"He must have been mad," said Friar Mathieu. "Never has a King of France been so loved as this Louis." "Count Amalric went on crusade with King Louis, taking my mother, Countess Nicolette, along with him, even as King Louis took Queen Marguerite. I was a very young child then. They left me in the keeping of my mother's sisters. The crusaders captured Damietta, at the mouth of the Nile, left the noncombatants there and marched southward toward Cairo." Simon hesitated, feeling himself choke up again. These were the crimes of the man everyone believed was his father. It was agony to give voice to them. But he plunged on. "At a city called Mansura, Count Amalric led part of his own army into a trap, and most were killed. He tricked the rest of the army, including the king, into surrendering to the Mamelukes. He alone escaped. He went to Damietta, supposedly to take charge of the defense. He made a secret promise to the Sultan of Cairo to deliver Damietta, together with the ransom money, if the sultan would slay the king and all the other captive crusaders." Friar Mathieu gasped. "Why in God's name would a French nobleman do such dreadful things?" "With the king and his brothers dead, he would be the most powerful man in France," said Simon. "He might have succeeded, but for two things. First, the Mameluke emirs, led by the same Baibars who now rules Egypt, rose in revolt and killed the sultan with whom Count Amalric was bargaining. Baibars and the Mamelukes preferred to deal honorably with their prisoners." "Ah, yes, Baibars," Friar Mathieu nodded. "The Tartars hate him and all of Outremer fears him." "And then a knight-troubadour captured along with the king, one who had an old grudge against the Count de Gobignon, offered to go to Damietta and meet the count in single combat. After a fierce combat he slew Count Amalric. The king and the surviving crusaders were saved and they ransomed themselves. The troubadour's name was Roland de Vency." "I never heard of him," said Friar Mathieu. "No, just as you never heard of Count Amalric's treason. The king wanted the whole episode buried in an unmarked grave along with the count." There was silence between them for a moment. Simon listened to the cart wheels creak and looked up at the moon painting the Umbrian hillsides silver. Soon they would round a bend and see the lights of Orvieto. Simon, torn by anguish, wondered what Friar Mathieu thought of him. Did he despise him, as so many great nobles did? He remembered that Friar Mathieu had once been a knight himself. How could he not hate a man with Amalric de Gobignon's blood in him? His muscles knotted as he waited to hear what Friar Mathieu would say. He looked at the old Franciscan and saw sadness in his watery eyes. "But what happened does not lie buried, much as the king and you would wish it to."