s body was sound.

He raised his hands to her as she bent over the litter. She saw that the
fingernails were blackened and bloody, and her own fists clenched as she
felt what they must have done to his hands. She slid her arms around his
shoulders and pressed her face against his. Perhaps the men-at-arms and
servants should not see the cardinal's niece embracing the trader from
Trebizond, but at that moment nothing mattered to her but to hold his
living body in her arms.

She heard him gasp. She was hurting him. What a fool she was!

"Forgive my clumsiness, David. I am so sorry."

He gently squeezed her hand as she drew away from him. "Your arms feel
like an angel's wings."

Ugolini called his steward, Agostino, and rattled off a list of
necessaries for treating Daoud's wounds--water, a pot and a brazier,
clean cloths, medicine jars from the cardinal's cabinet.

Sophia walked beside the litter as Ugolini's men carried Daoud to his
room on the third floor. Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder. Her
feelings alternated between agony, as she imagined what he had gone
through, and singing elation that he was back with her. With joy she
felt movement and life in the hard muscle under her fingertips.

"Tilia and I did what we could for you," she said when the men had
deposited him on his bed.

"I know," said Daoud. "Ugolini told me about your visit to the contessa.
Had she not sent for d'Ucello when she did--as you persuaded her to
do--I would be dead now."

She sat on the edge of his bed and put her hands over her face and wept
for joy. It had all meant something, her rushing to Tilia before dawn,
her going with Ugolini to the contessa, her falling to her knees before
the old woman.

As the men-at-arms left, Ugolini came in with Agostino and two servants
bearing a brazier and a tripod, pots of water, cloths, and jars of
ointments and powders from Ugolini's shelves. Two other servants brought
a table into Daoud's room, and Ugolini had the medications arranged on
it.

"He also let me go because the Ghibellini from Siena are about to
besiege the city," said Daoud. "He wants my help in surrendering to
them."

"A pity the Sienese could not have gotten here in time to catch the
Tartars and de Verceuil," said Sophia when the servants had left.

Ugolini looked up from the powders he was mixing for poultices and
frowned. "Catch them? Why?"

Sophia stared at Ugolini. Then the news had somehow missed him. She felt