“The girl stayed in that house and began to heal. But late one night, as he tended her wounds, the learned physician seduced the girl and lay with her in secret. She fell in love with him and believed all he told her. Then one day, a knock came at the door. When the girl answered, she found one of the soldiers who had raped her on the road, bleeding from wounds. ‘Call the physician,’ he begged. ‘I am dying.’ The girl let the soldier inside, but there, remembering her pain, she picked up a hammer and smashed the soldier’s skull. When the learned physician came down the stairs, he cried, ‘What have you done?’ The girl said, ‘I have killed the man who raped me, and who murdered my brother. Nothing more.’ ‘Go back to your room and say nothing of it,’ said the physician. ‘I will make it so that no one asks questions.’

“As the physician predicted, all was well for a few days. But then the girl discovered she had got with child. Confronted by this evidence of their sin, the physician said, ‘You cannot stay in this house. I have a wife and children. They cannot discover what has passed between us.’ Handing her a few coins, he pushed her out into the road and locked his door. Stripped of her job, her virtue, and carrying his child, she fled the land of her birth. She eventually settled in a far country, where her life grew worse each year.

“And so, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you a simple question. Who did the more terrible deed? The ignorant soldiers on the road, who simply took what they wanted and went on their way? Or the learned physician who knew better? The man who took what he wanted, not with a club or a spear, but with honeyed lies and empty promises?”

Without waiting for an answer, Shad lowers his head, walks toward the bench, then turns toward the spectators, continuing to pace as he speaks.