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.