d, after all this was over, might be all she would have left.
Daoud could be killed fighting the French. Her heart stopped beating for
a moment, and then began pounding in fear.

She put that thought out of her mind quickly. She must believe that he
would not be killed. And there was good reason to believe so, with all
he had survived already.

No, it was more likely she would lose him when the war was over and he
went back to his people. He loved his faith, loved the land that had
first enslaved him, then made him a warrior. And she could never go back
to Cairo with him. What she had heard about a woman's lot among the
Muslims sounded like a living death. He had never said so, but he
probably had a wife in Egypt. Several wives perhaps, as Muslims were
said to do.

Live as just _one_ of his wives? Her stomach burned at the idea.
Unthinkable!

Could she persuade Daoud to come with her to Constantinople? Daoud could
serve the Basileus brilliantly, as a strategos, a general, or as a
mediator between Byzantines and Saracens. A man of his experience would
be invaluable. Ah, but to achieve to the utmost of his ability, though,
Daoud would have to join the Orthodox Church. And that, after the words
he had just spoken, she could never imagine him doing.

Well, but she _could_ imagine it. Why spoil the beautiful dream of
herself and Daoud together amid the glories of the Polis? For the moment
she could indulge her fancy and tell herself anything was possible.

Allowing her mind to drift among these visions, she fell asleep.

LXIII

"Ecco! The residence of Cardinal Paulus de Verceuil," said Sordello with
a flourish of his hand. The narrow Viterbo street on which Simon,
Sordello, and Thierry had been riding opened out suddenly, and they were
facing a huge cylinder built of small stones, blackened with age. Simon
felt his mouth fall open in wonder, and he quickly snapped it shut. He
would not let anything de Verceuil might do seem to impress him.

They rode across a drawbridge over a moat full of water that smelled of
rotting things, its surface coated with a green slime.

"It looks a bit like Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome," Simon remarked.

"It was a pagan temple in ancient times," said Sordello.

After passing through the gatehouse, they found themselves in a
stone-paved semicircular courtyard. The palace was built against the
rear half of the old Roman inner wall and towered above it.

"No more lodging with