Crossing To Paradise (22 page)

“That's
the slaughterhouse,” said Brother Gabriel, pointing to a long, low building.

“Where they were massacred?” Gatty asked.

“What?”

“Where the women and children were massacred?”

“Dear Lord, no!” the knight-brother replied. “Where the pigs and cattle are butchered, and prepared for the kitchen.”

“Oh!” said Gatty, rather breathlessly.

“The Venetians have set themselves up very nicely here,” Brother Gabriel told her, “as they usually do. This whole quarter of town is theirs. They have their own bathhouse, their own water mill, their own
fonduk
.”

“What's that?” asked Snout.

“A warehouse:
fonduk
in Arabic.” The Hospitaller strode through the narrow streets, with Gatty and Snout on either side of him. “Yes,” he went on, “their own church and bakehouse and vegetable plots and I don't know what else. So Sir Faramond is very well placed.”

“But he's not Venetian,” said Gatty.

“No,” said the knight-brother, “but he's rich, and this quarter has the best buildings. In any case, there's no Norman quarter here.”

The outside walls of Sir Faramond's and Lady Saffiya's house—their “little palace,” Brother Gabriel called it—were muscular and gritty and gave no idea of the wonders inside.

As soon as one Saracen servant had admitted them, two more courteously helped them to take off their battered boots.

Just look at them, thought Gatty. They're in even worse shape than I am.

Gatty stared around her. She was in some kind of hall, but there was no fire in the middle of it, and the walls were smooth white marble. The
ceiling was vaulted, like the apse in Caldicot church, and although there were only three high slit-windows, the room was quite light.

“This is where Sir Faramond sees people on business,” Brother Gabriel told her. “You know, traders and bankers and so on.”

Just as the outside of the little palace gave the pilgrims no sense of the antechamber's cool, shiny grace, the antechamber offered them no more than a hint of what lay beyond.

Two more servants were standing on either side of the massive oak doors, and when they swung them open Gatty drew in her breath. In front of her was the most beautiful courtyard, its covered arcades supported by little avenues of slender, glassy columns. The entire floor of the courtyard was paved in white marble, and in the middle was a plashing fountain.

Beside this fountain Gatty saw two people, laughing: a young woman wearing a sparkling veil, hazel-skinned, slender as a willow wand; and a handsome man, neither large nor small, with merry eyes and a nicely trimmed grey beard.

“Sir Faramond!” Brother Gabriel greeted them. “Lady Saffiya! Your visitors.”

Lady Saffiya inclined her head slightly towards Snout, with the ghost of a smile, and then gathered both Gatty's hands between her own. “Well come,” she said. Her voice was singed and husky.

Then it was Sir Faramond's turn. He stared Snout in the eye and warmly embraced him. Then he bowed slightly to Gatty, and kissed her on each cheek.

“Pilgrims!” he exclaimed. “Speakers of English! An English man and English woman. What wealth my nephew has brought to our door.”

Wealth! Snout felt slightly dazed—by the diamonds sparkling in Lady Saffiya's veil. By her beauty. Her fleeting smile.

Hearing Sir Faramond to be so warm and so plainspoken, Gatty spoke plainly herself.

“I'm only a chamber-servant, sir,” she said. “Snout's a cook.”

Sir Faramond smiled and led his guests round the fountain, and Gatty noticed he had a limp.

“Saffiya was just telling me about her uncle,” he said. “He was a magician.”

“There was a conjuror in the pound,” Gatty told him. “He took a red jewel out of my ear.”

“This man wasn't a conjuror,” Sir Faramond said. “He was a magician. An impatient magician! When his barber had a queue of customers, Saffiya's uncle told him, ‘I can't wait. I'll have to leave my head here and collect it later.' Then her uncle took his head off! And after the barber had given it a haircut, he collected it!”

Gatty and Snout looked startled; Sir Faramond laughed. “That's why we were laughing as you walked in.”

“I met an astronomer, sir,” Gatty said, “and he told me to be careful about laughing with Saracens. In case it offends them.”

Sir Faramond nodded. “No one likes being laughed at,” he replied, “but everyone likes laughing together.” He smiled at his wife. “Well, I wish I'd met this magician. Poor Gabriel! I fear I'm nothing like such an exotic uncle.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Brother Gabriel said. “Hacked-and-broken, Anglo-Norman, Saracen-marrying, sherbet-sipping…”

Sir Faramond and his wife burst out laughing.

“Thank you,” Lady Saffiya said in her husky voice, “for such a graceful reminder.” And away she glided on her quiet feet. Snout gazed after her as if she were an angel who had bestowed a brief visit on them and was now returning to heaven.

“I have business in town to attend to, and mules to hire,” Brother Gabriel told his uncle. “Please excuse me. I'll collect your visitors later!”

Exotic! Everything in the “little palace” seemed exotic to Gatty.

She sipped refreshing sherbet, marveling at the way it fizzed slightly on her tongue, like overdue apple juice. Sharp-eyed, she watched the silver fish darting around the fountain pool, and then she sank with the cumbersome
red and gold fish, dreaming under the lily pads. When Sir Faramond and Lady Saffiya conducted the pilgrims into one of the smaller rooms looking onto the courtyard, Gatty kept twisting her head round and round.

“Careful,” Sir Faramond said, “or it'll come off!”

“Like the magician's head!” Gatty replied, grinning. “I didn't know there was no place like this.”

As with the antechamber and courtyard, the floor was marble, but the side walls were covered with turquoise and ocher tiles patterned with circles, triangles and squares. The far wall consisted almost entirely of a large double-arched window covered with a perforated stone screen, so that light streamed through it and fell on the floor and walls in dashes and splashes and elongated diamonds. The room was made as much of light as stone.

Gatty examined a strange band of squiggles inscribed on the wall beside her—just above the patterned tiles.

“It looks like writing,” she announced. “Like the alphabet did before I learned it.”

“You know your alphabet?” Sir Faramond asked her.

“Backwards!” laughed Gatty. “Z-y-x and w-v, u-t-s and r-q-p.” And then she said, rather proudly, “I can read, slowly.”

“And she can write,” added Snout. “Can't you.”

“Very slowly!” Gatty said.

“You hear that, Saffiya?” asked Sir Faramond. “Most remarkable!”

“Lady Gwyneth,” Gatty said. “She wanted me to learn so I could read to her. She said it's one of the greatest pleasures to listen to someone telling or reading a story.”

“It is indeed,” said Sir Faramond.

Lady Saffiya reached up and touched the squiggles, which looked like knots, or flowers, or leaves, yet somehow more organized and rhythmical.

“You're right, Gatty,” she said. “This is writing. It's
thuluth.
A kind of Arabic scripture.”

“You mean script,” Sir Faramond corrected her. “But yes, scripture too.”

“What does it say?” Gatty asked.

“It is the
bismallah,
” Lady Saffiya replied. “It reads, ‘In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.'”

“In other words,” said Sir Faramond, “
in nomine patris
…in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

All her life, it seemed, Gatty had listened to people denouncing Saracens. Oliver saying they had horns and tails. The friar who had come to Caldicot to proclaim the crusade, hammering the pulpit with his fists and yelling, “Jerusalem is still in the grip of the vile Saracens. Drive them out! Kill them!”

Yet here she was, in the Holy Land, in this peaceful airy room, talking with a Christian married to a Saracen. It scarcely made sense.

“Perhaps I know what you're thinking,” Sir Faramond told her. “I follow my faith and Saffiya follows hers. But we learn from each other. We believe one and one add up to three.”

“Eh?” exclaimed Snout.

“You got children then?” Gatty asked.

Lady Saffiya shook her head, and lowered her eyes. “As Allah wills,” she said throatily. Gatty could feel her sadness.

So could Snout. Uncomfortably, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“I'll sing over you,” said Gatty.

“What was that?” asked Sir Faramond.

“I'll sing a spell over her,” Gatty repeated. “If you want, I mean.”

“So you can sing too.”

“You should hear her,” Snout said. “The abbot in Kyrenia said he'd never heard such a voice.”

“It might help,” said Gatty. “It won't do no harm.”

Sir Faramond and his wife caught one another's eye. Neither of them said anything.

Glass windows, mosaics, fountains! Silken sheets and woven carpets! Weekly baths! Scented soap! That afternoon the pilgrims found out how Sir Faramond and his wife lived.

“It's like the Promised Land,” Gatty said.

“This is the Promised Land!” Sir Faramond replied, smiling.

How happy the two of them are, Gatty thought, laughing and learning from each other. Not like Emrys and Tilda. Not like Nakin and his wife by the sound of it.

My father and mother, did they ever make each other happy? I wish I could remember her.

Then Gatty and Snout told their hosts about Lady Gwyneth, and how she had died in Venice; how in Kyrenia Gobbo had refused to wait; how their companions were most likely on their way home.

“And you've been left behind,” mused Sir Faramond.

“We'll catch them up,” Gatty told him. “In Venice or somewhere.”

“In our coffins, we will,” Snout said in a dour voice.

“Not many pilgrims make the long journey here from England,” Sir Faramond told them. “Anyhow, they almost always sail down to Jaffa, because it's closer to Jerusalem. It's very pleasant to have a chance to speak English again.”

“You grew up in England, sir?” asked Snout.

“I did. Near Lynn in Norfolk. My father owned lands there. I ceded them to my brother.”

“Unto Allah,” said Saffiya, “belong the easts and the wests.”

Sir Faramond smiled at his wife. “Over my dead body,” he said. And at once Gatty saw this little girl, eyes screwed up, terrified, and the Norman knight standing over her.

“Now,” said Sir Faramond, “you both long to reach Jerusalem, and we well know how dangerous it can be. Snout, Lady Saffiya will help to dress you.”

Snout gave Sir Faramond a strange look, and then guffawed.

“Not Snout, sir!” said Gatty. “Brother Gabriel said I got to disguise myself as a boy.”

Sir Faramond shook his head. “We've discussed this further with Brother Gabriel. If he travels as a Hospitaller, he's bound to attract attention.”

“Far better all three of you dress as Saracens,” Lady Saffiya told them.
“A nobleman with his two wives. If you're challenged, Brother Gabriel can speak Arabic.”

“You taught him!” Gatty said. “But what if they speak to me?”

“They won't,” said Sir Faramond. “No Saracen would speak to another man's wife. Not without her husband's permission.”

“Your faces and your hair will be covered by your
burqas,
” Lady Saffiya told them. “Whatever you do, you mustn't say a word.”

“All right, Lady Snout?” Gatty asked, smiling.

The cook grunted.

“Now,” said Sir Faramond, “we can help you to reach Jerusalem…and maybe while you're in Jerusalem.” He glanced at his wife and Lady Saffiya gave him a firm nod.

“Yes, we'll help you. As I said, it's very pleasing to be able to speak English. You see how we live here?”

Gatty knew he was girding himself up.

“What have you to go back to?” Sir Faramond asked. “In England? With Lady Gwyneth dead?”

Arthur, Gatty thought at once.

I've got Hew, thought Snout.

Caldicot, thought Gatty. Sian and everyone. Hopeless. My chickens.

Ewloe, thought Snout.

And Ewloe too, thought Gatty. Nest—unless she stays in Venice. Everyone. Griffith's grave. The Marches, green and blue and grey, and cool and damp, and fair and dear…

“What we would like,” Gatty heard Sir Faramond saying, “is for both of you to come and live here.”

“Here!” Gatty and Snout exclaimed.

“You, Snout, you can work in the kitchen, instructing, learning. And Gatty, you and I will speak English.”

“But why?” asked Gatty, mystified.

“As we get older,” Sir Faramond said, “we value our skills; we like to use them. Yes, we can speak English, and you can read to us, and write. And sing.”

Lady Saffiya gazed at Gatty. Her long dark eyelashes trembled.

And Snout gazed at Lady Saffiya, openmouthed!

Gatty planted her feet firmly on the ground, just a little apart, and put her hands over her stomach. She filled her lungs with air and rounded her mouth and sang one long note, very low and quiet at first, then rising and growing…All at once, Gatty stopped and grinned at Lady Saffiya.

Sir Faramond smiled. “To begin with,” he said, “you'll say you must get back to England. But think about it on your way to Jerusalem. Talk to my nephew. You would be happy here—as I am.” Sir Faramond nodded. “God willing, Allah willing, Brother Gabriel will bring you back with him.”

Gatty
rubbed Snout's hands between her own for a third time and then just tipped his nose.

“There!” she said approvingly. “A real woman!”

“Never lost for something to say, are you?” grumbled Snout.

“I never thought the oils and creams Nest left would come in so handy. What about me? How do I look?”

Snout considered Gatty, and the expression that came over his face was like sunlight sweeping over shadowed land.

“Like a second wife,” he said with a smile.

“Have I put on too much?” Gatty asked. Gingerly, she dabbed her face on the back of her hand. “It feels so strange, wearing this
abaya
—is that what it's called? It's so…floating. And so dark.”

Brother Gabriel appeared at the door. “Beautiful!” he exclaimed. “Especially you, Snout!”

Snout curtsied. “Thank you, husband,” he said in a charming, light voice. “You do look very handsome yourself.”

Gatty considered the Hospitaller. “Like a ruffian,” she said. “Very fiery.”

“Are you ready?” Brother Gabriel asked. “It's almost sunrise and the mules are at the gate. We should celebrate Mass and be on our way.”

The last piece of clothing Gatty put on was her
burqa
, and she didn't like it at all. It imprisoned her. She couldn't feel the wind and sunlight on her freckled cheeks.

“Why do we have to wear it?” she asked.

“So you won't be recognized,” Brother Gabriel replied.

“No, I mean why do Saracen women have to wear it?”

“Ah!” said the knight-brother. “To conceal their hair. A woman's hair is the most attractive thing about her, and she should save it for her husband. It may give other men impure thoughts.”

“Is that why Lady Gwyneth wore a wimple?” Snout asked.

“You may be right, Snout,” Brother Gabriel replied. “That may be why ladies in England and Normandy wear wimples.”

Gatty and Snout were pleased to be in the saddle again, even if their mounts were only two scabby mules. But on their way out of the town they had a shock. Advancing down the street towards them was a monster with a long neck, a small head, eyes like a goat, and a huge hump on its back. It was sandy-colored and twice as tall as a tall horse.

“Stone a crow!” said Snout.

“What is it?” demanded Gatty.

This monster's mouth was puckered, as if it had just swallowed a whole mouthful of sloes.

“Foul-tempered,” said Gatty. “You can tell.”

The animal swished its tail and began to roar. Then, as it passed Gatty, it swung its long neck and tried to take a bite out of her. Its driver shouted at it, and it swayed past them.

Gatty's heart was pumping. “Ugly beast!” she exclaimed. “What's it called?”

“Man's best friend in the desert,” the knight-brother replied. “A camel. They can travel for days without needing water. And they can carry loads over great distances. Quiet now! No one must hear you speaking English.”

Gatty took no notice. “How far is it, did you say?”

“Ninety miles,” the Hospitaller replied, “and an Arabic mile is much further than a Roman mile.”

“I don't know how far a Roman mile is,” Snout grumbled.

“How many days, then?” Gatty asked.

“Three.”

“Where will we sleep?”

“In caves.”

Snout struggled inside his black clothing. “I look like a fat raven!” he complained.

“Not another word until we're out of Acre,” said Brother Gabriel.

As soon as this Saracen and his two wives left the town, they entered dry, unforgiving country. It rose up in front of them, it stood between them and the Holy City. It was the last week of July and the short grass was baked and fried. The few trees were gnarled and stunted by their exhausting fight with the sun. The hills were pale as straw, littered with grey boulders and crags.

Riding between Snout and Brother Gabriel, Gatty began to think of green Caldicot. The dark pools under the elms and oaks on the manor land. The green naves in Pike Forest where she went to snare rabbits and collect firewood. The willows weeping into the Little Lark…Arthur promised me we'd go upstream, Gatty thought. I'm holding him to that.

As the sun rose, the light began to shimmer. Gatty narrowed her eyes. Whatever she looked at trembled.

“What's that?” she asked, pointing up the track. “That black thing.”

As the three of them approached it, Brother Gabriel said, “I wouldn't look too closely.”

Gatty did.

The black thing was a pilgrim cloak, and inside the cloak was a grinning skeleton. It was propped up against a rock, picked clean by vultures.

Gatty's mouth went dry. Then her stomach quaked and she felt sick.

“I'm afraid so,” Brother Gabriel said.

Gatty stared out of her
burqa,
confused and alarmed.

“Why didn't his companions bury him?” asked Snout.

The Hospitaller shook his head. “Too dangerous,” he said. “It would take too long. The Bedouin killed him, and they left him here as a warning.”

Somber and silent, the three travelers rode through the wilderness. Now there were no trees; no piping birds, only from time to time a bird of prey, wheeling; lizards basking; the throbbing sun.

In this wilderness, Gatty began to doubt. Can we rely on Brother Gabriel? she thought. I mean, I trusted Signor Umberto, and I was wrong. And what about Snout? Will he be strong enough if the Bedouin come?

“My lady,” she said silently to herself. “Give me strength. Give me
courage, so I don't fail you. I pray you, keep the Bedouin away.” Gatty wept dry tears.

Brother Gabriel turned to her. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Second wife?”

Gatty couldn't reply. Inside her dark clothing, she was feeling so weak and uncertain. Have I been tricking myself all this time? she thought. Getting into deeper, always deeper water. Am I drowning? It's my own fault. How will Snout and I ever get to Jerusalem?

Brother Gabriel could sense Gatty's turmoil. “God sees you for who you are and loves you for who you are,” he said gently. “Not only for your strengths, Gatty. He loves you for your weaknesses.”

Gatty swallowed. Her throat was so dry.

That night and the next, the three of them slept in caves, somehow airless, stale with animal droppings. They ate their food cold.

“No fire,” Brother Gabriel told them. “Smoke's a sure way of attracting attention.”

On the third afternoon, though, the three travelers did attract attention. Seven horsemen suddenly appeared on the white skyline ahead of them.

“Bedouin!” Brother Gabriel warned them. “Keep moving! Not a word! Not one word!”

The horsemen swept down off the hilltop in a glowing cloud of dust. The hooves of their horses thudded. They shouted to each other. They surrounded Brother Gabriel and Gatty and Snout.

Gatty's heart was beating so loudly she thought the horsemen might hear it. She was trembling and sweating. Afraid her
burqa
might slip down to her chin. Afraid her fear might give her away. Afraid! For the first time on the entire pilgrimage, she could smell her own rancid fear.

Now the Bedouin leader was staring straight at her with his burning eyes, pulling at his black mustache. He jabbed the air with his knife and asked her something.

Gatty lowered her eyes.

Brother Gabriel waved at the Bedouin impatiently. He barked in Arabic.

Still, the leader persisted. He asked Brother Gabriel question after question, and tersely Brother Gabriel answered him.

Gatty dared not to raise her eyes again. She knew that if she were to make one false move, just one, they too would be food for vultures.

Then, as abruptly as they had appeared, the seven horsemen wheeled round. They shouted. They cantered away.

“Where are they going?” asked Gatty, alarmed.

“With the winds!” said Brother Gabriel.

“Are they coming back?”

“No, no.”

“I've wet myself!” said Snout. “Why did I ever leave Ewloe?”

Then Gatty began to tremble.

“I told him we'd come from Acre,” Brother Gabriel said. “I said we're on our way to Jerusalem. Nothing strange about that. But then he asked me about you. You, Gatty. Your grey-green eyes. He said you had the eyes of a young woman but rode like a man! My second wife, I told him. Born a long way north from here. He asked me your name. Ayesha, I said.”

“Is that when he spoke to me?” Gatty asked shakily.

Brother Gabriel nodded. “He should never have done so without my permission. And then, if you please, he asked me whether we'd seen any pilgrims.”

“God's guts!” said Snout in a gravelly voice.

“So I told him I'd seen two,” the knight-brother went on cheerfully. “Two pilgrims, traveling with one guide!”

Gatty still couldn't stop shaking.

That night, the three travelers slept in a cave again. They shared it with several rats and mice.

“Tomorrow?” asked Gatty.

“Tomorrow,” Brother Gabriel replied.

When she lay down with her head on her scrip, grateful at last for her voluminous clothing, Gatty wanted to prepare herself. She wanted to pray with Snout.

“Snout,” she whispered, and she yawned.

“What is it, girl?” asked Snout. And then, after a little while, “Gatty! What is it?”

But Gatty was already asleep. Cool and easy she slept until, like a ghost, dawn assembled herself, pale at the entrance to the cave. Then Gatty woke as she had on the first day of their pilgrimage: instantly awake.

Today, she thought. Today!