Pope Urban stood up and lifted his arms. "Silence!" he cried. His voice was shrill and louder than Fra Tomasso's bell. The argument died down. "Have you seen the Tartar army in action, Messer David?" d'Aquino asked. David was silent a long time before answering. His face took on a haunted look. His eyes seemed to gaze at something far away. "I was at Baghdad a week after they took it. I came to trade with the Tartars. There were no other people left in that country to trade with. The Tartar camp was many leagues away from the ruins of Baghdad. They had to move away from the city to escape the smell of the dead. I went to Baghdad because I wanted to see. I saw nothing but ashes and corpses for miles and miles. The stink of rotting flesh nearly killed me. "I found people who had survived. Those who had not gone mad told me what had happened. The Tartars commanded the caliph to surrender. He said he would pay tribute, but he could not surrender his authority to them because he was the spiritual head of Islam." Simon heard murmurs of derision at this, but David ignored them and, speaking through Ugolini, went on. "Over a hundred thousand Tartars surrounded Baghdad, and their siege machines began smashing its walls with great rocks brought down from the mountains by slave caravans. Soon their standards, which are made of the horns and hides and tails of beasts, were raised over the southeastern wall from the Racecourse Gate to the Persian Tower. The city was lost. The Tartars promised to spare the remaining troops if they would surrender. The soldiers of Baghdad went out, unarmed, and the Tartars killed them all with arrows. This is the Tartars' notion of honor." "They will do the same to us!" shouted a cardinal. The pope slapped his palm loudly on the arm of his chair, and silence settled again. "Hulagu Khan, the commander of the Tartar army, now entered the city and made the caliph serve him a splendid dinner. After dinner the khan demanded that the caliph show him all the jewels and gold and silver and other treasures that had been gathered by the caliphs of Baghdad over the centuries. Hulagu promised to let the caliph live, together with a hundred of his women." This brought a loud cackle from under one of the red hats in the front row. "Only a hundred women!" a voice followed the laughter. "Poor caliph! How many was he wont to have?" "Seeing how ugly those Saracens' women are, I would think one wife too many," another prelate called out. Irritated, Simon wished he could silence them all. This was too serious a matter for such unseemly jokes. The ribald jests continued, to Simon's annoyance, until Fra Tomasso rang his bell. Then David, looking grimmer than ever, spoke to Ugolini, and Ugolini began to address the assembly. "Next the Tartars commanded all the people of Baghdad to herd out onto the plain outside the city, telling them that they would be made to leave the city only while the Tartars searched it for valuables.