ct the woman I was with."

D'Ucello smiled thinly. "I see. Then you are telling me that you had
carnal relations with this woman while your good friend and vassal
looked on."

Simon was momentarily at a loss for words. It would have delighted him
to reply by running d'Ucello through.

They stood bristling at each other like two hostile hounds when Simon
heard a door open. A moment later, to his enormous relief, Friar Mathieu
joined them by the marble railing overlooking the atrium.

"If you wish to examine young Sire de Pirenne's body, he lies in Count
Simon's room waiting for you, Signore," said Friar Mathieu. "This is a
very sad day for us."

With a black look at Simon, d'Ucello bowed to the old priest and left
the galleria.

When they were alone, Friar Mathieu grunted. "A good thing I merely
extended the wounds Sire Alain had already suffered. The podesta might
well bring charges against me for desecrating a corpse if he saw I had
made incisions in the body."

"Did you learn anything?" Simon asked.

"I am convinced that Sire Alain was not merely stabbed to death."

"What do you mean?" Simon was eager to get Friar Mathieu's advice on how
to handle the podesta, but this was more important.

"When I looked closely at the wound in his stomach, I discovered that it
was two wounds," said Friar Mathieu. "He was punctured there by a thin,
round object, like a large needle. Then he was stabbed through the
heart, and blood poured out of him. And then the killer stabbed him in
the belly to try to mask the dart wound."

"How do you know that?"

"The belly wound did not bleed much, so the heart wound must have
preceded it. When the killer drove his knife into the puncture in the
belly, it did not go in exactly the same direction. The smaller wound
goes upward at a slight angle, as if the needle were driven in from the
level of the killer's waist. The knife wound goes straight in. I had to
dig below the skin and ribs to discover the needle wound."

"A needle could not have killed Alain."

"It could have been a poisoned dart. Alain's lips are blue. That is
sometimes a sign of poison."

Simon heard a clumping of boots in the corridor. He hurried in from the
galleria to find Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil, accompanied by two
black-robed priests, striding toward the room where Alain lay.

"Now one of your knights has been killed!" de Verceuil boomed. He was
dressed in a dark cerise tunic with particolored hose and for