Crossing To Paradise (19 page)

From
the moment Gatty and Babolo stepped into the little stone courthouse, Signor Umberto's plans started to go wrong.

“The justice is not here,” said a woman whose face looked like a shriveled leather purse. She waved a huge key. “I'm the only one. Me and two prisoners.”

“Where in God's name is he?” Signor Umberto demanded. And then he told Gatty, “I can scarcely understand her. She speaks abominable Greek.”

The woman shrugged. “He rode over to Larnaca yesterday.”

Late that afternoon, the justice returned—a man with a slight squint, a no-nonsense manner, and a bull-neck.

“You should have arranged beforehand,” he told Signor Umberto in good Italian. “Then you and your wife wouldn't have had to wait.” He looked down his nose at the sleeping baby, and just touched the tip of its nose.

“Her name?” he asked.

“His,” said Signor Umberto. “He's a boy.” He nodded at Gatty.

“Babolo,” said Gatty. She could hear her heart hammering.

“Tell the justice how old he is,” the Venetian instructed her.

“Four months,” said Gatty. “And five days.”

“What language is she speaking?” asked the justice.

“English,” Signor Umberto replied.

“Your wife is English?”

“
Sì.
”

After this, Signor Umberto told the justice the purpose of their visit, to claim land in Cyprus now lawfully his. “I have the necessary papers,” he said. “I have my father's will, and I have a testimonial to Babolo's birth.”

“Please,” said Gatty, “explain what you're saying.”

“It's all right,” Signor Umberto told her. “Leave it to me.”

“Babolo,” said the justice. “Not Babola? Not a girl?”

“No, I told you. You want to see?”

The justice waved his right hand. “Where was he born?”

“In Crete,” Signor Umberto replied. “In Malaxa. Four months ago.”

“And five days,” the justice said carefully. He shook his head as if he were weighing it. “I cannot confirm your father's land now belongs to you. You pay me and I appoint three men to witness your papers, and ask you questions.”

“What's he saying?” asked Gatty, bewildered.

The Venetian made a fist of his right hand and thumped his forehead. “There's no time for all this,” he said, “and there's no need.”

The justice was not used to being hectored. His red bull-neck turned redder and the blue veins swelled.

“My wife!” the Venetian said very loudly, throwing a protective arm round Gatty's waist. “You can't keep her waiting. Her boat sails for Crete this evening.”

Signor Umberto's voice woke Babolo and the baby began to grouse and then to wail, and Gatty wasn't able to soothe him.

“Now look what you've done,” the Venetian said.

“He's hungry, isn't he?” the justice asked Gatty. He gestured to her to sit down and nurse her baby.

“You can't keep Signora Gatti waiting,” Signor Umberto repeated, more coolly now. “Her boat sails this evening.”

“So you've said,” the justice replied.

The Venetian delved into his gown, pulled out a fistful of gold coins, and one by one dropped five of them into the palm of his left hand. He gave the justice a sly smile.

“Since when was it lawful to hurry the law?” the Cypriot asked.

“What did he say?” asked Gatty.

“Please wait here,” the justice told them. Then he walked out of the courthouse and the shriveled old woman turned her huge key in the lock.

“Why have they locked us in?” Gatty demanded.

“Idiot!” the Venetian exclaimed.

“What did he say to you?”

Signor Umberto saw how anxious Gatty looked. “It's all right,” he reassured her. “He'll come back soon.”

“And Gobbo does know. I mean…”

“
Sì, sì.
He'll wait.”

But the justice did not return that evening, and he did not return during the watches of the night.

Those were the strangest hours for Gatty. Missing his own mother, the baby became more and more fractious, and then began to scream. When Gatty fed Babolo from the flask of his mother's milk, drop by drop, it comforted her to feel him pulling so strongly on her little finger. She rocked him and crooned to him, and, as she did so, she drowsily half-remembered her own mother crooning to her. For a while Babolo slept, but Gatty couldn't escape the tides of her own fears.

When the justice returned an hour after sunrise, Signor Umberto del Malaxa greeted him with cold fury.

“Where,” he asked menacingly, “in the name of God, have you been? How dare you leave a lord and his lady all night in this stinking little room?”

The justice pointed at Gatty and said one word.

“What did he say?” asked Gatty.

“Translate!” said Signor Umberto. “He says I am to translate.”

“As to whether this baby is your baby, Signor Umberto, I have great doubt,” the justice began.

“How dare you?” shouted Signor Umberto.

“And as to whether this lady is his mother, I have great doubt also.”

“Idiot!” shouted the Venetian.

“Translate!” the justice reminded Signor Umberto. “Signora Gatti does not hold him as a mother holds her baby. She did not know how to quieten him. She does not speak to him like a mother.”

“She does!” retorted Signor Umberto. “In the English way. They live in a cool climate. They're not the same as us.”

The justice was wholly unperturbed. “So why did you try to bribe me?” he inquired.

“What did he say?” asked Gatty.

Signor Umberto translated.

“The Saracens may say that the greater the bribe, the lesser the problem,” the justice observed. “I do not.”

“Damn you!” exclaimed the Venetian.

“Signor Umberto,” said the justice in his level voice, “you lied to me. There was no boat leaving for Crete last night.”

The Venetian lowered his eyes.

“What's he saying?” Gatty asked.

Signor Umberto translated.

“But there was a boat leaving for Jaffa,” the justice continued.

Gatty almost understood. “Did he say Jaffa?” she asked, her voice rising. “They haven't gone, have they?”

“I thought as much,” said the justice. “Signora Gatti, you're not Signor Umberto's wife, are you? I think you must be a pilgrim, and that is your only reason for coming here to Cyprus.”

Signor Umberto translated and Gatty nodded. “Yes, sir,” she whispered.

“Tell her exactly what I say,” the justice instructed Signor Umberto in a stone-cold voice.

“He says,” the Venetian translated unhappily, “you have been punished too much already. The door is open, he says. You are free to leave.”

“What about you?” asked Gatty.

The justice understood and at once jabbed his blunt forefinger into the Venetian's chest, and said something.

“Prison,” Signor Umberto said calmly. “Leave Babolo here. He will be safe with me.”

The justice squinted at Gatty. Then he rubbed his right thumb and forefinger.

“Oh!” cried Gatty. “Yes! My reward.”

“Yes,” said the Venetian. He dipped into his cloak and counted five gold coins for Gatty.

“Ten,” Gatty said at once.

“No,” said Signor Umberto.

“Ten!” repeated Gatty loudly, shaking her curls and almost forgetting she was still carrying Babolo. “You're cheating me! You promised us ten each!”

The Venetian sighed loudly and counted out five more coins, a transaction watched by the justice with grim understanding.

“What about Nest?” asked Gatty.

“No!” Signor Umberto said. “No!” Then he reached out with both arms. “My dress,” he said. “You give it back?”

“How can I?” exclaimed Gatty. “My clothes are on the ship.”

The Venetian pushed out his lower lip. He shrugged, and then gave Gatty the most charming smile.

“Oh, Umberto!” she said, shaking her golden head. First she gave him Babolo, and then she stretched out over the baby, put both arms round Signor Umberto's neck, and firmly planted a warm kiss on his right cheek.

Gatty raced down to the harbor, full pelt. Her finery swished and danced around her.

But the moment she reached the cobbled quay, she could see Gobbo's ship was not there. Where her three masts had pierced heaven, where her rigging had rapped and whipped and her sails ballooned and flapped, where her decks had creaked and her high castle stood, where her great bulk had rested almost weightless on the water, there was a white space.

Gatty's breathing was jagged. Still she ran, unable to believe her eyes. Reaching out with her hands towards what was no longer there.

Along the quay, there were iron bollards, anchors, hawsers, coils of rope, barrels, wooden boxes, grappling hooks. In front of Gatty, the empty, pearly, early-morning ocean stretched to eternity.

All at once, Gatty's legs gave way beneath her. She reeled towards a barrel, subsided against it with a moan, and began to sob.

Gone! They've gone. Gone! At first, that was her only thought.

Why did I trust Gobbo?

Gatty couldn't stop sobbing. Her whole body was trembling.

Why did I trust Umberto, with all his pomades and perfumes and compliments? I'm a fool. A complete fool. Look at me! Half-naked. I'm not Gatty.

Gatty still couldn't stop sobbing.

Gone! They've gone!

Tilda's right, thought Gatty. We're pilgrims, not playthings. And Emrys is right, saying Lady Gwyneth would be turning in her grave…

“I need you, Gatty…Gatty, I am so proud of you…” Gatty remembered Lady Gwyneth's words and stinging tears flooded her eyes. How can I get to Jerusalem? How can I save Lady Gwyneth's soul? I promised her, I did; I promised her she could trust me. Nothing never mattered as much.

Gatty's whole body was racked with pain. Slumped there beside the barrel, dressed like a Venetian lady, she had never felt so desolate in her life.

A
large man with a mop of copper hair tacked up to the lump wrapped in yellow-green silk. He bent over it. He inspected it.

Little pearly-eyed dragons, blowing flames. A broad sash, grey-green as a finch's chin. A hair-mesh of fine gold thread, fixed with butterfly hairpins.

“Gatty?” said the man in a cautious voice.

The lump did not move.

The man eyed the storm of golden curls half-checked by the hair-mesh.

“Gatty. Is it you?”

Slowly, very slowly, the heap shifted. One red eye looked out.

“Gatty?”

All at once, the heap shuddered.

That was enough for Snout. He dropped onto his haunches and drew Gatty to her feet. He held her shaking in his arms with the same quiet devotion with which, five years before, he had held his newborn son.

Two squabbling gulls mewed like hoarse wildcats; saltwater sucked stone. Gatty was so exhausted that she felt lightheaded.

“God's bread!” said Snout in a husky voice. “I wasn't even sure it was you.”

Gatty closed her aching eyes. In her finery, she didn't feel like herself either.

“I saw you running, I did. I thought you were one of them dancing girls, you know, from Nakin's den.”

Gatty snuffled.

“Nest told us everything. We searched for you, we kept running through the streets, shouting out your name.”

Gatty squashed her face against Snout's shoulder.

“That swine, Gobbo! He wouldn't wait. He wouldn't! He insisted on leaving for Jaffa. Nakin offered to pay him extra but Gobbo said he couldn't let down his other passengers and the weather would turn against us.”

Snout eased Gatty away from him and ran his rough hands up to the top of her sleeves, taking good care not to touch her bare shoulders. “Look at you!” he marveled. “Lady Gatty! Well, I've got your cloak and your other clothes, and your boots. And your staff and scrip and your leather bottle. And the carving of Syndod, the one Emrys cut for you. Nakin's given me coins. I don't know what they're worth, mind. Now, girl, stop shivering!”

Gatty drew in both her lips.

“We're to catch them up,” Snout told her. “We're to find a fishing boat and pay the fishermen to sail us over—Gobbo says it's only a day across to Jaffa. If they can, Emrys and everyone will wait for us there. And if they can't, they'll leave a message with the harbormaster, and we'll have to ride after them.”

Gatty raised her puffy face. Her dark lip-cream was smeared over her chin, and her left cheek was smutted with her eye-blacking. She gazed at Snout.

“You waited?” she whispered.

Snout stood very firm and still. The only thing that moved was the light in his eyes.

“For me?”

The corners of Snout's mouth twitched.

“You waited,” Gatty said again.

“God's lid! I couldn't leave you behind, could I?”

“No one's never done nothing like this before. Not for me.”

“You wouldn't last a day,” said the cook. “Not in that dress! Look at you! You'd be gobbled up.”

“Oh Snout!” exclaimed Gatty. She stared at Snout in complete wonder. “Snout! You're so…so staunch. So faithful. I don't know what the word is. And I'm a fool. I trusted Gobbo. I trusted Signor Umberto. What if…I mean, what if you'd never found me?”

“I know you,” Snout said. “You float like cork floats. You're a survivor.”

Gatty slowly shook her head and gazed at Snout with her river eyes. “What about Nest? We got to catch them up as soon as we can.”

After this, Gatty put on her grey pilgrim's cloak over her dress and, hot as the July morning already was, she kept it well drawn around her. Then she and Snout hurried to the market in search of food. Sitting in the shade of a palm tree, they ate crusty bread, cheese, olives, black grapes, a small sweet melon.

Snout smacked his lips. “Melon!” he said. “I'd never even heard of it before Venice.”

Now Gatty and Snout talked, and how they talked! Gatty told the cook what had happened after she'd climbed up to Gobbo's cabin and put on her silk dress. Snout told Gatty how Tilda kept badgering Nest until she got the truth. Gatty told Snout about mothering Babolo, and Snout said he had already run up to half the mothers and babies in Kyrenia, searching for her, and never wanted to see another baby in his life. Snout told Gatty that Nest had bravely wanted to stay behind in Kyrenia, but the others wouldn't let her, and Gatty said she'd made the most terrible mistake in her whole life, and let Lady Gwyneth and everyone else down, and Snout told her that everyone makes mistakes, terrible ones even. Then Gatty showed Snout the ten gold coins she had wrested from Signor Umberto, and Snout was able to double that with the money Nakin had given him.

Snout pointed at Gatty's hand. “Is that your marriage ring?”

Gatty quickly put her left hand over the ring.

“Let's have a look.”

“No,” said Gatty, but she allowed the cook to examine it.

“Not another baby!” he exclaimed. “A mother and her baby. Twenty coins and this ring, then! We've got plenty.”

“I'm not selling this ring,” Gatty told him.

Snout sank his buck teeth into another juicy wedge of melon.

“We can't even speak their language,” said Gatty.

Not far away, two women wearing black headscarves shook out a rainbow shawl and laid it on the ground. Then one of the women started to play a reed flute and a man sauntered up, carrying two small drums. He sat down, cross-legged, and began to tap the heart's beat, the sun's pulse, the heat and mystery of the growing day.

“Nest!” said Gatty. “She needs me. And Everard, what can I do without him?”

“What can you do with him!” Snout replied.

“We have to catch them up,” Gatty said. “My singing lessons. And my reading and writing.”

Snout attacked the last wedge of melon. Then he sucked his cheeks and his teeth. “God help us if we don't,” he said quietly.

“These musicians,” said Gatty, “they must be the ones Everard told us about. Oh! Look over there!”

“What?” said Snout.

“That monk! It's Brother Antony—the one we met at the abbey the other day, the one who spoke English. Snout! Are you blind?”

“Not so blind I couldn't find you.”

“Oh Snout! It's just…” Gatty scrambled to her feet and pulled Snout up. “God is with us, He must be.”

As soon as the monk heard that Gatty's and Snout's ship had sailed without them, he led them back to the high monastery. And there, his fellow monks recognized Gatty and Snout from their visit only three days before.

Brother Antony knelt and washed their feet with cool, clean spring water, and then the guestmaster dried their feet with a shaggy towel.

The abbot himself welcomed them to Saint Mary of the Mountain. First he poured water over their hands and wrists, and then he knelt with them, and said something in French.

“Here, we honor Jesus and the Virgin Mary in each stranger,” Brother Antony translated.

The abbot smiled and inclined his head, and gave each of them the kiss of peace.

“The abbot wishes you to know you are the first English pilgrims to stay here,” Brother Antony told them, “and you're welcome to remain as long as you have need.”

“It won't be long,” said Gatty, shaking her golden curls.

“But we need your help,” Snout added.

“We got to catch up,” said Gatty.

“I understand,” said Brother Antony. “But you can't catch up without a boat.”

Snout held up his right thumb. “It's only one day,” he said, “only one across to Jaffa.”

Brother Antony gave Snout a mild look. “Who told you that?”

“Gobbo. Our captain.”

Brother Antony translated this for the abbot and his fellow monks, and they tutted and knowingly shook their heads.

“It's only one day if you have wings or a magic carpet,” Brother Antony said. “No, it's three days at least.”

“No,” gasped Snout.

“Three days and three nights with the wind behind you.”

“How do you know?” cried Gatty.

“We lived in Jaffa,” Brother Antony replied. “All the monks here come from Jaffa. We were driven out by the Saracens.”

Gatty stared at Snout, crestfallen, and Snout stared at the ground.

“Gobbo lied to you too,” said Gatty in a low voice.

“Don't despair,” Brother Antony told them. “God throws these challenges in our path like great boulders. Somehow we must welcome them.”

“Lady Gwyneth said that,” Gatty replied, and her eyes began to smart.

“And because of these boulders,” continued Brother Antony, “our achievement is all the greater.”

“I got to get to Jerusalem,” Gatty informed the monk. “We both have.”

“Of course,” said Brother Antony. “We'll talk to the harbormaster and as soon he finds a fisherman prepared to sail you across, he will let us know.”

“How long will that be?” Gatty asked.

“We can pay,” said Snout.

The monk smiled gently. “We are all in the hands of God,” he said.

“How long?” Gatty demanded.

“Be patient!” Brother Antony told them. “You're not the first to be stranded here. Pilgrims have been traveling from Cyprus to the Holy Land for more than one hundred years.”

“But unless we catch them up…”

Brother Antony raised his right hand. “I will do my utmost,” he said, and he made the sign of the cross.

Then the abbot put his fingers to his lips and murmured something, and Brother Antony explained, “The abbot says we observe the rule of silence here, but in the guesthouse you're welcome to talk.”

“But you been talking to us,” said Gatty.

“We talk when there's a need,” Brother Antony replied. “To buy food, to offer help, to welcome stranded pilgrims…” He smiled gently. “But most often, there's no need. Talk gets in the way of prayer and study.”

Gatty and Snout were the only guests in the hospice, and the guestmaster, a monk with a limp and skin like a baby, made them most welcome with big smiles and small signs. The hospice had its own kitchen and cook, its own washroom and latrines, and Gatty was astonished when the guestmaster conducted her to her own separate room.

I'm like a lady, she thought. Like Lady Gwyneth. She stood alone in the quiet of the room. She walked around it. She laid her forehead against the cool stone walls.

That first night, Gatty didn't lie down for a long time. She folded and refolded her silk dress, with the hair-mesh and the butterfly pins and her amber necklace inside it, and was amazed to discover the material was so fine she could hold it inside her cupped hands. Then she rolled up the dress inside her spare tunic, and pushed it into her scrip.

After this, Gatty counted and recounted her gold coins and drove
them, and her ring too, to the very bottom of her scrip. Then she drew out her precious violet ribbon again—her half of it—and carefully secured it round her right wrist. After this, she squeezed the hem of her cloak to check that the little almond-shaped silver seal, wrapped in a lock of Lady Gwyneth's hair, was still safely sewn into it.

“Keep it safe and secret until you get back to Ewloe.” She could hear Lady Gwyneth's voice. “Then show it to Austin.”

Why, thought Gatty. Why does it matter so much?

Gatty got down on her kneebones.

To begin with, she closed her eyes and made pictures in her mind. She saw Lady Gwyneth standing in front of the rood-screen in Ewloe church, facing her people, and then rebuking Gatty in London for her disobedience, and telling her she had put the entire pilgrimage at risk, and then sitting proud on her Arab stallion, and then lying in that hospice in Venice, with a little bubble between her lips.

Gatty opened her eyes. “My lady,” she whispered, “I know you're near. It's like you're in this room. What? What did you say? Willful and stubborn! Like a bull glued to mud! But you said you were proud of me too. You did.” Gatty rubbed her sore red eyes. “My lady, forgive me for being so foolish. I almost wrecked our pilgrimage. My lady, please keep your warm eye on Nest, and her baby. She's so…unable. And Snout, my lady. Brave Snout waited for me. Of your mercy, please ask God to reward him. We'll catch up with the others. We will.”

After this, Gatty began to sing:

“
Oh, little waves of Kyrenia!
Have you seen our five companions?
Please God, let us catch them up soon.

Great waves, wild waves of the ocean,
Have you seen our five companions?
Please God, let us catch them up soon.

Waves, have you seen our companions?
Like a breaking wave, I raise this cry:
Please God, let us catch them up soon.
”

Gatty made up the tune as she went along, and her song was full of love and longing. She sang for herself; for Lady Gwyneth; for God. What she didn't know was that the guestmaster's right ear was pressed against the other side of the door. He was entranced by Gatty's pure voice, the way she plumbed dark depths and scaled thrilling heights:

“
Have you not seen our five companions?
I'm adrift. I'll drown without them.
Please God, let us catch them up soon.
”

Smiling to himself, the guestmaster limped away from the door, and Gatty lay down. But dog-tired as she was she still couldn't sleep, and—quite why, she had no idea—she started to think about the wall painting in Oliver's vestry at Caldicot.

A boat with three fishermen in it, and a shining lamp in the bow. A fourth man standing on the iris-blue water, yes, standing on the water, waving a shoal of fish into the net.

You can't walk on water unless it's well frozen, Gatty thought. Then she remembered the day when Sian had gone right though the ice on the fishpond, and she and Arthur had bellied out, clawing and toe-pushing themselves across the ice, and saved her from drowning.