“It has been four years since I mounted a horse and drew my bow in battle,” said John Chagan with a grin.  “A man grows old if he does not fight.”

Rachel paused in her work of setting up their tent for the night to stare at him, wondering if he knew how unready for fighting he looked.  The pouches under his eyes were as prominent as his cheekbones, and the cheekbones themselves were criss-crossed with tiny red lines.

It had been nearly a month since he had taken his pleasure with her in bed.  She was glad enough of that, but she felt sorry for him, even knowing that his death in battle would free her.  The way his hands trembled, he would be lucky to get an arrow nocked, much less shoot it at an enemy.

The tent flap was pushed aside, and a Venetian crossbowman backed in holding one end of Rachel’s traveling chest.  Another man followed at the other end.

“What have you got in here-marble blocks?” the first archer grumbled as he set the box down on the carpeted tent floor beside the bed.

“My helmet and sword and coat of mail,” said Rachel with a smile.  “I would not want to miss the battle.”

Fear whispered to her that the armed men who traveled with the Tartars must be aware that she had valuables in that chest.  If any of them ever got an opportunity, they would not hesitate to steal it from her.  And stab her to death to get at it, if they had to.  She hated carrying the heavy box everywhere.  But even if she could have found a safe place for it in Rome, she had no way of knowing whether she could ever get back there to claim it.  The chest held her prisoner as much as John did.

She had thought that while she and John traveled with Charles d’Anjou’s army, she might be able to slip away.  Perhaps if there was a battle, she might escape in the confusion.  But she could not do it alone, not if she wanted to take the chest.

“You can take my place if you are so eager,” the second Venetian laughed.  “I’ve seen battles enough.”

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Icerna.  Still in papal territory.”

“Where are we going?” She heard a movement as she asked the question, and looked over at John.  He was pouring himself a goblet of red wine while eyeing Rachel and the Venetians distrustfully.  He had learned no Italian, and perhaps he thought she was flirting with the two archers.

“We are coming to a town called Benevento.  Right on the Hohenstaufen border.  Supposed to be a papal city, but you never know.  Border cities usually give their support to whoever is closer to them with the bigger army.  The rumor is that whether the town is Guelfo or Ghibellino, King Charles will let the troops have their way with Benevento.  And high time.  How is a man to live on the miserable wages our would-be king doles out to us?”

“Enough of your damned complaining!” a deep voice boomed.  The flap of the tent flew open, letting in a blast of chill air, and Cardinal de Verceuil strode in.  Terror raced through Rachel.  She quickly dropped a quilted blanket over the chest containing her treasure.

De Verceuil threw back the fur-trimmed hood of his heavy woolen cloak and, though his words had been for the Venetian archers, glared at Rachel accusingly.  She felt herself trembling.  He was dressed in bright red, but like a soldier, not like a man of the Church.  He wore a heavy leather vest over his scarlet tunic, and calf-high black leather boots.

God help me, what is he going to do to me?

Sordello, the capitano of the Tartars’ guards, followed the cardinal into the tent.  His lopsided grin was as frightening as the cardinal’s angry stare.  His eyes narrowed, and Rachel felt her face burn as he looked her up and down.

“Out!” Sordello snapped at the two Venetian crossbowmen.  After they were gone, the tent flap opened still another time, and Friar Mathieu hobbled in, leaning on his walking stick.

“We do not need you,” de Verceuil growled in his French-accented Italian.

“John needs me,” said Friar Mathieu.  “To translate for him.  And I think Rachel needs me too.”

“Stupid savage should have learned Italian by now,” said Sordello.

Ah, you are very brave, capitano, insulting him in a language he does not understand, thought Rachel contemptuously.

De Verceuil glowered at Friar Mathieu.

“You cannot protect her.”

“Protect me from what?” Rachel’s voice sounded in her own ears like a scream, and her heart was pounding against the walls of her chest.

“John can protect her,” said Friar Mathieu, “if he understands what is happening.”

He looked full into Rachel’s face, and there was a warning in his old blue eyes.  She was almost frantic with fear now.  She had not been so frightened since the day John and the rest of them had invaded Tilia’s house and carried her off.

What was Friar Mathieu trying to warn her about?

“What do you know of Sophia Orfali, Ugolini’s so-called niece?” de Verceuil demanded in his French-accented Italian.

Friar Mathieu has betrayed me!

Rachel looked over at the old Franciscan and saw him close his eyes very slowly and deliberately and open them again. Keep your mouth closed, he seemed to be trying to say to her.  She had to trust him.  She could not believe he would say anything to turn de Verceuil against her.

“I-I know nothing,” she said.  “Who is this you are asking about?”

“What happens here?” John asked Friar Mathieu in the Tartar language.  “Why are the high priest and this foot archer in my tent?  I did not invite them.  Tell them I send them away.”

Friar Mathieu started to answer in the Tartar tongue.  Rachel strained to hear him, but Sordello’s ugly laughter overrode the friar’s voice.

“I escorted Sophia Orfali to Tilia Caballo’s brothel more than once,” Sordello said.  “And I know she was going to visit you because I overheard her telling that to that devil David of Trebizond.”

So it was Sordello, not Friar Mathieu, who had been talking to de Verceuil.  She should have known.

Rachel heard Friar Mathieu now.  “I am talking to you, not to John,” he said in the Tartar’s tongue, and she understood that Friar Mathieu meant her.  Neither de Verceuil nor Sordello understood the language of the Tartars, or knew that she knew it.  As long as Friar Mathieu did not address Rachel by name and kept his eyes on John, who looked confused, it would appear that he was talking to the Tartar and not to Rachel.

De Verceuil strode over to the wine bottle standing on the low table by John’s bed.  Without asking permission, he picked it up and drank deeply from it.

“The Tartars travel with the best wine in this whole army,” he declared.  “Better than the cheap swill King Charles carries with him.”  Sophia glanced at John and saw that he was glowering at de Verceuil.

Friar Mathieu said in the Tartar tongue, “Sordello went to the cardinal with the story that you must be some sort of agent for Manfred and therefore it is dangerous for John to keep you with him.”

Why would Sordello do that now, Rachel wondered.  He could have accused her anytime in the past year.  She could not question Friar Mathieu, though, without giving it away that he was talking to her.  Did Sordello have some plan to get the chest away from her and desert?

“They know hardly anything about you,” Friar Mathieu said.  “Do not be afraid.  Admit nothing.  Deny everything.  I think Sordello knows more about Ugolini’s household, and about Tilia Caballo’s brothel, than is safe for him to admit.  Say nothing, and I believe they will frustrate themselves.”

John smiled and nodded at Friar Mathieu.  “I see what you are doing,” he said in Tartar.

De Verceuil was looming over her.  “Speak up!  What was your connection with Ugolini’s niece? Was she Ugolini’s niece?” Even though she was standing up, he looked down on her from an enormous height.  His deep voice and great size terrified her.

She said, “I know nothing about any cardinal or any cardinal’s niece.”

De Verceuil seized her by the shoulders, his fingers digging in so hard she felt as if nails were being driven into her muscles.  She was almost dizzy with panic.

“You lying little Jewess!”

Suddenly Rachel felt a violent shove, and she was thrown back against her quilt-covered chest and sat down on it hard.  She looked up and saw that John was standing before de Verceuil.  It was he who had pushed them apart.  His arms were spread wide.

“Do not dare to touch her again!” John shouted in the Tartar tongue.  He turned to Friar Mathieu and jerked his head at de Verceuil.

“Tell him!”

When Friar Mathieu had repeated John’s command, the cardinal answered, “Tell Messer John that we have reason to believe that this Jewish whore is an agent of Manfred von Hohenstaufen, the enemy we are marching to destroy.  She met with Sophia Orfali, Ugolini’s niece, and Ugolini and his niece have both fled to Manfred.  Manfred has tried before now to harm Messer John, and he could do it through this girl.”

John shrugged and glowered at de Verceuil when he heard this.

“Foolishness.  Reicho does nothing but read books and comfort me.  She has no friends, and no one comes to talk with her.  Except you.  Go away.”

De Verceuil took another swallow from the wine jar.

“Put that down!” John shouted.  De Verceuil did not need to have that translated.  He put the jar down, frowning at John, offended.

“Sordello is right,” de Verceuil said.  “The man is a savage.”

“Do you want me to tell him so?” said Friar Mathieu.

De Verceuil replied to this with a haughty stare.

“Tell him this,” he said.  “Tomorrow we march to Benevento.  King Charles has sent scouts and spies into Manfred’s lands, and they have learned that Manfred is moving in our direction with a large army.  Larger than ours, if the reports are to be believed.  We would be stronger still if your friend the pusillanimous Count de Gobignon were to put in an appearance.”

Rachel remembered the Count de Gobignon, that tall, thin, sad-looking man who had so frightened her with his questions about Madonna Sophia.

Everyone was asking questions about Madonna Sophia.  There was no doubt that Madonna Sophia and her friends had some secret.  Rachel had always known that, though she did not want to know what the secret was.  Whatever it was, Rachel promised herself that no one would get a hint of it from her.

“Count Simon was reported coming down the east coast of Italy,” said Friar Mathieu.  “He could have joined our army if King Charles had been able to wait for him in Rome.”

“King Charles did not choose to wait in Rome,” said de Verceuil.

“Oh, I think he did,” said Friar Mathieu.  “I think he would have been happy to stay in Rome if his supporters, such as his marshals and yourself, had not pressed him to move southward when you heard Manfred was on the march.”

“I did not know that you ragged Franciscans were experts on military strategy,” said de Verceuil.

“We are not.  Indeed, war greatly grieves us.  But we do possess common sense.”

What if there were a battle and Manfred won?  Rachel thought.  Would Manfred’s soldiers kill John?  Would they treat her as one of the enemy?  Would they rape her, steal her treasure?  She had always hoped to escape to the kingdom of Sicily, and now she was in the camp of Sicily’s enemies.

“Will there be a battle?” she asked timidly of no one in particular.

De Verceuil’s head swung around toward her.  “Do not worry about the battle, little harlot,” he said in an unpleasantly syrupy voice.  “Yes, I expect we will be too busy tomorrow and the next day to concern ourselves with you.  After that, perhaps we will have some Ghibellino prisoners to help us find out what you have been up to.  And you will furnish our weary troops with diversion.”

Rachel felt as if her body had turned into a block of ice.  Was he saying that he would let the troops have her?  That would kill her.  After something like that, she would want to be dead.

“Please-” she whispered.

“Yes, diversion,” said de Verceuil, reaching down to take her face between his hard, gloved fingers.  “It has been many a year now since I have seen a Jew burn.  And when you go up in flames, it will mark a new beginning for this Sicilian kingdom of heretics, Jews, and Saracens.  You will be the first, but not the last.”

He let go of her face just in time to avoid being pushed away by John.  He took a last swallow of wine and turned and strode out of the tent, followed by Sordello, who turned and gave Rachel a last leering, gap-toothed grin.

“Is that a great man among your people?” John asked Friar Mathieu, his face black with rage.  “Among my people he would be sewn into a leather bag and thrown into the nearest river.”

Rachel sat on her traveling box, her hand pressed between her breasts to quiet her pounding heart.  She could hardly believe what she had heard, that de Verceuil wanted to burn her at the stake as an agent of Manfred’s after the coming battle.

Oh, God, let Manfred win, please.

His name was Nuwaihi, and he was so young that his beard was still sparse.  He came riding with his two companions out of the blue-gray hills to the north, and brought his pony to a skidding stop beside Daoud.  He turned his mount and they rode on together, side by side, in Manfred’s vanguard.

“I saw the army of King Charles, effendi, I and Abdul and Said,” he said in Arabic, gesturing to include his comrades.  “The Franks are on the road that leads from Cassino to Benevento.  They are about two days’ ride from here.  We hid behind boulders close to the road, and we counted them.  There are over eight hundred mounted warriors and five thousand men on foot.  They have many pack animals and wagons and merchants and priests and women following them.  Just as our army does.”  His breath and that of his pony steamed in the cold air.

Daoud felt a prickling sensation rise on his neck and spread across his shoulders.  Two days’ ride.  The armies could meet tomorrow.  Tomorrow would decide everything.

Now, if only Manfred could conceive a plan for outmaneuvering Charles.  If only he would take Daoud’s advice.  He knew Europeans preferred to fight pitched battles, and he prayed that Manfred would not choose that way.

“Did you see a purple banner with three gold crowns?” Daoud asked.

Two weeks ago a courier from the Ghibellini in northern Italy had brought word that Simon de Gobignon’s army had passed through Ravenna, on the Adriatic coast.  It seemed unlikely to Daoud that de Gobignon would catch up with Charles in time to take part in the coming battle.

“No purple banner.  They fly the white banner with the red cross.”  Nuwaihi turned his head to the left and spat.  “And all the soldiers have red crosses on their tunics.”  He spat again.  His fierceness pleased Daoud.

At one time, he thought, he would have been sorry to learn that Simon de Gobignon was not with Charles’s army.  He would have longed to meet Simon on the field and fight and kill him.  But now he understood that he had hated Simon because Simon resembled the Christian David that he might have been.  It did not matter to him that he would not meet the French count again.  Instead, he could feel relieved that Charles would not have Simon’s knights and men as part of his army.

Nuwaihi went on, “Their Count Charles, he who would be king, was at the head of the column.  I knew him because he wears a crown on his helmet.  His banner is red with a black lion rearing up on its hind legs.”

Daoud looked over his shoulder and saw Manfred not far behind him, on a white horse with a black streak running from forehead to nose.  The king of southern Italy and Sicily, in a cloak the color of springtime leaves, was the center of a mounted group of his favorite courtiers.  One strummed a lute, and they were singing together in Latin.

A brave spectacle.  Manfred rides into battle singing Latin sonnets.

A Mameluke army on its way to war would have mullahs praying for victory and a mounted band playing martial music on kettledrums, trumpets, and hautboys.

The young blond men around Manfred, Daoud knew, were nimble dancers, witty talkers, skilled musicians, and expert falconers.  How well they could fight he had yet to see.  Manfred was the oldest of them, but right now he looked as young as the others.  He had on no visible armor, though Daoud knew he regularly wore a mail vest under his lime tunic.

Behind Manfred, all on glossy palfreys and wearing mail shirts, rode his Swabian knights, Lorenzo Celino and Erhard Barth in the first rank.  The Swabians’ grandfathers had come to Sicily to serve the Hohenstaufens, and they still spoke German among themselves.  Like their king, they wore no helmets, but most of them had fur-trimmed hoods drawn tight around their heads to protect them from the February wind.  Above them fluttered the yellow Hohenstaufen banner with its double-headed black eagle.

The column of knights, four abreast, stretched westward down this main road.  The lines of helmets and pennoned lances disappeared over the crest of a pass cutting through the bleak mountain range that formed the rocky spine of Italy.  Snow outlined the crevices in the rocks that towered above the army of Sicily.

Manfred’s host moved at a leisurely rate Daoud found typically European.  The march west, after they had assembled at Lucera, had taken two weeks.  The mounted warriors were held to the pace of the foot soldiers.  Twice the army had been struck by sleet storms that changed the road into a river of mud.  Rather than press on, as Baibars would have, Manfred had ordered his army to halt and seek shelter in hillside forests.

In some of the valleys the army had been able to spread out and march briskly over frozen fields and pastures.  But then, along a mountainside or through a pass, the road would close down again, and the flow of troops would slow to a trickle.

Daoud turned back to Nuwaihi.  “Were you close enough to the road to see the Tartars I told you of?  Two small brown men with slanted eyes?”

“Yes, effendi, they were riding near the head of the Franks.  Just as you told me, they had eight mounted men wearing red cloaks guarding them.  And before and after them marched many men carrying crossbows.”

Their people are such masters of war.  How they will laugh at the idiotic way Christians fight each other.

Daoud wondered whether the enemy army were mostly Frenchmen, or as mixed a host as Manfred’s troops were.  Manfred’s thousand knights and four thousand men-at-arms included Swabians, south Italians, Sicilians, and Muslims.

If only, instead of three scouts, we had three hundred men lying in ambush along that road, we could have broken Charles’s attack and perhaps killed him and the Tartars then and there.

Daoud thanked Nuwaihi, Abdul, and Said and sent them to join the Sons of the Falcon, riding today as the rear guard.  He rode back to Manfred, hoping he could persuade the king and his commanders to use wisely the great army they had assembled.

Soon Manfred, Erhard Barth, several of Manfred’s German and Italian commanders, Lorenzo, and Daoud were dismounted and gathered in a field beside the line of march.  Manfred’s orderly had brought a map of the region and spread it out on the ground, weighting the edges with rocks.

As Manfred crouched over the map, his five-pointed silver star with its ruby center hung over a town, represented on the map by an archway and a church surrounded by a wall.  The drawing was marked with the Latin name “Beneventum.”

“We can be in Benevento by nightfall,” said Barth.  “And Anjou’s army will probably arrive at the same time.  There is but one road they can follow.”  He pointed to a brown line that ran down from a large oval, at the top of the map, drawn around a collection of buildings and marked “Roma.”  Between Rome and Benevento was a series of towns, each indicated by a drawing of one or two buildings surrounded by walls.  Mountains were shown as rows of sharp little points.

“Benevento is a Guelfo town,” said Manfred, “and deserves to have us move in on it and quarter our troops there.  The town is at the end of a long valley that runs north to south.  The opening at the north end of the valley is a narrow pass.  Anjou’s army must come through that pass.  They will find it easier to get into the valley than to get out, because we will be waiting for them.”

Daoud felt a surge of exasperation, and quickly pushed it back down.  Anger would not help him.

“Waiting for them?” he said.  “If we are making war, we do not want to meet them.”

Manfred frowned.  “If we drive them up against the north end of the valley, we will have them trapped.”  Manfred smashed his fist into his palm.  “There will be nowhere for them to escape to.”

He is getting tired of my giving advice that contradicts the way he thinks things should be done.  After all, he did win battles before I came here.

But to simply meet Charles’s army face-to-face, like two bulls butting heads, seemed lunacy to Daoud.

“Such a battle will be bad for both sides,” he said.  “We will butcher each other.”

Perhaps I should have spent less time training my men and more trying to teach Manfred.

“We do outnumber them,” said Manfred testily.

“And if every one of their men kills one of ours and every one of our men kills one of theirs, there should be a few of our men left at the end of the battle.  Do you call that a victory?”

“Show some respect for your king!” a Neapolitan officer snapped.

“No, be still, Signore Pasca,” Manfred said to the Neapolitan.  “I want to hear Emir Daoud out.  What can we do, except meet them and fight them?”

Daoud remembered how he had wished that instead of scouts he had set men to ambush the Franks.  He studied the map.

“Let us send men into the mountains around here and here.”  He ran his finger over the angular shapes the mapmaker had drawn around Benevento.  “Then, when Charles’s army is in the valley, we will fall upon it from both sides and destroy it.”

No one spoke for a moment.  The younger Swabian officers were looking at him with mingled horror and disgust.  Manfred stared at the map with embarrassed intensity.

Erhard Barth broke the silence.  “Such an ambush would not be according to the customs of chivalry, Herr Daoud.  Even if we were to win the battle in such a fashion, the victory would bring us so much infamy that it would be better had we lost.”

“We are not in Outremer, thank God,” said a Swabian with a long scar on his cheek.

“And we are not Saracens,” said the one called Pasca.  “Most of us.”

“In other words, our noble commanders would refuse to fight?” said Lorenzo, glaring angrily at the other officers.

How would Baibars deal with these men, Daoud wondered.  He might cut off a head or two and lavish gold and jewels and robes of honor on the rest.  But Daoud had placed himself under Manfred’s orders.  And Manfred’s army was not disciplined as Islamic armies were.  European armies were made up of bands of warriors led by men who might or might not choose to take orders from their overlord.

“You cannot turn my men into Saracens,” said Manfred firmly.  “Even my Saracens fight like Europeans, because they have lived in Sicily for generations.  You have trained two hundred men in your Mameluke methods of fighting, and I have seen that they are a brilliant unit, but you would need many years to teach your ways to thousands of knights and men.  And I must give my Germans and Italians a plan that will be acceptable to them.”

Erhard Barth’s mouth drew down in an apologetic grimace.  “It is the way we are used to fighting, Herr Daoud.”

It was infuriating.  Daoud felt rage burst in him like Greek Fire.  With a silent inward struggle, he brought it under control.  For good or ill, his destiny was bound to Manfred’s.

When the conference ended, Daoud’s horse picked its way among the shrubs and rocks beside the road, retracing the line of march back to the supply caravan.  Daoud felt a powerful need to spend a few moments with Sophia.  She had insisted on coming with him.  He had wanted her to stay out of danger.  Now, tormented by misgivings about the coming battle, he feared for her even more.  But nothing now could spare them from tomorrow’s peril and it lifted his heart to know that she was here.