Englishwoman in France (17 page)

Tib and Misou (who is sitting on Tib's feet) watch the procedure with interest. Tib hands me a small wooden paddle with sticky ointment on it. ‘Rub it all over your skin,' he says. ‘For the bites.'

I take it gratefully and rub it on. It's very soothing,

Now Modeste can start to comb my hair straight back and smooth it into a cue, which he ties with a strip of black cloth.

Tib puts his head on one side. ‘You are quite beautiful, Florence,' he says thoughtfully. ‘But not as beautiful as my mother.'

Modeste drops the hood over my head. ‘But to our good people here you will be just another pilgrim.'

Their work table is two wide planks, like the deck of a ship, set across two tree trunks. This reminds me of something, like cobwebs hanging in the back of my mind that I can't quite reach, I concentrate very hard and remember it is like the one in Louis' room in the rue de la Poissonnerie.

On this table are boxes and horns containing powders and leaves. There's a stack of squares of oiled cloth and twisted vine stem fasteners. At the far end of the table, held down by stones, are the documents and maps. Familiar from . . .
somewhere
. I know – they're from the wall in Louis's room, his monk's cell.

All around us birds warble and twitter and sing song-sets like the chirruping of time. From the back of my mind – with some difficulty – I pluck the memory of the nightingales and the other river, long and straight, dappled in sunlight and lined with trees like soldiers on guard. Here perching above us in the wild olive tree are dozens of small birds, like elongated kingfishers, bouncing slightly on the finest, most fragile reaches of the branches.

Tib catches my look. ‘They eat bees, their most favourite dish.' He flings out a hand to encompass the glade around the olive tree. ‘We have to watch them so that they don't lay siege to our hives. But there are so many flowers, so many bees. There is balance.'

‘You have beehives?'

‘On the flat land beyond the garden. One of them was built for us by Léance, a man of Cessero. And another built by me on the instruction of Léance. The bees are a great resource. They are full of energy. They are a sign of the kindness here for us and our cause.'

As if on cue an old woman moves through the trees, a rush basket in her hands. Misou barks and the woman frowns down at him. Modeste stands up quickly to go to greet her and I too scramble to my feet.

The old woman bows very deeply to Tib, less deeply to Modeste, glances curiously at me and hands over the basket. ‘I see you have a new follower, messire Modeste,' she says.

He nods. ‘We have here a traveller, madam, a wanderer. He likes our message and our ways.'

‘Is he from Good Fortune? Or Massalia?'

‘He's from further away than we can think, madam, from across the sea at the far end of the Empire.'

She surveys me from head to toe. I bend at the knee so she won't see my bare, soft feet and my painted toenails.

‘He'll have needed good boots for such long walk. But it's a blessing that our precious boy has another person to care for him. Soft-handed if I see things right.' She bows in my direction and I bow back. ‘Take care of the boy,' she says.

‘I will,' I say, deepening my voice. ‘That is my purpose.' And as I say the words I know that is true. I've come from a world that's now drifting around in cobwebs in my head into a world that I hardly know in this strange dream. But I know there's a purpose to it. Siri is part of that purpose, and so is Tib. I glance at the boy and he nods his head slightly.

Misou yelps.

The woman frowns at him and looks up at Modeste, who is putting her gifts of bread and wine on the table. ‘That is a very strange creature, messire,' she says.

‘He too is from far away.' Modeste smiles slightly and bows to the woman. ‘Will you thank the people of Cessero, Madame Léance?' he says. ‘For their charity?'

She smiles slightly. ‘We always look after our own, sire,' she says. ‘And we always will.'

And then she vanishes back through the trees.

‘And now, Starr,' says Modeste, ‘you must be hungry. I think we should eat.'

H
ave you ever heard of a dream extending to days? I've been in this dream long enough to know the routine here in this camp. (I can only call it a camp. It's not a house and we live mostly out of doors.) We eat fruit and fish that Modeste catches in the river. Sometimes the villagers leave their own fish as well as bread, funny kind of junket cheeses and this rough wine that's so thick and strong it needs diluting with clear stream water if you want to avoid an extreme headache. We always take the unsullied water from above the village. We cook the fish on a fire of vine twigs that Tib brings back from his herb foraging.

Tib does all of the gathering of herbs. Modeste tells me that once Tib knew what to gather, the boy insisted on doing all of the gathering himself. It seems that Modeste's methods were not particular enough for him. Tib's very particular – I would say obsessive – about which plants, where, which part of the plant to use, how to cure it and how keep it.

Sometimes Tib calls Modeste the Corinthian, in affectionate tones. ‘Is that where you come from, Modeste? Corinth?' I ask, curious about his life here.

He smiles. ‘Aye, you might say that, by way of the Imperial court. And they sent me here, to care for the boy. Tales of his genius had reached them even from these far distances.' Then he tells me this weird tale of favour, healing and banishment.

‘His own father?' I say. ‘Tortured you?'

Modeste shrugs. ‘It's an edict straight down from the Emperor. Anyone following the way of the Nazarene is to be punished, even killed. There've been special games dedicated to the destruction of these gentle heretics. Tib's father risked – even risks now – his own life allowing us to live. The Emperor Diocletian is an impatient man. He wants us all to confirm, to pay tribute to the God Emperors and the old gods. In refusing to conform we risk our lives. Many of us have suffered cruel deaths, in the great arenas, in private, in public.'

Now then, I've got some idea of the Caesars and all that. There was Nero fiddling while Rome burned. And I've seen Ben Hur galloping along on a reissued DVD. But I've never heard of this one.
Diocletian.

I stop asking too many questions. I have to take in this dream step by step.

I see that Modeste and Tib have their rituals. Modeste reads his scrolls and pores over his maps. Tib recites old stories and prayers. They sit silent for long periods, eyes closed, looking inwards. They eat bread and drink wine in a ritualistic fashion. I don't question it or join in with them. I just observe. It's just my dream, after all. But it's their life.

One day Modeste and I are walking up into the village to deliver wooden dishes of ointment to two women who have suppurating sores on their cheeks. I feel confident enough today to ask Modeste about Tib in a broader way. Not about his gift of healing nor even about their faith, which I know is some sort of Christianity – a risky thing before it was the done thing to follow the way of the Nazarene, as they call him. I have seen the people who come to the camp for help and healing, some from many miles away. These people join in Tib and Modeste's simple ceremonies, as do many Cesseroneans who move into the camp like shadows to take part.

I now realize that I experienced Tib's healing gift myself, when he cured me of the strange fit I had when I first arrived at the camp. I'd experienced it before, in my waking life, in Agde, the town at the mouth of the river, the town
they
call Good Fortune. Even in my waking life, before we met here in this place, before I knew his name, Tib conjured up good thoughts of Siri for me in the streets of Agde.

But now, walking into Cessero, I try to get Modeste to talk about Tib's more particular oddities: the patterns and lines, the precision of the recipes for the medicines, the tendency to look away, when you know he's concentrating on you. ‘He wasn't like that when I saw him in Good Fortune.' (I nearly said
when I was awake
. . .) ‘He seemed light-hearted there; I remember when he jumped into the river and raced the boat. How merry he was.'

‘That was his playtime. In this place now we're moving to different, terrible times, different selves,' says Modeste briefly. ‘There in Good Fortune he was experiencing the last of his childhood. He has hard times ahead.'

‘Did he know this?' I ask. ‘Did he know he was there, playing?'

He shakes his head. ‘I can't say. Perhaps not. But I think it all adds up into a life lived.'

‘But you knew?' I persist.

‘It has always been my job to look over him.'

I can't pursue this because now we're walking into the straggle of houses that comprise the village of Cessero and people are coming to the doors of their dwellings to watch us make our progress. A stranger is theatre here. Some men raise a hand in greeting, some nod. One or two bow gracefully, an action at odds with their rough clothes obviously worn for years, patched and added to. They are barefoot and wear a kind of smock and britches, unlike the tunics and cloaks worn by both Tib and Modeste.

We come to two grander buildings with archways wide enough for wagons and large window hoists adapted from ships' gear. Warehouses, says Modeste. It seems that Cessero owes its modest prosperity to trade in wine and woollen cloth from further inland, shipped down on small boats to Good Fortune, and also to passing trade from the great road nearby that crosses over a great bridge and goes all the way to Rome.

‘Did you travel here on that road? All the way from Rome?' I tease my mind to imagine horses, pack-donkeys, chariots, closed wooden carts. Pictures from textbooks. ‘It must have taken a long time.'

He shakes his head. ‘It is a good road, but that would take far too long. The sea is the best route, even with its great risks. By foot and horse from Rome to the coast, swift sailing ship hugging the coast for safety, landfall here. So much quicker than the road.'

Even so, I think this must have taken weeks. Time and distance are different here, that's for sure.

Now we're at the house of the two women. They are sitting with their faces to the sun, as Tib has taught them. They stand up and bow to Modeste but look at me with great disappointment. ‘The boy's not here, messire?'

Modeste shakes his head. ‘Tibery is praying and cooking his cures. But he sends you more ointment.' He hands over the wooden boxes. ‘Is there improvement?' They hold up their faces for inspection. New raw sores are surrounded by the receding tides of the old sores. ‘Yes. It looks better. Rub this on each morning, drink clear water and eat young figs. Then your faces will have the bloom of a young maiden!'

‘You say so, messire!' The older woman smiles faintly and nods. She says, ‘Will you bless me, messire?'

Modeste puts a hand on each shoulder, says something, then makes a mark on her forehead. The younger woman stands while he does the same. Then all three of them take each other's hands and make a circle and close their eyes for a few moments. Then that's it. They all smile and nod and say their farewells. ‘Give our love to the boy!' says the older woman. ‘And our blessing, messire.'

As we walk back along by the river it strikes me that Modeste lives up to his name. All these cures and methods are from
his
knowledge and his long experience, yet all are now credited to the boy. And Modeste doesn't seem troubled by this one bit. As we walk, he tells me more about the village. ‘It is named after a great emperor – Caesar – Cessero. See?'

‘Which Emperor?' I don't know why I ask. After all, I only know Nero. And Julius, of course.

‘The Emperor Tiberius. The Cesseroneans have a story that tells how he came here once, in the olden time. The old ones say six generations ago.'

‘Tiberius? That's like—'

‘Tibery! I know. Tiberius had been a great general. Tib's father has a shrine to him in his house. He gave his son that name in tribute.' He pauses. ‘But the humble people here in the village see the boy's name as a great portent.'

Then I stumble on the stone-strewn pathway and he takes my arm. In the back of my dreaming cobweb mind I remember another time where I tripped by a broad, straighter river than this. I hug Modeste's arm into my side, clinging to this evidence of the then, and of the now. And it comes to me how much happier I am in the now, here in my dream.

When we get back to the camp it's empty. Tib's medications and medicaments are stored away in their boxes in the hut and he's nowhere to be seen. ‘Where is he?' I ask.

Modeste gives his characteristic shrug. ‘Sometimes Tib takes off, walking from village to village, giving his advice, laying on his healing hands. To be honest the people like it best when he's on his own. My job's nearly done here. But, healer though he is, he's too young to leave on his own.'

‘Yes. How old is he? Ten? Eleven? He needs to be taken care of.'

Modeste smiles, his dimple deepening in his left cheek. ‘Master Tibery has an old soul, older than yours or mine, believe me. It's he who takes care of us, Florence, you may be sure of that.' He looks around. ‘Now, what shall we do while we await his return?'

W
hile we wait for Tib we sit at Modeste's end of the plank bench and he lays out his fine vellum maps to show me how he got here from Rome. ‘We shipped out from Ostia then changed ship at Masallia. Then round the coast to Good Fortune. Always within sight of the coast – venture further and you may be lost to storms or pirates.'

He frowns. ‘In the end these arrangements about Tibery were made in a great hurry. I was just on the point of embarking for Corinth, to visit the church there and see my brothers and their children.' There is tension in his voice. ‘But I was called, then, to this task.'