Daughters of Babylon (15 page)

“Cow eyes!” The heat spread down his neck and across his collarbone. If Catarina was that observant, then she must also know that Lizibetta was not returning his long, adoring glances. He wasn’t even sure she noticed them.

“She sent me here to offer my services as a go-between.”

Arturo grabbed two grooming brushes and rubbed them together fiercely to dislodge the hair and to avoid looking at Cati. “Is that so?”

“Mother has marriage plans for Betta and does not want her reputation ruined. I happen to know the toad she’s picked for her, and we both agree, my sister and I, that she ought to have a few moments of pleasure before she begins a life of kissing warts.”

“You and Betta have actually spoken about this?”

“We have,” she said, in her high-pitched, earnest voice. “It will work out very well. Mother doesn’t care where I go or what happens to me. As a second daughter with no dowry, I’ll end up in a convent sooner or later. Betta, though, has to wait on Mother hand and foot. It’s hard for her to get away to . . . you know.” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand in a matter-of-fact way that suggested, yes, she had witnessed the trysts that went on outside the encampments of a Crusade after dark, and if he cared to challenge her knowledge, she was up for that, too.

“So what are you prepared to do as your sister’s go-between?”

“I’ll deliver messages from Betta to you and from you to Betta. I can make excuses when you need privacy.” She rested a cheek on Pistache’s shoulder and slowly stroked her back.

“In exchange for what?”

“No exchange. I love my sister.”

There was something about Catarina that Arturo could not put his finger on. She was like a baby ferret, quick and unpredictable, who’d sooner nip than kiss you. Then again, there was a poem burning a hole near his trousers about the roses of Zaragoza whose perfume could never compare with the sweat of his Beloved, and they had camp to break with a long day’s march ahead of them. He turned away so she couldn’t watch and untied the pouch at his waist.

“You must promise on the blood of your ancestors never to read or tamper with anything I give you for Betta. My words are meant for her eyes only.”

“I know that! What do you think I am—a child?”

Arturo held out the small clay cylinder. Cati looked surprised—he wasn’t sure why—and opened her palm to accept it.

From a copse of pines, not twenty feet above them, a dozen pairs of eyes saw everything.

Silvina, standing at the teal blue door, jingled through her keys. She inserted the only modern brass key into the lock and turned the doorknob. The door wouldn’t open. That was odd. She’d tested the door before leaving for Cerabornes; it had definitely been locked. She turned the key the other way, tried again, and the door opened. Maybe it had only been stuck, not locked. Old wood swells, and there’d been a lot of rain in Toulouse this spring. Maybe here, too.

She carried the groceries to the kitchen counter and turned the tap on, letting the rust clear out of the water while she unloaded the bags. She filled the blue and white speckled dipper and drank it half empty. The water tasted mountaintop cold and delicious.

The gift basket, mostly empty now, from
La Sorcière du Miel
, had included a bottle of Pinot Grigio that Silvina had placed in the refrigerator. She found a corkscrew in the utensil drawer, poured herself a glass, and prepared a plate of baguette and brie. The omelet could wait.

Silvie ate at the island facing the window that looked out at the escarpment across the road. The yellow-tan stone looked like stacks of giant pizza boxes. Juniper and holly and other tough little evergreens poked through the cracks, defying gravity and dearth of soil. In the twenty minutes she sat there, her brain orbiting from the recently completed FST sessions with the rave reviews to how out of shape she was—a mile and a quarter, for cripes’ sake!—three cars went by, one of them Jean-Luc’s shuttle van. She wondered how Viv did not go stark raving mad.

Silvina put her lunch dishes in the sink. Until the final year of her life, Viv only lived at Reine du Ciel six months out of twelve; the rest of the time, she spent on European theatre stages or American studio lots. If one viewed this place as a sanctuary for recharging and not 800 square feet of “Oh my God, where am I going to start?”, it probably gave off a better vibe.

She was halfway up the stairs before she noticed. The sight of a second, perpendicular staircase blocking her way was so weird, she thought her senses were cross-wiring, playing musical chairs in a synesthesial episode brought on by electronics withdrawal. The stairs filled the second floor landing, crosscutting her access to the only bathroom in the house, which was where she’d been heading.

The attic stairs couldn’t just fall. Dr. Shirazi had walked her through the mechanics and had insisted, after refastening the velvet pull to the bronze wall hook, that she try it herself while he watched. The purple velvet rope with gold tassel was wrapped three times around the hook and swagged over a second hook higher up the wall so it didn’t hang loose in the corridor and strangle passersby. The far end was fastened to a ring on the trapdoor, held in place by a spring-loaded mechanism that required two to three good yanks before it released.

Faced with the certainty that she was not alone in the house, Silvie’s head began to spin. She felt like the central pivot of an Escher drawing. Her need to pee intensified, along with an urge to flee, but where was she going to run, and to whom? Had there been a vehicle in the driveway when she returned from Cerabornes? No. At the end of her ride, she’d wheeled the bike back into the shed at the end of the driveway, and the little pink flowers were uncrushed. She had paused to admire them. Yes, the twelve-foot cedar walls on both sides of the house were thick enough to conceal an army, but she’d locked the door, hadn’t she? Or thought she had.

Silvina girded her straining bladder, drew in a rattling breath, and called out, “Hello!”

Arturo thought up poems on the road to Mount Cadmos.

I listen to the sounds of melting, hope it is my—

No, that’s not right.

I run to find you in the darkness, we are torn apart
—
melting heart
, maybe is better.

Will she think it too common? She might.

I listen to the sounds of melting, hope it is my heart…

The rhythmic scrap of
cossante
he had been working on since their first rest stop chafed like the straps of old Ezequiel’s satchel. He’d treated the satchel with neat’s foot oil so it would be more comfortable for the shoemaker to carry. Repetitive movement like the rubbing of leather or the currying of horses usually inspired Arturo, but something was wrong. Holding the reins of the gentle bay mare that led the baggage train, he pushed at the inertia of the pilgrims ahead of him. Usually, by this time of the day, pecking orders and factions between family groups had worked themselves out, and they moved with, if not rigour, at least, steadiness. But today, the pilgrims were clustered into small tight groups and lagging, and the knights who would normally flank them for protection, or circle round and herd them like wayward sheep, were riding too far ahead.

W
e are torn apart, I listen—to the melting heart, I run to find you…

Part of the problem was this mountain pass. It was too narrow for five hundred people to travel with more than six or eight abreast. Sheer walls rose on one side with crumbling precipices to a thickly forested valley on the other. The trail was slick with ice and snow melt. People were twisting ankles on tree roots and stones; even a couple of the knight’s horses had been hobbled, but King Louis was making no allowances for the difficult conditions. He hadn’t even allowed fires to be lit and meals to be cooked during their midday stop.

And then there was the loneliness.

For the first hour of travel, Catarina had kept Arturo company, leading Pistache while they spoke, at Arturo’s insistence, about her sister Lizibetta’s likes and dislikes. Then, out of the blue, Cati informed him that her mother was not feeling well, which seemed suspect, given that an hour ago, the woman had been fine.

She tethered Pistache to the first baggage cart and sashayed off, and since then, Arturo only been able to catch glimpses of the three women. They walked arm-in-arm—Betta, his beloved, walked tall and stately on the left side of Maria del Carmen; Cati, twitchy as a flea-bit pup, on the other.

“We never should have come this way. There are easier routes.” Ezequiel had broken from the ragged crowd to join Arturo, filling the gap that Catarina had left.

“I know,” the boy said. “I nearly lost a cart and two horses a quarter mile back. This is his doing, you know.”

“Whose?”

“His Royal Majesty’s.”

“Is it now?” The old man patted the lead mare’s flank, his hand knobbly and red from a life of working leather. “What qualifies a waterboy to challenge a king’s wisdom?”

They were walking far enough behind the others that no pilgrims or knights could overhear, but still Arturo lowered his voice. “It’s something I learned from the fishermen’s fleets, from my father and my uncle. The last boat to leave the harbour looks out for the other boats. Even when they’re out to sea, the captain and crew of the last boat keep watch on the horizon for pirates and other threats, and if need be, they are ready to lead or change the fleet’s direction at a moment’s notice.”

“So you think that Louis, king of the Franks, should be our last boat.”

Arturo knew Ezequiel well enough to know he wasn’t poking fun, but frustration still crackled in his belly like a blacksmith’s fire. The procession
was
distorted and out of synchrony, like the phrases of the cossante that refused to come together. The girl for whom he pined had not glanced over her shoulder, not even once, and Catarina had, apparently, given her the poem hours ago. Perhaps it was the absence of Eleanor, queen of this Crusade, that dispirited the pilgrims and Arturo. For it was she, not Louis, who kept the disparate souls together with song and dance and merriment; who mitigated the dourness of clergy and the itching ambition of soldiers spoiling for combat. She should have been here with them, not a day’s march ahead with the Crusade’s dull knights and strategists.