"You must never forget Constantinople," she admonished him with a small smile.
"I spent a month in Constantinople some years ago—that was the other imperial city—and I shall not forget it." This made her feel warmer still toward him.
Then his smile faded. "Your city, too, has suffered at the hands of barbarians—the Franks, who would destroy us."
Destroy us? she repeated in her mind. Is he not a child of those Frankish barbarians?
On the road from Lucera to Rome, he had told her—in a brusque fashion, as if he were speaking of someone other than himself—the story of his childhood and how he came to be a Mameluke. She found it hard to believe that he spoke of the killing of his parents and his enslavement by the Saracens as if it were some kind of blessing—but she had no doubt that he was a believing Muslim through and through.
"Do you never think of yourself as a Frank, David?"
He smiled again. "Never. And I hope you will not think of me as one either. Because I know you must hate Franks."
Hate Franks? Dread them was closer to the truth. Last night, when they fought their way free of those people from the inn, she had remembered the terror she had known as a girl in Constantinople. It was the return of that terror that had given her the strength to smash a jug over that horrid woman's head.
She was about to reply to David when Scipio broke into loud barking. David frowned at the sight of something ahead. The Tiber made a sharp bend, and beyond that, on the opposite bank, towered a huge fortress, a great cylinder of age-browned marble—Castel Sant' Angelo.
At the base of the citadel was a bridge, and Lorenzo was crossing it. She knew him even from this distance by his purple cap and brown cloak.