XXXIII
A hand shook Simon's shoulder. His whole right side ached. He fought wakefulness, trying to plunge deeper into sleep. He was in a cool blue lake surrounded by dark masses of spruce. He had just seen a wolf with a silver-white coat drinking from the lake on the opposite shore and he was trying to swim to it.
"Simon. You must wake up."
He opened his eyes. Right before his face was a twisting streak of orange against a royal blue background, and he realized he was lying on his side on the Persian carpet in Sophia's bedchamber. He rolled over on his back and rubbed his aching side. He saw Sophia's face just above him.
He could not help himself. He reached up with both arms and pulled her down to him and kissed her. Her lips felt cool and dry, and he had a sudden fear that his breath must be sour from sleep. She pushed herself away from him and he did not try to hold her.
"There is light coming through the window, and I hear birds singing," she said. "You must go now. Many of my uncle's servants get up at dawn."
He sat up. She was kneeling beside him, still wearing the same cream-colored gown. He remembered now that they had talked of courtly love, and a little about her childhood in Sicily. To his disappointment, she had not said that she loved him.
The necessities of nature had forced on them an intimacy of one sort—while each had pretended not to notice, the other had used the chamber pot discreetly placed behind the red and green diamonds of a screen.
She had been the first to fall asleep. Sleep had overtaken him, too, but each time he dozed off he started to topple off the small straight chair he was sitting on. The fourth or fifth time this had happened he gave up sitting and stretched out on the carpet.
"Quickly, Simon, please. If my uncle ever finds out you were here, he will send me back to Siracusa."
God forfend! The habits of his knightly training took over, and he strode quickly to the corner, where he had left his sword and belt leaning against the wall, and buckled them on.
He remembered that Alain was supposed to sing an aubade, a dawn song, in the street below to warn and rouse him. An old troubadour custom. Perhaps he had sung, and Simon, sleeping so soundly, had not heard.
"Did you hear anyone singing out in the street?" he asked.
Sophia smiled and shook her head.
Blast Alain. He must have overslept, too.
Sophia said, "But how will you get out of here? It is not as easy to climb up to the roof as it is to climb down from it."
Simon went to the window and pushed the curtain aside. The rope he had climbed down on was still dangling from above. He gave it a hard pull, and it held firm. He looked up at the sky. It was a deep violet with only a few faint stars and one brightly shining planet.
The morning star might be Venus, a good omen for a lover.
His heart was light, even though he was leaving Sophia. It had been a beautiful night.
A half-filled cup of wine stood on the table by her bed. He swigged it to rinse his mouth, swallowed, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He tried to think of some parting word worthy of a troubadour, but none occurred to him.
She stood by the bed, her eyes warm. He held out his arms and she slipped into them with as much ease as if they had been lovers for years. She was so much shorter than he that he had to lean down to kiss her, and as he did she arched her body against him.
"I love you," he whispered, embarrassed by its prosaic simplicity. But it was simple truth.
"And I love you." She kissed him quickly on the lips and turned away.
Her words stunned him. He felt for a moment as if he were going to fall dead on the spot. And that if he did, it would be a perfect moment to die.
The candles were almost burned to the bottom. He looked over at the painting of Saint Simon Stylites, whose blue eyes seemed to gleam out at him from the shadows.
He wrapped the rope around both arms, gave it another yank to be sure it was tied tightly above, and stepped up on the windowsill. He swung around so that he was facing the wall of the mansion and began to climb, his joy at her parting words making him feel stronger and more agile. His hands gripped the rough rope; his feet in calfskin boots pressed against the wall, pointed toes seeking out cracks. He did not look at the stone-paved street three stories below.
He heard voices in the street—and froze. There were men gathered down there. If they looked up, they would see him climbing up the front of the cardinal's mansion.
Move quickly, he told himself. He scrambled up to the square Guelfo merlon around which his rope was tied, pulled himself over the parapet, and dropped with relief to the flagstones of the flat roof.
He untied the rope. Curiosity made him want to look at the men whose raised voices he heard coming from across the street. Something had disturbed them. But he had the feeling that if he did not look at them, they would not see him.
Hurry. Holding the loosely coiled rope in one gloved hand, he ran as lightly as he could so as not to disturb anyone in the rooms below him.
He came to the back of the building, where, two stories below him, a crenelated lower wall protecting the courtyard joined the main building. He uncoiled the rope, found its center, and doubled the line around an angled merlon at the corner of the roof battlements so that both halves dangled down just above the courtyard wall. Then, gripping the doubled rope, he swung himself out and began to climb down.
A thunderous roar battered at his ears. He saw in the courtyard a big gray hound racing over the paving stones twice as fast as any man could run. It kept up a furious, enraged barking in a deep, bone-chilling voice. In an instant the dog was below him. Its bellowing was sure to rouse the cardinal's guards. Its huge, pointed white teeth glistened; its tail lashed from side to side.
If I fell, that damned dog would eat me alive.
He remembered seeing the dog before with Giancarlo, David of Trebizond's servant. It had been friendly enough that day. But now it saw him as an intruder.
Giancarlo called it by name. What the devil was it? If I could speak its name, maybe I could get it to shut up.
Simon stood on the courtyard wall, thankful that it was too high for the dog to reach him. The hound sprang at the top of the wall, at the same time emitting a bark so loud it almost knocked Simon off his perch.
Simon pulled on one end of the rope, and it snaked around the merlon and came rippling down to him. To his horror, one end fell past him into the courtyard.
In an instant those great ivory fangs had sunk into the braided hemp. Simon yanked on the rope, but there was no tearing it loose. Hoping to catch the dog by surprise, Simon gave the rope some slack and then jerked with all his might, but succeeded only in dragging the beast a foot or so, claws scraping on cobblestones. At least the animal could not bite the rope and bark at the same time. Enraged, muffled growls issued around its clenched teeth. It snapped its head from side to side, trying to tear the rope out of Simon's hands.
He cut part of the rope away with his dagger, letting the end the dog held fall into the courtyard. Even as he was coiling up the rest of the rope, the beast gave a howl of fury and with a tremendous leap was halfway up the wall.
The remaining rope tied to his belt, Simon hung by his hands on the outside of the wall and let himself drop, hitting the stone street with a thud that sent jolts of pain through his shinbones. He heard shouts on the other side of the wall mingling with the roars of the hound.
Limping a little at first from the force of the drop, he staggered into the nearest side street. He would have to circle back to the avenue that ran in front of the cardinal's palace, approaching it from another direction.
It seemed to take hours for him to find his way through the snake's nest of byways. But he felt not the least bit disturbed. It did not matter. Nothing mattered, because Sophia's parting words to him had been And I love you. He felt like dancing through the crooked streets.
By the time he emerged near the east side of the cardinal's palace, he could see quite clearly. There was no sun, though. The morning was damp and gray. He would have to cross the avenue and walk back past the cardinal's mansion to find the inn he and Alain had picked for their rendezvous. It must be near where that crowd of men had formed a circle around something.
"Are you the watch, Messere?" a man said, coming up to him as he approached the crowd.
"I am not," said Simon with a slight haughtiness, and the man fell back, eyeing Simon's rich clothing, sword and dagger.
"Scusi, Signore."
I really should not let myself be seen around here.
With deference to Simon's dress and manner, the crowd parted for him when he joined them to see what they were looking at.
It was the body of a dead man.
It was Alain.
Simon staggered back, feeling as if he had been struck in the heart by a mailed fist.
"No!" he cried.
"Do you know this man, Signore?" someone asked him.
Simon did not answer. He fell to his knees beside Alain, horrified by the face so white it seemed carved from marble. He saw now the great bloodstain down the front of Alain's pale green tunic. Flies with gleaming blue-green bodies were humming above the bloodstain, settling down again after Simon's arrival disturbed them.
He raised his head, and through the tears that clouded his vision he recognized a face. Last night's innkeeper. A short, balding man with large eyes and a generous nose.
"We have sent for the watch, Your Signory," said the man.
"Did anyone see or hear anything?"
"My wife heard your friend go out before dawn. He never came back."
Jesus, have mercy on me, thought Simon. This is my fault. He went out to await the dawn so he could warn me. And someone killed him. Tears were pouring from his eyes. He was sobbing convulsively.
"Poverello," he heard someone mutter sympathetically. Here he was a knight, a count, kneeling in the street weeping in front of a crowd of strangers. He did not care.
Guilt crushed him. He wanted to lie beside his friend's body and be dead with him. But how could he? No, he had to find and kill Alain's murderer.
Still kneeling beside Alain, he wiped his face with the edge of his cape and surveyed the crowd. To keep his identity a secret seemed unimportant now.
"I am the Count de Gobignon of France. I will pay handsomely anyone who helps me find the man who did this. If anyone can name the murderer, I will pay"—he thought a moment—"a thousand florins."
A murmuring ran through the crowd. A fortune! Foolish, perhaps, Simon thought, to offer such a reward. A man would accuse his own brother to get that much money.
I may hear many names. I will have to be sure.
He looked down at poor Alain. The flies were crawling on his face, and he brushed them away. Alain's lips had turned blue. He looked for Alain's purse and saw none on his belt.
Stabbed to death for the few coins he carried. Dead at twenty years of age. Tears overflowed his eyes again.
Oddly, Alain still wore his sword and dagger.
Alain's weapons were still both sheathed. Whoever had stabbed him had not given him time to defend himself. Yet, there were no recessed doorways or alley openings where an armed robber might hide himself.
The spot was unpleasantly familiar. This was where Simon's archers, at de Verceuil's orders, had shot two Orvietans.
Had Alain been tricked by someone pretending to be a friend? Was the killer someone Alain knew?
Ah, my poor friend, what a shame it is when a young knight dies without sword in hand. Simon clenched his fist, the tears falling unceasingly. By the wounds in Christ's body I swear I will avenge the wounds that killed you, Alain.
Simon remembered now that the watch was on the way. When they got here they would ask him questions about what he and Alain were doing here, questions he did not want to answer until he had time to think.
A scandal would give de Verceuil a chance to eat me alive. And I must get Friar Mathieu to help me.
"Send someone to the Palazzo Monaldeschi for my horse," he said to the innkeeper, standing suddenly.
"As you wish, Your Signory." The innkeeper hurried off.
Simon swept the crowd with his gaze. "Remember, all of you. Anyone who saw anything, heard anything. You will be paid. Come to the Palazzo Monaldeschi."
Simon sat down on the stone street to wait for the horse. Silently the crowd that had gathered waited with him.
When the innkeeper's servant brought the horse, Simon lifted Alain's body with the help of two other men and lashed it securely facedown over his horse's back with the rope he had used to climb to Sophia's room.
Sophia. He had been so happy just moments ago because she said she loved him as they parted. Was she looking down now, seeing this pitiful sight?
Fresh sobs forced their way into his throat, and he leaned against his horse, covering his face with his arms.
I have to get away from here quickly.
He forced himself to stop crying and took hold of the reins. The Orvietans fell back as he led the horse up the street leading northward to the Monaldeschi palace. He felt warmth on his neck and looked up to see the sun through a break in the clouds.
Alain would never see the sun again.
Whoever did this to you, Alain, I will not rest until I have killed him with my own hands.