"Let us go and see this ship you have found for us."
"Your Signory, you have not told me whether you will take me back into your service."
Simon shook his head, as if tormented by gnats. "After we see the ship."
Sordello sighed and led the way out of the inn. They crossed the cobble-paved roadway that led along Livorno's waterfront, Simon breathing deeply of the salt-smelling air to clear his head.
Sordello pointed. "There it is."
He was pointing toward the same big, ungainly buss that Simon had visited earlier, whose captain had refused Simon.
"But he said he was going to Cyprus!"
"He lied to you," said Sordello. "I know the man. Guibert was shipmaster for a boatload of us mercenaries in the last war between Pisa and Genoa. He feared that if you were to travel on his ship, you might find him out."
"Find out what?"
"He is one of those Languedoc heretics who hate the Church and the French nobility, a follower of the Waldensian heresy. He was imprisoned once and sentenced to death in Montpellier. He recanted his heresy and was released after signing over all that he possessed to the Church. But then he came to Italy, made a new start, and backslid to Waldensianism. If the Inquisition got him now, he would go to the stake even if he recanted a thousand times."