LXV
Pride swelled Daoud's heart as he watched the column of Muslim cavalry suddenly change direction and sweep like a long roll of thunder through the valley. A flutter of orange banners on their flanks, and the men at the far end of the line launched into an all-out gallop, while the riders at the near end slowed to a high-stepping trot. The whole line pivoted like a great scythe, enveloping the flank of an imaginary enemy.
"Very impressive," said King Manfred. "They get their orders from those colored flags?" He and Daoud stood on the rounded brow of a grassy hill, watching the Sons of the Falcon displaying their skills for their king. The valley Daoud had found for the demonstration was a natural amphitheater, a flat, circular plain at least a league in diameter surrounded by hills. Normally it was used as grazing land.
For over a year Daoud had been training these two hundred men, picked from hundreds of volunteers from Manfred's Saracen guards. With so much time, he had been able to forge and polish the Sons of the Falcon into a weapon that could be the vanguard of Manfred's army.
He hoped that what Manfred saw today would put him in a warlike mood, a mood to ask Daoud for his advice. He prayed for the chance to urge Manfred not to wait for Charles d'Anjou to invade his kingdom, but to march north and attack Charles at once.
O God, open Manfred's mind.
For Manfred to delay the start of his war against Charles d'Anjou even this long could well be disastrous. A year ago Manfred could have moved out from southern Italy and smashed Charles, as a man rises from his couch and crosses the room to crush a mosquito. Sadly, like many a man who sees a mosquito across the room, Manfred had chosen to remain on his couch.
And the mosquito was fast growing into a dragon.
Lorenzo Celino and Landgrave Erhard Barth, the grand marshal of Manfred's army, stood on either side of Daoud and Manfred. Scipio stood beside Celino, who rested his right hand on the dog's big head. Half a dozen nobles and officers of Manfred's court were gathered a short distance away from the king and his three companions. Lower down the hillside, scudieros held the party's horses.
"Those flags would be useless at night," said Barth, speaking Italian with a heavy accent, which Daoud knew to be that of Swabia, the German state from which Manfred's family came. "And they would be hard to see on a rainy day." He was a broad-faced man with a snub nose. All of his upper front teeth were missing, which caused his upper lip to sink in and his lower lip to protrude, giving him a permanent pout.
Irritated, Daoud spoke to Manfred rather than to Barth. "There are many ways to signal. Colored lanterns at night. Horns. Drums. These men have learned all those kinds of signals and can respond to them quickly."
Daoud's muscles tensed as he thought that the big German and he might have it out today. Barth, he felt sure, was one of the advisers who was holding Manfred back.
"I like the idea of signals," said Manfred. "In every battle I have seen, no one knows what is going on once the two sides meet. Our knights do not know how to fight in unified groups as the Turks and the Tartars do."
The Sons of the Falcon rode to the base of the hill from which Manfred was reviewing. Omar, Daoud's black-bearded second in command, spurred his horse up the slope, leapt from the saddle, and rushed forward to kneel and kiss Manfred's hand.
"You ride splendidly," said Manfred in Arabic.
"Tell the men I am very proud of them, Omar," Daoud said. Omar flashed bright white teeth at him.
To Manfred Daoud said, "Now, Sire, if it be your pleasure, the Sons of the Falcon will demonstrate their skill in casting the rumh—the lance."
Manfred nodded and waved a gauntleted hand. He was dressed in a long riding cloak of emerald velvet, with an unadorned green cap covering his light blond hair. His only jewelry was the five-pointed silver star with its ruby center, which Daoud had never seen him without.
Just as I still wear the locket Blossoming Reed gave me.
Omar bowed, and vaulted into the saddle with an agility that brought a grunt of appreciation from Manfred. Waving his saber, he rode back down the hill.
A scaffold and swinging target for the lances had been set up halfway across the valley. Recalling his own training—and Nicetas—Daoud watched his riders form a great circle in the plain below them. He heard in his mind a boy's warbling battle cry, and felt a deep pang of sadness.
"Why do you call them the Sons of the Falcon, Daoud?" Manfred asked.
"Because I know the falcon is the favorite bird of your family, Sire," Daoud said. Manfred grinned and nodded.
He thought, And because the falcon does not hesitate.
Daoud admired Manfred. He was said to be the image of his father, and that made it easy to see why Emperor Frederic had been known as "the Wonder of the World."
Easy to see why Sophia loved Manfred for a time.
But as a war leader, Manfred was frustrating to work with. He seemed to have no plan for fighting Charles d'Anjou. All over southern Italy and Sicily, knights and men-at-arms were in training and on the alert, but days, months, seasons, followed one another and Manfred ordered no action.
Daoud's own goal remained the same he had set for himself a year ago in Orvieto: To spur Manfred on to make war and to help him win a victory.
And when the war gave an opportunity, Daoud would once again try to kill the Tartar ambassadors. They were now, Manfred's agents in the north reported, in Rome under Charles's protection. Perhaps he could even rescue poor Rachel.
Daoud smiled with pleasure as the riders below formed a huge circle, one man behind the other. He was able to recognize individual men he had come to know over the past months—Muslims from Manfred's army whom he had picked and trained himself—Abdulhak, Mujtaba, Nuwaihi, Tabari, Ahmad, Said, and many others. They were as eager for this war to begin as he was.
At a shouted command from Omar, who sat on his horse in the center, the circle began to rotate, the horses running faster and faster. Each man balanced a lance in his right hand, and as he rode past the swinging target ring, he hurled it. The ring was pulled from side to side with long ropes by attendants, just as when Daoud had trained as a Mameluke.
As lance after lance flew through the moving target, Manfred gave a low whistle of appreciation. Daoud had ordered the ring to be a yard wide and the distance from horseman to target fifty feet. It was easier than it looked for men who had practiced for months, but the rapidity of it made a beautiful spectacle. Daoud's eye caught a few misses, but he doubted that Manfred noticed.
"Like falcons, swift and fierce and sure," said Manfred. "But a bird is just bone and muscle and feathers, Daoud. These men are lightly armed and armored compared to Christian soldiers. These two hundred of yours could never stop a charge of Frankish knights."
Daoud tensed. This was an opening.
"True, Sire, when Frankish knights in all their mail get those huge armored war-horses going at a gallop, nothing can withstand them. But we Mamelukes have defeated the Franks over and over again by not letting them use their weight and power to advantage. They must close with their enemy. We fight from a distance, raining arrows down upon them. If the enemy pursues you, flee until he wearies himself and spreads his lines out. Then rush in and cut him to pieces. Attack the enemy when he is not expecting it."
"That might do well enough in the deserts of Outremer," said Manfred, "but European warfare is different. There are mountains and rivers and forests. We cannot spread out all over the landscape."
Daoud threw an exasperated look at Lorenzo, whose dark eyes were sympathetic, but who shook his head slightly, as if to warn Daoud to be politic in his argument with the king.
"There is one principle that you can adopt from Mameluke warfare," said Daoud, choosing not to contradict Manfred, "and that is speed."
"Our Swabian knights and our Saracen warriors ride as swiftly as any in Europe," Barth growled.
"Once they get moving," said Lorenzo sharply.
He isn't always politic himself, thought Daoud.
"Forgive me for speaking boldly, Sire," said Daoud, "but a whole summer has gone by since Pope Clement proclaimed a crusade against you and declared that your crown belongs to Charles d'Anjou. And there has been no fighting. Is this what you mean by European warfare? In the time it takes Europeans to get ready for one war, we Mamelukes would have fought five wars."
As he spoke he proudly recalled what an Arab poet had written of the Mamelukes: They charge like lightning and arrive like thunder.
Manfred turned to watch the riders. A royal privilege, Daoud thought, to conduct an argument at one's chosen pace. He pushed down the urge to say more, forced himself to be patient, waited tensely for Manfred to reply in his own time.
He felt a movement beside him and turned to see that Lorenzo had moved closer to him. He gave Lorenzo a pleading look, trying to ask him to join the discussion. Manfred respected Lorenzo and listened to him.
Lorenzo replied with a frown and a nod. He seemed to be saying he would speak up when he judged the moment right.
When the men who had cast came around to the opposite side of the circle, fresh lances thrust upright in the ground by their servants were waiting for them. Each warrior leaned out of the saddle, seized a lance, and rode back around at top speed to throw at the target again.
After a moment, Manfred turned back to Daoud and said, "Charles d'Anjou has been hanging about in Rome all through the spring and summer claiming to be king of Sicily. This morning I asked to see my crown, and my steward brought it to me from the vault. The pope's words had not made it disappear. Rome is not Sicily. Anjou is welcome to stay in that decaying pesthole until he takes one of those famous Roman fevers and dies."
No doubt, thought Daoud, Manfred's gesture in calling for his crown had amused his whole court. And put heart into any who feared Charles's growing strength. Manfred was charming, no question. But meanwhile Charles d'Anjou, who by all accounts had not a bit of charm, was in fact growing stronger day by day. Those of Manfred's supporters who were afraid had good reason, and Daoud was one of them.
It was agony to think how the opportunity to beat Charles now was slipping away.
"So, you will wait for Charles to come to you," said Daoud.
Manfred smiled. "And he, I suspect, hopes that I will come to him. Charles has to pay his army to stay in Italy. The longer he puts off attacking me, the more his treasury is depleted. My army waits at home, sustaining itself."
Daoud said, "Now that Charles's war is called a crusade, barons and knights are joining him from all over Christendom. Many of them are paying their own way. Sire, when Charles decides he is ready to move against you, his strength will be overwhelming."
Lorenzo spoke up. "And meanwhile the pope has placed your whole kingdom under interdict. No sacraments. No Masses. Couples cannot marry in church. Can we weigh the pain of mothers and fathers who think their babies that die unbaptized will never see God? And what about the terror of sinners unable to confess, and the dying who cannot have the last sacraments? And the grief of those who had to bury their loved ones without funerals? Sire, your people have not heard a church bell since last May. They grow more restless and unhappy every day. And it does not help your cause when they see your Muslim and Jewish subjects freely practicing their religions."
"I am surprised to hear you pay such tribute to the power of religion, Lorenzo," said Manfred with that bright grin of his.
The grim lines of Lorenzo's face were accentuated by the droop of his black and white mustache. "I have never in my life doubted the power of religion, Sire."
Having used up all their lances, the Sons of the Falcon were now shooting arrows from horseback, riding toward lines of stationary targets that had been set up at the far end of the valley.
"Do you have a proposal, Daoud?" said Manfred with a sour look. "Let me hear it."
Daoud felt an overwhelming sense of relief. This was the moment he had been hoping for all day.
"Sire, do not wait for Charles to come out of Rome," he said. "In January, February at the latest, assemble your army and march north."
There, he had made his cast. Would it pierce the target?
"I could go all the way to the Papal States only to find Charles lurking behind the walls of Rome. I cannot besiege Rome. That would take ten times as many men as I have."
"No," said Daoud. "His army will not let him stay in Rome. By the end of winter they will have stolen everything in Rome that can be stolen. Charles will have to promise them more spoils and lead them to battle, or they will desert him."
Manfred nodded thoughtfully. "In truth, greed is what drives them."
Daoud added, "And call on your allies in Florence and Siena and the other Ghibellino cities to stop any more of Charles's allies coming into Italy. They cannot all come by sea as he did. Many times I have heard people in your court say that Charles has cut Italy in half. Nonsense. He has put himself between two millstones."
Manfred's eyes lit up. "Yes, I like that way of looking at it."
The Sons of the Falcon had ridden to the far end of the valley and were now roaring back, standing in the saddle and firing arrows over the tails of their horses.
"Sire," said Daoud. "Not to act is to act." He felt urgency building in him as he sensed that he was persuading Manfred.
"I remember my father saying something like that," said Manfred. "What do you think, Erhard?"
Daoud's heart sank. The beefy Swabian would undoubtedly counsel more waiting.
In thought, Landgrave Barth sucked in his upper lip and pushed out the pendulous lower one until it seemed he was trying to pull his nose into his mouth.
"Anjou will have to campaign against you soon, Sire, for the reason Herr Daoud has just given," he said slowly. "His men will not allow him to stay in Rome and endure the privation of a siege. When they learn you are coming, they will demand that he march out to meet you. He is probably planning an attack for next April or May, when the weather is best. He must expect reinforcements—but, so he does not have to pay them for long, he will not want them to come until the very moment he is ready to invade. So, if you attack him in January or February, you catch him unready." He finished with a vigorous nod of his head. "I recommend it."
Daoud felt a new and unexpected warmth toward Barth. The landgrave was not such a dull-witted old soldier after all.
The Sons of the Falcon had finished their archery exercise. In four ranks, fifty mounted men abreast, they drew up at the base of the hill and saluted Manfred, two hundred scimitars flashing in the afternoon sun.
Manfred stepped forward to the crest of the hill and raised his hands above his head. "May God bless your arms!" he shouted in Arabic.
The wild, high-pitched ululations of his Muslim warriors echoed against the surrounding hills as Manfred, smiling, returned to his companions.
He said, "In three months' time, then. No more than four. The weather will decide. I will call in my barons one by one and tell them to prepare. We must keep this a secret for as long as possible."
Daoud, Lorenzo, and Barth all bowed in assent. Daoud felt a surge of joy. He had succeeded in persuading Manfred to strike at Charles. Manfred's reasons for not wanting to move were sound ones, he knew. He had spent long hours considering them himself, but he was certain that if Manfred did nothing, he was surely doomed. At this moment Manfred and Charles were nearly evenly matched, Manfred a little stronger, Charles growing in strength. To a great extent it would be luck—or the will of God—that determined the outcome. Daoud could not control luck or God. But he could make the best possible plan and give his all to it.
Suddenly, he badly wanted to get back to Sophia in Lucera. Usually he enjoyed being out with the troops, overseeing their training. Today he begrudged the time. Every moment seemed precious. Three months would be gone before he and Sophia realized it. Then he would be riding with Manfred's army, perhaps never to see her again.
He must make sure she would be safe no matter what happened. Perhaps Ugolini or Tilia could help. Sophia would want to travel with the army—with him—north. She was not a woman to pine at home while men marched away. He must discourage her; it was too dangerous.
But to discourage her would probably be impossible.
Simon listened to the drumming hooves behind him on the dirt road and thought, I will be hearing this sound all day long every day for months. He supposed that after a while he would no longer notice it, but today, the day after his departure from Château Gobignon, his ears seemed to ache from the incessant pounding.
And the hoofbeats were a constant reminder that he was really leading the Gobignon host to war.
All summer long the conviction had been growing upon him that this was a bad war, and all the suffering it caused, all the deaths and mutilations, would be on his conscience forever. No matter that the pope had proclaimed it a holy crusade against the blasphemer Manfred. Popes could be wrong about wars.
Simon's father, Roland, had vividly described for him the horrors of the Albigensian crusade of a generation ago, when knights of northern France had fallen upon Languedoc like a pack of wolves—like Tartars, in fact—reducing it to ruins. And that crusade had been proclaimed by a pope.
In days to come the rumbling in his ears would be louder, the feeling that he was guilty of great wrongdoing harder to bear. He looked over his shoulder and saw thirty knights mounted on their palfreys, another twenty equerries and servants on smaller horses, two priests on mules, five supply wagons, two of them full of weapons and armor, one hundred foot soldiers and sixty great war-horses in strings, a page boy riding the lead horse in each string. This was the Gobignon household contingent. At today's end he would have three times that many of every category, and by the end of the week his army would have swollen to its full size of four hundred knights, fifteen hundred foot soldiers, and all the equerries, attendants, horses, and baggage they needed.
And, a year or more from now, how many of them would come back from this war? He thought of Alain de Pirenne, lying on a street in Orvieto. He thought of Teodoro at the Monaldeschi palace, his chest crushed by a stone, his warm blood pouring out of his mouth over Simon's hand. How many of these men would die miserably like that?
Thierry d'Hauteville and Valery de Pirenne—Alain's younger brother—the two young men who rode behind him, caught his eye and grinned delightedly. He managed a smile in return, but feared it must look awfully weak. The bright red silk crosses sewn on their chests caught his eye. He wore one, too, on the breast of his purple and gold surcoat. His oldest sister, Isabelle, a fine seamstress, had sewn it there and embroidered the edges with gold thread.
All three of his sisters, Isabelle, Alix, and Blanche, had worked on the crusaders' banner, red cross on white silk, that rippled above Simon. Equerries took turns riding with the banner according to a roster Simon himself had written. Beside the crusading flag, another equerry carried the banner of the house of Gobignon, three gold crowns, two side by side and one below them, on a purple background.
His sisters' three husbands rode to war behind him today. Since he was unmarried and had no heir, one of them would be Count de Gobignon if he should fall.
And with more right to the title, perhaps, than I have, he thought unhappily. And he felt as if icy fingers stroked the back of his neck when he thought how much one of those three knights back there stood to gain by his death.
His little troop raised no dust; the road was damp and covered with puddles from yesterday's rain. Thank God it had not rained hard enough to turn the road into mud. As it was, the weather made his leave-taking gloomier than it need have been. The empty fields, littered with yellow stubble, lay flat under the vast gray bowl of a cloudy November sky. The only feature in that landscape was a darker gray, the bulk of Château Gobignon with its round towers rising on its great solitary hill. The road they traveled ran back to it as straight as if it had been drawn with a mason's rule.
I should stop this enterprise now, Simon thought. I should turn back before it is too late.
The longer they were on the road, the harder it would be to declare suddenly that Gobignon was not going to war in Italy, to tell his barons and knights to return to their homes and hang up their arms. If he did so at this moment, he would provoke great anger in these men of his own household. Today and tomorrow great barons would be joining him, mature men—his vassals—but men of weight and power in their own right. Their scorn at his change of heart would be almost unbearable.
But did he want to be another Amalric de Gobignon, leading the flower of his domain's manhood, hundreds of knights and thousands of men-at-arms, to war, with only a handful coming back? If this was a bad war, God might well punish Charles d'Anjou with defeat. And Simon would share, not in the glory as Charles had promised him, but in disaster and death.
And I am not rightfully the Count de Gobignon.
He knew, though these men did not, that he had no right to call them out to war. If Simon de Gobignon, a bastard and an impostor, led this army to its destruction, what name was there for such a crime?
The voice of Valery de Pirenne, Simon's new equerry, broke in on Simon's tormented thoughts.
"I am not sorry to be leaving home this time of year. What better place to spend the winter than sunny Italy?"
I have already caused the death of this young man's brother. Will I kill Valery too?
"It rains much in Italy in January," said Thierry, now Sire Thierry d'Hauteville, having been knighted by Simon at the beginning of November on the Feast of All Saints. His tone was lofty with experience.
"Bad weather for war," said Henri de Puys, whose experience was ten times Thierry's—or Simon's, for that matter. "But the rains should be over by the time we reach that infidel Manfred's kingdom."
"Look there," said Thierry. "More knights coming to meet us."
Simon saw a line of about a dozen men on horseback, three canvas-covered wagons and a straggling column of men on foot with spears over their shoulders. The oncoming knights and men were tiny in the distance, marching along a road that would meet Simon's route.
Oh, God, now it will be harder to turn them back.
"That will be the party from Château la Durie," Thierry said, pointing to the horizon where the four towers of a small castle were just barely visible.
A distant bell was ringing out the noon hour as Simon's troop met those from la Durie. All of the new knights wore red crosses on their tunics. Sire Antoine de la Durie was a stout man about de Puys's age with a huge mustache called an algernon, whose ends grew into his sideburns. Simon and de la Durie brought their horses together and embraced. The knight smelled like a barn.
"How was your harvest, Sire Antoine?"
Large white teeth flashed under the algernon. "Ample, Monseigneur. But not so ample, I trust, as what we shall gather in Sicily."
They all wanted this so much.
How his chief barons had cheered and roared and stamped when he announced this war to them at his Midsummer's Eve feast in the great hall at Château Gobignon! It was at that very moment, when he had seen the ferocious eagerness of his barons for war, that he had begun again to doubt.
Antoine de la Durie gestured with a callused, bare hand to three young men on horseback whose russet cloaks were patched, but whose longswords proclaimed their knighthood. They grinned shyly at Simon.
"These are the Pilchard brothers, Monseigneur. They are not Gobignon vassals, but they are Madame de la Durie's cousin's sons, and I vouch for them. They beg to go crusading under your leadership."
Under my leadership! God help them!
"You are right welcome, Messires. When we stop for the night, see my clerk, Friar Amos, and have him add your names to our roll."
The young men dismounted, rushed to him, and kissed his hands.
Why did he not send them away, send all these knights away, tell them there would be no war in Italy? Because he was afraid of his own barons and knights, the men he was supposed to lead. Because he felt he had set something in motion that could not be stopped, like one of those horrendous avalanches in the Alps.
If they were to keep going, he must—without mishap—cover ten leagues a day to reach Rome by February. He must study again the maps Valery was carrying in his saddlebags, especially the one he had just received, along with a letter, from Count Charles—King Charles.
The infidel Manfred, Charles had written, had stirred up the Ghibellino cities of northern Italy. They were lying in wait for allies of Anjou, who might come down from France or the Holy Roman Empire. Simon must not waste troops fighting the Sienese or Florentine militia. So he should enter Italy by way of Provence and Liguria, then cut across eastward to Ravenna and thence down to Spoleto and Viterbo, and finally to Rome. The roundabout route would take longer, but Charles would expect Simon in Rome by the first of February. Charles intended to march against Manfred at the beginning of April.
Two months to reach Provence, march along the Ligurian coast, perhaps as far as Genoa, which was safely Guelfo, and then pick his way around the nests of northern Ghibellini to Rome. It could be done, but only if his army met with no unexpected obstacles—a Ghibellino army, for instance, or a bad winter storm.
And then, beyond Rome, what would they find?
Once they were there, at least he would not have to make the decisions that determined the fate of these men. The responsibility—and the blame if they failed—would be Charles's.
The greatest war since you were a child, Charles had promised.
And none of the Gobignon men would ever know that they were fighting because he had fallen in love with a woman named Sophia—if that was truly her name—and she had let him taste her love and then had disappeared.
He remembered a trouvere at a feast singing of how the Greeks went to war because Helen, wife of one of their kings, ran off with Paris, prince of Troy. But that was just a story.
Sophia—her face and form arose in his memory, and there was a strange happiness mixed with the pain, as if he were glad of his suffering. He had heard songs about the sweet pain of love, but he had never before now understood them.
And even now he could not think of Sophia as an enemy. His heartbeat quickened at the thought that there was a chance, very small but still a chance, that Sophia might truly be someone he could love, and that he could free her from whatever entanglement had dragged her into Manfred's power.
By the end of the day the sound of hoofbeats around him was no longer a drumming, but a thundering. And all around and above him was a fluttering of banners. Each of the larger contingents that joined him had brought the standard of its seigneur.
The road south was climbing into forested hills. At the crest of the first hill Simon tugged on the reins to slow his palfrey, and turned to look back. In the fading light of the overcast day, Château Gobignon was a violet outcropping on the flat horizon, its towers indistinct. This would be his last sight of it, perhaps for years. And tomorrow he would cross the boundary of his domain. That was a point past which there was no return. Once the host was assembled, once they had crossed the Gobignon border, it would not matter what he told them. If he refused to lead them, they would find another leader.
He saw two more banners rising above the crest of a bare ridge to the west. Then the heads and shoulders of men, then the horses they rode. They waved and halloed. More followed them. And still more.
Simon met the newcomers by a stream that trickled through a small valley lined with birch trees. Seigneur Claudius de Marion, the leader of the large new party, lifted his square chin as he reached over and clapped Simon heartily on the shoulder.
"The valley widens out up ahead," he said. "I propose that we camp there. The forest beyond is thick and not a good place to ride through at night. And, Monseigneur, to be frank, I do not want to send my daughter home after dark."
"I will be quite safe, Father, if Monseigneur the Count wishes to press on for the night."
The young woman riding a tall gray and white stallion beside Claudius de Marion had humorous blue eyes and a wide mouth. Her upper lip protruded slightly, an irregularity Simon thought quite pretty in her. She had not inherited her father's nose, which was shaped like an axe blade; hers was small and turned up at the end. Her single yellow-gold braid, which circled round from under her blue hood and hung down between her high breasts, seemed to glow in the gathering dusk.
Simon remembered dancing in a ring that included her at last Midsummer's Eve feast. She had worn a woven wreath of white daisies in her hair.
"Barbara insisted on accompanying me to our meeting," said de Marion with an indulgent grin. "I could not persuade her to bid me farewell from our castle."
Barbara's smile was wide and frank, like her father's. "In truth, Monseigneur, I had to see all the knights and men you have gathered. I knew it would be a brave sight, such as I have never seen the like of. God grant you a glorious victory. Will you take wine?"
She held up an oval wineskin, and at Simon's nod and murmur of thanks she worked her horse over to his with a click of her tongue and a pat on the neck. She rode like one born to it, thought Simon. Which she was.
She squirted the wine into his open mouth. It was red and strong, and it lit a welcome little fire in his belly.
As they rode deeper into the valley, Simon asked himself, where had Barbara de Marion been when he had been earnestly searching for a wife? She had been a child, and his eyes had passed right over her. How different his life might have been if she had been a little older two years ago. Seigneur Claudius was one of his chief vassals and a good friend, and would doubtless have had no objection to a marriage. Simon might never have gone to Italy.
But there was room in this heart for only one love. And there was only one course his life could take now.
Somehow, with the sight of this maiden and the realization that he might have fallen in love with her once but never could now, a door closed in Simon's mind. His destiny lay in Italy. He could no more forget Sophia and return to Château Gobignon like a snail crawling into its shell than he could spit himself on his own sword.
As for these men, they were going to Italy for their own gain, not to help Simon find Sophia, nor yet to help Charles d'Anjou become King of Sicily. Or even to protect the pope from his Hohenstaufen enemies. He had not had to appeal to their feudal obligations in summoning them to war. As Count Charles had predicted, they all wanted to come. All they cared about was a chance for riches and land and glory after years of doing nothing but managing their domains. They marched of their own free will. He only pointed the way.
He remembered something Roland had said to him: Once you have made your choice, put your whole heart and soul into it. Never divide yourself.
Which, Simon thought, was exactly why, even though he would pass near Nicolette and Roland's home in Provence, he would not visit them. He knew well their feelings about crusades, and he could be quite sure of the loathing with which they would view this war. Roland had even spent a good part of his youth at the court of Emperor Frederic, Manfred's father. No, he had enough doubts of his own without letting his parents add more.
Even so, from his belt hung Roland's gift to him, the jeweled Damascus scimitar. He did not like to admit to himself that he was superstitious, but with this scimitar Roland had gotten out of Egypt alive in the face of the most terrible dangers. Somehow, Simon saw the scimitar as a talisman that might also get him through this war.
He glanced over at the beautiful Barbara de Marion and felt a rush of gratitude. Knowing that, lovely as she was, she could never make him forget Sophia, had helped him make his decision.