candles. Her host showed it only to his most trusted guests.

"Which god is this?" she had asked.

"I think it is just an athlete," said her host. "The old Greeks made
gods of their athletes."

Manfred's naked torso, pale as marble, seemed as beautiful. And was
alive.

She sighed happily. "How lucky I am that there was time for love in my
king's life this afternoon." She spoke in the Sicilian dialect,
Manfred's favorite of all his languages.

How lucky, she thought, that after all her years of wandering she had at
last found a place in the world where she was loved and needed.

His lips stretched in a smile, but his blue eyes were empty. Uneasiness
took hold of her. She sensed from the look on his face that he was about
to tell her something she did not want to hear.

* * * * *

In memory she heard a voice say, _Italy was ours not so long ago and
might be ours again_. So Michael Paleologos, the Basileus, Emperor of
Constantinople, had introduced the suggestion that she go to Italy, and
at just such a moment as this, when they were in bed together in his
hunting lodge outside Nicaea.

She had felt no distress at the idea of being parted from Michael. He
was a scrawny man with a long gray beard, and though she counted herself
enormously lucky to have attracted his attention, she felt no love for
him.

She had come to Lucera acting as Michael's agent and personal emissary
to Manfred--and resenting Michael's use of her but feeling she had no
choice. She was a present from one monarch to another. She ought to be
flattered, she supposed.

She had walked into Manfred's court in the embroidered jeweled mantle
Michael had given her, her hair bound up in silver netting. Lorenzo
Celino had conducted her to the throne, and she bowed and looked up. And
it was like gazing upon the sun.

Manfred von Hohenstaufen's smile was brilliant, his hair white-gold, his
eyes sapphires.

He stepped down from his throne, took her hand, and led her to his
eight-sided garden. First she gave him Michael's messages--news that a
Tartar army had stormed the crusader city of Sidon, leveled it, and
ridden off again--a warning that Pope Urban had secretly offered the
crown of Naples and Sicily, Manfred's crown, to Prince Edward, heir
apparent to the throne of England.

"Your royal master is kind, but the pope's secret is no secret," Manfred
had said, laughing and unconcerned. "The nobility of England have fl