The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 48

As if dismissing her, he turned to Lorenzo. "Speaking of ladies and love, our young friend Rachel is still living here. I want you to escort her to Madama Tilia's house this afternoon."

Sophia stifled a gasp. She felt as if she had been struck from behind.

She wanted to cry out in protest, but she knew it was useless.

"Must I?" said Lorenzo, and Sophia saw pain in his eyes.

"Remember your promise to me in Rome," David said, fixing him with a grim stare.

Lorenzo sighed. "I remember."

Sophia's heart, already bruised by her gloomy thoughts about herself, ached even harder for Rachel. She had tried to save her from being sent to Tilia's, but there was no more she could do. If Ugolini was right about their being in such terrible danger, Rachel might be safer at Tilia's than here.

How could she help Rachel, she thought desolately, when she herself was a stranger among strangers?

XVII

The beauty of Orvieto, Simon thought, was that, isolated as it was on its great rock, it was as big as it ever could be--and a man could go anywhere in the city quickly on foot. Those of wealth and rank often rode, but a horse or a sedan chair was a mark of distinction rather than a necessity. A bird looking down on the city would see a roughly oval shape, longer from east to west. One might get lost in the twisting side streets but otherwise could walk along the Corso from one end of Orvieto to the other while less than half the sand trickled through an hour gla.s.s. From Ugolini's mansion on the south side of the town, Simon reached the Palazzo Monaldeschi, near the northern wall, so quickly, he barely had time to think over the events of the day.

David of Trebizond was a trader, after all, and traders needed armed men to protect their caravans. Why worry about the three men with swords and crossbows he had seen with Giancarlo? They were far from being an army.

But was David actually sending out any caravans?

_If I could put someone in the enemy camp ..._

Before entering the Palazzo Monaldeschi, he surveyed it with a knight's eye. It was a three-story brown stone building with a flat roof crowned by square battlements. In each of the four corners of the palace there were small turrets with slotted windows for archers. Above the third story rose a block-shaped central tower.

Even as he looked up, he noticed a figure on the battlements, a helmeted man with a crossbow on his shoulder. He looked down at Simon, touched his hand to his helmet, and walked on.

It was good to know that the Monaldeschi family maintained a constant guard on their palace. The hidden enemy of the Tartars could get at them here only by a full-scale siege.

Simon walked around the building. If there were two archers in each turret, their overlapping fields of fire would cover every possible approach. He noted that the piazza in front of the palace and the broad streets on the other three sides allowed attackers no cover. The city wall was nearby, though, he saw. Archers could fire on the Monaldeschi roof from there, and at least two of the city's defensive towers were so close that stone casters set up in them could score hits on the palace.

What if the enemy were to attempt a siege?

_We must control that section of the city wall and make it our first line of defense. The buildings around the palace would be our second, and the palace itself the third. To control all that, we really need another forty crossbowmen. But how to pay and feed them and keep them under discipline? I will have to make do with my knights, the Venetians, the Armenians, and the Monaldeschi retainers._

And he felt the weight of responsibility pressing on his back like a boulder. He had studied siege warfare under veterans. But how good, he asked himself, would he be in real combat?

His entire experience of battle consisted of one siege that ended as soon as the rebellious va.s.sal saw the size of Simon's army, one encounter in his private forest with poachers who ran away when he drew his sword, and one tournament, two years ago, in Toulouse.

And yet, if the Monaldeschi palace were attacked, he would be expected to a.s.sume command. The thought made his stomach knot with anxiety.

He scrutinized the palace itself. He saw no windows at all on the ground floor, but there were cross-shaped slots for archers. The second story had narrow windows covered with heavy iron bars. On the highest level the windows were wider and the grills that protected them of a more delicate construction. On that floor were the apartments of the Monaldeschi and their more distinguished guests. The darkness and cramped quarters one had to endure in the palace because it was so well-fortified were a measure of the fierceness of the street fighting that had been going on in Orvieto, as in most of the cities of northern and central Italy, for generations.

_We French are better off doing most of our fighting in the countryside.

City fighting is a dirty business._

There were only two ways into the palace. On the west side a postern gate for horses and carts was protected by a gatehouse with two portcullises and doors reinforced with iron. In front, facing the piazza, a two-story gatehouse with a peaked roof and arrow slots jutted out from the center of the building. The doorway was in the side of the gatehouse on the second floor, and to reach it one climbed a flight of narrow stairs.

_Why plan for a siege that probably will never take place?_ Simon asked himself.

_Because I have tried to go beyond my duty this day and accomplished nothing. I had better be sure I can do what I am expected to do._

The door swung open as Simon reached the top step.

"Oh, you look too serious, ragazzo caro. Don't frown so--it will put wrinkles in your smooth brow. Surely your life is not so melancholy as all that?" Fingernails stroked his forehead and then his cheek.

Simon recognized the voice, but after the bright sunlight of the street it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness inside the doorway and actually to see Donna Elvira, the Contessa di Monaldeschi.

She took him by the hand and led him through the inner door, which, in the time-honored practice of fortified buildings, was set at right angles to the outer one. The hallway that ran the length of the second floor was dimly illuminated through the barred windows. Unlit bra.s.s oil lamps hung at intervals from the ceiling.

"I saw you from my window and came down to let you in myself." The contessa's nose was sharp and hooked like a falcon's beak. It might have been handsome on a man, but it gave her an unpleasantly predatory look.

Simon felt distaste at the short silky hairs on her upper lip and uneasiness at the bright black eyes that looked at him so greedily. She gave off a strong smell of wine. How old was she, he wondered. At least eighty.

He politely bowed over her bony knuckles and kissed them quickly. She held his hand longer than necessary.

"Your greeting does me too much honor, Donna Elvira," Simon said, easing his hand away from hers. "I was frowning because I was thinking of what we must do to protect the amba.s.sadors from Tartary. I am happy to see that you have a guard posted on the roof."

"Always." The contessa held up a clenched, bejeweled fist. "But surely you are not afraid for the emissaries. Who would want to hurt those little brown men? No, I am ever on guard against my family's ancient enemies, the Filippeschi."

Simon felt the boulder on his back grow a little heavier.

_Something else to worry about._

"Is it possible that the Filippeschi family might attack us here?"

The contessa nodded grimly. "They have wanted blood ever since my retainers killed the three Filippeschi brothers--the father and the uncles of Marco di Filippeschi, who is now their capo della famiglia.

They caught them on the road to Rome and cut off the heads of all three, to my eternal joy. Six years ago, that was."

"My G.o.d! Why did your retainers do that?"

There was more than a little madness, Simon thought, in the bright-eyed, toothless grin the contessa gave him. "Ah, that was to pay them back for the death of my husband, Conte Ezzelino, twenty years ago, and my son Gaitano, who died fighting beside him, and my nephew Ermanno, whom they shot with an arrow from ambush twelve years ago." She held up bony fingers, totaling up the terrible score. "They cut out my husband's tongue and his heart."

"Horrible!" Simon exclaimed.

"Now there remain only myself and my grandnephew, Vittorio, a ragazzo of twelve, to lead the Monaldeschi."

"What of Vittorio's mother?" Simon asked.

The contessa shrugged. "She went mad."

_Well she might_, thought Simon.

The contessa's face turned scarlet as she recounted her injuries. "Now that canaglia Marco would surely love to finish us by killing Vittorio and me. But he is not man enough. And one day I will cut out _his_ tongue and _his_ heart."