"No, but I thought now that she has been with us awhile and there has
been no trouble, you might change your mind."
"I do not change my mind so easily." By God, working with this woman was
an ordeal. She argued and complained far too much. He wondered whether
showing their faces in public made Christian women overbold.
"But where can she go? You would not really cast her out to starve."
"Tilia Caballo will take her in."
"You will force her into that horrible fat woman's brothel? And she only
a child?"
"She is nearly thirteen. Many women are married by then."
"She has not even started bleeding yet."
"How do you know that?" Daoud felt somewhat embarrassed.
"She told me, of course."
"She need only be a serving girl at Tilia's."
"No doubt Tilia would find her too precious a commodity _not_ to be
sold. There are old men who would give that woman her own weight in gold
to get their hands on an intact virgin child. And these high churchmen
can afford it."
Daoud remembered the rough hands of the first Turks who captured him and
shuddered inside himself. "She does not have to lie with men unless she
chooses that life."
"Do you really think you and Tilia would be giving her a choice?" said
Sophia angrily.
Again Daoud's feelings struggled against each other. He liked the way
she spoke up fiercely for the child. Yet it angered him that she was
making it harder for him to deal with the painful problem of Rachel.
"How much choice is anyone in this world given?" he demanded.
"Are you not here by choice, David?"
"I am the slave of my sultan," he said. "That is what the word
_Mameluke_ means--slave. He sent me here. But I am also here by choice."
"To save Islam from the Tartars." She reached her fingertips into the
water and dabbed the droplets on her forehead.
He caught the note of skepticism in her voice. "Yes. Do you not believe
that?"
"Can you see yourself through my eyes?" There was an earnestness in her
face, as if she badly wanted not to doubt him.
"No, how do you see me?" he asked gently.
"I see a Frankish warrior, fair of hair and face." She turned and looked
directly at him, then quickly cast her eyes down. "Good looking enough,
for a Frank." She gestured toward his knee, encased in scarlet silk.
"You show a handsome leg in your new hose."
_Why, she cares for me!_ He felt a little leap of delight, and reminded
himself that he must not let himself be drawn to Sophia.
"You and the Turks call all men from western Europe Franks," he said.
"But my parents were not from France, but of English descent."
"You could go back to France or England with your jewels and buy a
castle and lands and an army of retainers and live like a little king.
And forget all about Islam and the Tartars."
He did not want to argue with her. He wanted to reach out and touch her
lips with his fingertips.
"I consider myself blessed by God to have been raised amid the glories
of Egypt rather than in ignorance and dirt among those you call Franks."
She nodded. "We Greeks think the people of Arabia and Egypt are the only
other civilized people in the world. Almost as civilized as we Greeks."
She said the last with a smile, and he noticed that her cheeks dimpled.