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

you. I trust Lorenzo to travel far and secretly in my service, even as your master trusts you."

Celino sighed. Daoud and Celino eyed each other.

Daoud began searching for ways to dissuade Manfred. A short while earlier he and Celino had been trying to kill each other. And Celino would be putting Manfred's interests first, not those of Islam.

Obviously aware of his hesitation, Manfred took his arm. "Listen to me, Mameluke. You will be wise to accept every bit of help that is offered to you. I have powerful allies in northern Italy, in Florence, Pisa, Siena, and other cities. But you do not know them and they do not know you. Lorenzo speaks for me. He knows who the key Ghibellini are in the north, and they know him. Do not object to taking him with you."

Manfred would not let him go, Daoud realized, unless Celino went with him. And the argument that Celino could put him in touch with the Ghibellini of the north was a strong one.

Lorenzo is perhaps twenty years older than I, but he is quick-witted and quick on his feet. And, yes, I would rather not go alone. I could easily make a mistake from ignorance. I am better off with a man like this to guide me.

A tentative smile played under Celino's grizzled mustache. "My royal master is determined in this. What do you say?"

Daoud bowed. "I accept. With gratitude. We shall travel this road together."

"Whatever happens to the two of you," Manfred said, "no one must ever know that I am involved."

"I guarantee that, Sire," said Celino.

Manfred rubbed the palms of his hands together. "There is one other person I propose to send with you. She can be a great help to you."

Celino turned quickly to Manfred. "I do not advise it, Sire."

"Why not?" said Manfred. "She will be perfect."

"Because she will not want to go." There was censure in Celino's dark stare—and a boyish defiance in Manfred's answering look.

"Do not question me," said Manfred. "I have no choice. For her good and for my own, she must leave here. And she will be useful to you."

Instead of replying, Celino only sighed again.[31]

"A woman?" Daoud was thunderstruck. In El Kahira women left their homes only to visit other women. He felt anxiety claw at his belly. Any mistake in planning might wreck the mission and doom him, and Celino, to a horrible death. And to send a woman to the court of the pope on such a venture seemed not just a mistake, but utter madness.

"A very beautiful woman," said Manfred, a grin stretching his blond mustache. "One who has had a lifetime's schooling in intrigue. She is from Constantinople, and her name is Sophia, which means wisdom in Greek."

There are no more treacherous people on this earth than the Byzantines, Daoud thought, and they have ever been enemies of Islam.

Argument surged up in him, but he saw a hardness in Manfred's eyes that told him nothing he might say would sway the king. He looked at Celino, and saw in the dark, mustached face the same reluctant acceptance he had heard in the sigh.

Whoever this Sophia might be, he would have to take her with him.

IV

Sophia pressed her head back against the pillow and screamed with pleasure. Her loins dissolved into rippling liquid gold. Her fingers dug into the man's back and her legs clenched around his hips, trying to crush him against her.

"Oh—oh—oh—" she moaned. The warmth spread to her toes, her fingertips, her scalp, filling her with joy. She was so happy that she wanted to cry.

As the blaze of ekstasia died down, she felt Manfred driving deep inside her. She felt his hardness, his separateness, as she could not feel it a moment ago when she was at her peak and they seemed to melt together, one being.[32]

His rhythm was insistent, inexorable, like a heartbeat. His hands under her back were tense. He was fighting for his climax.

She delighted in the sight of his massive shoulders overshadowing her. It was almost like being loved by a god.

Manfred's face was pressed against her shoulder, his open mouth on her collarbone. She turned toward him and saw the light in his white-gold hair. She slid one hand up to his hair and stroked it, while with the other she rubbed his back in a circular motion.

She felt the muscles in his body tighten against her. He drew in a shuddering breath.

"Yes—yes—good," she whispered, still stroking his hair, still caressing his back.

He relaxed, panting heavily.

He never makes much noise. Nothing like my outcries.

They lay without moving, she pleased by the warm weight of him lying upon her, as if it protected her from floating away. The feel of him still inside her sent wavelets of pleasure through her.

Still adrift on sensations of delight, she opened her eyes to stare up into the shadows of the canopy overhead. On the heavy bed curtains to her left, the late afternoon sun cast an oblong of yellow light with a pointed arch at the top, the shape of an open window nearby. She knew well the play of light in this unoccupied bedchamber in an upper part of the castle. Manfred and she had met here many times.

They rolled together so that they lay side by side in a nest of red and purple cushions. The down-filled silk bolster under them whispered as they shifted their weight, and the rope netting that held it creaked. Manfred propped his head up with one arm. His free hand toyed with the ringlets of her unbound hair. She slid her palm over his chest.

She remembered an ancient sculpture she had seen in a home outside Athens. The torso of a man, head missing, arms broken off at the shoulders, legs gone below the knees, the magnificent body had survived barbarian invasions, the coming of Christianity, the iconoclasts, the Frankish conquest, to stand now on a plain pedestal in a room with purple walls, the yellowish marble gleaming in the light of many candles. Her host showed it only to his most trusted guests.

"Which god is this?" she had asked.

"I think it is just an athlete," said her host. "The old Greeks made gods of their athletes."[33]

Manfred's naked torso, pale as marble, seemed as beautiful. And was alive.

She sighed happily. "How lucky I am that there was time for love in my king's life this afternoon." She spoke in the Sicilian dialect, Manfred's favorite of all his languages.

How lucky, she thought, that after all her years of wandering she had at last found a place in the world where she was loved and needed.

His lips stretched in a smile, but his blue eyes were empty. Uneasiness took hold of her. She sensed from the look on his face that he was about to tell her something she did not want to hear.

In memory she heard a voice say, Italy was ours not so long ago and might be ours again. So Michael Paleologos, the Basileus, Emperor of Constantinople, had introduced the suggestion that she go to Italy, and at just such a moment as this, when they were in bed together in his hunting lodge outside Nicaea.

She had felt no distress at the idea of being parted from Michael. He was a scrawny man with a long gray beard, and though she counted herself enormously lucky to have attracted his attention, she felt no love for him.

She had come to Lucera acting as Michael's agent and personal emissary to Manfred—and resenting Michael's use of her but feeling she had no choice. She was a present from one monarch to another. She ought to be flattered, she supposed.

She had walked into Manfred's court in the embroidered jeweled mantle Michael had given her, her hair bound up in silver netting. Lorenzo Celino had conducted her to the throne, and she bowed and looked up. And it was like gazing upon the sun.

Manfred von Hohenstaufen's smile was brilliant, his hair white-gold, his eyes sapphires.

He stepped down from his throne, took her hand, and led her to his eight-sided garden. First she gave him Michael's messages—news that a Tartar army had stormed the crusader city of Sidon, leveled it, and ridden off again—a warning that Pope Urban had secretly offered the crown of Naples and Sicily, Manfred's crown, to Prince Edward, heir apparent to the throne of England.

"Your royal master is kind, but the pope's secret is no secret," Manfred had said, laughing and unconcerned. "The nobility of England have flatly told Prince Edward that they will supply neither money nor men for an adventure in Italy. The pope must find another[34] robber baron to steal my crown." And then he asked her about herself, and they talked about her and about him.

She had thought all westerners were savages, but Manfred amazed her with his cultivation. He knew more than many Byzantines, for whom Constantinople—which they always called "the Polis," the City, as if it were the only one—was the whole world. In the short time she and Manfred strolled together that day, he spoke to her in Greek, Latin, and Italian, and she later found out that he knew French, German, and Arabic as well.

He sang a song to her in a tongue she did not recognize, and he told her it was Provençal, the language of the troubadours.

He undid the clasp of her mantle and let it fall to the gravel. He kissed her in the bright sunlight, and she forgot Michael Paleologos. She belonged altogether to Manfred von Hohenstaufen.

Now, with a chill, she remembered that she did indeed belong to Manfred. She was not his mate but his servant.

His fingertips stroked her nipple lightly, but she ignored the tingle of pleasure. She waited for him to say what he had to say.

He said, "Remember the fair-haired Muslim who came to the court today?"

"The man from Egypt? You had him killed?"

"I changed my mind," Manfred said.

She felt relief. She was surprised at herself. She had wanted the man to live. She remembered her astonishment when, with a gesture like a performing magician's, Manfred threw open the doors of his audience hall and the entire court saw the blond man with his dagger at Celino's throat.

She had been surprised when Manfred told her that this man, dressed in a drab tunic and hose like a less-than-prosperous Italian merchant, was the awaited Saracen from the Sultan of Egypt.

The sight of him as he passed through the audience hall had left her momentarily breathless. He looked like one of those blond men of western Europe the people of Constantinople called Franks and had learned to hate at sight. His hair was not as light as Manfred's; it was darker, more the color of brass than of gold. Manfred's lips were full and red, but this man's mouth was a down-curving line, the mouth of a man who had endured cruelty without complaint and could himself be cruel. She wondered what he had seen and done.

As he had passed her, his eyes caught hers. Strange eyes, she could not tell what color they were. There was a fixity in them akin[35] to madness. The face was expressionless, rocklike. This, she was sure, was no ordinary man, to be disposed of as an inconvenience. She was not surprised Manfred had decided to let him live.

"Why did you change your mind?"

"I think this Mameluke can help me," Manfred said. "Therefore I am going to help him. He is going to Orvieto on a mission for his sultan. I am sending Lorenzo with him."

"What did you call him?"

"A Mameluke. A slave warrior. The Turks who rule in Muslim lands take very young boys as slaves and raise them in barracks to be soldiers. They forget their parents and are trained with the utmost rigor. They are said to be the finest warriors in the world."

What does a life like that do to a man? It must either destroy him or make him invincible.

"The man looks like a Frank," she said.

"He comes of English stock," said Manfred. "You Byzantines lump all of us together, English and French and Germans, as Franks, do you not? So you can call him a Frank if you like. But whatever he looks like, he is a Turk at heart. I've learned that from talking to him. It's really quite amazing."

They were plunged into deep shadow as the arched golden shape on the bed curtain disappeared, a cloud having passed over the sun. Despite the summer's heat she felt cold, and even though she did not trust Manfred she reached for him, wanting him close.

But Manfred drew away from her, preoccupied. She pulled a crimson cushion from behind him and hugged it against her breasts.

How alone the Mameluke must feel.