The Saracen: The Holy War Part 3

It was the same sort of plan, Daoud thought, as inciting the Filippeschi against the Monaldeschi. But Lorenzo had already visited Siena and made sure that the Ghibellini of Siena, with Daoud's help, could raise a far greater army than the pope could muster in Orvieto. This time he would succeed.

"Impossible!" Ugolini cried. "No king can control the Papacy. The Hohenstaufen have been trying to rule over the popes for centuries, and for centuries they have failed."

"Perhaps it takes a stranger to see that where the Hohenstaufen failed, the French are about to succeed," said Daoud. "France is now the strongest kingdom in Europe. If Manfred does not get control of the pope and the cardinals, the next pope will be under the protection of the French, and will have to do whatever they want."

"Urban is a sick man," said Ugolini. "There is not a cardinal who would risk a wager that he will live to see the year 1265. He will not call for the French to save him when he knows the angels are coming to get him."

"No, there I must disagree with Your Eminence," said Lorenzo, lounging in a large chair facing Ugolini's table. "Urban is a Frenchman, and he will work to bring the French into Italy until the moment the angels knock at his door."

Sophia, who had been sitting quietly in an armless straight-back chair with her hands folded in her lap, said, "The pope will blame the Ghibellini for the attack on the Monaldeschi. He will want help, and he will ask it from the French even if it means Christians joining the Tartars in a crusade the pope does not really want."

"Very shrewd," said Daoud with a smile in her direction. "Except that the pope had decided before the attack on the Monaldeschi to approve the alliance with the Tartars. As we know from his persuading Fra Toma.s.so to switch sides. It was because the pope had clearly turned against us that I planned to kill the Tartars."

Daoud was tired of sitting. Despite the pain in his leg, he used his stick to push himself to his feet and stepped out of the window recess.

He limped over to Ugolini's table.

"We must send Lorenzo to Siena with enough of our precious stones to raise an army big enough to overwhelm the papal soldiery and the Orvieto militia. It may take time to persuade the Sienese to act. It will take more time to muster an army and march on Orvieto. We must begin as quickly as we can. With the pope in Ghibellino hands, with the Ghibellini in a position to sway the outcome of the next papal election, we may yet keep the French out of Italy."

And that, he thought, would keep crusaders and Tartars out of the Dar al-Islam.

Ugolini's shrug spoke more of despair than of acquiescence. "Certainly the French will come if we do nothing. You are right about that. Do as you will. It is a miracle we have survived this long."

Strange, Daoud thought. Ugolini saw their mere survival as miraculous.

To Daoud, failure so far to put a final stop to the alliance of Christians and Tartars made him wonder whether G.o.d disapproved of him.

Once he accepted the fact that he had to go, Lorenzo had hoped the rain would continue. Under its cover his leaving the city was less likely to be noticed or impeded. But by mid-afternoon, the hour of None, when he was packed and mounted, a spare horse trotting behind him, a bright, hot sun had come out, and the puddles in the narrow streets were turning to steam.

At the Porta Maggiore he stopped when he saw two clerks seated at tables on either side of the gateway, one questioning each person entering the town, the other examining those leaving. A dozen of the podesta's men in yellow and blue stood by to keep people in line. Each clerk consulted what appeared to be a list on a scroll and on another scroll wrote down the names of those he questioned.

Only two days ago Sophia had told d'Ucello that David of Trebizond and his man Giancarlo were in Perugia. Now, Lorenzo thought, those d.a.m.ned clerks were probably watching for their return. They could have been set at the gate the morning after the attack on the Monaldeschi palace.

He smiled ironically as he remembered how, last summer, he had sat as these clerks did now, at the gateway to Lucera waiting to catch a certain Saracen newly arrived from Egypt.

Now, thought Lorenzo, if he tried to leave Orvieto he would not only be stopped and possibly arrested, he would be as good as telling the podesta that he and David had never been out of the town at all.

Lorenzo clenched his fists. He felt like a tuna caught in a net.

_And if I stand here much longer staring they'll notice me and haul me in._

He quickly turned his horses away from the gate and headed back to Ugolini's mansion.

At the beginning of the third Nocturn, Lorenzo, David, and a servant of Ugolini's named Riccardo, whom they had chosen for his size and strength, emerged from an alley near the north side of the city wall.

David wore a hood pulled low over his face. He limped and walked with a stick. Lorenzo had advised against his being out in the street at all, but David had answered that the watch did not know he was in Orvieto and would not be looking for him.

Lorenzo was amazed at how rapidly David had gotten better. He had never seen a man walking only two days after taking a bad arrow wound in the leg. The Muslims who taught David the art of healing must be even better than Jewish physicians.

As they walked, Lorenzo made David recite the names of half a dozen prominent Perugian merchants who were supporters of King Manfred. If the podesta were to question David about his whereabouts the night of the Filippeschi uprising, these men would bear witness that David and Lorenzo had been in Perugia.

"If d'Ucello does question you, how will you explain that you are back in Orvieto without having been seen entering through the gate?" Lorenzo asked him.

"I will tell him--with the greatest reluctance--that the line was very long when I arrived and that I was in haste to enter, so I bribed the men on duty to let me by. The more time pa.s.ses before he discovers my presence in Orvieto, the more believable that will be."

"If he suspects you of anything, he will arrest you no matter how good a story you tell him," Lorenzo said.

David stopped walking and rested his hand on Lorenzo's shoulder. "That is why you must go tonight, my friend. And come back quickly with an army from Siena."

Lorenzo had a pack over his shoulder and wore a long traveling cloak.

Riccardo carried a coil of rope. Ahead of them was a small stone shed built against the wall, beside one of the round guard towers.

Lorenzo was not particularly frightened by the ordeal ahead. He had done enough climbing in his younger days. But he was repelled by the thought that through the large opening in the floor of the little house the people of this quarter dumped, not only their garbage, but also the contents of their chamber pots.

They went quietly to the door of the shed. There was a guard in the tower above them, though he would have no reason to watch the garbage chute.

Riccardo put a meaty hand on the rough-hewn door. It gave without a struggle. Not even locked, thought Lorenzo. He supposed the podesta, may his ballocks wrinkle up like prunes, had not thought that anyone would choose this ignominious way to escape from the city.

"Sophia told me to tell you she would miss you," David said.

"Kiss her for me," said Lorenzo.

_Wonder if David has bedded Sophia yet._

Riccardo filled the little room so that Lorenzo felt himself being crowded to the edge of the chute.

"Hey! Riccardo! Push me down _after_ you have the rope around me."

"Sorry, Messere." The burly man tied the rope tightly around Lorenzo's waist, just above the belt that held the jewels, and they both pulled hard on the knot to test it. Tying the knots in the dark, they had to be doubly careful. Then Riccardo tied the other end of the rope around his own waist and donned heavy oxhide gloves.

It was a warm April night, and Lorenzo smelled a horrid odor of garbage and excrement coming up from the pit. It was not actually a pit, but a crevice in the face of the cliff on which Orvieto was built. Lorenzo had hoped the day's heavy rain would have washed the cliffside clean. But the people of Orvieto had been dumping offal here for centuries.

"Your final instructions?" he said to David.

"Ugolini's servant Guglielmo seems to have gotten safely out of the city with your horses and baggage," said David. "He must not have been on any list. He will meet you at the shrine of Saint Sebastian on the road to Siena. From there you know what you have to do."

David grasped him by the shoulders and then patted his back. They had become good friends, Lorenzo realized. Look how David was trusting him to ride with a fortune in gems to Siena, meet the right parties, bargain with them, deliver the gems to them and come back to Orvieto with a Ghibellino army. That was much to expect of a man. Yet David seemed not to doubt that Lorenzo would do it.

Lorenzo felt warm when he thought how much David meant to him. He had come on this mission as King Manfred's man, but he was going to Siena just as much for David as for Manfred. Bringing the Sienese into the struggle might keep the French away, though, and that would help Manfred as much as it would the Muslims.

"Lower away, then," Lorenzo said to Riccardo.

David stepped back. Riccardo and Lorenzo both took hold of the rope.

Lorenzo stepped over the edge of the chute. His legs dangled, and he tried not to think about how much empty s.p.a.ce was between him and the rocks at the base of Orvieto's mountain. The rope cut painfully into his waist and back. He gripped it tightly with his gloved hands and wrapped his legs around it to take some of the strain off the loop around his waist.