d in Orvieto. In
all honesty, Daoud--"

"Call me David," he interrupted. "Here I must be known by a Christian
name."

"Well, David, I think you had best go quickly back to Egypt. What can
one man do against the French royal family, half the cardinals, the
pope, the Monaldeschi, and the Tartars themselves?"

He felt a quick spurt of anger. He knew as well as she did the odds he
faced. Why was she trying to weaken him by making him afraid?

_Ugolini sent her to discourage me. It is he who is afraid._

He felt more respect for her, coming out and meeting him and trying to
influence him, than he did for this Cardinal Ugolini, who was trying to
protect himself. He knew from having read her letters that she was a
shrewd and brave woman. He had to win her cooperation. There was only
one way he might hope to do that.

Daoud smiled at her. "Does not great wealth give one great power?"

She smiled back. He noticed that she had rubbed some kind of red
coloring on her cheeks to make herself look healthier. And she had
painted blue-black shadows around her eyes, as Egyptian women did. But
here and there her sweat had made the paint run in rivulets.

She said, "Only faith is more powerful than money."

"Then here is power." Daoud unbuckled his belt and let the jewels spill
out of its hollow interior into his hand. He heard Tilia gasp. When the
glittering stones filled his hand, he dropped them gently to the thin
woolen cloak he had spread on the ground and shook the rest out of the
belt. In the shadow of the pines the jewels seemed to give off their own
light from their polished, rounded surfaces, red and blue, green and
yellow. A sapphire, a topaz, and a pearl were each set in heavy gold
rings. The others were loose. Some were so small that three or four of
them would fit on the tip of Daoud's finger. One, a ruby, was the size
of a whole fingertip. There were too many of them to count quickly, but
Daoud knew that Manfred had given him twenty-five, and one had gone to
equip them for the journey.

"Sanctissima Maria! May I touch them?"

"You are welcome to," he said, smiling, "but make sure none of them
sticks to your fingers."

She plucked some of the jewels from the cloak and let them trickle
through her fingers, catching the light as they tumbled to the cloak.
She held the big ruby up between thumb and forefinger and studied it,
turning it this way and that.

"A drop of God's blood."

"You should have seen the sin