The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 82

He had taken a tiny leather capsule out of his belt purse and was inserting the message into it now. "Madama Tilia keeps the pigeons."

"Then are you going to her house?" Sophia remembered with a feeling of guilt that she had not thought of Rachel in some time. "Please, David, will you see how Rachel is while you are there?"

David looked at her quickly and glanced away. She felt a coldness in her chest.

"What has happened to her?" she demanded. She seized David's arm, lest he turn away from her.

He did not try to pull free. "She is well. She is already wealthy, in fact." His eyes did not meet hers at all now.

"Oh, my G.o.d! A man has had her!" She let go of David and turned her back on him.

There was another silence while fury churned in Sophia. She wanted to turn on David, to scratch his face with her nails. She wanted to tear her clothing in anguish, in mourning for Rachel's lost innocence. She hated herself for her part in the child's degradation.

"Sophia." David's voice came from behind her, soft, a little uncertain.

"Were you so much older than Rachel when you--became a woman?"

Wrath overpowered her other feelings, and she turned on him. "Do you think _that_ is what makes a girl into a woman? And you complain about speaking foolishness?"

"How old, Sophia?" His voice was more confident now, as if her anger had put him on firmer ground.

She thought of Alexis, the boy she had loved, and the long afternoons they had spent together hidden under an old broken arch covered with vines and lapped by waves on the Aegean side of Constantinople.

She shook her head. "Yes, I was her age. But I was in love. Doing it for money or for my city came later, when I was alone in the world and older."

There was appeal in his look. "But you know what it is to be alone and in need. Just as you freely chose to serve the Emperor of Constantinople with your body, so Rachel freely chose to sell her virginity for a fortune in gold."

His obtuseness made her more angry than ever. "You know nothing about freedom or women. Rachel was no more free to keep her virginity than you were free to remain a Christian after the Turks captured you. As for me, at least I know enough to hate the murderers of my parents."

His fingers dug into her shoulders until they hurt and the fire in his eyes terrified her. But she held her face frozen, refusing to show fear or pain.

"Say no more," he whispered in a strangled voice. "Not another word."

_Saint Simon, protect me._

_Simon._

She could see the struggle in David's face and body. She had enraged him to the point where he wanted to hurt her. But he was not going to let himself do it. She thought she must have taken a hundred breaths before he released his grip on her shoulders, pushing her away a little.

Again she wondered what he had been through that would give him such iron self-control. She stood looking at him, breathing heavily in the aftermath of her terror.

_I am a fool to despise anything as powerful as what he has._

He raked her with his eyes, then turned toward the door.

"Do not bother to find out about Rachel for me," she said. "I will go myself."

He stopped, and the fury in his face made her brace herself again for an attack.

"You cannot go. You cannot be seen going into Tilia's."

"Do you think I have served great men for years without learning how to move about a city unnoticed?"

"Go, then." His normally fair face was scarlet with rage. "And learn from Rachel's own lips what the Tartar did to her."

For a moment she seemed to go blind and deaf. She felt hot and cold at once. Her body had reacted to the meaning of his words before her brain understood them.

"_Tartar!_ The man was a Tartar? You let a Tartar have her?" Sophia seized the first object near her hand and threw it at him. She saw as it struck him that it was the painted skull. It hit his chest with a thump, and he took a step backward.

"You filthy b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she screamed. "Pig of a Turk!"

Expressionless, he turned without another word and left her, closing the door of Ugolini's cabinet behind him.

She sank weeping to the floor.

_Rachel, Rachel, how could they do this to you? With a Tartar. Oh, no!_

She sat there until her tears stopped and her thoughts began to make some sense. The skull, lying on its side, seemed to look back at her.

_Thank you, David. You have made my decision for me. Simon de Gobignon shall have me._

XXIX

This was a fearsome place, thought Daoud as he gazed around the underground chamber hewn out of the yellow tufa on which the building stood. Lit with torches, its vault was festooned with ropes and chains, one wall lined with whips, rods, and scourges hanging from hooks, pokers and branding irons heating in smoking braziers, a rack in one corner, a ring of wood and iron six feet in diameter suspended in the center of the room, on which a man could be spread-eagled. A veritable bazaar of torture instruments. Its door was of solid oak reinforced with criss-crossed strips of iron, designed to dash any hope of escape.

Daoud sat in a thronelike chair painted black--Tilia said it had once belonged to a pope--on a raised platform against a wall. If the d.a.m.ned chair had a few cushions in it, it might almost be comfortable. This place, Tilia had told him, was for patrons of hers who liked to torture--or be tortured.

It was perfect for his purpose. But could he himself be as perfect as the room? This was a hard and wily man he had to deal with tonight. It would be difficult to dominate him.

Beside Daoud, a preparation of wine, hashish, and the distilled juice of the Anatolian poppy simmered in a pot held on a metal tripod over a candle flame. He sniffed the faint steam that rose from the warm potion.

He warned himself to do no more sniffing, or he would be unable to conduct the night's proceedings with a clear head. He glanced down at one broad arm of the throne, where a small bra.s.s bowl lay. In the dish rested a steel needle as long as a forefinger, its tip covered with a black paste.

A nervous antic.i.p.ation tingled in the pit of his stomach, but he held himself very still.

Daoud heard Lorenzo's voice, and a moment later the oak-and-iron door swung open. A man stumbled through, his head covered with a black hood, his hands tied behind him, his ankles chained close together with hobble-gyves. Two of Tilia's mute black slaves held his arms. Behind him walked Lorenzo, a broad-bladed dagger held at waist level.

Daoud sat straighter in the throne, resting his hands on the arms. The door boomed shut, and at Lorenzo's command the slaves untied the prisoner's wrists and pulled the hood off his head.

Sordello stood before Daoud, blinking and staring angrily around him.

Daoud watched, pleased, as the sight of the irons and chains and scourges bore in on Sordello and the anger on the bravo's face changed to alarm.

"Why have you done this to me? What the devil is this place?"

An appropriate question, Daoud thought. "You are in h.e.l.l," he said.

Sordello squinted at Daoud. "And who are you supposed to be, Messer David, the Prince of Darkness? Is this some sort of miracle play?"