Before Charles took Rome, Lorenzo and Tilia and I passed near the city,
but skirted around it. It would not do to have someone from that inn
recognize us."

"How well I remember that night." It was then that she had first seen
how resourceful and how ruthless Daoud could be.

"Lorenzo and I could talk about it now without getting angry," Daoud
said. "He told me he tried to help the old Jew, Rachel's husband,
because a man does not forget the faith and the people he was born to."

"And you wondered about yourself?" said Sophia.

"Exactly." The palm of his hand felt wonderfully hard against the flesh
of her buttocks. "And, strangely, I found myself thinking of Simon de
Gobignon."

She felt her body stiffen and tried to make herself relax. "What could
have made you think of him?" She had never told Daoud about Simon's
shadowed childhood. She wondered if he had heard of it from someone
else.

"I asked myself, what if the Turks had not overrun Ascalon and killed my
parents and carried me off? And the answer came that I would have been
very like Simon de Gobignon. He grew up, you see, having all the things
I lost."

"What things?"

"A family, a home, the Christian faith, freedom, knighthood, his
country. Even his name."

This talk about Simon was making her desperately uneasy. She wondered if
she could tell Daoud to go to sleep and forget it all.

"And I saw at last why I hated him so much," Daoud went on. "I hated him
in part, of course, because of you. I had already started to love you,
and the thought of him possessing you made me furious. And yet it was my
duty to send you to bed with him. Fortunately, that never had to happen.
But there was an even deeper reason for my hating him."

"What was that?" she asked.

"Envy. Envy that I could not admit to myself."

"Not admit to yourself? Why?"

His hand on her was motionless. She sensed that it was an effort for him
to put his thought into words.

"Because I was afraid to. That is always why we do not admit a truth to
ourselves. My Sufi sheikh often said, _The things you most fear, those
you must turn and stare at until you are no longer afraid_. I was afraid
I might betray my faith."

"You mean renounce Islam?" A chill went through her. What a disaster
for all of them that could have been. She could well understand how the
thought of that might frighten him.

"Yes. I had to put that possibility out of my mind. So I hated Simon de
Gobignon without knowin