Her full lower lip pushed out. "I do not understand why you had to send a pious simpleton to a horrible death."
Guilt twisted in Daoud's guts like a Hashishiyya dagger. Yet he could not admit to Sophia that he regretted what happened to the heretic. She might approve his feeling, but she would also lose confidence in him.
"I will use any weapon I can find," he said. "Even if it breaks in my hand."
Sophia sat down on the marble lip of the fish pond. After a moment's hesitation Daoud sat beside her, smoothing his red cloak under him.
"Where is Lorenzo?" she asked. "I have not seen him since the day the Tartars arrived."
"He visits Spoleto, to find a few bold men for me." Lorenzo would bring back two or three men from Spoleto. Later he would gather more men in Viterbo, Chiusi, and other nearby cities. Imperceptibly over the coming months, bands of armed men—the Italians called them "bravos"—would gather in Orvieto to do Daoud's bidding.
Acting as a go-between for Daoud and the bravos was a mission at which Lorenzo should do well.
"The men Lorenzo brings here will not know my name or my face," he went on. "In a few days Cardinal Ugolini will take me before the pope, and I will warn him against the Tartars from my own true experience of them. I must not be connected with other things done against the Tartars, disturbances among the people, armed attacks. That is why Rachel is such a danger."
She had been looking thoughtfully at the pebbled path. When he spoke Rachel's name, she lifted her head to stare at him.
"Are you going to make me give up Rachel?"