yellow and blue stood by to keep people in line. Each clerk consulted
what appeared to be a list on a scroll and on another scroll wrote down
the names of those he questioned.

Only two days ago Sophia had told d'Ucello that David of Trebizond and
his man Giancarlo were in Perugia. Now, Lorenzo thought, those damned
clerks were probably watching for their return. They could have been set
at the gate the morning after the attack on the Monaldeschi palace.

He smiled ironically as he remembered how, last summer, he had sat as
these clerks did now, at the gateway to Lucera waiting to catch a
certain Saracen newly arrived from Egypt.

Now, thought Lorenzo, if he tried to leave Orvieto he would not only be
stopped and possibly arrested, he would be as good as telling the
podesta that he and David had never been out of the town at all.

Lorenzo clenched his fists. He felt like a tuna caught in a net.

_And if I stand here much longer staring they'll notice me and haul me
in._

He quickly turned his horses away from the gate and headed back to
Ugolini's mansion.

* * * * *

At the beginning of the third Nocturn, Lorenzo, David, and a servant of
Ugolini's named Riccardo, whom they had chosen for his size and
strength, emerged from an alley near the north side of the city wall.

David wore a hood pulled low over his face. He limped and walked with a
stick. Lorenzo had advised against his being out in the street at all,
but David had answered that the watch did not know he was in Orvieto and
would not be looking for him.

Lorenzo was amazed at how rapidly David had gotten better. He had never
seen a man walking only two days after taking a bad arrow wound in the
leg. The Muslims who taught David the art of healing must be even better
than Jewish physicians.

As they walked, Lorenzo made David recite the names of half a dozen
prominent Perugian merchants who were supporters of King Manfred. If the
podesta were to question David about his whereabouts the night of the
Filippeschi uprising, these men would bear witness that David and
Lorenzo had been in Perugia.

"If d'Ucello does question you, how will you explain that you are back
in Orvieto without having been seen entering through the gate?" Lorenzo
asked him.

"I will tell him--with the greatest reluctance--that the line was very
long when I arrived and that I was in haste to enter, so I bribed the
men on duty to let me by. The mo