drew in a deep, gasping breath. She wanted to scream.

The man standing in the doorway was short and broad. He wore a long,
brightly colored silk robe. His skin was brown, his eyes little black
slits. A white mustache drooped below his flat nose. A thin white beard
like a goat's hung from his chin.

She had seen this man once before, when she watched from the window of
Sophia's room at Cardinal Ugolini's, the day he arrived in Orvieto in a
great procession.

Rachel's breath, so long held, burst out of her in a moan.

The man who had come to take her virginity was a Tartar.

* * * * *

"It was as much by my choice as the cardinal's that I did not attend the
contessa's reception," said Friar Mathieu, yawning. "How could a Little
Brother of San Francesco stay up till all hours with people stuffing
themselves with rich food and drinking wine? And gambling, and kissing
each other in dark corners?"

The old Franciscan's eyes were watery with sleepiness, but the corners
of his mouth quirked with humor under his white mustache. He sat on the
edge of the cot, which, as he had insisted when he moved into the
Palazzo Monaldeschi, was the only piece of furniture in the room. Simon
paced the floor, unable to stand still.

Simon felt the barb in the mention of kissing, but he did not mind it.
When he routed Friar Mathieu out of his narrow bed in a remote corner of
the palace, he admitted at once that he had been in the atrium with
Ugolini's niece, Sophia, while David of Trebizond was so disastrously
baiting the Tartars.

"I was wrong to pay court to the cardinal's niece." He could still feel
her lips under his, still taste them, and his body tingled at the
remembrance. "I am as much at fault as de Verceuil. But it was he who
found that ignorant woman to replace you as interpreter, and then he
went off to gamble--with David's servant, of all people--and left the
Tartars alone and unprotected."

Friar Mathieu shook his head. "Yes, and drinking that wine of
Montefiascone. I wonder why God chose to make those particular grapes so
irresistible."

Simon pounded his fist into his palm. "We must confront de Verceuil,
Friar Mathieu."

A deep crease appeared between the thick white eyebrows. "At this hour?"

Simon saw the fatigue in Mathieu's wrinkled face and felt guilty. "I am
most heartily sorry for awakening you at this ungodly time of night. It
was just--"

"Just that you could not sleep yo