The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 51

Simon shook his head. "I tell you, Friar Mathieu, between Ugolini's persuasion and de Verceuil's bullying, I was nearly ready to leave Orvieto today."

But he would not have left under any circ.u.mstances, he knew. Especially not after meeting Sophia. He recalled her smoldering eyes and full red lips. And her splendid b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Ah, no, he must stay in Orvieto and become better acquainted with Sophia Orfali.

XVIII

A swollen yellow moon appeared over the treetops, and Simon was grateful for its light. Now they would have less trouble following the road.

Friar Mathieu said, "It is not an easy thing for so young a man to match wits with two powerful churchmen skilled in dialectic. I congratulate you on doing it at all."

Simon felt a hollow in his stomach. He saw himself going back to France, sneered at not only for his family's disgrace but for his own incompetence.

"Our mission _must_ succeed," he said, clenching his fist. His voice rose above the creak of the wagon wheels, surprising even himself with his vehemence.

"G.o.d has His own ideas about what ought to succeed or fail," said Friar Mathieu. "Do not try to take the whole burden on yourself."

"I must," said Simon, feeling tears burn his eyes.

The voice in the semidarkness beside him was soft, kindly. "Why _must_?"

"Because of who I am," Simon said in a low voice.

"What do you mean, Simon?"

_Can I tell him_, Simon wondered. Ever since, seven years ago, his mother and Roland had told him the secret of his birth, questions of who he really was, questions of right and wrong, had a.s.sailed him, and there had been no one to ask. He loved his mother and he admired Roland, but they were too close to it all. But to tell anyone else would bring calamity down on all three of them.

There had been times during the years Simon had lived with King Louis that the king had seemed ready to listen. But Simon had also known that King Louis believed in doing right no matter whom it hurt.

Friar Mathieu, though, seemed to have more of a sense that life was not a matter of simple rights and wrongs. He could see the Tartars for the ferocious creatures they were, and yet feel kindly toward them. His wisdom and worldly experience could help Simon sort things out.

Then, too, there was a way to bind Friar Mathieu never to speak of this to anyone.

But when Simon tried to speak, his chest and throat were constricted by fear, and his voice came out in a croak. He felt as if he were under a spell to prevent him from uttering his family secrets.

"Father, may I confide in you under the seal of confession?"

The old Franciscan tugged on the reins of his donkey, so that they fell farther behind the rest of the party. Simon slowed his palfrey to fall back beside Mathieu.

"Is it truly a matter for confession, or just a secret?"

Simon's hands were so cold he pressed them against his palfrey's neck to warm them. How could he tell everything to this priest he had known only a few months? Perhaps he should just apologize and say no more.

But he thought a little longer and said, "It is a question of right and wrong. And if I am doing wrong, I am committing a terribly grave sin."

Friar Mathieu looked around him. "Very well, then, what you tell me is under the seal of the sacrament of confession, and I may repeat it to no man, under penalty of eternal d.a.m.nation. Make the sign of the cross and begin."

Simon touched his fingertips to forehead, chest, and shoulders. For a moment he hesitated, his mouth dry and his heart hammering. He had promised his mother and Roland never to tell anyone about this.

_But I must! I cannot have it festering inside me for the rest of my life._

What, though, if Friar Mathieu disappointed him? What if he had nothing useful, or even comforting to say on learning Simon's secret? Well, there was a way to test him.

The secret was really twofold. One part of it was terrible enough, but already known to the king and queen and many knights who had been on the last crusade. Simon could tell Friar Mathieu the lesser secret safely enough, then weigh his response and decide whether to tell him what was known to only three people in the world.

"I said I must make this mission succeed because of who I am. What have you heard about the last Count de Gobignon?"

By now the moon had risen high, and Simon could see the old Franciscan's face quite clearly. Friar Mathieu frowned and stroked his long white beard.

"Very little, I am afraid. He was a very great landowner, one of the five Peers of the Realm, as you are now, and he was zealous in putting down the Cathar heretics in Languedoc." He cast a pained look at Simon.

"I spent the years when your father was prominent wandering the roads as a beggar, then studying for the priesthood, and I am afraid I paid very little attention to what was happening in the world."

Friar Mathieu's reply brought a sad smile to Simon's lips.

"That you, like most people, know so little of Amalric de Gobignon I owe to the generosity of King Louis and those close to him. The man whose name I inherited was a murderer, an archtraitor, a Judas. But when King Louis came back from that failed crusade in Egypt, he decreed that Count Amalric's deeds not be made known."

"I well remember my horror when I heard that the king was captured and his army destroyed," said Friar Mathieu. "I fell on my knees in the road, weeping, and prayed for him and the queen and the other captives.

What joy when we learned they were ransomed and would be coming back to us."

"It was Count Amalric's treachery that caused the calamity." It seemed to Simon that Nicolette, his mother, and her husband, Roland, had told him the story hundreds of times. They wanted him to know it by heart.

"He believed that the Cathars had murdered his father, Count Stephen de Gobignon, my grandfather," Simon went on. "King Louis advocated mercy toward heretics. Count Amalric had a brother, Hugues, a Dominican inquisitor, who was killed before his very eyes by an a.s.sa.s.sin's arrow in Beziers while he was presiding over the burning of Cathars."

"Ah, those heresy-hunting Dominicans." Friar Mathieu shook his head.

"When Hugues was killed, Count Amalric blamed the king's leniency toward heretics. After that, it seems, a madness possessed the count. He came to believe he could overthrow the king and take his throne."

"He must have been mad," said Friar Mathieu. "Never has a King of France been so loved as this Louis."

"Count Amalric went on crusade with King Louis, taking my mother, Countess Nicolette, along with him, even as King Louis took Queen Marguerite. I was a very young child then. They left me in the keeping of my mother's sisters. The crusaders captured Damietta, at the mouth of the Nile, left the noncombatants there and marched southward toward Cairo."

Simon hesitated, feeling himself choke up again. These were the crimes of the man everyone believed was his father. It was agony to give voice to them.

But he plunged on. "At a city called Mansura, Count Amalric led part of his own army into a trap, and most were killed. He tricked the rest of the army, including the king, into surrendering to the Mamelukes. He alone escaped. He went to Damietta, supposedly to take charge of the defense. He made a secret promise to the Sultan of Cairo to deliver Damietta, together with the ransom money, if the sultan would slay the king and all the other captive crusaders."

Friar Mathieu gasped. "Why in G.o.d's name would a French n.o.bleman do such dreadful things?"

"With the king and his brothers dead, he would be the most powerful man in France," said Simon. "He might have succeeded, but for two things.

First, the Mameluke emirs, led by the same Baibars who now rules Egypt, rose in revolt and killed the sultan with whom Count Amalric was bargaining. Baibars and the Mamelukes preferred to deal honorably with their prisoners."

"Ah, yes, Baibars," Friar Mathieu nodded. "The Tartars hate him and all of Outremer fears him."

"And then a knight-troubadour captured along with the king, one who had an old grudge against the Count de Gobignon, offered to go to Damietta and meet the count in single combat. After a fierce combat he slew Count Amalric. The king and the surviving crusaders were saved and they ransomed themselves. The troubadour's name was Roland de Vency."

"I never heard of him," said Friar Mathieu.