battered old
chairs and tables, past walls covered with tattered hangings, dented
shields, and rusty coats of mail. The Monaldeschi family, it seemed,
never threw away anything. The rooms set aside for the cardinal and his
entourage were on the third floor of the palazzo, where the windows were
larger and set with white glass. A man wrapped in a blanket lay on a
sack of straw outside the door to the cardinal's rooms. The top of his
head, shaved in a tonsure, gleamed dully in the light of the one fat
candle that illuminated the corridor. A cleric in minor orders, no
doubt. Simon shook him.

"No, Your Signory," the cleric said, yawning and stretching as he stood
up to bow properly to the count. "The cardinal is not sleeping, but
neither is he here. After the contessa's reception he and the Tartars
and their guards all went out. His Eminence did not choose to tell me
where they were bound."

Simon felt the wind knocked out of him, as if he had been running full
tilt and tripped. He looked at Friar Mathieu, who wore a pained, even
sad expression.

After everything else that had gone wrong, how could de Verceuil take
the Tartars into the streets late at night? They might run afoul of
bravos or some of the wild young men of Orvieto's feuding families. Why
would de Verceuil take such a risk?

Then Simon understood the reason for Friar Mathieu's look of sadness.
Men would leave the Palazzo Monaldeschi at this hour for only one
reason--loose women.

Simon had heard that in the darkest hours a corrupt, secret world
glowed brightly in Orvieto, hidden behind discreet walls. Rumor told of
high-ranking churchmen who ventured behind those walls; indeed, it was
said that the secret world existed because of the patronage of such men.
Of course de Verceuil would be a patron of that sinful night world. And
of course he would draw the Tartars into it. Barbarians that they were,
they no doubt expected the attentions of harlots as their due.

_That I am surprised only proves, I suppose, what a bumpkin I am_,
thought Simon, annoyed at himself and disgusted with de Verceuil.

He must pray, he thought with a chill, that the Tartars' guards were
well armed and alert.

XXV

Swords drawn, Daoud and Lorenzo stood back-to-back in the shadowy
courtyard. Lorenzo faced the six men who had emerged from the end of the
alley and were now fanning out to surround them. Daoud confronted the
four who had jumped down into the campiello.