"You cannot protect her."
"Protect me from what?" Rachel's voice sounded in her own ears like a scream, and her heart was pounding against the walls of her chest.
"John can protect her," said Friar Mathieu, "if he understands what is happening."
He looked full into Rachel's face, and there was a warning in his old blue eyes. She was almost frantic with fear now. She had not been so frightened since the day John and the rest of them had invaded Tilia's house and carried her off.
What was Friar Mathieu trying to warn her about?
"What do you know of Sophia Orfali, Ugolini's so-called niece?" de Verceuil demanded in his French-accented Italian.
Friar Mathieu has betrayed me!
Rachel looked over at the old Franciscan and saw him close his eyes very slowly and deliberately and open them again. Keep your mouth closed, he seemed to be trying to say to her. She had to trust him. She could not believe he would say anything to turn de Verceuil against her.
"I—I know nothing," she said. "Who is this you are asking about?"
"What happens here?" John asked Friar Mathieu in the Tartar language. "Why are the high priest and this foot archer in my tent? I did not invite them. Tell them I send them away."