all the talk about it made him uneasy. The frenzy
in the Christian faces around him might be turned, he thought, in any
direction. It must be the same frenzy that had driven generations of
crusaders to hurl themselves against the Dar al-Islam.

Fra Tomasso was at the very center of the furor. It was he who had sent
word from Bolsena that in his judgment the miracle was indeed authentic.
Might this new preoccupation distract him from his efforts to prevent
the alliance?

And there was something else, something that revived a terror buried
deep in Daoud's soul. Jesus, the crucified God of the Christians,
stirred in this miracle. As a boy growing up among Muslims, Daoud had
renounced belief in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Now he
felt again his father's ghostly hand on his shoulder, and the hairs
lifted on the back of his neck.

"Look at the sick people and the cripples lining the road," said
Lorenzo. "I would not have thought there could be that many infirm
people in Orvieto." He and Daoud stood side by side, at a spot where the
road between Bolsena and Orvieto passed through a wide valley, their
horses tethered in a nearby grove of poplar trees. They had moved back a
few paces from the edge of the road to make room for a dozen men and
women on stretchers, wrapped in blankets, who had been carried here by
Franciscan friars from their hospital.

All around Lorenzo and Daoud stood Cardinal Ugolini's men-at-arms,
servants, and maids. Ugolini's entire household was here except for the
few of highest rank who would march with the cardinal, who marched
behind the pope.

Fearing that Scipio would go uncared for, Lorenzo had brought him along,
holding him on a thick leather leash. The gray boarhound paced nervously
and growled from time to time.

In the meadow across the road the pope's servants had erected a pavilion
without walls--just a roof of silk, gold and white, the papal colors,
coming to three points held up by a dozen or more stout poles. There
Pope Urban would say mass after receiving the sanctified cloth.

Daoud glanced down the road to where Sophia stood. They had agreed that
in public it would be best for them to appear far apart from each other.
She was dressed as any well-to-do Italian woman might be, her hair
covered with a round, flat linen cap bound under her chin, a
midnight-blue chemise with long, tight sleeves, and a sleeveless gown of
light blue silk over it. Beside Sophia stood a slig