A Stolen Tongue

by Sheri Holman

  “Felix, stop!” John orders. “She is obviously very ill.”

  With a sob, the Tongue throws herself over the merchant’s sweating body. “Constantine, wake up!” she cries. “I need you!”

  “Madame!” I pull her up, but John snatches her away.

  “Come along, my lady.” He encircles her protectively with his arm. “You have been through a terrible ordeal. Let’s go upstairs and get Conrad to look at your wounds.”

  The Archdeacon throws me a disgusted look as he leads Arsinoë away. Constantine moans in his delirium and stretches out his withered hand.

  At least you have a hand with which to beg, I think to myself. What have you done with my wife’s?

  Calm

  Earlier, I mentioned several perils of the sea that plague pilgrims and terrorize them on their voyage, and yet there is one danger of which the inexperienced would never think; nor is it to be found in books. When the winds are silent and the sea is dumb, a calm comes over the Ocean that is more distressing to pilgrims than anything other than actual shipwreck. I have seen men suffer during storms, vomit, and grow weak, but many more have I seen sicken and die during a calm at sea.

  When no winds blow and the ship stays fixed in its place, everything on board begins to rot. The drinking water stinks; salted meat spawns maggots, flies, worms, and lice. Men on board grow lazy and sleepy from the unrelenting heat or, worse, indulge in hatred, envy, melancholy, and spleen. On the day after Arsinoë’s return, our ship suffers from such a calm. The bad wind drops and is replaced, more maddeningly, by no wind at all. Those who diced the day before, and lost, harbor murder in their hearts against their compatriots who diced and won. Abovedeck there is rage and torpor; below, stagnation and death.

  Like a Christian Hermes, I conduct souls from one level to the next.

  Down into the underworld, I lead the merchant’s wife. John finally persuaded her late the night before to take some rest and let us watch over her husband. Just after dawn, I climb the steps to the ladies’ cabin, expecting to find Arsinoë deeply asleep next to the Cypriot lady-in-waiting. Instead, I surprise her kneeling before the carnelian trunk, mouthing a prayer in the gathering light. When she sees me, she rises and silently follows me down to where her not-husband lies dying.

  Up into the light of day I lead John, when the merchant’s wife asks for solitude in which to bid her husband good-bye. Neither of us has slept, and the glaring sun upstairs induces in us a cranky, blinking drowsiness. To stay awake, we search each other for lice, wiping the ones we pop between our fingernails on the rigging where we sit. I stare out across the water, listening to the soft plash of ripples against the boat, letting John’s fingers root through my hair. The vermin scuttle before his nails, tickling my scalp, dropping into the collar of my tunic, and swimming down my sweaty back. The Perfidious Tucher sits some feet away from us, pounding his infested shirt between two rocks he has collected for this purpose. He has endured much under-the-breath teasing for his refusal to touch the bugs, and now his exposed back is turning a deep pink in the morning sun. I run my fingers through my beard, and they come away covered in eggs.

  To stay awake, we talk of Jerusalem.

  In Jerusalem there will be wholesome foods to eat like new-killed mutton and eggs with cheese. Live water will bubble up from the earth to slake our thirsts, and the breezes that rustle across the Mount of Olives will dry the sweat from our swollen faces. I recite for John whole passages of Saint Jerome’s letters to Paula and Eustochium, describing his life in exile. The Holy Land was perfect, Jerome has written, except that he carried his forced separation from them like a pebble in his shoe. John and I think on Jerome with selfish envy. We are a mere two days from Jerusalem, and yet it feels like God has stretched out His arm and set His palm on our ship, holding us in place like a father stays an impatient child.

  John comes up with the game of putting saints to spices when, after an hour, we’ve grown too heartsick to talk on about Jerusalem. After all, he says, Saint Bernard wrote that saints’ lives added spice to mankind’s otherwise bland diet of mortality. If, as John suggests, we assign the precious saffron to the Virgin Mary and the essential salt to Her Son, where on the palate do the legions of the blessed reside?

  Since John is the inventor, he begins. Oregano? he asks. To which saint do we assign oregano?

  I think for a moment. Saint Anthony of the Desert, I reply, reminding him of the thorny herb bushes that perfume the wilderness. During one of the dry storms over the desert, lightning might have struck a shrub, reducing it to a cloud of thick aromatic smoke. Asleep in his cell, the old ascetic might have dreamed of roasting shanks of meat, dripping juice thick with flecks of the oregano bush. He might have awaked suddenly in that sharp, smoky night and understood the old wisdom: It is far easier to tame one’s manhood than one’s stomach.

  Hot pepper, I demand of John, raising the stakes. I only once tasted this spice, and my tongue throbbed for days after. John laughs. That’s easy. Saint Dominic, the founder of your order. During her pregnancy, didn’t his mother dream of a dog with a torch in his mouth?

  Rosemary? Immediately, I think of Saint Agnes, whose sign is the lamb. One of my earliest memories, before I entered the novitiate, was of my aunt’s mutton stew, deliciously oiled with fat and rosemary.

  Mustard? I see the dusty road to Damascus and the yellow cloud that rose when Paul fell to his knees in front of Christ.

  Clove? John imagines the sharp black teeth of the dragon that swallowed Saint Margaret.

  On and on we name—basil, coriander, sesame—and as we play I come to understand why Bernard chose this metaphor. Like barrels of incorruptible spice, all the early saints traveled from the East to preserve the West. Whether, like Paul, they came in person or, like the blessed Katherine, as a cult and legend only, all the ancient saints at some point boarded a ship and sailed to us. I’ve often wondered how a princess martyred in Alexandria and translated to fiery Sinai could find herself alive in the hearts of forest-dwelling inland Europeans. The returning ships of our ancestors must have brought her legends wrapped up with their pepper and cardamom, heedless of the peasants running along the docks, gathering their dropped stories like precious peppercorns that escaped their packaging. Once taken to market, a merchant might have related the color of the saint’s hair to an Italian housewife buying cinnamon for her vats of prunes. Another might have handed over her height with a cone of green cumin. In this way, Saint Katherine was transported and reconstructed in Europe, given back her legs, and handed off the boat. Her story was told and retold in every language where ships sail, and there again she is like a spice, for thyme tastes the same on the tongue of a German as it does on an Italian, as on a Swede.

  When he grows weary of his own game, John suggests we check on the merchant’s wife. I take a cupful of sludgy water and follow him downstairs. It is cooler below, but moist, as though a day and night’s worth of exhalations have snagged along the floorboards. As for me, I can hardly breathe for the wormy smell of the liquid I carry, and I know if the merchant is not yet dead, one sip will surely kill him. I needn’t have worried. A single glance is enough to see he is well on his way to where no amount of water can slake his thirst.

  During the night, after we sent his wife upstairs, the merchant began to convulse. His bowels let go just before dawn, and while I fetched Arsinoë, John had managed to soak up what he could of the watery mess. We assume that’s why the merchant is now lying naked on his cowhair tick, toes to the sky, privates draped with a triangle of sheet. Arsinoë must have tried to clean him.

  I stare down at his sunken chest and watch a single flea flip from nipple to groin. For a second it burrows through a gray field of hair; then, with a twist, it sails through the air in a perfect arc. On the fourth jump, it disappears for good under the sheet.

  Both John and I know it is time to administer last rites, yet neither of us moves to do it. We are both keenly aware of the Church’s stance on the Eastern heresy,
and without a recantation we understand Constantine will have to die unshriven. While silent glances pass between John and me, Arsinoë’s great brown eyes remain fixed on the soiled clothes in her lap, the garments she has stripped from her husband. Perhaps if she would turn them on John, he would put aside his scruples and ask her if perhaps she thinks Constantine might have embraced the Latin faith in his heart. If she thinks, Perhaps, yes, why not? John might trace a dry cross over her husband’s forehead and absolve him. But his wife does not raise her eyes to find John’s expectantly fixed on hers. She merely examines her husband’s clothing, turning it over and over in her lap, as though searching for holes.

  Since I can do nothing for him as a Christian, I once more lace my winged sandals and gently lower my caduceus to Constantine’s trembling eyelids. For all his delusions, he was a kindly man. It is only fitting he should have an arm to lean on as he totters off to Hell.

  ii

  Storage

  Our wretched sheep stand in a circle with their worn velvet noses just touching. When I approach, the leader shuffles away and waits for the flock to fitfully readjust itself. Across from the sheep, with their jointed legs folded under them, the remaining assembled goats blink up at me suspiciously, watching me steal what remains of their dirty straw. These parched animals rise and stiffly follow behind where I’ve gathered up their grass, to lick the moisture from the floorboards with their long pink tongues.

  I join Conrad downstairs, where he has already laid out the merchant; he wipes the dead man with a preserving mixture of myrrh and myrtle juice, slicking the hair along Constantine’s shins, cupping a puckered foot. The pilgrims will go up to dinner soon, and that’s when we’ll finish him. Should the sailors discover us, they would not suffer his corpse to remain on board; but I gave Constantine my word, and on Katherine’s life I won’t let the fishes borrow him.

  I place the cloakful of straw beside our silent barber, still as much a mystery to me as the first time we met. The Tuchers and I were hurrying through the small German/Italian border village of Botzen, afraid for our lives. On one side, Botzen is crushed against high mountains; on the other, miles of pestilent marshes bleed into its borders. Fever bred in the swamps gets trapped by the mountains; consequently, so many of Botzen’s inhabitants suffer feverish symptoms that it is no longer counted a disease among them. When one friend sees another pale and shaking and asks after his health, he’s answered, “Oh, thank God I’m not ill, my friend, it’s only the fever that alters my looks.”

  Conrad stoppers his vial of myrrh and neatly nestles it in the trunk among the tools of his trade: razors, lancets, strops, antidotes, cups, and bristling brushes. He was carrying this trunk on his back when we passed him on the road out of Botzen, our noses covered against the contagion. When we offered him a ride, we learned it also housed what few possessions had not been burned belonging to his wife and small son, carried off earlier that week by the Fever that was not a Fever.

  “Where did they go?” I ask, realizing John and Arsinoë are missing.

  “They left as soon as I got here.”

  I’m relieved, actually. John would vehemently oppose this plan.

  “You’ll get the salt and wine?” I ask.

  Conrad nods. “And a lantern.”

  I make a quick search under the sheets for Constantine’s robe, hoping at least to cover him for the move. When I can find it nowhere, I wrap the soiled sheet under his armpits and toga him like a Roman statesman. Conrad blocks the hatch from view, while I unceremoniously stuff our senator into the shallow hold belowdeck.

  Now to picture this hold, brothers, you must understand a galley is not flat-bottomed like other ships but tapers at an angle so steep that it cannot stand upright on land. Sand fills the belly of the ship almost to the floorboards of the pilgrims above, and we bury in this sea-cold ballast all our perishable goods. Once Conrad lowers the hatch, I am no longer able to stand but must crawl backward like a crab dragging a heavy log of driftwood. I must pull Constantine well beyond where any pilgrim might rummage for a midnight snack.

  Only when I’ve reached the darkest corner of the ship, a place where no light penetrates through the floorboard cracks, where no noise reaches me, do I stop. Constantine’s heels have dredged up someone’s chilled bottle of half-drunk wine, and I treat myself to the rest of it. How silent and still it is beneath the pilgrims’ feet. The pitching is less than on deck because the angle here is less acute, but the calm is eerier, a sort of embryonic rocking, like being nailed in a coffin when the rains flood your graveyard.

  Alone in the dark, with this expired merchant between my knees, I confess, brothers, my mind misgives a bit. I know you would not have me perpetuate this fraud, and I do not want to disappoint you; but you know not the ignorance of sailors. I’ve provided numerous examples of their superstitions, but by far the most disturbing, to me and my promise, is their insufferance of anything ill-omened on board their ship. While at Venice, our party was shown an animal called the Elephant, a huge and terrible creature with a nose that hung to the ground and two ferocious teeth the length of a man’s arm on either side, which nonetheless would perform wondrous tricks at a simple sign from its master. This master sadly told us he had owned an Elephant prior to this one, had taken it to Germany where he made much money, and then set sail with it to Britain, when a violent storm blew up at sea. The sailors, ever at the mercy of their superstitions, cast that poor gentle beast overboard, and so it perished. Hark, then: If sailors could be so hard-hearted with a creature as rare as the noble Elephant, think not that they would hesitate to rid themselves of a creature so common as a dead merchant?

  But how shall the sailors be deceived, you ask? Through the fearsome power of words, brothers. With words alone, I, Friar Felix Fabri, can keep this man alive until we dock—always downstairs or having just gone above—until, once arrived at land, with more words I can slay him. I will need to whip the name of Constantine around the ship like a wandering Jew, never allowed to rest, always somewhere else, in order to keep my promise made on Katherine’s life. I will have to give him sleepless nights and send him up on deck, when it’s time for pilgrims to come to bed; I will have to give him listless afternoons belowdeck, deny him appetite, when pilgrims are above. I will tell the pilgrims he has not died, and thus he shall live, brothers. Wonder not at this strange juxtaposition of death and language, for Saint Augustine tells us words are like men’s mortality: “Our speech is accomplished by signs emitting a sound; but our speech would not be whole unless one word pass away when it has sounded its parts, so that another might succeed it.” Thus, as speech is predicated on dying, so sometimes dying is keyed to speech. Gently, I brush the sand off the merchant’s chilled body, grasp his head, and shake it, too, free of sand. Say good-bye to your shell, Constantine Kallistos, merchant of Crete; you have become no more than a breath in my mouth.

  But enough. There is much to be done, and Conrad is waiting. I follow my own trough back through the sand to the hatch we used. Waiting for me are two bags of rock salt, two skins of water, four bottles of lesser wine, the cloak of hay, and Conrad’s trunk. But there is no sign of Conrad. Cautiously, I lift the hatch to see if I spy him.

  “There you are, Friar!” Ursus claps his hand on my shoulder. “You’re missing dinner.”

  “I was ...” What could I have possibly been doing beneath the floorboards, covered in sand? “I was saying my prayers.”

  “Well, come on.” Ursus rolls his eyes. “The merchant’s wife is telling her story. Where is the merchant?”

  “In the latrine.” I practice on my charge, who seems not to doubt my story.

  I am quickly hauled on deck to the long dinner benches set up near the animal pen. Already seated, Conrad looks up apologetically. Arsinoë sits uncomfortably beside him, grilled by my patron.

  “When he grabbed you, did you cry out?”

  “No ... I was too startled. Anyway, his hand covered my mouth.”

  “Were his fin
gernails painted? I’ve read they paint their fingernails.”

  “I couldn’t see, but, yes, maybe they were painted.”

  “I’ll bet he called on the name of Allah when he leapt.”

  “No, I think he was silent. Though later perhaps he called on Allah.”

  I take my place at the crowded table next to Feckless Tucher, who pays me no mind, intent as he is on the merchant’s wife. She wears the exhausted air of a guest who has arrived late at night but is kept up talking by an oblivious host. John sits to her left, carving a picture in the table with his knife. When I finally catch his eye, his expression is unreadable.

  “Were there other women?” Ursus asks, leaning in like his father.

  This seems to disturb Arsinoë. I see her knuckles whiten around her cup and she rises a little on her elbows.

  “I was kept with the other prisoners. Women from all over the world: blond women, dark flaky-skinned women, blind women, and armless women. Only one thing did they have in common. They were completely naked except for a single golden manacle worn around their ankle, and they sprawled like prostitutes on mounds of embroidered pillows.”

  “Pardon me, my lady.” Ursus giggles. “But do the Saracen women have ... hair?”

  Arsinoë drops her eyes, and Lord Tucher smacks his son across the ear.

  John stares off to his right, away from the woman, toward the sea. I see his chest rise and fall in a sigh.

  “They had volumes of hair, which they draped artfully.” She pretends to misunderstand. “But I can’t talk about it anymore. I’m sorry.”

  While the other diners contemplate this scene, populating their own Turkish cabins with dark bodies on embroidered pillows, I use the opportunity to put together a plate for myself. The ship’s cook only slaughters animals that appear ready to die anyway, so the meat is, as usual, gamey and discolored. The boat is rocking so, it takes three tries before I can spear a piece of dead goat and add to it some grainy suet. A meager meal to be sure, but I am famished.