"Not knowing Fra Tomasso is actually trying to remain neutral, they will use every means they have to try to win him back, as they think, to their side. I am hoping they will try to bring Cardinal de Verceuil's influence to bear. If de Verceuil goes to Fra Tomasso--or, even better, to Fra Tomasso's superiors--he may well drive the learned friar over to our side." "What if you are wrong? What if de Verceuil and the other Franks do persuade Fra Tomasso to support the alliance? Would it not be better to leave him where he is, neutral?" Daoud shook his head. "At least this way we are trying to control what happens." She smiled. "I thought you Muslims believed in leaving things up to fate." "The efforts of men are part of the workings of fate." She would probably never understand his Muslim way of thinking. Perhaps he would not accept her love because he saw her as an unbeliever. It made her angry to think he might hold himself aloof from her because of her religion, and he not even a Muslim born. "The Turks killed your parents," she said. "How can you be a Muslim?" It was something she had never understood and had wanted to know ever since she learned what he was, but she asked it now to hurt him. He gave her that silent, burning stare, and she began to wonder, with a rippling of fear in the pit of her stomach, if she was in danger. "That was my fate," he said. "I had to lose my mother and father to find God." Before she could catch herself, she started to laugh with a kind of wildness, a touch of hysteria. She had been angry at him and had goaded him and feared his striking back, and instead he made a statement that was utterly absurd. _I lost my mother and father, and I gained nothing from it. I became nothing, neither daughter, nor wife, nor mother._ At her laughter, he took a step backward, as if she had struck him, and his tan face reddened. Now she felt terror. This time she had surely gone too far. "Forgive me. Your answer surprised me. It sounds so strange for a man of your profession to talk of finding God." "What profession?" "Well, you are a warrior and a spy, not a holy man." "We do not need to speak of this." He turned away from her to stare out the window. She looked past him at red-tiled rooftops. A flock of pigeons circled in the distance. "No," she said. "And as an unbeliever I suppose I would not understand." Surprisingly he approached her and looked down with eyes that were serious and free of anger. "If you ever, in sincerity, want to know about Islam, come and ask me, and as best I can I will answer your questions. But do not speak foolishness. And do not laugh."