The stout friar waxed philosophic, as was expected of him, discoursing on the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," using Alain as an example. The Sire de Pirenne's death was murder, ambush out of the dark, he said.
Loud coughing interrupted the sermon. Simon looked and saw that it was Pope Urban, bent double, Cardinal le Gros holding his arm and resting a hand on his shoulder, while Cardinal Ugolini looked alarmed. The coughing had a burbling sound to it, as if the old pope's lungs were full of fluid. A cough like that in November was an ominous thing, thought Simon.
Fra Tomasso resumed when His Holiness had quieted. To kill is not always a sin, he said, but to kill the innocent is. It is not a sin, therefore, to wage war on the Saracens, as pope after pope has called upon good Christian warriors to do, because the Saracens are not innocent. They hold in their clutches the most sacred places of Christendom, the lands where Our Lord Jesus Christ was born and died; they rob and murder pilgrims seeking to visit those holy places; and they seek to spread the false religion of Mohammedanism which denies the central mystery of our faith—Christ crucified, dead, and risen again. For all these reasons the Saracens should be fought.
Fra Tomasso paused and looked about him. Simon felt that the pause was intended to be significant, that the great Dominican was about to say something very important. But the silence was disturbed by a whispering. It came from behind Simon and to his right. He glanced in that direction and saw that the Bulgarian woman, Ana, was sitting with the two Tartars and was whispering her translation of Fra Tomasso's sermon to John, the older one, who was immediately on her left.
"We may ask ourselves, why does God permit an innocent young man like this to die?" Fra Tomasso went on. "The answer is, of course, that He permits it to make possible a greater good, the exercise of human free will. I say to you that Our Lord, Jesus Christ, crucified at the age of thirty-three, is the type of all innocent young men done to death by evil. And evil is a necessary consequence of human freedom."
Fra Tomasso looked out over his audience for another silent moment, then said, "God must value freedom very highly if He allows so much evil to occur, just so freedom can exist."
I never thought of that.
But there was very little freedom in the world, Simon thought, apart from the power to sin. Everybody from kings down to the meanest serfs was bound in a net of obligations, duties, laws, loyalties, obedience. Simon remembered what Friar Mathieu had said about using Fra Tomasso's vow of obedience, through de Verceuil's speaking to his Dominican superior, to force him to give up his opposition to the alliance.
And now Simon noticed that Fra Tomasso was looking at de Verceuil.
"Often, all too often, one man will seek to rob another of the freedom to do what is right," Fra Tomasso said. "If a superior commands another to do wrong, and the inferior obeys, the one who gives the wrongful order bears the greater burden of guilt. But some guilt also falls upon the one who obeys. It is only with the greatest reluctance and after the greatest deliberation that one should disobey any order from one of higher rank. But there are times when it must be done."