es back in the same way?"

"It takes over a month each way, so I have received but one message from
the sultan since coming to Italy."

"Does the cardinal keep the pigeons?"

He had taken a tiny leather capsule out of his belt purse and was
inserting the message into it now. "Madama Tilia keeps the pigeons."

"Then are you going to her house?" Sophia remembered with a feeling of
guilt that she had not thought of Rachel in some time. "Please, David,
will you see how Rachel is while you are there?"

David looked at her quickly and glanced away. She felt a coldness in her
chest.

"What has happened to her?" she demanded. She seized David's arm, lest
he turn away from her.

He did not try to pull free. "She is well. She is already wealthy, in
fact." His eyes did not meet hers at all now.

"Oh, my God! A man has had her!" She let go of David and turned her back
on him.

There was another silence while fury churned in Sophia. She wanted to
turn on David, to scratch his face with her nails. She wanted to tear
her clothing in anguish, in mourning for Rachel's lost innocence. She
hated herself for her part in the child's degradation.

"Sophia." David's voice came from behind her, soft, a little uncertain.
"Were you so much older than Rachel when you--became a woman?"

Wrath overpowered her other feelings, and she turned on him. "Do you
think _that_ is what makes a girl into a woman? And you complain about
speaking foolishness?"

"How old, Sophia?" His voice was more confident now, as if her anger had
put him on firmer ground.

She thought of Alexis, the boy she had loved, and the long afternoons
they had spent together hidden under an old broken arch covered with
vines and lapped by waves on the Aegean side of Constantinople.

She shook her head. "Yes, I was her age. But I was in love. Doing it for
money or for my city came later, when I was alone in the world and
older."

There was appeal in his look. "But you know what it is to be alone and
in need. Just as you freely chose to serve the Emperor of Constantinople
with your body, so Rachel freely chose to sell her virginity for a
fortune in gold."

His obtuseness made her more angry than ever. "You know nothing about
freedom or women. Rachel was no more free to keep her virginity than you
were free to remain a Christian after the Turks captured you. As for me,
at least I know enough to hate the murderers of my parents."

His fingers dug into her shoulders u