LIII
Rachel sat on a divan by the window in her room. She had drawn the curtains back and pushed the shutters open so that she could see out and feel the cool breeze. She held a small leather-bound book in her hand, Geography of the World, by Yucaf ibn Faruzi, a Spanish Jew. It was one of the small store of books Angelo had owned, written in Hebrew, that she had kept with her to help her pass the long hours she spent alone. Besides enjoying reading, she felt she was somehow pleasing Angelo, who had taught her to read Hebrew.
She was reading about Egypt when the second storm of the morning struck Orvieto and the window no longer admitted enough light to read by. A few water droplets blew in through the open window to fall on the open pages. She carefully blotted them up with the hem of her satin robe, but she was afraid more rain would damage the vellum pages. So she shut the book, and watched the lightning flash and listened to the thunder.
Tilia's house was built halfway down an incline, so Sophia could see water foaming in the ditch that ran through the center of the street. So heavy was the rain that waves were flowing down the cobblestones. Where a raindrop struck the water, the splash was like a little crown.
A dark shadow appeared at the high end of the street, a hooded figure. Another followed, and another. They rose higher and higher, until she could see that they were riding horses. What were men doing out in a storm like this? Were they coming here?
They were. The first men reined up their horses outside Tilia's front door, dismounted, and moved to the shelter of the overhanging houses across the street. More men on horses, some on mules, and many more on foot, gathered outside the house. All wore hoods or broad-brimmed hats to keep the rain from their heads. Rachel's heart began to thud in her chest when she saw there were too many for her to count. She saw the gleam of helmets under some of the hoods, the wet glitter of mail when an arm or leg emerged from a cloak. A train of mules carrying heavy packs came down the street and stopped.
Rachel began to tremble. These men had not come for pleasure. There were too many of them, and their dress and manner was full of menace. She was glad that the heavy rain forced them to keep their heads down; otherwise, one of them might have looked up here and seen her. She drew back a little from the window.
A line of covered carts drawn by pairs of mules pulled up behind the crowd of armed men. The cart in the lead was bright yellow and red, and its paint glistened wetly.
Did anyone else in the house know this crowd was out there? Perhaps no one else was looking out a window. She ran to the door of her room, just as she heard a pounding from below.
Then there were shouts, bangs, and crashes, the shrill shattering of glass and porcelain, the heavy thumps of bodies falling. Rachel opened her door. Other doors swung open along the shadowy third-floor corridor. Someone stepped out with a candle. Frightened women's faces were white in the candlelight. She saw Antonia, Angela, Gloria.
She did not see Tilia. She must still be with Sophia, wherever they had gone this morning.
Oh, if only Sophia had taken me with her as I begged her to. I knew something terrible was going to happen.
"What is it?" the women cried to one another. "Who is down there? Wounds of Jesus!"
Cassio emerged from Francesca's room, tying the drawstring of his hose. He was a big man, his bare chest matted with black hair, and the sight of him comforted Rachel until she looked into his face as he hurried past her and saw that it was tight and pale with fear. And he was carrying a naked shortsword.
But Cassio's appearance emboldened the women, and they left their rooms to crowd toward the top of the stairs that led to the lower floors. Rachel joined them.
"I saw a lot of men outside," Rachel told the others, her heart battering against her breastbone. "Armed men, with horses and mules and wagons."
Antonia, a round-faced woman, hair dyed red with henna, pulled her robe around her. "Another party setting out for Perugia, I suppose. They probably stopped by for a little farewell fun."
"Then why are they fighting downstairs?" Francesca said, anxiety sharpening her voice.
Thunder shook the house, drowning out the clamor of the brawling two stories below. Then Rachel heard the clang of steel and Cassio's voice crying out angrily.
The carpeted stairs at the end of the corridor shook under heavy feet. Women's screams, mingled with the cries of men, arose on the lower floors. She pushed her way to the head of the stairs and looked down.
A group of men were coming up. They had thrown back the hoods of their brown cloaks, and their pointed helmets reflected the candlelight. Rachel backed away as she saw that the half-dozen men with helmets were brandishing long broad-bladed daggers.
The women around her started screaming and darting back into their rooms. Rachel bolted for her own room.
"Rei-cho!" The man's shrill cry shot an arrow of terror through her. That was John's voice.
She turned in the doorway of her room and saw the Tartar standing at the head of the stairs, his soft black cap hiding most of his white hair. Beside him was a stocky, middle-aged woman, and flanking them were the swarthy men with their daggers. John and the other men were all smiling, as if, as Antonia had said, they had come only for a bit of pleasure. But the tumult downstairs, shaking the house more than the thunder, belied that.
John spoke to the woman and she called to Rachel. "Signore John must go to Perugia." Her Italian was strangely accented. "He wishes you to come with him. He will give you many costly gifts."
Rachel took a step backward into her room. "No. I do not want to go."
Not now. Not when Sophia had just come to tell her they were going to take her south with them. South to Manfred's kingdom, where Jews were treated like everyone else. Where she might yet find a place for herself and forget that she had sold her body.
John and the woman advanced down the corridor, their guards with them. Some of the swarthy men pushed open the doors of the rooms they passed and looked in. The doors could not be barred from the inside. Tilia had always insisted on that, so no client could lock himself in with a woman and harm her. The men with the daggers grinned at one another and talked in a strange language.
"No, I don't want to go!" Rachel screamed. She darted into her room and slammed the door. Frantically, she looked around for something to hold it shut.
The door started to open, and she threw herself against it. It closed for a moment. Then she was hurled away from it as it swung inward, John behind it. She screamed in fear.
The Tartar, who was not much taller than Rachel, strode into the room. He walked with what appeared to be a swagger because he was slightly bowlegged. He was talking rapidly in his language, advancing on Rachel and smiling. He held out his arms. The stout woman stood in the doorway, watching without expression.
Rachel backed away from them, her body rigid.
"You must come with him now. He is in a great hurry. An army of the pope's enemies is less that a day from Orvieto, and they want to take Signore John and Signore Philip prisoner."
"Then let him escape," Rachel cried. "I do not want to go with him." She was standing before her bed now. The woman spoke to John and he answered quickly, still smiling.
"He says you are precious to him and he cannot leave you," she said tonelessly.
She had to get away now, or be John's prisoner for the rest of her life.
Panting more from fury than from exertion, Rachel made a sudden jump to her right, and when John stepped in that direction to grab her, she darted to the left and ran out the door. John's translator made no effort to stop her.
That would not have fooled him, except that he was not expecting me to do anything, she thought as she ran down the corridor.
She held one thought in her mind—she must get out of this building. She heard screams and sounds of struggle from the rooms of the other women. She saw Francesca fighting with a helmeted man, and her eyes met Francesca's over the man's brown-cloaked shoulder. Only one of the dagger-wielding men was in the corridor now, and she had surprised him. He shouted at her and ran after her.
Gathering up the skirt of her robe, she raced down the stairs, taking the last four in a leap. The dark man with the dagger was right behind her, and behind him she could hear John's shout. There was anger in the Tartar's voice now. That terrified her even more.
He did not think I would get away from him this easily.
The dark man grabbed her flying robe, and she felt the silk tear. She had nothing on underneath the robe. She would not let that stop her from running. She must not let anything stop her.
She heard the man behind her calling as she ran down the stairs to the first floor. She was in the corridor now, and she saw that it was swarming with men in helmets and mail, struggling with Tilia's women. Some of the men had their breeches down.
She saw tall, beautiful Maiga striking out with her fists at the helmeted men. But they were wrestling with her and forcing her onto her back. Agonized pity for Maiga blazed up within her, but she ran on.
One of Tilia's black African servants was lying on the floor across the corridor. His eyes were open and he was not moving. Again she felt a surge of pity.
But then terror gripped her.
They are killing people here! My God, what are they doing, what are they doing?
Instead of going on down the stairs from the first floor gallery to the ground floor, she leapt over the body of the black man and ran into the crowd of men and women struggling in the hall.
I am small and I am quick, she thought, and that gave her the courage to keep running. The men in the hall were not interested in her, and she slithered past them while John and his bodyguard stumbled along behind.
The bodyguard's voice sounded far away. Other men were shouting at him.
"Catch her yourself, you damned Armenian ape!" These men were speaking in Italian. "We've already got ours."
Rachel reached the stairs at the other end of the corridor. They led down to the same place as did the main stairs, the reception room on the ground floor. But her pursuers would not know that. Sure enough, they were following her through this first-floor corridor. She glanced back and saw that the crowd of Italian men had gotten in their way, so that half the corridor was between them.
Run, Rachel!
Frantically she ran down to the first floor. There, horror greeted her. More of Tilia's black men—she could not count—were sprawled around the reception hall.
She saw blood spattered over the frescoes. She saw a black arm lying by itself. One body had no head. She heard a scream of horror and knew it was her own voice. Why were they doing this? What devils drove them? There was blood all over the floor. Puddles of it. She had to dart around them, over them.
Terror streaked through her as a tall man blocked her path. His hood was thrown back and his cloak was open, and a jeweled cross glittered on his chest—like the one Tilia wore, only three times bigger. Their eyes met; his were staring and full of rage. His nose was big, and his mouth was small and cruel. He pointed a long finger at her, a fortune in jeweled rings glittering on his gloved hand.
"You! The one we came for! Stop!"
She stood paralyzed as a recollection of the dread face before her flashed into her mind. Dinners for John and Philip—Tilia had given elegant dinners, three or four of them—with musicians and the companionship of her ladies, Rachel included.
And this was how they repaid her courtesy.
This man had been a guest at those dinners. He was a man of very high rank, a cardinal in the Christian Church. He was French, she remembered. His Italian words were heavily accented.
What will they do to me if I don't obey him? Will they burn me for being a Jew?
And there was the other Tartar, Philip, standing beside the French churchman. He looked like John—round head, brown skin, slitted eyes—except that his beard and mustache were black. He was carrying a bow in one hand and had a quiver full of arrows slung over one shoulder. Rachel froze, like a rabbit trapped by two wolves.
The tall Frenchman reached for Rachel—but another figure appeared between them, one of Tilia's black men. He blocked the tall man with the cross, giving Rachel a chance to jump for the door.
Out of the corner of her eye Rachel saw Philip, strong white teeth gleaming in a brown face, raise his bow. She heard the thrum of the string, and then a piercing scream. Anguish for the black man welled up in her.
Her torn robe was flapping as she ran out the door. She almost fell as someone seized the back of her robe and yanked on it. She twisted out of the robe and ran on, naked.
She heard John's shrill voice. He had reached the ground floor.
She was out of the house. In an instant her bare body was rain-wet from head to toe.
A group of big men holding horses stood across the street, under the overhang of the house opposite Tilia's. They were wearing swords and purple surcoats over mail shirts. They looked at her gloomily and made no move to stop her.
She had no idea where to go, but downhill was the easiest direction. Maybe hide in an alley. Knock on a door and beg for help. Try to get across town to Sophia.
Anywhere, if only she could get away from John.
Many times she had nightmares of running from something that was trying to kill her. Sometimes a monster or a demon. Sometimes from crowds of roaring people carrying torches. Always in those dreams she could not make her legs move. It was like trying to run through water. Always she tried to scream for help and no sound would come from her throat but a whisper.
Now she was able to run full speed away from that house where death and destruction were running riot. And running as fast as she could was not enough! It would not get her away fast enough from John and his armed men and that horrible cardinal. She was able to scream at the top of her lungs, but to no avail. Nobody would come to rescue her. Nobody would help her.
She had also had nightmares about running through the street naked, with hundreds of people watching. In those dreams she had been horribly embarrassed. Now she was really doing it, and she did not care about her nakedness.
She darted past the carts and the horses and mules and their drivers that filled the street from side to side. She was running naked and barefoot over the cobblestones.
She ran past the red and yellow cart at the head of the line of wagons and saw sitting beside the driver a man with a full white beard. He was looking down at her. For a moment she thought he was a rabbi. Then she saw his shaven scalp and brown robe. One of those Christian begging monks. He opened his mouth to say something to her, but she was past him already.
She heard hoofbeats behind her, and gooseflesh broke out all over her naked body.
Dear God, is he chasing me on horseback?
But she could dart into a quintana, the space between two houses. It would be too narrow for a man on horseback to follow her. She saw an opening on her left and made for it, begging God to help her run faster.
She felt something whip around her body, tearing her skin. She was jerked off her feet. She fell on her back on the wet cobblestones. She lay helpless, stunned and gasping for air. A rope was cutting into her chest just below her breasts, pinning her arms above the elbows to her sides. The rope burned her. Her back felt scraped and bruised. She saw a horse's legs beside her. John was grinning down at her, holding the other end of the rope. The rain pouring down in her face stung her eyes.
Now that she knew she was caught and helpless, her terror was transmuted into rage. What right had he to treat her this way?
"May God strike you dead!" she spat. He might not know the words, but she was sure he could hear the hatred in her voice.
He tugged on the rope to make her climb to her feet. She felt she would rather lie there and make him drag her, if he wanted her so badly, but she realized that would only hurt her worse.
She took a grip on the rope to haul herself up. The cold rain beat down, plastering her hair to her head. She wanted to wipe her face, but her arms were pinioned. Her back felt as if it were on fire.
She looked at Tilia's house and saw that a man's body was swinging, sodden and limp, above the door.
Her stomach turning at the sight, she recognized Cassio's features in the swollen, blackened face. They had hanged him from Tilia's crenellated balcony. And she had always thought he was such a big, tough man. She felt a stab of pity for him, even though he had never been especially nice to her.
Her heart grew heavier and colder in her chest as the horror sank in. These men had destroyed Tilia's house, killed the men and raped the women with the gleeful cruelty of small boys stoning a bird's nest.
Another jerk on the rope started her walking back up the street. She kept her eyes down to avoid the sight of Cassio's body.
As they passed the yellow cart, a voice called out to the Tartar, and he answered briefly in what seemed to be his own language. Again the voice, and there was command in the tone. John reined his horse to a stop.
Apprehension filled her. What new indignity would she have to suffer?
Very slowly, the brown-robed Christian priest climbed down from the cart. He pulled his hood up against the rain. Rachel put one hand between her legs and tried to cover her breasts with her forearm, lest he be offended. Fear and the cold rain beating down on her naked flesh made her shiver violently. She could not hope for kindness from this white-bearded man. After all, as a priest he must condemn her as a harlot. And if he found out she was a Jew, he would despise her all the more.
The priest reached up into the cart and took down a long walking staff and a gray blanket. Leaning on the staff, he approached her slowly. Looking at her very sadly, unconcerned about the rain soaking his robe, he draped the blanket over her head and shoulders. She gripped the edges of the blanket and pulled it across her. As long as John's rope stayed slack, the blanket would cover her, although it was already cold and heavy with rainwater.
The kindness in the seamed, bearded face warmed Rachel, and she dropped to her knees before him.
"Help me, Father," she begged. "Do not let him take me away from here."
"Get up, child." Leaning heavily on the staff with one hand, he used the other to help her to her feet, and she saw how stiffly he moved and heard him give a little groan of pain.
"Just a few old broken bones," he said. "It has been months, and they are mending well enough."
He reached under the blanket that covered her, and she shrank away from his hand.
"Forgive me," he said. "I mean no harm." Without looking at her, and hardly touching her, he managed to loosen the rope around her chest so that it fell to the ground. She stepped out of the loop, and it slid away from her. She looked up and saw John coil the rope and tie it to his saddle. His face was reddened and his mouth compressed with anger.
"It is useless to try to outrun a Tartar on horseback," said the priest. "They are like centaurs. What is your name, child?"
As she told him, Rachel felt a glimmering of hope. The priest had spoken to John in his own language, and the Tartar seemed to have some respect for him. At least he was no longer trying to drag her away.
"I am Friar Mathieu d'Alcon," said the white-bearded priest. "What does this man want with you?"
Rachel felt a blush burn her face.
"He has lain with me, and he paid money to me and Madama Tilia," Rachel said, barely able to choke out the admission of her shame. "Now he is leaving Orvieto, and he wants to take me with him."
Friar Mathieu sighed and shook his head. "And so young. Jesus, be merciful." He turned to John and spoke to him in a soft, reasonable voice. Rachel sensed that the priest was chiding the Tartar gently. John's answer was a series of short phrases, shrill with anger. He finished by slicing the air with his hand in a gesture of flat refusal. Rachel's heart grew heavy with despair.
"He will not listen to me," said the friar. "He thinks he has a right to take you. His customs are not ours."
"But you are a priest. Does he not have to do what you tell him?"
"Sometimes he does what I tell him to, because he is a Christian, and I have been his companion and confessor for some years. But he is more Tartar than Christian, and Tartars keep many women."
Rachel's limbs turned to ice. "Does he think he owns me?"
Colder than the rain pouring down on her was the terror of being torn from the few friends she had, to be used for pleasure by a man who could not even speak to her. She put her hands to her face and started to sob heavily.
A burst of loud laughter from John made her look up. At first she thought he was laughing at her tears, but he was pointing at Cassio's dangling body. Still chuckling, he said something to Friar Mathieu.
"He says that man used to be the stud bull hereabouts. Now he is dead beef."
Rachel shook her head. "He has no pity for Cassio—nor for me." Filled with revulsion, she thought she would rather die than spend the rest of her life with that brute.
Friar Mathieu looked off into the distance. "That is how it is with the Tartars."
Rachel shuddered. To John, Cassio was just a bundle of rags to be laughed at, and she was a plaything to be dragged through the world.
"Please help me get away," she begged Friar Mathieu. "I think I will kill myself if I have to stay with him."
Friar Mathieu closed his eyes in pain. "Do not talk that way, my child. Every person's life belongs to God."
Another voice boomed down at them from above, speaking a language Rachel had heard before but did not know. The sour-faced man with the big nose peered at them out of a cavernous hood. The French cardinal. He towered over them on a great black horse. Rachel shuddered at the sight of him.
"Pardonnez-moi, votr'Eminence," said Friar Mathieu calmly. He went on, in what must have been French, to say something which she supposed from his gestures was about John and her.
The cardinal's reply seemed as loud as thunder. He pointed at Rachel, and she cringed away. What was he saying, that she belonged to John?
Feeling hopeless, Rachel stood weeping silently while the priest and the cardinal argued what was to become of her in a language she did not understand.
Has God abandoned me because I have sinned?
She looked at Tilia's house, at the horrid sight of the hanged man above the door, cries of women barely audible over the rumble of thunder and the pounding of rain on the pavement. She saw men carrying boxes and bundles of cloth out the front door and realized that they were ransacking the place.
Cold horror swept her as she realized she was going to lose everything. Everything she had earned by her shame was in a chest in Tilia's room.
Friar Mathieu cried out something in French. In the midst of her misery, Rachel was shocked to see a beggar-priest publicly chastising a cardinal.
The cardinal stared at the friar, seemingly also shocked. He blinked as lightning flashed overhead.
Rachel said, "Good Father—"
The cardinal found his voice and roared back at the friar, jabbing a bejeweled finger at Rachel and turning on her a glare of utter contempt. His look hurt Rachel as much as if he had hit her in the face with dung. She pulled the soaking blanket tighter around herself. She saw that, staunch as the friar might be, all the power was on the other side.
"Father," she said, "if nothing can stop them from taking me, at least let me get the things I own from the house. My clothes and books." She did not mention the bags of gold ducats in Tilia's chest, though John might know of them. "Let me take them with me and travel with you."
Friar Mathieu nodded and spoke again angrily to the cardinal.
The cardinal yanked on the reins of his horse, turning the black head around, up the street. He flung his answer over his shoulder.
Friar Mathieu turned a sad face toward Rachel. "He says you and I and John can go back into the house and get what belongs to you. And you can travel in my cart. But I am not to interfere if the Tartar desires you." He shook his head. "I promise you, child, as long as you are with me, John will not touch you. I was a knight before I was a priest. They can make me stand by and witness murder and robbery. But not rape."
Rachel looked up to see John grinning at her with proprietary pride. Like Rachel, he had not understood a word of the argument between the friar and the cardinal, but he understood well enough that Rachel was still his prisoner.
She felt a little better for having an ally in Friar Mathieu. But she promised herself that whatever John might think, he would never take her back to his country. She really would kill herself first.
The storm had passed over Orvieto by the time the cart carrying Rachel was bumping along the road to Perugia. As she sat on a bench beside the old priest, looking out through the open front end of the cart, Rachel saw patches of blue sky above the hills to the northeast.
John had gone with Friar Mathieu and helped him find her chest in Tilia's room and the key to the padlock, hidden under Tilia's mattress. He had ordered two of his Armenian guards to carry the chest out for Rachel and load it in the back of the cart, along with another chest of her books and clothing. He himself had smilingly handed her the key. As if he expected her to be grateful, she thought.
So she was still a wealthy woman, Rachel thought bitterly, even though she was also a prisoner.
With Friar Mathieu sitting on the bench up front beside the driver, she had gone to the back of the cart and opened both chests to make sure everything was there, even hefting the bags of gold. Then she had dried herself off and put on a bright blue linen tunic.
On the outside she was more comfortable now; within, desolate. Even though Tilia had sold her to the Tartar, Tilia's house had been home to her for nearly a year. She had come to know the men whom today she had seen murdered, and the women who had been forcibly taken by the Tartars' bodyguards. They and Sophia, David, and Lorenzo were the only friends she had known since Angelo was killed. Now she would never see them again.
She had not felt so wretched since the night of Angelo's death.
To comfort herself, she took out the Hebrew prayer book Angelo had given her. To have light to read by, she would have to go to the front of the cart and sit beside Friar Mathieu. The sight of her prayer book might turn the old priest against her. She remembered Angelo telling her how priests at Paris had burned a thousand or more volumes of the Talmud. Tears had come to his eyes at the thought of so many holy books, lovingly copied by hand, destroyed.
But Friar Mathieu had been kind to her even when she admitted that she had lain with the Tartar for money. He did not seem like the kind of man who would despise her for being a Jew.
Right now she desperately needed to be able to trust someone, and she decided that she could trust Friar Mathieu.
Balancing herself against the swaying of the cart, she climbed on the bench beside the old priest.
Her book was a collection of writings and prayers, including passages from the Torah. Some rabbi, or perhaps more than one, with quill pens and parchments, had taken years and years to copy it out. She had marked the Psalms with a ribbon and turned to them now.
For lowly people You save, but haughty eyes You bring low ...
For the first time since she had seen those hooded riders approaching Tilia's house, she felt some measure of peace.
After a moment she realized Friar Mathieu was reading over her shoulder. Fear chilled her.
"One rarely finds a man learned enough to read Hebrew," said Friar Mathieu gently. "In a woman as young as yourself it is positively miraculous."
She smiled timidly in answer to the kindliness in his eyes. "My husband was a seller of books. He taught me to read the language of our ancestors."
"Your husband?" His eyes, their blue irises pale with age, opened wider. "You have been married?" He shook his head. "People never cease to surprise me. I would like to know you better, child. Will you tell me about your life?"
His gentle tone gave her heart. Not since Sophia had talked to her on the road from Rome to Orvieto had anybody been interested in who she was. Talking to this good priest about her past, she could forget for a while the terror of present and future. She would tell him everything.