Crossing To Paradise (14 page)

To
begin with, the pilgrims behaved almost as if it hadn't happened. Once Simona and the hospice nuns had taken in hand all the arrangements for the funeral, they were relieved to get on with small jobs and to help one another. True, Gatty and Nest and Tilda embraced several times but they didn't say much. Gatty went out to buy lettuce and chervil for her teeth from the market stall and came back with a little pot of perfumed grease for Tilda to smear onto the scabs of her boils, and Tilda smeared it on the cooking pot as well while she was about it; Nest mended a tear in her gown and in Everard's ripped breeches, and then she went out without saying where; Everard hurried off to Mass and Snout trundled along to the hospice kitchen where the nuns soon had him cracking bones, tearing apart joints and chopping up meat; whistling a mournful song under his breath, Emrys set off with a nun to find a blacksmith to sharpen everyone's knives and replace the broken tines on his and Austin's sticks; Austin prayed and then he unwound his clotted bandage; Tilda helped him to scrape away the poultice, inspected the red mangled mess of Austin's hand, and dressed it with ointment given to her by a white-faced nun; Nakin laid out rows of silver coins on a bench and counted and recounted them, and then asked Austin to check the pilgrims' passes and letters of commendation.

“Without them,” he said, “we can't go on and we can't go back.”

Austin grunted.

Neither man said anything more; both knew how difficult and painful would be the discussion they must all soon have.

Lady Gwyneth's funeral was not like any Gatty had been to at Caldicot. First, there was the funeral of little Luke, Lady Helen's son, who had died in the same year he was born, and then her brother Dusty's funeral. Only
the previous June, Gatty's father had died, and very soon after that, Gatty's grandmother had been buried next to her son.

At these funerals, each person living in the manor had followed Oliver to the graveside, and sprinkled a little earth into the grave, and for a long time after that the bereaved had visited the grave each day and kept their dead company.

On the second afternoon after Lady Gwyneth died, Simona led the pilgrims to a canal where two boats were awaiting them. The first was draped in black velvet. Lady Gwyneth's coffin was raised on trestles, and in the bow and stern stood two groups of little children, carrying bunches of wildflowers.

The moment she saw them, Gatty felt the blood in her leaden veins quicken. Blebs of tears swelled in the corners of her eyes, and then rolled down her freckled cheeks.

The pilgrims stepped onto the second boat, and Gatty saw that Simona's six brothers were sitting at the pairs of oars. She wept some more and, through her tears, smiled at them.

“Where are we going?” she asked Simona.

“
Santa Marta,
” said Simona. “
Santa Marta
is best.”

“Saint Martha?” Austin repeated. “Is that what you said?”

“
Sì,
” said Simona.

The priest shook his head. “Protector of pilgrims,” he said.

“Venice smells bad,” Simona said. “The dead smell worse.”

Gatty wished she hadn't said that.

“And what sinks to the bottom sometimes pops up again.”

Gatty wished she hadn't said that either.

“One day we will make a burial island,” Simona said. “Not yet.”

In the first boat, one of Simona's brothers lit a bowl of dried rose petals and herbs and spices. Gatty could smell the sweet smoke drifting back past her. Then, as the two boats rode out into a larger canal, she saw a floating cormorant, funeral-black, shrieking, bending its neck into an upward loop and a downward loop both at the same time, and suddenly disappearing! It seemed to Gatty that the whole of Venice was water.
Nervous and jumpy. Half of what it swallows it chokes up again, she thought. All the churches and markets and graveyards are afloat and barely anchored. Rotting timbers; rotting wattle; rotting food; rotting bodies.

At Saint Martha's, the six brothers passed straps under Lady Gwyneth's coffin and lowered it into a muddy grave. Austin pronounced the words, absolute yet comforting, and dear because familiar. One by one, the little children dropped their wildflowers onto the coffin, and Gatty saw how a daisy—or a white violet, was it—stuck to one side of the grave.

“Our lady,” Austin said, “she told me she wanted Gatty to sing at her funeral.”

“It's all Lady Gwyneth's words,” Gatty told them. “It's all things she said to me, except for ‘Aiee!' I made that up.”

Nest edged closer to Sei and then, as everyone stood still around the grave, in death and yet in life, about their bowed heads small birds whistling, children somewhere near singing a skipping-song, street-criers far off shouting their wares, Gatty began to sing:

“
I was conceived, and I was born
While waters broke in the red barley corn.

Aiee! Aiee!

I was a baby, I was a girl,
My father called me his pearl, his shining pearl.

Aiee! Aiee!

I crossed the years, a misty maiden,
Green and rising, unproved, unladen.

Aiee! Aiee!

I was a faithful wife, I was a mother And my son, my son…

Aiee! Aiee!

I was a woman of Clwyd's holy hills, Magic in her bones, songs in her sweet rills.

Aiee! Aiee!

Like the waking bell, sound in Ewloe steeple, I tried to ring true for each one of my people.

Aiee! Aiee!

I was the pilgrim Death took down for his wife, And I was a pilgrim all my life.

Aiee! Aiee!”

How beautifully Gatty sang. The birds stopped to listen to her.

“Amen!” said Austin and “Amen!” everyone mumbled as Gatty's sweet, clear voice ascended to heaven. But before the pilgrims and Simona and her six brothers had left the graveyard, Nest and Nakin closed in on either side of her.

“She asked you to sing?” said Nest.

“You didn't like it?” asked Gatty.

“No.”

“What right have you to put words into your mistress's mouth?” Nakin asked.

“I told you,” said Gatty. “It's only things she said when she talked to me.”

“What's ‘Aiee!' supposed to mean?” Nest demanded.

To their consternation, Gatty lifted her voice in another terrible aching cry of loss and pain. “Aiee!” Then she looked at Nest and Nakin. “It means like it sounds,” she said. “It does to me, anyhow.”

As soon as Simona had guided the pilgrims back to the hospice, she took Austin to see Doctor Lupo about his swollen hand. And no sooner had they left than the other pilgrims began to argue.

“I knew we should never have come,” said Nest. “I just want to go home.”

“It's a pity Lady Gwyneth brought you at all,” Nakin told her.

“We can't go on!” wailed Nest.

“I'd be very glad to leave you here,” Nakin said nastily, “but it's not what Lady Gywneth wished. Anyhow, your passage is already paid for.”

“With you, Nakin,” Tilda observed, “it's always about money, money, money.”

“Gobbo will have to repay Lady Gwyneth's fare,” Nakin said. “Everard! What do you think?”

Everard gave a low whistle. “You must be up against it,” he said, “asking my opinion.”

“Dear God, man!” exclaimed Emrys. “Why can't you just answer him?”

“What I think,” Everard replied in a calm voice, “is that we should respect Lady Gwyneth's wishes, and remember how she said that each step we take is a step toward paradise.”

“Exactly!” said Nakin.

“And I've got work to do, teaching Gatty. Besides, I want to hear how Saracens sing.”

“We must stick together,” Emrys said. “That's the important thing.”

“I'm going home!” Tilda proclaimed. But then she burst into noisy, messy tears and, curiously, that set Nakin off too. He sobbed and he dribbled.

“Part of me died when she did,” he gulped. “I mean, everything I'm not.”

“I don't understand,” said Nest.

“Her honor and eagerness, her wholeheartedness. Her…”

“You're coming with me, Tilda,” Emrys announced in a forceful voice.

“No!” screamed Tilda.

“What about the horses? How would they manage without me?”

“What about you, Snout?” asked Nest.

Snout shook his head. “First I think one thing, then I think another.”

“Snout can never make his mind up,” said Nakin. “Always sniffing and sniveling!”

“I'm going out!” Nest announced. “Lady Gwyneth's dead, and all you do is argue!”

And with that, she turned her back and flounced out of the room.

“She means all she can do is think about Sei,” said Tilda. “Did you see her in the graveyard? The way she kept edging closer to him.”

Nest was out all afternoon and only came back to the hospice, her cheeks on fire, her lips puffy, just before Austin and Gatty returned from Doctor Lupo with very bad news.

“She says I may have to lose my hand,” Austin told them.

“No!” shrieked Tilda.

“There's no time for it to heal before our ship sails. She says I must stay in Venice and each day she'll treat it.”

The pilgrims were dumb as donkeys.

“Gobbo's ship is the last of the season,” Austin said, shaking his head. “I'll have to wait for you here.”

Gatty advanced on Austin. She wrapped her arms around him.

“I'll wait with you,” Nest told him.

“No, Nest!” said Gatty.

“Emrys said we must all stick together,” Nakin observed.

“He's right,” said Austin.

“Tilda's coming,” said Emrys. “We've both put our hands to the plow of this pilgrimage.”

“And so have I,” said Everard.

“Yes,” said Nakin, licking his lips. “Necessity makes strange bedfellows. What about you, Snout? Have you made your mind up yet?”

Snout slowly nodded his big, hairy head. “I'll do what Gatty does,” he said.

“I'm coming!” said Gatty. “Of course I am! I promised Lady Gwyneth I would.” But then she stared at Austin in consternation. “My reading lessons!” she cried.

“Yes,” Austin said in a weighty voice. He turned to Everard and raised his eyebrows.

“I will,” said Everard. “Indeed I'll teach them.”

Nest clicked her teeth and sighed noisily. “No!” she said. “Not without Lady Gwyneth. I couldn't! I'm staying here.”

Gatty
and Simona stood on the spine of Saint Nicholas. On one side, just a sniff away, lay the lagoon, pink and placid as a well-fed baby. And on the other lurched the fretful, flint-grey Adriatic.

“This is where his camp was,” said Simona.

“Right here?” Gatty demanded.

Simona nodded. “There were camps all the way down the island. Crusaders from Provins, Italy, Picardy, Germany, Anjou, Normandy, Flanders. You should have seen them.”

“I can,” said Gatty.

“And Navarre and Burgundy and I don't know. More than twenty thousand men, and that's not counting us Venetians! And more than two hundred boats.”

For some while, Gatty stared to the left and right, and out to sea. “Bonamy,” she said. “Was he here?”

“He was,” Simona replied. “His eyes!”

“I never seen him,” Gatty told her.

“Damson,” said Simona.

“Arthur was going to ride him over, when we went to Ludlow Fair, but he's so strong and handsome someone might have stole him.”

“He is,” said Simona.

“Where is he?”

“I told you, Arthur had to leave him in Zara…” Simona waved at the boundless sea. “Serle said he'd do his best to look after him.”

Simona sensed that Gatty wanted to be on her own. She sat down on a baking, flat stone and, before long, Gatty wandered off down to the beach. In front of her, the ocean's battalions were rolling in, flying their sparkling silver flags, beating their dark drums.

All this water, thought Gatty. It's not just Venice, the whole world's
mainly water. Tides of saltwater. What can I do without Lady Gwyneth? Lady Gwyneth and my mother…my father…Dusty…Why do the people I love desert me? Why have they all died? Oh, Arthur!

Gatty meandered along the foreshore. She picked up a little shell, pale as a lemon, and then a larger orange one, each of them ribbed and shaped like an open fan. Then she found such a pretty, closed winkle, nipple-pink, and a sliver of sage-green grass, and a tiny glass bead, creamy on the inside, cinnamon on the outside. Gatty stooped and scooped up a handful of the fine, muddy-dark sand, and let it trickle between her fingers.

This is when she saw it.

Gatty gasped. She bent over it. She dropped onto her knees and very carefully reached out for it as if there were some danger she might frighten it away.

The bruised gold ring was warm to her touch, warm on her cheek. Gatty studied it: On the little square seal was a woman with a baby in her arms, and the baby was holding out something to its mother…

It's not the ring Ranier dropped into the water, Gatty thought. It can't be. It's not a diamond ring.

Gatty examined the scratched seal again. She tried it on and it fitted her middle finger. Then she rolled it between her thumb and forefinger and looked closely at the inside.

Scuffs and scratches, she thought. Oh, no! No, they're not. Gatty was looking so closely at the ring that it all but touched the tip of her nose. “A D,” she said out loud. “Yes, A D E. And the last letter's C. I'm sure it is.”

Gatty splayed her fingers and combed them through her curls; several sandflies hopped down onto her shoulders.

“A D E C,” said Gatty. “ADEC. DECA. DACE. ECAD. CADE. What does it mean?”

One small dark cloud rushed in from the east. The water quivered.

“Oh!” cried Gatty. “A DE C. Arthur! Arthur de Caldicot! It can't be! How can it be?”

The dark cloud swept away west. Once more Saint Nicholas basked in hot sunlight, and Gatty stood on the foreshore, shivering.