He spoke softly, through tight lips, and his voice was as frightening as the hiss of a viper. "I begin to think King Manfred is my enemy, and the enemy of my people, sending the two of you with me on this journey. From now on both of you will do as I command, and you will not question me."
Desperately Sophia turned to Lorenzo. "Can you not speak to him?"
Looking down at the cobblestones, Lorenzo shook his head. "I made a terrible blunder, trying to help Rachel and her husband. From now on things must go as David commands."
If Sophia had been arguing for herself, she could have said no more in the face of David's fury. But she looked away from him to the small figure standing by the horses, and her anguish for the child forced her to speak.
"But, David, what harm can Rachel do?"
Now the burning gaze was bent on her alone. "We will be saying things about ourselves in Orvieto that she already knows are not true." He turned to Lorenzo. "You talk of the lives the Jewish leaders have in their care. You do not understand—you cannot understand—what will happen to my people if I fail. What is it to you if the Tartars kill every man, woman, and child in Cairo?"
His voice was trembling, and Sophia realized he must have seen sights in the East that made the terror of the Tartars real to him, as it could not be to her.
"I owe the girl nothing," David went on vehemently. "Nothing. It was not I who caused this."
But a little girl with her whole life before her, hanged or torn to pieces by a mob— The thought of it made Sophia want to scream at David. She remembered the awful, mindless terror when she and Alexis ran through the streets of Constantinople with a roaring pack of Frankish men-at-arms hunting them. Last night she had relived that terror when they fled from the inn. She thought she would rather die herself than let Rachel be taken by a mob.
I cannot abandon Rachel. I must try to sway him. Is there any way I can touch David's heart?