_Well she might_, thought Simon. The contessa's face turned scarlet as she recounted her injuries. "Now that canaglia Marco would surely love to finish us by killing Vittorio and me. But he is not man enough. And one day I will cut out _his_ tongue and _his_ heart." "Might the Filippeschi attack John and Philip, thinking it would hurt you?" Simon asked. The contessa thought for a moment and nodded. "Ah, that is very clever of you. Certainly, they would treat any guest of mine as an enemy of theirs." She smiled. "At any rate, you need not worry about protecting the Tartars today. They are not here." Simon felt as if a trapdoor had opened under his feet. "Where are they?" The contessa shrugged. "Riding out in the hills. They left hours ago. They took their own guards and the old Franciscan with them. He told me they were restless." _God's wounds!_ Simon remembered the bloody fight between the Venetians and the Armenians. He remembered Giancarlo and his bravos. He thought about what the contessa had just said about the enmity of the Filippeschi. He pictured the mutilated bodies of the Tartars sprawled on a mountain road. "Did my French knights go with them?" The contessa shrugged. "They are in the palazzo courtyard, practicing with wooden swords." Simon ground his teeth in rage. _The idiots! Training themselves for some future battle while their charges go off to face God knows what dangers!_ "Which road did the Tartars take? I must go after them." The contessa was by now rather obviously annoyed at his lack of interest in her. "I do not know. Perhaps Cardinal Paulus knows. He spoke to them before they left." Simon bade the contessa a polite good-bye. She insisted on embracing him. He wondered if he had looked as foolish to Sophia as Donna Elvira now appeared to him. * * * * * For the second time that day Simon found himself sitting in a chair that was too small for him. The back of this one came to an abrupt stop halfway up his spine, and his shoulders ached even though he had been sitting for only a few moments. He had taken off his gloves and tucked them in his sword belt, and he sat with his fists clenched in his lap. De Verceuil strode across the room and stood over Simon. "I may yet demand that you be sent home. I cannot imagine why the Count of Anjou entrusted such a stripling with a mission of this importance." "Your Eminence may not approve of my visiting Cardinal Ugolini," Simon said, keeping his voice firm, "but can you show me where I have done wrong?" He did not want to talk about Ugolini; he wanted to find out where the Tartars were. But de Verceuil had not even given him time to ask. "You could have gone wrong in a thousand ways," said de Verceuil, staring down at Simon. "Both the king and Count Charles have confided in you. Rashly, I believe. You might have revealed more about their intentions than you should have."