I who first fell in love with
Daoud. There were moments when I hated him--when he killed your friend,
for instance--but as I got to know him better and better I could not
help loving him. I had been loved by an emperor and a king, but I had
never met a man like Daoud. He had begun as a slave, and he became
warrior, philosopher, poet, even a kind of priest, all in one
magnificent person. You probably have no idea what I am talking about.
You knew him only as the merchant David of Trebizond."

"I knew you only as Sophia Orfali."

"You may despise me now that you have learned so much about me, but the
more you knew of him, the more you would have had to admire him."

"How insignificant I must have seemed to you beside such grandeur." She
could hear him breathing heavily in the darkness, sounding like a man
struggling under a weight he could not bear.

"I did love you, Simon. That was why I cried when you said you wanted to
marry me. The word love has many meanings. And your French troubadours
may call it blasphemy, but it _is_ possible for a woman to love more
than one man."

"Not blasphemy. Trahison. Treachery."

"As you wish. But in that moment you and I shared by the lake near
Perugia, I was altogether yours. That, too, is why I fled from you. I
could not stand being torn in two."

"Why torn in two, if you find you can love more than one man?" The hate
in his voice made her want to throw herself from the balcony, but she
told herself it would ease his suffering for him to feel that way.

"I said it was possible. I did not say it was easy. Especially when the
two men are at war with each other."

"And did Daoud know about me? Did you tell him what you and I did that
day?"

"No," she said, finding it almost impossible to force the words through
her constricted throat. "I could never tell him."

"So you could not admit to this _magnificent_ man, this philosopher,
this priest, that you had betrayed him with me."

"No," she whispered. "He was jealous, as you are. At first he wanted me
to seduce you. But as he came to love me--I saw it happening and I saw
him fighting it--he came to hate the idea of letting you make love to
me. He came to hate you, because of that, and because he envied you."

"Envied me?"

"Yes. He saw you as one who had all that he never had--a home, a
family."

Simon stepped forward and brought his face close to hers. "Did you tell
him about my parentage?"

"No, never."

"Why not?" H