ng to remind me that I am younger than
he is?_

"I am sure we have never met, Messere," Simon said coldly.

"Quite right, Your Signory," said David. "But no doubt we will meet
again."

Simon walked past the man from Trebizond. His back felt terribly
exposed, and he held his shoulders rigidly. He felt the enmity from
behind him as sharp as a dagger's point.

XV

Simon guided the black palfrey carefully down the road into the wooded
valley west of Orvieto. The path, like the streets of the city, was
carved from rock and slippery.

When he needed to think, Simon liked to get out of doors, beyond any
walls, and to feel a good horse moving under him. It was now a week
since the day of the papal council, and its inconclusive outcome
troubled him sorely. The pope had repeatedly postponed his audience with
the Tartar ambassadors, pleading a sudden excess of phlegm. The Tartars
were growing restless, pacing the courtyard of the Palazzo Monaldeschi,
muttering to each other angrily and refusing to speak to anyone else.

The longer the negotiations were delayed, the greater the chance they
would fail. The Tartars might even die. Friar Mathieu had said that the
Tartars, coming from a land so distant and so different, were especially
vulnerable to the diseases of Europe.

Charging de Pirenne and de Puys to keep careful watch over the two
emissaries, Simon had ridden out into the hills to think what he might
do to help his cause along.

_But it is not my place to try to speed things up. My task is to guard
the ambassadors, nothing more. If I do only that, I have done my duty._

But, as he rode out into the valley under the deep shade of huge old
olive trees, he heard in his mind King Louis's voice.

_And you, too, Simon, must do whatever you can, seize any opportunity,
to further the cause of the alliance._

* * * * *

King Louis lay prostrate on the floor of the Sainte Chapelle, his face
buried in his hands. Simon, impatient to speak to Louis about his
mission to Italy, knelt on the stone a few paces away from the king's
long, black-draped form. The two of them were the entire congregation
this morning, far outnumbered by the twelve canons and fourteen
chaplains chanting the royal mass.

Unable to keep his mind on the mass, Simon kept gazing up at the stained
glass windows. Since the age of eight, when he had become part of the
king's household, he had spent hundreds of morning