Daughters of Babylon (14 page)

Surrounding him in the dark chill were five hundred sleeping pilgrims. Among them snored the lesser knights and squires, armed protectors interspersed among the weaponless. King Louis’s tent rose high and proud in the center of the encampment, surrounded by the tents of his principal knights and entourage. At the corners of the camp and on the peaks of every tent flew the red and white banners of the Second Glorious Crusade, their mission to reclaim the holy cities for the One True Church. Queen Eleanor’s sleeping quarters was not among them.

Arturo was neither knight nor courtier, and nor was he a pilgrim. He was the water boy, and more importantly, the tender of the queen’s royal baggage and beasts of burden who hauled it. He listened to the coughs, the whistling snorts and bellows, and found that he could distinguish a few of them. Ezequiel, the old shoemaker, talked in his sleep, conducting dream business, perhaps, in the shop he’d left behind in Padrón. Isidore, a distant illegitimate cousin of the king, sounded like a jackal being flayed alive. Arturo listened for and was relieved not to hear the sobbing prayers of doña Maria del Carmen, mother of Lizibetta and her irritating younger sister, Catarina. Pilgrims who accompanied the Crusade en route to Jerusalem often prayed and grieved under cover of darkness, but they were not the mother of his new love, so they didn’t pull him down into feelings of helplessness.

He reached inside a pillow of moss wrapped in canvas and felt around for two objects. The first was a dagger. An attendant of the royal baggage was permitted no unauthorized weaponry, although if it came to that, he would probably fight to the death to keep this one.

Arturo’s mother had given him the sheathed knife on the eve of his departure from Galicia eight months ago. She had kept it sequestered behind the azulejo tiles in the kitchen for years, its existence known only to the women. He ran his fingers along the bumps and dips of the worn leather sheath. When they reached Mount Cadmos tonight, after all the watering and feeding and unloading was complete, he would find a quiet place in the woods and with a rag dipped in neatsfoot oil, restore suppleness to the leather.

The sheath, of course, had held less interest than its contents on the night that his mother placed it before him at the table near the fireplace.

“The time has come for you to have this, Arturo,” she told him, unwrapping a long thin parcel of linen. “It belonged to your grandfather, for whom you were named, and now it belongs to you. It will keep you safe on your journeys.”

Arturo stared at the beautiful object lying before him. Slowly, he wrapped his fingers around the polished bone handle and pulled out the dagger. It was Toledo steel, the world’s finest, and hallmarked at the base. The blade was the length of a man’s hand, curved and tapered to a point that drew blood instantly when Arturo touched it. The silver metal glinted in the firelight, showing off fine swirls from years of sharpening.

“I have never seen anything more beautiful in my life,” he said, which lifted the weariness from his mother’s face.

Father was dead three years now, having lost his fishing boat and eventually his life to poor business investments that Arturo was expected to pay off with years of indentured service. Uncle Benicio had managed with fists and other well-aimed negotiations to erase the debt and tried to persuade his nephew to carry on with the fishing trade, but Arturo couldn’t do it. He didn’t know why. The sea was not for him. Only Mother seemed to understand.

“Your grandfather was knighted during the First Crusade,” she said, “although he began, as you will, with no rank.”

“How did he become a knight?” Arturo asked.

She ran a hand up and down the sleeve of her perpetual mourning. “According to your Aunt Constanza, he crept into an encampment of infidels during the night and slit their throats while they slept.”

Arturo drew in a sharp breath. “All of them?”

“All but the women and children.” The sadness in her dark eyes, said to resemble his, deepened. “I want you to hear me now. There was never any proof that the people of that camp intended to attack the Crusaders. There were many travelers on the road in those days, driven from their homes by droughts, floods and pillaging knights. Your grandfather was haunted by his actions for the rest of his days. Do not let me hear that you have done the same.”

Arturo held the dagger this way and that, taking in the heft and the balance. “Pillaging is for brigands, Mother. A true knight follows only the commands of God and king.”

“So we are led to believe. I want you to look at the sheath.” She waited until Arturo, reluctantly, set the knife down. “The finest craftsman in Compostela tanned and embossed this leather and when the task was complete, the Bishop himself blessed both dagger and sheath, imparting the humility of St. James to whoever used it.”

Two strips of tan-coloured leather had been finely stitched with cord of a deeper hue to contain the curving shape of the knife. There wasn’t a man in Galicia who wouldn’t recognize the three scallop shells of Santiago, St. James, patron of fishermen and the dispossessed, embossed on one side of the sheath. The symbols on the other side were less familiar to him.

Mother ran a finger, reddened from years of scaling and cleaning fish, along the image at the haft end. “This is the carpenter’s square of St. Thomas, the apostle who doubted the resurrection of Our Lord until he touched the wounds.” She traced the second image. “These are the crossed keys of the kingdoms of Heaven and Earth, entrusted to St. Peter even though he denied his Teacher three times. And this… this is the money pouch carried by Judas from whom the Apostles drew funds, as needed.”

Arturo scowled. “But why would Grandfather include a symbol of Judas? He was the vilest sinner of them all.”

“Yes, he was. Judas betrayed the Son of God, but in doing so, he set off a series of events that redeemed us all, one that we celebrate more than a thousand years later.”

“I don’t like hearing you talk that way, and I don’t think our Bishop would approve of this money bag either.”

She smiled. “Bishops, I assure you, have no quarrel with money bags. What matters, Turo, is that your grandfather selected these images after he left the Crusades, and he prayed for a son to whom he could impart their message.”

“Father became his son when he married you.”

“Yes, but they were very different men, your father and your grandfather. I wish you could have known both in better times.”

Since joining up with the Second Crusade in Aragon in early summer, Arturo had used the dagger only for cutting and hunting, though in the face of arrogant squires and inebriated knights who could not keep their hands off female pilgrims, his fingers had often itched to draw blood. He slipped the weapon into his boot, as he did every morning.

The second object he removed from the pillow stirred a different set of emotions. The finger-length clay cylinder was a gift from Ezequiel and had once contained a mezuzah, a rolled parchment with the laws of God that every orthodox Jew kept upon his doorpost. Ezequiel claimed to be a
convertido
, no longer Jewish, although Arturo had seen him steal away on Fridays at sunset and suspected he had different reasons for traveling to Jerusalem. No matter. The cylinder made a perfect container for the poem he’d written and intended to give Lizibetta, as soon as he could work up the courage—perhaps today. He slipped the tube into a corded pouch he kept tied around his waist, threw back the covers and rose into the cold night air.

It took Arturo the better part of an hour to deliver buckets of icy river water to the pilgrims’ encampment, and another to water and groom the horses in preparation for the loads they would soon be pulling through steep Phrygian passes to Mount Cadmos. There, they would reunite with the army vanguard, one hundred strong, led by Queen Eleanor and Geoffrey de Rancon, military commander of the Crusades. Fifty-four mares and geldings, perfectly matched in colour and temperament, pulled twenty-seven wheeled carts containing the personal wardrobes and possessions of the queen and her ladies-in-waiting.

Arturo checked all the bridles a second time. He could not understand why a king would send his queen, especially one as beautiful as Eleanor, ahead of him, deep into the land of infidels. Yes, he’d heard it was her idea, and tents, even those of royalty, were flimsy structures. It was no secret to anyone that Louis and Eleanor did not get along. Nonetheless, Arturo had perfected a routine of brushing, inspecting hooves and rewarding good behaviour with nosebags of oats so that when the time came for harnessing and setting out, the beasts, at least, would not delay the reunion of the monarchs.

Only one creature among the royal horses was spared the indignity of cartage, and Arturo always saved currying her for last. La Pistache, named for her love of the rich green nutmeat, was an Anadolu pony, bred of these mountains and the Arab lands to the south. She had been a gift to Queen Eleanor from the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople.

Pistache stood just over 13 hands high and was a furry-coated sorrel with a long, cream-coloured mane that spilled over an enchanting pony face. Her breed was renowned throughout Anatolia for loyalty, endurance, and speed of the gods.

Arturo took a brush to the pony’s coat and murmured endearments that cast Lizibetta’s full lips and violet eyes temporarily out of mind. During their three weeks of rest and provisioning in Constantinople, he had been blessed to see Eleanor bring Pistache to a gallop at the Emperor’s private track. They rode currents of pure joy, the queen’s gold and copper locks streaming like a banner of flame, her pony more eager with every stride to please. She had even worn the divided silken trousers of the harem for riding. That had set the pilgrims’ tongues flapping for days.

Eleanor had yet to recognize the eleven-year-old boy she’d pulled from quicksand at Talmont, and why should she? With six hundred Crusaders, attendants and pilgrims on the march, and Arturo forced, by virtue of his job, to bring up the rear, he had only been close enough to speak a few times, and of course, no commoner addressed a royal without being spoken to first. Although he was now Pistache’s official groom and had delivered her, saddled and ready to ride many times, the queen had not yet addressed him with anything beyond the kind courtesies she offered to everyone.

Arturo wove his fingers through the pony’s blonde mane and nuzzled her face. “Pistache, you are going to see your Beloved today. Do you know how much she misses you? I know because she whispers in my sleep how much she longs to ride you.” The pony whickered and gave him a saucy peer from beneath long lashes.

A crunching sound on frozen grass came from behind them. Arturo grabbed hold of Pistache’s bridle and swung around. Framed by long-needled mountain pines stood a silhouette of shawl and skirts, shivering a little. Arturo’s emotions swung from fear to embarrassment to a heart that thumped happily.

“Lizibetta?”

The silhouette stepped forward. “Betta and I don’t look at all alike. I don’t see how you could confuse us.”

“Cati . . .” Arturo sighed, hope plummeting. “You scared the horses, and you shouldn’t sneak up on people. It’s rude.”

“I didn’t scare anyone but you, and I think you’re just worried that I might have overheard you.”

“I don’t care what you overheard! How long have you been spying?”

Catarina shrugged. “Not long. I was awake when you got up, but I know you don’t like to be disturbed when grooming the horses, so I waited.”

Cati was right. She didn’t look like her sister. Lizibetta was tall and womanly with heavy-lidded eyes that gave her a look both sultry and intoxicating and far beyond her fifteen years. Catarina was smaller, built like a stick and younger than Betta by a year or two.

The two girls had accompanied their mother Maria del Carmen from Zaragoza where their father lay strapped to a bed, his mind vacant and his body withering from constant physical torments. The year before, the women had completed a pilgrimage to Compostela in search of a cure and received none; Maria del Carmen hoped for better results in Jerusalem.

“Why are you here, bothering me?” Arturo asked.

“We’re breaking camp this morning, aren’t we? I can help you harness the horses to the carts.” Without being invited, she came over to Pistache and stroked her back. “You are such a pretty thing, look at you!”

Arturo refrained from slapping Cati’s hand off Her Royal Highness’s horse, only because Pistache seemed to approve. The pony turned her head and nibbled at Catarina’s earlobe that held a small pearl stud.

“May I feed her?” Cati asked.

“How do you know she hasn’t been fed?”

“Because you always groom the horses first, and her nosebag is over there.” She pointed toward the pines where she’d been skulking.

“Very well,” he said. “Make sure you use the special mix.”

Catarina retrieved the bag that contained a costly blend of oats, ground sugar and pistachios and fed the pony from her open hand.

Watching her affectionate way with Pistache, Arturo had to admit that while it was fine to pride himself on all he could do single-handed, hitching the horses to the carts was tedious. The task was made lonelier by the pilgrims’ aversion to the queen’s royal baggage, which they viewed from their pinnacles of suffering as excessive. The knights and squires were no help either. In the absence of combat, they had far more time than Arturo, but they would never lower themselves to assist a waterboy.

“How does your mother feel about you sneaking around, unchaperoned?” he asked.

“She encourages anything that might get us to the Holy City sooner.”

“Jerusalem could be months away. There’s the weather to consider, and the Crusaders must first take Edessa, then Antioch . . .”

Cati rubbed the pony’s nose while she looked at Arturo. “The queen’s uncle is prince of Antioch. Why would we conquer a city that’s already ours?”

“I meant Aleppo,” he said, face burning.

She draped the nosebag around Pistache’s neck and clapped her hands clean. “You like my sister, don’t you?”

“Aah, erm . . .”

“No need to be embarrassed. She told me about the violets you picked for her, and I see you making cow eyes while we’re on the road.”