The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 59

The sultan's eyes narrowed, and a deep crease appeared between his brows as he turned to Baibars. "Is this Frankish murderer a protege of yours, then?"

Baibars nodded. "I have seen reason to take a personal interest in him, if it please My Lord."

What did that mean? What had Baibars seen in him that day in the slave market, and why had Baibars come there that day?

_I have long watched for such a one as you, who could have the outward look of a Christian knight but the mind and heart of a Mameluke. One like you could be a great weapon against the enemies of the faith._

"It does not please me," said Qutuz shortly. "There is too much breaking of rules among the Bhari Mamelukes." He spoke, Daoud thought, as if he were not originally a Mameluke himself.

"There is a law among Mamelukes more binding than any lesser rule," said Baibars quietly. "He who feels himself greatly sinned against must strike back. If he cannot do that, he is not enough of a man to be a Mameluke. Even as this foolish boy said, the strong must rule."

Daoud saw grave approval in Baibars's brown face and realized that it did not matter at all to Baibars that Ka.s.sar was a Kipchaq. His joy grew as he realized that he had Baibars on his side.

Daoud remembered Nicetas's dying words--_I am not strong enough to be a Mameluke_.

_But together we were strong enough to do what had to be done._

Qutuz said, "If all Mamelukes believed only in the rule of the strongest, we would have chaos."

"Only if it were not certain who _is_ strongest," said Baibars quietly.

Baibars and Qutuz sat looking at each other in a grave and thoughtful silence that seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, Qutuz turned away.

"I must allow you to discipline the Bhari Mamelukes--or not discipline them--as you see fit, Bunduqdari. That is your responsibility."

"Thank you, My Lord," said Baibars with just a hint of sarcasm.

He turned to Mahmoud. "Take him away."

Daoud crossed the field, walking beside Mahmoud, wondering how his khushdashiya, cl.u.s.tered together around what had been their goal, would greet him.

_I have killed Ka.s.sar_, Daoud thought. _I have taken a life._ It was the first time, and he felt glad and proud.

But he would gladly give up this proud moment to have Nicetas back. His grief for Nicetas was sharp as ever, not at all eased by vengeance.

_Is it wrong to have done as I did and to feel this way?_

A sharp voice rang out behind them. "Mahmoud!"

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 G.o.d 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 Ka.s.sar had killed Nicetas and Daoud had killed Ka.s.sar. And though Daoud had never felt guilty for killing Ka.s.sar, 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 a.s.sailed 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' a.s.sailant. 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?"