"O Kriste!" she whispered. She wept anew as her eyes traveled over the golden body she loved and saw huge, broken blisters and patches of red skin; swollen black bruises the size of hen's eggs; long, deep lacerations filled with crusted blood; the many little black scabs of puncture wounds. "When Lorenzo and the Ghibellini get here, we will have d'Ucello and his torturers torn to pieces," she raged. She went to the table, folded a linen cloth, and dipped it in the water. "I do not hate d'Ucello," said Daoud as she began, very carefully, to clean his wounds. "He has his work and I have mine. As for his torturer--Erculio is his name--d'Ucello does not know it, but his torturer is one of us." Sophia's hand, moving the cloth lightly over a long, shallow cut that ran across the smooth, almost hairless skin of his chest, paused. Was he delirious? "One of _us_? The torturer?" Daoud looked amused. "I do not know where Erculio comes from, but he is a good servant of the God of Islam and of the sultan, who placed him there for my protection." "For your protection? You mean he would have killed you." Her body turned to ice as she faced the reality of how close she had come to losing him. "Yes," said Daoud. "I thought I would never see you again." He reached out his arms, grimacing with pain. She put down the cloth and let him hold her. Her heart swelled up in her throat and tears burned her eyes. And suddenly, as if a curtain were lifted, she saw that life with this man would always be this way. Whenever she was with him, there would always be a yesterday in which some miracle of good fortune kept him alive. There would always be a tomorrow in which he must face death yet again. Her head rested on his chest for a moment; then she wiped her face and went back to cleaning and covering his wounds. Never mind her pain. Whatever he was feeling must be much worse. He told her how to make poultices for his burns using wet cloths and powdered medicinal herbs Ugolini had prepared. It was like what she had done for his arrow wound, only now there were many more hurts to treat. Silently, in Greek, she cursed d'Ucello and cursed the torturer. She did not care whether Daoud forgave them. She would never forgive what they had done to her man. When he was in the cellar of the Palazzo del Podesta being tortured, had he grieved at the thought of losing her, as she had sorrowed for him? She worked her way down his body from head to foot, tying the poultices in place with strips of cloth. Thank God, they had done nothing to his manly part. That was often the first place a torturer went for. When would they make love again, she wondered. That depended on how long it took him to recover. Perhaps weeks, perhaps even months.