Gazing up the river, he noticed a huge round shape bulking against the horizon, a fortress of some kind. There might be danger from that direction. "Celino, you and Sophia and I are a little army in the land of our enemies. An army can have only one leader." Celino nodded. "I know that. But you must understand that if I accept you as our leader, it is of my own free will. I am still my own master." Daoud felt a strange mixture of admiration and uneasiness at this. He was painfully aware that among Mamelukes a warrior of Celino's age would be treated with great respect. Indeed, King Manfred clearly held Lorenzo in high esteem. His effort to save the old man had been noble in its way. But an impulse at the wrong time, even a noble impulse, could mean death for all of them. "Does that mean you feel free to disobey me?" "I have done whatever you wanted up to now. Except for what happened at the inn. That was different." "Why different?" Daoud demanded. "You are not a stupid man, Celino. Why did you do such a stupid thing?" Celino shook his head and turned away. "Angry as you are at me, Daoud, you cannot be angrier than I am at myself. If I had not intervened, that man Angelo Ben Ezra might yet be alive and his child-wife not widowed. They might have been hurt, and they surely would have been robbed. But I do not think those tavern louts would have gone so far as to kill them." Daoud was astonished that Celino did not even defend his actions. "Any more than we meant to kill any of those men," Daoud agreed. "But a man of your experience knows that once the sword is drawn, only God knows who will live or die. Yet you drew your sword against them." "The old man wandered in out of the night seeking hospitality. Instead, they were beating him, and they were going to take his donkey and everything he owned and cast him out. Because he was a Jew." "Yes, you Christians are very cruel to Jews. It is not so in the lands of Islam. But you should be used to seeing such things." "I am not a Christian, Daoud. I am a Jew myself. And that is why I went to that old man's aid." Daoud blinked in surprise, then began to laugh. "You find that funny?" "I am just as surprised to find out that you are a Jew as others would be to find out that I am a Muslim." Daoud stopped laughing. "I have known many Jews in Egypt. Abd ibn Adam, Sultan Baibars's personal physician, is a Jew. But why do you not wear the required hat?" "It is not required in Manfred's kingdom. And I would not wear it on this mission any more than you would wear a Muslim's turban." Then Celino laughed. "But if I were to drop my breeches, you would see the mark of Abraham." "I have that as well," said Daoud with a smile. "Muslims are also circumcised. I was eleven." He remembered with a twinge the old mullah chanting prayers in Arabic, the knife whose steel looked sharper and colder than any he had seen before or since.