The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 99

The contessa herself had suggested that a Filippeschi might have murdered Alain just because he was a guest of the Monaldeschi family.

Simon supposed the Filippeschi chieftain was paying public respect to Alain to demonstrate his family's innocence. The Filippeschi, Simon had heard, were opposed to a French presence in Italy--perhaps simply because the Monaldeschi were friendly to the French.

So opposed that they would murder an innocent young man? Simon burned to seize Marco di Filippeschi and throttle the truth from him.

By turning his head slightly, Simon could see Friar Mathieu on the left side of the church, sitting in the midst of the Franciscan congregation.

Beyond the Franciscans, in the shadow of a pillar, stood a stout man in dark cape and tunic. D'Ucello, the podesta, observing the funeral--thinking perhaps that Alain's killer might attend. He prayed that the podesta would stop wasting his time pursuing the nonexistent women Simon and Alain had been with.

_Find Alain's killer, d.a.m.n you!_ Simon thought, clenching his teeth.

Simon turned briefly to survey the crowd that filled the nave all the way to the doors. Halfway back, a spot of red light from a window fell on a man's blond hair. Simon was almost certain that was David of Trebizond. He still saw no sign of Sophia, and his heart fell.

As Simon watched the pope celebrate the ma.s.s, a.s.sisted by the two cardinals, the Italian Ugolini and the French le Gros, he wondered whether Alain was watching from heaven. He must be in heaven. Was he not a martyr?

But did Alain care about what was happening on this earth? Surely a man would want to see his own funeral. For a moment Simon imagined he could speak to Alain, reach out and touch him.

_How do you like this, my friend? The pope himself says ma.s.s for you._

Simon choked on a sob and had to wipe tears from his face.

The pope sang the Gospel in a quavering voice, and a chorus of stout young priests boomed back the responses. The voices, rising and falling in the chant devised by Pope Gregory the Great, unaccompanied by any instrument, rebounded from the heavy stones of the vaulted ceiling.

Simon swore to himself he would write about this to Alain's mother.

When it came time for the sermon, Fra Toma.s.so d'Aquino rose from the bench that had been set for him at the front of the cathedral. He turned and bowed to the pope, who sat in a throne on the right side of the altar. Pope Urban's hand twitched in a small gesture of blessing.

Standing at the head of Alain's bier, Simon was close enough to Fra Toma.s.so to hear the breath whistling through his nostrils as he exerted himself to move his bulk from bench to altar steps. The black rosary around his middle rattled with his steps and creaked with his heavy breathing.

A hush, heavy with the odor of incense, fell over the crowd a.s.sembled in the nave. For a sermon by a bishop or even a cardinal, this crowd of high-ranking prelates would probably go on whispering to each other. But all were interested in hearing the philosopher-friar who was famous throughout Christendom, whom some revered as a living saint and a few others considered a subtle heretic.

Fra Toma.s.so spoke Latin, as was customary before any a.s.semblage of churchmen. His tenor voice sent high-pitched reverberations through the nave of the great church. It is a sad moment, he said, when G.o.d chooses to cut off a young man in his prime, yet it happens all too often. I share the sorrow of the family and friends of this excellent young knight, he said, and Simon felt comforted. Indeed, all Christendom must mourn the loss of such a fine young man, killed while performing his duty, far from home, guarding an emba.s.sy to His Holiness from the other side of the earth.

_And accompanying a friend making a secret visit to a lady._

The stout friar waxed philosophic, as was expected of him, discoursing on the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," using Alain as an example. The Sire de Pirenne's death was murder, ambush out of the dark, he said.

Loud coughing interrupted the sermon. Simon looked and saw that it was Pope Urban, bent double, Cardinal le Gros holding his arm and resting a hand on his shoulder, while Cardinal Ugolini looked alarmed. The coughing had a burbling sound to it, as if the old pope's lungs were full of fluid. A cough like that in November was an ominous thing, thought Simon.

Fra Toma.s.so resumed when His Holiness had quieted. To kill is not always a sin, he said, but to kill the innocent is. It is not a sin, therefore, to wage war on the Saracens, as pope after pope has called upon good Christian warriors to do, because the Saracens are not innocent. They hold in their clutches the most sacred places of Christendom, the lands where Our Lord Jesus Christ was born and died; they rob and murder pilgrims seeking to visit those holy places; and they seek to spread the false religion of Mohammedanism which denies the central mystery of our faith--Christ crucified, dead, and risen again. For all these reasons the Saracens should be fought.

Fra Toma.s.so paused and looked about him. Simon felt that the pause was intended to be significant, that the great Dominican was about to say something very important. But the silence was disturbed by a whispering.

It came from behind Simon and to his right. He glanced in that direction and saw that the Bulgarian woman, Ana, was sitting with the two Tartars and was whispering her translation of Fra Toma.s.so's sermon to John, the older one, who was immediately on her left.

"We may ask ourselves, why does G.o.d permit an innocent young man like this to die?" Fra Toma.s.so went on. "The answer is, of course, that He permits it to make possible a greater good, the exercise of human free will. I say to you that Our Lord, Jesus Christ, crucified at the age of thirty-three, is the type of all innocent young men done to death by evil. And evil is a necessary consequence of human freedom."

Fra Toma.s.so looked out over his audience for another silent moment, then said, "G.o.d must value freedom very highly if He allows so much evil to occur, just so freedom can exist."

_I never thought of that._

But there was very little freedom in the world, Simon thought, apart from the power to sin. Everybody from kings down to the meanest serfs was bound in a net of obligations, duties, laws, loyalties, obedience.

Simon remembered what Friar Mathieu had said about using Fra Toma.s.so's vow of obedience, through de Verceuil's speaking to his Dominican superior, to force him to give up his opposition to the alliance.

And now Simon noticed that Fra Toma.s.so was looking at de Verceuil.

"Often, all too often, one man will seek to rob another of the freedom to do what is right," Fra Toma.s.so said. "If a superior commands another to do wrong, and the inferior obeys, the one who gives the wrongful order bears the greater burden of guilt. But some guilt also falls upon the one who obeys. It is only with the greatest reluctance and after the greatest deliberation that one should disobey any order from one of higher rank. But there are times when it must be done."

Again he looked at de Verceuil.

"Thus when we see a mighty nation that again and again does harm to the innocent," said Fra Toma.s.so, "we are bound in conscience to denounce it."

Simon felt as if he had been struck on the head with a rock. Now he was sure of what was coming. And so, evidently, were others, because a murmuring was arising in the church.

Fra Toma.s.so blinked slowly, as if to show his calm acceptance of the stir he was causing. "We are obliged to denounce unjust war even when the evildoer offers us the hand of fellowship. When a puissant nation takes up arms against the world, when it makes war its chief occupation, when it attacks peoples that have not harmed it, when it threatens all humanity, we are not permitted to condone such wrongs. When this nation carries war to innocent, unarmed men, women, and children, slaughtering these noncombatants by the tens and hundreds of thousands, we are obliged to condemn it."

_Oh, my G.o.d! If this is the Church's verdict, all is lost._

Simon looked at the pope on his throne to the right of the altar. He sat slumped, his white mitre tilted forward, his eyes half shut as if in thought. Simon saw no sign that Urban objected to what Fra Toma.s.so was saying.

The murmur was louder now. Despairing, Simon turned to look back at the Tartars. Little points of candlelight were reflected in their black eyes, and their brown faces were tight. Simon could imagine what would happen to anyone, holy man or not, who spoke out against them so in their own camp.

The stout Dominican stretched an arm in a flowing white sleeve toward the still, mail-clad body on the red bier. "It may be asked, why do I speak of such things on this sad day, when we mourn a young man cruelly struck down in youth? I answer that this young man came here and died here because Christendom is now faced with this great moral dilemma.

What we owe this young man, what we owe any man who dies in the performance of his duty, is to do our own duty."

"Enough! Sit down!" came a hoa.r.s.e whisper from Simon's left, and he turned to see de Verceuil half out of his chair, fists clenched. It had been de Verceuil who had wanted Fra Toma.s.so, as the most distinguished speaker in Orvieto, to deliver the funeral sermon. And doubtless it was the cardinal's heavy-handed dealing with Fra Toma.s.so that had provoked this particular sermon. And now de Verceuil was trying publicly to silence Fra Toma.s.so, making more enemies for their cause.

Fra Toma.s.so turned in the cardinal's direction, then once again slowly shut his eyes and slowly opened them as he turned away. He went on speaking.

"And perhaps G.o.d has taken this young man from us to remind us how many other innocent lives may be lost if we wage war unwisely."

Simon and the other five French knights turned the red-draped wooden pallet so that Alain's head was toward the altar and his feet toward the church door. The weight had not bothered Simon carrying Alain into the church, but now the burden seemed twice as heavy. He was afraid, as he descended the stairs in front of the cathedral, one worn stone step at a time, that his knees might buckle and he might spill Alain to the ground. He would be anxious until he got Alain back on the cart that would carry him to his final resting place in the cemetery on a hill to the north of Orvieto's great rock.

_And where will I go?_

Trying to get de Verceuil to change Fra Toma.s.so's mind had been a serious error in judgment. Every important churchman and official in Orvieto had heard the greatest thinker in Christendom attack the plan of Christians and Tartars waging war together on the Saracens. What would happen now?

_Nothing._

Nothing would happen, and that was all that was needed for the alliance to fail. The Tartars would go home. They would continue their war against the Saracens, the war they had been losing lately, without Christian help. And eventually the Mameluke waves would roll over Palestine and Syria and the Christian strongholds in Outremer would crumble like sand castles.

_And the escutcheon of Gobignon is a little more tarnished. And I have led my dearest va.s.sal to useless death. Whenever the Tartars leave Italy, and it will probably be soon, I will return to Chateau Gobignon a failure._

He thought back to his meeting with Charles d'Anjou on the wall of the Louvre last July. It had seemed then that helping the Tartars to ally themselves with the Christians was a way to change his whole life for the better. He would take his rightful place in the kingdom as a great baron. He would end the shame and suffering he had always lived with.

He would hold his head up among the n.o.bility, and King Louis and Count Charles would love and respect him.

Now he would accomplish none of those things. He had been knocked from his horse and was rolling in the dust. He would go back to the living death of being afraid to show his face beyond the bounds of Gobignon, the only place in the world where he was known and respected.

Go back to Gobignon and never see Sophia again? She, at least, would not think less of him because the grand alliance had failed. She probably felt sorry for Alain. Perhaps even felt responsible for his death. Simon should go and rea.s.sure her.