City of Pearl

by Alys Clare

  The monk’s voice dropped to a whisper and, as we strained forward to hear, he announced that before we heard mass we would be allowed to go down into the crypt of the original chapel and stand in the presence of the saint.

  Filing down with my companions, I was pushed, shoved and elbowed, my nostrils filling with the smell of sweat and garlic. There were too many people around for me to see ahead, and it was therefore a surprise to find myself suddenly before an open space in which were three stone sarcophagi.

  ‘The saint and his two disciples,’ breathed the monk behind me. ‘They stay with him out of loyalty and love, even in death.’

  Being dead, they didn’t have much choice, I reflected. But I kept the thought to myself.

  I stared at the central sarcophagus. Was there truly a saint’s decapitated body inside? My companions clearly believed it was so, for most of them had kneeled to pray and many were in tears. I wondered why I felt so unmoved. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t really here as a pilgrim.

  Although I was only beginning to realize how much was being kept from me, I knew already that Gurdyman and I were on a very different mission.

  As I walked beside Gurdyman on the second morning out of Santiago, at last I plucked up my courage and said, ‘Where are we going?’ I bit back the other question: And what in heaven’s name are we doing here?

  He didn’t answer at first, and I had the sense that he was having to bring himself back from somewhere deep within his own thoughts. Then, with a smile, he turned to me and said, ‘I am sorry, Lassair, that I have been such a poor companion. I have dragged you from your home and from all that you know, all those you love, with scant explanation.’

  With no explanation, I could have said.

  ‘But now that we have achieved the first part of our journey without mishap, it is time for me to enlighten you.’

  I could have laughed with relief.

  There was a pause while he gathered his thoughts and then he said, ‘Now, let me see, what have I told you of my youth?’

  ‘You were born to elderly parents who were so pleased to have a child that they wanted to go on a pilgrimage to give thanks,’ I said. ‘You—’

  But he was chuckling. ‘Elderly!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes, I suppose I did say that.’ He looked at me. ‘I think, Lassair, that, just in case I misled you in any way, or you have forgotten pertinent details, I had better begin at the beginning.’

  Cheered at the thought of how well a story would help pass the miles, I said happily, ‘Please, go ahead!’

  And this is the tale he told me, as we walked the roads of Galicia on a day of early winter sunshine and the mountains, already white at their summits, rose up ahead of us and to our right, and the soft chatter of our small group of fellow travellers filled the air with a steady, gentle murmuring.

  ‘Well. Now,’ he began. ‘I was born many years before the Conquest, in a village inland from Hastings on the track leading towards London. My father brewed ale, and considered himself the luckiest man alive because he loved his work and, even more, he loved the woman to whom he was married, who had a beautiful spirit and the kindest smile. The pair of them were beloved in their small community but, despite their close and happy marriage, they had not been blessed with children, and this was an enduring sorrow. My father watched as his beloved wife slowly and steadily became increasingly sad, and even a little strange.’

  She was probably entering the years when a woman ceases to be fertile, I thought, and, longing for a child, beginning to realize that her time was running out.

  ‘Then, to my father’s dismay,’ Gurdyman went on, ‘she began to speak of visions. She always saw the same image: an angel dressed in pink. My father, loving her as he did, tried everything he could think of to help her, which I suspect was not very much, for, generous and kind though he was, he had little imagination and, like the majority of men, not a great deal of insight into what it is to be a woman. He attempted to curb her wild talk of her pink angel, for he feared that if her odd behaviour came to the notice of the wrong people, trouble might ensue. He believed, I imagine, that it would be assumed she had lost her mind, and he was terrified that somebody would come and take her away.’

  Not an unreasonable fear, I thought. People were very frightened of madness.

  ‘Then my father had a new and far worse anxiety, for his wife began to suffer from bouts of sickness. Beside himself, terrified that he was going to lose her, he watched her more closely than ever before. And, far from growing thin, losing her teeth and her hair and beginning the long decline to death, she began to grow plump. The sickness stopped, her hair shone, her skin was luminous … she was pregnant.’

  So thoroughly had he drawn me into the story that, although I already knew the outcome, for wasn’t her son walking there right beside me, nevertheless I was flooded with delight.

  ‘It was a miracle,’ Gurdyman said softly, ‘for she was advanced in years and had imagined her chance of motherhood had gone for ever. In the privacy of their bedchamber, she whispered to my father that her angel in pink had brought this wonderful, unlooked-for gift, but he hushed her, for such talk – which others might interpret as his wife placing herself in the company of the blessed Virgin – must surely be blasphemous.

  ‘People, of course, began to notice her condition and, fond of her as they were, they rejoiced for her. They began to call her Elizabeth and my father Zachary, remembering the story of John the Baptist in St Luke’s gospel.’ He turned to me. ‘You are of course familiar with it?’

  ‘Tell me again,’ I replied.

  ‘Elizabeth was the cousin of Mary and married to Zachary, who was a priest. They were childless and elderly, and Elizabeth was well beyond childbearing age. Zachary was selected to offer incense at the Golden Altar, and there the Angel Gabriel appeared to him, telling him his wife would bear a son, who was to be called John. Zachary was astonished and utterly refused to believe this unlikely prediction, whereupon he was struck dumb, remaining so until his wife gave birth. Relatives urged the couple to name the child Zachary, after his father, but Zachary wrote, “His name is John,” and straight away speech was restored to him.’

  ‘But your father didn’t doubt that his wife was pregnant?’

  Gurdyman smiled. ‘Oh, no. But then he had the physical evidence before his eyes rather than the mere word of an angel.’

  I glanced round swiftly to check nobody had heard, for speaking so frivolously of an angel didn’t seem wise in the company of devout men and women on their way home from a pilgrimage.

  ‘The pregnancy proceeded uneventfully,’ Gurdyman was saying, ‘and in due course a baby son was born.’

  ‘You!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Indeed. The baby thrived, his parents’ joy increased and continued to do so as their sturdy little son grew into a happy, smiling and bright-eyed toddler, interested in everything, speaking with sense and meaning far sooner than he had any right to, and badgering his parents constantly with his incessant why?’ He smiled gently. ‘My mother, who had never forgotten her angel in pink and attributed my presence entirely to his intervention, developed a strong desire to give thanks, for such was her happiness that she grew more devout, her heart full of love for the God who had brought it about. Living as she and my father did, in the inn by the track to Hastings, they knew about pilgrimages; and Rome, even Jerusalem, were spoken of, but my mother had a hankering to go to Santiago de Compostela. So, when the infant – I – was three years old, they packed their bags, collected their pilgrims’ scrips and staves and set off.’

  ‘Did they travel as we did?’ I demanded.

  ‘No. They crossed the sea quite close to its narrowest part, landing in Dieppe and picking up the pilgrim route through Chartres, Tours and Bordeaux, then down into the Pyrenees and over the Roncesvalles Pass, where Charlemagne fought back the massed ranks of the enemy on his borders and saved his land. They travelled the width of northern Spain and finally reached journey’
s end in Santiago.’

  How long ago were they there? I wondered. Long before the new cathedral, of course, and the town would have been simpler, less grand, less crowded then.

  ‘They gave their thanks, for that was my mother’s only thought and she would not rest until she had done so, and then settled down to rest and recuperate before beginning the long journey home. But my father was worried, for walking so far had tired my mother greatly, and she did not seem to have the energy or, he feared, the heart, for the return. They had not gone far when she became unwell, and the sickness grew rapidly worse. My father sought out a place for them to stay until she was fit enough to continue; an easy task since the pilgrimage trail, as you have no doubt already noticed, has many simple hostels along its length. My father chose well, for the tavern-keeper and his family were kindly people and made the little family welcome. Time passed, however, and my mother still did not recover her strength, and so my father, very worried at his rapidly dwindling supply of coins, sought employment. There is always work for a man who knows his ale, and very soon he, his wife and the child settled down to what was obviously going to be a long stay. My mother grew strong again, and soon she too joined my father working in the tavern. A winter passed, and, although it grew very cold up there in the foothills of the coastal mountains, the air was clean and fresh, and, as spring came, my parents realized that for the first time in memory, my mother had passed through the cold months without her usual debilitating cough.’

  ‘And so they decided to stay?’ I said.

  ‘They did,’ he agreed. ‘They worked hard and spent little, happy in their new life, and in time they were able to move into their own small inn, in a pretty village on the pilgrim route. It did not take long for word to spread that there was a certain hostel where the innkeeper brewed ale as good as in any English tavern, and my parents never lacked for guests in their taproom and in the overnight accommodation.’

  ‘So when did you start to be taught by the Arabs?’ I said. ‘The north – Galicia – isn’t under Moorish control, is it?’

  ‘Not now, although it was for a short time,’ he replied. ‘But I wasn’t taught in the north; or, I should say, I wasn’t taught all that I know here.’ He paused, assembling his thoughts, then said, ‘There was always much contact with the Moorish lands to the south. Travellers would entertain us with their tales of life in what sounded like a different world. Fascinating, extraordinary ideas wove through the talk, and I used to listen avidly, my why? coming as persistently as when I was three years old.’ He smiled. ‘My parents, having little intellectual curiosity, would stare at me open-mouthed, as if wondering where my strange mind came from. My mother, I suspect, believed until the day she died that it was a gift from her pink angel.’

  ‘So they taught you? These travellers who had come up from the south?’

  ‘I learned from them, yes, but only sporadically and in random bits and pieces, and many of the visitors were far too interested in my father’s good ale and my mother’s excellent cooking to spare any time for an inquisitive child. My teacher in my early years was a wise and learned village man named Raymond, who saw my hunger for knowledge and was glad to feed it.’ His expression softened. ‘Raymond,’ he repeated quietly. ‘I owe him so much, for he taught me what he referred to as grammar, which embraces also logic and rhetoric.’

  I wasn’t entirely sure what any of those terms meant but I didn’t want to interrupt, so I just said, ‘Mm,’ knowingly, and nodded.

  Gurdyman smiled to himself.

  ‘Our priest came to hear of my lessons with Raymond,’ he continued, ‘and raised with him the possibility of my going south to al-Andalus, where the men of learning were far more advanced in virtually any area you might name than the sages of the Christian north.’

  Once again I looked round to see if anyone’s ears were flapping, and if somebody was about to take issue with this slur on the faith and the learning of the world of our fellow travellers. But nobody was paying us any mind.

  ‘Between them Raymond and Father Rodrigo persuaded my parents that it would be a sin not to utilize what they referred to as my God-given talent for learning, and, since this accorded with my mother’s private belief that I was as I was because of her pink angel, in the end, although it grieved them to contemplate losing me, they agreed. And so, as I approached my fifteenth year, I said farewell to them and, in the company of a local merchant who was a good friend of Raymond and Father Rodrigo, I set off south for Muslim lands.’

  ‘And that’s where we’re going to—’ I began excitedly.

  But he held up his hand, silencing the tumble of words. ‘For now, Lassair, we shall concentrate on our immediate destination, which is the village where my parents ran their inn.’

  I didn’t want to stay in a little village in Galicia. I’d been in the region for several days. It was very beautiful – wild and mountainous, with unexpected villages and hamlets appearing behind folds in the land where people cheered our little band of pilgrims on their way – and the air of constant elation engendered by the joyful company was exhilarating, but already I was hungry for something new: for the mystery of the south.

  There was no point in saying so, however, so I meekly nodded and said, ‘As you wish.’

  He shot me a swift look, his mouth turning down in a wry smile, and I knew my attempt at mild obedience hadn’t fooled him for a moment.

  It took us the best part of four long days of walking to reach Gurdyman’s parents’ village, and I worked out from other people’s talk that this was a brief distance in comparison with the full length of the pilgrim routes that traversed the mighty mass of Spain. And I noticed, with a sinking heart, that Gurdyman and I walked more slowly than almost everybody else, to judge from the steady stream of people overtaking us. I didn’t yet know how far it was to our ultimate goal, but it was clear I would have to find us a more efficient and effort-saving means of transport.

  Almost without exception, the pilgrims walked. But we were not pilgrims: we were merely sharing their well-worn and well-frequented trails. There was other traffic on the road, and I had observed several examples of what seemed to be a local type of cart. These were simply built and consisted of four sturdy wooden wheels on a pair of axles, over which was a very basic cube-shaped frame made from wooden planks. Some of the carts had a narrow bench along the front edge, a few were even provided with padded cushions for comfort. The little carts were drawn by mules or stout ponies and transported everything from piglets and bundles of hay to elderly people too old to walk.

  I had money, I reminded myself. While Gurdyman rested and recovered in whatever hostel we put up at, I would go out and purchase a cart and a pony to pull it. Looking surreptitiously at Gurdyman, I realized it was the only option. He looked all in, and we’d only walked about fifty miles.

  As, late in the afternoon, we approached the village, I knew exactly why Gurdyman’s father had chosen to settle there. For sound commercial reasons, for one thing: the little settlement slowly coming into view on its slope above us was the first we had come to for quite a long time, and people all around us were greeting its appearance with sighs and cries of relief. It seemed to be divided into two halves, sitting either side of a stream that came flying down from the heights in a roar and a flurry of white spray. Behind me, I heard a man say cheerfully that he couldn’t wait to bathe his sore feet in that lovely cold water. The buildings were low, built of stone and roofed in thatch; here and there tubs of bright flowers stood out in brilliant contrast.

  The climb up to the village was hard, and we were all panting as we reached the first houses. There were hostels right there at the entrance to the village square, but I guessed that these would all be already full. Seeing me glance at them, Gurdyman shook his head and, taking my arm – he was far too breathless to speak – led me on into the village. We passed several more hostels, outside which men stood with expansive gestures of welcome, inviting us in, but still Gurdyman struggled on, now l
eaning heavily on his staff. He paused for a moment, staring round and frowning, then his expression cleared and he set off down a sloping track that led to the stream bisecting the village. And there, on a low rise above the rushing water, stood a stone building with a beautifully curving thatched roof, its double wooden doors standing open. There was a woman standing at a bench in a flag-floored room within, kneading dough with her sleeves rolled up over thick arms. She raised her eyebrows and Gurdyman nodded, muttering something. She beckoned us inside by jerking her head. She yelled out what sounded like someone’s name, and presently a wiry old man appeared from further down the passage that disappeared into the dark depths of the hostel.

  He looked at us expectantly, and Gurdyman said the words I already knew meant We would like accommodation, adding that we’d be staying for a couple of nights.

  At first the man’s face only registered the sort of dutiful politeness he probably displayed to every guest. But then I noticed he was staring intently at Gurdyman. He put up a hand and brushed it over his eyes. Then his expression changed. Opening his arms, he rushed forward. ‘Juan!’ he cried, his voice high and as excited as a child’s. ‘Oh, Juan!’

  He was sobbing.

  Juan?

  Then I understood. Gurdyman’s elderly parents had been nicknamed Elizabeth and Zachary, in honour of the Baptist’s parents. It was hardly surprising that they should have called their son John.

  I shot a glance at my mentor. How on earth, then, had he acquired the name Gurdyman?

  Gurdyman, returning the old man’s hug, was speaking softly to him, and his sobs turned to laughter. Then he broke out in a swift stream of words that I couldn’t follow, including me in his fulsome welcome. But then, seeing that I hadn’t understood, he said in my own tongue, ‘I am Iago. I am young when Juan is young, I work for his mama and his papa here in this very inn, they are like my own mama and papa and they teach me good talk.’