The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 7

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 grat.i.tude. 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.

"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.

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 ma.s.sive shoulders overshadowing her.

It was almost like being loved by a G.o.d.

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 G.o.d is this?" she had asked.

"I think it is just an athlete," said her host. "The old Greeks made G.o.ds of their athletes."

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 n.o.bility 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 robber baron to steal my crown." And then he asked her about herself, and they talked about her and about him.