The Silk Road, the main vein of trade and custom and culture from the Roman world to the Far East, terminated where it met the sea at the port city of Selucia Pieria, the harbor city and naval stronghold that had fed and guarded Antioch since the time of Alexander. As we left the ship with the rest of the crew, Captain Titus stopped us at the gangplank. He held his hands, palm down. Joshua and I reached out and Titus dropped the coins we’d paid for passage into our palms. “I might have been holding a brace of scorpions, but you two reached out without a thought.”
“It was a fair price to pay,” Joshua said. “You don’t have to return our money.”
“I almost drowned your friend. I’m sorry.”
“You asked if he could swim before you threw him in. He had a chance.”
I looked at Joshua’s eyes to see if he was joking, but it was obvious he wasn’t.
“Still,” Titus said.
“So perhaps you will be given a chance someday as well,” Joshua said.
“A slim fucking chance,” I added.
Titus grinned at me. “Follow the shore of the harbor until it becomes a river. That’s the Onrontes. Follow its left bank and you’ll be in Antioch by nightfall. In the market there will be an old woman who sells herbs and charms. I don’t remember her name, but she has only one eye and she wears a tunic of Tyran purple. If there is a magician in Antioch she will know where to find him.”
“How do you know this old woman?” I asked.
“I buy my tiger penis powder from her.”
Joshua looked at me for explanation. “What?” I said. “I’ve had a couple of harlots, I didn’t exchange recipes.” Then I looked to Titus. “Should I have?”
“It’s for my knees,” the sailor said. “They hurt when it rains.”
Joshua took my shoulder and started to lead me away. “Go with God, Titus,” he said.
“Put in a good word with the black-winged one for me,” Titus said.
Once we were into the wash of merchants and sailors around the harbor, I said, “He gave us the money back because the angel scared him, you know that?”
“So his kindness allayed his fear as well as benefiting us,” Joshua said. “All the better. Do you think the priests sacrifice the lambs at Passover for better reasons?”
“Oh, right,” I said, having no idea what one had to do with the other, wondering still if tigers didn’t object to having their penises powdered. (Keeps them from chafing, I guess, but that’s got to be a dangerous job.) “Let’s go find this old crone,” I said.
The shore of the Onrontes was a stream of life and color, textures and smells, from the harbor all the way into the marketplace at Antioch. There were people of every size and color that I had ever imagined, some shoeless and dressed in rags, others wearing expensive silks and the purple linen from Tyre, said to be dyed with the blood of a poisonous snail. There were ox carts, litters, and sedan chairs carried by as many as eight slaves. Roman soldiers on horseback and on foot policed the crowd, while sailors from a dozen nations reveled in drink and noise and the feel of land beneath their feet. Merchants and beggars and traders and whores scurried for the turn of a coin, while self-appointed prophets spouted dogma from atop the mooring posts where ships tied off along the river—holy men lined up and preaching like a line of noisy Greek columns. Smoke rose fragrant and blue over the streaming crowd, carrying the smell of spice and grease from braziers in the food booths where men and women hawked their fare in rhythmic, haunting songs that all ran together as you walked along—as if one passed his song to the next so you might never experience a second of silence.
The only thing I had ever seen that approached this was the line of pilgrims leading into Jerusalem on the feast days, but there we never saw so much color, heard so much noise, felt so much excitement.
We stopped at a stand and bought a hot black drink from a wrinkled old man wearing a tanned bird carcass as a hat. He showed us how he made the drink from the seeds of berries that were first roasted, then ground into powder, then mixed with boiling water. We got this whole story by way of pantomime, as the man spoke none of the languages we were familiar with. He mixed the drink with honey and gave it to us, but when I tasted it, it still didn’t seem to taste right. It seemed, I don’t know, too dark. I saw a woman leading a nanny goat nearby, and I took Joshua’s cup from him and ran after the woman. With the woman’s permission, I squirted a bit of milk from the nanny goat’s udder onto the top of each of our cups. The old man protested, making it seem as if we’d committed some sort of sacrilege, but the milk had come out warm and frothy and it served to take away the bitterness of the black drink. Joshua downed his, then asked the old man for two more, as well as handing the woman with the goat a small brass coin for her trouble. Josh gave the second drink back to the old man to taste, and after much grimacing, he took a sip. A smile crossed his toothless mouth and before we left he seemed to be striking some sort of deal with the woman with the goat. I watched the old man grind beans in a copper cylinder while the woman milked her goat into a deep clay bowl. There was a spice vendor next door and I could smell the cinnamon, cloves, and allspice that lay loose in baskets on the ground.
“You know,” I said to the woman in Latin, “when you two get this all figured out, try sprinkling a little ground cinnamon on it. It just might make it perfect.”
“You’re losing your friend,” she said.
I turned and looked around, catching the top of Joshua’s head just as he turned a corner into the Antioch market and a new push of people. I ran to catch up to him.
Joshua was bumping people in the crowd as he passed, seemingly on purpose, and murmuring just loud enough so I could hear him each time he hit someone with a shoulder or an elbow. “Healed that guy. Healed her. Stopped her suffering. Healed him. Comforted him. Ooo, that guy was just stinky. Healed her. Whoops, missed. Healed. Healed. Comforted. Calmed.”
People were turning to look back at Josh, the way one will when a stranger steps on one’s foot, except these people all seemed to be either smiling or baffled, not annoyed as I expected.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Practicing,” Joshua said. “Whoa, bad toe-jam.” He spun on his heel, nearly turning his foot out of his sandal, and smacked a short bald man on the back of the head. “All better now.”
The bald guy turned and looked back to see who had hit him. Josh was backing down the street. “How’s your toe?” Joshua asked in Latin.
“Good,” the bald guy said, and he smiled, sorta goofy and dreamy, like his toe had just sent him a message that all was right with the world.
“Go with God, and—” Josh spun, jumped, came down with each hand on a stranger’s shoulder and shouted, “Yes! Double healing! Go with God, friends, two times!”
I was getting sort of uncomfortable. People had started to follow us through the crowd. Not a lot of people, but a few. Maybe five or six, each of them with that dreamy smile on his face.
“Joshua, maybe you should, uh, calm down a little.”
“Can you believe all of these people need healing? Healed him.” Josh leaned back and whispered in my ear. “That guy had the pox. He’ll pee without pain for the first time in years. ’Scuse me.” He turned back into the crowd. “Healed, healed, calmed, comforted.”
“We’re strangers here, Josh. You’re attracting attention to us. This might not be safe…”
“It’s not like they’re blind or missing limbs. We’ll have to stop if we run into something serious. Healed! God bless you. Oh, you no speak Latin? Uh—Greek? Hebrew? No?”
“He’ll figure it out, Josh,” I said. “We should look for the old woman.”
“Oh, right. Healed!” Josh slapped the pretty woman very hard in the face. Her husband, a large man in a leather tunic, didn’t look pleased. He pulled a dagger from his belt and started to advance on Joshua. “Sorry, sir,” Joshua said, not backing up. “Couldn’t be helped. Small demon, had to be banished from her. Sent it into that dog ov
er there. Go with God. Thank you, thank you very much.”
The woman grabbed her husband by the arm and swung him around. She still had Joshua’s handprint on her face, but she was smiling. “I’m back!” she said to her husband. “I’m back.” She shook him and the anger seemed to drain out of him. He looked back at Joshua with an expression of such dismay that I thought he might faint. He dropped his knife and threw his arms around his wife. Joshua ran forward and threw his arms around them both.
“Would you stop it please?” I pleaded.
“But I love these people,” Josh said.
“You do, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“He was going to kill you.”
“It happens. He just didn’t understand. He does now.”
“Glad he caught on. Let’s find the old lady.”
“Yes, then let’s go back and get another one of those hot drinks,” Joshua said.
We found the hag selling a bouquet of monkey feet to a fat trader dressed in striped silks and a wide conical hat woven from some sort of tough grass.
“But these are all back feet,” the trader protested.
“Same magic, better price,” said the hag, pulling back a shawl she wore over one side of her face to reveal a milky white eye. This was obviously her intimidation move.
The trader wasn’t having it. “It is a well-known fact that the front paw of a monkey is the best talisman for telling the future, but the back—”
“You’d think the monkey would see something coming,” I said, and they both looked at me as if I’d just sneezed on their falafel. The old woman drew back as if to cast a spell, or maybe a rock, at me. “If that were true,” I continued, “I mean—about telling the future with a monkey paw—I mean—because he would have four of them—paws, that is—and, uh—never mind.”
“How much are these?” said Joshua, holding up a handful of dried newts from the hag’s baskets. The old woman turned to Josh.
“You can’t use that many,” the hag said.
“I can’t?” asked Joshua.
“These are useless,” said the merchant, waving the hind legs and feet of two and a half former monkeys, which looked like tiny people feet, except that they were furry and the toes were longer.
“If you’re a monkey I’ll bet they come in handy to keep your butt from dragging on the ground,” I said, ever the peacemaker.
“Well, how many do I need?” Joshua asked, wondering how his diversion to save me had turned into a negotiation for newt crispies.
“How many of your camels are constipated?” asked the crone.
Joshua dropped the dried newts back into their basket. “Well, uh…”
“Do those work?” asked the merchant. “For plugged-up camels, I mean.”
“Never fails.”
The merchant scratched his pointed beard with a monkey foot. “I’ll meet your price on these worthless monkey feet if you throw in a handful of newts.”
“Deal,” said the crone.
The merchant opened a satchel he had slung around his shoulder and dropped in his monkey feet, then followed them with a handful of newts. “So how do these work? Make them into tea and have the camel drink it?”
“Other end,” said the crone. “They go in whole. Count to one hundred and step back.”
The merchant’s eyes went wide, then narrowed into a squint and he turned to me. “Kid,” he said, “if you can count to a hundred, I’ve got a job for you.”
“He’d love to work for you, sir,” Joshua said, “but we have to find Balthasar the magus.”
The crone hissed and backed to the corner of her booth, covering all of her face but her milky eye. “How do you know of Balthasar?” She held her hands in front of her like claws and I could see her trembling.
“Balthasar!” I shouted at her, and the old woman nearly jumped through the wall behind her. I snickered and was ready to Balthasar! her again when Josh interrupted.
“Balthasar came from here to Bethlehem to witness my birth,” said Joshua. “I’m seeking his counsel. His wisdom.”
“You would hail the darkness, you would consort with demons and fly with the evil Djinn like Balthasar? I won’t have you near my booth, be gone from here.” She made the sign of the evil eye, which in her case was redundant.
“No, no, no,” I said. “None of that. The magus left some, uh, frankincense at Joshua’s house. We need to return it to him.”
The old woman regarded me with her good eye. “You’re lying.”
“Yes, he is,” said Josh.
“BALTHASAR!” I screamed in her face. It didn’t have the same effect as the first time around and I was a little disappointed.
“Stop that,” she said.
Joshua reached out to take her craggy hand. “Grandmother,” he said, “our ship’s captain, Titus Inventius, said you would know where to find Balthasar. Please help us.”
The old woman seemed to relax, and just when I thought she was going to smile, she raked her nails across Joshua’s hand and leapt back. “Titus Inventius is a scalawag,” she shouted.
Joshua stared at the blood welling up in the scratches on the back of his hand and I thought for a second that he might faint. He never understood it when someone was violent or unkind. I’d probably be half a day explaining to him why the old woman scratched him, but right then I was furious.
“You know what? You know what? You know what?” I was waving my finger under her nose. “You scratched the Son of God. That’s your ass, that’s what.”
“The magus is gone from Antioch, and good riddance to him,” screeched the crone.
The fat trader had been watching this the whole time without saying a word, but now he began laughing so hard that I could barely hear the old woman wheezing out curses. “So you want to find Balthasar, do you, God’s Son?”
Joshua came out of the stunned contemplation of his wounds and looked at the trader. “Yes, sir, do you know him?”
“Who do you think the monkey’s feet are for? Follow me.” He whirled on his heel and sauntered away without another word.
As we followed the trader into an alley so narrow that his shoulders nearly touched the sides, I turned back to the old crone and shouted, “Your ass, hag! Mark my words.”
She hissed and made the sign of the evil eye again.
“She was a little creepy,” Joshua said, looking at the scratches on his hand again.
“Don’t be judgmental, Josh, you’re not without creepiness yourself.”
“Where do you think this guy is leading us?”
“Probably somewhere where he can murder and kill us.”
“Yeah, at least one of those.”
Chapter Eleven
Since my escape attempt, I can’t get the angel to leave the room at all. Not even for his beloved Soap Opera Digest. (And yes, when he left to obtain the first one, it would have been a good time to make my escape, but I wasn’t thinking that way then, so back off.) Today I tried to get him to bring me a map.
“Because no one is going to know the places I’m writing about, that’s why,” I told him. “You want me to write in this idiom so people will understand what I’m saying, then why use the names of places that have been gone for thousands of years? I need a map.”
“No,” said the angel.
“When I say the journey was two months by camel, what will that mean to these people who can cross an ocean in hours? I need to know modern distances.”
“No,” said the angel.
(Did you know that in a hotel they bolt the bedside lamp to the table, thereby making it an ineffective instrument of persuasion when trying to bring an obdurate angel around to your way of thinking? Thought you should know that. Pity too, it’s such a substantial lamp.)
“But how will I recount the heroic acts of the archangel Raziel if I can’t tell the locations of his deeds? What, you want me to write, ‘Oh, then somewhere generally to the left of the Great Wall that rat-bastard Raziel showed up looking lik
e hell considering he may have traveled a long distance or not?’ Is that what you want? Or should it read, ‘Then, only a mile out of the port of Ptolemais, we were once again graced with the shining magnificence of the archangel Raziel? Huh, which way do you want it?”
(I know what you’re thinking, that the angel saved my life when Titus threw me off the ship and that I should be more forgiving toward him, right? That I shouldn’t try to manipulate a poor creature who was given an ego but no free will or capacity for creative thought, right? Okay, good point. But do please remember that the angel only intervened on my behalf because Joshua was praying for my rescue. And do please remember that he could have saved us a lot of difficulty over the years if he had helped us out more often. And please don’t forget that—despite the fact that he is perhaps the most handsome creature I’ve ever laid eyes on—Raziel is a stone doofus. Nevertheless, the ego stroke worked.)
“I’ll get you a map.”
And he did. Unfortunately the concierge was only able to find a map of the world provided by an airline that partners with the hotel. So who knows how accurate it is. On this map the next leg of our journey is six inches long and would cost thirty thousand Friendly Flyer Miles. I hope that clears things up.
The trader’s name was Ahmad Mahadd Ubaidullaganji, but he said we could call him Master. We called him Ahmad. He led us through the city to a hillside where his caravan was camped. He owned a hundred camels which he drove along the Silk Road, along with a dozen men, two goats, three horses, and an astonishingly homely woman named Kanuni. He took us to his tent, which was larger than both the houses Joshua and I had grown up in. We sat on rich carpets and Kanuni served us stuffed dates and wine from a pitcher shaped like a dragon.
“So, what does the Son of God want with my friend Balthasar?” Ahmad asked. Before we could answer he snorted and laughed until his shoulders shook and he almost spilled his wine. He had a round face with high cheekbones and narrow black eyes that crinkled at the corners from too much laughter and desert wind. “I’m sorry, my friends, but I’ve never been in the presence of the son of a god before. Which god is your father, by the way?”
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