The Codex Lacrimae

by A. J. Carlisle

  Ríg smiled, ignoring the barbs. “I can’t help you, Master Jeremiah. If you recall, you were the one chasing Pellion through the scriptorium with a broom and throwing quills at him! I had to get him out of range before you took an eye out.” He shrugged. “It’s not my fault that Brother Perdieu happened to be walking down the hall outside at that moment.”

  Jeremiah kept glaring at Ríg and then snapped his head away, changing the subject: “Yes, well, I think that we’ve got enough ground azurite for the blues, but the dried buckthorn berries were completely ruined when Pellion — ” he took a deep breath and smacked his lips together, “I mean, when the accident happened.”

  Ríg clasped a reassuring hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Master Khaldun just returned and he might have some of those supplies with him.” The knight straightened. “Meanwhile, can’t you just keep sketching artwork between the spaces you’ve made for framing the written columns?”

  Jeremiah grimaced. “Not my preference, but of course I’ll make do, I’ll make do.” He chuckled. “You’re patient with an old man’s fits of madness, Boy. I appreciate that. Thankfully, you question everything, Ríg, which is why you keep learning. One couldn’t ask for more from a knight, eh? Not even from Lancelot or Palomides, though even they could have done with asking a few more questions in their quest for the Grail…”

  Jeremiah began to rise from the stool and almost tripped over his own feet. The misstep irritated him. “Confound it all! That’s what I get for throwing out a compliment, a broken neck!”

  He shakily grabbed the table for support, and then snapped at his protégé, all his earlier irritation returning in a flash. “Well, come on, give me a hand here, Ríg, for God’s sake! Do you want me to have an accident, too? Then, you’d be out both Pellion and me!” Jeremiah sat down wearily on the stool, briefly appraising Jacob, before again completely changing his line of thought. “You, Boy! Do you know the Greek term, homooúsios ?”

  “Me?” Jacob was startled, but replied immediately, glad for the chance to show this cranky monk that he, too, had a scholarly side. “Yes, I do, it’s Greek….”

  “I know that, Whelp! Do you know the answer or not? Quit stalling and —”

  “It means that, no matter what the appearance, something’s of ‘the same substance’ as something else,” Jacob interrupted, speaking in a rush and talking over the old man. The boy was a quick study of people, and beyond the judgmental severity in Jeremiah’s eyes, he sensed the old man was as much a teacher as any rabbi Jacob had ever met. “Kind of like when the wizard, Merlin, disguised Uther Pendragon so he could steal into Tintagel castle, seduce Lady Igraine, and sire King Arthur?”

  “Hmph. A more Christian response would’ve focused on the same Essence of the Father and Son being one and the same, but we’ll let that pass,” Jeremiah grumbled as he looked away, but his eyes twinkled through bushy eyebrows. Jacob had, indeed, taken the right tack. “But, oui, let’s use Arthurian history, although a better example would be the shifting nature of the Holy Grail.” He chuckled, as if remembering a private joke. “Oui, oui. Fools…fools like me, eh…well,” Jeremiah paused, an unidentifiable emotion overtaking him. Finally, he gathered himself, and continued in a voice filled with urgency, his eyes shifting to Ríg. “Fools like you and me, Lad – sometimes they forget the essentially supernatural aspects of our faith. They forget that our minds can comprehend both the universal essence of a form and the — what’s the word? — oui, comprehend both essence and the particularity of its physical reality. Things are not always what they seem, Ríg.” Then, Jeremiah inhaled deeply, and his cutting tone returned. “Do you see what I’m getting at? Eh? Let me tell you, Boys – to return to our point: if the Round Table knights who pursued the Holy Grail had recalled that (like so many magical talismans) the Sangréal could take many shapes other than a mere cup, they’d have saved themselves years of fruitless questing and —”

  Ríg held up a hand, “I’m sorry, Jeremiah, we have to stop now. Perhaps we’ll discuss this later.” He smiled ruefully. “If it weren’t for a couple of armies outside, we could spend the rest of the afternoon talking about the substantiae of God, or more Arthurian lore, but we’ve got to go.”

  “Years of searching,” Jeremiah repeated, tears coming into his eyes at the thought of something. He cleared his throat, then: “What were we talking about? Oh, right,” the old man’s voice was confused, and then his voice returned to normal, the momentary madness receding. ““Yes. Quite right. No rush, Ríg. We can talk later. The world moves on, no matter how old fools like me would try to stop the Wheel of Fortune from turning. I can’t get angry at you, son, not if you’re asking the right questions. Can you promise me that you’ll keep asking?”

  Ríg frowned slightly, apparently misunderstanding the direction of the old man’s ramblings, but he nodded and said he would keep asking whenever he could.

  The monk had taken quill in hand again, moving it with an astonishingly steady hand to the inkwell nearby, devoting his entire attention to the parchment page. Jacob tried to say farewell, but the old man seemed to have forgotten that he and Ríg existed.

  “Come, let’s let him get back to work,” Ríg said in a quiet tone. He retrieved the lantern from the stone bench where he’d lain it. “We’ll go through the other part of the library.”

  The lamplight cast fluttering shadows on the walls as Ríg began telling the boy about varying aspects of the collection.

  “Master Khaldun called you his apprentice,” Jacob prompted at one point, trying to get to the bottom of his confusion about the seemingly dual nature of monk-knight beside him.

  “Yes, I am, and I’ll probably be so for many years to come,” Ríg agreed. “I came to the Krak when I was about your age, and he was a somewhat severe taskmaster for the first few years. I wanted to do nothing but pray and read when I got here, but I’ve also had to serve as squire for Brother Perdieu — you know, to become a knight.”

  “Can you do both, though?” Jacob asked.

  “Both what?”

  “Be a monk and a knight?”

  Ríg smiled. “I don’t know. The Templars and Hospitallers can be something of both. I’m squired to Brother Perdieu, but still mean to be ordained as a priest at the end of my training.”

  He looked down at the boy. “I do have to go now, Jacob. You’ll take the stairwell at the end of this hall, make two rights and a left, and you’ll be at the infirmary.”

  “Two rights and a left. Got it.” Jacob looked back at him. “Where will you be?”

  “The opposite way,” Ríg replied, “the end of this hall and making two lefts and a right to Arcadian’s chambers.” He paused, wanting to ask about Jacob’s mother again. He’d asked about the boy’s family in one of the other chambers and received only short answers, and finally silence in response.

  “So, your mother has no husband now, and her family in Jerusalem rejected her for marrying a Christian?”

  When the boy nodded mutely, Ríg continued, “And now her parents are dead, too?” Another nod.

  Ríg tried to get Jacob’s attention, but the boy turned away from him so the older youth just said what was on his mind.

  “Look, Jacob. I know it’s probably not my place to say this, but your mother needs you all the more since her parents and husband have died. You’ve got to understand that the deaths of your grandparents would still make her sad, even if things weren’t going well between them.”

  “She’s sad, but she was just as sad when my father’s parents were alive! They were mean to her, and she was all alone when Aba died.” Jacob’s anger was hot, and he felt tears filling his eyes.

  This talk was making him think of his father. He didn’t want to answer questions about his family from a Christian. The nazaros had taken his father, his Aba, from him at the Battle of Mecina. Whatever anyone thought of that massacre, Jacob’s father had perished for the sake of Servius Aurelius Santini’s own vanity and fanatical religious beliefs.

/>   Why couldn’t such man have been as reasonable as Ríg — if all Crusaders were like this, wouldn’t Mecina have ended differently? Should he rethink his perceptions and allow that his father might still be alive?

  “I’ve been taking care of her, Ríg,” Jacob said, controlling his anger and focusing on his mother, “but then we got kicked out of the Italian Quarter when a lousy Genoese tried to have his way with her…”

  “Ah, I see. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The knight reached forward and tousled the boy’s dark hair. “Go. I’ll come to the infirmary after the knights’ council and you can introduce me to your mother.” He gave Jacob a searching look. “Does that sound all right with you?”

  “Yes, Ríg — thank you. I —”

  Two French-speaking monks came hastening down the corridor from the stairwell, hailing Ríg. One said something, but couldn’t be heard yet because of the length of the hallway.

  Ríg said, “I’ve got to go with these men. One last thing: there’s a member of the eastern mission who’s my best friend. He’s about my age, but kind of silly. Please tell him I said that, and use the exact words: ‘You’re funny.’ His name’s Marcus —

  “Master Khaldun’s son?”

  “Oh. You know that, too, do you?” Ríg said. “You’re a very fast learner, Jacob. Yes, he’s that, too, but the main thing is, if he’s awake, introduce yourself and tell him that Ríg said he must’ve been fighting like a little girl to get hurt so badly by only a couple dozen marauders.”

  Ríg chuckled and prepared to join his brethren, when two other soldiers rushed into the corridor, obviously looking for him. After a brief conversation, Ríg turned and beckoned Jacob to follow.

  “Let’s go, Jacob! I’ll tell Marcus myself — there’s an emergency in the hospital!”

  Chapter 9

  The Flyting at Caesarea

  A few days before Ríg and Jacob dashed to the hospital ward, sixty leagues southwest at the coastal city of Caesarea, Clarinda Trevisan was well into a mid-afternoon supper in the tower keep of the Templar Grand Master, Evremar of Choques.

  A month had passed since the departure from Constantinople, and she now sat at dinner with Pasquale, Alexander, Genevieve, and a roomful of strangers.

  The young Venetian woman looked at the bay’s waters through the portico where she and her fellow diners sat, momentarily bored with the conversation. The topic had unfortunately drifted to local and political matters.

  Such talk threatened to drive Clarinda insane with impatience — she didn’t want to talk about taxation or watch the Grand Master use fancy words to spar with the ousted King Guy and Queen of Jerusalem, she wanted to find her father! She needed action, to return to the sea, to do everything possible to find her father — whether he was somewhere within the ruins of the Roman amphitheater or in the hundreds of houses in the city itself — to do anything active that would get her moving again and perhaps closer to finding her Padre.

  But, no — while grey and white plumed gulls cried nearby, circling overhead as a couple alit on the rail of the wrought-iron balcony, she just sat here and endured the slow agony of this semiformal dinner! Feeling as if she might scream inside — Padre, where are you? I feel you so close! — she focused again on the waters of the harbor and then looked around at the assembled diners.

  So many smiles. Hiding so many different realities and agendas.

  Her eyes drifted westward, and she felt some reassurance at the sight of the two three-masted Venetian round ships from her fleet, anchored a safe distance off the concrete wharf there.

  The deeper hulls of the Maritina and Calypso had been unable to enter into the shallows of the inner harbor entrance as Clarinda was unsure what kind of reception to expect. She’d ordered the crews on both vessels to remain battle-ready. Then she, Pasquale, Alexander, Genevieve, and Kenezki rowed ashore to the city in only a small dinghy. This group was all that had set forth from Constantinople over a month ago. Clarinda had followed Urd’s advice in bringing Alex, but also trusted her own initiative where Genevieve and Kenezki were concerned. Some deeply buried instinct told her that they’d both be needed before her quest was over.

  Following Kenezki’s instructions, they’d maneuvered the dinghy to a jetty at the north of the port, the tiny vessel now jouncing softly against that half-ruined wharf.

  Curiously, they’d been directed by a guardsman to dock close to a shipwrecked Genoese galley that had apparently been consumed by flames.

  The fire had been recent. Smoke still rose lazily into the air from the broken main mast that tilted forward into tangled and charred rigging. To Clarinda’s eyes, the splintered and tortured spars caused the ruined hulk to look like the blackened hand of some undersea monster reaching from the deeps to grasp the jetty.

  As the group walked past the shipwreck, the reek of scorched caulking and pine emanated strongly. The members of her small party all stepped cautiously over the debris that lined the pier, but Clarinda felt a tremor pass through her as she did so.

  How hot must that fire have been to make such a pyre, she wondered, and why do I feel as if Padre was on that vessel?

  Now, some two hours later, Clarinda found herself impatiently sitting cross-legged on the floor of Evremar’s second-story, private porch of bleached sandstone.

  Evremar of Choques was an enormous man, with a shock of orange hair that fell thinly in strands over a sunburned forehead; having no discernible throat, his triple chins folded in a fleshy heap onto his bulky torso, and his entire body seemed to press dangerously in the stomach area against a heavy white tunic and red robes. He lay almost on his side on the floor, propped up by gigantic satin pillows in the Roman style.

  Clarinda thought it strange that the entire assemblage was eating on the floor, but grateful that her mat was on the portico in the sunshine. Here, at least, she’d a commanding view of the town and sea.

  Evremar had explained the unusual arrangement by jokingly referring to the fact that he’d been hosting his two Arabic, bedouin guests — Fatima and Khalil — for three days now, and that the entire company should make them feel welcome by dining in what Evremar called the ‘desert style,’ on the hastily matted and pillowed floor.

  Clarinda sat on the side of the table at the opposite end of Evremar, between Pasquale and one of the bedouin guests, Fatima.

  As the diners had various conversations, she picked absently at the salad in front of her, trying to curb a rising impatience, and waiting for the chance to direct the dinner conversation back to finding her father.

  Would these distractions never end? Worse, when they did, would she like the answers about her father?

  Further complicating all her thoughts were the dream visions that had increased since her meeting with Urd. Clarinda’s developing Sight was intensifying, now limited neither to her sleeping hours nor to the battle near the subterranean pool.

  All the visions seemed to be part of a future that she needed to understand. The sights, sounds, and people who appeared were so different from Clarinda’s daily reality, she didn’t know how to make any sense of what she was seeing.

  The only consistent touchstone was the appearance of Servius Aurelius Santini in each vision, and that reality annoyed Clarinda.

  She’d been angry at the youth since Urd had named him as her mysterious, dark-cloaked champion at the burning underground pool. She was thoroughly vexed by the possibility that that heroic knight (whom she’d become infatuated with over the past couple of months) might in reality be a bloodthirsty warrior and religious zealot. Clarinda couldn’t help but see red whenever Aurelius appeared in her visions!

  How could all of these emotions she felt have their source as just visions? Dreams that might or might not occur? The fact that Clarinda hadn’t seen Urd nor any other of the Norns since Constantinople did nothing to improve her mood.

  Stop it, she interrupted herself. Even if the dreams are real, he’s dead.

  Even if Clarinda could find it in herself to like (l
et alone come to love) the young man in her dreams, she and the rest of the Mediterranean world knew there was no chance of anything occurring outside the realms of dreamtime because Servius Aurelius Santini had died in the fires of Mecina.

  Stymied (and irritated) by a feeling of unrequited love that would’ve been impossible to explain to anyone, a fresh wave of annoyance heated her cheeks at finding her thoughts turning repeatedly to that young, infuriatingly good-looking man whom she’d never met.

  Besides the fact that Aurelius was most likely dead, even while alive in her dreams he’d begun to irritate her for reasons that had nothing to do with his violent nature or religious calling. Clarinda never thought that jealousy would’ve been a possible emotion where the mystery knight was concerned, yet lately because of the appearance of another woman in her dreamscapes she’d felt just that!

  It all started when she’d had a vision shortly after setting sail from Constantinople. In the dream, she’d been in a blizzard, making her way slowly through a wet, bone-chilling snowfall, clad in thick furs. After descending a drift of snow at almost a wading run, Clarinda found herself abruptly in a dark forest whose pine and maple trees provided cover from the storm.

  Blood spatters were everywhere on the ground of the tree-line and it was as if she’d just stumbled into an area of a great battle.

  Then she saw him.

  As her eyes followed the trail of blood, Aurelius’s form appeared through a tangle of juniper branches, speaking urgently to someone hidden from Clarinda’s view. The youth leaned exhaustedly against an ancient oak tree, heaving from some exertion, with his head resting in the crook of his elbow and a bloodied sword in his right hand. Cadavers and skeletons were everywhere in the forest — cast on the ground, thrown into trees, and some shambling away to a greater darkness deeper in the wood. A wolf bounded into view, and passed out of sight behind a gigantic spruce.