easy to launch another invasion of
Constantinople.

In memory she saw Alexis, the boy she loved, fall as the French crossbow
bolt hit him. She heard him cry out to her.

_Go, Sophia, go!_

_Why was I saved that night if not that I might help to stop the French
from conquering Constantinople again?_

"I cannot send an army to Orvieto to stop the pope's intrigues against
me," Manfred said. "That would turn all Christendom against me. But I
can send my two best people, my brave and clever Lorenzo and my
beautiful and clever Sophia. Together with David, you two perhaps can
turn my enemies against each other. You may be gone six months or a
year. And afterward you can come back."

He did not take his eyes from hers as he said it, but there was a
flickering in their depths that told her he was not being honest with
her.

"When will I meet this--Mameluke?"

"Tomorrow we go falconing. The forest is a good place to talk freely."
He paused and grinned at her. "But do not dress just yet. This may be my
last chance to enjoy your lovely body."

She looked away. She felt no desire for him. She was sick of being
enjoyed.

"Forgive me, Sire, I have much to do," she said. Before he could object,
she had slipped through the curtains around the bed and was pulling her
blue gown over her head. She had left half her clothes behind with
Manfred, but that did not matter. Her own quarters were near, and later
she could send a servant for her things.

As she hurried out the door, she pretended not to hear Manfred's angry
cry, muffled by the bed's thick curtains.

* * * * *

Sophia wrapped in white linen the satin mantle in which she had been
presented at Manfred's court. She laid it in her traveling chest, then
brought her jewel box from the table on which it had stood since she'd
arrived here, and laid it on the mantle.

Manfred would gladly have ordered servants to do this packing for her,
but it was easier to preserve her privacy when she did for herself.

She looked down at the polished ebony box with the double-headed eagle
of Constantinople in mother-of-pearl inlay. A gift from the Basileus
when he sent her to Sicily. The eagle of Constantinople, tradition said,
was the inspiration for the two-headed Hohenstaufen eagle.

She folded a green woolen tunic and laid it over the jewel box. As she
stood with her hands pressed on the tunic, sorrow welled up within her.

_Was there ever a woman