He was alive, but how badly hurt was he? She prayed that when she lifted the blanket that covered him she would see that his body was sound.
He raised his hands to her as she bent over the litter. She saw that the fingernails were blackened and bloody, and her own fists clenched as she felt what they must have done to his hands. She slid her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face against his. Perhaps the men-at-arms and servants should not see the cardinal's niece embracing the trader from Trebizond, but at that moment nothing mattered to her but to hold his living body in her arms.
She heard him gasp. She was hurting him. What a fool she was!
"Forgive my clumsiness, David. I am so sorry."
He gently squeezed her hand as she drew away from him. "Your arms feel like an angel's wings."
Ugolini called his steward, Agostino, and rattled off a list of necessaries for treating Daoud's wounds—water, a pot and a brazier, clean cloths, medicine jars from the cardinal's cabinet.
Sophia walked beside the litter as Ugolini's men carried Daoud to his room on the third floor. Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder. Her feelings alternated between agony, as she imagined what he had gone through, and singing elation that he was back with her. With joy she felt movement and life in the hard muscle under her fingertips.
"Tilia and I did what we could for you," she said when the men had deposited him on his bed.
"I know," said Daoud. "Ugolini told me about your visit to the contessa. Had she not sent for d'Ucello when she did—as you persuaded her to do—I would be dead now."
She sat on the edge of his bed and put her hands over her face and wept for joy. It had all meant something, her rushing to Tilia before dawn, her going with Ugolini to the contessa, her falling to her knees before the old woman.