s
a beggar, then studying for the priesthood, and I am afraid I paid very
little attention to what was happening in the world."

Friar Mathieu's reply brought a sad smile to Simon's lips.

"That you, like most people, know so little of Amalric de Gobignon I owe
to the generosity of King Louis and those close to him. The man whose
name I inherited was a murderer, an archtraitor, a Judas. But when King
Louis came back from that failed crusade in Egypt, he decreed that Count
Amalric's deeds not be made known."

"I well remember my horror when I heard that the king was captured and
his army destroyed," said Friar Mathieu. "I fell on my knees in the
road, weeping, and prayed for him and the queen and the other captives.
What joy when we learned they were ransomed and would be coming back to
us."

"It was Count Amalric's treachery that caused the calamity." It seemed
to Simon that Nicolette, his mother, and her husband, Roland, had told
him the story hundreds of times. They wanted him to know it by heart.

"He believed that the Cathars had murdered his father, Count Stephen de
Gobignon, my grandfather," Simon went on. "King Louis advocated mercy
toward heretics. Count Amalric had a brother, Hugues, a Dominican
inquisitor, who was killed before his very eyes by an assassin's arrow
in Beziers while he was presiding over the burning of Cathars."

"Ah, those heresy-hunting Dominicans." Friar Mathieu shook his head.

"When Hugues was killed, Count Amalric blamed the king's leniency toward
heretics. After that, it seems, a madness possessed the count. He came
to believe he could overthrow the king and take his throne."

"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 Mamelu