XLVIII
Just as Sophia and Riccardo arrived at the Porta Maggiore in the city wall of Orvieto, the air around them seemed to glow and crackle. A cold wind blew across the road leading up to the gate. Sophia spurred her bay, but the horse hardly needed encouragement to gallop the last few paces to the shelter of the gatehouse. A shaft of lightning dazzled Sophia, and a mighty thunderclap, loud enough to shake the rock on which Orvieto stood, deafened her. She and Riccardo were in the shelter of the gatehouse before the first fat drops began to fall, making craters in the dust of the road.
They identified themselves to the guards without dismounting. Clerks were no longer posted at the gates to interrogate and record the name of every person entering and leaving Orvieto. Evidently the podesta had given up on that.
Sophia, Daoud, and Ugolini had, even so, been chilled by a polite letter from d'Ucello to Ugolini requesting that "His Eminence's distinguished guest from Trebizond" not leave Orvieto without the podesta's permission. Sophia, on the other hand, seemed free to come and go as she pleased.
The thought crossed Sophia's mind that she would be soaked as she rode from the gate to Ugolini's mansion. But the meeting with Simon had left her in misery, and the storm suited her mood. David knew that she was meeting Simon outside the town. Now what would she tell David about where Simon was going?
She was about to ride on into the city streets when a man stepped out of the crowd that had gathered for shelter under the gateway arch. He raised a hand.
"Madonna!" It was Sordello. "A private word, I beg of you."
She saw fear in his face, but in his bloodshot eyes burned another feeling she could not identify. She disliked the man and did not want to talk to him, especially not now, carrying secrets as she was. But he served David, and his disturbed look suggested that what he had to say might be important. Sighing, she dismounted, gave the reins of her horse to Riccardo, and walked beside Sordello to an unoccupied corner of the gatehouse.
"You know that Messer David has set me to find the informer among us, and he says he will kill me if I fail." He had backed her into the corner and pressed uncomfortably close to her. His breath smelled of onions, and he was altogether repellent.
"What do you want of me?"
"The one person who might give me a clue is the Count de Gobignon, and he has disappeared. No one at the Monaldeschi palace will tell me anything about why he left."
Does he know that I just met with Simon?
"Why ask me?"
"I know that it is Messer David's wish that you allow de Gobignon to court you. If he has left Orvieto, perhaps you have heard where he is going." He smiled, showing a gap in his upper front teeth. And now she realized what the hidden feeling was. It was lust. She was disgusted, and pushed past him to give herself room.
He said, "I saw you ride out earlier today, and I waited here at the gatehouse for you to come back. You must have met with the count. Madonna, I do not know what to do. And Messer David will kill me if I do not tell him something."
She desperately wanted to get away. "I am going to Messer David myself to tell him that Count Simon has left for Perugia. Where the pope is going. He is recruiting more guards and preparing a refuge for the Tartar ambassadors. You'll gain nothing with Messer David by telling him the same thing."
Sordello frowned thoughtfully. "No, but I might try to catch Count Simon on the road and talk to him."
Sophia's heart leapt with alarm and seemed to lodge in her throat. What if Sordello followed Simon and discovered he was on his way to France and came back and reported that to Daoud?
"You needn't go to all that trouble," she said, keeping a grip on her voice. "We will all be going to Perugia shortly, and you can question Count Simon there."
He nodded, as if satisfied with that, and she felt a little better.
He bowed again and again. "Thank you, Madonna, thank you."
In a moment she was on her horse again and riding into the rain. She wanted nothing more to do with Sordello.
But the encounter had helped her in one way, and now she felt more confident about talking to David about Simon. Rehearsing the lie with Sordello had helped.
"He is leaving the Tartars behind? After I came so close to killing them?"
"They will be closely guarded. I do not think you will be able to get at them again."
There was a bitterness in the small smile that quirked David's thin lips. "I do not intend to try until the Sienese arrive here. When I seek their lives again, a whole army of guards will not be enough to stop me."
What would David do, Sophia wondered, if he learned that the alliance he had fought so hard to prevent would soon be sealed in France by Simon de Gobignon?
She looked at David's eyes, the color of the thunderclouds outside. Her hatred for herself struck her heart with hammer blows.
He stood by the window of his room, straight and broad-shouldered, wearing a belted gown of black silk with a broad red stripe at the bottom. His wound no longer required a poultice, and it was almost healed. The strange Saracen treatment he had prescribed for himself had worked.
She saw pain in his eyes, a pain of the heart. "No doubt you will miss the count," he said in a low voice. He turned to look out the window.
He had pulled the leaded pane of glass slightly inward on its hinge, letting into the room the cold breeze stirred up by the storm. Locks of his blond hair fluttered around his forehead. She studied his profile, the nose long and straight, the chin sharp, the brows seeming to frown even when relaxed.
"You wanted me to make love to him," she said softly.
He kept his face turned. "Yes."
"You did not want me to make love to him."
"Yes."
She stood in the center of the room, about ten paces from him, her hands clasped before her. Her shawl and her gown were cold and wet. A net of small pearls held her hair in place, but her hair, too, was sodden with rain. She felt on the verge of shivering, but she held herself very still.
White light filled the room. David's body jerked, and his lips tightened. A long, rolling peal of thunder followed the lightning, ending in a crash so loud it hurt her head.
He was afraid of thunderstorms. She had noticed that before. There was little rain in the part of the world where he had grown up. He was afraid of nothing else, as far as she could see. There was nothing he would not do, nothing he could not do. If only he were Greek, what a fighter for the Polis he would be.
But when he winced away from the lightning, she wanted to cradle his blond head against her breasts.
The rain beat down on the walls and roof of Ugolini's mansion with redoubled intensity. She saw a small pool of water on the wood floor, rain blown in through the open window.
"I never did make love to him," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the wind and rain.
"I know that." He took a step toward her.
I am doing worse than that now, she thought with a stab of guilt. I am keeping from David something he would badly want to know.
"He put his arms around me and kissed me many times," she said.
David turned fully to look at her, saying nothing.
"Whenever he took me in his arms, I thought of you."
He closed his eyes.
When she was with David she never grieved over the turns her life had taken. She never felt sorry for herself, as she did with Simon, because she had not married and could not marry. Simon had actually said he wanted to marry her, and in the end she had believed him. That seemed like a dream now. A pleasant dream, but an impossible one.
For an instant she tried to picture herself, a woman of Constantinople wed to a Frankish lord and living in a castle in the north of France. If such a preposterous thing should come about, she would be enormously wealthy and powerful—though she had not really thought about that when she was with Simon. She was not herself when she was with Simon. And now, when she was herself and able to see things clearly, the wealth and power still did not matter, because they would give her no pleasure if she had to live among barbarians.
When she was with David she never worried or even thought about her future, what life would be like for her when she was older. With David she thought only of now.
He had opened his eyes and was staring at her. She looked at him, standing tall and fair.
I love you, David. I want you so.
Why had it not happened? Soon it would be a year since they had met at Lucera, and she had long known that she wanted him, and believed that he wanted her as well. But something had always held him back.
Her body grew warm inside her cold garments.
It is not because of me that we have waited this long.
There was a question in his eyes, and she felt something inside her pulling her toward him. She took a faltering step across the tile floor. Then another, surer one.
He held out his arms, his harsh mouth softening as his lips parted slightly.
"Come to me," he said.
He watched her walking toward him one step at a time, and he thought she looked like a woman in a trance. Her head was lifted to receive his kiss.
"How like rose petals your lips are," he said in Greek. He had never spoken Greek to her before. She stopped her slow march toward him and gave a long, shuddering sigh.
Then she ran the last few steps and threw herself into his arms. Joy flooded his chest as he pulled her against him.
At last, at last, at last!
He had wanted to hold her like this for so long, and much of the time had not even been aware that he wanted it.
He had not wanted to be aware of it, he thought, knowing that he must use her against his enemy. And how he had hated Simon de Gobignon simply because Simon was to have Sophia.
I should have known then that my hatred for de Gobignon was a measure of my love for her.
But he had not wanted to know that either, because Blossoming Reed, the daughter of the sultan, awaited him in El Kahira, and he had sworn to be faithful to her all his life.
Take as many women as you like. But love always and only me.
He felt a chill, and realized that he was feeling cold not merely because of the memory of Blossoming Reed's warning, but because Sophia was rain-wet against him. She had ridden through the storm still thundering away outside, and he felt a cold dampness soaking through his gown.
"Your clothes are wet," he said, continuing to speak Greek.
She rubbed herself against him. "I am wet to the skin. I need to take these clothes off."
"Yes. Why not do that?"
Without hesitation she stepped out of the circle of his arms and undid the brooch that held her printed shawl around her shoulders. She would not be shy, he realized. There had not been time, in the life she had led, for hesitation with men. Only, he hoped that she would not, like some of the experienced women he had known, show little feeling herself while she let him use her in any way that pleased him.
She is not that sort. I know it.
Foolish of him to even think it. But some part of him needed to doubt. This moment was too good to be true.
And too frightening. Because what they were about to do was not just satisfy their bodies' hungers; it would seal the bond of love between them. And then he would not be able to send Sophia like a falcon to strike at his enemies. He would not be the same man when he went back to Blossoming Reed. What they were about to do would change both their lives.
Standing in the crumpled heap of orange and green silk that was her shawl, she turned her back to him.
"Help me with the laces," she said. He saw that her gown laced down the back.
"One small moment," he said, running his hand caressingly over her back. He walked to the door. There was still pain in his right thigh when he moved quickly, but now it was overwhelmed by his body's yearning to have this woman. He felt the swelling and pressure of arousal in his loins.
He opened the door of his room partway and looked up and down the shadowy corridor. There was no one in sight. He closed the door firmly and slid home the heavy iron bolt that would guarantee their privacy.
She was standing where he had left her, watching him, her amber eyes warm. He went quickly to her and untied the knot in the laces at her back, marveling at the slenderness of her neck. She could have unlaced the dress herself, he saw, but she wanted him to.
She wore no belt, and the dress fell away. Under it was a white silk chemise without sleeves. Still standing behind her, he dropped his hands gently on her small, square shoulders and slid the chemise down. His eyes followed its fall, savoring her delicate shoulder blades, the shadowed hollow of her back. All that remained now were light green hose attached to a wisp of silk that girdled her hips.
Sophia shivered, and he knew it was not the cold, though the storm was blowing a strong, moist breeze through the partly opened window.
He put his hands on her shoulders, firmly now, and turned her around. She threw back her head and laughed as he stared at her breasts and bit his lower lip.
What Daoud carried under his black gown felt as big and heavy as a mace.
He dropped to one knee before her. He reached around to her buttocks, his palms tingling at their cool firmness, and he slid down the last of her garments. She stood, all exposed, before him.
"Will I not see you naked?" she said with a throaty chuckle. "Is that the Turkish way, for the man to remain clothed?"
"You will soon learn what the Turkish way is, my lady." He leaned forward, still genuflecting, and dropped a dozen light kisses on her belly and thighs, and then buried his face in the rich triangle of hair between her legs and kissed her deeply.
She cried out in surprise and pleasure.
Suddenly he stood up and swung her up in his arms like a Bedouin chieftain carrying his bride to his tent. She laughed delightedly. She felt as light as a child. He strode across the room to the bed and laid her down.
He wrestled his black silk gown over his head and threw it off. Quickly he pulled off the locket Blossoming Reed had given him and dropped it on the gown. He stood over her, looking down at her, and letting her look her fill at him.
"The blond Turk," she said in Greek with a small smile, and moved her hips from side to side.
Slowly she reached up to her head and pulled free the net of pearls woven into her hair. Long locks, black as raven's wings, spread out around her head on the pillow.
"I must look like Medusa," she said.
"Who?"
"A woman with snakes for hair. Men who saw her were turned to stone."
He remembered now: In a bazaar at El Kahira he had listened to the story of the she-monster.
"The sight of you would bring a stone to life," he said.
"Ah, but part of you is already hard as stone. How long are you going to stand there? I want you." The yearning in her voice made something vibrate inside him, as if she had plucked a taut string in his very soul. He was seized by a violent urge to throw himself upon her and take her at once. And she would welcome it, too, he knew.
But this moment was too precious to be allowed to pass so quickly.
He sank to his knees and reached out to pull her hips to the edge of the bed. She squirmed across the bed to help him.
Just after he grew out of boyhood, when he was very wild and afraid of nothing, Ayesha, the youngest wife of Emir Faruk abu Husain, discovered that he existed, and showed him a way to come to her in abu Husain's harem. He knew he would die writhing on a spike if the emir's slaves caught him, but he was also quite certain that such a thing could never really happen to him.
With a boy's eagerness and excitability, he had spent himself an instant after he joined Ayesha in the darkness on her couch.
"The emir is very old and has many wives," she purred. "Rarely can we slip a beautiful young man like you past the harem guards. So we must learn how to pleasure each other. There are many things that will delight a woman's body besides a man's rumh. Shall I show you?"
He was curious, and at his whispered agreement she pushed his head down between her legs and told him what to do.
"And put your fingers here at the same time. Ah, that feels very good."
He looked at Sophia lying open before him and said again, "How like a flower." He saw dew on this flower, and he bent to taste.
He did to her the things he had learned from Ayesha and later on from other harem women.
As he worked upon Sophia the magic of the harem, he listened to her breathing as it grew faster and faster. He watched her breasts rise and fall, her chestnut-color nipples standing up.
She groaned and tossed her head from side to side, the groans turning to screams as she reached a pinnacle. He brought her to another, and another.
Panting, almost crying, she put her hand on his head. "No more. This way of the Turks is wonderful, but I want you inside me now."
He stretched himself full length beside her, put his face, wet with her own sweet liquor, against hers and kissed her with lips and tongue. She seized his shoulders, her nails digging into his muscles, and pulled him over on top of her.
The way was so well prepared that he was within her in an instant. He knew that he could not hold himself back very long, and he gave himself up to the floodtide of pleasure. He raised his head a little so that he could look down into her wide amber eyes, and so that she could see into his soul at the moment when he gave all his force to her.
Almost at the same moment the muscles in her face tensed and her neck corded. Through clenched teeth she cried out again and again and again.
Their bodies relaxed together. Daoud felt that now, in the aftermath of frenzy, their flesh was melting and flowing together and becoming one.
They lay in silence, and a distant growl of thunder told him that the storm outside had passed. He had not noticed its dying away. He felt a cool breeze blowing through the windows.
It seemed as if hours passed while they lay there in silence, arms around each other, legs entwined, and he listened to her breathing slowly grow calmer.
She stroked his cheek and played with the blond hairs on his chest. "Is anything changed now?"
"For us, I think, much is changed."
She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I love you. Does love mean anything to you Muslims?"
He laughed softly. "Of course it does. In this world, women and perfume are dearest to me. So spoke our Prophet, may God commend and salute him."
She shook her head and ran her finger down his forehead and nose. "I am glad I am as dear to you as perfume. You say 'our Prophet,' lying there looking more French than Simon de Gobignon. Of course, that is why your sultan sent you here. If I, who know what you are, still find it hard to accept you as a Saracen, those who do not know would never suspect."
As she spoke the name de Gobignon, he felt a twinge of anger. Just his name, mentioned in their bed, was an intrusion. Her eyes flickered momentarily away from his, as if she, too, realized it was an error. Best, he thought, to say nothing about it.
"Yes, I am truly a Muslim, and Muslims know more of love, I believe, than most Christians." But now he thought of Blossoming Reed.
Why must these ghosts hover over us?
She reached out to touch the little leather capsule tied by a thong around his neck, the only thing he was wearing at the moment. "What is that?"
"It is called a tawidh. Inside are numbers written on a scroll. It protects me from death by wounding and causes any wounds I do receive to heal quickly."
"Tawidh?" She mimicked exactly the Arabic pronunciation. "How can numbers on a scroll protect from wounds?"
He did not fully understand himself the Sufi belief that all things are numbers, and that numbers written by a holy man could control objects and events.
"One must be of my faith to understand it," he said briefly.
She looked at him earnestly. "It is so hard to think of you as a Mohammedan, David."
"Not Mohammedan—Muslim. And David is not my name. My true name is Arabic. Shall I tell it to you?"
"Oh, yes, please. I will use it with you when we are alone together."
"I am called Daoud ibn Abdallah. Daoud is Arabic for David."
"Then your name is David."
"No, it is Daoud," he said. "The sound matters a great deal. It is the sound that God hears."
"You believe that God speaks Arabic?"
"It is the language most pleasing to Him. Did He not give His message to the Prophet—may God praise and salute him—in Arabic?"
She pulled herself closer to him. "Ah, David—Daoud—do not talk to me of religion now. Here and now, let us think not of religions and empires and wars, but only of you and me." She paused and looked at him a little anxiously. "Do you think the servants or anyone else heard me screaming?"
"I saw no one outside. Most of them probably suspect that we have been lovers for a long time. But suspicion is one thing. To confirm it by our outward behavior could be dangerous. We must continue to act as if this never happened."
"We will do this again, will we not?"
He touched her dark red lips with his fingertips and said:
After suffering the joy of love
I have no abiding place.
I live only to be
With the one I love.
"Yes, we will do it again. Very soon now. I feel my strength returning." He curved his hand around the softness of her breast.
"Ah, good! I did not want it to be over yet—Daoud."
In the first days of the Christian month of July the sun grew very strong, and above the narrow streets and tiny gardens, dust rose. Daoud found the climate more to his liking. Although he believed he would never have a true home or enjoy peace in this life, he felt a happiness such as he had never known before. And this was strange, because Hulagu Khan's emissaries to the Christians still lived, and al-Islam was still threatened with destruction, and while he turned many plans over in his mind, he was not sure what to do next.
But when he and Sophia were together he was able almost entirely to forget those threats. And when he was not with her, he carried her image in his heart, and his heart was the lighter for it.
His leg had healed, and it was safe for him to walk the streets now. He knew the podesta's men must be watching him, but he feared them less now, because they would not see him limp. They might wonder when he had returned to Orvieto from Perugia, but they would have to suppose it was after the podesta took the clerks away from the gates. Each day he wandered through the town, forming plans, observing.
He sensed a tension in the air, growing a little stronger each day, like the summer's heat. Around the palace of the Filippeschi on the south side of the town, in its windows and on its battlements, men stood watchful, holding crossbows, hands on their sword hilts. They were not as strong as they had been last April. The bravos Lorenzo had gathered and Daoud had lent to their cause had quietly left Orvieto. The Filippeschi had lost many men and were thrown back on their own resources now. Their grim apprehension was obvious.
Daoud did not speak directly to the Filippeschi. Aside from his one meeting with their leader, Marco, he had avoided any contact with them that might compromise him. He wondered whether Marco had given any thought to a suggestion Lorenzo had made to him: that aid might be forthcoming if the Filippeschi switched their allegiance to the Ghibellino cause. Apparently Filippeschi loyalty to the pope went back centuries, and was not easily changed. That was something to be discussed when Lorenzo returned.
At the Palazzo Monaldeschi Daoud saw an air of preparation, of forces gathering, of confidence. One afternoon Vittorio de Monaldeschi, aged eleven, in full mail—a child's mail shirt and hose must cost as much as a man's, and be usable for only a short time—wearing an orange and green surcoat, rode slowly along the length of the Corso with a dozen horsemen, orange and green pennons on their lances. A show to intimidate his enemies.
Both sides seemed to be awaiting something, and the air of the city felt to Daoud as it did when a thunderstorm was approaching.
The petty street wars of Orvieto would mean nothing to him soon, Daoud thought. Lorenzo had managed to send two messages by way of Ghibellino merchants passing through Orvieto. He had made his way safely to Siena, was negotiating with Rinaldo di Stefano, Duke of Siena, and was recruiting bravos by the hundred. But all was not going quickly enough for Daoud. With the pope on the verge of leaving Orvieto, it appeared the Sienese would not come quickly enough. Unless Lorenzo and the Sienese arrived in time to trap the pope and the Tartars here, he would have to follow them to Perugia.
Or he could go to Manfred and urge him to make immediate war on the pope. Every rumormonger in Orvieto claimed that Manfred was on the brink of marching out of southern Italy to make the whole peninsula his. But Daoud doubted it. It would probably be difficult to persuade Manfred to take any action against the pope, unless the French actually invaded Italy.
Every day he and Sophia spent hours together, sometimes in his chamber, sometimes in hers. They chose different times of the day, hoping to make their meetings less obvious.
The best times were the afternoons. Most Orvietans slept an hour or two after their noon meal, just as most Egyptians did. Sophia and Daoud would draw the curtains to hold out the heat and dust. They would make love, their bodies slippery with sweat. Then they would lie side by side and let themselves cool, talking of what they felt about each other, of the world, of the mission they had come to Orvieto to accomplish.
They never spent an entire night together. This would cause too much gossip among Ugolini's servants. For the benefit of the podesta and whoever else might be watching them, Daoud wanted to maintain the fiction that he was a trader from Trebizond, far to the east, and Sophia a Sicilian girl from Siracusa, and they had very little to do with each other. Alone in his bed at night, Daoud sometimes lay awake thinking about what Sophia had come to mean to him. He had fallen in love with her, he realized now, long before he first possessed her body.
If it was their fate to die here in Italy, at least they would have known this happiness first. But if he succeeded in his mission, and if he and Sophia were still alive after that, what then? Return to his emir's palace in El Kahira, to Blossoming Reed, bringing Sophia with him? A Greek Christian woman entering a Mameluke's harem? And even if Sophia were willing, Blossoming Reed would try to kill her. But Sophia would make a formidable enemy for Blossoming Reed.
No, he could not subject either of them to that. Or himself.
But for him what else was there? El Kahira was the only home he knew. He had left it only to protect it. He must return.
All this thinking, he decided, was foolishness. What would happen was written in the book of God, and one could be sure only that it would be very different from what he expected. Let him concentrate on following the path as far ahead as he could see clearly, and the next stage would be revealed when God turned the page.
An orange radiance suffused Cardinal Ugolini's dining hall, gilding dust motes that hung in the air. A stout maidservant cleared away the trenchers, the round slices of bread on which Ugolini had served spring lamb to Daoud and Sophia. She bundled up the knives and forks in her apron. Daoud's fork was clean. He preferred, among friends, not to use the strange implement, which seemed to him a bida, an undesirable innovation. He ate with the fingers of his right hand.
"His Holiness takes the road for Perugia a week from tomorrow," said Ugolini. "You have not told me what you intend to do, David."
"We must await Lorenzo's coming. He and the Sienese may be here before the pope leaves."
"I assure you that if that were possible, the pope would be galloping out of town right now," said Ugolini. "His information is better than ours."
Sophia daintily wiped her hands and lips with the linen cloth that covered the table. "Your Eminence, Messer David, I want to use these long July hours of daylight for painting. I beg to be excused."
She refused more wine and genially overrode Ugolini's protests. Carefully keeping his face blank, Daoud watched her walk out of the room, tall and straight in a cherry-red gown. He found himself picturing the things they had done not long ago, while Orvieto rested at midday. He turned back to Ugolini to see the little cardinal was also, with a lubricious smile, watching Sophia.
Ugolini's long nose twitched with amusement as he turned to Daoud. "There have been times when I thought there was a chamber of torment on the top floor of my mansion. The groans, the screams—"
"I have heard nothing, Your Eminence," said Daoud, keeping his face expressionless.
"I should have been concerned for the lovely lady, except that she is obviously so healthy and serene. Much more serene, I believe, than when she first came here. What do you suppose accounts for that?"
Daoud shrugged. "In silence is security from error."
"Is that a saying of one of your Muslim philosophers?"
"Yes," said Daoud, allowing himself the faintest of smiles. "The Princess Sheherazade."
The sun had set by the time Daoud left Cardinal Ugolini, and the third-floor corridor was nearly dark. Servants had placed small candles on tables at each end of the corridor. Daoud had allowed himself a cup of wine with the cardinal because there was nothing else to drink, and now his face felt slightly numb.
A large figure walked slowly toward him from the opposite end of the corridor as he approached his room. With the candlelight behind him, the man's face was in darkness, and Daoud tensed himself.
"Messer David, it is Riccardo."
Now they stood face-to-face, Daoud having to look up a little.
"I searched everywhere. Questioned everyone I know. I would stake my life that Sordello is not in Orvieto. He went out the Perugia gate after talking to Madonna Sophia. I do not think he ever came back."
Dismissing Riccardo, Daoud went into his room to think and to pray. He felt baffled. He would have staked his life that no man bound by the powers of the Hashishiyya would ever turn against the one who showed him the delights of paradise.
But I did threaten him with death, and he saw that I wanted to kill him. That might have been enough to break the bond.
And I did wonder, even when I initiated him, whether there might not be some part of him that remained free.
Daoud bolted the door of his room. He needed to be alone, to think and to refresh his mind.
He faced the charcoal-marked spot on his wall that marked the direction of Mecca and, with care and thought, went through the sequence of the salat, standing, bowing, kneeling, striking his head on the floor again and again until he was done. He asked God, as he did every night, to favor his efforts here in Italy with success, out of His love for the people of Islam.
I place all in Your hands.
After he was finished praying, he unlocked his traveling chest and began to take things from it. First came a small grinder box he had bought from an Orvieto ironsmith, a grinder such as women used to make small amounts of flour. Next, from a cotton bag he took two handfuls of roasted kaviyeh beans given him by Ugolini and put them in the top of the grinder box. He ran the beans through the grinder, rapidly turning the crank on the box until they were a coarse powder.
He took his old pack out of the chest and found in it the brick of hashish wrapped in oiled parchment. It nestled in the palm of his hand, and he weighed it, wondering whether he deserved this pleasure. For that matter, did he deserve Sophia? His attempt to kill the Tartars had failed, and now they might be slipping out of his grasp.
With money and the threat of a French invasion, Lorenzo should be able to persuade the Ghibellino leaders of Siena to follow their natural inclination and send an army against Orvieto. But that army would not be enough to counter the forces the pope could gather around himself at Perugia.
I must get Manfred to march.
With Manfred's help he could capture the pope and kill the Tartars. And he saw an even larger vision. Under Manfred, Italy could become a bulwark against the crusaders from northern Europe. Manfred was not just friendly to Egypt. He had Muslim officials and soldiers and was not far from being a Muslim himself.
There was so much to be done. Daoud wanted to go to Siena to hasten the Ghibellino attack on Orvieto. He wanted to ride to Manfred and urge him to invade the Papal States. But he had to remain here as long as the Tartars were here. Were it not for Sophia, these months of inactivity since that night at the Monaldeschi palace would be driving him mad.
He held the black hashish cake over the grinder, using his dagger to shave small, coiling peels into the ground kaviyeh beans. Then he filled a small iron pot from his water jar. He poured the mixture of water, kaviyeh, and hashish into the pot and set it to boil on a rack over the flame of short, fat candle.
He smiled and inhaled deeply as the rich, burnt smell filled the room. Just the smell of kaviyeh could give him visions, making him think of the gaily lighted streets of El Kahira, of the dome of the Gray Mosque, of the white arms of Blossoming Reed.
When his brew was ready he poured it into an Orvieto porcelain cup painted with bright flowers. He carried the cup to his window and pulled the window open. Even though Orvieto was atop a great rock, the starry sky seemed much farther away here than when he lay on his back and looked up at the stars in the desert. He wondered how far it was to the crystalline sphere in which the stars were set, like jewels. Was it farther than the distance between Orvieto and El Kahira?
He recited to himself the invocation, In the name of the Voice comes the Light.
Standing at the window, he drank his hashish-laced kaviyeh in slow sips. When he knew, by a peculiar intensity in the starlight, that the magic horse had begun its flight to paradise, he started to walk to his bed. A sudden impulse took him, and he went to his pack again.
Folded inside a square of blue silk he found the silver locket Blossoming Reed had given him. Since he had started lying with Sophia he had stopped wearing it. He remembered the suggestion he had planted in Sordello's mind, that at the sight of the locket he would kill Simon de Gobignon. With Sordello and Simon both gone, the locket was useless for that purpose.
As he held it in his hands, he remembered what Baibars's daughter had said to him:
I will always know if you are well or ill, alive or dead, and how you fare and what you feel. And if you would know how it is with me, seek me in this.
He lay in bed propped up on one elbow and turned the tiny screw that held the locket closed. He had meant to think about Manfred and Sophia, to try to catch some glimpse of the future. It troubled him that he had taken this bypath. He remembered now how troubled he had been when last he looked into the locket. He had not meant to use it again.
Now, though, it was somehow too late for him to stop. He seemed to have no will of his own. He raised the lid of the locket and looked down into it, at the design incised on rock crystal that looked like an interweaving of Arabic letters with circles and triangles. He waited to see what visions the locket would give him tonight.
The knowledge you run from is the most precious of all.
He gasped.
A pool of darkness opened in the center of the design. The network of straight and curved lines seemed to crumble into it as the pool spread. And it began to rotate, slowly at first, then faster. He was looking into a whirlpool of blackness.
It drew him in. He felt as if his eyes were spinning, then his head; then he fell into the whirlpool and it sucked him down. He could not breathe. He was drowning in blackness.
At the last moment, when he thought he would die, suffocated, the black pool released him and flung him back on his bed, contemptuously rejecting him.
He lay there, gasping, terrified.
Take as many women as you like. But love always and only me. For if you do love another, I promise you that your love will destroy both her and you.
Had he truly heard the voice of Blossoming Reed, burning and cruel in his mind, coming from as far off as the stars? The locket fell to the floor with a crash that seemed to shake the stone building in which he lay. He remained motionless, paralyzed with dread.