"I was asking you to think, not carry on," said Tilia reprovingly. "If you want to walk well in life, you had better learn not to burst into tears when you have an important decision to make." Rachel took deep breaths to calm herself. "I decided days ago that I could not do any better for myself than this, Signora Tilia. But I am so afraid. Perhaps the man will not want me when he sees how afraid I am." Tilia grinned broadly. "Nonsense. The more innocent and timid you appear, the more you will delight him." Rachel heard a light tapping at the door, and her heart beat so hard she thought it would burst. Tilia rose, brushing down her green satin gown. "The signal that he has arrived. I thought he would never get here. It's almost morning. I must go down and greet him, child. But remember, I will be watching everything." _I do not really like that._ Tilia winked and pushed on what looked like a plaster panel between two gold-painted beams in the wall. It swung away from her and she squeezed through. Rachel sat in the bed, drawn up into the corner of it that was farthest from the door, and waited. She played nervously with fingers that felt like icicles. A short time later she caught a glimpse of Tilia pushing open the door, but her eyes fixed on the man standing in the doorway. She drew in a deep, gasping breath. She wanted to scream. The man standing in the doorway was short and broad. He wore a long, brightly colored silk robe. His skin was brown, his eyes little black slits. A white mustache drooped below his flat nose. A thin white beard like a goat's hung from his chin. She had seen this man once before, when she watched from the window of Sophia's room at Cardinal Ugolini's, the day he arrived in Orvieto in a great procession. Rachel's breath, so long held, burst out of her in a moan. The man who had come to take her virginity was a Tartar. * * * * * "It was as much by my choice as the cardinal's that I did not attend the contessa's reception," said Friar Mathieu, yawning. "How could a Little Brother of San Francesco stay up till all hours with people stuffing themselves with rich food and drinking wine? And gambling, and kissing each other in dark corners?" The old Franciscan's eyes were watery with sleepiness, but the corners of his mouth quirked with humor under his white mustache. He sat on the edge of the cot, which, as he had insisted when he moved into the Palazzo Monaldeschi, was the only piece of furniture in the room. Simon paced the floor, unable to stand still. Simon felt the barb in the mention of kissing, but he did not mind it. When he routed Friar Mathieu out of his narrow bed in a remote corner of the palace, he admitted at once that he had been in the atrium with Ugolini's niece, Sophia, while David of Trebizond was so disastrously baiting the Tartars.