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.