closer." He pointed to the forest clearing where Sophia and Rachel
were already starting toward him. "I must be alone with Madonna Tilia."

"Yes, Messere," said Celino with a bow. Scipio paced ahead of him like a
tame lion as he walked off.

"We expected you to enter Orvieto alone," said Tilia, looking at Sophia
and Rachel, who were staring back at her from across the road. "Why this
entourage?"

_And I expected to meet with Cardinal Ugolini at once_, thought Daoud
with growing irritation. _Has he set this woman up as a barrier between
himself and me?_

He explained briefly how Celino, Sophia, and Rachel came to be traveling
with him. Tilia gazed at him with a falcon's piercing stare. Daoud was
not used to being stared at by a woman, and she made him uneasy. But he
met her eyes in silence until she turned to her slaves and made a
dropping gesture with her hand. The Africans immediately squatted in the
grassy clearing where they had set Tilia's chair. Daoud realized that he
had not heard a sound from them, and suspected they must have been made
dumb.

"Come." Tilia took his arm, again surprising him. In Egypt women did not
touch men they had just met. But she owned a house of pleasure. She was
not a respectable woman.

Why should that bother him, he asked himself. He had spent his share of
time in houses of pleasure along the Bhar al-Nil. What he felt toward
their owners was mostly gratitude.

Tilia drew Daoud with her into the thicket along the hillside, stepping
gracefully, despite her bulk, around shrubs and over rocks and fallen
branches. She led him away from the road and into a grove of pine trees
a little way up the slope. Daoud felt his muscles tightening. He was
going to have to undergo more testing before she would let him meet
Ugolini. Did they really think that Baibars would send a fool to
Orvieto?

"Spread your cloak for me." She pointed to a spot under an old pine
whose trunk rose straight and bare twice the height of a man before the
first branch sprouted. Daoud unclasped his brown cloak and laid it on
the thick bed of brown pine needles. Tilia sat down, smiled, and patted
the place beside her.

"A messenger brought the news to the pope yesterday that the Tartar
ambassadors have landed at Venice," she said. "They are on their way to
Orvieto and should be here in a week or so. They are well protected.
They brought their own bodyguard, which is now reinforced by a company
of French knights and V