“The Angel Tower is coming along very well,” Fakhr-ad-Din said. “Somebody told me that they’re rebuilding it to your design.”
“The old one was too tall for its width. It’s nicely placed; I want to use it as a watch tower.”
“I suppose you can see the harbor and the hillside behind the town from the summit? Excellent. This peach jam is wonderful, very fresh.”
“What’s Nablus like?”
Fakhr-ad-Din made a face. “It’s a typical oasis city, dusty and unentertaining and full of human debris. Al-Kamil hates it. He says if it weren’t the perfect position from which to watch you, his brother, and his nephew, he’d never be there. You’d like Cairo.” Fakhr-ad-Din grinned around a mouthful of bread and peach jam. “Cairo has everything you love—music, philosophy, cutthroats, and sin. Lots and lots of sin in Cairo.”
Yusuf, sitting on a stool to one side, started to laugh and played a Sicilian mountain song. Frederick thought of Palermo and ate a bite of couscous.
“Nothing compares with Palermo. Not just in sin. You can buy anything, you can sell anything, and you can talk any language and be understood.”
“I know, I’ve been there.” Fakhr-ad-Din’s face screwed up pleasantly. “One of the great surprises of my trip was having a street boy with a Greek face and Norman coloring tell me in very nice Arabic what I could do with myself. And the paintings on the carts, I liked them too.”
“In Germany they paint scenes from the Bible onto the fronts of their houses, and when you get someone’s address it’s liable to be something like ‘Jacob’s story, third house down in the High Street.’ What’s al-Kamil’s court like?”
“Yours, a lot. He makes sure he’s surrounded by learned men, but if they can’t talk to him about the pleasures of women, he won’t keep them on. He’s liable to walk out of a good party for no reason and send his slaves back to tell everybody to go home. But I think that’s part of his concern for the way other people think of him—he hates to be predictable. If you want to read that letter, go ahead, please.”
“Thank you.” He took the packet from his coat and opened it again. His hands moved jerkily, as if they weren’t entirely under control.
Only half the letter was written in Piero’s handwriting; the rest was in a scribe’s and reported the facts of the invasion. As always, Piero had marked in red and blue ink the sections to be read first. Frederick had trouble reading it—he didn’t want to, and there was so much to be understood, he had to stop every once in a while and think and absorb it.
The Pope’s armies had met little resistance, but because of it, almost everything was intact. Princess Yolande and the young King of Jerusalem were safe in La Favara Palace. The entire government had moved in a clump from Troia, where it had been seated, to Palermo. Most of the town governments remained in place. Piero had closed Brindisi’s port and the Sicilian fleet was using Palermo and Messina instead, and the Pope had no control over the seas. The peasants had brought in the harvests as usual; in the areas still under control Piero’s agents were collecting taxes, and the Cistercians were serving as a liaison between the conquered towns and estates and the free government. But the Pope’s soldiers had imposed a curfew and were busy lining up their supporters. Piero thought they’d have sufficient local help by the end of the spring to start removing Frederick’s podestàs.
“It doesn’t sound too bad,” he said to Fakhr-ad-Din.
“Being in possession of land is infinitely different from ruling the people who live on it.”
“Well, Sicilians have always been conservative.”
Fakhr-ad-Din laughed. The clink of dishes and dinnerware and the low voices of the pages mingled with the erratic chords and arpeggios of Yusuf’s guitarra. Piero had written, “We are working to create tension between the people and the Pope’s garrisons—to keep them hostile as much as possible. This I have undertaken as we discussed the problem, before Your Majesty’s departure. Until further notice we shall continue along the lines your general instructions indicated.”
“One thing al-Kamil doesn’t have,” Frederick said. He looked around for something to drink and took a cup of sherbet. “Piero della Vigne.”
“Your colorless little secretary. Yes. My master’s servants are more dramatic and considerably less effective. I told him he should send some boys to your schools to be trained.”
“Tell him to hurry up, I keep thinking of closing down the university.” The strategy against the Pope’s soldiers they had worked out in the autumn before last while he’d been lying on a bed in Pozzuoli, incapable of moving his head on the pillow, waiting out the malaria. They say I may still get spells of that. Haven’t yet. Remembering it frightened him, as if he could feel the fever coming on.
“Frederick?”
“What?”
Fakhr-ad-Din was staring at him, smiling, his eyebrows lowered slightly. “I’ve just asked you the same question five times.”
“Oh. I’m . . . thinking—in Italian—and you know I wouldn’t hear Arabic.”
Fakhr-ad-Din shrugged, but the frown remained on his face. “‘Would you rather I leave?”
“No, of course—” It occurred to him suddenly that he did want it; he had to think. “Would you?”
“Yes.” Smiling Fakhr-ad-Din stood up, beckoning to his attendants. “I’ll see you at dinner. Have a good day.” With another laugh he walked, surrounded by his retainers, in through the nearest door.
Frederick hunched down in his chair and braced his feet on the table. They’d borrowed the plan for maintaining the kingdom against invaders from the Saracens of the Sicilian mountains. In each town and on each estate in Sicily they’d found one man whom they could trust to aggravate the enemy armies into mistreating the Sicilians, who would therefore hate the newcomers and want Frederick back, their lovable King. Piero had been all for secret societies with a whole series of detailed stratagems, passwords, and disguises, but the Sicilians would have grown bored with the rigor. Straight in with the knife under the ribs, hit them over the head with a hammer; he’d been handling them like that for years. They loved the spontaneity of it, and if either Piero or the Pope got up a schedule, the Sicilians would hate it. I’m Sicilian and I need enemies.
Just indoors, workmen were painting the walls of the chambers, filling in the sketches the artists had made. The scent of paint reached him. Lifting his head, he looked toward the wall again, the sun so bright he could barely make out the men climbing across it. The leaden uncertainty was pressing against his heart again. Keep it off with work, hold it back, and soon it will be night and I can sleep, and maybe, in the morning, a message from al-Kamil—
Mutu said, “The Pope has sent a message to al-Kamil telling him on no condition to give Jerusalem to the Emperor. A man whose name I don’t know went recently to Damascus from Antioch and I am to tell the agent of the Hospitallers that what he carried got there safely. John d’Ibelin of Beirut is in close touch with John of Brienne, the new Eastern Emperor, and this Emperor’s father-in-law, who is commanding the armies of the Pope in Sicily.”
Paying out coins, Fulk turned his head and looked at Frederick, sitting to one side wrapped in a cloak. Frederick cocked his eyebrows.
“Three of the night watchmen in the Old Quarter will take bribes to overlook robbery and murder. There is a man in the harbor district selling wheat stolen from the granaries of the Emperor.”
Mutu’s voice ground on, even and unemphasized; Frederick began to wonder at his memory. Twice now they’d come and sat in this room and Mutu, had recited an incredible list of facts ranging from small details about Jaffa to enormities about the world at large, and everything Frederick had been able to verify had been true.
He’d always known that information circulated widely through a network of criminals and spies and whores and drunks and beggars—he’d learned that in Palermo and he’d made use of it in Sicily—but Mutu was the perfect contact. He knew about everything. Watching the gold coins clink down onto the r
ug between Mutu’s feet, Frederick decided that everybody thought that, and probably everybody else believed, the way you believed you’d never die, that Mutu was keeping faith with him alone. By now everybody with a penny to pay for it knew that the Emperor was cutting in on the game. Which might well serve its own purposes. He licked a last taste of hashish out of his mouth and swallowed, grinning.
He’d given the Assassin a chunk of hashish the size of his fist, and the Assassin’s eyes had glowed like carbuncles. “Lord.” The warm fuzziness spread through him, and his skin tingled pleasantly. I am in a wonderfully good mood and I will think about al-Kamil tomorrow.
“Is that all?” Fulk said.
“All?” Mutu snorted. “I spilled my brains, didn’t I?” Scooping up the money into a leather bag, he looked toward Frederick. “Suppose we do some business in my direction now. This must be expensive for you.”
“It’s not my money.”
“Well, then.” Mutu yanked the strings tight on the bag. “What if your master found out you’ve been eating hashish?”
Frederick twitched, startled; he’d almost forgotten the role he played with Mutu, and yet he’d been acting it only a moment before. The hashish made it hard to think and he got scared he’d botch the whole thing, so he said nothing.
“Wouldn’t like that, would he?” Mutu said gently. “He might even decide to find out where you got it.”
“He knows I traffic with you,” Frederick said. “I’m His Majesty’s agent to you.”
“But he might think you’re paying for it with certain things he wouldn’t like me to know. And that wouldn’t incline him to like you, would it?”
Mutu, Frederick thought. How unkind of you. He glanced at Fulk, who was sitting back on his heels, his face as secretive as a cat’s.
“Wait for me outside, Fulk.”
Fulk got up and went silently out the door, and the curtain swung closed behind him. Frederick fought against the tendency of the hashish to pull him off course.
“Do you trust him?” Mutu jabbed his thumb at the door. “Fulk.”
“Yes. Make it worth my while to tell you what I know.”
“What do you know?”
“Something worth half that gold.”
“How do I know? Tell me, and I’ll see what it’s worth.”
Frederick shook his head, grinning. Balancing the sack in his hand, Mutu made it clink, his eyes speculative. Finally he opened the sack and dumped out part of the coins into a little shimmering mound on the rug.
“Tell me. If it’s worth more than that I’ll give it to you.”
Frederick shrugged. “The Emperor has an embassy in Damascus.”
“Everybody knows that.“
“Very few people know he sent special instructions to the envoy just before en-Nasr led his army down to raid al-Kamil’s supply lines around Nablus, and that the envoy went with en-Nasr and is negotiating with him for an alliance.”
Mutu’s nostrils flared. “No. Very few people know that. Is it true?” His voice was pitched higher than before, for all he tried to sound bored.
Frederick nodded. “The Emperor wants Jerusalem. He doesn’t much care whom he gets it from.” His heart beat raggedly, excited; nobody would be able to prove that either way, and it might . . . If it got to al-Kamil, that might make up his mind for him. He stared at Mutu until his eyes began to burn.
“Take it.” Mutu threw the sack into Frederick’s lap. “And hurry, before I decide you’re lying.” He gathered up the coins on the rug. Frederick laughed and thrust the sack into his belt.
“I’m not lying. It’s not worth it to me.” He ducked out the curtain into the dark street. Fulk was waiting at the corner, leaning against the wall of a building with one foot drawn up. When Frederick came toward him in the darkness, Fulk straightened casually and fell in beside him.
“What happened?”
“Teased him a little bit.”
“Maybe you’d better stop coming down here. If he ever finds out who you are, he’ll figure out a way to make a fortune on it, and that might not be safe for you.”
Frederick nodded. “I’m not coming again.” They turned the corner and started up toward the arch. “Ezzo can come with you, I just wanted to see what happened this time. Remember what he said about the watchmen and the stolen grain, will you?”
“Yes. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
The moonlight turned the street nearly as bright as day, and up under the arch the whores were parading back and forth. This street was becoming as familiar to him as the streets of Barletta or Troia or Castellamare; already he had trouble remembering what in the beginning had been most striking to him about it. Maybe it was the hashish. The good mood was fading, and now he was merely numb. In the morning he had to wake up and go through the whole thing again. But what else was there to do? He’d never done anything else, his whole life went on and on., backward and forward, days full of the same thing. He hunched his shoulders, morose.
Theophano was watching the pages put away his new coats; the tailors had sent in eighteen of them at noon. She shook her head. “How can you possibly wear so many clothes?”
“I don’t.” He straightened the one he had on and nodded to Corso to bring the mirror over. “I like this one, don’t you? I like the sleeves.” He walked back and forth in front of the mirror, grinning at his image, making the short skirt swing out. It was weighted down with gold thread and swung dramatically.
She giggled at him. “I’ve seen women less vain than you.”
“I’m not vain.” He took off the belt and picked up another from the couch. “I’m only trying to look the way people expect me to. I need another haircut.” He put on the belt and settled it on his hips, watching himself in the mirror.
Corso said, “He isn’t vain, my Lady—you should have seen the way he went around on shipboard. Sire, you can’t wear that belt with that coat. Giancarlo, bring me the Byzantine belt.”
“I like this belt with this coat.” He pulled down the cuffs of the sleeves. “Somebody tell them to make the sleeves longer on the next one.”
Giancarlo trotted up to him with what Corso called the Byzantine belt, made of gold filigree, and Corso deftly unbuckled the one already around his waist.
“Do you miss Sicily, Corso?” Theophano said, practicing her Italian.
“Oh, no,” Corso said. “I love Jaffa—this is fun.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Frederick said. “We may be here a while.” He scowled into the mirror.
Giancarlo murmured a protest, but Corso smacked him across the back with his open hand. “Shut up, Gian, how can you be a poet if you’ve never been in exile?”
Giancarlo blushed dark red. Frederick took the new belt and put it on. “Giancarlo. Are you writing poetry these days?”
Backing off, Giancarlo glared at Corso. “You promised you wouldn’t tell anybody.”
The other pages were watching, their faces intent, fascinated. Frederick looked at himself in the mirror. While he turned slowly around, contemplating the belt, Corso said, “Well, you ought to have somebody read them and find out if they’re any good. Just because I think they’re awful—”
Theophano said, “Oh, Corso, be quiet. Gian, please get me something to drink, I’m thirsty.”
Giancarlo ran off, beet-colored. Corso said, “That belt looks much better, Sire.”
“I still like the other one. This one won’t sit right.” He unhooked the belt, moved it around, and hooked it again on the same hook. “What’s Giancarlo’s poetry about?”
“Girls—whom he doesn’t know anything about.” Corso went behind him to straighten the coat under the belt. “It’s in Latin too.”
“Tell him I’ll read it if he wants me to.” The glistening white of the coat somehow managed to clash with the Byzantine belt. He took it off. “What’s wrong with Latin poetry?”
“Giancarlo is terrible at Latin,” Corso said. “Besides, you don’t write in Latin, Sire.”
/> “Quid libet, licet. I didn’t know you were a Latin scholar, Corso.” He turned his back to the mirror and looked into it over his shoulder, frowning at the lines of the coat. “I don’t need a belt.”
“If you wish, Sire.” Corso’s voice was perfectly noncommittal.
“Do you write poetry?” Theophano said.
“I used to. I don’t anymore.” He nodded to Corso, who started to take off the coat. Giancarlo came back with a tray of cups and a ewer, and he poured Theophano wine.
“Why not?” she said drinking.
“I haven’t got the time. And anyhow I had it on good authority that I’m no poet.” He shrugged back into his old coat. “On better authority than Corso della Messina.” He grinned.
“I liked your poetry,” Corso said, taking away the new coat.
Giancarlo said softly, “So did I, Sire.” And blushed again.
“You’ll have to show me some,” Theophano said.
“It’s in Italian, and you don’t read Italian. Not yet.” She could hardly speak it, although she understood most of what she heard. He took a cup from Giancarlo, sniffed it, and sent him out for sherbet.
“What was your poetry about?” she said in Greek.
Frederick grinned. “Girls. Like Giancarlo’s.” He pulled a stool over and sat next to her. “I’ll translate some for you later if you’d like.”
Corso called, “Sire, Marino is here.”
“Let him in.”
“Write me something in Greek,” Theophano said, smiling. “Something I can keep.”
“You can keep me, you don’t need a poem. Hello, Dawud. What’s it like out?”
“Beautiful, as ever,” Fakhr-ad-Din said. He began to smile. “May I speak with you alone a moment?”
“Naturally.” Frederick stood up. Theophano and the pages left, and he looked around. Giancarlo had put the sherbet on a little table. Working to stay calm, he went over and poured some. “Are you thirsty?”
Antichrist Page 22
