covered the stairs to a locked cellar pantry where, Simon knew, the Monaldeschi hoarded possessions as costly as jewels—their collection of spices imported from the East.
Simon had just a glimpse of the ruddy face with its broken nose before the crossbowman-troubadour fell to his knees and thumped his forehead on the brick floor.
Perhaps I could pop Sordello into that cooking pot and be done with him for good and all.
"Thank you, Your Signory, for being willing to see me," came the muffled voice from the floor. "You are far kinder than I deserve."
"Yes, I am," said Simon brusquely. "Get up. Why have you come to me?"
Sordello rocked back on his heels and sprang to his feet in a single, surprising motion. Simon told himself to be wary. It was all very well to be gruff with Sordello, but he must keep in mind that the man was a fighter, a murderer. And one with a vile and overquick temper, as he had proved in Venice.
"I have no one else to go to." Sordello spread his empty hands. He had grown a short, ragged black beard, Simon noticed. He wore no hat or cloak, and his tunic and hose were stained and tattered. His tunic hung loose, unbelted. No weapons. That made Simon feel a bit easier. The toe of one boot was worn through, and the other was bound with a bit of rag to hold the sole to the upper.
"I thought you would see the Count d'Anjou." And Simon had half expected Uncle Charles would send Sordello back with a message insisting Simon take the fellow back into his service.
Sordello laughed and nodded. "Easy to say 'see the Count d'Anjou,' Your Signory. Not so easy to do when you are a masterless man with an empty purse. The count likes to move about, and quickly at that. But I caught up with him at Lyons. He already knew the whole story."
"I wrote to him," said Simon.
"Well, your letter must have been most eloquent, Your Signory, because the count refused to take me back into his service. He called me a fool and a few other things and told me I deserved exactly what I got. Told me if I wasn't out of the city in an hour he would have me flogged."
"I assumed that the count reposed great confidence in you, and I felt I must convince him that I had done the right thing in dismissing you." He sounded in his own ears as if he were apologizing. He reminded himself firmly that the scoundrel had no right to an apology.
"You convinced him, all right." Sordello's manner was becoming less humble by the moment.
He is either going to attack me or—worse—ask for his position back. I must not be soft with him.
"Once a man as well known as the Count d'Anjou has expelled you from his service, you can't find a position anywhere in France or Italy," said Sordello. "Not if your only skills are fighting and singing. I sold my horse in Milan. I walked from there on. I ran out of money in Pisa. I starved and slept in ditches to get here."
"And stole here and there, too, I'll wager," said Simon, determined to be hard with Sordello. "Well, here you are, and why have you come?" He knew the answer perfectly well, and was determined, no matter how the troubadour tried to play on his sympathies, to send him on his way. Even if he had wanted to take Sordello back into his service—and he most definitely did not—the Armenians and the Tartars would never permit his presence among them. At any rate, regardless of what Sordello claimed, he would not starve. He could sing for his supper in inns. And Italy's street-warring families and factions could always use a dagger as quick as Sordello's.
"I could throw my lot in with the Ghibellini, Your Signory, but their prospects are poor," said Sordello, as if aware of Simon's thoughts. "The day is coming when all of Italy will be in the power of the Count d'Anjou. I want to get back into his good graces, and the only way I can do that is through you, Your Signory. If you take me back, he will take me back."
David of Trebizond's servant, Giancarlo! Just today, was I not wishing I could put someone in the enemy camp?
Simon stood staring into Sordello's eyes, deliberately making him wait for an answer. The troubadour's eyelids wrinkled down to slits, but he held Simon's gaze.
"I was going to tell you I had nothing for you." Simon saw Sordello's face brighten at the hint that Simon would offer him something. "But there is a way you can serve me."
Sordello began to smile.
"It does involve throwing your lot in with the Ghibellini," Simon said, "but you will be serving me and, through me, Count Charles. Does that interest you?"
Sordello dropped to his knees, seized Simon's hand, and kissed it with rough lips. "To spy upon them? Your Signory, I was made for such work. Thank you, thank you for letting me serve you. Command me, Your Signory, I beg."