Nothing would happen, and that was all that was needed for the alliance
to fail. The Tartars would go home. They would continue their war
against the Saracens, the war they had been losing lately, without
Christian help. And eventually the Mameluke waves would roll over
Palestine and Syria and the Christian strongholds in Outremer would
crumble like sand castles.

_And the escutcheon of Gobignon is a little more tarnished. And I have
led my dearest vassal to useless death. Whenever the Tartars leave
Italy, and it will probably be soon, I will return to Chateau Gobignon a
failure._

He thought back to his meeting with Charles d'Anjou on the wall of the
Louvre last July. It had seemed then that helping the Tartars to ally
themselves with the Christians was a way to change his whole life for
the better. He would take his rightful place in the kingdom as a great
baron. He would end the shame and suffering he had always lived with.
He would hold his head up among the nobility, and King Louis and Count
Charles would love and respect him.

Now he would accomplish none of those things. He had been knocked from
his horse and was rolling in the dust. He would go back to the living
death of being afraid to show his face beyond the bounds of Gobignon,
the only place in the world where he was known and respected.

Go back to Gobignon and never see Sophia again? She, at least, would not
think less of him because the grand alliance had failed. She probably
felt sorry for Alain. Perhaps even felt responsible for his death. Simon
should go and reassure her.

And then what? Bid her farewell?

He and de Puys on the other side, two knights behind each of them, slid
Alain's body with a dry, rasping sound along the unpainted gray wood of
the cart bed. The red ribbons on the four tall cartwheels fluttered in
the slight breeze.

A thought that had fleetingly occurred to Simon before now formed itself
solidly in his mind.

What if he were to take Sophia back to Gobignon as his bride?

Many there were who would rail against him for doing it. His grandmother
in particular, herself the daughter of a king, would be beside herself
with fury. King Louis and Uncle Charles might even try to stop him. But
he was the Count de Gobignon, a Peer of the Realm, almost a king in his
own right, and he had tried to do what his elders expected of him, and
he had failed.

Twice he had loved women whose lands and high birth made them proper
matches for