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The sky was iron-gray, and a cold wind, unseasonably cold for August, blew down from the north. Daoud stood near the entrance to the courtyard of the Palazzo Papale, facing a row of the podesta's guards, in yellow and blue, who held back the watching crowd. A troop of mounted lancers clattered out under the gateway arch. Then, in mule-borne litters, came the nine cardinals who had elected to go with the pope to Perugia. Each had his own small procession of clergy and guards. In a sedan chair borne by six burly men rode Fra Tomasso d'Aquino, reading a small leather-bound book. Then came a hundred mounted archers, their conical helmets gleaming dully under the overcast sky.
Finally, as the people threw themselves to their knees, some crying out and stretching their arms wide, Urban himself, on a litter carried by eight men-at-arms, with a column of priests on either side, came through the open gate of the palace. He wore white gloves on the trembling hands that he raised to bless the people. He was bundled up in a white wool cloak, and his head was covered by a hood of fur so white that it made his own hair and his beard look yellowish.
Reluctantly, but knowing it would be dangerous not to do so, Daoud dropped to his knees as Urban passed him.
"Do not leave us, Holy Father!" a man next to him cried out.
Daoud thought of the whispers he had been hearing in his wanderings through the streets and marketplaces. People were frightened. Some said that terrible things would happen after Urban left. There would be new bloodshed between the Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi. The Sienese would besiege Orvieto and massacre its people.
Daoud himself believed d'Ucello, the podesta, would use the pope's departure to try to increase his own power over the city.
And that bodes ill for me.
The podesta was a clever man. Daoud felt certain d'Ucello suspected him of the killing of the French knight and of involvement in the Filippeschi uprising.
Daoud followed the procession along the curving street to the Porta Maggiore, intending to watch it follow the road to the north, wishing the Sienese army might appear suddenly in the distance and intercept it. But at the gate a sergente in yellow and blue stepped into his path.
"I am not leaving," Daoud said, staring at the man. "I want to stand just outside the gate."
The sergente shrugged. He was a broad-shouldered man with a square brown face and a mustache cut straight across. As they stood talking, he darted little glances at Daoud's hands and feet, half smiling. Daoud sensed that he was ready for a fight, perhaps even wanted one. The sergente thought, of course, that he was dealing with a merchant, who would not be as skilled in combat as a professional soldier.
Daoud felt a chill along his spine. D'Ucello was still determined to keep him prisoner in Orvieto. That confirmed Daoud's suspicions that the podesta might soon move against him.
"You can watch the procession from the top of the wall," the podesta's man said. "The view is better from up there anyway. You may not go beyond the gate, Messer David."
Angered by the feeling of confinement, Daoud thought about throwing the guard, disarming him, and walking through the gate just to teach him a lesson. But that was hardly what a trader would do. That would only bring more suspicion down on him. He nodded curtly and walked away.
The following Sunday, Daoud stood at the front of the cathedral, reluctantly hearing Mass, bodies pressing him from all sides. Four of Ugolini's men-at-arms, including the massive Riccardo, stood with Daoud. The little cardinal, required by the etiquette of the Sacred College to attend but made fearful by the rumors of fighting and killing to come, had begged Daoud to come with him and stay near him. The noonday heat together with the heat of packed human flesh turned the interior of the cathedral into an oven. The reek of sweat mixed with the heavy smell of incense rendered the air almost unbreathable.
A gilded screen standing on the altar displayed the miraculous linen cloth of Bolsena, lighted candles massed around it. The pope, at least, had left that to Orvieto. Ugolini was one of six red-robed cardinals, half hidden under their huge, circular red hats, who sat in chairs in a row before the altar. Each one had a cluster of assistants and guards behind him. Cardinal de Verceuil was among them. Daoud recognized him from the rear because he was the tallest of the six.
That meant the Tartars were still in Orvieto. If Lorenzo and the Ghibellino army from Siena arrived in time, there would be a chance to kill the Tartars before they rejoined the pope in Perugia. It was maddening, not knowing what Lorenzo had accomplished or where he was. This was one time he wished Christian armies could move with the speed and decisiveness of Muslims. Or Tartars.
The elderly Cardinal Piacenza, his arms supported by priest-assistants, held up the gold cup of wine which Christians believed, in a sense that Daoud had never been able to understand, to be the blood of Jesus the Messiah. The cathedral was filled with a reverent quiet.
A burst of angry men's voices from the rear of the cathedral broke the silence. Shouts echoed against the heavy stone walls. Daoud heard thuds, scuffling, the clash of steel. A jolt of alarm went through him, and his hand went to his sword.
Everyone, including Piacenza, turned to stare. The last time there had been a clash of arms in the cathedral it had been the Count de Gobignon and that heretic preacher, Daoud thought.
Daoud was amazed that Christians would interrupt the most sacred moment of their Mass. He tried to see over the heads of the people around him. One voice, roaring in protest, was raised over the others. It sounded familiar to Daoud.
People were passing word back from the middle of the nave, where the struggle was. "It is Marco di Filippeschi," a man near Daoud cried. "They have come to kill him."
Daoud's body went cold. Might whoever was coming after Marco attack him too?
The fighting seemed to be moving toward the doors, and the crowd flowed after it. Mass was forgotten as the congregation, cardinals and bishops included, rushed to see.
Ugolini hurried to Daoud and took his arm. The two of them were carried with the crowd toward the rear of the cathedral. Ugolini clutched at Daoud so tightly that his fingers hurt. The servants, Daoud noticed, managed to stay with them.
"Stay close to me," Ugolini said.
"You might be safer in the cathedral," said Daoud.
"Outside there is more room to run."
The short-legged Ugolini could not run very far, thought Daoud. He steeled himself. If they were attacked by a large number of enemies, they were dead men.
Daoud and Ugolini came through the main door of the cathedral together and stood on the crowded steps.
"I cannot see!" Ugolini cried. People on the steps below him were blocking his view.
Daoud was tall enough to see quite well. His heart, beating rapidly, seemed to be rising from his chest to his throat. Marco di Filippeschi, his long black hair flying as he jerked his body from side to side, was struggling with four men who held him, while a fifth wrapped a rope around his arms. Other men used pikes to push back the crowd, forming a ring of space around the young Filippeschi leader and his captors.
Marco is going to die, Daoud thought, feeling cold sweat all over his skin.
He looked to the edges of the piazza and the mansions that overlooked it. He saw crossbowmen in the orange and green livery of the Monaldeschi on rooftops and in windows, and mounted lancers in the outlets to the square.
The Filippeschi should have missed Mass today.
"God damn your puzzolenti souls, you bastards!" Marco roared as he fought. "May your mothers and fathers burn in Hell!"
Some men were trying to help Marco; Daoud saw little knots of struggle as his eyes traveled over the crowd. But no one could reach Marco because the orange Monaldeschi tunics were everywhere.
"What is happening?" Ugolini demanded.
"They are killing Marco di Filippeschi," said Daoud, thinking: He helped me. He needs help now. His hand gripped the hilt of his sword tightly, and he wanted to draw it and rush down the stairs to fight beside Marco.
But the knowledge that anyone who went to Marco's aid would die with him held him motionless. Daoud was not free to draw his sword for Marco, not while the Tartar ambassadors lived and the pope might yet proclaim a new crusade.
Marco was shouting obscenities so rapidly that Daoud's Italian failed him and he could not understand. The Filippeschi chieftain was tightly bound and helpless, and the men around him pushed him to his knees.
God be merciful to him, Daoud prayed.
"Lift me up so I can see!" Ugolini cried to his men-at-arms.
"You do not want to see," said Daoud, but Riccardo obediently hoisted him up to sit on his shoulders. The cardinal looked ridiculous, Daoud thought, like an overdressed child being carried by his father.
A man holding a long two-handed sword stepped out of the empty space surrounding Marco di Filippeschi. Daoud drew in a breath. The crowd gasped. The blade flashed in the sun like a mirror as he swung it up. Marco struggled, shouting curses, twisting and thrashing to escape the sword. Blood splashed over the gray-black paving stones as the sword came down. Marco cried out in agony. It took three strokes to behead him.
As much death as Daoud had seen, this sickened him. He felt bile flooding his stomach and rising in his throat.
After Marco's head lay apart from his still-trembling body in a rapidly spreading pool of blood, the silence was shocking in the piazza that had an instant before rung with his cries. As shocking as the look of the bound body without its head.
A woman's piercing scream broke the silence. Holding a baby in her arms, she burst out of the ring of men who had cordoned off the beheading. She knelt, screaming and sobbing, and reached out with one hand to touch Marco's severed head.
Another woman ran out of the crowd with a dagger in her hand. She pounced on the mother and baby and stabbed and stabbed. A pikeman in an orange tunic dragged the baby from its mother's arms, tossed it in the air, and caught it on the end of his pike, spitting it. Some in the crowd screamed with horror. Others cheered and laughed.
Daoud's stomach lurched. He pressed his hand against his middle and hoped the mother had not lived to see what had been done to her baby.
He wanted desperately to be away from there, not just because he himself might be in danger, but because he could not stand to watch.
He looked up at Ugolini. The little cardinal sat rigid on Riccardo's shoulders, his face white and blank, his whiskers quivering. How foolish he had been to want to see.
Not far away, de Verceuil's dark face under his wide-brimmed red hat stood out above the other faces in the crowd on the steps. The little mouth was set in a satisfied smile. Daoud wished he could slash that smug face with his sword.
Another Monaldeschi man-at-arms set Marco di Filippeschi's head on the end of his pike and waved it in the air for all to see. The mob in the piazza began to boil. It was a chaos that Daoud's eyes could take in only piecemeal. Men and women fought with swords and daggers and clubs; masses of people shrieking with terror surged toward the streets leading off the piazza where mounted Monaldeschi retainers slashed at them with swords and drove lances into them; crossbowmen fired into the crowd from balconies.
Now Daoud's heart was beating so hard that the booming of his blood in his ears almost drowned out the noise in the piazza. This was a war breaking out all around him.
A continuation, he reminded himself guiltily, of the war he had started.
No, he need not blame himself. He had not started this. These people had been slaughtering one another long before he came to Orvieto.
How could the Monaldeschi tell their friends, or the innocent, from their enemies, Daoud wondered. Perhaps, he thought, it did not matter to them.
He now made out, on a balcony opposite the cathedral steps, the stooped figure of the Contessa di Monaldeschi. Her cloak glittered with gold embroidery, and on her gray hair she wore a small silver coronet. She rested one hand on the shoulder of a boy, her grandnephew Vittorio.
What a monster that child must be!
Daoud heard Ugolini's choking whisper from above him: "Get me out of here."
There was only one way to escape, back into the cathedral and out one of the side doors. Daoud helped Ugolini down from Riccardo's back, and they hurried through the center doorway, followed by his men-at-arms.
"Do not draw your weapons," Daoud said to Riccardo and the others. "Or you might get pulled into the fighting. But be ready to stand and fight if we must."
The din of the massacre in the piazza echoed within the cathedral, which was now mostly emptied out. Cardinal Piacenza had brought his Mass to a quick end. He was sitting in a chair near the altar, looking stricken, and a young priest was mopping the old cardinal's forehead with a white cloth. On one side of the nave stood the podesta, d'Ucello, surrounded by a group of his sergentes in yellow and blue.
There is murder in the piazza, and the keeper of public order hides in the cathedral, Daoud thought.
The podesta's eyes met Daoud's as Ugolini's retinue hurried past him toward the rear doors of the cathedral. There was a menace in d'Ucello's set face, but he said nothing as Daoud strode by.
The look in d'Ucello's eyes told Daoud that the moment when the podesta would strike at him was not far away. Daoud felt as if a ghost had gripped the back of his neck with an icy hand.
Ugolini, muttering to himself, led the way to the north transept. A half-dozen men in orange and green tunics, swords drawn, barred the door.
"Stand aside in the name of God!" Ugolini cried as he approached the Monaldeschi men-at-arms. "Your damned bloody quarrels have nothing to do with me."
Daoud was surprised. He had often seen Ugolini frightened, but now fear seemed to have given him sudden strength. The men guarding the door stepped aside. The cardinal's servants held the door for him, and in a moment they were in the narrow street running along the north side of the cathedral, where they joined a crowd of weeping, shouting people who had managed to break loose from the piazza. There were splashes of blood, Daoud saw, on the tunics of many men and the dresses of many women. Ugolini's servants formed a wedge around him, and in stunned silence they walked back to his mansion.
Daoud felt shaken and sick. His hands were trembling.
The Filippeschi could have been allies for Daoud against the podesta. Now he was alone.
Ugolini's small contingent of armed retainers could not resist the town militia. A cold feeling of helplessness settled over Daoud. If only Lorenzo would come back.
Bars of afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows of Ugolini's cabinet, giving a fiery tinge to his red rug and glistening in the eyes of his stuffed owl. Ugolini sat behind his table, holding the painted skull in both hands and staring intently at it, as if it held the explanation of what had happened at the cathedral this morning. Sophia sat in a chair on the other side of the table, and Daoud stood by the window.
"The Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi are both Guelfo families, and the Filippeschi have high connections with the Church," Ugolini said. "That is why the contessa waited until the pope left before taking her revenge."
"I have seen Christians slaughter Muslims and Muslims massacre Christians," Daoud said. "But today Christians were killing mothers and infants that could have been their own. Women were doing some of the killing."
Ugolini smiled at the skull, but there was no laughter in his round eyes. "Are not family quarrels the cruelest of all?"
Daoud noticed that Ugolini's hands, fingertips pressed against the smooth curve of the skull's cranium, were still quivering. As for Daoud himself, he was quite calm now.
The last time I was really terrified was when I looked into the locket and saw whirling blackness.
He was still angry with himself about that, knowing what a foolish thing it had been to partake of hashish when he was already in a dark mood. The fear he had felt a month earlier after taking the drug and looking into the locket remained with him, clinging to his mind like some parasitic insect. It rose to confront him now, as he looked at Sophia. Would something horrible happen to her because of him? Blossoming Reed had threatened just that, and so far Blossoming Reed's magic had worked well. Since that vision, the joy he felt with Sophia had been chilled somewhat by fear for her.
"How safe are we now, with the Monaldeschi rampaging through the streets?" Sophia asked.
Ugolini shuddered. "And the Filippeschi. Those who are left will be striking back. This city will destroy itself, like a rat eating its own innards. I say leave now. All of us."
Leave? Daoud thought. He would be less afraid for Sophia if she were in a safer place. But where should he go?
"Where do you want to go?" he asked Ugolini.
The little cardinal drew himself up. "I am still the cardinal camerlengo, and will be as long as Urban is alive. I am obliged to follow the pope as quickly as I can to Perugia. There is peace and order in Perugia." He looked at Daoud uneasily. "What do you want to do? Stay here?"
He is hoping to be rid of me. Daoud considered Perugia, but there he would have everything against him and no forces to help him.
He must go to Manfred. Once the pope and the Tartars were safely in Perugia, only Manfred's army would be powerful enough to get at them. Manfred might not want to go to war, but war was inevitable. Clearly the pope was no longer neutral. He favored the Tartar-Christian alliance and was waiting only for the right moment to announce it. When the pope came out for the alliance, the French would come into Italy.
The time for Manfred to act was now. If he marched north and seized all of Italy, including the person of the pope and as many cardinals as he could capture, the French never would invade, because a Ghibellino pope would not approve a joint campaign of Christians and Tartars against Muslims. Then, for certain, there would be no alliance.
"Now that the pope has moved to a place of safety," he said aloud, "only King Manfred can dislodge him."
Ugolini wrung his hands. "First you incite the Filippeschi against the Monaldeschi. Then Siena against Orvieto. Now Manfred against the Papal States? Sometimes I think you are like one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, spreading war wherever you go."
All too true, Daoud thought. He turned to Sophia to see whether she agreed with the accusation. She looked at him somberly, but did not speak.
He sighed. "I am fighting for my people. For my God."
"I, too, for my people," said Sophia quietly. Her tone told Daoud she sided with him, and he felt an inner warmth.
"And what have your people to do with this?" Ugolini cried. "Have you forgotten that you are not Sicilian but Greek?"
"Not at all," said Sophia. "I want to see Manfred in control of Italy. He is a friend of Byzantium. The Franks are our enemies."
Ugolini shook his head. "I am the only Italian in this room. And I weep for my people."
Daoud strode over to Ugolini's table, pressed his hands flat on it, and stared into his eyes.
"Be strong for your people," he said. The hairs on the back of his neck rose with excitement as he spoke. He had wanted to try to put strength into Ugolini for such a long time.
Ugolini looked bewildered. "What do you mean?"
"Think what Italy would be with Manfred von Hohenstaufen ruling from the Alps to Sicily and a pope who supports him."
"A Ghibellino pope?" Ugolini looked surprised, then nodded. "Why not? As a Ghibellino myself, I would rejoice at that. But it will happen only if Manfred has the College of Cardinals in his power."
"Yes," said Daoud. "And that is why I must go all the way south to Lucera, where Sophia and Lorenzo and I started from." Ugolini's eyes were brighter, and Daoud felt with pleasure that he had breathed new life into the little man.
"But the podesta won't let you leave the city!" Sophia exclaimed.
Again Daoud felt that cold hand grasp his neck. Perhaps he should have left long ago. He turned from Sophia to Ugolini.
"You must demand that he let me leave, Cardinal," said Daoud, feeling less confident than he tried to sound.
Or, he thought, he could escape the way Lorenzo did. He had never truly been a prisoner here.
"I will order the servants to start packing for me," Ugolini said. "Of course, I must make arrangements for Tilia to move, too, and that might take time. Although many of her best clients are gone now." He sounded like a man who knew what he was doing and Daoud was relieved to hear it.
Daoud turned from Ugolini to Sophia. The knowledge that he would soon leave Orvieto, where he had seen too much of defeat and slaughter, lifted his spirits. He smiled at Sophia, and she smiled back. He knew she was thinking the same thought he was—that they had hours to spend together this afternoon.
Daoud and Sophia lay naked in her bed, legs entwined, her head resting on his bare chest.
"What about me?" Sophia asked. "Will I go south with you to Manfred, or north to Perugia with Ugolini?"
"With me, of course," said Daoud. At the mention of leaving her, he felt as if a cold wind had blown across his naked body. He was surprised that she was even considering staying with Ugolini.
"I want to be with you," she said, caressing his chest with a circular movement of her palm. "I hate the thought of our being apart. But with the pope and the Tartars in Perugia, you need someone there besides Ugolini. Someone who has an aim in common with yours. I can help him and make sure that what he does helps you. Helps us."
He ran his fingers through her long, unbound hair. "I will think about what you've said. But I do not like it."
"Neither do I. But it may be necessary."
A loud knock at Sophia's door interrupted them.
Something in the urgency of the knock made Daoud spring out of bed and reach for his sword, hanging from a peg on the wall. Putting a finger to her lips, Sophia got out of bed more slowly and went to the door.
"It is I," the cardinal called through the door in answer to her question. "I know David is there with you. Let me in. The podesta is here."
The ghost that haunted him whenever he thought of himself and d'Ucello seized Daoud's entire body in a cold, paralyzing embrace. His first thought was of escape. But d'Ucello probably had the mansion surrounded.
Sophia and Daoud dressed quickly and opened the door for the cardinal.
"D'Ucello has come here with twenty or more men-at-arms," Ugolini said. "He demands that you go with him to the Palazzo del Podesta, David."
"Can you not order him away?" Sophia demanded. "You are a prince of the Church. You did that before."
"He waited until most of the power of the Church had left Orvieto," said Ugolini.
"And until the Filippeschi had been crushed, thinking I might call upon them for help," Daoud said.
"You must try to escape," said Sophia.
"Then what would happen to you?"
"We will escape together!"
Daoud looked at her drawn face, and at that moment he loved her more than ever. His love warmed him, and freed him from the grip of fear. This woman—who had spoken a short time ago so calmly of separation—was ready to run, to dodge arrows, to hide in ditches, to climb walls, to do whatever she had to, to be near him.
"If he finds out what you are, we are all doomed," said Ugolini. Daoud saw that the small body was aquiver with fear.
He could imagine what Ugolini was thinking, that the evil he had dreaded since Daoud came to Orvieto had come upon them at last. Just when he thought he was about to escape it.
"He will learn nothing," said Daoud.
"He will torture you." Ugolini sat down on Sophia's bed and wrapped his arms around his stomach. "We will all die horribly—me, Sophia, Tilia—everyone who helped you." He raised hands curved like claws and shook them at Daoud. "Oh, God, how I wish you had never come here!"
Sophia sat beside Ugolini and put her hand on his knee. "If we can stay calm, dear Eminence, we can think of a way out of this."
"Even if he tortures me, I will tell him nothing, except that I am David, the trader from Trebizond," said Daoud. The methods of resisting pain that he had learned from the Hashishiyya would serve him now.
"You must not think of going with him!" Sophia cried.
"It is the only way. If I cooperate, it shows my innocence. The cardinal can use his influence to get me freed."
She jumped up and threw herself against him, weeping. "You are going to your death!" He held her tightly.
"D'Ucello has nothing to gain by killing me," he said. "And surrendering to him is the only thing I can do." He looked at Ugolini. "Do you agree?"
Ugolini sighed and shook his head. "I cannot think."
Gently Daoud freed himself from Sophia's embrace. "Insh'Allah, God willing, I will return to you."
He turned to the door. Every muscle in his body screamed at him to run, or to draw his sword and try to fight his way out. He cringed inwardly from the thought of imprisonment and torture. He remembered the poor madman whose body they had torn apart with red-hot pincers. He forced himself not to tremble. He took the first step toward the door, then another.
God, make me strong in the face of my enemies.