Crossing To Paradise (24 page)

Clutching
Snout's damp left hand, Gatty gazed around her in awe.

It's like a huge hall full of night-sky, she thought.

Slowly her eyes grew used to the blue gloom, thick with burning incense, littered with shining, soft-edged moons and stars—candles in bloom.

Then Gatty saw the church was built on many different levels, and there were little chapels all around her, balconies, passages.

A hall full of night-sky, she thought, and a warren too. An enormous warren. I'm going to burrow into every corner.

Then Gatty removed her hand from Snout's, blew on her fingertips, and took a candle from the large rack beside the door.

Around her, she could see swarms of pilgrims, upright and misshapen. She watched a procession of ten people slowly crossing the hall, each with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. She heard people calling out “
Gott sei dank!
” and “
Dieu nous aide!
” and “
Dios! Dios!
” and listened to the undertow of people sobbing.

“You,” said a voice in the gloom. “Girl!”

The voice belonged to a young Saracen man, sitting cross-legged on a low marble table.

“You German?”

“English,” Gatty replied.

The young man produced a little box. “Toe,” he said.

“Look, Snout!” said Gatty.

“Toe Saint Digita,” the young man told them, gently shaking his head as if he could scarcely believe it.

Gatty reached out, wide-eyed.

“No touch!” said the man. “Three gold.”

Snout had a careful look at the relic. “That's not a toe,” he said. “It's part of a trotter. I've cooked hundreds.”

“How can he!” exclaimed Gatty in disgust. “In this holy place.”

“There'll be plenty more like him,” Snout warned her.

“Selling hope,” said Gatty.

“Charlatans! Lining their own pockets. Spend your prayers and save your money.”

The young man pouted. “Two gold,” he said.

“No gold!” said Snout.

Gatty looked eagerly around her. She took an enormous breath and flung her arms wide. “Oh Snout! We done it!”

At first, Gatty and Snout stayed together. Side by side, and silent, they climbed up the stone steps to Golgotha, the rock where Adam died, and Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac, and Jesus was stripped by Roman soldiers. Like the pilgrims in front of them, they threw themselves on their backs and spread out their arms where the soldiers nailed His hands and feet. They jammed their heads into the rock fissure right next to the socket-hole of the Cross.

Then, after waiting their turn for a long time, Gatty and Snout filed into a little rock tomb: They gazed at the stone shelf where Jesus's dead body had lain, wrapped in linen—the very place from which He had risen again.

After this, Gatty wanted to be on her own. She knew the time had come to pray for Lady Gwyneth.

“I got some praying of my own to do,” Snout told her. “We can meet at the great door when the Saracens shout everyone out.”

Gatty took a few steps in one direction and then hesitated; she set off in another direction, then paused again. I don't know where to pray, she thought. She turned back towards the outside wall of Jesus's tomb and launched herself onto her knees. She pressed her forehead against the cool rock.

Gatty closed her eyes. She could see Lady Gwyneth in her dying-room. She could hear her confessing how she'd lain on her sleeping baby without
realizing it, and her whisper, feverish: “I cannot, I cannot reach Jerusalem to do penance for my soul.”

Gatty chafed her forehead against the rock. The wall began to glisten with her tears.

“If you fail, Gatty, I will never rise to paradise. I will never see Griffith again.”

“Jesus,” said Gatty in a low voice. “Please listen now!”

Gatty felt a hand on her left shoulder. It was a Saracen holding a large tray, piled with fresh fruit.

Gatty shook her head. But when she tried to pray again, the man just stood there, waiting. Gatty clicked her tongue and waved him away.

This is a church, not a market, she said to herself. It's the most holy place in the most holy city in the world.

No sooner had Gatty turned to Jesus again than she heard two men speaking English. They stopped right next to her.

“Wine and oil, yes…”

“Cumin, coriander.”

“Yes, and pepper and all the other spices. But for real profit…”

“Salt.”

“Exactly! We must try to pick some up in Alexandria. Failing that, we'll have to stop in Cyprus.”

Gatty looked up at the two men, but their backs were turned, and almost at once they strolled off.

Dear God, she thought. Buying and selling! Is that all that interests them? How can I pray for Lady Gwyneth here?

When Gatty stood up her candle went out, so she stopped the nearest person, a young Saracen boy supporting a wizened old pilgrim, and touched her candle to his. The boy smiled, pursed his lips, and blew lightly over her face.

Why did he do that? Gatty wondered. His breath was so sweet.

Then Gatty went on her way like a wandering star and came to the mouth of a winding passage.

This is better, she said to herself. I'll pray for Lady Gwyneth in here. And then say all my other prayers. For Arthur and everyone.

This passage led nowhere. Or, rather, it twisted and tightened and led to a brick wall. When Gatty held up her candle, she saw this wall was completely covered with words and drawings and so were the rocks on either side of her. Not only
Yahweh
and JHVH and Ghost and
Dieu
and
Spiritus
and
Gott
and
Dominus
and Bread of Life and Lamb and True Light and
Dios
and all the other thousand names of the Holy Trinity (some of them Gatty puzzled out and recognized, some she had never heard of before), but scratched initials, rough drawings of women, men, children, dogs, boats, horses.

For a while, Gatty examined them, all these signs people had left behind them.

I wish you'd got here, Arthur. I keep thinking about how you set off for Jerusalem but had to return home, and I stayed home but had to set off for Jerusalem. You remember when I asked you about walking here?

Gatty stared at the brick wall. “I know!” she exclaimed.

She pulled her little knife from its sheath. She scratched a line on the brick, and another one beneath it. Then a head and ears; four legs; a tail. Now Gatty cut two mounted figures. A boy in front, holding reins; a girl behind, with her arms round the boy's waist, her head resting on his back.

“Remember?” she asked. “Me and you and Pip. So you're here now, you and me, and this is where we'll stay.” Carefully, she carved A and then G under the horse's belly and girth.

At this moment, Gatty heard the sound of tapping coming from back along the passageway. Irregular; insistent. It got louder.

I can't pray for Lady Gwyneth in here either, she said to herself. I'll have to find somewhere else.

With one last look at her carving, Gatty turned and walked back along the passage—and what she saw was a man with his back to her, chipping away pieces of holy rock with a chisel and a small hammer.

He can't do that, thought Gatty. This is Holy Sepulchre! He's robbing Jesus! It's sackliridge—or whatever the word is!

Then the man sensed someone was standing behind him. But seeing only Gatty, he just grinned.

Gatty lowered her eyes.

The man opened his right hand and showed Gatty three nuggets of rock. “
Ken?
” he said. “
Ken
?”

Gatty frowned. “
Ken?
” she repeated.

The man rubbed his left thumb and forefinger so close to her nose that it made her cross-eyed.

“No!” said Gatty. “You're a thief! If we all do that, there soon won't be any church left.”

All afternoon, it seemed, Gatty searched for somewhere quiet to pray for Lady Gwyneth's soul, as she had vowed to do. She climbed creaking steps to balconies, she tucked herself into corners of chapels, she explored passageways.

Hall of night-sky; warren; chamber of echoes…Shuffles and murmurs and sobs, conversation, bursts of laughter, shouts and wails and songs: They all circled Gatty's head, indistinct and blurred.

Down one passage, she found three hook-nosed pilgrims—two men and an old woman—facing the rock wall. The old woman cut off a white curl and tapped her forehead and, while the three of them chanted, she forefingered the curl into a crack in the wall. Then one of the men shaved off part of his mustache with a cut-throat and, baring his black teeth, he stuffed that into the wall. After them, the other man ripped open his tunic, as if he were a fieldworker on a hot day. He tore out a fistful of his chest hair and jammed that into a fissure! Then the three of them chanted while he patted his heart.

I got the lock of Lady Gwyneth's hair, thought Gatty. She told me to leave half in Jerusalem and bury half in Griffith's grave.

Quickly, Gatty raised her gown, gnawed at the hem, and drew out a few strands of Lady Gwyneth's hair. Watched by the three pilgrims, she wound them loosely round her little finger.

What shall I say, wondered Gatty. I'm not asking for a cure, like they are. I'm singing for a soul:

“
You were a baby, you were a girl, Your father called you his pearl, his shining pearl.

Aiee! Aiee!

You were the pilgrim Death took down for his wife, And you were a pilgrim all your life.

Aiee! Aiee!
”

As Gatty cried “Aiee!” for the second time, the three pilgrims joined in. “I sing for your soul,” Gatty sang out, and then she hesitated. “Yes, I know:

I sing for your soul, not your flesh or bone. Jesus, I beg you, bring my Lady Gwyneth home.

Aiee! Aiee!
”

Then Gatty pushed her fingertip as far as she could into a little hole in the wall and pulled it out again, leaving Lady Gwyneth's hair embedded deep inside the rock.

There, she thought. Part of you will be here forever now.

No sooner had the three pilgrims bowed and gone on their way than the Saracens began to shout everyone out.

“No!” Gatty protested.

Brandishing clubs as large as marrows, the Saracens strode into each chapel and up to each balcony and along each passage, bawling and barking.

No! I can't go! I haven't prayed yet.

Gatty heard light steps. She screwed up her eyes and in frustration shook her head from side to side until her hair was a ball of twisting gold.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw the young Saracen boy, the
one with the candle who had smiled at her and pursed his lips and blown over her.

Gatty looked at him, sharp-eyed. She shook her head.

Very seriously, the boy nodded.

“No,” said Gatty. And then, in a low, urgent voice. “I got to stay. I got to.”

Perhaps the boy understood. He could hear Gatty's determination. He narrowed his dark eyes and opened his right hand. “
Bakchies
,” he said.

“What?”

“
Bakchies.
”

“What's
bakchies
?”

The boy fished in his pocket.

“Money!” said Gatty in disgust. “All everyone wants is money. Don't you understand? I got to stay and pray for Lady Gwyneth.”

“
Bakchies,
” the boy said again.

“I haven't got none.”

Now, another wave of shouting boomed down the passageway, and the Saracen boy looked uneasily over his shoulder.

This time it was Gatty who understood—understood that the boy's sweet nature and his fear were in the balance. Gently, she nodded. And then, quite why she couldn't have said, she did exactly what the boy had done earlier: She pursed her lips and blew very softly into the boy's face.

The boy closed his eyes and opened them again. He smiled like a seraph. Then he reached up and gently, very gently, touched his right forefinger to Gatty's lips.

For a long time Gatty stayed in the rock passage, alone. The shouting became more distant, more occasional. Then she heard a thud as the great doors were closed; she could even hear the crunch-and-scrape of the key in the lock.

After this, there was nothing but the sound of silence: that, and the rock's husky voice when Gatty rubbed a shoulder against it, or wiggled
the heel of her boot against it. The double thump of her heartbeat. A slight whistling in her right ear.

Poor Snout, she thought. He's lost me again! He'll guess, won't he? He'll understand.

Still Gatty bided her time, brave and cautious as a hare. Then at last she tiptoed down the twisting passage and a few steps out into the hall of night-sky, heart of the warren, chamber of echoes.

Around her head, this massive building soared and stood like plates of armor, grand and unshakable. Gatty craned her neck and looked upwards and sideways; she looked all around her; and after a while this church, Holy Sepulchre, began to seem more like a mantle than armor. A strong cloak to shelter and protect her.

And yet, she thought, it's all incense smoke, all candlelight. Shimmering and trembling. As though it scarcely exists.

Then Gatty had an idea. She delved into her scrip and triumphantly drew out the felt shoes, grubby now but still soft, still yellow, that Mansel had given her. She pulled off her boots and slipped them on.

I'll tell Mansel, she thought. I never knew I'd be so glad of them.

Gatty advanced slowly towards the very center of the hall: like a child stepping from the safety of the beach into dark, deep water. She could hear she was quite breathless. She dropped onto her knees.

First, Gatty prayed for Snout. She told Jesus how bravely he had waited for her in Kyrenia, and asked Him to heal Snout's nose. “It won't be too difficult,” she said. “Anyhow, you can do everything. His lip's split halfway up to his nose, and his nostrils are too wide.”