The Saracen: Land of the Infidel by Robert Shea (read novel full txt) 📕

If Ugolini was here, had his niece Sophia come tonight as well? Yes, there she was, halfway across the hall, talking to the Contessa di Monaldeschi. The pale violet of Sophia's gown made her skin look darker. The poets always sang of fair ladies, but Simon found her dark complexion wondrously attractive. She had let her embroidered silk shawl fall away from her bare shoulders, and he marveled at their sweet delicacy. Under her gauze veil the pearls in her headdress twinkled like stars against hair that was black as night.

"Excuse me, Fra Tomasso, Messer David. I have promised to deliver a most urgent message to the contessa."[244]

Fra Tomasso, in the middle of an anecdote about Friar Hugues's subtlety as an inquisitor, gave Simon leave to go. As David bowed, his eyes met Simon's, and his look was at once both knowing and bitter. He, too, was a guest in Ugolini's house, thought Simon. Was he, too, attracted to Sophia? Who would not be?

As Simon moved toward Sophia, the contessa's majordomo strode to the center of the sala maggiore and called in a deep voice, "Signori e madonne, tables, game boards, and cards are set for your amusement in the inner galleria."

Then Simon was bowing before the contessa, acutely aware of Sophia standing beside her. He kissed the old lady's shiny knuckles, hoping he would have an opportunity to kiss Sophia's hand as well.

"My dear boy, did you hear the announcement? Do you enjoy cards or backgammon? I understand your pious king forbids such amusements at his court. And yet our Holy Father himself loves to play alii." She saw Simon staring at Sophia and smiled.

"You see, my dear?" the contessa said to Sophia. "Does this splendid young Frenchman look as if he is interested in cards or dice? Or in you? Enough of your modesty."

Sophia lowered her eyelids and blushed. How beautiful her olive complexion was, tinted with rose!

"The contessa is merciless," she said in a low voice.

"Merciless!" the contessa cackled. "My dear, if I were the envious sort, then indeed would I show you no mercy. By San Giorgio, I would have you poisoned. But I made up my mind many, many years ago, when I saw my looks beginning to fade, that I had to choose between hating the beauty of other women or enjoying it. I was already spending all my hatred on the odious Filippeschi. So I decided that when I saw beautiful women I would rejoice at their presence in the world and delight myself by remembering my own youth and imagining the pleasures they must be experiencing."

She put her hand on Simon's arm. "What do you think, Count Simon? Would you like me to present this young lady to you?"

"A thousand thanks, Contessa," said Simon, falling into the extravagant style of speaking the occasion seemed to call for. "I have already had the great pleasure of meeting Madonna Sophia at her uncle's mansion."

The contessa nodded. "Ah, you have called upon Cardinal Ugolini. I am glad to hear that. I would have told you to if you had not done it on your own." She turned again to Sophia. "Your uncle[245] and I have been friends ever since the Holy Father moved the papal household to Orvieto. I deeply admire and respect him. When he reads the stars for me, his insights and predictions are remarkably accurate. His remedies for my body's complaints always achieve their purpose, which is more than I can say for other physicians I have consulted. And best of all, he finds time for a lonely old lady, when others who should be more attentive make excuses."

"My uncle is a marvelous man, Your Signory," Sophia murmured. "I am most fortunate to be his niece. Otherwise I could never hope to be present on this magnificent occasion, to meet and talk with you."

"And to be waited upon by this handsome cavaliere," the contessa finished for her, smiling broadly.

The contessa really is enjoying this, Simon thought. The old lady was beaming with pleasure.

Sophia turned to Simon.

"I am most pleased to see you again, Count." Her eyes seemed to shine at him. Was it his imagination?

She held out her hand. His whole body felt more intensely alive as his fingers touched hers. He noticed as he bent over her hand that she wore one ring, a garnet of a red so deep as to be almost black. His lips touched the creamy skin of the back of her hand, and he thought he felt her tremble slightly.

Contessa Elvira eyed both of them, sighed happily, and said, "I think it is time for me to find someone to play rota with. Perhaps I will ask your uncle to tell my fortune with the cards. He reads the cards as well as he reads the stars."

They bowed as she moved off. As she turned her back, Simon noticed that her long blue velvet gown had threadbare patches in the rear. She was so old and so powerful, Simon thought, that such things did not matter to her. Perhaps it was a favorite gown from the days when she was young and beautiful, like Sophia.

But he doubted that she had ever been as beautiful as Sophia.

"May I bring you some wine or something to eat, Madonna?" he asked Sophia.

"Thank you, I am not hungry. But"—she gestured as if to free him from obligation to stand with her—"perhaps you—"

"Oh, no, I am quite content. A hand of cards, then?" Simon hoped she would see that he was making it his responsibility to entertain her.

She took a deep breath, and Simon felt a small thrill as he watched[246] her bosom rise and fall under the fine silk of her violet gown. "What I would really like, Count, would be a stroll in the garden. This room, big as it is, is so hot and crowded. And even though it is September, this evening it is very warm, do you not think so?"

"Very warm," said Simon, delightedly taking her arm.

As Fra Tomasso chatted with him, Daoud watched de Gobignon and Sophia stroll across the brightly candlelit hall to the door leading to the inner galleria.

De Gobignon spoke to me in the language of my parents.

Sire Geoffrey and Dame Evelyn Langmuir, he knew, were of English stock. But Daoud's father had once told him that all the English nobility spoke French.

Tonight was the first time since Daoud landed in Italy that he had heard French or had spoken it. When he first heard himself addressed in French, he had experienced a strange and frightening sensation, as if his dead father were speaking to him. He hated de Gobignon for doing that to him.

And I hate him because he will enjoy the woman I want for myself.

The voice of Fra Tomasso faded away. Black rage filled Daoud's skull, deafening and blinding him. He pictured Sophia naked in Simon de Gobignon's arms, and his body trembled.

And when he did become Sophia's lover, the puppy would have no understanding of how much of a woman he was possessing. To him she would be the sweet Sicilian niece of a cardinal. He would have no idea of the woman behind that mask.

Sophia, Daoud had come to realize, had known suffering and loss. She had survived at the very bottom of the world, and she had risen to be the intimate of an emperor and a king.

She occupied his thoughts, Daoud sensed with some uneasiness, far more often than did Blossoming Reed back in El Kahira.

Simon would know Sophia Orfali, not Sophia Karaiannides, who had told Daoud more than once, he thought with a grim smile, how much she hated Franks. She would make a fool of this Frank.

Fra Tomasso was rambling on about the one sea voyage he had ever taken, from Normandy to Naples. "One would think going around the continent of Europe like that would take much longer than making the same journey overland. It took us only a month, whereas on land it would have taken at least three. The sea is a two-dimensional surface. On land one is traveling over a three-dimensional surface and can encounter many obstacles."[247]

Yes, and a carrier pigeon travels much faster than a ship. In a month or two Daoud's request for the book Fra Tomasso wanted would have reached Baibars, and a few months after that, if Baibars could obtain the book, the Friar's pudgy hands would be holding it.

Listening with half an ear, Daoud looked about him at the marble pillars that ran up to the gilded beams of the ceiling, at the paintings of angels and saints on the plaster walls, at the fragments of old Roman statues that stood here and there—mostly nude torsos. Idolatry, yes, but beautifully done. The arts of the Christians and their pagan predecessors were not altogether as barbaric as he had imagined them.

Ugolini suddenly appeared at Daoud's elbow to interrupt his thoughts and Fra Tomasso's discourse. "Excuse me, Fra Tomasso, but His Holiness wishes a word with David."

The little cardinal's eyes darted about nervously. Obviously, the idea of a conversation between Daoud and the pope terrified him.

"Have you had any wine?" said Ugolini in a low voice as they crossed the room to where Urban, in his white cassock, a red cloak wrapped around his shoulders, was sitting in a large, high-backed chair. The spiritual father of all Christians was dressed heavily for such a warm evening, Daoud thought. A sign of ill health.

"I never drink wine if I can avoid it," he answered Ugolini.

"Well, you will not be able to avoid it tonight. But remember, you have no head for it."

Daoud was about to retort sharply, but he swallowed the impulse. Such unnecessary advice was the cardinal's way of allaying his terror. He had never told Ugolini about the training in resistance to drugs he had undergone with Sheikh Saadi. Al-koahl, the intoxicating element in wine, could affect his body but not his mind.

"This is a very dangerous practice," Sheikh Saadi said as he crouched over a small cooking pot suspended on a tripod above a low fire. "But it is now a necessary one for you."

Whatever was bubbling in the pot gave off a strange, cloying odor that Daoud found frightening and seductive at the same time. They were in the inner garden of Saadi's small house in al-Fustat, the oldest quarter of El Kahira.

Daoud half sat, half reclined on a pile of cushions. He leaned back and saw that the stars were fewer and the sky was lighter. They had been up all night drinking kaviyeh.[248]

The liquid Saadi was brewing now smelled nothing like kaviyeh. Studying the simmering, sweet-smelling liquid, Saadi seemed satisfied. He took the pot off the fire and set it on a stone.

Still on his knees, the sheikh swung around to smile at Daoud. In the firelight his face was many shades of brown and black. But his beard, in the years Daoud had known him, had gone from gray to a white as pure as the wool from which the Sufi took their name.

"Kneel and compose your mind," said Saadi.

Daoud rose from a sitting position to his knees. As Saadi had taught him, and as he had practiced for many years, he visualized his mind as an empty pool, walled with tiles. A fountain sprang up in the center of the pool and filled it slowly with clear water. The walls of the pool disappeared, and there was nothing but clear water in all directions, stretching away to infinity.

Saadi seemed to know when Daoud had reached the vision of infinity, and he spoke again.

"Think of God."

Daoud saw a mountain, a flame, the sun. None of those were God. At last he saw the blackness of the spaces between the stars. There in the infinite lightlessness was the dwelling place of God, like the Black Stone in the Qa'aba. He saw the darkness that veiled God, and he locked the idea of God in his mind.

"Now, hold the thought of God, and drink."

Saadi held a silver cup to his lips. The liquid was sweet and thick. He swallowed, and it burned the lining of his stomach.

"What is it?"

"Wine mixed with hashish."

Daoud was shocked.

Filth, spiritual poison!

Saadi himself had taught him that. And now Saadi had tricked him into sipping the vile stuff.

He swayed on his knees, feeling dizzy and angry. Saadi held up a warning hand.

"Remain in the Presence of God. He will protect you from the ill effects of the poison. This is the practice."

Daoud struggled back to the infinite emptiness that hid God, and as he did so he felt his mind clear. The drugs were spreading like tiny flames through his body, but his body was far away. Too far away for him to feel