She found herself standing next to Jaufre, and glanced at him. He, too, was staring up, absorbed, this time in a tall, slender column of glass showing a tree springing from one man’s groin in the bottom panel and ending at the top in another man crowned with seven doves. “Their Christ?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, in an equally hushed tone. “It’s almost enough to make me believe.”
He shook his head. “They’re barely civilized enough not to shit in their own drinking water, and then they build something like this.”
Alaric had come to stand by them. “You know why they built it, don’t you? To bring in pilgrims to spend money in the town. It’s why all cathedrals are built.”
Jaufre looked at him. “You don’t even believe that yourself.” A thought struck him. “Wilmot. I completely forgot. Is your friend here?”
Alaric shook his head. “I’ve asked. If he was here, it was only briefly, not long enough to make an impression on any of the residents. No one remembers him.”
It was past noon when they emerged again, feeling half-drunk on the wonders within, to find pilgrims lining up to view the Sancta Camisia, allegedly the tunic Mary wore when she gave birth to Christ and the cathedral’s most precious relic. Behind the pilgrims a man was perched on the edge of a fountain, a bound trunk on the ground below, open to reveal a sheaf of forms. Another man displayed a writ of some kind upon a red velvet cushion. Even at a distance they could see that the writ was most wonderfully decorated with great scrolls and flourishes, and the cushion was no less wonderfully decorated with elaborate embroidery in gold thread and gold tassels. It was very gaudy.
To one side a flock of men in clerical black stood with their hands folded piously beneath their cassocks, crucifixes gleaming upon their breasts. Behind them a huge wooden cross had been raised and draped with a banner.
Alaric caught his breath and crossed himself.
“What is it?” Jaufre asked in a low voice.
“That banner is the banner of the Holy Father himself,” Alaric said, murmuring a prayer and crossing himself again.
“Of Pope John in Avignon?”
“The same.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
Everyone appeared to be waiting for the bells in the tower to stop ringing. When they did, the crowd surged forward, hands held out, usually with coins displayed in them.
“I have here your passport to Paradise!” the man on the fountain cried. “One quarter florin saves you seven years of penance! Have you committed the mortal sin of carnal knowledge of your mother or your sister? Poor Christian soul! Step up, place your coin in the bowl of the Holy Father! You will receive a letter of remission of your sin, and if the Holy Father forgive it, then God must also. Step up! Did your father die unshriven? Poor Christian soul! As soon as the coin rings in the bowl, that soul will fly straight from Purgatory to Heaven! Step up!”
They stepped up in a body, crowding around, fighting for place. Even a few pilgrims broke rank, perhaps tired of waiting for Mary’s attention. A third man counted the money as it dropped into the bowl with one hand, and handed out forms from the chest with the other.
“I thought you said you had to confess your sins to a priest,” Johanna said to Alaric. “That was why they wouldn’t let us bury Félicien in one of their graveyards.”
“And that you couldn’t be forgiven your sins until you had done penance for them,” Shasha said.
“Usually on your knees in church,” Jaufre said.
Alaric’s mouth was a thin line of disapproval.
“Is it not said, ‘Who fears not, God, Thy gifts to take and then Thy ten commandments break, lacks that true love which should be his salvation?’” Hari quoted piously.
“Amen,” Jaufre said heartily, and was seconded by a chorus.
Alaric scowled. “Let’s get out of this crowd.”
They let him lead the way home because none of them could keep their faces straight.
Life was not all tragedy, Johanna thought, and people were not all of them evil. For every Ambroise there was a Hari and a Firas and a Jaufre and yes, even an Alaric. For every Chartres Cathedral built to the great glory of church and state by the hand of man, there was a man offering you an opportunity to buy your way into heaven.
No, not all tragedy. Johanna felt the numbness that had enveloped her upon Félicien’s death begin to ease, and when she next drew breath the scents of spring were rich in her nostrils.
And Félicien?
She was unaware she had said the words out loud until Jaufre answered her. “Félicien would have written a song about it,” he said.
She looked at him and saw that he was smiling. “And not a nice one.”
Even Alaric smiled.
That night Shasha conspired with their landlady, with whom they were by now on quite good terms, and produced a feast of roast chicken and a heaping bowl of root vegetables mashed with butter and herbs, and another bowl of fresh-picked strawberries for dessert. Johanna couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten anything that tasted as good.
They cleared away the debris and returned the dishes to the scullery, and came to roost on the fenced paddock that currently housed North Wind. He trotted directly up to Johanna and nosed her so impatiently that she nearly fell off the rail. She climbed back up and produced a wizened excuse of an apple excavated from their landlady’s cellar. North Wind snorted down the front of her tunic and after a little fake dissembling deigned to accept the tribute.
He ambled away, munching, as the other three Arabians and the rest of their mounts fell in a respectful distance behind. He still had that scar on his right foreleg from that time in the Hindu Kush, when they ran from Gokudo until they caught him. There was another on his left hindquarter, a rope burn suffered from one of Sheik Mohammed’s men.
She looked around at her human companions. They were all scarred in one way or another, too.
“So,” Shasha said. “What do we do next?”
It so happened that they were facing north. Johanna saw Jaufre raise his head and stare off at the horizon. “I’d still like to find a good source of wool,” he said. “Good quality fleece would fetch a fine price both in Lyon and in Venice.”
Alaric was picking at his teeth with a twig. “They do say,” he said, “that the best wool comes from England.”
“Do they,” Shasha said, eying Alaric narrowly. There had been something suspiciously studied in his statement.
He returned a glance of limpid innocence and spread his hands. “So I have heard. I’ve never been there myself, of course.”
Johanna wondered what wool cost in England. It had been an expensive winter. She herself was down to two rubies, one sewn into the hem of each leg of her trousers, the last of her patrimony, the last gift she would ever receive from her father. As for coin, there was precious little left of that left in any of their pockets.
“Then perhaps we should go to England,” Jaufre said.
Alma and Hayat exchanged glances. “What?” Jaufre said.
“Well,” Hayat said. “Where is it?”
“North,” Alaric said. “And west. And we’ll have to cross La Manche.”
“The channel? What channel?”
“It’s what they call where the ocean travels between Normandy and England.” He looked at their blank faces, and added kindly, “Normandy is also north.”
“There’s a university in the town,” Alma said to Hayat.
“And where there is a school, there will be a library,” Hayat said, with resignation.
“And where there is a library, there will be maps,” Alma said, with satisfaction.
“How far to this channel?” Firas said.
Alaric shrugged. “Fifty leagues, perhaps?”
Johanna looked at him, at his purposely diffident air, and thought that he knew down to the rod how far it was to the channel.
“And how long a voyage to cross it?”
“If
the weather is fine, a day or less.”
Their last voyage, a storm-ridden journey across the Middle Sea, was strong enough in everyone’s memory to be relieved to hear it, even if they didn’t quite believe that any sea voyage could be quite that easy. Tiphaine, never having been on a ship, was enchanted at the notion and bounced on top of the fence, to the imminent danger of them and the railing they were sitting on. “When do we leave?”
“As soon as possible,” Alaric said.
“Why?”
“It’s spring. In two months’ time, or when the ground dries out, whichever comes first, armies will begin to march. It would be best to be gone before that happened.”
“Which armies?”
“All of them. Did you think all those ships were being built in Venice only for trade?” Alaric grimaced. “The English kings have been fighting with the French kings ever since Henry II died. All this—” he waved an inclusive hand “—or much of it once belonged to the English, by marriage portion of Eleanor of Aquitaine. They’ve been losing it a piece at a time to the French ever since, but they’re very tenacious, the English. There is nothing they love so much as a vain hope, and they are more than willing to sacrifice any number of lives to it.”
That last came out a little acidly. “You know them well, in spite of never having been there,” Shasha said.
“There were many English among the Knights Templar.” He nodded at Jaufre. “His father was only one of them. My suggestion is that we sail from Harfleur. It’s a smaller port than Calais, with fewer ships to choose from, but it’s closer to us. And farther from the Low Countries.”
“The Low Countries?”
“Someone is always fighting over or fighting with the Low Countries,” Alaric said. “They are very rich, and so present tempting targets to anyone with a large enough army. We would be much safer avoiding them altogether, even though it will be a longer sail from Harfleur.”
“Fifty leagues,” Shasha said, sliding to the ground. “Say a week’s travel—what is the way like? Should we go supplied, or will food be readily available for purchase on the journey?”
“We begin practice again every morning,” Firas said. “If we are going where armies march—”
“Armies march everywhere, all the time, Firas,” Alaric said. “And we are not an army, in and of ourselves.”
“Nevertheless—”
“A ship! We’re going on a ship!”
They moved off, chatting animatedly. Johanna found herself alone with Jaufre for the first time in months. She hesitated, looking at him.
“What?” he said.
“Is looking for wool the real reason you wanted to go to England?”
“Oh, well…” He looked a little self-conscious, which was better than the open, gaping wound that had been living with them lately. “I suppose I would like to see the land my father came from.”
“Will you look for his family? Your family?”
He shook his head, more definitely this time. “No. They are nothing to me.” He looked at her. “Johanna.”
Something in his expression made her heart skip a beat. “What?”
“I’m sorry.” He took in a breath and blew it back out again. “It’s late to say it, and if you have a shred of self-respect you won’t accept it, but I am truly sorry.”
She didn’t pretend not to understand. She surprised them both when she said baldly, “Did you love her?”
He looked first surprised and then confused. “What?”
“Did you love her? Félicien? I thought you—I thought we—” She couldn’t go on, her throat closing over the words. She looked away, unable to bear the sight of his face when he said “Yes.”
“Johanna. Johanna, look at me.” A large hand raised her chin and she willed back the tears to meet his eyes. They were so blue, and so dear. “Of course I loved her,” he said, and her heart plummeted. “No. Listen. Listen to the rest. Listen to all of it.” He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her towards him. She went, step by hesitant step. “Of course I loved her, as I love them all—” he jerked his head at the group now entering the inn. “—the whole annoying, irritating, infuriating bunch of them. They are my comrades, as Félicien was my comrade.”
“But she was more than that,” she said.
He squeezed her shoulders. “I lost my mother the same way, Johanna.”
She looked up, startled, and he smiled. “I didn’t think I’d have to explain this to you of all people. My mother was kidnapped and sold into slavery when I was ten. I never saw her again, but I never stopped looking for her.” He raised his head and stared into the distance with blind eyes. “I went to the slave auctions in Venice, Johanna. I watched women being stripped to their skins, their mouths forced open to show their teeth, filthy, grinning old doctors produced to attest to their virginity.”
He gave a shaky sigh. “I was sick. Worse than Félicien on the worst day of her illness. I barely made it outside.” He looked back at her, his eyes very bright. “I swore to myself, then and there, that I was done looking for my mother. I swore to accept the fact that she had gone beyond my reach. That my memories of her were all I would have. All these years of looking for her, and I finally realized. I wasn’t ever going to find her. I wasn’t ever going to rescue her. The last word I would have from her, the last sight of her I would see would be from that morning on the Road, three days from Kashgar. When we woke, and broke our fast with tea and dried fruit, and she made a joke when I brought in a bag of dried camel dung for that night’s fire.”
She felt tears sting her eyes. “It’s not a bad last memory.” She thought of her own mother’s death. But she had been there, holding her mother’s hand as she died. She hadn’t seen her mother disappearing around a street corner in every city between Cambaluc and Venice for the last ten years.
She looked at Jaufre. “And then Félicien was taken.”
“Yes, and it was my mother all over again. She was taken, and I could do nothing to stop it. I might as well have been that ten-year old boy again, utterly useless, utterly ineffectual. I couldn’t let it go, Johanna. I couldn’t let her go.” He searched her face. “Do you understand?”
She thought back to those days and weeks following Félicien’s taking, when Jaufre had seemed so maniacally focussed on getting Félicien back, allowing nothing and no one, not even his friends and comrades’ doubts and fears to get in his way. “We could have been killed, Jaufre,” she said. “All of us, not just Félicien.”
He gave a short, explosive laugh. “Don’t I know it! Looking back I can’t believe I did that. But I had to.” He looked at her again. “We had to. We had to rescue her, because we could. We could not have left her there, with him.”
She thought of Félicien, laying on the bed in the room upstairs in the inn, wasting away to a skeleton, her hands growing ever more frail on the strings of her lute. How much more terrible would those days have been, had they been spent in L’Arête? “No,” she said. “No, we could not.”
He looked relieved, and then doubtful. “Does everyone feel the way you do?”
She pushed him away gently. “That is something you must talk to them about. Each and every one of them, Jaufre, from Hari to Tiphaine. Make your peace with them, or it will blight us all going forward.”
He drew close again. “And us?” he said. “Did I blight us, too? Did I lose what we could have been, too?”
She gave a sudden, blinding smile. “You don’t get rid of me that easily, Jaufre of Cambaluc.” She kissed him swiftly on the corner of his mouth. “Félicien died free, and she died among friends, among people who loved her.” She drew back and looked at him with steady eyes. “All that we did, all that we endured, all that we dared. It was worth it.”
She ran after the others.
He watched her go, the lithe girl with the bronze braid and the golden skin, running easily across the yard to disappear inside the inn.
One thing he hadn’t told her, one thing he might never
tell her, was what he had felt when she tumbled beneath the belly of Ambroise de L’Arête’s destrier, to deliberately place herself within range of the dangerous hooves of a trained war horse. A terror greater than any he had ever felt seized him and for a moment he couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak, he could do nothing but watch to see if the destrier trampled her to death. Such was his concern to keep Félicien free of Ambroise that when they had made their plan, when Johanna had insisted it was the only way to provoke North Wind into action, he had not thought what it would mean.
She could have been injured. She could have died. Surely she knew that, and much sooner than he had. And she had done it anyway.
He looked about himself with new eyes. Their world over the winter had slowly contracted to the room in which Félicien lay dying. But here, outside that room, there was sun, and blue sky, and trees and shrubs going from bare limb to fat buds overnight, and pollen gathering in yellow drifts on roadsides, and farmers laboring in the fields, and calves and lambs mastering insubstantial legs to totter in search of mother’s milk. He saw gray-cloaked pilgrims on the road, eyes fixed on the towers of the cathedral, burning with the hope that the Holy Mother would grant their wish for a son, a cure, forgiveness, grace.
Inside the inn his friends waited.
And then he closed his eyes and gave devout thanks to whomever was listening for the luck of a fool such as he.
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