The interior of the cathedral was ablaze with the light of a thousand candles, but Simon was not impressed by the windows, which were small and narrow and filled with dull-colored glass. This was an old church, he thought, remembering the huge windows of many-colored glass in the newer cathedrals of France. The crowd was so tightly packed that Simon and Friar Mathieu could not get to the front of the nave, where chairs had been set before the altar for dignitaries. They had to be content with standing halfway down the length of the church. Simon thought wryly that he was getting used to being pushed into the background. Perhaps he was accepting it too easily. Pope Urban, his white hair uncovered, had raised high the round wafer of bread for the Consecration of the Mass, when an angry shout echoed through the cathedral. A chill went through Simon's body, cold as a knife blade. Using his shoulder as a wedge, he forced his way through the crowd toward the source of the sound, near the front of the church. "Ex Tartari furiosi!" the man was shouting in Latin. "Libera nos, Domine!" _From the fury of the Tartars, Lord deliver us!_ Cries of dismay rang out near the disturbance, and people began shouting in Italian. "Stand aside! Let me through!" Simon shouted. If this were an assassin, reverence for the mass, even for the pope, must be set aside. Again and again the shout rose, "Ex Tartari furiosi!" It was harder to move through the crowd. People were struggling to get away from the man making the uproar. Simon stopped, shoved men right and left to make room, and pulled his scimitar from his scabbard. People around him turned at the unmistakable rasp of steel on leather, a sound that so often preceded sudden death. They saw the Saracen sword in Simon's hands and drew back. As Simon hoped, more people noticed and fell over one another trying to get out of his way. Like Moses' rod parting the Red Sea, Simon's scimitar opened a path for him. Simon saw a young man with a tangled mass of brown hair whipping about his face and a brown beard that spread over his chest. He was big and broad-shouldered, and he wore a plain white robe, ragged and gray with dirt, and sandals. In one hand he held a dagger. _Blood of Jesus! He must have come here to kill the Tartars._ Terrified people had opened a circle around the white-robed man, and as he moved toward the front of the cathedral the open space moved with him. "Stop!" Simon cried. Baring greenish-looking teeth in a snarl, the man swiveled his shaggy head toward Simon, then immediately rushed at him. _He's crazy_, Simon thought, a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He crouched, holding his sword out before him, diagonally across his chest. "Do not kill him!" boomed a deep voice that Simon recognized as de Verceuil's. The man with the dagger hesitated now, just out of reach of Simon's sword. _Am I to risk my life to keep this madman alive?_