The Saracen: The Holy War Part 4

Grunting, Riccardo slowly lowered Lorenzo through the chute. David was standing beside Ugolini's man and had laid a protective hand on the rope. The hole in the floor was just wide enough for Lorenzo's shoulders to pa.s.s through. Then he was hanging free below the city wall, his back to the cliff, staring out at a starry black sky and the silhouettes of distant hillsides. He felt dizzy and shut his eyes.

"Turn me," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely up at the opening above him.

After a moment he felt his body rotating, and again he had to fight dizziness. He was facing in toward the smelly crevice, and he drew up his legs and planted his feet firmly on its walls. With the help of the rope he could walk down the cliffside. Riccardo let out the rope a little more, and Lorenzo's boot sole sc.r.a.ped loudly against the crumbling tufa surface, releasing a shower of pebbles.

"Who's down there?" a distant voice shouted, and Lorenzo felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over him. That was the guard in the tower high above. He wondered if the guard could see him down here. He tried to grip the sides of the crevice with his feet and pull himself closer to the cliff face.

"I am taking a p.i.s.s, buon'amico!" Riccardo called up to the guard. "Do you mind?"

"That place is not for p.i.s.sing," the guard called back.

"Would you rather I sprinkled your tower?"

There was no answer this time, and Riccardo began whistling loudly to cover any further noises Lorenzo might make. Lorenzo hoped the guard would not come down to investigate. What if he did, and Riccardo felt he must let go of the rope?

Riccardo must have had the same thought, because he began paying out the rope more rapidly, and Lorenzo's feet flew over the crackling rock. He was like a man running furiously backward. It would be comical, he thought, were he not in danger of breaking his neck.

This was a time when he wished he had clung to a religion of some sort rather than abandoning the faith of his fathers and replacing it with nothing. It would be so comforting to pray to an all-powerful being who might be kind enough to protect him. Just _hoping_ not to get hurt seemed stupid and futile.

He felt the cliff wall beginning to slant outward a bit under his feet.

The whistling from the shed had stopped. He looked up and saw that he was halfway down the side of the cliff. The backs of his legs ached from the strain of supporting his weight, and his shoulders and arms hurt too. He began to worry, not so much about whether he would fall as what he might land in when he reached the bottom.

And the smell of rot and filth all around him might choke him before he ever got down. He saw directly below him a pit of blackness surrounded by trees that were only a little less dark. The muck might be over his head; he might just sink into it.

As he reached the level of the trees he drew his knees up and then straightened them hard, giving himself a push away from the cliff. He was still being lowered, so that when he swung back to the cliff he was much farther down. This time his boots. .h.i.t a coating of soft stuff on the rock, and the smell was unbearable.

_I'd rather break my neck than smother in s.h.i.t._

He kicked again with his legs, and when he hit the end of the outward swing, the rope feeling as if it would cut him in two, he grabbed for a tree branch, barely visible in the darkness. It hit him in the stomach and knocked all the wind out of him, but he clung to it desperately.

Bent double over the tree limb, he looked down and saw shadows that might be forest floor as far below him as his own height. Then again, he might be seeing the tops of other trees. He drew his dagger and cut the rope around his middle but held it with one hand. He took deep, relieved breaths when the constraint was gone. He gave three sharp jerks on the rope, the signal that he was down. After a moment all tension left the rope, and he felt it falling in the darkness. Another moment and he heard rustlings, thumps, and splashes as the rope landed at the bottom of the crevice. Tomorrow's dumping, he thought, would quite conceal it.

He wondered briefly if David and Riccardo had safely left the dumping shed and were on their way back to Ugolini's. He looked down again into the darkness, realizing that if he jumped from here he might fall far enough to kill himself. Having swung away from the pile of offal, he was now more worried about breaking his neck. He pulled himself up, straddling the tree and facing in toward the trunk. He slid down to the trunk, then tried to feel about with his foot for another branch.

His feet met nothing. He swung over the side of the branch, feeling the trunk with one hand and the s.p.a.ce below him with his feet. Still nothing. Now he was dangling from the limb, holding on with two aching hands. If he had not worn gloves, he would have no skin left on his palms.

_Well, here goes one hopeful atheist._ He let go.

He fell a short distance, feetfirst, into a pool of water. It came up over his low boots, soaking his hose. There was no smell; apparently it was a pure forest pool, probably a puddle enlarged by the recent rain.

Sighing, he sloshed out of it. Small creatures hopped and scurried away from him.

_It could have been much, much worse._

Glad to feel his feet on the ground, he hoped the rest of his journey to Siena would be less exciting than the beginning.

XLVI

Friar Mathieu sat in a cushion-lined armchair in the cloistered garden of the Hospital of Santa Clara, the white wisps of his beard ruffling like feathers in the morning breeze. The dappled shade of a pear tree protected him from the June sun.

A young Franciscan, his tonsured head a gleaming pink spot surrounded by a wreath of close-cropped black hair, stood at a tall desk beside Friar Mathieu, writing on a piece of parchment.

"All things lead to good if one looks at them aright," Friar Mathieu said with a chuckle. "That murderer in black gave me the time I needed to do something needful--get the story of my journey among the Tartars written before it is lost in my failing memory. A good thing I did not land on my head."

Despite the pain he felt at Friar Mathieu's injuries, Simon had to smile at the old Franciscan's little joke. And indeed, he might look small and fragile huddled in his chair, but he was showing energy and zest for life. He was pulling through.

"And behold," Friar Mathieu went on, lifting his bandaged right arm, "I myself am exempted from writing. Friar Giuseppe must do the work while I sit here and explore my memory. And when I grow tired of even that little bit of work, Friar Giuseppe reads to me from the newly arrived ma.n.u.script on mathematics, called _De Computo Naturali_, by our gifted brother Friar Bacon of Oxford. I could almost be grateful to that a.s.sa.s.sin."

Simon stood awkwardly, looking unhappily down at him, till Friar Mathieu motioned him to sit on the ground beside him. To make room for himself, Simon moved a pair of crutches out of the way. It was worrisome that so soon--only a few weeks after the fall that had almost killed him--Friar Mathieu had started hobbling about on crutches and had begun dictating, sitting painfully upright, to Friar Giuseppe. Even though one leg was certainly broken and there were probably a dozen other cracks in his arms and ribs, Friar Mathieu insisted that he was more likely to die if he remained in bed than if he was up and moving about.

"You are looking well today, Father." He had to admit it, even though the old priest was not taking proper care of himself.

"I am lucky this happened to me in the spring," said Friar Mathieu. "The sun and air help me mend. But I fear you will not see my complete recovery, since you will have to leave Orvieto shortly."

"Leave? Why, Father? Has something gone wrong?" His first thought, as always, was for the safety of the Tartars. Ever since that terrible night in April, he dreaded leaving them out of his sight.

Instead of answering, Friar Mathieu asked Friar Giuseppe for privacy.

The young priest bowed deeply and touched the old man's hand reverently before gathering up his writing materials and turning to go.

"You have not heard, then? A courier brought the news to the pope's palace last night. All through the north, the Ghibellini are on the move. Siena, it seems, has been quietly raising an army to send against Orvieto. And the Ghibellino party has taken power in Pisa and Lucca. It appears the Ghibellini have decided to seize all of Italy before the French come in and take it."

_But we are French_, thought Simon, _and we have no ambitions in Italy_.

_Uncle Charles does._

In this quiet garden it was hard to believe that an army could be preparing to march against Orvieto. Or even that the attack on the Palazzo Monaldeschi had happened in the same city. Simon watched a friar in his brown robe serenely weeding. The rows of plants were already tall and thick--peas, haricots, lettuce, cabbage, carrots. At Gobignon this time of year the seedlings would not be half as high.

"Will the Sienese besiege Orvieto?" he asked.

_Another battle? And another attempt on the Tartars?_

"Pope Urban will not wait to see what they do," said Friar Mathieu. "He feels threatened from both north and south, and intends to move away from here as soon as possible. There is a rumor that Manfred of Sicily himself may invade the Papal States this summer."

Simon sprang to his feet and threw his arms wide in astonishment. "And what about the Tartars?"

"They will certainly go where His Holiness goes."

"G.o.d's blood!" Simon struck his forehead with his hand. "Forgive me, Father. But if the pope has not enough troops to keep him safe in Orvieto, surely he is in even more danger on the road. And if the Tartars are with him, we could lose everything."

Friar Mathieu shook his head, absently rubbing his bound right arm with his left hand. "We can gain everything. His Holiness needs help desperately. Now he can be persuaded to give King Louis permission to join with the Tartars." The old Franciscan's eyes fixed on Simon's. "You must go to the pope."

Simon felt the palms of his hands grow cold. "The pope will not listen to me, Father."

Friar Mathieu chuckled. "Is he more likely to listen to that fool--G.o.d forgive me--de Verceuil?"