where we are going," he said gruffly.

Sophia felt herself melting within as she saw the misery on Rachel's
face. Swinging her leg over her mare's back, she slid down, rushed over
to the girl, and put her arms around her. She looked up at David.

"David, please."

David looked down at her, his face hard, as if carved from dark wood,
the eyes glittering like shards of glass. She could not read his
expression.

_How can I know what is in the mind of a Frank turned Turk?_

David got down from his horse and beckoned to Sophia and Lorenzo. They
followed him a short way along the street. When he turned to face them,
Sophia saw fury in his eyes, and her heart fluttered like a trapped
bird.

He spoke softly, through tight lips, and his voice was as frightening as
the hiss of a viper. "I begin to think King Manfred is my enemy, and the
enemy of my people, sending the two of you with me on this journey. From
now on both of you will do as I command, and you will not question me."

Desperately Sophia turned to Lorenzo. "Can you not speak to him?"

Looking down at the cobblestones, Lorenzo shook his head. "I made a
terrible blunder, trying to help Rachel and her husband. From now on
things must go as David commands."

If Sophia had been arguing for herself, she could have said no more in
the face of David's fury. But she looked away from him to the small
figure standing by the horses, and her anguish for the child forced her
to speak.

"But, David, what harm can Rachel do?"

Now the burning gaze was bent on her alone. "We will be saying things
about ourselves in Orvieto that she already knows are not true." He
turned to Lorenzo. "You talk of the lives the Jewish leaders have in
their care. You do not understand--you cannot understand--what will
happen to my people if I fail. What is it to you if the Tartars kill
every man, woman, and child in Cairo?"

His voice was trembling, and Sophia realized he must have seen sights in
the East that made the terror of the Tartars real to him, as it could
not be to her.

"I owe the girl nothing," David went on vehemently. "Nothing. It was not
I who caused this."

But a little girl with her whole life before her, hanged or torn to
pieces by a mob-- The thought of it made Sophia want to scream at David.
She remembered the awful, mindless terror when she and Alexis ran
through the streets of Constantinople with a roaring pack of Frankish
men-at-arms hunting them. Last night she had