XXXII
Simon remembered those kisses in the garden of the Palazzo Monaldeschi as he looked again at Sophia, and his arms ached to hold her. But he must keep himself in check. He was still not sure he could trust her. And even if he were certain of her honesty, courtly love commanded him not to touch her until months, perhaps years, of worshipful wooing had passed.
Sophia said, "I must tell my uncle that his mansion is not as well protected as he thinks it is. His guards must have been asleep tonight."
Her oval face reflected the warm glow of the five or six small candles she had placed around her room. Her dark brown hair was unbound and fell in waves to her shoulders. He felt his heartbeat quicken as he looked at her.
"You did invite me here, Madonna." Simon felt rather proud of the way he had scaled the wall by the courtyard gate, waited till the cardinal's guards were out of sight, then climbed to the roof of the central wing.
"Yes, but I did nothing to help you, and I truly do not see how you got here." She stood facing him, her hands at her sides. He was not sure whether the gown she wore was for bed, or for him, or both. It was a translucent white tunic, sleeveless and cut deep in front, revealing the swelling of her breasts, pulled in at the waist by a cloth-of-gold belt. A large gold medallion stamped with a horse's head hung from a gold chain around her neck. His eyes kept traveling from her shoulders to her bosom to her narrow waist. The effort of holding himself back from touching her was agony. Sweet agony.
"I am trained in the art of stealing into castles."
"I thought the French were more given to marching up to a castello in broad daylight, banners flying, and taking it by storm," she said. Her teeth flashed in the candlelight. He wished she would invite him to sit down. But then he saw in what she said an opportunity to raise the subject of trust.
"True, Madonna. We French excel at open warfare, whereas you Italians seem more adept at intrigue."
"Intrigue? What do you mean?"
He tried to sound lighthearted. "Oh, for instance the clever way you diverted my attention at the Palazzo Monaldeschi while David of Trebizond had the Tartar ambassadors making fools of themselves."
For a moment she did not speak.
Then she said abruptly, "I bid you good night, Your Signory."
He drew back, shocked. "Madonna!"
"The same way you came will see you out."
"I but meant to praise your skill at diplomacy. I hope I have not given offense."
"A gentleman always knows when he is giving offense."
"I—I merely wish to clear—to set my mind at rest," Simon stammered. He cursed himself for his heavy-handed attempt to test her. It was true, the French were no good at intrigue.
"Rest your mind somewhere else." She went to the door and stood there, back to him. Was she going to call for help? How embarrassing it would be if he were caught here.
The beautiful curve of her back distracted and confused him still more.
"If you do not leave, I will," said Sophia, grasping the black iron door handle. "You may stay in this room forever if you wish."
What a brouillement I have made of this rendezvous. Casting about frantically in his mind, Simon wondered what his troubadour father, Roland, would have done.
Or Sire Tristan or Sire Gawain, what would they do now?
There was no more time to think. He must act. He threw himself to his knees, arms outstretched, and waited. A long, silent moment passed. Finally Sophia turned her head. Her lips—those tender, rose-colored lips—parted and her eyes widened. She turned all the way around.
She started to laugh.
"Laugh at me if you will, but do not cast me out." The sound of her laughter was like the chiming of a bell. After a moment she stopped laughing and smiled. A lovely smile, he thought, a kindly smile. He could happily kneel here for as long as she went on smiling.
"I have never had a man kneel to me before." A faint vexation flickered across her face. "First you accuse me of kissing you only to further my uncle's plots against the Tartars. Then you kneel to me. What am I to make of you?"
Relief swept over him as he realized she was no longer angry.
"Make me your slave."
"My slave? You are toying with me, Your Signory."
"Toying with you? Never. Call me Simon if it please you."
"You would be my friend?"
"I would be more than your friend, Madonna."
She came to him and held out her hands. Her smile was dazzling.
"Well then, Simon, you may call me Sophia. And you may rise."
Simon grasped her hands, feeling joy in his very fingertips. He vaulted to his feet and thought of taking her in his arms, but she freed her hands with a quick, unexpected motion and took a step backward.
With just a movement of her hands she can lift me up or cast me down.
"For a man to kneel to a woman is not the custom in Sicily, Simon," she said softly.
It was as he suspected. She was not familiar with the ways of courtly love.
"If I do anything that seems strange to you, Sophia"—he used her name for the first time, and it thrilled him—"know that my actions are ruled by what we call l'amour courtois, which means that we know how to value women, whose value is beyond price."
"I have heard of courtly love. It sounds blasphemous to me, almost as if the man worships the woman. I do not think your patron saint would approve."
"My patron saint?"
"Him." She pointed to the small painting in a gilt wooden case that stood open on a large black chest. Candles in heavy enamel sticks stood on either side of the painting.
Sophia took his hand. At the touch of her cool fingers the muscles of his arms tensed. She led him across the room. Still holding his hand, she spread the wings of the case wider apart so he could see the image.
That it was a saint was apparent at once from the aureole of gold paint encircling the black hair. Simon saw a narrow face with huge, staring blue eyes painted with such bright paint they looked like sapphires. Compared with the saint's eyes the sky behind his head seemed pale. There were purplish shadows under the eyes, and the cheeks curved inward like those of a starving man. The beard and mustache hung straight but were ragged at the ends, and what little could be seen of the saint's robe was gray. To the left of the halo, in the background, stood a fluted ivory pillar with a square base and a flaring top. The pillar connected the azure sky and ochre ground. Simon felt admiration for the face; in that desolate scene the saint must have endured great privation and come through with holy wisdom.
"A wonderful face," he said, turning to Sophia with a smile. "And you say this is my patron saint?"
"Simon of the Desert," she said. "Simon Stylites."
"Stylites? What does that mean? I do not know Greek."
"Neither do I," she said, "but a priest told me that his name means 'he of the pillar.' Saint Simon was a hermit who lived ages ago, when the Church was young. He dwelt and prayed for thirty years on top of a pillar that was all that was left of an ancient pagan temple. That is the pillar behind him."
Live on top of a pillar for thirty years? Questions crowded into Simon's mind. How did he keep from falling off when he slept? Would not the burning desert sun have killed him? How did he get food and water? After thirty years the pillar ought to be surrounded by quite a pile of—
No, he put that thought firmly out of his mind. After all, the whole point about saints was that they were not subject to natural laws.
He asked only one question. "How high was the pillar?"
She shook her head. "I do not know. So high that he had to climb a ladder to get to the top. Then his disciples took the ladder away." She pointed at the pillar in the painting. "I tried to paint it so that it could be any height you might imagine."
"You painted this?"
"You find that hard to believe," she said with amused resignation. "That is why I hardly ever tell anyone. Many people would be sure I was lying. Others would think that a woman who paints is some kind of freak. Or that it is somehow dishonorable for a lady to paint, as if you, for instance, were to engage in trade. What do you think?"
"I think God has given you a very great gift," said Simon solemnly.
She squeezed his hand, giving him exquisite pleasure, and then, to his sorrow, let it go. "I hoped you would understand." She put the candlestick down, and Saint Simon Stylites receded into the shadows.
"I knew that you were going to be someone very important in my life when I found out your name is Simon," she said. "I think my saint wished us to meet."
How sweetly innocent she was, Simon mused. He was ashamed of the thoughts he had been entertaining about her ever since they had kissed in the Contessa di Monaldeschi's garden. Over the days and nights he had gradually grown more and more familiar with her—in his fancy.
He had thought about holding her breasts through her gown, then putting his hand on the warm, soft flesh, had thought about lying beside her in her bed, both of them nude. He had even, one cool night, allowed himself to imagine entering her body and lying very still, clasped inside her.
The ultimate act of l'amour courtois, this had been quite beyond his power of self-restraint with the women who played at courtly love with him in Paris. The way Sophia excited him, it was even less likely that he could hold himself back while remaining inside her for hours, as a true courtly lover was expected to do.
And now Sophia went over to the very bed he had imagined, and perched on it. The frame of the canopied bed was high above the floor, and when Sophia sat on it her feet dangled prettily, reminding Simon how much shorter than he she was. The sight of her on the bed made him tremble, frightened by his own passion. There was no one here to protect this innocent girl from him, except himself.
"Sit with me," she said, patting the coverlet beside her. He knew that the best way to protect her was to go nowhere near her. But he wanted desperately to sit beside her, to feel her hand in his again, to put his arms around her.
But if I take her in my arms, on her very bed, how can I stop myself?
Still, she had invited him to sit with her, and an invitation from his lady was a command.
He had intended to sing a love song to her. He had not the skill at making poetry to be a troubadour, but he had a good tenor voice, and he had learned dozens of troubadour songs early in life from Roland. He had sung them before he understood what they meant, because he liked the sound of them.
He bowed and went to the bed. He sat as far from her as possible.
"Will you let me sing for you?"
When she smiled, he noticed, dimples appeared in her cheeks. "Oh, that would be a pleasure. But softly, please. We do not want to rouse my uncle's servants."
Softly, then, he sang.
My love is the flower that opens at morning,
That greets with her petals the radiant sun,
Yet methinks 'tis not she who lives by the sun,
But the sun gives its light so my lady may shine.
Sophia's smile was itself sunny as he finished the first verse. She leaned back, putting her hands out behind her on the bed, and closed her eyes as he sang the second and third. When he began the fourth verse, she drew closer to him till their legs were touching. Making himself concentrate on his music, he went on to the fifth verse. He resolved that at the end of it he would stand up and move away.
At sunset my love will close up her petals
Till with the dawn she awakens again,
And her beauty will blaze out to dazzle the day.
To see her the sun will be eager to rise.
By the end of that verse she was leaning against him and had reached around behind him to stroke his neck. Without his consciously willing it, his arm stole around her waist and pulled her to him.
His song, he realized, was insidious in its power. He had thought only to entertain her with his music, but he was seducing her. Her head rested on his shoulder, her eyes closed. Her fingers crept slowly, delicately, across the back of his neck under his hair, sending thrills down his spine. He could not move away from her.
"Stop," he whispered. "Please stop."
"Are you afraid of me?" she asked softly.
"I am afraid for both of us. You do not know what a raging fire a lovely woman like you can kindle in a man like me."
She withdrew her hand from his neck and let it rest on his thigh. That, he thought, made it even more difficult for him.
"I must tell you something," she said. "I am not—wholly innocent."
His heart felt a sudden chill. How could this dear creature be anything but innocent?
Now her hands were in her lap and her eyes were cast down. "As you surely know, most women past twenty, unless they are nuns, have been married for years. You must have wondered what I am doing in Orvieto, unmarried, living with my uncle."
"I never thought about it."
"Then you are very innocent."
Simon felt himself wilt inwardly. How could he have been so blind as not to wonder why Sophia was not married? She had seemed timeless to him and attached to no one. Even her relation to the cardinal, except that it put her in the enemy camp, seemed unimportant.
"You have a husband?" His voice was heavy with sorrow. Foolish as it was, he had dreamed that she might be virginal. But that made no sense, now that he considered it. The rule in courtly love was to fall in love with a lady who was married to someone else. His Parisian courtly lovers had been married women. If Sophia were already married, that should make it better.
Then why did he feel so disappointed?
"I was married at fourteen. His name was Alessandro. He died two years later of the damned fever that takes so many of our good Sicilian people. He was very kind to me, and I was inconsolable."
"Ah. You are still in mourning for him?"
She turned her hands over, showing empty palms. "I loved him so much that I could not think of marrying another man in Siracusa. At length my mother and father decided to send me to live with my uncle in the hope that I could forget Alessandro enough to consider marrying again."
"I have met no one I am drawn to but you, Simon, and marriage between you and me would be unthinkable. My family's station is so far beneath yours."
His heart leapt happily. She was free, yet, as she said, not wholly innocent. He need not feel quite so guilty about the passionate thoughts he had been having about her. And as for marriage between them being unthinkable, she did not know that none of the great houses of France would consider a daughter of theirs taking the name de Gobignon. Her nonclerical family might be of low station, just as the pope's father had been a shoemaker, but Sophia was the niece of a cardinal, a prince of the Church.
It was love, not thoughts of marriage, that had brought him here tonight. Still, he must respect her honorable widowhood. Since she had loved her husband, she might be more susceptible to him, and he must guard her virtue all the more steadfastly. Perhaps she thought that he respected her less as a widow. He must reassure her.
She was not holding him any longer. He could stand up without tearing himself away from her. He sprang to his feet and strode to the center of the room.
"Believe me, I think you just as pure as if you had never been married at all."
She looked up at him, surprised, her hands still folded in her lap, her dark eyes wide.
"I am delighted to hear that. But"—she cast her eyes down and smiled faintly—"does that mean there is to be nothing at all between us?"
"I love you!" Simon declared. "I will always love you. I think of you night and day. I beg you to love me in return."
"Oh, Simon. How beautiful." She held out her arms to him. But he stayed where he was and raised his hands warningly.
"I mean to love you according to the commandments of l'amour courtois. With every fiber of my being I yearn to be altogether yours, but you must restrain me."
"I must?"
"You must be what the poets of old Languedoc called 'mi dons'—my lord. You must rule me. One day we will join together in body, but only after I have been tested and found worthy."
"Is that what courtly love means?"
"Yes, and that is why it is more beautiful than marriage. Husband and wife may embrace carnally the moment the priest says the words over them. No, they are required to. Courtly lovers know each other only when love has fully prepared the way, so that their coming together may be a moment of perfect beauty."
Sophia looked at him silently. Her face was suddenly unreadable.
"Do you understand?" he asked after he had stood awhile gazing into her lustrous brown eyes. "These ideas are perhaps new to you."
"The woman is ruler of the man?"
"Yes."
The corners of her mouth quirked. "Then what if I were to command you to get into this bed with me?"
He was certain from her sly smile that she was joking. But he could think of no clever answer. He considered what he had read, what he had been told, what he had done with other women. None of it helped. The women who fell into bed with him on the first tryst had not been serious about love, nor had he been. In all the lore of l'amour courtois the woman made the man wait—sometimes for years, sometimes for his entire life—and the man was happy to wait, and that was all there was to it.
Then he remembered something his mother had said, a secret so precious he would never tell anyone, not even Sophia. Not even Friar Mathieu needed to know it. But it guided Simon now.
The first time your father and I were alone together I wanted him then and there. But he was strong enough for both of us. It was a whole year before we possessed each other in body. And you came of that union.
"You will not command me so," he said with cheerful confidence.
Her eyebrows rose—they were strong and dark, like a raven's wings. "Indeed?"
"Because you know how much better it would be to wait. We both want each other now. But if we restrain that hunger, it will grow. It will be not just a desire of the flesh, but a longing of the spirit. It is said that the souls in paradise know no greater happiness than two lovers do, who are united in soul as well as body."
"Prodigioso," she said. "But I am just a Sicilian girl, and I do not perhaps have the refined spiritual appetite of a French nobleman. What if I cannot wait?"
"It is natural," Simon said, thinking again of what his mother had confided to him. "Then I must be strong enough for both of us."
The thought of her powerful passions, which she restrained with such difficulty, excited him. Holding himself back from her was going to be painful, but delightfully so. And think of the ecstasy when at last they were united.
Sophia released a long sigh and brought the palms of her hands down on her knees with a slap of finality. "So be it, Simon. You will teach me the ways of courtly love, and I will do my best to be your—what did you call it?"
"Mi dons. My lord."
Her teeth flashed white in the candlelight, and her lips glistened. Simon's own lips burned to taste hers.
"How strange. As if I were the man. Ah, but you are very much a man, Simon, and you make me feel very much a maiden."
Simon turned and went to the window. The night air blew through the gauze curtains, and he felt a wonderful aliveness all over his body. He wondered whether Alain, out there in the dark somewhere, could see him here in the window. He pushed the curtain aside so Alain, if he was there, could get a good look and know that his seigneur was safe and happy.
Dawn must still be hours away. What would he tell Alain about what transpired this night? The truth, assuredly. But would Alain believe him? And if he did, would he mock Simon for not bedding Sophia?
No, Alain would understand. He respected the good in men and women as much as Simon did. Which was why they were friends as well as lord and vassal.
Sophia stood beside him and put her hand on his shoulder.
"You cannot stand there all night, Simon. Come back and sit down."
He bowed. "As mi dons commands." He let her take his hand and draw him away from the window.
There was one chair in the room, and he took it. Foolish to expose himself to temptation by sitting beside her on the bed again. The chair was straight, with a tall back and no arms. The only touch of comfort in its rectilinear shape was a cushion laid upon its seat. Sophia smiled and shrugged and sat again on her bed.
Would she let him spend the night? Whenever he had been all night with a woman, they had made love. Should he sing to her again? Would she want to sleep? He pictured himself watching over her while she slept, perhaps kneeling by her bedside, and the beauty of it thrilled him.
Now he remembered something she had said earlier, that he had accused her of kissing him only to further my uncle's plots against the Tartars. She was aware, then, of what Ugolini was doing.
She has no idea how much she revealed to me.
He sang another troubadour song, "White Hands." She let him draw off her red silk slippers, and he almost cast away all his promises to himself as she curled her toes against the palm of his hand. He forced himself to stand up and pace the room while she lounged back on her bed, her head propped up on her elbow, watching him with that delicious smile of hers.
She questioned him about his life, and he offered her a simple version of it, telling her nothing about his secret illegitimacy and the dishonor of the man whose name he bore. It struck him while talking to her that perhaps these two sins that had shaped his life—Amalric de Gobignon's treason and Nicolette de Gobignon's adultery—had given him the strength to resist the temptation to assail Sophia's virtue. He told her how he had spent much of his youth in the household of the King of France and how this had led to Count Charles d'Anjou's giving him the task of protecting the Tartar ambassadors.
And thus, inevitably, their talk got around to the Tartars.
"Why did you accept this task from the Count of Anjou?" she asked. "You have a lofty title, huge estates, everything you could want. Why trouble yourself with all this intrigue?"
Having decided not to tell her the truth about his past, Simon now could not answer her question both honestly and fully. He could not say that he had committed himself to this mission to clear the stain of treason from the name of de Gobignon and to prove that he had a right to the title.
So he told her of another reason, equally true.
"I am in part an orphan, and the king was like a second father to me. It is his wish that Christians and Tartars join together to liberate the Holy Land. And I would do anything for him."
Sophia frowned. "I find that hard to understand. As for me, I hate the Tartars."
Simon's mind pounced on that. Could she be more involved in Ugolini's scheming than she had admitted?
"Why do you hate the Tartars? You know so little about them."
"I know that they almost made enemies of us because you thought I was kissing you just to help my uncle."
Again she was hinting at her uncle's involvement in all that had gone wrong for the alliance. But if he asked her about it outright, she might think—as he had thought of her—that he was courting her only to further his cause.
"Well, I am sure your uncle is following his conscience, as we all are," said Simon. Actually, he believed nothing of the kind. But he did not want to offend Sophia, and perhaps l'amour courtois would permit a small lapse in one bound to be truthful to his lady.
"And your conscience tells you to guard those savages?"
"I want to see Jerusalem liberated and the Saracens conquered," Simon said. "Every good Christian does."
She sat up in bed, looking at him earnestly. "Do you not fear that the Tartars are worse than the Saracens? That is what my uncle says."
Step by step, as if he were defending a philosophical proposition at the University of Paris, Simon explained to her what he believed. Yes, the Tartars were barbarians and had committed unspeakable atrocities. But the Saracens, united under the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt, were more powerful now than they had been in hundreds of years. If not stopped now, they would sweep all the crusaders out of Outremer, the land beyond the sea.
And a wave of Mohammedan conquests might well not end there. To this day the Moors were a power in Spain, and it was not that long ago that there were Saracens in France and here in Italy. Surely she remembered that her own island of Sicily had been conquered for a time by the Saracens. Indeed, King Manfred von Hohenstaufen's army was made up partly of Saracens, and he himself was an infidel.
With their belief in spreading their religion by the sword, the Saracens were a far greater danger to Christendom than the Tartars. The Tartars were simple pagans, easily converted to Christianity. Friar Mathieu had personally baptized over a dozen high-ranking Tartars.
She listened intently, her golden-brown eyes so fixed on his that he feared more than once to lose his train of thought. But he persevered to the end. When he finished, she nodded thoughtfully.
Now, he thought, he could turn the conversation to her uncle.
"All this is so obvious," he said, "it is hard to understand why your uncle should have formed a party to oppose the alliance."
She touched her fingertips to her mouth in surprise. That mouth—it was like a blooming rose.
"You mean my uncle is the leader of those who are against the alliance?"
This reminded him of mornings he had tiptoed through his forest at Gobignon, longbow drawn, catching a glimpse of a stag's brown coat and then losing sight of it again in the thick broussailles, trying to stay downwind and draw close enough for a good shot without frightening the deer into headlong flight.
"But I thought you already knew that," he said. If she denied that she knew any such thing, then his quarry had escaped him.
"So, he put David of Trebizond up to baiting the Tartars while you and I were so delightfully engaged? Wicked uncle! To think I almost lost you on his account." She clenched a pretty fist that looked as if it had been chiseled in marble. On one finger her small garnet ring glittered in the candlelight.
"I believe he brought David of Trebizond and his servant Giancarlo here to Orvieto, as well as that Hungarian knight, Sire Cosmas, who spoke at the pope's council, to discredit the Tartars." Simon wondered whether he should tell Sophia about the bravos Giancarlo was recruiting. No, if he told her what he knew about them, he would have to require her to keep it a secret, and that might make her feel disloyal to Ugolini.
She nodded. "Now I understand why he spends so much time closeted with that silk merchant, talking about—who is Fra Tomasso di—di—?"
God's robe!
"Fra Tomasso d'Aquino?"
She nodded. "That was the name. He sent David to see this Fra Tomasso, and when David came back I overheard my uncle joyfully shouting, 'Fra Tomasso is with us!' over and over again. Is he an important man, this Fra Tomasso?"
Simon tried to keep his face calm, but he was horrified. Simon recalled now that the d'Aquino family were from southern Italy, the kingdom of Manfred the unbeliever, as was Ugolini. And were not the d'Aquinos even related to the Hohenstaufens? Something must be done about this at once. How far had the plotters—that was what they were, plotters—gotten with d'Aquino?
How much further dare he pursue this subject before Sophia grew suspicious of him? And how much further before he began to feel that he was degrading their love?
Our love? But she has not said she loves me.
The realization was like a thunderclap in his mind.
What he really wanted to know was whether she loved him or not. To come right out and ask her was not the way of courtly love. He must wait for her to say. But she would never speak of love as long as they went on about the Tartars and Ugolini.
To the devil with Ugolini and David of Trebizond and Fra Tomasso and the Tartars!
He had learned enough anyway, he decided. She had confirmed his suspicion that Ugolini was the ringleader of the forces in Orvieto arrayed against the Tartars. She had let him know that they had drawn Fra Tomasso d'Aquino into their conspiracy.
Of one thing he felt certain. If she were working with her uncle to block the alliance, she would not have let him learn so much.