s, quiet reminders that the city had once extended into
these fields and beyond.

Simon was mounted on a borrowed war-horse, a mare whose shiny coat
reminded him of Sophia's hair--a brown so dark it might be taken for
black. After many hours of riding, the mare's rocking pace had chafed
the insides of his mail-clad legs.

He rode a few yards behind Count Charles d'Anjou and the three knights
Charles had appointed marshals of his army. When he looked back over his
shoulder, he saw a column of mailed knights riding three abreast strung
out along the Tiber for nearly half a mile, and beyond them, almost
obscured by clouds of yellow dust, clinking files of men-at-arms,
crossbows and spears over their shoulders.

Unimpressed by the sight of Rome, Anjou and his commanders carried on an
argument.

"You are a hard taskmaster, Monseigneur," said Gautier du Mont, whose
bronze hair was cropped in the shape of a bowl, slightly tilted so that
the back was lower than the front. "To make your knights ride half a day
in full armor when they have not seen a denier from your coffers since
we sailed from Marseilles--you demand too much." The points of du Mont's
mustache hung below his chin. Simon had heard he was little better than
a routier, a highwayman, who had begun his knightly career by robbing
travelers who passed his castle in the Pyrenees.

What Simon had seen thus far of Charles's army made the enterprise look
decidedly unsavory. Before reaching Ostia, Simon had expected that the
men Charles commanded would be vassals, men who had received land from
him and were bound by ancient oaths. He quickly realized that all of
these men were adventurers with little or no holdings of their own, in
this enterprise with Charles for whatever they could gain. Charles could
command them only as long as they could hope to grow rich in his
service.

Simon supposed this was the best Charles could do, since King Louis had
refused to help him raise knights and men and insisted that he hire them
himself. Knights willing to go to war for hire could not be expected to
be the better sort. Not only did Simon not want to make war on the
Italians, he wanted even less to be associated with men like the ones
Charles had recruited.

Unlike his three marshals, who were all bareheaded, Charles wore a
helmet. A steel replica of his count's coronet ringed its pointed top.
Beside him rode an equerry with his personal standard, the black
silhouette of a li