through it." Rachel believed
that, just as she had believed gruff Lorenzo Celino when he told her
she did not have to go to Tilia's house. But she also knew that if she
had not come here, or if she chose now to walk out that door, these
people would do nothing more for her.

Staying, much as she might hate what would happen to her, was better
than wandering alone on the roads of Italy.

She looked up at the canopy over the bed. It was peach-colored, as were
the bed curtains. The walls of the small room were hung with yellow silk
drapes framing frescoes showing nude, smiling women fleeing from
creatures that were half man and half goat, with things that stuck out
before them like spears.

"Real men do not have pizzles as big as that," Tilia had said when she
first showed Rachel the room, pointing with a grin at a bright red
organ. "Although it may look that big to you the first time you see one
in all its glory." Tilia had stopped joking then, and had carefully told
her exactly what would happen on this night.

_I am better prepared_, Rachel thought, _than many a woman is on her
wedding night_.

Indeed, her own mother, months before she died, had already explained
much of this to Rachel. But the thought of her mother fairly broke her
heart now. Her mother would cut her own throat if she could see Rachel
in this place, about to let a man do this thing to her for money.

Her body shrank with dread.

She would rather, far rather, be the ignorant bride of a carpenter or a
traveling merchant like her poor Angelo, who had been her husband in
name only, or even the wife of a butcher, than to lie here in this
gorgeously decorated room and give her most precious gift to a stranger
who had bought the right to deflower her.

She found herself wishing poor old Angelo had asserted his right as her
husband so that she could not now let her virginity be defiled.

_Thank God Angelo is not alive to see this! But if he had lived, I would
not be doing this._

_God will never forgive me._

_But if God does not want me to do what I am doing, why did He let this
happen to me?_

Tilia sat beside the bed in a big chair with a curved bottom. The
jeweled cross she wore--which reminded Rachel that she was among
Christians here and therefore not safe--rested on her bosom, half
covered by the gold lace bordering the neckline of her gown. The cross
quivered minutely with Tilia's heartbeat.

"You are probably wondering, child, whether