Lorenzo set the trencher and its burden of meat down before Daoud.
"Just butchered. Here, eat in good health. And here is a beaker of our good red wine of Monte Vultura." Daoud heard a false note in Celino's present heartiness and liked it even less than his earlier gruff suspicion.
Wine. An abomination forbidden by the Prophet. As Celino set a pitcher and two cups down on the table, Daoud recalled the nights he had spent with Sheikh Saadi learning to master wine and other drugs.
God prohibits the drinking of wine and the eating of unclean foods, not for His good, for nothing can harm Him, but for our good. Therefore, when a man goes among the infidel as a spy, God permits him to eat and drink the forbidden things lest he be discovered and put to death. You must learn to separate your mind from your body so that what harms your body will not affect your mind.
Daoud raised the cup, wondering if he would have as much power over wine drunk in the land of the infidel as he did when he drank it with his teacher. He sipped. The red liquid was thick and bitter and burned his mouth, but he made himself smile, sigh appreciatively, and sip again. He kept God at the center of his thoughts.
Celino was watching him closely. Raising his cup in salute, he also drank.
"Good, good. Now eat. Fresh roasted. Pork."
Daoud's fingers, poised over the meat, stopped short. Already made ill by hunger, by the vile odor of the room in which he had been confined, and by the wine that made his stomach churn, he felt himself on the point of vomiting. For nearly twenty years the prohibition against eating the flesh of pigs had been impressed upon him until the very thought of pork made him sick. He knew he should have prepared himself by eating it before he left El Kahira, but he had never found time for that. So now, a prisoner of the enemy, he faced for the first time the test of pork.
Celino was watching him with a half smile.
He would not test me with wine and pig's meat unless he suspected I am a Muslim.