Lounging on a divan, the emir scratched his armpits. These mosquito bites were unbearable! To his right, Monsignor Francesco, the Archdeacon of Nazareth, was nervously waving a black lace fan. To his left, the qadi was filing his nails with a shell-bladed stylet. Sitting cross-legged at the foot of the dais, counselors and marabouts were making an effort to assume a solemn and reflective air beneath their tangled turbans.
The steward ushered the slaves out as soon as Suleyman’s messenger appeared, out of breath after his long ride. The young soldier, eager to please the distinguished gathering, launched into a hurried account of what had happened. An interpreter whispered in the ear of the archdeacon, who immediately put down his fan. Without deigning to look up or interrupt the cleaning of his nails, the qadi hissed at the messenger to come to the point. The reprimanded soldier’s cheeks turned red, making him look like a male whore, an effect the emir found not unpleasing.
It was clear that the anxieties expressed by the qadi had been confirmed. The skilful way the two Frenchmen had been spirited away, in the very heart of Jerusalem, under the noses of the Mamluk guards, proved once again that Colin and François were not mere receivers of stolen goods.
That Suleyman had failed to discover the entrance to the Brotherhood’s mysterious headquarters did not greatly upset the emir, who thought it preferable not to intervene too early in this business. The more incriminating evidence they gathered, the easier it would be to confound Gamliel and his accomplices. Because what they still lacked was a charge that would stick.
“If, as you say, these conspirators meet in secret merely to discuss science and philosophy, I’ll invite them here to the palace to discuss these things with our scholars.”
The caliphate tolerated Gamliel’s activities for the simple reason that they were only aimed at the foreign censors, thus manifesting a praiseworthy hostility toward the common enemy. To stop them would be ridiculous. That would be tantamount to disciplining the Jews of Palestine on behalf of Western Catholics. This time, though, the book hunters seemed to be declaring a more general, more universal rejection of all established authority, and therefore also of Islam.
The archdeacon smiled to himself. He did not share this opinion. Jerusalem could not threaten any religion. It had already manufactured at least three all by itself. But what he dreaded was the participation of an unexpected rival, dangerous in quite a different way from the Jewish rebel: an adversary from within the ranks of Christendom itself, a pariah. Villon was an inveterate rebel. Nothing good could come of his encounter with the Holy Land. This passionate, pugnacious country was too well suited to his bad character for some terrible misdeed not to be the result. Sooner or later, the desert would get his blood up. Liberated from both scholarly austerity and courtly frivolity, his eloquence might play more than one trick here. If necessary, the emir would have the cursed poet impaled, and the incident would be closed. But this rhymester was merely the spokesman for a malign wind that corrupted men’s souls, a malaise eating away at their faith from the inside and already spreading over much of Italy. It was only a growing impulse, still immature, and therefore easy to guide on its first steps. From this very place, for example. The emir and the qadi were far from seeing how well-founded their suspicions were. And the archdeacon was certainly not going to tell them. Monsignor Francesco was sorry. His hands were tied. All he could do was inform Rome and try to convince the Papacy of the danger threatening it.
The qadi put away his file and dismissed the assembly. A slight smile lit up his arrogant face. Villon’s repeated insults to the guard of the caliphate were not without flavor. They amused him rather than worried him, especially when he thought of how Suleyman must be feeling at this moment. The emir seemed equally untroubled by this affair. He crushed a mosquito with a quick blow of his hand and brandished the crushed corpse of the insect with a triumphant air. As for the archdeacon, he was already trotting along the galleries of the palace, the heels of his shoes nervously striking the marble flagstones and echoing down the colonnades. He was on his way to write his letter to the Pope.