Daoud was not surprised. This must be the one who called herself Morgiana in the letters to Baibars that came regularly from Italy by carrier pigeon and ship, thought Daoud. Still clinging to the bearers, the stout woman pulled herself erect. Then she waved her servants away with a flapping of sleeves and a jangling of bracelets and squinted at Daoud.
"Is it time?" said Daoud. He spoke in Arabic.
"Not yet," she answered in the same language. "But presently." That completed their prearranged words of recognition.
"Salaam aleikum, Morgiana," he said, smiling. "Peace be to you." He pushed back his hood and bowed to her. He had a warm sense of meeting an old friend. He had read many of her reports on matters of state in Italy.
"Wa aleikum es-salaam, Daoud," she replied. "And peace also to you. You will have to know my real name now. Tilia Caballo, at your service."
He had pictured Morgiana as a tall, slender woman of mature years, darkly attractive. The real Morgiana was quite different. Her eyebrows were thick and black, her nose a tiny button between round red cheeks. Her face was shiny with sweat even though she had been doing nothing but sitting in a sedan chair. Looking at her spherical body, Daoud felt great respect for the strength of the men who carried her. The silk clinging to her body outlined breasts like divan cushions, and her belly protruded in a parody of pregnancy. Could she truly be a cardinal's mistress? Just as sultans and emirs had chief wives who were old and honored and younger wives for play, perhaps Cardinal Ugolini kept Tilia Caballo only as his official mistress.
The clasp on her turban was studded with diamonds. A heavy gold necklace spilled down the broad, bare slope of her chest. From the necklace dangled a cross set with blue and red jewels.
The gold Baibars has sent her helped buy the fortune she wears. He wondered, how much did Baibars really know about this woman?
"I saw Cardinal Ugolini for a moment only, Messer David," said Celino. "As soon as he found out I was from you, he insisted that I go to this lady's establishment." Celino, speaking the dialect of Sicily, uttered the word stabilimento with a curious intonation. Scipio stood with his forepaws on Celino's chest, and Celino scratched the hound behind the ears.
"He means the finest house of pleasure in all the Papal States," said Tilia Caballo, smoothing the front of her gown with a self-satisfied look. "Naturally his eminence Cardinal Ugolini cannot risk meeting openly with you until I have seen you on his behalf." She had switched from Arabic to an Italian dialect that was new to Daoud. He had trouble understanding her.