had been an
error. At least three Italian cardinals had told Ugolini that Fra
Tomasso had come to them personally with the same message. Cardinal
Gratiano Marchetti whispered that Pope Urban, who did not expect to live
through the winter, had promised the stout friar a voice in the election
of the next pope. Where Urban had been neutral toward the alliance,
perhaps even opposed, something now caused him to favor it. Just as the
tumbling of a single grain of sand could bring a whole dune crashing
down to bury a caravan, so those drops of blood at Bolsena had been the
start of an avalanche of reversals.

Daoud awaited Ugolini's coming, and the message he bore, as a man
accused of a capital crime awaits the verdict of his judge.

And if it was true that Fra Tomasso had irrevocably turned against them?
Daoud must begin all over again with a new plan to stop the alliance.

The fire gave off the sour odor of strange substances Ugolini had
previously burned on the hearth. Daoud pushed himself out of the
cardinal's chair and went to get a breath of fresh air. He opened the
casement window and saw Ugolini's sedan chair, borne by four servants,
turning in toward the door of the mansion.

The cardinal's chair passed the shop across the street, where rows of
large and small pots, brightly painted with floral designs, were laid
out on a large blanket. The potter and his wife, bundled up in heavy
cloaks, were calling out for the cardinal's blessing. Daoud saw a tiny
hand emerge from the curtains of the sedan chair, closed against the
February cold. The hand shaped the sign of the cross in the air as the
shopkeepers fell to their knees.

Daoud wondered whether the potter and his wife felt they had an unlucky
spot to offer their wares. That was where, last August, de Verceuil's
archers had shot down two men in the crowd when the Tartars were
entering the city. And it was in front of that shop, shuttered then for
the night, that Alain de Pirenne's body had been found. Had the
shopkeeper or his wife seen anything, and were they keeping silent only
out of fear? Months had gone by, but the podesta, d'Ucello, was still
investigating the killing, questioning and requestioning everyone who
might know something about it.

Daoud paced the room anxiously until Ugolini came in, throwing his
fur-trimmed cape and his wide-brimmed red hat to a servant. He sat down
in the chair Daoud had been using. Daoud closed the door.

As a man dying of