The Road to Damietta (17 page)

"Thank you," I said, glancing into my purse. "I find that I have at this very moment little or nothing."

Signor Gregorio ducked into a counting room where clerks, quill in hand, using Arabian abacuses, were making notations. He came back with a handful of money, which he emptied into my purse.

"Your father has instructed me to be generous with you," he said. "And so I shall be. There are many fine adornments to be found in Venice. The most elegant of gowns, oddments to suit any fancy. Do call upon me whenever it pleases you."

"Thank you, sir, thank you," I said.

He ducked back into the counting room and came out with a second handful of coins.

My purse bulged, so I thanked him again. He proved to be generous with me, and also with himself.

Through a maze of dog paths, winding lanes, arcades both covered and uncovered, small bridges, large bridges, Raul guided me back to Piazza San Marco, a vast square bordered by palaces of the Venetian rich. It was a mild afternoon fading into dusk but the square was filled with agitation. Bands of strollers were conversing in loud voices, and more with their hands than their mouths—in Assisi it was bad manners to make gestures while
talking; only varlets and serfs did so. The agitation was about the new crusade against the infidels announced by Pope Innocent.

Repeating the words I had overheard, I asked Raul if he planned to heed the pope's call for a million men to confront the sultan and his barbarians, to end at last and for all time their hold upon the Holy Sepulcher.

"The pope's plea falls upon my ears like a stone," Raul said. "It leaves me deaf. It wearies me. And judging from your tone, it wearies you as well. Since you aren't worried about me, the scholar, or about your father, who is too old, or your brother Rinaldo, who would rather dream of violence than participate in it, you're worried about Bernardone."

It was the first time he had mentioned Francis since the moment of my return from Porziuncola. "Will he join the crusade, do you think?"

"How do I know what goes on in his head?"

"You must have a thought about it."

"A very small one."

"What is it?"

"The crusade, the fifth now, after four silly failures in a hundred years, reminds me of the tale about Nasrudin the philosopher, who was walking around his house, tossing pieces of bread here and there.

"'What are you doing?' someone asked him.

"'Keeping the tigers away.'

"'But there are no tigers around.'

"'Exactly. The bread's a good idea, isn't it?"'

A flock of pigeons was pattering along behind us, begging for food. Raul bought a twist of barley and gave me a handful, and we walked along and fed them, a few grains at a time.

Dusk found us in front of the cathedral. We were beneath the golden horses that had been stolen during the sack of Constantinople and were now high up in the loggia.

"The new crusaders," Raul said, "the ones who aren't killed, who fortunately return, will steal more treasures from those they call barbarians to stuff their coffers and adorn their churches."

I didn't give up. "Will Francis go?"

Raul shrugged one shoulder.

"He fought in the war with Perugia," I said.

"Was dehorsed and thrown into prison for a year. He may recall those uncomfortable days and wisely stay home. This I doubt, however. He has a restless soul, part warrior, part troubadour, part clown—he's being called God's fool. I rather think he likes that name. There's no telling what will occur to him next. For your sake, I trust that he sails to the Holy Land and finds a war to his liking."

We went into the church. I knelt on the cold tiles and asked God to counsel Francis against heeding the pope's call for a new crusade.

When we came out, night had fallen. Boats lit with lanterns
and torches were moving along the Grand Canal, throwing colored shadows across the square and on the faces of the nobles' palaces. From a distance came the sound of lutes and singing voices. All this, with the night air that smelled of the sea and of far-off places, could have tempted Raul into another declaration of love. It didn't.

He drew his cloak around his shoulders. I took his hand and we crossed the square and went along the winding street, over the four bridges that led to the monastery. Church bells rang in the night.

"We're late," he said, giving me a tug. "Your aunt will be waiting, angry and waiting."

She was both. Standing at the portal, which she held half open to exclude him, she snatched me in. It was a very poor beginning.

After bowls of cold mush, Nicola and I were taken by
two young nuns to an immense bare room furnished with a bed, a painting, and a bench. A small window looked out upon the rooftops toward Piazza San Marco, where torches were burning, and beyond to the Grand Canal and the Mare Adriaticus.

Aunt Sofia came, bringing with her a list of rules. Her mood had improved. She even attempted a smile when Nicola said she liked our room better than the ones at San Paolo delle Ancelle di Dio.

"It would be un-Christian and also unfair to our sisters," she said to us, "to those who live ordered lives, for you to live as the spirit impels you. I demand, therefore, strict obedience to the rules set down by Saint Benedict and honored by thousands of women for more than six hundred years."

Aunt Sofia shook out a scroll, which reached the floor, and held it to the light. It was frighteningly long. Fortunately, she read only that part of the rules dealing with the times for prayer.

"Matins," she said, "lasts but a short time. Lauds, which foretells dawn, lasts twice as long as matins. Prime follows lauds and ends just before daybreak. Tierce comes next; then sext welcomes workers to the midday meal, which often includes olives and bread and fruit in season. Nones takes up the middle of the afternoon. Vespers occurs at sunset, the time for supper, which must be finished before dark and is less bountiful than the midday meal, although we often serve a bowl or two of raisins. Complin follows soon after dark, and at that time everyone, everyone, is in bed. As you two will be, promptly after I leave this room."

Her words dashed all hope of favors to come. Whether it was her own idea or my father's, I was to be treated to the common lot. I was now in a monastery, a Benedictine monastery at that, famous for its piety. Had I known what the summer held, I would have risen as soon as Aunt Sofia said goodnight, risen quickly to my feet, gathered my clothes, and fled.

Besides the prayers there was hard work—cleaning, scrubbing, clothes to wash and iron, a garden to weed, dishes to wash. Afterward there were the sick to care for and poor people in the city whom the monastery shared its meager things with. And toward the end of the day, sewing if you had the strength and the wits to attempt it.

I marveled at these women, old and young, most of them frail. They slept little and on hard pallets. They went poorly clad, with stomachs that were never full. They tended the sick
and raised their thin voices to God, asking little for themselves. How starkly they stood out from all the nobles and knights, my own brother. The ones who were never hungry, whose throats were never dry, who swung big swords and set hot fires and killed the innocent as well as the evil. Those who lived for praise and were called heroes.

I marveled at these women and blamed myself that I lacked their courage.

It was an unhappy year, made worse by Nicola's happiness. She loved to rise in the middle of the night and pray. She got up at dawn and prayed. She loved the kitchen, though she missed the cinnamon and saffron and the jugs of treacle she'd had in Assisi. We never fought, but seldom a day passed that she didn't fray my nerves.

This unhappy time ended suddenly; at least it seemed sudden to me, though I later learned that my father and Aunt Sofia had planned the event for months. Even before I arrived in Venice.

Her library didn't compare with the thirty libraries of Baghdad or the library in Cairo that housed two thousand one hundred and ninety-seven copies of the Koran, but before the fire it was a large and growing one.

Modestly ambitious, yet hoping to surpass the Benedictine library at Padua, she had accepted me with the understanding that I was to work in the scriptorium. When Raul had deposited me and an armful of scrolls on her doorstep, I had assumed that I
would begin on them at once. Instead, following my father's request, Aunt Sofia had sentenced me to the life of a novice, a harsh probation meant to last a year.

Before long, however, feeling it was a waste of my talents, she took matters into her own hands. She set me to work restoring her copy of the New Testament, which had been badly damaged in the fire the previous year.

The task began slowly. Though Venice was the third largest city in Europe—after Paris and Bruges—paper of quality was scarce. The common variety was available in any amount, since the Venice wharves teemed with trade. But why commit the Great Book to paper that would become dog-eared with a few readings?

After searching Bologna, Milan, and Padua, we found a cache of the finest vellum not a league distant from Venice, on the island of Burano, hidden away by some thoughtful monk during the sack of Venice by the Saracens.

The first week of December, having spent nine hours of each day at our benches, work on the New Testament was finished. One hundred and fifty-three pages of manuscript were taken to the bindery, where artisans fashioned hardwood boards, secured the pages between them, and bound the boards in the richest of Cordovan leather. I printed the words
NEW
T
ESTAMENT
on the cover in Florentine letters limned in sea-blue and sunrise-gold and presented the book to Aunt Sofia.

Overwhelmed, she clasped the Bible to her breast as if it were
a child long lost and said to me tearfully, "I knew from the moment I saw you that God had sent us one of His most precious beings, an angel in disguise."

A celebration was held at San Marco. The bishop blessed me as I knelt at the altar, and a procession was formed that wound through the piazza, my aunt walking in the lead with the Bible cradled in her arms. But no word was forthcoming about my return to Assisi. In fact, that night at supper, she gave me the task of copying the rest of the materials Raul had given her.

"On the best of vellum," she suggested, "limned in the elegant Florentine script I so admire, though it's a trifle gaudy. How long do you think this task will take you? A year, perhaps?"

I nodded, overwhelmed by the prospect of more long months in Saint Benedict's monastery in the city of Venice.

"We can find a dozen sisters who will be glad to help you," she said. "Everyone is fascinated with the work you're doing. Such beautiful work!"

"They would only be in the way," I said churlishly. Then, realizing that I might ease myself out of all future work and Venice itself, I apologized, saying that I would be very happy to train two of the sisters.

Alas, soon after the New Year, Raul brought us more scrolls. I spied him as he came up from the Grand Canal, as he glanced up to see me standing at my window, the window where I often stood, which faced southward toward home and Porziuncola. I hurried into the street.

"How wonderful to see you," I cried, clasping him in my arms. "Did you have a good journey? You look well. Are you tired? Is the family well?"

He brought out a note in my father's writing, which I put away to read later. I waited, all but tapping my feet.

"Be patient," Raul said. "I am about to recite a parable."

"Don't," I said. "Please don't."

"It concerns the barefooted one."

"No; the news without the parable."

"Well, you'll not be surprised to hear that men by the hundreds, young and old, fat and lean, knights and merchants, have flocked to Porziuncola to shed their clothes, array themselves in sackcloth, and take to the byways, preaching poverty. Girls and women flock there also, to trade their fair raiment for sackcloth, to join Clare di Scifi and her Franciscans. She calls them the Poor Clares. Even her sisters, Agnes and Beatrice, have joined. And there are rumors that Ortolana will be the next of the Scifi women. I wonder what the Scifi men will do? Perhaps give a word of thanks."

I waited, my face a mask, my heart beating.

"There's a miracle also," he said. "It was reported from Gubbio, just before I left. It seems that the town had been bedeviled by a wolf, a large and ferocious beast that roamed the surrounding country, killing everything it saw, even humans. People were afraid of taking a step beyond the town walls lest they be slain by the monster.

"Francis, hearing of their plight, went to Gubbio and talked to them about taking the wolf to task. The townspeople were horrified. They told him that of a certainty he would be killed. But Francis and a companion, while the people climbed on the town wall and watched in horror, strode into the countryside and called to the wolf. Even before he called, the beast was already running toward him, jaws agape, flecked with foam."

Raul was enjoying himself with the story, but we were blocking the narrow street, so I suggested that we move on to a wider place.

"To the consternation of the townspeople," he continued, now dramatizing his words, making wild movements with his hands, "Francis Bernardone gave the sign of the cross and the wolf came to a halt.

"Come here, Brother Wolf,' Francis said, speaking sternly. 'Come here and lie down beside me.'

"When the beast obeyed his command, Francis read it a lecture. 'You have done a lot of damage around here, Brother Wolf. You have murdered God's creatures and human beings who are made in God's image. You deserve to be punished as a robber and a murderer. But I want to bring peace between you and the people of Gubbio. Therefore you will be forgiven your evil deeds, and from now on neither people nor dogs are to persecute you.'

"He made everyone promise to feed the beast every day, since
it was only from hunger, he told them, that it did evil things. From then on, it is said, peace reigned between the townspeople and Brother Wolf."

Raul gave me a sidelong glance, gauging the effect of the story he had told in his mocking voice.