of this excellent young
knight, he said, and Simon felt comforted. Indeed, all Christendom must
mourn the loss of such a fine young man, killed while performing his
duty, far from home, guarding an embassy to His Holiness from the other
side of the earth.

_And accompanying a friend making a secret visit to a lady._

The stout friar waxed philosophic, as was expected of him, discoursing
on the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," using Alain as an
example. The Sire de Pirenne's death was murder, ambush out of the dark,
he said.

Loud coughing interrupted the sermon. Simon looked and saw that it was
Pope Urban, bent double, Cardinal le Gros holding his arm and resting a
hand on his shoulder, while Cardinal Ugolini looked alarmed. The
coughing had a burbling sound to it, as if the old pope's lungs were
full of fluid. A cough like that in November was an ominous thing,
thought Simon.

Fra Tomasso resumed when His Holiness had quieted. To kill is not always
a sin, he said, but to kill the innocent is. It is not a sin, therefore,
to wage war on the Saracens, as pope after pope has called upon good
Christian warriors to do, because the Saracens are not innocent. They
hold in their clutches the most sacred places of Christendom, the lands
where Our Lord Jesus Christ was born and died; they rob and murder
pilgrims seeking to visit those holy places; and they seek to spread
the false religion of Mohammedanism which denies the central mystery of
our faith--Christ crucified, dead, and risen again. For all these
reasons the Saracens should be fought.

Fra Tomasso paused and looked about him. Simon felt that the pause was
intended to be significant, that the great Dominican was about to say
something very important. But the silence was disturbed by a whispering.
It came from behind Simon and to his right. He glanced in that direction
and saw that the Bulgarian woman, Ana, was sitting with the two Tartars
and was whispering her translation of Fra Tomasso's sermon to John, the
older one, who was immediately on her left.

"We may ask ourselves, why does God permit an innocent young man like
this to die?" Fra Tomasso went on. "The answer is, of course, that He
permits it to make possible a greater good, the exercise of human free
will. I say to you that Our Lord, Jesus Christ, crucified at the age of
thirty-three, is the type of all innocent young men done to death by
evil. And evil is a necessary consequence of human freed