The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 19

He and his companions topped another hill, and when he looked back again their pursuers had disappeared below its crest.

Daoud raised his hand and called out, "Slow down to a trot. No one seems to be following us. We can be easier on the old man and the horses."

"And on Scipio," Celino said, pointing down to a great shadow racing with them along the side of the road. Daoud could hear the hound panting and his claws drumming on the paving stones. He wondered how long Scipio could keep up with galloping horses, then reminded himself that this was a hunting dog. Scipio could probably outrun horses.

"Soon the Appian Way will take us to the old walls of Rome," said Celino. "The watchmen there would question us. But we can go off to the left toward the Tiber and skirt the city."

_And because Celino knows such things, I cannot kill him. But I must see to it that he never again does anything like this to endanger us._

As they rode on, Daoud realized that the old man had stopped moaning. He heard Celino whispering something that sounded like a prayer.

"How fares the old man?"

Celino sounded angry. "He's dead."

On the other side of Celino the boy let out a wail of anguish, and then sobbed bitterly. Daoud felt a surge of grief. He was not sure whether it was for the boy or for himself.

"We should leave his body behind," he said to Celino. "Going this fast, that horse cannot carry both of you much farther." Anger at all this useless trouble constricted his throat and made his voice husky.

The boy cried, "No!" It was almost a scream.

"I can manage," said Celino.

"I will not leave him!" the boy shouted.

Sophia whispered, "I wish we had never seen them--without our help, they might only have been robbed. That poor boy!"

Celino clenched his fist and muttered to himself. Then he looked up and motioned to Daoud, pointing out a road diverging westward from the Appian Way. Daoud jerked the reins of his horse, and the hooves no longer rang on old Roman paving stones but thudded on hard-packed dirt.

The trees closed together overhead, and they rode for a time in almost total darkness.

Celino dropped back now, and Daoud, glancing over his shoulder a little later, saw the boy and Celino in conversation as they rode side by side.

After they had gone a mile or so, Celino rode back to join Daoud and Sophia. The old man's body was draped over his horse's back in front of him.

"You have much to answer to me for," Daoud said.

"I know that," said Celino. "But as long as we are out of Rome by morning, we are safe. The Giudecca, the Jewish quarter, is along the Tiber on the south side of the city. We can leave the boy with them and they will help him bury his father and take him in. It is not far from here." Daoud could not see his face clearly in the dark, but there was a note of pleading in his tone.

"How far?" Daoud demanded.

"We will be there long before dawn."

"But then we will have to go into the city," Daoud said. "How do we explain to the Roman watchmen why we are carrying an old man, dead of a knife wound? Surely they will be at least as thorough in inspecting baggage as you were at Lucera."

Celino was silent a moment. "You two can cross a bridge that will take you west of the city. I will take the old man's body and the boy to the Giudecca, and I will be the only one who will have to deal with the watch."

Sophia spoke up. "As you dealt with those ruffians at the inn? Then we will have all of Rome hunting us."

"All of Rome?" Celino chuckled. "The Romans can agree on only one thing--fighting among themselves. There are powerful Ghibellino families here who will protect us if need be."

He needed this d.a.m.ned Lorenzo, Daoud thought, because of his connections with the Ghibellini.

"How did the men at the inn know the old man was a Jew?" Daoud asked Celino.

"The hat he was wearing," Celino said. "All Jews are required to wear those round black hats in the Papal States. To make it easier for good Christians to persecute them." Daoud shook his head. Even Christians were treated better than that in al-Islam.

_I did not know. Somehow, out of all that I learned about the Christian world, that detail about hats for Jews was left out. A little thing, too trivial to be mentioned. What other deadly little omissions lie in wait for me?_

He felt like a man in chains. He would have to keep Celino with him, and the prospect infuriated him.

As they continued riding westward, Daoud heard the boy weeping. It made him think of nights in the Mameluke barracks on Raudha Island when he lay on his pallet, biting his knuckles so no one would hear him sob as he cried for his mother and father and for himself so lost and lonely.

_I will help the boy bury his father. If it does not endanger us._

This boy, too, was lost and lonely. As Daoud had been while training to be a Mameluke.

As Nicetas had been.

It had been a chilly day, the day that Daoud and Nicetas became friends.

Huge gray clouds billowed in the east, over the Sinai desert. In the lee of a cliff formed of giant blocks of red sandstone, a dozen small tents cl.u.s.tered.

On a restless brown pony with a barrel-shaped body, Daoud waited in a line of nearly thirty julbans, Mamelukes in training, similarly mounted.

Soon it would be his turn to ride past the wooden ring that a pair of slaves was swinging from side to side between the legs of a scaffold. In his hand Daoud grasped a rumh, a lightweight lance longer than a man's body, with a tip of sharpened bone.

On a low rise of brown gravel, Mahmoud, the Circa.s.sian naqeeb in charge of their training troop, sat astride a sleek brown Arab half blood. He looked almost regal in his long scarlet kaftan and reddish-brown fur cap. His beard was full and gray, and a necklace of gold coins hung down to his waist. The boys wore round caps of undyed cotton cloth and striped robes, and they rode scrubby ponies.

From atop a galloping horse, each boy was expected to hurl his rumh unerringly through the ring, whose diameter was two handspans. The ring was attached to three strong, slender ropes. One rope suspended it from the scaffold; the other two went out to either side, where the slaves held them. Pulling in turn on the ropes, the two slaves swung the ring from side to side.

The boy just ahead of Daoud in line was a new member of the troop of young Mamelukes. His face was smooth and his skin pale, his hair and eyes very black.

He turned to Daoud and said, "What if we hit one of those slaves by mistake?"

Daoud had once seen a slave transfixed by a wild cast of the rumh. It hurt to remember his screams and thras.h.i.+ngs.

"Wound a slave and you will be beaten," he said. "Kill a slave, and you go without water for three days. In this desert that is a death sentence."

The boy whistled and shrugged. "Hard punishments for us, but not much comfort to the slaves, I'd say."

"It comforts them to know we have reason to be careful," Daoud answered.

After a moment, the boy smiled hesitantly and said, "I am Nicetas. From Trebizond. Where are you from?"

Daoud rubbed his pony's neck to settle it down. "Ascalon, not far from here. I am called Daoud." He saw the puzzlement in Nicetas's face and added, "My parents were Franks."

"Oh," said Nicetas, and looked sympathetic, as if he had instantly grasped what had happened to Daoud's mother and father and how he came to be a Mameluke.