"As God wills," Daoud croaked. A numbness had come over him as if he were already dead. This was older and simpler and more effective than the techniques of Sufi and Hashishiyya. This deadness was his body's final answer to a night and a day of unbearable pain and fear.
LV
The woman's shoulders shook, and she rocked back and forth. She could not speak. Tilia sat on Sophia's bed holding the sobbing woman in her arms.
Tilia, calling her Francesca, tried to calm her. Sophia at first had thought Francesca was a madwoman. Her tunic was torn and rain-wet, her long black hair not bound up and covered but in wild disarray.
"You are safe now, piccione," Tilia kept saying. "Calm down and tell us what happened." Tilia herself was pale, her wide mouth drawn tight.
Seeing even Tilia's face grim, Sophia felt a chill of apprehension and an even greater anxiety to know what this was all about.
"I know I should not come here, Madama. Forgive me. But I did not know what else to do. I walked so far to get here, and I kept getting lost, and I was afraid to ask anyone where Cardinal Ugolini's mansion was."
"How did you know I was here, Francesca?" Tilia asked.