Daoud walked to one of the four mullioned windows. The casements swung inward for air. Looking down through the iron bars on the outside of the window, Daoud regarded the street where the Tartars had passed. The pottery maker across the road had washed away the bloodstains and was sitting in front of his shop displaying his brightly colored wares. What would move this man Ugolini--money, threats, the promise of personal power? He turned back and made himself smile. "You do not want me here, Your Eminence." Ugolini looked at him for a long moment, and finally said, "For over a dozen years Baibars has been a far-off figure who sends me small rewards in return for scraps of harmless information. Now, suddenly, his agent is in my home, demanding that I, the cardinal camerlengo of the Sacred College, risk death by torture to deceive the pope and betray the Church. In a week or two in the cathedral piazza, they will do horrible things to that poor mad heretic. But his sufferings will not be the tenth part of what they will do to me--and to you--if we are found out." Daoud bowed his head. "The sooner I complete my work, the sooner I am gone." While he let that sink in, he decided that with his next words he would pit his boldness against Ugolini's timidity. "So, you must present me to the pope as soon as possible." Ugolini's eyes grew wide and his mouth trembled. His stare, with his sharp nose, tiny chin, and trembling whiskers, gave him the look of a jerboa, one of those desert rats that Daoud had hunted with hawks in Palestine. "Tilia told me you had some such mad notion," said the cardinal. "If you speak to the pope and his court, every important man in Orvieto will see you. If you make the slightest slip that could reveal what you really are, they will be on you like hounds on a fox." He laughed nervously. "No, no, no, no. I might as well take you to de Verceuil and say, 'Here is the enemy you are looking for. Behold, a Muslim, even a Mameluke! And, by the way, it was _I_ who brought him into Orvieto.'" Ugolini covered his eyes with his hand. He did look as if he had been losing sleep, Daoud thought, remembering what Tilia had told him. Daoud felt his teeth grinding together in frustration. It would be easier to fight a band of Tartars than to try to put courage into this one little man. And he needed more from the cardinal than compliance. _I must make him want, not just to help me, but to lead the opposition to the Tartars. Otherwise this will be like trying to move the arms and legs of a dead man._ "The cardinals speak Latin to one another, do they not?" Daoud asked. "I will say my piece in Greek and you will translate it into Latin for me. So you will have a chance to cover any errors I make." "Why must you go before the pope?" Ugolini demanded. "It is foolish bravado. Remain in seclusion and tell me what you want done and I will have it done for you."