attack, following the pope from one city to another.

"No, Father," he said. "I cannot leave the Tartars."

Friar Mathieu shook his head patiently. "Do you not see, Simon? If the
pope does decide to approve an alliance with the Tartars, John and
Philip's work is done."

Standing on the gravel walk of the Franciscan cloister garden, Simon
felt as if the earth were shaking under him. He could not picture
himself speaking to the pope as one statesman to another. Persuade the
pope suddenly to take a stand, when he had vacillated for nearly a year?
And yet, he told himself, he was the Count de Gobignon, and the lands he
held were larger than some kingdoms.

But that only reminded him that he held the title through a lie.

* * * * *

The courtyard before the papal palace was crowded with covered wagons
and open carts, horses and donkeys, men carrying crates and bales. Here
and there, mailed papal archers in gold and white surcoats strode,
crossbows on their shoulders, alert for pilfering. Simon asked a series
of servants for the pope's majordomo and was directed to that official,
clad in a glittering embroidered tunic, who stood at the center of the
papal library overseeing the packing of books and scrolls. Simon
summoned up all his confidence and presented himself to the man.

"The Count de Gobignon of France?" the horse-faced majordomo repeated.
"I will try to find His Holiness for you, Your Signory."

They found Pope Urban in a tiny chamber on the second floor of the
palace, writing furiously at a desk that faced a window opposite the
door. He was wearing a white cassock with a white linen hood drawn up
over his head. On his desk Simon saw a jar of ink, a sheaf of quills,
and a stack of parchment sheets. A wrought-iron stand held a black
earthenware pitcher over a candle flame.

"Holy Father--" the majordomo began, addressing the pope's back. Simon
watched with fascination the rapid movements of Pope Urban's right arm
as his quill raced over the parchment, leaping after each line to the
ink jar and back again.

"Maledizione!" the pope exclaimed. "Not now, Ludovico. God's pity, let
me get at least one letter done without you interrupting me. The
Archangel Michael run you through if you speak another word to me."

Simon was momentarily shocked, but then recalled that the pope was a
shoemaker's son. Once a bourgeois, always a bourgeois, he thought, even
if one becomes God's vicar on