now closing the trap. "You must teach me what to say to my uncle. As
I said, it would be easy for you to come to me without anyone knowing.
Will you visit me when I send for you?"

"Oh, Madonna! Command me." His eyes were huge now, and his smile was
like a full moon shining into the atrium.

"I command you to come over here with me," she said.

She took him by the hand, and, as a light rain began to fall, led him
into a shadowy corner of the open gallery that surrounded the garden. He
pressed her back against a column. She lifted her veil and let him kiss
her fiercely as the rain pattered down on the lemon trees.

She became entirely Sophia Orfali and tasted his kisses hungrily, dizzy
with joy at having won the love of a splendid young nobleman.

* * * * *

"Of course I fought in Russia and Poland," Ana said, speaking for John
Chagan, while the old Tartar threw out his arms in a sweeping gesture.
"Everyone went."

Daoud smiled and nodded, leaning back in the chair someone had brought
for him, his right leg crossed over the left. He tried to look relaxed,
though his heart was beating fast. He felt like a man climbing a cliff,
whose slightest misstep might bring a disastrous fall.

He was feeling the effects of the al-koahl--a hissing sound in his
ears, a numbness in his face, a difficulty focusing his eyes, an urge,
difficult to suppress, to splash the contents of his wine cup in John's
ugly face. But his mind was untouched, he knew, and that meant he was
under better control than these two savages whom he had drawn into
telling stories of their wars.

"Was that your first campaign?" he asked.

John made a lengthy speech in answer to Daoud's question, striking his
chest many times and reaching for more wine. Finally Ana translated. She
seemed made of iron, this Bulgarian woman. She did not drink, she did
not get tired, she did not even sit down, and she did not seem to care
what anyone said.

John assured David that as a young man he had participated in the
destruction of the Khwarezmian empire. Khwarezmia, Daoud remembered, a
Turkish nation, was the first Muslim land to fall to the Tartars.

He glanced around and saw that Ugolini and a number of other cardinals,
both French and Italian, had gathered to listen. The contessa was there,
too. And even as Daoud looked, the circle parted for Pope Urban. Two
servants hurried over, carrying a chair for him, and he sat down
heavily.