pieces the dog, Lorenzo, and
perhaps Daoud himself.

Lorenzo grabbed Scipio's muzzle with both hands, forcing it shut. Scipio
kept up a growling through his teeth. Lorenzo growled back, "Be still!"
He wrestled the dog down until the lean gray head was pressed into the
grass.

"Barking is the only way he knows to greet the Savior," said Lorenzo
with an ingratiating grin, looking up at the people glaring at him.

"There could be a devil in that dog," a brown-robed friar said
ominously. But Scipio relaxed under Lorenzo's hands, and those around
Daoud and Lorenzo turned back to the procession.

Daoud was furious. Lorenzo's damned dog had been like a stone in his
shoe ever since they set out from Lucera. Lorenzo was a valuable man,
but he insisted on attaching others to him who caused endless trouble.
Like the dog. Like Rachel.

A scream rose above the music, so shrill Daoud put his hands over his
ears again.

"My God! I can see!" A woman was standing, clasping her hands together
and flinging them wide again and again. One of the Franciscans threw his
arms around her, whether to rejoice with her or restrain her, Daoud
could not tell. But she pushed him away and went stumbling after Father
Kyril. From the way her hands pawed the air, Daoud suspected she could
not see very well, but she shouted with joy all the same.

She joined a crowd of people, many of them waving walking sticks and
crutches, others with bloodstained bandages trailing from their hands.
One man, Daoud saw to his horror, was missing a foot and was limping
along in the dirt road, without the aid of crutch or cane, on one whole
leg and one stump bound with a dirty cloth that ended at the ankle. His
face was red, sweat-slick, and blindly ecstatic.

Behind the rejoicing invalids walked rows of clergymen from Bolsena.
Daoud recognized a familiar figure in the foreground, Fra Tomasso
d'Aquino, his cheeks crimson with cold and exertion, his black mantle
blowing in the wind. He had spent the last two weeks, Daoud knew, in
Bolsena investigating the miracle and overseeing preparations for the
altar cloth to be brought to Pope Urban.

What did he think now, Daoud ached to know. Would he still work as hard
to defeat the Tartar alliance? Did this miracle mean Daoud had gained
ground or lost ground?

A sudden silence fell over the meadow. Pope Urban, with trembling hands
upraised, approached Father Kyril, whose back was to Daoud.

Father Kyril went down on h