The Saracen: The Holy War Part 94

Simon stepped onto the platform. His arms, stiff and sore from yesterday's fighting, ached as he lifted the stone to place it. He laid it next to Charles's rock on the inert, hidden form and stepped back.

Gautier du Mont of the bowl-shaped haircut was next. He bowed to Charles and Simon and put his rock beside theirs.

"Simon, come with me," said Charles. "We have had no chance to talk since yesterday." He led Simon to a small nearby hill, where they could watch the long line of Charles's army winding single file through the gray valley of Benevento under an overcast sky. Each man, by Charles's order, carried a stone to lay on Manfred's cairn.

"If not for you, Manfred would be burying me today, Simon," said Charles, his large eyes solemn. "I am in your debt forever, for my kingdom and my life."

_That should make this a bit easier for me._

"Thank you--Sire."

Du Mont and FitzTrinian, Fourre and de Marion, laid their stones as Charles and Simon watched. The Burgundian, von Regensburg, had been killed yesterday, impaled on a Saracen foot soldier's spear. Simon felt little regret at his pa.s.sing.

"We are burying Manfred as our pagan ancestors were buried," said Charles, "but I hope this gesture of respect helps reconcile his former subjects to me. I fear trouble with them. It has already started. Last night, after the battle, several men died mysteriously."

"Oh?" said Simon.

"The death that shocked me most was de Verceuil's."

Simon was amazed. "The cardinal?" He could hardly believe it. He remembered de Verceuil's departure just after the cardinal had killed Manfred, as Simon and Daoud were beginning their final combat.

"Poisoned," said Charles. "I do not know if it was done by Manfred's followers or by an enemy of his in our own ranks. You had not heard?"

"No."

Even though one expected to hear, after a battle, of untimely deaths, Simon's blood ran cold with shock. De Verceuil did not seem the sort to oblige his fellow men by dying unexpectedly.

A cold wind blew across Simon's neck and whipped the bright purple woolen cloak Charles was wearing. Charles touched his hand to his gold crown, larger than the count's coronet he had worn on state occasions in the past, as if fearing that it might blow away.

"He went to the Tartars' tent looking for them before we learned they had been killed," Charles said. "Saw a jar of wine on the table. He was thirsty after the fighting, and took a long drink straight out of the jar. Those who saw him said that in an instant his skin turned hot and red. First he cried out that he was blind, then he raved about terrible visions and began laying about wildly with his mace, so that his attendants were forced to flee. Then he went into convulsions, and within the hour he was dead."

Simon remembered Lorenzo saying something about having gone to the Tartars' tent.

_He was going to make doubly sure he killed them this time. Instead, he killed Manfred's killer._

"A tragedy," Simon said, sorry that, despite the duty of Christian charity, he could feel no sorrow.

"Then there was Sordello, your captain of archers who guarded the Tartars. Did you not hear about him?"

"He has not been under my command since I left the Tartars with you in Rome," said Simon. He kept trying to think about de Verceuil and prayed that his face would not give away his knowledge of how Sordello died.

"He and two of his men were found this morning in a building in town.

Sordello had a small puncture in his throat, and one of the others had been stabbed in the chest with a very thin blade. One of my priest-physicians looked at the bodies and believes both of them were killed with poisoned implements. And it appeared the throat of the third had been torn out by the fangs of some enormous beast."

"Perhaps a watchdog," said Simon. "After all, when troops are turned loose on a town, one must expect that a few of the citizens will fight back."

"I am sorry to lose Sordello," said Charles. "A despicable man, but often useful."

The rocks covered Manfred's body completely now. Only the edges of the yellow banner were still showing. Those who had placed their stones stood around in groups to watch the cairn grow.

"These Sicilians will not settle down until the remaining Hohenstaufens are out of the way," said Charles. "Manfred has three sons and a daughter. I have to find them and lock them up. Too bad I cannot have them executed, but they are just children."

_Children!_

Simon prayed that Manfred's children escaped from Charles.

He stood facing Charles, knowing that he was as tall as the new king of southern Italy and Sicily and that he no longer felt afraid of him.

Fighting in this battle, his near-death at Daoud's hands, the shock and pain of what Sophia had told him--all together, these things had changed him. He no longer doubted that he deserved to be the Count de Gobignon.

It did not matter who his real father was. What mattered was that there was no one else in the world who could rule Gobignon as well as he. In the past two years he had become the Count de Gobignon in truth as well as in t.i.tle. And now all he wanted was to go back to his domain.

To bring up the subject, Simon said, "Friar Mathieu is most grieved at the deaths of the Tartar amba.s.sadors, but it means you no longer need him here. He has asked me to take him back to France with me. He has permission from his order to go. He wants to tell King Louis in person about his journey among the Tartars. And he wants to spend his remaining years in France. As for me, I am eager to see my mother and stepfather in Provence."

_Now that I can face them with a clear conscience._

Charles frowned, throwing his head back and staring down his long nose at Simon. "You want to go back to France now? But our work here has only begun."

"If you wish to offer any of my va.s.sals fiefdoms or positions in your new kingdom, they have my leave to accept. I promised them that when they came with me."

"But you cannot leave before taking possession of your own dukedom."

"Thank you, Sire. But I have decided that for myself I want nothing."

He had rehea.r.s.ed that sentence in his mind a hundred times. He was delighted at the sound of it and even more delighted at the stupefied expression on Charles's face. It was not often one surprised a man like Charles d'Anjou.

"_Nothing?_ But that is preposterous. You have come all this way, won this great victory--has your head been addled by chivalrous romances?

This is not the world of Arthur and Lancelot."

Simon recalled Manfred's last stand on the field yesterday and thought, _Perhaps that world ended with him_.

Surely Charles, keeping himself well out of the battle and threatened only when Daoud desperately tried to reach him, had been no figure out of chivalric romance. This was a man he could not trust, could not admire, and especially could not like.

"Too true, Sire. But it is a world in which people need decent rulers. I do not need more land, and the land I already have needs me. If I divide myself between a domain in northern France and another one here in Italy, I cannot govern either well. And, frankly, I do not want to live in the midst of a strange people as a foreign conqueror."

_Giving up this dukedom, too, gives me a better right to be Count de Gobignon._

"You overestimate the difficulty of governing," said Charles.

_No, you underestimate it_, thought Simon. For Charles governing was a simple matter of squeezing the people and their land for all they were worth. And killing anyone who protested, as he had those citizens outside Rome. If the people were strange to him, all the easier to oppress them.

"Perhaps what comes easily to you is difficult for me, Sire," he said.

Charles shook his head, then quickly reached up to steady the heavy crown. "I do not understand you. But that province is too valuable for me to press it on someone who does not want it. I can use it to reward others who have served me, not as well as you have, but well enough."

"I hoped you might see it that way."

"But think, since I asked you to guard the Tartars--it has been nearly three years--you have taken part in great affairs and you have added to your reputation and restored l.u.s.ter to your family name. You have led your Gobignon va.s.sals to a victory that has brought them glory and riches. You have, I tell you again, won my lifelong grat.i.tude. Why separate yourself from all that now? By what you did yesterday you wiped out the stain on your family name. Your father betrayed his king and his crusader comrades, but now you have won a victory for a crusade and saved the life of a king."

_Yes, but how different those crusades, and how different those kings._