ck to her table. From a reading stand at its side she picked
up her leather-bound book of parchment sheets and opened it to a page
marked by a ribbon. She studied the portrait of Manfred she had begun
only two days before. Most of it was still rough charcoal strokes, but
she had colored his beard in a mixture of yellow and white paints,
because it was the most important color and she wanted to get it down
first so it could control her choice of the other colors. The eyes would
be last, because when she painted in the eyes the picture would, in a
sense, come to life.

Even with the eyes blank the portrait seemed to smile at her, and she
felt a ripple of remembered pleasure. Grief followed almost at once.

_Shall I try to finish this tonight and give it to him as a parting
gift?_

After a moment's thought her fingers clawed at the parchment and tore it
free of the stitches that held it in the book. She rolled it up and held
an end to a candle flame.

V

Keeping his face severe, Simon de Gobignon walked slowly past the six
knights lined up on the wharf. The men's faces were scarlet and
glistening with sweat under their conical steel helmets. Simon felt
rivulets running down his own back, under his padded cotton undershirt,
mail hauberk, and surcoat.

Gulls screamed overhead, and the smell of the salt sea and of rotting
fish hung heavy in the warm air.

Venice in July, Simon thought, was no place to be dressed in full battle
gear.

The two banners held by men-at-arms at the end of the line hung limply:
the royal standard of France, gold fleurs-de-lis on an azure ground, and
that of Gobignon, gold crowns on purple.

Simon reproached himself. He had brought his company down to the
waterfront too early, as soon as he had word that the galley bearing the
Tartar ambassadors from Cyprus was in the harbor. It was there, sure
enough; he could see it, a long, dark shape a few hundred feet from
shore. But it rode at anchor while officials of the Most Serene Republic
inspected it for diseases and registered its cargo, a task that had
already taken hours while Simon and his men sweltered onshore.

Behind the knights stood a lance of archers, forty men in four rows.
They were talking and laughing among themselves in the Venetian dialect,
which Simon could barely understand. While growing up he had learned the
speech of Sicily, but that was nearly a different language.

The crossbowmen should not be chattering, Simo