nching his teeth.

Simon turned briefly to survey the crowd that filled the nave all the
way to the doors. Halfway back, a spot of red light from a window fell
on a man's blond hair. Simon was almost certain that was David of
Trebizond. He still saw no sign of Sophia, and his heart fell.

As Simon watched the pope celebrate the mass, assisted by the two
cardinals, the Italian Ugolini and the French le Gros, he wondered
whether Alain was watching from heaven. He must be in heaven. Was he not
a martyr?

But did Alain care about what was happening on this earth? Surely a man
would want to see his own funeral. For a moment Simon imagined he could
speak to Alain, reach out and touch him.

_How do you like this, my friend? The pope himself says mass for you._

Simon choked on a sob and had to wipe tears from his face.

The pope sang the Gospel in a quavering voice, and a chorus of stout
young priests boomed back the responses. The voices, rising and falling
in the chant devised by Pope Gregory the Great, unaccompanied by any
instrument, rebounded from the heavy stones of the vaulted ceiling.

Simon swore to himself he would write about this to Alain's mother.

When it came time for the sermon, Fra Tomasso d'Aquino rose from the
bench that had been set for him at the front of the cathedral. He
turned and bowed to the pope, who sat in a throne on the right side of
the altar. Pope Urban's hand twitched in a small gesture of blessing.

Standing at the head of Alain's bier, Simon was close enough to Fra
Tomasso to hear the breath whistling through his nostrils as he exerted
himself to move his bulk from bench to altar steps. The black rosary
around his middle rattled with his steps and creaked with his heavy
breathing.

A hush, heavy with the odor of incense, fell over the crowd assembled in
the nave. For a sermon by a bishop or even a cardinal, this crowd of
high-ranking prelates would probably go on whispering to each other. But
all were interested in hearing the philosopher-friar who was famous
throughout Christendom, whom some revered as a living saint and a few
others considered a subtle heretic.

Fra Tomasso spoke Latin, as was customary before any assemblage of
churchmen. His tenor voice sent high-pitched reverberations through the
nave of the great church. It is a sad moment, he said, when God chooses
to cut off a young man in his prime, yet it happens all too often. I
share the sorrow of the family and friends