I waited for my chance to reveal my plan. Finally, on the last night of the festivities, when the year had turned, we gathered for the Twelfth Night celebration. Murdo’s hall was filled with vassals, monks, and friends from Orkneyjar; the vats were filled with spiced ale, the cauldrons with stewed beef and pork with brown beans, and steaming jars of mulled wine lined the long tables. At the lord’s invitation, we took our places at the board and began to eat and drink.
Other dishes were brought and placed before us in their turn: sausages cooked with ale and apples, fish with fennel, and smoked ox-tongue roasted with sour cabbage. On each table were small mountains of special round loaves—the Twelfth Night bread baked specially for the feast. We ate and drank our fill of these delights, and when the first pangs of hunger had receded, Abbot Emlyn rose from his place and called the hall to silence.
“My friends!” said the cleric, lifting his voice above the cheerful rumble. “On such glad occasions it is good to pause and give thanks to the true Lord of the Feast who has so bounteously provided for his people.” With that, he clasped his hands and bowed his head. His prayer of thanks was simple and sincere, and short—a quality which greatly endeared the abbot to his flock. For when Emlyn prayed, one never got the feeling he was trying to chastise or rebuke his congregation by another means. Nor did he use the opportunity to display his erudition to impress or humble those beneath him—a temptation far too many clerics do not resist. When Emlyn prayed, he merely spoke his mind to his Creator, the Gifting Giver, he so evidently loved.
When he finished, my Lord Murdo rose next. He instructed everyone to fill their cups and bowls, and said, “We drink to the year now begun! May the God of Goodness and Light bless us richly, and may our realm prosper in every good and worthy thing.” We drank to that, and he said, “If it shall please our Great Redeemer, this time next year we will gather to consecrate the new church.”
“Amen!” cried Abbot Emlyn. “So be it.”
We raised our cups again, and then I was on my feet. Every face turned toward me in anticipation.
“Before God and this brave company,” I said, “I pledge myself to undertake the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the sake of my soul. If it should please God to reward my journey with success, I will pray for our realm and ask the Good Lord’s blessing on us all.”
This unexpected declaration was met with astonishment; gasps and murmurs of surprise filled the hall. Emlyn stood quickly and came to my side. He looked at me inquiringly. “Are you so resolved?” he asked.
“I am,” I replied.
He gathered me in a strong embrace, saying, “God bless you, my son! It is the Savior King himself who has put this into your heart.”
I thanked him, and was suddenly swarmed by others who thronged me to wish me well, and to add their pledges of support to my own. Several of the younger men offered to accompany me, and others to send gifts of provisions or gold to aid the journey. Everyone, it seemed, was delighted with the purpose of my pilgrimage.
Everyone, that is, except the one whose approval I valued the most: Murdo. My lord stood looking at me as if he had taken an arrow through the heart. Then, very slowly, he walked to where I stood. The hard expression on his face soured the mirth and all laughter ceased as an uneasy silence descended over the hall. I could hear the fire crackling in the hearth as he stepped before me, his eyes burning with rage.
“That was ill spoken,” he breathed, his voice soft—as if he struggled mightily to restrain it. My mother, distraught, joined him.
“My lord,” I said, “it has long been in my mind to do this thing. I believe God has called me to his service.”
“We will speak of this later,” Murdo said stiffly.
“Let us speak now,” I countered recklessly.
“Later,” Murdo insisted. “This is not the time to pursue a family dispute.”
I made to reply that this was as good a time as any, when I felt my mother’s hand on my arm, trying to restrain me. She implored me with a silent shake of her head.
“As you will, lord,” I replied, yielding to Ragna’s gentle entreaty. “We will speak later.”
The feast resumed, but slowly, and I felt like a rowdy cub that had just been slapped down by an annoyed bear. I sat for a while, trying to shrug off my reproof, but it was no use. The rebuke rankled, and I could not easily stifle my resentment. After awhile, I found a chance to slink away and left the hall unnoticed.
I went out into the freezing night and felt the sting of the icy wind on my hot face. What, I asked myself, had I expected? Did I really think Murdo would clap his hands and extol my pilgrimage with high words and praises?
No. What had happened was what I feared would happen, nothing more. The trouble was my own making. If there was any consolation, it was this: at least, I had announced my intention; come what may, my plan was no longer a secret.
All the next day I waited to be summoned to my lord’s chamber to receive the reprimand I knew was coming. But it did not come. The day passed and nothing was said; we bade farewell to our guests, and saw them away. Out of consideration for me, no mention was made of my announcement of the previous night. The day turned foul so I stayed in with little Cait, and took supper with my mother in the evening.
“He is that angry with you, Duncan,” she said, pursing her lips in her vexation. “He has snapped and snarled like a wolf with a toothache all day, and refuses to come to the table.” She stopped ladling the soup into the bowl, and looked at me. “You must go to him and tell him it was a mistake.”
“How so?” I asked. “He may not like it, but it was no mistake. I mean to go to Jerusalem just as I said. True, I would go with a better heart if I had his blessing, but with his approval or without it, I will go.”
She frowned. “Duncan, please, you do not know what you are saying.”
“Do I not, my lady?” I said. “Have I lived so long in this house that I know nothing of such things?”
“That is not what I meant,” she replied, placing the bowl before me. She sat down and, folding her hands, leaned toward me across the board. “When he returned from the pilgrimage,” she said, “your father vowed that neither he nor any of his family would ever again journey to the Holy Land. You have gone against him in this, and I fear the outcome.”
“I am sorry, Mother,” I replied. “But I knew nothing of this vow.”
“I wish you had said something, son. I could have told you.” She regarded me with sad eyes. “Is it so important, this pilgrimage?”
“My lady, it is,” I replied earnestly. “It is all I have thought about since Rhona died. I believe God has put the desire in my heart, and he alone can take it away.”
“And if you go, it will kill your father,” Ragna pointed out. She frowned again and reached out to squeeze my hand. “Believe me, Murdo could not stand the torment of your leaving.”
“The torment would be mine,” I said sharply, “not his.”
Lady Ragna shook her head gently. “No,” she said, “because he knows—even if you do not—what lies before you. He has been there, Duncan, and he knows the dangers you will face. He could not live with the hardship and suffering that would befall you.”
“If God has put it in my heart to go, and I do not go,” I replied, “what am I to do then? How am I to live with that?”
EIGHT
I LEFT BANVAR WITHOUT speaking to my father again, and the regret of that bitter leaving pains me still. Believe me, Cait, I would give the world and all its treasures to have departed with a blessing from the one person in the world whose approval alone would have sustained me through the trials I have faced. But Murdo was implacable in his opposition. He refused to speak to me until I repented of my plan. This I could not do.
I have since had many occasions to wonder what he would have said if he had known the true purpose of my pilgrimage? Would it have made a difference?
Who can say?
Know this, my soul, and remember it always: I have no fear
of death. For me to leave this life is to enter the next in triumph. But the thought that I will die in this foreign land without ever seeing the faces of those I have loved best in life fills me with grief so strong it does take my breath away.
Even so, I bear my lot patiently for your sake, and pray the caliph tarries yet awhile so that I may finish what I have begun.
It is a most curious captivity, I declare. I am given the best of food and drink; my modest needs are met without the humiliation that so often accompanies captivity. I even have a servant to attend me and, in many ways, I am treated as an honored guest with all courtesy and respect. Even so, I accept all I am given with gratitude, knowing it could so easily be otherwise.
The Muhammedans are a noble people, never doubt it. If peace were ever possible, I think we should find ourselves brothers under the skin. Alas, too much blood has been shed on both sides of the battle line for it to be forgiven. There will never be peace between our peoples until our Lord Christ brings it at his return. This I most heartily believe.
Now I will tell how I came to Marseilles.
On the morning I took the boat, I asked Sarn to accompany me. I did not tell him where I was going. I had made my farewells the night before—not that anyone knew it—and rose at dawn and went down to the bay to rouse Sarn out of his nest of oars and sailcloth. In warm weather he always slept in the hut beneath the cliff on the strand.
I let him think we were going fishing, until we had made the headland, and then I told him to sail for Inbhir Ness. It was then he looked at the pack I had brought aboard. “Where are you going, lord?” he asked.
“I am going away for a while,” I told him.
“It is the pilgrimage, so?” A sly expression passed over his open, honest features, giving him a look of mild imbecility.
Of course, everyone in the realm knew about my desire to undertake the pilgrimage—and my father’s unyielding opposition to it. The entire settlement had discussed it at length, and most had taken sides.
“Have you made a wager on me?”
He smiled readily. “Yes, lord,” he admitted without guile. “You are your father’s son. Some of the others said you would stay, but I knew you would go.”
“Once you have seen me to Inbhir Ness, you can go back and collect your winnings,” I told him.
“The wind is good. We will be there before dusk,” he announced, looking at the sky. Indicating my small bundle of belongings, he said, “Are you certain you have enough food to see you to Jerusalem? The abbot says it is very far away.”
“I have enough,” I allowed, “to see me three or four days. After that, I am in God’s hands. It is for him to provide.”
“Do you have a sword?” he asked, regarding my sad bundle doubtfully.
“If I need a sword, I will get one,” I told him. “True pilgrims carry no weapons.”
He frowned at this, but returned to his tiller, and I to the contemplation of the task ahead of me. It was my intention to follow my father’s example by going to Inbhir Ness and begging passage as a crewman for any ship sailing south. I did not think it would be more than two or three days before I found a ship to take me on. Certainly, when I bade farewell to Sarn and sent him home, I did not think to see him again.
But, two days later, I was still waiting at the quayside when he returned. I saw the ship as it came into the harbor and recognized it; my heart sank. I imagined my lord had come to take me back. But it was not Murdo he had brought with him, it was Padraig.
“If you have come to talk me out of leaving, you can turn around and go home,” I told him bluntly. “My mind is made up. I am on pilgrimage.”
The tall, soft-eyed monk regarded me mildly. “Then I am a pilgrim, too,” he replied.
“What do you mean?” I asked suspiciously. “Did my father send you to bring me home, or not?”
“Lord Murdo says that if you leave now, you leave forever. You must never think to see your home again, for the dead do not return.”
“He considers me a dead man, is that it?”
“That is what he told me to say.”
“Well, you have said it. You can go back and tell him that I must do what God has given me to do.”
“My uncle said that is what you would say,” Padraig observed placidly. “Abbot Emlyn said that if you were determined to carry out your plan, then I was to accompany you.”
“Accompany me? All the way to Jerusalem?”
“Yes, lord,” affirmed the monk. “I am to be your servant and guide.”
“Thank you, Padraig,” I told him. “But this is my decision. You are free to go home. Tell the abbot I cannot accept responsibility for any life but my own. I thank him for his kindness, however.”
“Sarn will tell him. I am going with you.” He raised his hand and declared, “Hear me: pilgrimage is a sacred undertaking. We go on faith, or we do not go at all. But if we travel with hope, trusting in our Great Redeemer, we need have no fear, for we shall meet angels along the way who will befriend us.”
“Look you, as much as I would like your company, I cannot allow you to go to Jerusalem with me,” I said. “You have no provisions, no cloak, no water skin.” Pointing to his bare feet, I added, “You do not even have shoes.”
Padraig smiled. “My cloak and staff are in the boat. If I have need of anything else, God will supply it out of his matchless bounty.”
Sarn, who had been listening to this exchange from his place at the bow rope, spoke up. “That is the same thing you told me, lord,” he chuckled.
“You stay out of this,” I snapped. I glared at them both. Daylight was quickly fading and twilight gathering; if I sent them back now it would be dark before they reached the estuary. “Very well,” I relented, “you can stay here with me tonight, but you must leave in the morning.”
Padraig said nothing, but set about making a fire. Sarn tied the boat to a post driven into the earthen bank that served as part of the harbor wall. That finished, he brought out a bundle and began unwrapping it—loaves of bread, dried fish and pork, and other things to make a meal. “There is ale in the stoup,” he said. “Lady Ragna thought you might like a last good drink before going to the Holy Land.”
Stepping over the bow and into the ship, I found the jar.
“How did you know I would still be here?”
The seaman shrugged. “There were no trading ships when I left you. If any came they would not have departed so soon.”
“So now it is Sarn the Shrewd, I suppose?”
He smiled. “We would have drunk the ale whether you were here or not.”
“See you do not drink too much,” I warned lightly. “You are leaving in the morning—both of you. Together.”
We ate our meal, and night gathered around us. Torches were lit along the bank, and we sat drinking ale and watching the flickering light along the quayside. It was quiet; there were few ships in the harbor, and most of the sailors were at one or the other of the town’s inns.
“There are not many ships coming here, I think,” Sarn observed. “How long will you wait?”
“As long as it takes,” I replied, slightly annoyed by the question. “I talked with a man yesterday who was at Rouen in the spring. He said the Franks are raising men for the Holy Land.”
“Rouen,” repeated Padraig. “That is where Lord Ranulf and the northern noblemen joined the crusade.”
“It is,” I confirmed.
“Then maybe we should go there,” suggested the monk.
“Is that not the very thing I plan to do,” I retorted, my irritation growing, “as soon as I can get a ship?”
“You already have a ship,” Padraig pointed out. “Sarn could take us.”
I might have resented the idea if it had not struck me as faintly ridiculous. “He might,” I agreed haughtily, “if he had a chart and provisions enough for such a trip.”
Sarn brightened, his smile wide in the dark. “I have these things.”
I stared at him. Had the two of th
em conspired in this? “The boat is too small,” I complained. Truly, I had imagined sailing into Jerusalem aboard a Norse longship like the one my father had journeyed in.
“Small, yes,” Sarn conceded amiably, “but the boat is sound and the weather good. It could easily be done.”
“Where did you get a chart?” I asked.
“The monastery provided the chart,” Padraig replied, and explained how Abbot Emlyn had personally supervised the copying and preparation.
“And you have provisions?”
“These we have also,” confirmed Sarn. “Enough for three men for several weeks of days—although the abbot does not think it will take so long.”
“We can depart in the morning,” Padraig pointed out. “If you have no objection, that is.”
“Since you both seem to be determined,” I said, “then I will allow it. You can accompany me to Rouen, and I shall be glad of the company. Once we reach the port, however,” I continued, raising a finger in warning, “you will turn around and sail home. Is that understood?”
They both regarded me curiously.
“Is that understood?” I repeated.
“It is a long way to Frankland,” Padraig mused. “Perhaps it would be best to wait until we see what we find when we get there.”
So, we sailed for Rouen, leaving the next morning as soon as it was light enough to navigate the river estuary. The winds were steady, and the weather stayed fair; we made good speed the first five or six days, keeping the coast in sight by day and night. Sometimes we made camp on land; most often we slept in the boat. We lost sight of land only once when fog stole the coast for a night and part of the next day.
It was only upon crossing the narrows and coming in sight of the Frankish coast that the weather soured, and we were lashed by the tail of a thunderous storm. The wind shrieked and hurled stinging waves over the rails time and again. Padraig clung to the mast and prayed; Sarn and I bailed with cup and water stoup. We stood off the coast until the storm had passed; then, almost shaking with relief and singing psalms of thanksgiving, proceeded south to the sea mouth of the river the Franks call Seine.
The Black Rood Page 8
