"For your protection? You mean he would have killed you."
Her body turned to ice as she faced the reality of how close she had come to losing him.
"Yes," said Daoud. "I thought I would never see you again." He reached out his arms, grimacing with pain. She put down the cloth and let him hold her. Her heart swelled up in her throat and tears burned her eyes.
And suddenly, as if a curtain were lifted, she saw that life with this man would always be this way. Whenever she was with him, there would always be a yesterday in which some miracle of good fortune kept him alive. There would always be a tomorrow in which he must face death yet again.
Her head rested on his chest for a moment; then she wiped her face and went back to cleaning and covering his wounds. Never mind her pain. Whatever he was feeling must be much worse.
He told her how to make poultices for his burns using wet cloths and powdered medicinal herbs Ugolini had prepared. It was like what she had done for his arrow wound, only now there were many more hurts to treat. Silently, in Greek, she cursed d'Ucello and cursed the torturer. She did not care whether Daoud forgave them. She would never forgive what they had done to her man.
When he was in the cellar of the Palazzo del Podesta being tortured, had he grieved at the thought of losing her, as she had sorrowed for him?
She worked her way down his body from head to foot, tying the poultices in place with strips of cloth. Thank God, they had done nothing to his manly part. That was often the first place a torturer went for. When would they make love again, she wondered. That depended on how long it took him to recover. Perhaps weeks, perhaps even months.
When she was finished with his front, he turned over with her help. Again she could not hold back her tears. Pain, not bodily, but real just the same, struck her at the sight of his tormented flesh. For a moment her eyes were covered with darkness. The skin of his back and buttocks had been whipped away in large red slashes. She shook her head violently, spoke a few more curses in her mind, and went to work. Daoud, who had endured most of her healing efforts in silence, cried out when she put a wet cloth on a torn spot.
"What more can you tell me about Rachel?" he asked. She suspected he wanted to take his mind off the pain.