Three hundred leagues to the east, the Duke of Mitla drank two cups of wine, spilling some in his haste to get it down. He had to put aside his burning impatience at the tardiness of his allies; he was angry, and his anger frightened his guards and servants. Then he shed his armour. No squire helped him, and as the armour fell to the floor and met the spilled wine, it hissed with heat.

Dressed in Ifriquy’an aesbaestos, he went out into the public square under heavy guard to give alms to the poor on his way to mass. His chamberlain handed him a heavy purse of chain maille, and he went along a line of poor men, putting a solid gold coin in each hand. The coins were hot.

“Pray for me,” he said as he came to each man.

They fawned on him, but they had learned better than to touch him. They took their coins from a slight distance. Which he enjoyed. He hated it when the poor were not appropriately thankful for his largesse, and he basked in their proper admiration.

“Pray for me,” he said, putting a gold coin in a woman’s hand.

“Your bravos killed my man,” she said. If the touch of his fingers burned her, she gave no sign.

He paused. And glared. “Take the coin from her,” he said to his chamberlain.

The woman must have known she would forfeit the coin by making any protest, but she struggled and a pair of soldiers beat her with their scabbarded swords. The gathered crowd watched, silent, as the thugs beat the woman, who was old enough to be anyone’s mother. It wasn’t a severe beating; no bones were broken. It was merely humiliating.

Infuriatingly, the woman smiled throughout her beating.

“You’ll see,” she said through her split lips.

“See what, Mother?” asked one of the soldiers. “You don’t have anything I want to see.” He smacked her again for emphasis and then tugged at his hose to smooth them while his partner rotated his head, reseating his chain maille collar.

The duke moved on, putting coins into hands of fawning men, now well ahead of his escort.

“You missed one,” whispered his chamberlain.

The Duke of Mitla was at the part he always dreaded—the lepers. He tried not to touch them at all, and indeed, he feared them.

But in his hurry to get it done, he’d skipped a man, a sort of huddle of rags with a round, nondescript face.

He held out the coin and the man seized his hand, a shocking invasion of his space. And used it to pull himself to his feet.

“Pray for me,” spat the duke in revulsion. The man was a leper. And he had touched the duke. The duke turned away and hurried through the others, avoiding contact as much as he could.