ere going to take his donkey and
everything he owned and cast him out. Because he was a Jew."

"Yes, you Christians are very cruel to Jews. It is not so in the lands
of Islam. But you should be used to seeing such things."

"I am not a Christian, Daoud. I am a Jew myself. And that is why I went
to that old man's aid."

Daoud blinked in surprise, then began to laugh.

"You find that funny?"

"I am just as surprised to find out that you are a Jew as others would
be to find out that I am a Muslim." Daoud stopped laughing. "I have
known many Jews in Egypt. Abd ibn Adam, Sultan Baibars's personal
physician, is a Jew. But why do you not wear the required hat?"

"It is not required in Manfred's kingdom. And I would not wear it on
this mission any more than you would wear a Muslim's turban." Then
Celino laughed. "But if I were to drop my breeches, you would see the
mark of Abraham."

"I have that as well," said Daoud with a smile. "Muslims are also
circumcised. I was eleven." He remembered with a twinge the old mullah
chanting prayers in Arabic, the knife whose steel looked sharper and
colder than any he had seen before or since.

"Now that mark is all I have left of the religion I was born into,"
Celino said.

"What do you mean? Did you convert to Christianity?"

"I told you I am not a Christian. I profess no faith."

Daoud drew back. A man who had no faith at all was somehow less than
human.

"You believe in nothing?"

"One of Manfred's Saracen scholars gave me a book by your Arab
philosopher Averroes. In it he taught that there are no spirits, no
gods, no angels, no human souls. All things are matter only. That is
what I believe."

Daoud made a casting-away motion. "I have been taught that Averroes is a
great heretic. Now I see how wise we are not to read him."

"It was life that made me a nonbeliever. Averroes only showed me that
there are learned men who think likewise."

Daoud shook his head. Baibars would never allow such a man near him.

"Why does your king permit you to have no religion?"

"The truth of it is, he thinks as I do. As his father, Emperor Frederic,
did before him. In the kingdom of Sicily under the Hohenstaufens, people
may believe as they please, as long as they are discreet about it. Of
course, King Manfred must pretend to be a Catholic, or all the hosts of
Christendom would fall upon his kingdom and destroy him. As for me,
Manfred trusts me because he knows I do not stand in awe o