A Stolen Tongue (33 page)

John kicks out and hits me in the chest, sending me sprawling across my pallet.

“No. I want Katherine to whisper to me tonight,” he says. “I want her to tell me why she is putting us all through this. What's that you say?” He holds her tongue up to his ear. “You don't know whom you love?”

“John!” I command. “Give that back—you are damning yourself to Hell.”

“I don't see how Hell could be any worse than this constant unknowing. We used to be friends, Felix. We used to confide in each other. Now you have betrayed Arsinoë, and I don't know you anymore.”

“I did not betray her, John. She lied to us.”

“Why did she come to you?” I can't tell whether John is asking me or the tongue. “Why did she trust you? I never would have sided against her.”

Outside, the night wind pushes against the tent flaps like a woman in labor, grunting sand through the joints and laces. John is holding the tongue carelessly. Little grains of stone and earth stick along the tip, as though she has licked a city street.

Why do we do it, brothers? Why do we struggle over bits of women? Even John and I, who have renounced the sex completely, are not free. I want Katherine's tongue; John wants Arsinoë's heart—no, no, more than that. He wants that small, pulsing piece of absolute trust that no man ever truly wins. But he knows Arsinoë has long ago given that to another woman. John cannot bear that we are both more devoted to the tip of this tongue than either of us are to him.

“Felix. John. I think you should see this.” Conrad, our watch, sticks his sandy head through the tent flap. For a second John is distracted; he loosens his grip on the tongue. I snatch it and thrust in into my money pouch before I grab our lantern and follow Conrad. I must be more careful from now on.

Down the torrent bed, unevenly lit by the half-moon rising in the sky, staggers our final pilgrim, the Mameluke Peter Ber. Even before he breaches the ring of camels surrounding our camp, I can smell his reeking breath.

“I guess we know what happened to our wine,” Conrad says.

“Everybody! Everybody wake up!” Peter shouts, stumbling over a tent brace. “Guess what I found.”

Heads emerge from the other two tents. Ser Niccolo raises his lantern and scowls in disgust at the Mameluke's condition.

“Peter,” I say sternly, “that wine was our medicine. You had no right to take it.”

“This is the thanks I get,” he scoffs, throwing his heavy arm around my shoulder, “when I traveled miles for these?”

Ursus creeps outside his tent, hoping not to wake his exhausted father. He too wants to see what the Mameluke brags about.

With a flourish, Peter unfurls his robe, and like Venus's golden apples they roll out: four perfect spheres.

“Fruit!” Ursus cries. “Herr Peter, where did you find it?”

“Way, way down the torrent bed.” He gestures behind him, opposite to where the others searched. “There must be an underground spring. I found no water, but a whole patch of these apples.”

“Can we eat them?” Ursus reaches for one, but Peter pushes his hand away.

“Cut them, son. We mustn't be greedy.”

Like a good anatomist, Ursus cleaves them, working his knife through firm flesh and flicking away seeds like small chips of bone. The apples bleed clear juice onto the sand, fall vivisected into his palm, to be passed between us. If our earthly Paradise is truly to the east of here, brothers, it seems some kindly prelapsarian took pity on our thirsty party and rolled us the fruit of Eden. My fever has gone down several degrees just at the sight of them.

“Enjoy!” the Mameluke cries and collapses to the ground.

Before my teeth even touch the apple wedge, my lips have shriveled into my skull. A tongue crashing against my pallet to get out, a dry desert vacuum in my mouth! I try to swallow, to raise saliva, but it is impossible. My mouth has turned in on itself.

“Oh, God! Oh, God! You should see yourselves!” The drunken Mameluke practically pees with laughter.

Ursus thrusts handfuls of sand into his mouth, scrubbing his tongue and screaming.

John, Conrad, and I spit again and again at the ground, but for nothing. Our mouths are bitter, arid, puckered bladders.

“Must be what Adam felt like when he bit into
his
apple, eh, Felix?
Oh, no, Evie! Ye vile shriveler!
” Peter coughs raucously
and points to his phlegm on the ground. “Look. The spit comes back.”

“Why did you make us eat those apples?” Ursus cries like someone numbed with alcohol.

“I didn't
make
you, son. I offered, just like Mother Eve. I bit into one myself a few hours ago and knew I couldn't deny you the experience. Just drink some water.”

Elphahallo comes running from his own tent at the sound of our wild screams and stoops to examine the apple Ursus spit out. I move my tongue inside my mouth and feel only the cracked, uneven salt flat of a cheek.

“Oh, Failisk!” Elphahallo shakes his head sadly and holds up the fruit for the awakened Arab camel drivers to see. “Don't eat these! They are wild gourds. They are poison.”

The Arabs convulse and hold their throats, pantomiming our deaths from the gourds. Did I spit out my piece or did I swallow it?

“Elphahallo,” I beg, “our mouths are filled with poison, and we have no water. I beseech you, let us have some of yours.”

“You mean our stinking red water?”

“Please, my friend.” I feel my desperation rise. I
did
swallow the gourd.

“I don't know, Failisk. I have no water to spare for men who will pick anything off the ground and put it in their mouths. These men lack the proper humility to make it across the desert alive. I would be wasting my water.”

“You can be assured, we are the lowest of all men. We are at your mercy, Elphahallo.”

Elphahallo turns back to his comrades and confers with them. After much incoherent wrangling and jabbering, he extends his water skin.

“Though red and salty, this water is medicinal, Failisk. Drink, and pass this among you. When you have emptied this skin, come back and I will give you another.”

I could kiss the ancient Saracen, but instead I solemnly do as I am told: drink and make the others drink. Little by little, the poison gall washes from my mouth; patches of my tongue retain the
metallic imprint of the gourd, souring each mouthful, but at least I am able to swallow. We all glare at the abashed Mameluke.

Peter kicks the dust. “It was just a joke.”

Ser Niccolo, the only man not to taste the fruit, strides to Peter Ber and smacks him sharply across the face.

“You think that's funny?” Niccolo growls. “Here—in this place where there is too much to die from already?”

The Mameluke's spirits, in the manner of drunken men, change instantly from levity to belligerence.

“Don't you fucking hit me!” He shoves the translator hard in the chest.

“You are a stupid slave, Abdullah,” Ser Niccolo sneers. “I should have left you in Jerusalem to rot.”

“You couldn't very well do that, now, could you?” Peter spits. “You owe me.”

“Shut up,” the translator warns.

“You lied. She wasn't even worth it. Like fucking a corpse.”

With a cry, Ser Niccolo tackles the raving Mameluke, battering his face with his fists. I grab Ursus Tucher, who looks on wide-eyed, and press his face into my robes.

“You fucking animal!” the translator screams, banging Peter's head against the ground. “I never told you to do such a thing.”

“You only told me how pretty she was,” Peter shouts back, wrapping his beefy fingers around Ser Niccolo's neck. “How weak. You only sent me to steal her for you.”

“Goddamn you!”

The Arab camel drivers dive upon the foes and fearlessly pull them apart. Niccolo and Peter claw the air between them, eager for more blood, but the Saracens won't allow it. A skinny camel driver walks the Mameluke one way down the torrent bed, gibbering at him in Saracen, while another steers Niccolo in the opposite direction.

What could Niccolo have been thinking, brothers? It is not as though he was unaware of the sort of man he sent in search of his sister. He knew Abdullah to be a dissolute, erratic apostate, pledging allegiance to no faith or country; worse still,
battal,
a disgrace
even among the most depraved Infidel. How could he imagine a man of this sort would not take liberties with a defenseless woman and, after she stabbed him and escaped, later seek revenge upon her? It was Emelia Priuli's eternal misfortune to have slept in a woman's skin our first night in Joppa. I can only imagine the drunken Mameluke saw only one female form among our slumbering pilgrims and extracted his payment from it. Thank God, brothers, that Lord Tucher sleeps through the Mameluke's tirade. Happily praying inside his dream church, he has no idea Peter Ber set fire to his beautiful Martyr Priuli.

“Go back to bed,” Elphahallo orders us solemnly.

It is my turn at watch, and while the others reluctantly head back to their tents, I miserably take up my post to walk the concentric camps of Animal, Infidel, and Christian until dawn.

Elphahallo falls into step beside me, stopping to pet the distressed camels, who lift up their necks and roar. I am truly the most wretched of monks, brothers, stumbling through this darkness. I try not to let Calinus see my emotion.

“Do you see that star that has just risen?” The venerable Saracen stops me and points to the dark southern sky. “That is called Saint Katherine's Star, and beneath that star is the Mountain of Sinai. When we must travel at night, as we will soon, we will go no other way than toward that star.”

I study that tremulous bit of light assaying the vault of Heaven. Beside me, Elphahallo says no more, offering up no comment on what we just witnessed. For once I do not need to talk, brothers. For once, it is enough to know I am not alone in this strange white desert. It is enough, in this darkest night, to have been given a star to follow.

We travel the whole next day without a word between us, so our throats are tight, not only from thirst but also from disuse, when Elphahallo stops and puts our route to a vote.

“We have a choice to make,” Elphahallo announces, while our donkeys mill, pressing their juiceless noses together.

“If we take this left path through the mountains, we will reach the monastery in three days. The way will be hard, and I know for a fact there are no wells before we reach our final destination. Our water supply is almost exhausted as it is.

“If we take the path to my right, down along this torrent bed, across the black plain, and back into the mountains farther in, we may find water, or the wells may be dry, or warlike desert Arabs might surround them. I know wells exist along this path, but I cannot swear to their condition.

“I put it to your decision, gentlemen. Which way shall you go?”

Young knight Ursus looks back to me for advice. His father no longer cares about water or food; he talks of nothing but his dream church. Until today, I had not noticed how filled with concern Ursus's eyes had become when they rested upon his ailing father. Not yet fully recovered from his excesses during the sandstorm, Lord Tucher might not survive a three-day press. The only safe way, grievous as it may be, is to take the more circuitous path.

Niccolo's voice surprises us all.

“I say let's make haste through the mountains. Three days is not so long to go without water, and there is no guarantee we will find it on the longer path. If the wells are dry, and they may well be, we will be farther away from our destination and worse off. I would rather be a little thirsty for three days than take such a risk.”

Ser Niccolo's motives could not be more brazen. Arsinoë's caravan will naturally stick to the known wells. If we cut through the mountains, we will have at least two days' jump on her. All the pilgrims, myself included, fear to cross Ser Niccolo. After last night, there is no telling what he might do.

“I beg pardon, but we would suffer more than a little thirst.” Conrad bravely speaks up. “I have seen men in the fields, under a much weaker sun than this, faint dead away through lack of water. Their heads throb, their fevers soar. Lord Tucher almost succumbed to this heat, and we had ample water to revive him then. We are men of differing ages and conditions. I think we must take the route of water.”

“Felix.” Niccolo turns from Conrad in disgust. “You are Lord Tucher's spiritual adviser. Wouldn't you counsel him, for the benefit of his soul, to assume the extra hardship of the mountain journey—sparing himself none of the desert fathers' privations?”

“Yes, Felix,” Lord Tucher says. “I want to be a desert father.”

Niccolo's eyes bore into mine with an unmistakable meaning. He will uphold the pretense that this pilgrimage is about Tucher's sin, if I will publicly show my allegiance to him. Can I weigh the lives of a dozen plus men against the health of Christendom? Niccolo knows I understand the consequences. A wheelbarrow's trip of bones between our group, inert, heavy clubs, piped with spongy marrow—what would the world care if any in our party left his corpse on the desert floor? But to bear the responsibility of losing Saint Katherine forever? Could I live with it? Wouldn't I rather slowly turn to sand, my eroded bones mingled with this chalky dust, than inform Europe I had lost the Bride of Heaven?

“I don't think our friend Calinus would present a route that he knew would spell death for us,” I offer at last. “If he thinks it is possible, perhaps we had best take the shorter path.”

John gasps at my rationalization. “I am surprised at you, Felix,” says he. “Our desert fathers never strayed far from water, for they knew nothing displeased God more than suicide.”

I wish I could say John's reaction was solely about water, brothers, but he would do anything at this point to gainsay the translator.