"Well--I hope you will not hold it against myself and the cardinal--but
besides Sordello here, there are two of his henchmen in the room we have
been occupying."
"Also dead?"
"Also dead. They were trying to rob us."
Now Sophia remembered that Sordello had brought two Venetians with him,
and she remembered the barks and growls that had come up through the
floorboards while she was alone with Sordello. What had happened down
there between Ugolini and Tilia and Sordello's men? And Scipio?
Sophia looked at Tilia and noticed that she wore a small smile of
satisfaction and was fingering her jeweled pectoral cross.
_I need not worry about Tilia_, she thought grimly.
Simon sighed. "There must be a basement in this house, a root cellar,
something of the kind. Lorenzo, you and I will find a place to take the
bodies."
The room grew cold with Sophia and Rachel alone in it, and Sophia put
more logs on the fire, thankful that the merchant who had hurriedly
vacated this place had left plenty of wood. She lay down in the big bed
beside Rachel.
Hesitantly, Rachel told Sophia that she, with Friar Mathieu, had been
present at Daoud's death. She showed Sophia the little leather capsule,
and Sophia, remembering the many times she had seen it around Daoud's
neck, broke into a fresh storm of weeping.
Rachel held it out to her. "I think perhaps you should be the one to
have it."
"No. He gave it to you." Sophia wiped her eyes, drew out the locket and
opened it, looked sadly at the meaningless tracery of lines on its
rock-crystal surface, barely visible in the light from the low fire.
"This locket is what he gave me. It seems the magic in it died with him,
but it is a precious keepsake." She remembered that she had been looking
at the locket when Sordello tried to kill Simon. Why had he tried to do
that? It made no sense, but because of it she had killed Sordello, and
of that she was glad. She had avenged Daoud.
Desperately needing to know every detail of Daoud's death, Sophia
questioned Rachel until, in the middle of a sentence, the girl fell
asleep.
Sophia lay wide awake in the dark, crying silently. Lying there was
hell, as she had expected it would be. After what seemed like hours, the
fire on the hearth died. She got up and piled three bed carpets over
Rachel.
She wrapped herself in her winter cloak and slipped out of the room.
Going, she knew not where, but unable to remain still. Wanting only to
distract herself from her pain with a little movement.
She went down the stairs, passing the silent second-floor room were
Ugolini and Tilia lay. She heard men's voices from a room on the ground
floor.
The cabinet of the merchant who owned this house was just inside the
front door. There Sophia found Simon and Lorenzo seated facing each
other at a long black table. Scipio, lying on the floor near the
doorway, opened one eye, twitched an ear at her, and went back to sleep.
With a quill Simon was writing out a document, while Lorenzo used a
candle flame to melt sealing wax in a small brass pitcher on a tripod.
Simon gave her a brief, sad smile. He had taken off his mail, and wore
only his quilted white under-tunic.
Lorenzo stood up, went to a sideboard, and poured a cup of wine. Silent,
he handed it to Sophia. It was sweeter than she liked, but it warmed
her.
She took a chair at the end of the table. The two men sat there so
companionably that it was hard to believe that for more than two years
they had been enemies. She recalled with a pang how Daoud had said he no
longer hated Simon. If only he could be here to be part of this.
"One cannot predict these things," Lorenzo said, continuing the
conversation that had begun before Sophia arrived, "and I certainly do
not believe in trying to make them happen, but my son, Orlando, is at a
good age for marriage. And so is Rachel."
Simon looked up from his writing. "You would let your son marry a woman
who had spent over a year in a brothel?"