Grace stared with wide eyes and said, "But he would not have stolen something if he is a Christian."
Mai Lin let out a surprising cackle and slapped a palm against her wrinkled cheek. Grace's cheeks flushed as she sensed the crowd turning to look at them. She must speak to Mai Lin about treating her more respectfully, especially in public.
Just then, out into the square stepped a large man in a black robe with a saber hanging from his belt. The sword had to be three feet long, with a black lacquer handle and sheath. A red braided tassel swayed from the hilt. Grace had never seen such a handsome and frightening weapon. The man wore a black cloth over his forehead and another pulled up to his nose so that only his eyes were visible in the narrow slit between. He unsheathed his sword and swung it over his head.
The silver blade caught the late-afternoon sunlight as the man performed some sort of ritual, a dance that edged him nearer and nearer to the prisoner. The soldiers stood at attention and watched while the crowd became more quiet and tense. Grace wanted to look away. She knew she would regret it if she did not, but her eyes stayed frozen on every movement of the man who swung the sword. She heard Mai Lin mumbling beside her and noticed that the old woman's eyes were shut. Yes, Mai Lin's head was bowed in prayer, although Grace could not guess to what god she whispered.
The swordsman circled the cowering figure. He bent deeply in a ritual genuflection and let out a menacing cry that echoed across the courtyard and bounced off the city walls. The crowd answered with a nearly imperceptible gasp. Two soldiers lifted the prisoner and forced his bound arms over a bamboo pole. The man ducked his head as low as he could, as if that might help him escape his end.
Grace had a most startling thought at that moment: if that were she kneeling in the dust, she would not want to give the barbarians the satisfaction of seeing her cowed. She would not bow her head in prayer. She simply wouldn't do it, devout husband or no.
The Chinese man was a better Christian than she. The prisoner and Mai Lin both prayed frantically now. Grace wanted to shout at them: what was the use of prayer when the blade was about to strike? What good could it do when evil was upon you? No such prayers could save this man, just as fervent prayer had not saved her son when he had been stolen from her.
The sword drew an extravagant arc through the air. While it twisted and curved in arabesques, Grace wondered if the terrible thing might never actually happen. Maybe the blow would never be struck. That would be the only true miracle to prove once and for all that prayers had been answered.
But as she watched, Grace knew that she would carry the memory of this moment with her for the rest of her life, and in that way, the moment would never fully come to an end. The sword would hover continuously over the kneeling man's neck. The red tassel would dance forever like a gaudy bauble against the blue sky. The prisoner's final desperate cries would echo endlessly off the city walls and across the hushed courtyard. All of it would live on in Grace's mind in an endless cycle, never bringing relief or deliverance.
The slow, steady chewing of the ignorant donkeys to her right, the wild reverberations of her own heart pounding in her ears would remain always. At least, during that unbearably long moment, Grace hoped that would be the case. For as terrible as it was to wait, it was better than the swift and irreversible end that finally came too soon.
The blade hit bone with a sickening crack.
Grace yanked a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it against her mouth, where it hardly muted the terrified scream that rose from her lips. Her cry was all the more deafening because of the silence around her.
A hard thud sounded as the head hit packed earth. A duller thud signaled the body falling forward onto its stump. The soldiers who had held the bamboo pole let it drop and watched without expression. Blood spurted onto the dirt and soaked into the skin of the still-twitching man. It darkened the dust