The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 113

"I can use their other men. Have whatever the amba.s.sadors need for their comfort carried to the spice pantry." He looked again at the pile of garbage. "Tell them they will be next to the kitchen. They should like that."

XLII

"Count Simon!" Simon recognized the crackling voice of the contessa.

She was wearing a floor-length gown of deep purple velvet. She held up a disk-shaped bronze medallion on a silver chain.

"Please take this, my young paladino. Wear it into battle for me."

Simon went to her, his steel-shod feet echoing in the hallway. All his movements felt slow and clumsy in the mail shirt that hung to his thighs and the mail breeches that protected him from waist to ankle.

Embossed on the medallion was a mounted knight driving his lance into a coiling bat-winged dragon baring huge fangs in rage. Where the lance pierced the scales was set a tiny, teardrop-shaped ruby.

"Thank you, Donna Elvira," he breathed, full of admiration for the workmanship. "It is most beautiful."

She reached up and put it around his neck. He could feel its weight through his mail shirt.

"San Giorgio. It was my husband's, and I have kept it locked away in my jewel casket since the day the puzzolenti Filippeschi murdered him. It is yours now. San Giorgio will give you victory." She raised her thin body on tiptoe and he felt her dry lips press against his cheek.

"I will never forget this moment, Madonna." He touched her yellow cheeks with his fingertips to brush away her tears.

He did not want her to know that this was his first--his very first--battle.

Climbing the spiral stairs to the tower, his legs ached as he pushed his mailed weight upward, and his neck felt strained under his mail hood and steel helmet. It had been weeks since he had worn his mail, days since he had practiced his sword drill. He swore at himself.

He emerged through a trapdoor onto a square platform paved with flagstone. Three helmeted heads turned to him: De Puys, his head covered with tight-laced mail leaving only a circle for his eyes, nose, and mustached mouth; Teodoro, capitano of Simon's Venetian crossbowmen, wearing a bowl-shaped helmet; and de Verceuil, whose tall helmet was painted bright red and shaped like a cardinal's mitre covering his entire face with the stem of a gold cross running up the center and the arms of the cross spread over the eyeholes.

Dressed for war, de Verceuil looked more like a cardinal than he usually did, Simon thought ironically.

Of the four men on the tower platform, de Verceuil wore the most elaborate armor with steel plates over his mail at his shoulders, knees, and shins. Hanging from a broad belt at his side was a mace, an iron ball on the end of a steel handle a foot long. This was, Simon knew, the proper weapon for a clergyman, who was not supposed to shed blood.

Over his mail shirt de Verceuil wore a long crimson surcoat sewn with cloth-of-gold Maltese crosses. De Puys, like Simon, wore a purple surcoat on which the three gold crowns of Gobignon were embroidered over and over again. Teodoro's simple breastplate of hardened leather was reinforced with steel plates.

Leaning into a crenel between two square merlons, Simon took a deep breath of the mild spring air. It would be a pleasant evening, did he not know that many men were going to die.

He watched the last wagons bringing in casks of water and wine, loads of hay and sacks of grain and beans--supplies in case the fighting dragged on--over the drawbridge through the rear gate. Water, especially, was in short supply in the city on the rock. The palace had its own spring, but it did not produce enough water to supply the whole establishment. Simon remembered Sophia drinking from his hands in the garden.

He stopped short at the thought of her to whisper a little prayer for her safety. But she was in no danger. No one was threatening Cardinal Ugolini.

Simon had ordered that every cask of water available in Orvieto be bought and every vessel filled. The attackers would surely use fire as a weapon. He had also sent for a supply of rocks from a quarry outside the city, extra ammunition for the stone casters mounted on the roof.

He recalled that Sordello had said the Filippeschi intended a surprise attack. They were certain to learn of these preparations and realize that the Monaldeschi had discovered their plan. What if they did not come at all?

If the fact that the Monaldeschi were ready was enough to prevent the attack, that would be the best possible outcome. But Simon realized with a pang that if the Filippeschi did not come, he would be terribly disappointed.

He shook his head at his own madness.

Sunset reddened the tile roofs surrounding the Monaldeschi palace. From up there Simon could see the tall campaniles of Orvieto's five churches and the towers of the other palaces--all battlements square, because this was a Guelfo city. A green flag, too small from this distance to make out the device on it, flew over a tower on the southwest side of the city, the palace of the Filippeschi.

He went to the other side of the tower to look at the city wall. Orange and green Monaldeschi banners flew there. He had a.s.signed twenty Monaldeschi archers, all he dared subtract from the defenders of the palace, to secure the nearest section of the wall. He had wanted to station men in the houses near the palace as well, but de Puys persuaded him that such outposts would surely be overrun and the men speedily lost. Better to concentrate his forces in the palace itself.

He could not make out Cardinal Ugolini's house, somewhere to the southeast of him. It had no tower to distinguish it. But he thought again of Sophia. How lovely it would be to be with her sitting and chatting instead of up in this tower awaiting a deadly onslaught. How wonderful if his only worry were whether or not she would accept his marriage proposal.

He stared out over the city and thought, somewhere out there was another enemy. Even if, as Sordello reported, Cardinal Ugolini were not behind this attack, there might be someone behind both the Filippeschi and Cardinal Ugolini. Ever since he had come to Orvieto, Simon had sensed the presence in this city of a hidden enemy. An enemy who knew him and watched him, but whom he did not know. The one--Simon was sure of it--who had killed Alain.

_I am waiting for you_, he said, gripping the red bricks of the battlements.

Every old soldier Simon had ever talked to had said that war consisted more of waiting than of fighting. Simon found the combination of boredom and fear well nigh unbearable.

De Puys sat with his back against the battlements and dozed like a large cat. De Verceuil also sat, his helmet on the tower floor beside him, reading from a small leather-bound book, whispering the Latin words.

Simon supposed it must be his office, the prayers every priest was required to say every day. The cardinal would have to get today's office read quickly; the light was fading fast.

Capitano Teodoro preferred to be busy. He kept shuttling back and forth between the tower and rooftop two stories below, where his men were deployed. Teodoro would make a circuit of the tower battlements, frowning down at his company of archers. Then he would go down and order six or so men to change position. He would inspect everyone's weapons.

He inspected the bows of even the eight Armenians, in their bright red surcoats, who would fight beside the Venetians. The friction between the Armenians and the Venetians, Simon had noticed, had lessened considerably after he promoted Teodoro. He was a good leader. At the contessa's request Teodoro inspected the Monaldeschi men-at-arms, who were mostly stationed at the two gates and in the hallways and apartment windows.

After each inspection tour, Teodoro would come back up, study the situation, then go down and rearrange the men, likely as not returning them to their earlier positions.

But staying busy made sense. It kept everyone alert.

Simon left the tower once to visit his four knights on the rooftop, each one stationed, with six men-at-arms, by a stone caster at a corner of the roof. So that their missiles would clear the screening he had built over the battlements, the long-armed machines were set well back from the edge of the roof. The knights did not like supervising the stone casters. They wanted, they told him, a chance to charge the enemy during the attack. Simon tried to be good-humored about insisting that they remain within the palace, but it was hard giving orders to men who were older than himself and combat veterans. He missed Alain, realizing only now how much he had relied on his young friend as a go-between for himself and the other knights.

Returning to the tower roof, Simon kept pacing from one corner to the other. He fingered the jeweled hilt of his scimitar. He tried to divert himself by thinking of Sophia, by imagining how he would phrase his marriage proposal to her. He dreaded the fighting, but wished it would start.

Like a rising tide the shadows spread and deepened, swallowing up the hills beyond the city, then the city walls, then the towers. The four men stood in darkness, no torchlight up here to make them an easy target. The only light on the roof below was the shimmer of charcoals burning in four braziers for fire arrows.

An orange glow appeared over the hills to the east, the moon starting to rise.

Simon heard distant shouting. Battle cries.

"Filippeschi!" It was Teodoro's voice.

Simon saw flickering red light dancing on house walls coming toward them, converging from front, sides, and rear. The streets were too narrow to permit sight of the advancing bravos and their torches.

_So, even though they know we are ready for them, they have come._

From the street directly opposite the main entrance to the palace a long, dark shape emerged, like a gigantic tortoise. Similar shapes issued from other streets opening on the piazza. The tortoises were big enough to shelter at least a dozen men. There were six of them, crawling across the open s.p.a.ce.

"Use the fire arrows!" Simon shouted. Teodoro repeated the order to his men. On the roof below, men raced from the battlements to the braziers and back again, and streaks of light arced from the rooftop at the tortoise shapes.

Simon could hear the burning arrows sizzle on the wet wooden frameworks and wet hides. The hides did not burn, but the light from the arrows made it easier for the crossbowmen shooting from the battlements to see their targets. Teodoro was down on the roof directing their fire. The archers volleyed at the closest tortoise. The steel bolts tore right through the skins, piercing the men beneath. Simon heard the thump of thirty bolts striking a tortoise at once, then screams. The framework stopped moving, and Simon saw men crawling from under it. Some ran frantically back to the shelter of the side streets; others crept a few paces and collapsed.