Daoud and the naqeeb turned together, and Daoud was amazed to see that
Baibars, splendid in his red satin robe and green turban, was
approaching them. Daoud and Mahmoud rushed to stand before him, rigid
and trembling.
"Mahmoud," Baibars said, "when we return to Raudha Island tonight, you
will issue this fool the steel helmet of a full-fledged Mameluke,
trimmed with black fur."
He swung that searching blue eye back to Daoud. "Tonight at the Gray
Mosque I will perform the ceremony that frees you. You will be a part of
my personal guard from now on."
Dizzy with exultation, Daoud fell to his knees and pressed his forehead
to the cool brown earth before the emir. Tears burned his eyes and
dripped to the ground.
"May God praise and bless you, Emir Baibars!" he cried.
"Get up," Baibars said briskly. "Had you let your friend go unavenged, I
would no longer be interested in you."
As he scrambled to his feet, Daoud saw Mahmoud smiling through his
beard.
"You learned well the lesson I tried to teach you."
Dizzy, Daoud tried to grasp what had been going on in the minds of these
men without his realizing it.
Baibars said, "Now you must learn to kill with more grace and subtlety.
I shall see that you are trained by masters, as I did when I sent you to
Sheikh Abu Hamid al-Din Saadi."
_And I must go to Sheikh Saadi again_, thought Daoud. _That he may tell
me if I did wrong._
* * * * *
Now it was over ten years since Kassar had killed Nicetas and Daoud had
killed Kassar. And though Daoud had never felt guilty for killing
Kassar, he understood what Saadi meant about facing guilt.
If he had not understood, he might have told himself that it was not his
fault, it was these Christian brutes who chose to torment the poor
madman in this way. He might have told himself that Lorenzo, not he, had
found the man and brought him to Orvieto. He might simply have said, as
he had said to Sophia, that in war there must be innocent victims. He
might have reminded himself that he and Lorenzo thought that the man
would only raise a commotion in the church, not that he would draw a
knife.
And if he consented to any of those thoughts, he would have been
pinching off a fragment of his soul, just as the executioners pinched
off bits of this man's body.
He forced himself to watch as the cage moved slowly into the piazza and
the executioners tore again and again at the victim's body with their
red-hot pincers. He saw now that six laughing, well-dressed young men
were pulling the cart. Of course. No beast, its nostrils assailed by the
smell of burning flesh and its ears by the victim's howls of agony,
could remain calm and pull a cart through this frenzied crowd.
These were the same people who had rioted against the Tartars a month
ago, the day this man was arrested. Now they cheered and jeered at the
death of the Tartars' assailant. And that meant, Daoud thought, that the
man's death was in vain.
The cage drew near him now as it approached the scaffold. Daoud held his
breath at the thought that the condemned man might look him in the eye.
_How could I bear that?_ But the man's eyes, he saw, were squeezed shut
with fear and pain.
And guilt continued to cut into Daoud like the twisting knife blade of a
Hashishiyyin.
_A better man than I would have found a way to stir the people and keep
them stirred, so that lives would not be wasted._
The two red-garbed executioners had set aside their red-hot pincers and
were dragging the heretic up the ladder to the scaffold. His feet
dangled on the rungs. On the platform stood another man waiting for the
victim.
Daoud felt his eyes open wide and his lips begin to work silently when
he saw who the third executioner was.
His face was left bare by the executioner's black hood, whose long point
hung down the side of his head past his chin. No use to mask this man's
face; his body made him instantly recognizable to anyone who had ever
seen him before.
He smiled a serene, almost kindly smile down at the moaning man who was
being dragged up the ladder toward him. He held a cook's knife in one
hand with a blade as wide as his wrist and as long as his forearm. If he
were not holding the knife up to display it to his victim, the tip of it
would have rested on the platform, because the executioner's back was
bent forward as if it had been broken in some accident long ago.
_The firewood seller at Lucera!_
Daoud's head swam as he tried to fathom how the crippled dwarf who had
been part of the crowd of tradesmen entering the great Hohenstaufen
stronghold with him, who had witnessed Daoud's arrest by Celino at the
gate and even seemed to pray in his behalf, could be here conducting a
public execution in the city of the pope. He must have been a Guelfo
spy, by coincidence infiltrating Lucera at the same time as Daoud.
He had been in Manfred's pastry kitchen. Had he really been sleeping, or
had he seen Manfred, Lorenzo, and Daoud walk through together?
_If he sees me here in the crowd, he will expose me!_ The people around
Daoud, their breath reeking of onions and garlic, pressed him so tightly
he could barely move. Twisting his body, he managed to get his back
turned to the scaffold. This put him face-to-face with a
broad-shouldered man in a mud-brown tunic, with a thick black beard and
mustache. The man laughed at him.
"Would you turn away? Have you no stomach for Erculio's holy work?"
Daoud fixed the man with a stare, thinking of what he would like to do
to him. He realized, though, that if he tried to fight his way out of
the piazza, the little man on the scaffold would certainly notice him.
If he simply stayed where he was and watched, his would be one face in
thousands, and the dwarf obviously had more pressing business. He
reached up to the soft cap on his head, making sure it covered most of
his blond hair. Without a word to the man in brown, who had shrunk from
his stare, Daoud turned and faced the platform. He was just in time to
see the bent dwarf--Erculio, was that his name?--bless himself, just as
he had at Lucera.
Daoud's heart pounded as he imagined himself and Lorenzo and Ugolini
suffering as this naked, bleeding blistered heretic was.
_And Sophia! God forbid! I would cut her throat myself before I let
anything like this happen to her._
The thought of Sophia being tortured in public was such agony that he
wanted to scream and fight his way out of the piazza. He did Sufi
breathing exercises to calm himself.
They had tied the moaning victim down on a wooden sawhorse. Lying on his
back, he was low enough that the bent man could easily reach any part of
him. One of the executioners in red held the victim's mouth open, and
the little man reached in with one hand, pulled forth the tongue and
sliced it off. Like a jongleur producing an apple from his sleeve, he
waved the severed tongue at the crowd, then threw it. A forest of hands
clutched at it. Common people everywhere, Daoud recalled, believed that
parts of the bodies of condemned men could be used in magic.
It took a moment for Erculio to saw the heretic's nose off. With tongue
and nose gone, the condemned man's screams no longer sounded human. They
were like the bellowings of a steer being clumsily slaughtered.
Daoud realized that he was grateful for the problem that the little man
presented. It gave him something urgent to think about other than what
he was watching.
Erculio now stuck the knife, point down, in the platform and used both
hands to tear the heretic's eyeballs out. The tormented man was silent
now. He must have fainted. The little man danced about him, jabbing him
repeatedly with the knife until the screams started again.
Were the nobles and churchmen enjoying this as much as the common folk,
Daoud wondered. There seemed to be fewer prelates in red and purple on
the church and steps when he looked. Ugolini stood with his hands behind
his back, turning his eyes away from the scene in the piazza. De
Verceuil stared right at the victim, his little mouth open in a grin
showing white teeth. D'Ucello stood stolidly between his guards, his
arms folded. He did not seem to have moved or changed the expression on
his face since Daoud first saw him.
Simon de Gobignon was pale as parchment, and even as Daoud watched, the
young man turned and hurried into the cathedral.
_Weakling! It is because of you, too, that this man suffers, but you
cannot face it._
Erculio, dancing, grimacing comically under his black mustache, feinted
repeatedly with his knife at the condemned man's groin. When the shouts
of the crowd had reached a crescendo, he fell upon his victim and sliced
away testicles and penis with quick strokes. The heretic gave a long,
shivering howl of agony, then was silent. The little man tossed the
bloody organs into the air. An executioner in red caught them and threw
them to the other one, who in turn hurled them into the crowd.
_I hope dozens of them are killed in the scramble. God forgive me for
the pain I have caused this man._
The two men in red untied the condemned man and heaved him to his feet,
his face and body so running with blood that he, too, seemed dressed in
red. The crowd began to back away from the scaffold, and Daoud felt
himself irresistibly carried back with them. The executioners tied the
limp form of the heretic to the stake jutting up from the center of the
platform.
The black-clad dwarf scuttled like a monkey to the edge of the platform,
and someone handed him a flaming torch. He danced with it. He whirled it
in great circles around his head, and Daoud heard it hissing even over
the cheers of the crowd. He swung the flame between his legs and leapt
over it. He threw it high in the air, the torch spinning under the thick
gray clouds that hung low over Orvieto. Erculio neatly caught it when it
came down. For a man so badly deformed, his agility was eerie.
Erculio turned toward the cathedral, holding up the torch. Daoud
followed the dwarf's gaze and saw d'Ucello, the podesta, his face a
white mask, give a wave of assent.
Spinning on his heels, the dwarf scurried to the ladder, scrambled down
a few rungs, and threw the torch into the tinder piled under the
platform. Then he turned and leapt out into space. The other two
executioners had left the platform and stood at the bottom of the
ladder, and one of them caught Erculio and swung him down.
The flames shot up with a roar, a red and gold curtain around the
heretic. Daoud heard no more cries of pain. Perhaps he was already dead
of his wounds. Daoud prayed to God that it be so.
The smoke did not rise in the hot, moist air, but coiled and spread
around the scaffold. People coughed and wiped their eyes and drew back
farther from the blaze. Daoud was close enough to feel the heat, and on
such a sweltering day it was unbearable. But now, he discovered, he
could move. The crowd was dispersing. There was nothing more to see. The
heretic was surely dead, and the smoke and flames hid the destruction of
his body.
Daoud looked up at the cathedral steps. There were no red or purple
robes there, and the papal banner was gone. The Count de Gobignon had
reappeared and was staring at the fire. As Daoud watched, the count
stumbled down the steps, his arms hanging loosely at his sides.
Daoud turned to go back to Ugolini's.
"Well, Messer David, do they do as thorough a job on heretics in
Trebizond?"
Daoud's path was blocked by a man in a scarlet robe. From beneath the
wide circular brim of a great red hat, the long, dark face of Cardinal
de Verceuil glowered at him. Thick red tassels hung down from the hat
all around the cardinal's head.
Immediately behind de Verceuil stood two attendants. One held high a
white banner blazoned with a red cross and a gold flower shape in two of
the quarters; the other man, a sturdy, shaven-headed young cleric in
black cassock, carried a long golden rod that curved into a tight spiral
at the top. That was called a crosier, Daoud recalled, and was the
cardinal's staff of office. Behind them were four men-at-arms who looked
hard at Daoud, as if expecting him to give offense to their master.
Daoud wondered if the cardinal would consider having him killed here in
public. Daoud stared at him through the smoky air, measuring him,
looking for those small signs of tension to be found in a man about to
order an attack. The man seemed too relaxed for that.
"No, Your Eminence, we only stone our heretics to death."
De Verceuil smiled. "That may be a better way of disposing of them.
After a burning, the unpleasant thought always occurs to me that I am
carrying the heretic away in my nostrils and lungs."
Sickened inwardly at this reminder of the rancid smell that had come
from the heretic's pyre, Daoud smiled at the grisly jest, as he assumed
the cardinal expected him to. He remained silent, waiting for de
Verceuil to reveal the reason for this encounter.
"Ordinarily we merely burn heretics," the cardinal went on. "We had this
man tormented first because he threatened our guests, the Tartar
ambassadors, and disturbed a service in the cathedral with the pope
himself present. We had to be severe with him."
"Assuredly," said Daoud, still smiling. De Verceuil's Italian sounded
strange to him. He must be speaking it with a French accent.
"But perhaps, since you seem to think the Tartars are such a danger to
Christendom," said de Verceuil in a voice that was lower and more
menacing, "you approve of what that man did." He gestured toward the
burning scaffold. The stake and whatever was left of the body bound to
it had fallen through the platform into the pile of faggots. A breeze
had sprung up and was blowing the smoke away from Daoud and the
cardinal, for which Daoud thanked God.
"I came here today to see justice done," Daoud said firmly.
"You profess the Greek Church," said de Verceuil, eyeing him coldly.
"That makes you a heretic yourself."
The men-at-arms behind the cardinal shifted restlessly, and Daoud
wondered again if de Verceuil meant to provoke a fight leading to a
killing. Or perhaps have him arrested. He looked past de Verceuil and
his men and saw that some curious citizens had formed a circle around
himself and the cardinal. And there was de Gobignon, standing watchfully
only a short distance away at the foot of the cathedral steps. Was his
sword, too, at the cardinal's command?
"If you are concerned about justice, it is too bad you chose to be
Cardinal Ugolini's guest during your stay in Orvieto," de Verceuil said.
"You will hear only a corrupt Italian point of view in his household."
Praise God, de Verceuil was not pursuing the matter of Daoud's heresy.
Daoud shrugged. "I have seen what devastation the Tartars do, Your
Eminence. With respect, let me say to you that they are as much a danger
to your country, France, as to Italy."
De Verceuil essayed what he may have thought was an ingratiating smile,
but his small mouth made him look sly and sour.
"I invite you to come to live at the Palazzo Monaldeschi. I have spoken
to the contessa, and she would be most happy to receive you. The
Monaldeschi are the wealthiest family in Orvieto, and they have
connections with other great families in the Papal States. If you wish
to find good customers for your silks and spices here, it is the
contessa you should see. And if you would trade with France, perhaps I
can help you there."
The possibility of spending some days and nights in enemy headquarters
was intriguing. But would it be prudent to put himself into de
Verceuil's and de Gobignon's hands?
Daoud shook his head with what he hoped was a regretful smile. "Forgive
me, Your Eminence. Your offer of the contessa's hospitality overwhelms
me, but I have already promised to remain with Cardinal Ugolini, and he
would be deeply offended if I were to leave him."
De Verceuil glowered. "Ugolini is from Hohenstaufen territory. The
Monaldeschi have always been loyal to the pope and have great influence
with him. Just as I have with King Louis of France and his brother,
Count Charles. Come to us, and when you go back to your own land you
will be a wealthy man."
"Could it be that Your Eminence hopes I might change my testimony about
the Tartars?"
Daoud felt close to laughter as the cardinal's cheeks reddened.
De Verceuil shot back, "Could it be that your enmity to the Tartars is
more important to you than your profit as a merchant?"
Daoud's heart beat harder. That was too close to the mark. It was
foolish of him to jest with a man who had the power to condemn him and
his friends to be tortured and burned like that poor madman.
"I regret that I have offended Your Eminence," he said. "I have seen
what I have seen, and I am honor bound to speak the truth. And profit
will do me no good if the Tartars slaughter us all."
"You are ignorant of our ways," de Verceuil said ominously, after a long
pause during which Daoud felt raindrops strike his face. "Have a care
that you do not slip into pitfalls you cannot possibly foresee."
First de Verceuil joked, then he threatened, then he offered
hospitality, then he threatened again. He seemed to have no sense of how
to deal with men.
_Even if we were on the same side, I would hate him. What a trial he
must be for his allies._
But Daoud was eager to get away without creating any deeper enmity
between himself and the cardinal. "I thank you again for your offer of
hospitality, Your Eminence. Even if I cannot come to live at the
Monaldeschi palace, I do hope to meet the contessa. She has graciously
invited Cardinal Ugolini to her reception for the Tartar ambassadors,
and I shall accompany him."
"Do not think you are free to do as you please in Orvieto," said de
Verceuil angrily. "You are being closely watched." He turned abruptly
and strode off. Daoud bowed politely to his scarlet back. Casting ugly
looks at Daoud, the cardinal's men followed.
Daoud told himself that it would be wise to be frightened. But what he
felt was more a profound disdain for Paulus de Verceuil.
_As a man of religion or of power, how can this squawking bird in red
plumage compare with Sheikh Saadi and the Imam Fayum of the
Hashishiyya?_
The rain was coming down harder. It hissed in the still-burning heap of
wood and bones.
A movement near the cathedral steps caught Daoud's eye. He turned and
saw Simon de Gobignon looking at him. Why was he alone? Had he, like
Daoud, not wanted any of his comrades to see this horror?
How infuriating it must be for that proud young Frank to have to work
closely with a man like Cardinal de Verceuil. The cardinal was so
arrogant, so overbearing, so crude as to turn people _against_ any cause
he might support, no matter how worthy.
As the rain fell on him, Daoud hardly noticed it. He saw a new plan
shimmering like a mirage on the horizon of his mind.