as surprised to see how much it resembled the
shabby buildings on either side of it. He had expected some sign of
luxury, some flamboyance. He had thought to hear music as he approached,
as he would have outside one of the brothels of El Kahira--before
Baibars closed them. The house was quiet, unadorned save for a
third-floor balcony above the entryway. It gave no sign of who its
occupants were. He knew it only by counting--fifth house from the
corner, Ugolini had said. Unlike the roof of the cardinal's palace,
which was flat, the roof of Tilia's house was sharply peaked.

It looked like anything but a brothel. And though there were enough
small houses near it to hold two or three hundred people, the street was
not crowded, as were streets everywhere else in Orvieto. He saw a few
men lounging in doorways, a pair of men walking arm in arm past Tilia's
front door, but that was all. Distinguished churchmen and men of wealth
and good family could come here without attracting notice.

_Even so, I seem to be the only visitor who comes before dusk. Well, if
people see me and think I am a well-to-do merchant who frequents
Orvieto's finest brothel, that is exactly what I want them to think._

He felt the heaviness in his groin and the lightness in his stomach that
always accompanied his visits to women when he had done without pleasure
for a long time. He wondered if the Christian courtesan he picked
tonight would be able to match the accomplishments of the women who
served the Mamelukes in El Kahira. She would surely not be able to equal
the incredible pleasures he had enjoyed with Blossoming Reed.

He knocked at the plain dark-brown door, and it swung open immediately,
as if the one behind it had watched him approach. There stood one of
Tilia's black men, wearing a turban, robes, and pantaloons that for all
the world made him look like a harem guard in El Kahira. The costume
made Daoud uneasy. The slave bowed in silence, and with a sweep of his
arm bade Daoud enter.

The entrance hall was a surprise. It seemed much too large for the
building he had just entered. He stood on a Persian carpet in a wide,
high-ceilinged room filled with light. Candles burned in sconces around
the walls and in two chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Two tall,
thick candles stood in twisting brass stands the height of a man on
either side of a marble staircase. A pungent fragrance filled the air,
and Daoud realized that the candles were scente