"You are too generous, Madama," said Daoud, recovering from a small surprise. He had assumed that Tilia would give him access to her women out of simple hospitality, and it had never occurred to him that he would have to pay.
XIII
Simon stood shifting from foot to foot in the graveled yard before the palace of Pope Urban. An Italian cardinal had just arrived with his retinue of bishops, monsignori, priests, and monks, and Simon knew it would be some time before the procession passed all the guards and the majordomo at the main door.
Alain de Pirenne, beside him, said in a low voice, "I still can't believe it. We are about to attend a council called by the pope himself." His blue eyes were huge, and his fair skin was flushed with excitement. He was dressed in his best, an azure tunic with silver embroidery at the sleeves and collar, and on his feet poulaines, black deerskin shoes whose elongated toes came to points. The hilt of the longsword hanging at his waist was plain, but Simon knew it had been in the Pirenne family for generations.
"Do not believe it yet, Alain," Simon said wryly. "We were not invited, and we have not yet been let in."
"Surely they would not keep out so great a seigneur as you," said Alain. "Especially when you have been faithfully protecting the Tartars for a month."
"Well, that is what I am counting on," Simon said.
They stood inside a high wall of cream-colored tufa, the same rock on which Orvieto stood. The wall, topped with square battlements, surrounded the papal palace. Simon's gaze swept beyond the wall toward the bluish tops of nearby hills, wreathed in morning mist, then back to the row of pine trees that stood between the wall and the palace, the massed green of the needles almost so dark as to appear black. The palace itself, fortified by six square turrets, was of white limestone. It must have cost the papal treasury a fortune, Simon thought, to haul all those big blocks up here. Within this solid edifice, surrounded by this high wall, atop the impregnable mesa of Orvieto, the Holy Father was certainly well protected.
The last monk in his gray gown had passed the guards at the door, and Simon saw more clergymen massing at the outer gate. He took a deep breath and started up the stairs, de Pirenne hurrying behind him. He reminded himself, I am the Count de Gobignon.