Crossing To Paradise (16 page)

“Greetings in God!” Gobbo began.

“God's greetings!” Nakin replied.

“Tax,” Gobbo said.

“What tax?” asked Nakin.

“Last ship of the season. Four groats for each pilgrim.”

“You never mentioned this before,” Nakin objected, and he rounded on Simona. “Why didn't you tell us?”

Simona shrugged. “You can't tell what you don't know about.”

“No!” Nakin protested. “I won't pay it.”

Gobbo barred the way. “No tax, no ship,” he said, and he sounded quite apologetic.

Nakin turned his back on Gobbo, and set off down the gangway and almost immediately the captain landed a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You are my friends,” he said, smiling. “Three groats.”

“No,” said Nakin. “Two silver groats. Take it or leave it.”

“Take,” said Gobbo.

Out of the dark Sei appeared, holding a lantern. Nest cried out and put her arms right round him, lantern and all, and then Sei put his lantern down on the ground.

“You'll see him in fourteen weeks,” Gatty told her. “Tell him that.”

“I did!” Nest exclaimed. “This morning. And yesterday.”

In the warm wind, a hundred flags fluttered like wild birds eager to be unleashed, or imprisoned souls longing to be set free. Then a band of bright shawms and bombards and trombones lifted their loud voices and blew half the clouds away.

Gatty hurled herself at Austin, she grasped him and clasped him. Then Simona took Gatty's right hand and squeezed it.

“Oh Simona!” cried Gatty. “What was it? Apricot?”

“
Albicocca,
” Simona said in a low voice. “When you come back, I'll be waiting for you.”

Gatty ran up the gangway, followed by Nakin and Everard and Emrys and Tilda, by Snout, and last of all by Nest, fresh and flushed from Sei's long embrace.

Gatty spun round and grabbed the gunwale, so eager, so hungry for everything. She gazed at the milling hubbub on the waterfront, the dancing and gliding lights, the quiet hulks of houses, maltings and granaries in the almost-dark.

The pilgrims waved, they waved to Austin, and with his left hand Austin waved back.

Then Gatty reached for the dark sky with both hands, as if she were propping it up.

“No,” she said, “you're not a shooting star. You're our mother moon, you are.” In her clear, bold voice she caroled, “For you I will and all!” And louder yet, “I will!”

“Into
the wilderness of the sea!” Nakin proclaimed.

He and Gatty and their companions stood next to the forecastle, staring ahead as Gobbo's ship glided right past the place where Ranier had dropped the diamond ring.

At the entrance to the lagoon, the water became quite choppy. But then, almost at once, the ship picked up the northwest wind. Shouting, the sailors hoisted the second and third sails, and the ship sped over the olive-green waves.

“Forty days and forty nights in the wilderness of the sea,” announced Nakin. His lower jaw slackened and his mouth hung open. “Though not, I fear, with undue temptation.”

“Yah!” yelled a sailor, advancing towards them with a spar leveled straight at them.

The pilgrims dived out of the way.

“God's bodkin!” piped Everard.

“Jousting!” exclaimed Emrys. “Without a horse.”

“If he'd caught one of us with that,” Nakin said, “we'd be in kingdom come.” He led the other pilgrims down one side of the main deck until they were standing opposite the kitchen and immediately above their sleeping berths. “We're out of the way here. What was I saying?”

“Undue temptation,” said Nest, looking longingly back at Venice. She gave a heartfelt sigh.

“Ow!” yelped Gatty, hopping on one foot. She opened her gown, tugged at her tunic and her undershirt and, unembarrassed, inspected her right hip.

“A flea?” Nest asked.

“The size of a blackbird,” Gatty replied.

Nakin rubbed his chin. “We're scarcely underway and we've almost had our heads knocked off and Gatty's been bitten.”

“We'll soon get used to everything,” Emrys said.

“We won't get used to the bilge-water,” Nakin said. “Ugh! Each time you smell it…”

“What a Jeremiah you are!” Tilda exclaimed.

“When you're at sea, to begin with you're at sea,” Everard said, smiling at his own little joke.

“At least we've brought our own food with us,” Snout said. “Our own sausage and cheese. And our chickens.”

“And wine,” said Emrys.

In spite of their grief, the pilgrims were relieved to be on the move again. Except for Nest, that is. Often she sat on her own, and twice Gatty found her in tears. “I wish I'd stayed,” she told Gatty. “Sei wanted me to. What if I never see him again?”

Forty days and forty nights, and there were forty passengers aboard Gobbo's ship.

One man came from Scotland. He was completely bald and had terrible breath.

“You wait,” he told Gatty. “The Adriatic gets riled, she's got a temper.” His mouth was full of
t
s and
c
s and rolling
r
s.

This Scotsman seemed interested only in proving how little Gatty knew and displaying his own knowledge.

“Did you know an Arabic mile is not the same as an Italian mile?”

“No,” said Gatty.

The Scotsman shook his large head. “I thought not. I'll tell you why…You know what happens if the evening star rides low, do you?…Do bees sleep?…What's your opinion of Aristotle?…Have you never heard of the Sargasso Sea?…What's the cure for pimples?”

Gatty took to avoiding this Scotsman. Lying in her berth at night, she imagined she could hear him, droning like a June bug. And then she remembered Austin telling her, “It's one thing to know, Gatty, but quite another to understand.” I'll miss my lessons with Austin, she thought. I hope his hand heals.

Another of the passengers wore an orange cotton scarf wound round his head. He had dark eyes, a ready smile, and a carefully combed beard. On the fourth evening he sat himself down next to Gatty at one of the three dinner tables.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Home,” the man replied. “Turkey.”

“You're a Turk,” exclaimed Gatty. She was aware how large and watchful his eyes were. “Are Turks Christian?”

The man stiffened. “By Allah, no!” he said. “Christians are infidels.”

“What's infidels?”

“Unbelievers.”

“I do believe!” Gatty protested. “Of course I do.”

“Not in Allah and the Prophet Muhammad.”

“If you're a Saracen,” Gatty asked, “how can you speak English?”

“I need to talk to English scholars. English astronomers.”

“Astronomers!” Gatty exclaimed. “The stars and that?”

The Turk pinched his small black beard and nodded solemnly.

“Lady Gwyneth…” Gatty began. “Well, she was my lady. She died in Venice.”

“Peace be upon her,” said the Turk.

“She said an astronomer came to Ewloe,” Gatty told him.

“Ewloe?” the Turk inquired.

“Her castle. She said he came from Malvern, and told Lady Gwyneth that Saracens are star-wise. They're like learned adults and the English are babbling babies!”

The Saracen courteously shook his head but permitted himself a small smile. “That's not wholly true,” he said. “Adelard of Bath. Daniel of
Morley. Some Englishmen and Scotsmen are perhaps better known to us than in their own countries.”

“If you're an astronomer,” Gatty said, “you can tell me. The earth's flat, isn't it?”

“Young lady,” the astronomer began.

“I'm not a lady!” Gatty exclaimed.

“Let us go up on deck. Let us look.”

The Saracen led Gatty to one of the small boats strapped to the side of the ship. He hoisted his long gown and lowered himself into it. Then he offered Gatty his hand and she jumped down.

“Welcome to my observatory,” the astronomer said with a smile. “Much the best place aboard—or not quite aboard—this benighted ship.”

“Benighted?”

“Foul,” replied the Saracen, showing his teeth. “And Christian!”

“Amen,” said Gatty solemnly, and she crossed herself. “The earth, our priest says it's like an egg yolk, and the ocean is like the white.”

“And Bede, your historian…”

Gatty had never heard of Bede.

“…he wrote that the earth was like a ball.”

“We'd drop off.”

“Young lady,” said the Saracen. “As you can see, the sun's just setting.”

Gatty and the astronomer viewed the way in which the fiery sun had somehow broken and split along the whole horizon.

“And now look east,” the astronomer told her. “What do you see?”

“It's getting dark,” said Gatty.

“It is indeed,” the Saracen replied. “And the nearer the sky drops to the horizon, the darker it becomes. Violet, purple…”

“Like a plum,” said Gatty. “Its blue sheen.”

“Well,” said the astronomer, “why is the east almost dark while the west is on fire?”

Gatty screwed up her whole face.

“If our earth were flat,” the Saracen said, “surely we would all share the same daytime and nighttime. But as you can see, we do not.”

Gatty slowly nodded.

“Look ahead of us,” the Saracen told her. “What do you see?”

“I know. It looks curved.”

“This difficult problem,” the astronomer said gently, “has exercised minds greater than yours and mine for hundreds of years.”

Gatty liked the way the Saracen talked to her, and she was sure Lady Gwyneth would have liked it too. Sitting there in that little boat swaying like a cradle, she felt like telling him how much she did not know, and how very much she longed to know. I wish he could be my teacher, she thought, now that Austin's had to stay behind. Gatty shook her head. But he's a pagan. He's an enemy of God, an enemy of Christians, he may be a warlock or something.

“What is your name please?” the astronomer asked her.

“Gatty.”

“Gatty of…”

Gatty shook her head. “Just Gatty,” she said. Where is my home anyhow? she thought. Caldicot? Ewloe? I don't know where home is.

“Yes,” mused the astronomer. “In Alexandria, one thousand years ago, the astronomer Ptolemy said the earth was round and the sun and planets and fixed stars revolve around the earth in their nine heavens.”

“Is that what you think?” Gatty asked him.

“We must study the work of great scholars but also trust the evidence of our own eyes,” the astronomer replied. “We must look around us, and question what we see.”

“You believe the earth's round, then?”

“On balance,” said the astronomer, with some sympathy. “Yes, I do.”

For a while, Gatty was silent. Then she asked, “How does sunlight sound?”

“Young lady?”

“Sunlight. And how do stars sound?”

“There you have me!” the Saracen replied, flashing a smile at Gatty.

“Sometimes,” Gatty told him, “my eyes and ears get mixed up. And my nose does as well.” And then she said-and-sang:

“
I can touch what I smell
And smell what I hear
And hear what I see.

Mongrel-and-jumbled-and-scrambled-and-tangled.

That's me!

I'm topsy-turvy and arsy-versy,
Heels in the air,
YZX and BAC.

Mongrel-and-jumbled-and-scrambled-and-tangled.

That's me!
”

The Saracen astronomer laughed.

“Can you hear the stars too?” Gatty asked him.

Before the astronomer could reply, a figure loomed over them in the almost-dark.

“Gatty!” said a voice. “Is that you, Gatty?”

“No,” said Gatty.

“I've been looking for you everywhere,” the voice said. “We thought you must have fallen overboard. Help me down.”

Gatty grasped a damp hand, and Nakin plumped down into the little boat. He was carrying a leather flask and immediately took a draught from it.

“Better than the watered stuff the sailors are selling,” he said, and he offered the flask to the astronomer.

The Saracen shook his head. “Alcohol!” he growled. “The work of the devil.”

“As you please,” said Nakin. “Who are you, anyhow?”

The Saracen astronomer courteously inclined his head towards Nakin. “Osman of Trebizond. Now of Byzantium.”

“What names!” cried Gatty. “
Zz-zz-zz!
”

“Can you smell them?” the astronomer asked her, smiling.

“Smell them?” exclaimed Nakin, and he gave a loud hiccup. “Nakin,” he announced, holding out a hand to the Saracen. “A merchant from Chester.”

“Chester,” Osman repeated. “Yes! Across the Sea of Darkness.”

“God's own country!” Nakin declared.

“I've heard rumors,” Osman said, “that there are scholars in Chester. But Allah knows best what goes on at the ends of the earth.”

“Allah!” barked Nakin.

“What do you mean?” asked Gatty. “Ends of the earth?”

The astronomer smiled and nodded. “Just in a manner of speaking,” he told Gatty, and then he laid two fingers on Nakin's wrist. “Let us not argue,” he said. “What are the words of that psalm? ‘You made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows when it must set. You bring on darkness and night comes.' Let us sit together and watch this pale moon climb the slope of the sky. I believe more unites us than separates us.”

Nakin hiccuped again. “Trade,” he said.

For a little while, sitting there, Gatty could hear the moon: a kind of faint, breathy whistling. But all she could smell was salt and pitch and, now and then, the wad of sandalwood the Turk was chewing.

“I've heard there are tiles in Chester cathedral,” Osman said, “tiles with leaping and boxing hares on them. The hare is the creature of the moon.”

“Yes,” said Gatty. “I remember. When Lady Gwyneth said she was going to box my ears, Everard told us about them.”

“Everard?”

“He's the choirmaster,” said Nakin, “at the cathedral. The little man with pink cheeks.”

“He's teaching me to sing, and to read and write,” Gatty told him.

“Very good,” said Osman, and he stood up and stretched the dark wings of his gown.

Nakin opened his mouth so wide he could almost have swallowed the sky, and yawned noisily. “Time to sleep,” he said. “Come on, Gatty.”

Gatty sensed the astronomer wanted to be alone with the stars, and so she climbed up out of the boat.

Nakin stumbled across to the hatchway. He backed onto the topmost rung of the ladder—but the ladder was not there. With a yell, the merchant fell into the dark hole and landed with a heavy thud on the sacking at the bottom. And there he lay, silent and motionless. Before long, under the light of a single swinging lantern, a crowd of other pilgrims began to gather round him while, up above, Gatty kept calling out to find out if he was all right.

Nakin cautiously moved his left arm, his right arm. He flexed his left leg, his right leg. He explored his whole body and discovered nothing broken.

Emrys pushed his way forward and gave him a hand.

“Ooh!” groaned Nakin. “My hip!”

Tilda stroked the merchant's right arm. “It's a good thing you're so well padded,” she said.

Gatty carefully lowered herself through the dark hatchway. She supported herself on her arms. “I'm coming down,” she called. She lowered herself further, until she was clinging by her fingertips, and then she dropped onto the sacking.

Slowly and dismally, Nakin crawled away on his hands and knees. “Errch!” he choked. “Cur-ch!” Then he vomited. He threw up each morsel of food and every gulp of wine he'd swallowed that evening.

Lying in her tight berth between Nest and Everard, Gatty took some time to go to sleep. What if Nakin had broken his head? she thought. Or even his legs? And what about Nest? She's left her heart behind in Venice. Why does she keep going off on her own, and walking around at night? We're all like lost sheep without Lady Gwyneth. How will we ever get to Jerusalem?

At dawn the sea was milky blue, and there wasn't a single lamb-cloud in the blue fold of the sky. The air was quite crisp, and most of the pilgrims were in good spirits, even Nakin, despite his bruised hip and wounded pride.