Crossing To Paradise
Crossing to
Paradise
FOR LINDAâWITH LOVE
CHARACTERS
THE PILGRIMS
L
ADY
G
WYNETH DE
E
WLOE
A
USTIN
,
her priest
N
EST
,
aged 17, her first chamber-servant
G
ATTY
,
aged 15, her second chamber-servant
S
NOUT
,
the cook
E
MRYS
,
the stableman
T
ILDA
,
his wife, a wisewoman
N
AKIN
,
a Chester merchant
E
VERARD
,
Chester cathedral choirmaster
AT EWLOE
C
ROK
,
an armed man
A
RMIN
,
a day-worker
S
IR
R
OBERT DE
M
ONTALT
,
Lady Gwyneth's husband
L
LEWELYN AP
I
ORWERTH
,
a Welsh warlord
G
RIFFITH AP
R
OBERT
,
Lady Gwyneth's baby son
G
RUFFYDD
,
the shoemaker
M
ANSEL
,
his son
H
EW
,
aged 5, Snout's son
ON THE ROAD
S
AYER
,
a livery stablemaster in London
S
OLOMON
,
his partner
S
YNDOD
,
Gatty's Welsh cob
S
AVIOUR
,
Austin's horse
J
OHN AND
G
EOFF
,
two hired pilgrims
A German envoy
A Norwegian merchant
A French nun
A monk at Vézelay
S
ISTER
H
ILDA
,
a nun at Vézelay
A
ENOR
, a
novice at Vézelay
The doctor's accomplices
An Alpine guide
B
ROTHER
B
ENEDICT
The stablemaster at Treviso and his two daughters
S
IMONA
,
a translator in Venice
C
INQUE AND
S
EI
,
her brothers
G
IANNI
N
URICO
,
a dentist
G
OBBO
,
captain of a pilgrim ship
T
INY
,
an elephant
A hospice nun in Venice
A
LESSANDRA
L
UPO
,
a surgeon
Three Saracen traders in Venice
O
SMAN
,
a Turkish astronomer
M
ICHAEL
S
COT
,
a scholar
S
IR
U
MBERTO DEL
M
ALAXA
,
a Venetian landowner in Crete
M
ANSUR
,
his Egyptian slave
A justice in Cyprus
B
ABOLO
,
a Cypriot baby
B
ROTHER
A
NTONY
,
a monk at Saint Mary of the Mountain
A Saracen fisherman and his two sons
A snake-charmer in Acre
A conjuror in Acre
A wise man in Acre
B
ROTHER
G
ABRIEL
,
a Knight Hospitaller
S
IR
F
ARAMOND
,
a Norman crusader
L
ADY
S
AFFIYA
,
his Saracen wife
The Bedouin horsemen
G
REGORY
,
a helper at the Hospital of Saint John
J
ANET
,
his wife
A blind Jewish singer
Pilgrims, Saracens, traders, and a thief
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
A young Saracen boy
K
IT THE
T
RADER
R
AVEN
,
his brother
AT CALDICOT
S
IR
J
OHN AND
L
ADY
H
ELEN DE
C
ALDICOT
S
IAN
,
aged 12, their daughter
O
LIVER
,
the priest
S
LIM
,
the cook
T
ANWEN
,
a chamber-servant
J
OAN
,
a village woman
M
ACSEN
,
a day-worker
H
OPELESS
,
Gatty's cow
S
IR
W
ALTER AND
L
ADY
A
NNE DE
VE
RDON
W
INNIE DE
V
ERDON
,
aged 15
L
ORD
S
TEPHEN AND
L
ADY
J
UDITH DE
H
OLT
L
ADY
A
LICE DE
G
ORTANORE
T
OM DE
G
ORTANORE
,
aged 18
M
ERLIN
Arthur de Caldicot's mother
A
RTHUR DE
C
ALDICOT
(now
S
IR
A
RTHUR DE
C
ATMOLE
)
“Light
of light! Oh, flight! Oh, flight!” trilled the early birds.
In one corner of the cow-stall, the heap of dirty sacking shifted. Something buried beneath it made a sound that began as a gentle murmur and ended as a grouse.
Then Peter the cock crowed and that loosed the tongues of his disciples. Half the neighers and brayers and bleaters and grunters in the manor of Caldicot welcomed the day's dawning, chill and misty as it was.
As soon as Hopeless joined in and mooed, the heap of sacking shrugged and then tossed. In one fluid movement, Gatty stood up, crossed herself, reached for her russet woollen tunic lying in the manger, and pulled it on over her undershirt and baggy drawers. Loudly she yawned. She opened her mouth so wide she could hear all her little head-bones cricking and cracking. Then she stepped round to the next stall.
“Greetings in God!” she said politely to her cow. Then she gave Hopeless a handful of grain, pulled up her three-legged stool, and began to milk her.
The air in the cowshed somehow smelt thick and fresh at the same time. Rank with gluey dung and stale urine and musty straw, but also rinsed with the cool, clean breath of late September, that time of year when the weather begins to sharpen its teeth.
Gatty had chosen to sleep there since her grandmother died. After all, Hopeless was company of a sort, and Gatty preferred it to sleeping in her little two-roomed cottage on her own.
Her mother had died in childbirth, and her little brother Dusty died when he couldn't stop laughing and choked. Then, early that summer, an army of night-elves had invaded her father's stomach and jabbed their spears into him, and just four weeks after that, her grandmother had died
as well, seeing little point in hanging on once her only son had gone to the grave.
So Gatty was alone in this middle-world. There was no one to look after her, and no one for her to look after. And since Arthur de Caldicot had left the Marches to join the great crusade, for two years at least, he said, for two years and maybe three, there was no one with whom Gatty could really talk and laugh, no one to whom she could open her heart.
But soon after her father died, Gatty had begun to sing. While losing her family, and Arthur as well, Gatty found her own voice. As she filled her pail with bubbling milk, she crooned milking songs. She sang to herself the songs she heard villagers singing as they worked in the fields, love songs sung by traveling musicians, carols for dancing, charms. Not only those! She listened to the choirs of birds and the harping wind and made up her own green songs.
Early one morning, Oliver the priest stopped to listen to Gatty singing to herself in the cow-stall, and then bustled over to tell Sir John and Lady de Caldicot about it.
“That girl!” he said, blinking and shaking his bald head. “You've heard her sing?”
“Half the time,” said Sir John.
“Like a Welsh girl,” Lady Helen said.
“Better!” said the priest. He drew himself up to his full height, such as it was, and laced his pudgy fingers over his stomach. “She's untrained, of course, but she has the voice of an angel. An apprentice angel.”
Sir John rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “I wouldn't know,” he said.
“In fact,” said Oliver, “I'm beginning to think she should enter a nunnery.”
“Dear Lord!” said Sir John.
“Sister Gatty!” exclaimed Lady Helen.
“She should enter a nunnery,” said Oliver, who never said a thing once when he could say it twice, “where she can be taught and give her voice back to God.” The priest took a deep breath and permitted himself a small smile. “Yes!” he said. “Yes! A little March miracle!”
Sir John de Caldicot called for Gatty to be brought to him and inspected his field-girl. “So, now!” he said. “Arthur's friend!”
“Sir?”
“Braving furious bulls andâ¦absconding to Ludlow Fair, and sleeping up a tree.”
“No, sir.”
“No what?”
“Arthur wasn't there, sir.”
“Where?”
“Up the tree.”
“I know that,” said Sir John, sitting down on a bench beside the fire. “You're lucky the bears didn't get you. So, Gatty, are you always hard-working?”
“I'd starve if I weren't,” said Gatty.
“Except when you're off on some wild goose chase.”
Gatty stared at her chapped knuckles, her earth-stained hands. She scrubbed her gold-and-silver curls with her rough fingertips. Why was Sir John asking her such questions? Inside her sackcloth, Gatty began to feel smaller than she really was, and she gave Sir John a doleful look.
“What have I done wrong, sir?” she asked.
Sir John waved at Gatty to sit down on the bench opposite him. “You're fifteen, aren't you? When's your birthday?”
“Just after the harvest, sir. That's what my father said.”
“Yes, and you're alone now. No one to care for. No one to feed.”
“Hopeless,” said Gatty.
“What?”
“Hopeless,” she said. “And my seven chickens.”
“What about Jankin, then?”
“I can't!” cried Gatty, and she stood up.
“Sit down!” said Sir John.
“I can't marry Jankin!” Gatty said fiercely. “You can't force me.”
“Gatty,” said Sir John, “I'm your guardian now, and I will decide whom you marry.”
“I won't, anyhow.”
“So I gather,” said Sir John in a voice dry as a kindling stick. “As it happens, I think you're right. Jankin's father dishonored yours, and that's the end of the matter.”
Gatty glared into the fire.
“We each have our place in this middle-world,” said Sir John. “Children have duties to their parents, field-men and field-women have duties to their lord. Isn't that so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I have duties to the king,” Sir John said, “and the king must honor God. Now this is most unusual, I know. But what with you being alone, and only fifteen, and Arthur's friendâ¦well, for one reason and another I've decided to help you.”
Gatty knitted her brows.
“Oliver says you can sing. Will you sing for me?”
“Close your eyes!” Gatty instructed him.
“What?”
“Close your eyes.”
At first Sir John de Caldicot thought that he could hear the wind gently hissing, and then kissing the hall's horn windows. He listened to the soft
cu-ic, cu-ic
of the night jar. Then the bird clapped its wings.
P'weet,
sang the lapwing.
P'weet. P'weet.
And then Gatty began to sing the words she had heard in the hall at Caldicot three years before:
“
Love without heartache, love without fear
Is fire without flame and flame without heat.Love without heartache, love without fear
Is summer without flower, winter without frost.
”
Gatty's beautiful voice pierced Sir John's heart, and no sooner had he heard her sing than he resolved she should become a nun. But after riding
all the way to White Ladies beyond Wenlock, and talking to the nuns, he came back thunder-browed.
“They're grasping, those harridans,” Sir John reported. “Avaricious, that's what they are. They wanted me to pay outright for board, lodging, clothing, reading lessons, singing lessons, I don't know what. They'd charge you for the sunlight if they could figure out how.”
“Like all you English,” said Lady Helen. “Hard-nosed.”
“Anyhow,” said Sir John, “they weren't in the least keen to have Gatty, seeing as she's a field-girl.”
“What about her voice, though?” asked Lady Helen.
Sir John sniffed. “Brides of Christ! They're old crows. Rapacious crows.”
In early November, it was Lady Helen's turn to travel. She rode north to visit her widowed cousin, Lady Gwyneth of Ewloe, and when she came home after three weeks she reported that Lady Gwyneth was in search of a second chamber-servant.
“Well?” said Sir John. “What am I meant to do about it? Find one under a hedgerow?”
“What about Gatty?” said Lady Helen. She gave her husband a bright smile. “I promised Gwyneth I'd ask you. She's leaving on a pilgrimage, and she needs a second girl.”
“Poor Gatty!” said Sir John. “Not the shrine of another dismal Welsh saint. Not another mossy, dripping well.”
Lady Helen shook her head.
“Where then?” asked Sir John.
“Je-ru-sa-lem,” said Lady Helen, articulating each syllable.
“God in heaven!” shouted Sir John. “Jerusalem! What's got into the woman?”
“And she says Gatty's voice should help to keep everyone safe,” Lady Helen added.
“Keep them safe!” exclaimed Sir John. “Armed men keep people safeânot singing.”
“Gwyneth said she could do with her at once.”
“She'll have to wait,” said Sir John. “We need Gatty here over Yuletide. Macsen can ride north with her the morning after Epiphany.”
When Lady Helen told Gatty about going north to Ewloe, Gatty grinned. “I don't know nothing about chamber-servants and all that,” she said.
“You can learn, then.”
Gatty looked doubtfully at Lady Helen under her long lashes.
What daunted Gatty, though, and each day a little more, was the thought of leaving Caldicot. Leaving her lifelong friends. Leaving Hopeless, who always mooed to tell Gatty to feed her. Leaving her strip of land in Nine Elms, the one she and her father had worked side by side for as long as she could remember. Leaving the glinting clods and the high rookery, the way the cool dawn air fingered her hairline, the way the setting sun bled over Wales. Gatty had never traveled further than Ludlow in her whole life, where she went to the fair with Arthur.
“Lady Gwyneth is going on a pilgrimage,” Lady Helen told Gatty, “and she means to take you.”
“Where?” asked Gatty.
“Jerusalem!”
“Jerusalem!” Gatty exclaimed. “Where Jesus was?”
“The Holy Land,” said Lady Helen.
“Will I see Arthur, then?” she asked eagerly.
“That girl!” Sir John said later to Lady Helen. “So raw! She has no idea whatsoever of all the dangers and terrors awaiting her.”
Lady Helen shook her head. “Just as well, maybe!” she said in her sing-song voice.
“Jerusalem!” Sir John exclaimed. “She'll be lucky to get there alive, let alone back home again.”