The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (37 page)

It was something of a homecoming, for they were greeted by a number of people they had known on the earlier portion of the trip. The Cullens
found their place well toward the middle of the line of march because so many new travelers had formed up behind them.

She kept a careful watch, but it was almost nightfall before she saw the party for which she’d been waiting. The same five Jews with whom he had left the caravan returned on horseback. Behind them she saw the little brown mare; Rob J. Cole drove the garish wagon toward her and suddenly she could feel her heart beating in her chest.

He looked as well as ever and appeared glad to be back, and he greeted the Cullens as cheerfully as if he and she had not walked angrily away from one another last time they had met.

When he had taken care of his horse and came into their camp, it was only neighborly of her to mention that the local merchants had scarcely anything left to sell, lest he was short of provision.

He thanked her kindly but said he had bought supplies in Tryavna with no difficulty. “Do you have enough yourself?”

“Yes, for my father bought early.” She was vexed that he made no mention of the new dress and cloak, though he studied her for the longest time.

“They are the exact shade of your eyes,” he said finally.

She wasn’t certain but took it for a compliment. “Thank you,” she said gravely and, as her father approached, forced herself to turn away to study Seredy setting up the tent.

Another day went by without the caravan’s departure, and up and down the line there was grumbling. Her father went to see Fritta and came back to tell her the caravan master was waiting for the Norman knights to leave. “They have caused great mischief and Fritta wisely prefers to have them ahead of us instead of harrying our rear,” he said.

But the following morning the knights hadn’t departed and Fritta decided he had waited long enough. He gave the signal that started the caravan on the last long leg toward Constantinople, and finally the ripple of forward movement reached the Cullens. The previous autumn they had followed a young Frank and his wife and two small children. The Frankish family had wintered away from the town of Gabrovo; it had been their declared intent to resume the trip with the caravan, but they hadn’t appeared. Mary knew that something terrible must have occurred and prayed Christ to watch over them. She now rode behind two fat French brothers who had told her father they hoped to make their fortunes buying Turkish rugs and other treasures. They chewed garlic for health and often twisted in the saddle to stare stupidly at her body. It entered her mind that, driving
his wagon behind her, the young barber-surgeon might be watching her too, and at times she was wicked enough to move her hips more than demanded by the motion of the horse.

The giant serpent of travelers soon wound to the pass that led through the high mountains. The sheer mountainside fell away below the twisting trail, down to the glittering river, swollen with the melt of snows that had imprisoned them all winter.

On the other side of the great defile were foothills that gradually turned into rolling land. They slept that night in a vast plain of shrubby growth. Next day they traveled due south and it became clear that the Balkan Gate separated two unique climes, for the air was softer this side of the pass and with every hour they traveled it grew warmer.

That night they stopped outside the village of Gornya, camping in plum orchards with the permission of the farmers, who sold some of the men a fiery plum liquor as well as green onions and a fermented milk drink so thick it had to be eaten with a spoon. Early the following morning, while they were still encamped, Mary heard a rumbling as of distant thunder. But it quickly grew louder and soon the wild screams and shouts of men were part of the noise.

As she came out of the tent she saw that the white cat had left the barber-surgeon’s wagon and stood transfixed in the road. The French knights galloped past like demons in a nightmare and the cat was lost in a dust cloud, but not before Mary had seen what the first hooves had done. She wasn’t conscious of screaming but knew she was running toward the road before the dust had settled.

Mistress Buffington no longer was white. The cat had been trodden into the dust and Mary lifted the poor broken little body and for the first time became aware that he’d come out of his wagon and stood over her.

“You’ll ruin your new dress with the blood,” he said roughly, but his pale face was stricken.

He took the cat and a spade and went away from the camp. When he returned she didn’t approach him, but she noted from afar that his eyes were reddened. Putting a dead animal into the ground wasn’t the same as burying a person, but it wasn’t strange to her that he was able to weep over a cat. Despite his size and strength, his vulnerable gentleness was the quality that drew her.

For the next several days she let him be. The caravan stopped heading due south and turned east again, but the sun continued to shine hotter each day. It was already clear to Mary that the new clothing which had been made for her in Gabrovo was largely a waste, for the weather was too warm
for wool. She rummaged through the summer clothing in her baggage and found some lighter garments but they were too fine for traveling and would quickly be ruined. She settled on a cotton undergarment and a rough, sacklike work dress to which she gave a minimum of form by knotting a cord around her waist. She placed a broadbrimmed leather hat upon her head, although her cheeks and nose were already freckled.

That morning, when she got off her horse and started to walk for exercise as she was wont to do, he smiled at her. “Come ride with me in my wagon.”

She came without fuss. This time there was no awkwardness, just a deep gladness to sit on the seat next to him.

He dug behind the seat and came up with a leather hat of his own, but such a head covering as the Jews wore.

“Wherever did you get it?”

“It was given me in Tryavna by their holy man.”

Presently they saw her father sending him such a sour look they both began to laugh.

“I’m surprised he allows you to visit,” he said.

“I’ve convinced him you are harmless.”

They looked at one another comfortably. His was a handsome face despite the homely fact of his broken nose. She realized that however impassive his large features might remain, the key to his feelings was his eyes, deep and steady and somehow older than his years. She felt in them a great loneliness to match her own. How old was he? Twenty-one years? Twenty-two?

She realized with a start that he was speaking of the farming plateau over which they were passing.

“… mostly fruits and wheat. Winters here must be short and mild, for the crops are advanced,” he said, but she wasn’t to be robbed of the intimacy they had gained in the last moments.

“I hated you that day in Gabrovo.”

Another man might have protested or smiled, but he made no response.

“Because of the Slav woman. How could you go with her? I hated her, too.”

“Don’t waste your hatred on either of us, for she was pitiable and I didn’t lie with her. Seeing you spoiled such for me,” he said simply.

She never doubted he would tell her truth, and something warm and triumphant started to grow in her like a flower.

Now they could talk about trifles—their route, the way animals must be driven to make them endure, the difficulty of finding cooking wood.
They sat together all afternoon and talked quietly about everything except the white cat and themselves, and his eyes said other things to her without words.

She knew it. She was frightened for several reasons but there was no place on earth she would rather be than sitting next to him on the uncomfortable, swaying wagon under the battering sun, and she went obediently but reluctantly when at last her father’s peremptory call summoned her away.

Now and again they passed a small flock of sheep, which were mostly scruffy, though her father invariably stopped to inspect them and went with Seredy to interrogate the owners. Always the shepherds advised that for truly wonderful sheep he must go beyond to Anatolia.

By early May they were a week’s travel from Turkey, and James Cullen made no attempt to conceal his excitement. His daughter was dealing with an excitement of her own, but she was making every effort to conceal it from him. Although there was always a chance to cast a smile or a glance in the barber-surgeon’s direction, sometimes she forced herself to steer clear of him two days in a row, for she was afraid that if her father sensed her feelings he would order her to stay away from Rob Cole.

One night as she was cleaning up after supper, Rob appeared in their camp. He nodded to her politely and went directly to her father, holding out a flask of brandy as a peace offering.

“Sit you down,” her father said reluctantly. But after the two men had shared a drink her father became friendlier, no doubt because it was pleasant to sit in fellowship and converse in English, and also because it was difficult not to warm to Rob J. Cole. Before long, James Cullen was telling their visitor what lay before them.

“I’m told of a breed of Eastern sheep, lean and narrow-backed, but with tails and rear legs so fat the animal may live on stored reserves when food is scarce. Their lambs have a silky fleece of rare and unusual luster. Wait a moment, man, let me show you!” He disappeared into the tent and came out with a hat made of lambskin. The fleece was gray and tightly curled.

“Finest quality,” he said eagerly. “The fleece stays this curly only until the fifth day of the lamb’s life, but then the fur remains wavy until the beastie is two months old.”

Rob inspected the hat and assured her father it was a fine skin.

“Oh, it
is,
” Cullen said, and put the hat on his head, which made them laugh because it was a warm night and a fur hat was made for snow. He put it back in the tent and then the three of them sat before the fire and
her father gave her a sip or two from his glass. The brandy was hard to swallow but made the world safe for her.

Thunder rumbled and shook the purpled sky and sheet lightning illuminated them for long seconds during which she could see the hard planes of Rob’s face, but the vulnerable eyes that made him beautiful were hidden from her.

“A strange land, with regular thunder and lightning and never a drop of rain,” her father said. “I well mark the morning you were born, Mary Margaret. There was thunder and lightning then as well, but there was a teeming Scots rain that fell as though the heavens had opened and were never to close.”

Rob leaned forward. “That would have been in Kilmarnock, where you have your family holding?”

“No, it was not, ‘twas in Saltcoats. Her mother was a Tedder of Saltcoats. I had taken Jura to her old Tedder home because in her heaviness she had a great longing for her mother, and we were celebrated and coddled for weeks and overstayed her time. She was caught out with labor, and so it was that instead of in Kilmarnock like a proper Cullen, Mary Margaret was born in her grandfather Tedder’s house overlooking the Firth of Clyde.”

“Father,” she said gently. “Master Cole can have no interest in the day of my birth.”

“On the contrary,” Rob said, and he asked question after question of her father and listened at length.

She sat and prayed that the lightning would not resume, for she had no wish for her father to see that the barber-surgeon’s hand rested on her bare arm. His touch was like thistledown but her flesh was all stirred feelings and dither bumps, as though the future had brushed her or the night were chill.

On the eleventh of May the caravan reached the western bank of the Arda River and Kerl Fritta decided to camp there an extra day to allow for wagon repairs and the buying of supplies from nearby farmers. Her father took Seredy and paid a guide to go with them across the river into Turkey, impatient as a boy to begin his search for the fat-tailed sheep.

An hour later, she and Rob mounted double on her saddleless black horse and rode away from the noise and confusion. As they passed the Jews’ encampment she saw the thin young one ogling. Simon it was, the youth who served as Rob’s teacher; he grinned and nudged one of the others in the ribs to watch them ride by.

She scarcely cared. She felt dizzy, perhaps because of the heat, for the morning sun was a fireball. She put her arms around his chest so as not to fall off the horse and closed her eyes and leaned her head against his broad back.

A distance from the caravan they passed two sullen peasants leading a donkey laden with firewood. The men stared but didn’t return their greeting. Perhaps they had come from afar, for there were no trees in that place, only broad fields empty of workers because planting was long since over and the crops weren’t yet ripe enough to be reaped.

When they came to a brook, Rob tethered the horse to a bush and they left their shoes and waded down a dazzling brightness. On both sides of the reflecting water grew a wheat field and he showed her how the tall stalks shaded the ground and made it invitingly dark and cool.

“Come,” he said, “it’s like a cave,” and crawled into it as if he were a great child.

She followed more slowly. Nearby a small living thing rustled through the tall ripening grain and she gave a start.

“Just a tiny mouse, already frightened off,” he said. As he moved to her in the cool, dappled place, they contemplated one another.

“I don’t want to, Rob.”

“Well, then you won’t, Mary,” he said, although she could see in his eyes how thwarted he felt.

“Could you merely kiss me, please?” she asked humbly.

So their first overt intimacy became a clumsy, moody kiss doomed by her apprehension.

“I don’t like the other. I’ve done it, you see,” she said all in a rush, and the moment she had dreaded was accomplished.

“You’ve experience, then?”

“Only once, with my cousin in Kilmarnock. He hurt me awfully.”

He kissed her eyes and her nose, her mouth softly, while she fought her doubts. After all, who
was
this? Stephen Tedder had been someone she had known all her life, her cousin and her friend, and he had caused her true agony. And afterward had roared with laughter at her discomfort, as if it were clumsily funny of her to have let him do such a thing to her, like allowing him to push her onto her bottom in a mud slough.