by Robert Shea
IV
Sophia pressed her head back against the pillow and screamed withpleasure. Her loins dissolved into rippling liquid gold. Her fingers duginto the man's back and her legs clenched around his hips, trying tocrush him against her.
"Oh--oh--oh--" she moaned. The warmth spread to her toes, herfingertips, her scalp, filling her with joy. She was so happy that shewanted to cry.
As the blaze of ekstasia died down, she felt Manfred driving deep insideher. She felt his hardness, his separateness, as she could not feel it amoment ago when she was at her peak and they seemed to melt together,one being.
His rhythm was insistent, inexorable, like a heartbeat. His hands underher back were tense. He was fighting for his climax.
She delighted in the sight of his massive shoulders overshadowing her.It was almost like being loved by a god.
Manfred's face was pressed against her shoulder, his open mouth on hercollarbone. She turned toward him and saw the light in his white-goldhair. She slid one hand up to his hair and stroked it, while with theother she rubbed his back in a circular motion.
She felt the muscles in his body tighten against her. He drew in ashuddering breath.
"Yes--yes--good," she whispered, still stroking his hair, stillcaressing his back.
He relaxed, panting heavily.
_He never makes much noise. Nothing like my outcries._
They lay without moving, she pleased by the warm weight of him lyingupon her, as if it protected her from floating away. The feel of himstill inside her sent wavelets of pleasure through her.
Still adrift on sensations of delight, she opened her eyes to stare upinto the shadows of the canopy overhead. On the heavy bed curtains toher left, the late afternoon sun cast an oblong of yellow light with apointed arch at the top, the shape of an open window nearby. She knewwell the play of light in this unoccupied bedchamber in an upper part ofthe castle. Manfred and she had met here many times.
They rolled together so that they lay side by side in a nest of red andpurple cushions. The down-filled silk bolster under them whispered asthey shifted their weight, and the rope netting that held it creaked.Manfred propped his head up with one arm. His free hand toyed with theringlets of her unbound hair. She slid her palm over his chest.
She remembered an ancient sculpture she had seen in a home outsideAthens. The torso of a man, head missing, arms broken off at theshoulders, legs gone below the knees, the magnificent body had survivedbarbarian invasions, the coming of Christianity, the iconoclasts, theFrankish conquest, to stand now on a plain pedestal in a room withpurple walls, the yellowish marble gleaming in the light of manycandles. Her host showed it only to his most trusted guests.
"Which god is this?" she had asked.
"I think it is just an athlete," said her host. "The old Greeks madegods of their athletes."
Manfred's naked torso, pale as marble, seemed as beautiful. And wasalive.
She sighed happily. "How lucky I am that there was time for love in myking's life this afternoon." She spoke in the Sicilian dialect,Manfred's favorite of all his languages.
How lucky, she thought, that after all her years of wandering she had atlast found a place in the world where she was loved and needed.
His lips stretched in a smile, but his blue eyes were empty. Uneasinesstook hold of her. She sensed from the look on his face that he was aboutto tell her something she did not want to hear.
* * * * *
In memory she heard a voice say, _Italy was ours not so long ago andmight be ours again_. So Michael Paleologos, the Basileus, Emperor ofConstantinople, had introduced the suggestion that she go to Italy, andat just such a moment as this, when they were in bed together in hishunting lodge outside Nicaea.
She had felt no distress at the idea of being parted from Michael. Hewas a scrawny man with a long gray beard, and though she counted herselfenormously lucky to have attracted his attention, she felt no love forhim.
She had come to Lucera acting as Michael's agent and personal emissaryto Manfred--and resenting Michael's use of her but feeling she had nochoice. She was a present from one monarch to another. She ought to beflattered, she supposed.
She had walked into Manfred's court in the embroidered jeweled mantleMichael had given her, her hair bound up in silver netting. LorenzoCelino had conducted her to the throne, and she bowed and looked up. Andit was like gazing upon the sun.
Manfred von Hohenstaufen's smile was brilliant, his hair white-gold, hiseyes sapphires.
He stepped down from his throne, took her hand, and led her to hiseight-sided garden. First she gave him Michael's messages--news that aTartar army had stormed the crusader city of Sidon, leveled it, andridden off again--a warning that Pope Urban had secretly offered thecrown of Naples and Sicily, Manfred's crown, to Prince Edward, heirapparent to the throne of England.
"Your royal master is kind, but the pope's secret is no secret," Manfredhad said, laughing and unconcerned. "The nobility of England have flatlytold Prince Edward that they will supply neither money nor men for anadventure in Italy. The pope must find another robber baron to steal mycrown." And then he asked her about herself, and they talked about herand about him.
She had thought all westerners were savages, but Manfred amazed her withhis cultivation. He knew more than many Byzantines, for whomConstantinople--which they always called "the Polis," the City, as if itwere the only one--was the whole world. In the short time she andManfred strolled together that day, he spoke to her in Greek, Latin, andItalian, and she later found out that he knew French, German, and Arabicas well.
He sang a song to her in a tongue she did not recognize, and he told herit was Provencal, the language of the troubadours.
He undid the clasp of her mantle and let it fall to the gravel. Hekissed her in the bright sunlight, and she forgot Michael Paleologos.She belonged altogether to Manfred von Hohenstaufen.
* * * * *
Now, with a chill, she remembered that she did indeed _belong_ toManfred. She was not his mate but his servant.
His fingertips stroked her nipple lightly, but she ignored the tingle ofpleasure. She waited for him to say what he had to say.
He said, "Remember the fair-haired Muslim who came to the court today?"
"The man from Egypt? You had him killed?"
"I changed my mind," Manfred said.
She felt relief. She was surprised at herself. She had wanted the man tolive. She remembered her astonishment when, with a gesture like aperforming magician's, Manfred threw open the doors of his audience halland the entire court saw the blond man with his dagger at Celino'sthroat.
She had been surprised when Manfred told her that this man, dressed in adrab tunic and hose like a less-than-prosperous Italian merchant, wasthe awaited Saracen from the Sultan of Egypt.
The sight of him as he passed through the audience hall had left hermomentarily breathless. He looked like one of those blond men of westernEurope the people of Constantinople called Franks and had learned tohate at sight. His hair was not as light as Manfred's; it was darker,more the color of brass than of gold. Manfred's lips were full and red,but this man's mouth was a down-curving line, the mouth of a man who hadendured cruelty without complaint and could himself be cruel. Shewondered what he had seen and done.
As he had passed her, his eyes caught hers. Strange eyes, she could nottell what color they were. There was a fixity in them akin to madness.The face was expressionless, rocklike. This, she was sure, was noordinary man, to be disposed of as an inconvenience. She was notsurprised Manfred had decided to let him live.
"Why did you change your mind?"
"I think this Mameluke can help me," Manfred said. "Therefore I am goingto help him. He is going to Orvieto on a mission for his sultan. I amsending Lorenzo with him."
"What did you call him?"
"A Mameluke. A slave warrior. The Turks who rule in Muslim lands takevery young boys as slaves and raise them in b
arracks to be soldiers.They forget their parents and are trained with the utmost rigor. Theyare said to be the finest warriors in the world."
_What does a life like that do to a man? It must either destroy him ormake him invincible._
"The man looks like a Frank," she said.
"He comes of English stock," said Manfred. "You Byzantines lump all ofus together, English and French and Germans, as Franks, do you not? Soyou can call him a Frank if you like. But whatever he looks like, he isa Turk at heart. I've learned that from talking to him. It's reallyquite amazing."
They were plunged into deep shadow as the arched golden shape on the bedcurtain disappeared, a cloud having passed over the sun. Despite thesummer's heat she felt cold, and even though she did not trust Manfredshe reached for him, wanting him close.
But Manfred drew away from her, preoccupied. She pulled a crimsoncushion from behind him and hugged it against her breasts.
_How alone the Mameluke must feel. Even here, where Muslims aretolerated, they have tried to kill him. And when he is in the pope'sterritory, every man will be his enemy._
She remembered the harsh face with its prominent cheekbones and grayeyes and thought, Perhaps being alone holds no terror for him.
_After all, I am alone, and I have made the best of it._
"What is his mission in Orvieto?" she asked.
She listened intently as Manfred told her a tale of trying to preventthe great powers of East and West from joining together to crush Islambetween them.
Manfred continued, "David hopes to influence the pope's counselors toturn against the Tartars, that they may sway the pope himself."
"How can one man attempt such a huge undertaking?"
"He brought me an exceedingly valuable stone, an emerald, which I willtrade for jewels he can carry to Orvieto and exchange for coins. Itpleases me greatly that the sultan would entrust me with such a gem.That helped to change my mind about this David. The Saracens are men ofhonor in their way." He smiled at her, looking pleased with thesituation and pleased with himself. But she was quiet, unmoving, waitingfor him to say the thing she feared to hear.
"But you are right," Manfred went on. "He cannot do it alone."
Warm yellow light once more filled their curtained cubicle. The cloudhad passed away from the sun. But her heart froze.
"I have decided I must entrust my own most precious jewel to David." Heput his hand on hers.
_Oh, no!_ she thought, anguish tearing at her heart as his wordsconfirmed her guess. She felt a terrible pain, as if he had run herthrough with a spear. She wanted to clutch at him, hold him in spite ofhimself. She had not felt so lost since her mother and father and theboy she loved were killed by the Franks.
She studied his face to memorize it, because soon she would leave himand probably never see him again. It would do her no good to let him seehow she felt. She must decide what face to show him.
_I am a woman of Constantinople, alone in a country of strangers. And weare an ancient people, wise and subtle, and we bide our time._
She sat up in the bed, hugging her knees, thinking.
"How will my going with him help you?"
He grunted softly, and she looked at him. He appeared relieved. She wasmaking it easy for him. She felt the beginning of dislike for himstirring within her.
"I thought you would be perfect for this. And you are."
His words puzzled her, and she almost let her growing anger show. "I donot see what you see, Sire."
"We are in bed. You may call me Manfred."
_But I do not want to call you Manfred._
"What is it you think I would be so good at?"
"You can mask your feelings," he said with a smile. "You are doing itnow. You are very good at it."
"Thank you, Sire."
He shook his head, sat up beside her, and put an arm around hershoulders. "I meant it when I said you are precious to me. But you mustgo with this man. I cannot tell you all my reasons, but it is for yourown safety as well."
No doubt he was being honest with her, though he was not telling hereverything. Just the other day one of Manfred's servants, whom she hadcultivated with gifts, warned her that Manfred's queen, Helene ofCyprus, was demanding that Manfred break with Sophia. Of course, Manfredwould never be willing to admit that his wife could force him to do sucha thing.
She wanted to get off by herself and think this out, and cry, let tearsrelease some of the pain she felt. This curtained bed confined her likea dungeon cell. She found her white shift amid the rumpled bedclothes.Getting up on her knees, she raised the shift over her head andstruggled into it.
"Where are you going?" Manfred asked.
She crawled around the bed to look for her gown and her belt. "I havearrangements to make. Packing to do."
"I have not dismissed you," he said a bit sullenly.
"Yes, you have," she said, deliberately making her voice so low that itwould be hard for him to hear.
"You have not heard everything." He took her arm. She wanted to pullaway, but she let him hold her.
"I need your help," he went on. "You see, if David fails, in a year ortwo I may be dead."
He let go of her. She picked up the blue gown she had so eagerly thrownoff an hour ago. Her fingers crushed the silk. She wanted to be alone,but she needed to learn more. She paused, kneeling beside him.
"God forbid, Sire! Why should you be dead?"
"This time the pope is offering my crown to the French."
Sitting down, laying the gown in her lap, she sighed and turned all herattention to him.
"Why can you not make peace with the pope? Why is he so determined todethrone you?"
"Like all storied feuds, it goes back so far that no one can rememberwhat started it," said Manfred, smiling with his lips but not his eyes."At present the pope refuses to recognize me because my father promisedto give up the crown of Sicily."
He paused a moment, and fixed her with a strangely intent stare. "Andbecause my father did not marry my mother. Even though he loved heronly, and never loved any of his three empresses."
_He is trying to tell me something_, Sophia thought.
But before she could reply, he went on with his tale of theHohenstaufens and the popes. "As the popes see it, to have aHohenstaufen ruling southern Italy and Sicily is like having a knife attheir throats. This pope, Urban, is a Frenchman, and he is trying to getthe French to help him drive us out."
The French. It was the French who, over fifty years ago, had stormedConstantinople, looted it, and ruled over it until driven out by MichaelPaleologos.
And now the French threatened Manfred.
From his island of Sicily, how easy to launch another invasion ofConstantinople.
In memory she saw Alexis, the boy she loved, fall as the French crossbowbolt hit him. She heard him cry out to her.
_Go, Sophia, go!_
_Why was I saved that night if not that I might help to stop the Frenchfrom conquering Constantinople again?_
"I cannot send an army to Orvieto to stop the pope's intrigues againstme," Manfred said. "That would turn all Christendom against me. But Ican send my two best people, my brave and clever Lorenzo and mybeautiful and clever Sophia. Together with David, you two perhaps canturn my enemies against each other. You may be gone six months or ayear. And afterward you can come back."
He did not take his eyes from hers as he said it, but there was aflickering in their depths that told her he was not being honest withher.
"When will I meet this--Mameluke?"
"Tomorrow we go falconing. The forest is a good place to talk freely."He paused and grinned at her. "But do not dress just yet. This may be mylast chance to enjoy your lovely body."
She looked away. She felt no desire for him. She was sick of beingenjoyed.
"Forgive me, Sire, I have much to do," she said. Before he could object,she had slipped through the curtains around the bed and was pulling herblue gown over her head. She had left half her clothes behind withManfred, b
ut that did not matter. Her own quarters were near, and latershe could send a servant for her things.
As she hurried out the door, she pretended not to hear Manfred's angrycry, muffled by the bed's thick curtains.
* * * * *
Sophia wrapped in white linen the satin mantle in which she had beenpresented at Manfred's court. She laid it in her traveling chest, thenbrought her jewel box from the table on which it had stood since she'darrived here, and laid it on the mantle.
Manfred would gladly have ordered servants to do this packing for her,but it was easier to preserve her privacy when she did for herself.
She looked down at the polished ebony box with the double-headed eagleof Constantinople in mother-of-pearl inlay. A gift from the Basileuswhen he sent her to Sicily. The eagle of Constantinople, tradition said,was the inspiration for the two-headed Hohenstaufen eagle.
She folded a green woolen tunic and laid it over the jewel box. As shestood with her hands pressed on the tunic, sorrow welled up within her.
_Was there ever a woman more alone in the world than I am?_
In one night made hideous by the flames of the burning city and thescreams of the dying, she had lost her father, Demetrios Karaiannides,the silversmith, and her mother, Danuta, and her two sisters, Euphemiaand Eirene. The people of the Polis had risen against the Franks, andthe Franks had retaliated by killing everyone they could lay hands upon.
The boy she was going to marry, the boy she loved, had fled with her tothe Marmara waterfront. There they found a small boat, and then thecrossbow bolt had torn through his back. Dying, he cast her adrift.
_Go, Sophia, go!_
From then on she was alone.
_What am I? What is a woman alone?_
Not a queen or an empress, not a wife or a mother, not a daughter, not anun. Not mistress, now that Michael and Manfred had each sent her away.Not courtesan or even harlot.
Crossing the Bosporus to Asia Minor, she had survived. She did not careto remember the means by which she survived. Of all of them, the leastdishonorable was theft.
She let herself be used, and she could be very useful. She found her wayto the Byzantine general Michael Paleologos, who wanted to takeConstantinople back from the Franks.
Her help had been important to Michael, and he had rewarded her after hereconquered the Polis and made himself its Basileus by keeping her ashis favorite for a time. And she had rejoiced to see Constantinopleliberated from the barbarians, even though no one she loved was leftalive in it.
Then Michael had made her leave the one place she loved, sending her toManfred in Italy.
And now, just when she had begun to lose the feeling of not belonginganywhere, just when she felt she had found safe harbor with Manfred, shewas cut loose again.
She felt the tears coming, and fought them. She turned her mind awayfrom the questions that plagued her and thought about her packing.
_Saint Simon should go into the chest next._
In the center, where clothing above and below would protect him.
She went to the table by the window, where the small icon stood betweentwo candles in tall brass candlesticks. She picked up the saint andreverently kissed his forehead, then held the icon out at arm's lengthto look at it. The eyes dominated the portrait, transfixing her with ablue stare.
She had painted it herself a few years before, copying another, largericon that belonged to the Basileus Michael. Simon's cheeks were hollow,his mouth a tight line, his chin sharp. His hair hung brown and lank tohis shoulders, framing his face.
She had used real gold dust in the paint for the halo. Michael wasgenerous to her, and he laughed when she told him that she spent some ofthe money he gave her on expensive paint for an icon. The idea of awoman who painted amused him, like the bear that danced in theHippodrome.
Beyond the gold of the halo was the ocher of the desert and, standinglonely over the saint's right shoulder, the pillar on which he had livedin penance for fifteen years, the pillar that had given him hisname--Simon Stylites.
_Why do I reverence this saint? Because he knew how to endure alone, andthat is what is most important._
_Rest well, dear saint_, she prayed as she lowered the icon into thecedar chest. She closed the gilded wooden doors that protected thepainting, breaking the grip of Simon's staring blue eyes.
She next opened a small box of dark, polished wood, its lid inlaid withbits of mother-of-pearl forming a bird with swirling wings. A dozensmall porcelain jars lay in velvet-lined recesses shaped to hold them.Each jar was ornamented with the same floral pattern in a differentcolor, each color that of the powdered pigment the tightly corked jarcontained. Take a pinch of the powder, add water and the clear liquidfrom a raw egg, and you had a jewel-bright paint. Wrapped in linen atone end of the box were her quill pens, brushes, and charcoal sticks.
As always, the sight of her materials made her want to stop what she wasdoing and paint. She closed the lid gently, stroking its cover,remembering the merchant from Soldaia in the Crimea who had sold her thebox outside the Church of Saint John in Stoudion, telling her it camefrom a land far to the east called Cathay.
_The Cathayans must be as civilized as we are to make such a thing_, shethought as she put the box in her chest.
This blond Saracen--this Mameluke--whom she had seen briefly and wouldmeet again tomorrow, would not be a civilized man. He was both Turk andFrank--barbarity coupled with barbarity.
"Kriste eleison!" she whispered. "Christ have mercy." Until this momentshe had been able to stave off her fear of the danger she was goinginto. Now it struck her full force, leaving her paralyzed over hertraveling chest, her trembling hand still resting on her box of paintsas if it were a talisman that could protect her.
She was going among the worst enemies her people had on earth, more tobe feared than the Saracens--the Latin Christians of the West. The floorseemed to shake under her, and her body went cold and then hot as shethought of what she must face. If they found out that she was a woman ofConstantinople, they would tear the flesh from her bones.
_A woman of Constantinople helping a Saracen to plot against the pope!_
Fear was like a cold, black ocean, and she was drowning in it. She darednot even let herself imagine the horrors, the torments that would endher life if those people in Orvieto found her out.
She did not have to go through with it. Once she and Lorenzo and thisDavid--this Mameluke--were on the road, she could slip away. Manfred hadsaid they would be carrying jewels. Perhaps she could take some, usethem to buy passage for herself.
_Passage to where?_
There was no place in the world she belonged but Constantinople. And herplace in the Polis was dependent on the basileus, Michael. If sheangered Manfred, she could not dare go back to Michael.
To be forever exiled from Constantinople would be a living death.
In her mind she saw the Polis, glowing golden at the edge of the sea.She saw the great gray walls that had protected Constantinople againstbarbarian invaders from East and West for a thousand years. She saw thegorgeous pink marble of the Blachernae Palace of the Basileus, thestatue of Justinian astride his horse, his hand raised toward the East,the great dome of Hagia Sophia, her namesake saint, that seemed to floatover the city, held in place by an army of angels. She heard the roar ofthe crowd watching chariots race in the Hippodrome and the cries of themerchants from their shops along the arcaded Mese. The Polis was the hubof the world, the fulfillment of all desires.
The vision sent strength and purpose surging through her body, and shestraightened up, took her hand from the paint box, and began movingaround the room again, collecting her possessions.
She would go with Lorenzo and the Mameluke and do, as she had alwaysdone, whatever was necessary. She would see this thing through. With thehelp of God, she might prevail.
_And after that?_
What future for a woman as alone as Sophia Karaiannides?
She shrugged. Time enough to thin
k about the future after she had beento Orvieto and lived through it.
Of one thing she was already sure. She would not come back to Manfred.
She went back to her table. From a reading stand at its side she pickedup her leather-bound book of parchment sheets and opened it to a pagemarked by a ribbon. She studied the portrait of Manfred she had begunonly two days before. Most of it was still rough charcoal strokes, butshe had colored his beard in a mixture of yellow and white paints,because it was the most important color and she wanted to get it downfirst so it could control her choice of the other colors. The eyes wouldbe last, because when she painted in the eyes the picture would, in asense, come to life.
Even with the eyes blank the portrait seemed to smile at her, and shefelt a ripple of remembered pleasure. Grief followed almost at once.
_Shall I try to finish this tonight and give it to him as a partinggift?_
After a moment's thought her fingers clawed at the parchment and tore itfree of the stitches that held it in the book. She rolled it up and heldan end to a candle flame.
