"Let one Christian soul be near me at the last ere the curse of that wizard with the yellow cap is fulfilled on me.

For the sake of Jesus, stay! I'll tell all I know." "Speak then, and be swift.

You have no time to spare, I think." "When the darkness fell there in the Place of Arms," began Nicholas, "while you knights were waiting for the third blast of the trumpet, Cattrina fled under cover it." "As I thought, the accursed coward!" exclaimed Hugh bitterly.
"Nay, to be just, it was not all cowardice.

The wizard in the yellow cap, he who showed himself to the people afterward and called down this Black Death on Venice, appeared to him in the darkness and said something to him that turned his heart to water.

I think it was that if he stayed, within five short minutes he'd be dead, who otherwise, if he fled, had yet a breathing space of life.