Chapter 23

Rachel's eyes widened and filled with tears. "They are all dead, Your Signory. And if any of them were living, I would rather be dead myself than have them know what has happened to me."

"Then Sophia is the only friend you have in the world?" Simon waited a moment, then tried a blind guess. "Perhaps Sophia has gone back to the place where you first met her."

"No, no," said Rachel. Suddenly, she looked terrified. She shrank back from Simon.

_She is dreadfully frightened_, Simon thought.

Friar Mathieu was right. Sophia was hiding something. Anguish stabbed Simon again.

"What is it, Rachel?" said Friar Mathieu. He shook his head at Simon.

"If you want to help me, if you love her, just leave me alone. She was kind to me as no one else has ever been. She was my friend. Stop trying to find out about her."

What was this girl hiding? What was Sophia hiding? Simon felt as if he were surrounded by enemies, all of them plunging their daggers into him.

"Does a friend send a young girl like you to a brothel?" said Friar Mathieu softly.

This brought no reply from Rachel. She put her hands to her face and sobbed.

Simon could bear no more. He stood up abruptly. He was torturing this girl. And in a way, she was torturing him.

He said, "Rachel, we will leave now. I am sorry I frightened you. In truth, I have no wish to hurt you. But, I--I am upset too. Listen to me. If you ever decide you want to get away from here, tell me. I will not let John or Cardinal de Verceuil or anyone else stop you if you want to be free."

Rachel took her hands away from her face. "Where can I go? Tell me that, Your Signory. Where can I go?" Her eyes, rimmed with red from crying, were pools of darkness in her pale face. The sight of her tears made Simon's own eyes burn.

Friar Mathieu stood up, leaning heavily on his stick. He took Simon's arm, whispered a good-bye to Rachel, and drew Simon out of the room. Silently they went back up to the top-floor loggia. Simon seethed and churned, his mind full of confusion and pain.

They sat together on a bench in the deepening twilight. The sun was down and the sky over the distant hills was copper-colored.

"How clumsy I was," Simon said. "She will tell us nothing now."

"You learned quite a bit," said Friar Mathieu, "if you think about what she told you."

"I know this much," said Simon. "I have been a fool. Sophia has been lying to me."

"Everyone in love is a fool, Simon. The more in love, the more they want to believe whatever the beloved tells them. Only a man or woman in love with God can be a fool without risk."

From the distant walls of Viterbo, the guards called the hours to one another. Their long-drawn cries echoed against the stone building fronts.

"What did you mean, think about what she told me?"

Friar Mathieu sighed. "Rachel said that Sophia told her after they left Orvieto she would not _have_ to stay with Tilia Caballo anymore. Rachel was not at Caballo's of her own free will. And you may have noticed that when I suggested that Sophia sent her there, she did not deny it."

Simon felt another rush of anger at Friar Mathieu for trying to make him believe evil of Sophia. "Are you saying that Sophia forced that girl into a brothel? Father, Sophia is too much of an innocent to be a party to anything like that."

But he remembered that moment of deepest intimacy they had shared last autumn outside Perugia, the moment he had delighted in reliving thousands of times. She had surprised him with the suddenness of her passion, with the swift, sure way she had guided him into taking her and had taken pleasure from him. Of course, he had thought, she would know what to do. She had been married. But surely a chaste widow who had known only one man in her life would have shown some hesitation, some timidity, some inner struggle?

Simon felt rage building up within him. He hated these doubts. He wanted to lash out at someone.

Friar Mathieu's voice came to him again, mild but inexorable. "Rachel said she asked Sophia to take her _back_ to Ugolini's. Rachel must have lived at Ugolini's when she first came to Orvieto. If you say that Sophia could not have been the one who put Rachel in Caballo's house, I accept it. But Ugolini could have. Or David of Trebizond."

"You will drive me mad. Stop going step by step like a schoolman. Of what are you accusing Sophia?"

Only his reverence for Friar Mathieu kept him from shaking the old priest.

Friar Mathieu patted Simon's knee. "I am going step by step because I myself am trying to think this out. And I want to be sure, for your sake. Rachel knew something, or had learned something. So they put her in Caballo's brothel for safekeeping."

"They?"

"Ugolini. David of Trebizond. And Sophia, at the very least, must have known the reason, or she would not agree to let Rachel go to the brothel. If Sophia knew so much, then perhaps--I say perhaps--she knew more about Ugolini and David and their dealings than she admitted to you. I keep thinking of that night at the Palazzo Monaldeschi when she drew you to the atrium, conveniently for David of Trebizond, who was goading the Tartars into publicly embarrassing themselves. Was she as uninvolved then as she led you to believe?"

Each of Friar Mathieu's sentences was another dagger blow, plunging deep into Simon, sending agony through him, the sharp point searching out his heart.

Friar Mathieu was proceeding in the same painstaking way he had probed Alain's body until he discovered what killed him. Alain, whose murderer had never been found, who had died outside Ugolini's mansion.

_Alain! Oh, my God! Could she have known how he was killed?_

_What had really been happening at Ugolini's mansion?_

Simon bent double, digging his fingers into his skull. His head might burst apart if he did not hold it tightly. Could all the love he thought he had found in her be a lie? Could she be an _enemy_?

"You are destroying my life," he muttered, his hands over his face.

He felt the light touch of the old man's hand on his shoulder. "When a leg wound festers, the surgeon has to cut the leg off to save the man's life."

_And the old soldiers tell me the man always dies anyway_, Simon thought bitterly.

"I am doing this not just for you, Simon," Friar Mathieu went on. "There was a secret war being waged in Orvieto to prevent us from allying ourselves with the Tartars. The person behind it was probably King Manfred of Sicily, who wants to keep Charles d'Anjou out of Italy. Ugolini was Manfred's agent. And Sophia may have been Ugolini's weapon against you."

_No! Impossible! I love her. I could not love her if she were on the side of evil._

Simon struck his knee with his fist. "I must find out the truth. I must go after her."

"After Sophia?"

"Yes. If she is in Manfred's kingdom, I will find her and get her out."

"Whatever Sophia has done, she has already done, Simon. You cannot undo it, or simply pretend that she has done nothing at all."

Simon lurched to his feet. Staggering in his agony, as if those knives were still striking him from all sides, he reached the railing of the loggia and gripped it. The sky had deepened to violet, and a single silvery star glowed in the west. He remembered the magic his mother had taught him of wishing on a star. He could not wish this awful pain away.

"I do not know what she has done. And I refuse to believe ill of her until I have spoken to her."

"But you cannot go into Manfred's kingdom and look for her. You are certain to be caught and imprisoned. You could very well be killed."

Simon turned. Friar Mathieu was a dim figure huddled in the deep shadows of the loggia, his beard a light patch in the darkness.

"You think Manfred is behind all this," Simon said.

"Yes. Look you, when Urban died and Clement was elected--it was the letter you carried from King Louis that broke the cardinals' stalemate--Ugolini and Sophia saw they could do no more at the papal court, and they left. Maybe they were afraid they would be discovered."

Manfred. Simon knew little about King Manfred. Up to now he had hardly any reason to dislike him, and so had no reason to join Count Charles in making war on him.

Now all was changed. It plainly had to be to Manfred that Sophia had fled. And if Sophia had betrayed him, she must be serving Manfred.

And Mathieu was right. He could not go alone into Manfred's kingdom and bring Sophia out. If she had lied and betrayed him, she not only would refuse to come with him, she doubtless would betray him again, and he would end up a prisoner.

But there was another way he could go after Sophia.

With an army at his back.

Yes, he would go to Gobignon and send out his heralds. He would summon his vassals to a council of war at the chateau. Then, after the harvest was in, he would ride forth under the purple and gold banner of the three crowns with all the power of Gobignon behind him.

He would find Sophia if he had to tear Manfred's kingdom apart to do it. Find her and get the truth. As his wife or as prisoner, she would be his!

LXIV

On a dais high above Simon, on a gilded throne under a cloth-of-gold canopy, Charles d'Anjou sat, wearing the crown studded with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires placed on his head by Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil, as legate for Pope Clement, a few hours ago. Simon stood below him in a half-circle of Roman nobles and Charles's commanders. The Tartars and Friar Mathieu were beside Simon.

Behind them, the great hall of the Palazzo Laterano, Roman residence of the pope, was packed with French seigneurs and knights and the popolo grosso of Rome. The hall was stifling, and Simon felt sweat trickling inside his tunic. Even in early May Rome was already too hot to live in. He wondered how Anjou and his army would manage to survive the summer here.

Anjou beckoned to Gautier du Mont, who swept his cap from his bowl-shaped head of hair and hurried up the dozen steps, a sword that reached to his ankle swinging at his side.

Simon felt a hollow in his stomach large enough to hold all of Rome. Soon Charles would call him up to the throne, and he would have to give him an answer. A month ago in Viterbo he had been determined to bring the Gobignon army to Italy. In the intervening days, doubts had unsettled him. Did he really dare to commit the fighting men of his domain to the war? Each time he tried to decide, his mind gave a different answer, like dice endlessly tossed. His head ached and his eyes burned from lying awake all last night after his arrival in Rome just in time for the coronation.

Over and over again he heard what Friar Mathieu had said: _Not so long ago you even doubted your right to be Count de Gobignon. And are you now ready to lead the men of Gobignon to bloodshed and--for many of them--death?_

Du Mont had finished his conversation with Charles and, with repeated bows, was descending from the dais with his face toward the throne and his hindquarters to the gathering. Now that Anjou was a king, one did not turn one's back on him. A far cry from du Mont's behavior toward Charles of only a few months earlier, and another mark of Charles's increased stature since his arrival at the gates of Rome. Still, he had been required to compromise on his coronation. He had been crowned in Rome as he wanted, but not by the pope. Only de Verceuil, who felt himself exalted by the occasion, was perfectly happy with that arrangement.

As du Mont rejoined the crowd at the base of the throne, Simon's eye was drawn to the red silk cross sewn on his blue tunic. After the coronation, the pope's proclamation of a crusade against Manfred had been read. Charles's men must have had their crosses sewn on in anticipation.

Men like du Mont, von Regensburg, and FitzTrinian were now holy warriors, all of whose past sins were forgiven. If any of Charles's followers should die in battle, they would go straight to heaven.

Having seen those cutthroats in action, Simon thought their new state of holiness absurd. But now that Pope Clement had declared the war against Manfred a crusade, it would be so much easier to recruit an army from Gobignon.

Simon wore no cross, an outward sign of his indecision.

An equerry in red and black whispered to Friar Mathieu, who turned and spoke to the Tartars. John and Philip ceremoniously unbuckled their jeweled belts and draped them over their necks. As the bowlegged little men started up the steps, Simon heard snickers from among Charles's officers at this Tartar gesture of submission. The more fools they, he thought, to laugh at the customs of men who had conquered half the earth. Friar Mathieu followed the Tartars, holding the equerry's arm.

Innumerable conversations, echoing against the vaulted ceiling of the great Lateran hall, battered on Simon's ears. To his right he heard Cardinal de Verceuil's deep booming. Unwillingly, he turned, and saw the cardinal's wide-brimmed red hat, its heavy tassels swinging, rising above the crowd as did the voice coming from beneath it. De Verceuil was happy to dress like a cardinal today, since he was taking the place of the pope. Simon knew he would soon be trading his scarlet regalia for mail. Eager to share in the spoils of Manfred's kingdom, he was going back to France to raise an army from his fiefs and benefices scattered around the country.

Simon saw several other cardinals' hats here and there in the crowd. He wondered if any of the Italian cardinals supported Charles's adventure.

None of them disapproved openly, that was certain. Only Ugolini had protested, and his form of protest had been flight. Enough to cost him his red hat. By papal decree Adelberto Ugolini was no longer cardinal-bishop of Palermo. Simon had sought out priests and merchants traveling from southern Italy, asking them what had become of Ugolini. But news from the south was sparse these days, and news of Ugolini nonexistent.

Simon had spoken in Viterbo to a pair of Dominican friars recently come from Palermo. They had known Ugolini before he became a cardinal, but did not remember that he had any sisters, much less a niece. They had never heard of a Siracusa family called Orfali. Simon raged at his inability to learn anything at all about Sophia. It was as if she had fallen into a black pit.

John and Philip were kneeling before Charles at the top of the steps. Friar Mathieu stood beside the Tartars, interpreting for them and for King Charles. Charles was talking loudly enough for Simon to hear. Like many men, he tended to raise his voice when addressing those who did not speak his language.

"You must tell the great Abagha Khan that it is customary for rulers to send gifts to newly made kings. Tell him we look forward with delight to the wonderful things he will send us from the Orient."

More useful, in Simon's opinion, would be a detailed proposal from the late Hulagu Khan's son on how and when Christians and Tartars should launch their war on the Saracens. Stories had come from the East that Hulagu Khan's frustration over his failure to conquer the Mamelukes had hastened his death.

As he waited to climb the stairs and kneel before the new king, Simon reminded himself that he could still refuse to join Charles's war on Manfred.

He became aware of the dull pain around his heart that had been with him ever since he discovered that Sophia had vanished. Even when he forgot the suffering, it weighed down his footsteps and bowed his shoulders.

_And the worst of it is that I would rather live perpetually with this misery than stop loving Sophia._

But how could he go on loving her if she had been his enemy all along?

Was there any such person as Sophia Orfali? All the time he was courting her, she could have been working against the alliance. She might even have known the man in black who had nearly killed him.

That thought struck him like a bolt of lightning. For a moment, he was blind to the sights around him, deaf to the sounds.

_No! It cannot be!_

If she really had been that evil, it could be only because she had been corrupted by living in Manfred's kingdom. He remembered the words of de Verceuil's sermon this morning at Count Charles's coronation.

_The Hohenstaufens, that brood of vipers, have too long vexed Holy Church, persecuting pope after pope. May it please God that the bastard Manfred be the last of them. May we see the destruction of that family of blasphemers and infidels, secretly in league with the Saracens. We declare Manfred von Hohenstaufen anathema and outlaw. Blessed be the hand that strikes him down._

If it was Manfred who had turned Sophia into a tool of the infidels, then how right that Simon's hand be the one to strike Manfred down.

Now, bowing, the Tartars were carefully backing down from the royal presence. Friar Mathieu turned and teetered precariously at the top of the steps. Charles, seeming not to understand the Franciscan's infirmity, stared at him without moving from his seat. The equerry who had helped him climb made a move toward him, but Simon was already up the steps and gripping the old Franciscan's arm.

"Thank you, Simon." Friar Mathieu turned to Charles. "Sire, I hope you will forgive the sight of this old man's back. I am afraid my legs lack the power to climb downstairs backward."

"To be sure, Father, to be sure." Charles waved a hand in dismissal.

If King Louis were on that throne, Simon thought, he would probably have lifted Friar Mathieu in his own arms and carried him down. Simon so wished it were Louis, rather than Charles, he was serving. But perhaps by serving Charles he was serving Louis.

Perhaps.

Simon and Friar Mathieu descended a step at a time. Friar Mathieu was leaning on Simon, but he seemed to weigh nothing.

"Count Simon," Charles called when Simon reached the bottom. "I would speak with you next."

When Simon mounted the dais, Charles ordered his herald in red and black to call for silence.

"All honor to Simon, Count de Gobignon!" Charles called from the throne when he had the attention of the assembly. "For nearly two years he has guarded the ambassadors from Tartary. He has risked his very life in battle for them. His sagacity and bravery have brought new glory to his ancient name."

Simon felt dizzy with exaltation. He had not expected this, from the newly crowned king. His face burned. At a gesture from Charles, he turned to face the crowd. The gathering in the great hall of the Lateran was a multicolored, murmuring blur. The dais on which he stood seemed suddenly turned into a mountaintop.

"Now," Charles went on, "Count Simon and his vassals join us as allies in battle against the godless Manfred. May the deeds he has yet to do bring even more renown to the house of Gobignon. I guarantee you, Messeigneurs, the day will come when Simon de Gobignon will be known as one of Christendom's greatest knights."

Simon's bedazzlement at Charles's tribute to him turned in an instant to anger. By publicly announcing a decision Simon had not yet made, Charles was trying to force him to commit himself to the crusade. For a moment Simon was tempted to tell Charles that he would crusade at his side when the Middle Sea froze over.

But as he stood looking down at Charles's barons and the nobles of Rome, half turned toward Charles, half turned toward the assembly, the clapping and cheering were overwhelming him. His eye was drawn by a red hat above the rest of the crowd, and he was delighted to see that de Verceuil's face seemed a deeper red than his vestments.

Simon's anger at Charles faded as the moment lifted him up in spite of himself.

He who had dwelt in the shadow of treason all his life, who had hidden himself, when in great assemblies, for fear he would be noticed and treated with scorn, now honored by this multitude in the capital of Christendom in the age-old palace of the popes!

Was it not to achieve this that he had come to Italy?

_If only Sophia could see._

He did what he felt was required, and knelt before Charles, taking the new king's extended hand and kissing a huge ruby ring.

In a low voice Charles said, "I have prayed that I would have your help, Simon. Can you not tell me that my prayer has been answered?"

If he refused Charles and went back to Gobignon, he would never see Sophia again. And he would probably never again know a moment like this, when he felt so _right_ as the Count de Gobignon.

But he was still offended by Charles's claiming a commitment that Simon had not given him.

"It seems you already know your prayer has been answered, Sire."

Charles frowned for a moment, then smiled and patted Simon on the shoulder. "Forgive me. I want so much for you to join me that I spoke as if it were already true. Will you make it true?"

He looked up into Charles's large, compelling eyes and nodded slowly.

"I will come after the harvest is in, Sire. I will come with my army."

* * * * *

Rachel slid from the bed, trying to shake it as little as possible so as not to wake John. Letting her robe of yellow silk flutter loosely about her nude body, she hurried behind the screen that hid her commode and opened the chest that held her most private belongings. She took out the device of bladder and tubing Tilia had given her long ago, and with a pitcherful of lukewarm water washed John's seed out of herself quickly. Over the year and more that she had been with John, she had never let him see her using the thing. Men such as John, she knew, took pride in their power to get a woman with child.

She was fourteen now, and her breasts were filling out. Many women had babies at fourteen. She would have to be more careful than ever. She stretched her mouth in a grimace at the thought of a baby that looked like John.

As usual, she had endured, not enjoyed, the Tartar's mating. Another change she had noticed in herself, though, was that she had begun to understand how women could feel pleasure with a man. Several times since last spring a yellow-haired man had appeared naked before her in her dreams, and had lain with her. When she woke she could not remember the man's face, but she still felt the exquisite sensations his body gave her, and she sometimes had to caress herself until a surge of pleasure relieved the yearning stirred up by her dream.

Other times, when John came to her late at night and she was very sleepy, she closed her eyes and was able to imagine that the yellow-haired man was with her, and then she actually enjoyed John's attentions, which pleased him very much.

She tied the robe's sash and went to the window. The breeze from the west was strong and salt-smelling, and she was thankful that she was here, in a villa by the sea, and not in Rome. August, they said, killed one out of every three people in Rome. She sat on the wide sill and looked out. She did not lean out too far; she was four stories up, overlooking jagged boulders piled along the shore.

Afternoon sunlight sparkled on the Tyrrhenean Sea, and a flash of sun on the helmet of a guard patrolling the beach caught her eye. One of Sordello's Venetians, she thought, judging by his bowl-shaped helmet and the crossbow he carried. The men-at-arms of the Orsini family, who had lent this villa to the French party, wore helmets shaped to the head, with crests on top.

She heard the bed creaking behind her, and the Tartar groaned.

"Pour me another cup of wine, Reicho," he called.

"You have had three cups already, Usun," she said, but obediently went to the table and poured red wine from a flagon into his silver cup.

He had taught her his original Tartar name, Usun, and he liked to hear her say it. With the help of Friar Mathieu and Ana the Bulgarian, she had learned to understand and speak his language fairly well. She knew now that "Tartar" was merely a European word for his people, that they called themselves "Mongols."