A Stolen Tongue

by Sheri Holman

  Will you come when I call, my husband? it asked.

  I started up, expecting to find a woman in bed beside me, Katherine’s hardened face, her blond hair spilling over her shoulder like a spurned Valkyrie’s. But all was dark. Only the echo of her challenge hung in the air.

  Would I come when she called? Was this dream not a dream but a cry for help? No milk flowed from her severed hand tonight, only cold red blood.

  What makes a saint choose a certain friend, brothers? Saint Paulinus kept company with my name saint, Saint Felix, though he knew him not in life; he built a villa by his grave, fashioned poems in his honor, was laid beside him in death. Fifty years ago, my wife Katherine, along with Saints Margaret and Michael, spoke to a young peasant girl from Domremy, encouraging her to put on knight’s armor and liberate France from the English. These friendships are formed across the great gulf of Heaven; they are unlikely, dangerous alliances. We must take as much care in these friendships as we would walking about a dark ship at night.

  First: We must be deliberate in our scaling of the ladder to Heaven, lest we take undue pride in our friendship and tumble painfully to earth.

  Second: Like a lantern on deck at night, we must hide the light of our saint under a bushel, lest we be too tempted to gaze upon her always and slide into the sin of idolatry.

  Third: We should be careful not to wake the galley slaves of the Devil, those being his demons and minions, jealous of our heavenly friendships, who will seek to disrupt them.

  Fourth: We must test the ropes of our friendship by pulling on them, by which I mean through prayer. We must pray often and not fear to ask favors of our saint, for prayer and supplication keep proper tension on the ropes and stave off the pulleys and sails of Heaven’s wrath, that might crash upon our heads.

  Fifth and last: We must ease ourself onto the horn of salvation by remembering that Jesus Christ, not any one of his saints, is the pitch that sweetly covers this ship. How gladly we should sit in Him, brothers, that died to save us all.

  So I have given you a catalog of things to guard against, both while at sea and in forming an attachment to Heaven. I will add only one more caution, and it is this: Beware of talking to strangers, or God may make a liar of you, as he has just done to me. I said we had no women aboard our ship, but I swear on my life I see one.

  What a cruel joke the passing clouds play on Friar Felix, smudging moonlight and salty air, spinning silver night white hot into a hollow vessel. What I see across the deck cannot possibly be female: that flock of loose hair lifted on dark wings, the paucity of skin brushed across a face so thin it would rather wear its bones on the outside. This must be a trick of light, an Ocean mirage—there are no women aboard this ship.

  And yet, without a doubt, she stands against the moon, leached of all but angular blue shadows, wearing about her neck a heavy bag, like those used to feed cattle. Could she be one of the wretched women our sailors pick up on the docks for their sport? We see them limping down the gangplanks just before the ship sets sail, twisting their skirts in their fists where the bloodstains show. Vacant, pliable women, they exist only to contain the flood of sodomy, like soft wax plugs wedged into a cracked urn. No, were she one of those women surely some sailor would be right behind her, pulling her roughly back into his hold, there to store her beside his coiled rope and his bolt of precious contraband silk, the one he carefully wraps first in straw and then in burlap to keep out the mildew and preserve its resale value in Venice.

  Slowly, this impossibility walks to the ship’s ladder.

  And yet, what other sort of woman might she be? Mercifully, care of all the lady pilgrims devolved upon our rival, Augustine Contarini; for once one female pilgrim chose his cheaper antiquated bireme, no other dared explore our ship. Happy were we to read the ships’ lists and see all the gossipy Maries and Giulias and Annes safely stowed on Contarini’s galley. We aboard Lando’s boat have become almost like a floating monastery of harmonious brothers, save for the cursing and brawling and lack of prayer.

  Since I saw for myself no woman’s name darkening our passenger list, I know she cannot have been aboard for long. What did that stranger ask in church today? Have any strange women joined your ship?

  As I puzzle this out, the apparation lifts a leg and lowers itself onto the ladder fixed to the outside of the galley where pilgrims dismount to be rowed ashore. The rowboats have been hauled up and hung from the poop—does she not realize only bottomless Ocean rages below? I know what you would have me do, brothers. As you would command, I drop from the horn and follow her.

  “If you don’t stop me, I’ll know this is what you want!”

  I press my ear against the hand’s-width of wall as her distraught voice, lifted on the waves and wind, sobs against the wood. She must be clinging there, arms wrapped tight around the iron ladder, her dark skirt lathered with foam. I hear a rung groan under her weight and realize she is descending, like a contradictory Venus, into the sea.

  “Everything he said was true, then?” she asks plaintively. “We cannot do it without him?”

  To whom is she speaking?

  “Then you truly have forsaken me.”

  What is happening, brothers? Is there some force upon this ship that impels its passengers overboard? Have we another Schmidhans, but deliberate in her tragedy, a woman come and gone, unknown, unseen by any save a sleepless priest? I cannot allow her to destroy herself on this, a holy journey.

  “Lady! Stop!”

  I scramble down the ladder and stretch out to reach for her. Only the brown feedbag she wore around her neck is visible, borne up like a beaver’s carcass on a bloated river. Its strap twists around her thin throat, cutting off what little air she must have taken underwater with her. I lean over, and a frantic white hand reaches up, smacking at the bag, grabbing for the last rung.

  Without thinking, I hook my foot through the ladder and grasp the hand, tugging until I can snag a fistful of cold flotsam hair. Her wild feet swing around, drum against the ship’s side searching for the ladder on which to anchor themselves. Only the bag still seeks the Ocean. Heavy and waterlogged, it snaps her head back, catching at her chin in its anxiety to rejoin the sea. I am pushing it up and over her head, freeing her of this baleful sack, when she realizes what I’m about.

  “No!”

  The apparition twists in my arms, clutching at the bag, tugging it back onto her shoulder. She pulls so hard I nearly go overboard with her but manage to right us both and heave her over my head up the ladder. When I follow, I find her prone on deck, coughing salt water across the floorboards, clutching the bag protectively.

  “Madame,” I ask unsteadily, “did you fall in?”

  “You do!” she cries, smothering the briny sack with passionate kisses. “You do still love me!”

  Up close, she is all hollows and bone, far thinner than any self-respecting German woman would allow herself to become. Her dark eyes linger on the bag, as if she both fears and expects it will rise up and fling itself back overboard. Slowly, I reach out to take it.

  “Shall I carry this back to your room for you, Madame?”

  She is aware of me, I think, for the first time.

  “You are her agent.”

  She speaks perfect Latin but utter nonsense. I am about to lift the bag when suddenly she snatches it away.

  “We owe you our lives,” she says solemnly, turning to leave. “We won’t forget it.”

  I watch mystified, brothers, as she trails the oozing sack behind her, stumbling wet moonlight across the galley. I watch her climb the stairs to the ladies’ cabin, where, since we had no ladies on board, Captain Lando has stored his supplies and treasure. Above her door, a single lamp burns in the pilot’s castle, illuminating his grid maps and compass, throwing light across the worried eyes of the pilot’s companion, our ship’s soothsayer. This soothsayer is a man so learned in his art he can read signs in the color of the waves or the flocking of fish together, in the glittering of ropes and cables
at night, and the flashing of oars when they dip into the sea. What does he make of the madwoman below him, looking back over her shoulder at the hungry water? Madness comes from mene, meaning moon. Femina comes through the Greek fos, meaning burning force, because of the intensity of women’s desire. Even I, with no gift of prophecy, know that madness coupled with desire, glimpsed in moonlight, can only forbode disaster.

  Let that suffice about what a pilgrim should be on his guard against while journeying at sea.

  How Pilgrims Pass the Time on Board Ship

  Unless a man knows how to redeem his time on shipboard, brothers, he will find the passing of hours very tedious. Witness: All around me, a hundred pilgrims strive to outdo one another in indolence—some nap with hats over their eyes; some, like Lord Tucher, pick splinters from the benches. Near the ship’s kitchen, an especially dull pilgrim torments our poor livestock, running in circles around their corral, rapping it with his knuckles. Normally, I busy myself with prayer or observation or the making of this little book of travel; today, however, I find myself staring fixedly at the door to the ladies’ cabin.

  I’ve spent a night and a morning fashioning her a history from every account of madness I’ve read or heard whispered in confession. Most definitely, she is the woman sought by the stranger at the Franciscan monastery. She is his fiancée or, more likely, his new bride, gone mad upon the birth of their first child. Now she hears voices, she tortures cats, she hides in church lofts swearing she can’t bear the smell of human flesh. I’ve frizzed her hair, ripped her clothes, and foamed the spittle around her lips, configuring the perfect madwoman: one part hysterical nun, one part seductress, her nails crusted with ripped nipple flesh from her frenzy of self-loathing.

  I sketch this madwoman not in my normal, relaxed hand, for while I sat carefree among men I knew, the pen given me by dear Abbot Fuchs, that instrument which allowed me to hold a last bit of earthly Swabia between my fingers and, if nothing else, feel orthographically still tied to you, brothers, was taken.

  Lord Tucher, when I loudly made public this ill usage, magnanimously bestowed upon me his favorite quill pen, along with a knife to sharpen the nib and a stoppered pot of costly murex ink. The letters that flow off this instrument are far thinner than my normal hand; are, involuntarily, reedy and excitable, like my patron’s voice. It is disconcerting to have Lord Tucher insinuate himself into my private correspondence. I feel he’s eavesdropping.

  “Felix, did you try to wake me last night?” John asks, bringing me back to myself. He tilts back his head and opens wide his mouth for Conrad, our barber, the fifth and last member of our party.

  “No.”

  Conrad scours his iron pincers with sea salt and wets the tip of his cloak with diluted camphor. Gently, he touches it to John’s rotted molar.

  “Yes, you did, Friar. I heard you get up.” Constantine, my neighbor belowdeck, has assumed that geography beneath translates to friendships above and, when he hasn’t been seasick, has followed me around all morning.

  “Perhaps I did. I was hot.”

  “It’s hot today, Friar,” Ursus whines over the Latin text I’ve assigned him. “I can’t concentrate.”

  I tap his book with my foreign pen and set him to work on the verb “to journey.”

  “Peregrino, peregrinas, peregrinat.”

  “You know, Ursus,” I say, “Latin is the language closest to God. It’s the language of the Church and of all educated men.”

  “Peregrinamus, pereginatis, peregrinant.”

  “Demons are also capable of learning Latin.” I keep my eyes on his book when they want to stray to her door. “There’s the story of the erudite demon who possessed an ignorant peasant. The parish priest refused to admit the demon was real unless he spoke the Latin he claimed, but the peasant’s tongue couldn’t form the words!”

  Ursus squeals in delight.

  “I know of a demon,” he starts, “that possessed a girl, and when he tried to read the ‘Our Father’ he made all the same mistakes she usually made!”

  “I know of a priest who lost his knowledge of Latin when he attempted suicide.” The voice is familiar, though petal thin without the sea beneath it. “It ran out with his blood.”

  Conrad pops John’s tooth from the socket and holds it up for us to admire. My madwoman stands beside our barber, dry and smiling, simply dressed with her hair tucked into a white cap; not a hint of the half-drowned creature I saved last night. Slowly, her eyes travel the deck, studying with a sort of fascinated awe the bald heads, the unkempt beards, the thick, corded necks that turn to watch her. Her smile falters. She realizes she is the only woman.

  “I know another story of a priest who could only count in pairs. He walked through his pantry like this: ‘Here is a ham and its companion. Here is another ham and its companion—’”

  “Ursus,” I say, “be quiet.”

  “Arsinoë!” The Greek merchant jumps up. “Darling, did you sleep well? Were you comfortable?”

  “Yes, thank you, Constantine.” She bows to the merchant.

  “And will you let me go to the kitchen and have the cook prepare you some lunch?”

  “No, thank you, I’m not hungry.”

  “Please, then. Let me introduce you to our new friends. Friar Felix Fabri of the Preaching Brothers, the Lords Tucher, Archdeacon John Lazinus with his tooth, and—”

  Our barber packs the extracted molar’s socket with a piece of clean cloth and smiles shyly at the woman.

  “Conrad Buchler,” John gurgles around his packing. “He speaks only German.”

  “Conrad.” The merchant nods. “Please meet the lady Arsinoë. My wife.”

  His wife? My elaborate construction felled like the walls of Jericho by the simple word wife? Can it be that she is no runaway madwoman after all but nothing more exotic than the depressed housewife of a Greek vintner?

  “Friar Felix and I have already met.” She smiles at me.

  “When was that?” The merchant asks obligingly.

  “Last night when I tried to drown myself. The friar saved my life.”

  In stunned silence, the entire party turns to me. What strange trick is this, brothers, to air so boldly her own mortal sins?

  “It was nothing, Madame,” I say, my cheeks burning beneath my beard. “You slipped and I helped you back up the ladder.”

  “No, Friar.” She holds up her hand. “I was despairing and angry and about to destroy myself. She sent you to stop me.”

  “Darling, remember,” Constantine blurts. “We agreed not to discuss her.”

  I have seen such simplicity in halfwits and the very young, brothers, but never in a woman learned in the ways of Latin and smiling so very proudly. She takes a seat beside her husband, calmly speaking of last night as if I’d pulled her stuck shoe from the mud. Perhaps this disconcerting honesty is but another facet of her madness.

  “Why would you try to kill yourself, Lady?” asks Ursus.

  “Ursus!” Lord Tucher gasps.

  The merchant’s wife opens her mouth to answer, but Constantine nervously babbles over her.

  “It’s a myth, you know, that Greeks love the sea. We hate the sea. Agamemnon and his men hated it; Jason and his Argonauts hated it; Arsinoë and I hate it, too.”

  You know I don’t like to jump to conclusions, brothers, but something seems suspicious about these two. The merchant Constantine is determined not to let his wife speak, and she can barely contain herself, even on the most inappropriate subjects. What could she possibly reveal that has him figeting on his bench, forcing his cap strings once more into his mouth? We sit in awkward silence.

  “We’ve outrun Contarini, at least,” Lord Tucher says at last. He stands and paces between our benches, leaning, ultimately, where she stood last night, his back against the ship’s ladder.

  “Who is Contarini?” asks the merchant, relieved to change the subject.

  “Captain of the other ship and bitter rival to our captain,” I answer. “If they
beat us to Palestine, they will bribe the Saracens to lock us out, just in sight of Jerusalem but not allowed to enter until they leave.”

  For the first time today, the merchant’s wife’s eyes lose their witless shine. She turns anxiously to her husband.

  “There’s another ship?” he asks. “Going the same place?”

  “And if they beat us,” Ursus moans, “I will have to wait weeks for my knighthood!”

  “It’s no matter,” the merchant says tightly, patting his wife’s knee. “We’ve prepared for that.”

  “Oh, no,” I say. I do not think he understands the loss involved. “If we are locked out, not only do Contarini’s pilgrims get to fatten themselves on indulgences while we starve like beggars at the gate, but we might miss the caravans to Sinai. There are but few months that allow a safe passage across the desert.”

  “Constantine?” his wife cries.

  “I told you we should have gone overland.” He pulls abruptly away from her. “You’ve forced me into a dead man’s spot, and we still might not reach Sinai in time.”

  “In time for what?” I ask. What awaits this queer couple in Sinai?

  “And what would have become of me if this friar hadn’t saved you?” Constantine shouts.

  “In time for what?” I repeat.

  “You know we had to come by sea.” The merchant’s wife speaks calmly and deliberately. “It was the only way.”

  Without another word, she turns and strides back to the ladies’ cabin. We watch the delicate spider veins flash along the back of her emaciated calves as she gathers up her skirt to scurry up the ladder. The wretched merchant stares forlornly into his lap.