e would go.

Daoud raised his head and opened his eyes. "You want to ask something.
What is it?"

"Did you--did d'Ucello--learn anything?"

"God willed that he learn nothing from me," said Daoud, sinking back
again.

"_Your_ will had something to do with that," said Sophia.

_He held out against them. What a magnificent man._

But what price had he paid for his strength?

"God's will is my will," Daoud whispered.

"God be with you, then," said Ugolini, and left, pulling the door shut
behind him.

Daoud's eyes opened. The sight of his eyes woke a warmth in her breast
as if a small sun had risen inside her.

"Do you want to sleep?" she asked him.

"Yes, with you beside me."

Joy blazed up inside her at those words. She had been so afraid that
torture would somehow destroy his caring for her.

"Oh, yes," she said. "Nothing would make me happier."

"But first I need you to wash and dress my wounds."

Daoud gritted his teeth and winced as first she lifted off the purple
cloak that covered him, then inch by inch drew the yellow tunic up from
his body and over his head. He groaned aloud when, with her propping up
his heavy body, he raised his arms.

"O Kriste!" she whispered. She wept anew as her eyes traveled over the
golden body she loved and saw huge, broken blisters and patches of red
skin; swollen black bruises the size of hen's eggs; long, deep
lacerations filled with crusted blood; the many little black scabs of
puncture wounds.

"When Lorenzo and the Ghibellini get here, we will have d'Ucello and his
torturers torn to pieces," she raged. She went to the table, folded a
linen cloth, and dipped it in the water.

"I do not hate d'Ucello," said Daoud as she began, very carefully, to
clean his wounds. "He has his work and I have mine. As for his
torturer--Erculio is his name--d'Ucello does not know it, but his
torturer is one of us."

Sophia's hand, moving the cloth lightly over a long, shallow cut that
ran across the smooth, almost hairless skin of his chest, paused. Was he
delirious?

"One of _us_? The torturer?"

Daoud looked amused. "I do not know where Erculio comes from, but he is
a good servant of the God of Islam and of the sultan, who placed him
there for my protection."

"For your protection? You mean he would have killed you."

Her body turned to ice as she faced the reality of how close she had
come to losing him.

"Yes," said Daoud. "I thought I would never see you again." He re