He kicked again with his legs, and when he hit the end of the outward swing, the rope feeling as if it would cut him in two, he grabbed for a tree branch, barely visible in the darkness. It hit him in the stomach and knocked all the wind out of him, but he clung to it desperately. Bent double over the tree limb, he looked down and saw shadows that might be forest floor as far below him as his own height. Then again, he might be seeing the tops of other trees. He drew his dagger and cut the rope around his middle but held it with one hand. He took deep, relieved breaths when the constraint was gone. He gave three sharp jerks on the rope, the signal that he was down. After a moment all tension left the rope, and he felt it falling in the darkness. Another moment and he heard rustlings, thumps, and splashes as the rope landed at the bottom of the crevice. Tomorrow's dumping, he thought, would quite conceal it. He wondered briefly if David and Riccardo had safely left the dumping shed and were on their way back to Ugolini's. He looked down again into the darkness, realizing that if he jumped from here he might fall far enough to kill himself. Having swung away from the pile of offal, he was now more worried about breaking his neck. He pulled himself up, straddling the tree and facing in toward the trunk. He slid down to the trunk, then tried to feel about with his foot for another branch. His feet met nothing. He swung over the side of the branch, feeling the trunk with one hand and the space below him with his feet. Still nothing. Now he was dangling from the limb, holding on with two aching hands. If he had not worn gloves, he would have no skin left on his palms. _Well, here goes one hopeful atheist._ He let go. He fell a short distance, feetfirst, into a pool of water. It came up over his low boots, soaking his hose. There was no smell; apparently it was a pure forest pool, probably a puddle enlarged by the recent rain. Sighing, he sloshed out of it. Small creatures hopped and scurried away from him. _It could have been much, much worse._ Glad to feel his feet on the ground, he hoped the rest of his journey to Siena would be less exciting than the beginning. XLVI Friar Mathieu sat in a cushion-lined armchair in the cloistered garden of the Hospital of Santa Clara, the white wisps of his beard ruffling like feathers in the morning breeze. The dappled shade of a pear tree protected him from the June sun. A young Franciscan, his tonsured head a gleaming pink spot surrounded by a wreath of close-cropped black hair, stood at a tall desk beside Friar Mathieu, writing on a piece of parchment. "All things lead to good if one looks at them aright," Friar Mathieu said with a chuckle. "That murderer in black gave me the time I needed to do something needful--get the story of my journey among the Tartars written before it is lost in my failing memory. A good thing I did not land on my head."