Fortunate that Rachel's husband, a man who had spent many months of the year on the roads of Italy buying and selling books in the Jewish communities, had carried a tent with him. Daoud, Sophia, Rachel, and even Scipio had all crowded into it when they saw the storm coming. The tent had leaked, but the heat of the August afternoon would soon dry them. Daoud hoped none of the others had noticed his fear during the storm. He had been in the desert when lightning crackled in black clouds and the wind blew smothering waves of sand. But the thunderstorms they had been through had seemed to be just overhead, and so much water had fallen from the sky, Daoud was sure they would soon be drowned. It seemed almost miraculous to him that he could emerge from Rachel's tent alive and find the world outside as intact as he had left it. Better than he left it, because it was now washed clean of dust. He walked to the edge of the road to see if Lorenzo was returning from Orvieto. Orvieto. Across the valley, out of a deep-green forest rose a gigantic yellow rock shaped like a camel's hump. Crowning the hump, a wall of gray stone encircled the peaked roofs and bell towers of churches, the battlements of palaces and the red-tiled roofs of houses. One narrow road zigzagged up the steep side of the great rock, sometimes disappearing into clumps of trees, a white streak against the ocher cliffs. A city built on an almost inaccessible mountaintop, like the strongholds of the Hashishiyya. He spied a horseman in purple cap and brown cloak descending the road from the city. Celino. Following him was a glittering gilt sedan chair carried by four bearers. The breeze that had brought the storm had died away, and Daoud was beginning to feel the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. A mild sun compared to that of Egypt, even though this was the middle of the Italian summer, but he drew up his cotton hood to shade his head. He glanced over his shoulder. Rachel and Sophia were in the clearing on the other side of the road, watering the horses in a stream that ran down the hillside. Rachel was nodding eagerly as Sophia talked. He hoped she was not telling Rachel too much. Just as he himself might have told Sophia too much, he thought ruefully. Celino arrived at Daoud's camp well ahead of the sedan chair. Scipio had bounded up the road to meet his master, and now licked the hand that Celino held out as he dismounted. Celino said, "Cardinal Ugolini sends this messenger, who may surprise you." When the sedan chair came to rest on the side of the road, Daoud saw that the four bearers were black men of Africa. They wore scarlet vests, and sweat glistened on their bare arms and chests. Sheikh Saadi had been such a man, and there were many such men in the Egyptian army. Daoud wondered if these, too, were Muslims. In the city of the pope? Not likely.