by Sheri Holman
“Ursus, child”—I smile—“Priuli is a woman, hard to mistake for a young man like yourself.”
“But it looked like him, Friar. In the dark, it looked like the man who sold me the rubies.”
Did Ursus see someone bend over La Priuli? Did he wake up and see Arsinoë’s robed figure light the fire?
“I thought you were asleep, son,” I say. “I thought the smoke woke you up.”
Ursus shakes his head miserably. “I was too scared to do anything. I thought he wanted me.” Ursus turns away, and I see his hand go to his running nose. “Will they still let me be a knight of the Holy Sepulchre?” he asks. “Even though I let a lady die in my place?”
My poor Ursus, happily dreaming of hairless Turkish women in chains, suddenly strangled awake by a genie of smoke and melting flesh. I cannot let him believe La Priuli died for him.
“Ursus, look at me.” I lift his hanging head and smile into his eyes. “That man, if it was that man, was not after you. I’m afraid you bought nothing more from him than a few worthless chips of glass.”
I place a ruby between my teeth like a cherry pit and bite down hard. When it cracks in two, I cough it up and hold it out to him. I watch the boy’s face shift from fear to relief to righteous indignation.
“Faa-ther!”
Lord Tucher strides across the cave at the sound of his son’s cry. He takes one look at me and snatches Ursus away.
“We are angry with Friar Felix,” my patron tells his son sternly. His eyes are red from crying. “Come away.”
“I’m very sorry for having wandered off, Lord Tucher,” I say, as contritely as possible. “It was wrong of me.”
“Thank God we learned Saint Katherine’s Monastery burned to the ground. I can see you just ‘wandering off’ and leaving Ursus and me to die in the desert.”
“I was cheated, Father,” Ursus cries.
“We were both cheated, son. Putting our faith in such an irresponsible priest.”
“That’s not fair, Lord Tucher, I got locked out.”
“I wanted my friar to bury Lady Emelia Priuli. I wanted her poor body put into the earth by a friend. Where were you, Felix?” my patron yells, his voice breaking painfully. “Where were you?”
“Gentlemen.”
Like the snapping of a holy wafer in an echoing church, this dry, crisp word stills us. The desert speaks in our archway, in the guise of an ancient Saracen man.
“I know you have suffered a loss. I am here to see it redressed.”
He does not yell or even speak loudly, yet his words reach every teeming, wet crevice of the cave. This venerable Saracen must be near to eighty years old, upright in posture, trim of beard, cleanly dressed in white robes with a crisp white turban. Someone has finally come to us.
“My name is Elphahallo,” says he. “I am the Calinus, interpreter to the pilgrims. From this hour forth, you shall entrust your physical bodies to my keeping so that you may concentrate solely on your spiritual selves. I understand one among you has gone early to God. Who saw her attacker?”
If the patriarch Moses appeared in our archway, I don’t believe he could have been more commanding. The Saracen rakes the cave with abrasive eyes, rooting up the truth, commanding our consciences. With a red face and an aching throat, I open my mouth to confess, to say, Yes, it is my fault. I deserted my patron in his hour of need. I committed the worst sin a confessor could commit. I left his son to carry the guilt of this woman’s death; I abandoned my dearest friend to an unholy obsession; worst of all, none of it helped. She still got away. Had I only been here, I could have watched her. I could have saved Priuli’s life.
“I did it!” A Spanish pilgrim on the far side of the cave flings himself to the floor. “I killed my mother as sure as if I’d burnt her alive!”
His sobs echo through the cave; we watch horrified as he forces mouthfuls of grassy feculence into his mouth, rubs it through his hair, into his eyes.
“I needed the money. She never understood how desperate it was. Mother, why else would I have married a Jew?”
The pilgrims part silently to allow Elphahallo into the cave. He holds his white robes scrupulously above his ankles and picks his way to the shrieking man.
“Christ, I’ve come to make peace with you! You took my mother, you left me with that stinking convert Jew wife and her devil father. Take me back! I need you!”
“You married a Jew?” someone beside him marvels.
“Stand up, my son,” says Elphahallo, careful not to let his wide sleeves trail across the man’s shit-smeared face. “You must not speak that way of your wife.”
The Saracen addresses him in hushed tones for what feels like an hour, but try as I may I can make out none of it. He shows the pilgrim how to wipe his hands and mouth on his robe, demonstrating the procedure on his own pure white caftan. Soon after, the guilt-stricken pilgrim quiets and Elphahallo addresses us once more.
“Each man must make his personal peace with God, and I know many of you have journeyed to this place to do so. It is not my concern what baggage you brought with you from your separate homes, unless in it you packed ill will against your brother. My sworn duty as Calinus is to see that you stay safe while in my care, so I ask again: Who marked that woman’s murderer?”
“Excuse me, sir.” To my surprise, Ursus speaks up. “I might have seen something.”
“What’s that, child?”
Across the cave, John catches my eye, asks the question. Did he see? Will he betray her?
“Yesterday I bought what I thought were precious gems from a despicable unclean Saracen—no offense, sir—only to discover this morning that they were glass. Is it possible that same lying Saracen came back in the night to set me on fire so that I wouldn’t tell and, in the darkness, killed the person beside me by mistake?”
“It’s quite a theory, young man.”
Lord Tucher boxes his son’s ear, but Ursus will not be stilled.
“I only—” Ursus raises his voice over the laughter of his fellow pilgrims, straining his neck to be heard—“I only mention it—please—I only mention it because I thought I heard the lady scream while she was burning, ‘It wasn’t me!’ I thought she screamed, ‘It wasn’t me!’”
“I understand you discovered her, son, and I know that has been very hard on you,” Elphahallo says at last. “I’ll keep what you said in mind.”
“What about that man? He took most of my money. Don’t you want to know what he looks like, what he said?” Ursus demands.
“I know who he is.”
“You know? And you let him prey on innocent pilgrims?”
“You bought gems off a desperate man for a fraction of what you would have paid back home, did you not? Who exactly, son, was preying on whom?” Elphahallo bows to us and turns to leave.
“I want my money!”
Ursus’s scream shakes the cave, and that’s all it takes.
“Wait! When are we leaving?”
“Our captain! Let us see our captain!”
“Why are we being held prisoner in this stinking shit hole? Why aren’t we in Jerusalem?”
“I want my—”
“Will we have a guard? You’re in league with them, aren’t you.”
“—money!”
Elphahallo answers no one but waits like a patient camel against a raging sandstorm. When at last he is certain to be heard, he touches his white turban respectfully.
“The other pilgrim ship is debarking at dawn. I’ll ask you to remain inside until we’ve registered them and spoken with your captains about this tragedy.”
And with a duck under the archway, he is gone.
Oh, the tedious hours.
Conrad found a dead tortoise yesterday, and in between the times we are lined up, counted, and checked off by the Saracens he sits by our lantern, hollowing the beast out with his knife. The meat he sets aside for stew; the muscle he shears as he did Constantine’s intestine in the belly of the ship. I watch him bore two holes at ea
ch end of the shell, thread the sinew through, and tie it off at the bottom. He plucks the string. A lyre.
Disaffected Ursus consoles himself by stacking shells he collected on the beach one on top of the other. Clams and angel wings, scallops and oysters, he builds his little Tower of Shellfish Babel, then blasts it with his fist, sending it clattering across the cavern floor. Lord Tucher watches his son sorrowfully, while John stares intently into space. I want to see if Ser Niccolo has arrived, but the guard will not allow anyone outside, not even to pass water. There is nothing to do but wait. As we were born to wait.
When Christ walked the earth, so near and yet so far from this port of Joppa, He was wont sometimes to take his ease in the comfortable home of the sisters Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Martha. Now, once when blessed Saint Martha was running herself ragged—going to market, chopping sweetmeats, setting places at table, spicing wine, ordering the servants about, tidying her hair, stirring the soup, sweeping the floor, and seeing to all else that must be done in honor of such an important guest as our Lord—she chanced to see her sister, Mary, sitting at His feet, listening calmly to His Word. Martha wiped the sweat from her brow, straightened her apron, and stepped out of the kitchen. “Mary,” asked she, “can you be comfortable sitting while your sister goes crazy making all things happen?”
“Martha,” said our Gentle Lord, touching the Magdalene’s head, “Mary has chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.” By which he meant, Mary has chosen a life of contemplation over a life of action. When I have departed this world, she will have heard me, while you will have been bustling.
As you know, brothers, those of us in religious orders have chosen Mary’s part. We have retired from the world to meditate upon Christ and devote our lives to prayer. But woe unto me! At the heart of my Mary life I am still a Martha! Try as I may, this enforced inactivity is more grievous to me than any amount of effort could possibly be.
I rise and tap our Saracen guard on the shoulder. Will he not, please, let me go outside? Again he shakes his head, gestures for me to return and sit with the other pilgrims. I sneak a quick peek over his shoulder and see Contarini’s rowboat unloading six pilgrims onto the beach. They will soon have their first look at Saint Peter’s Cellars, recapitulate our labors of yesterday, and scrape their own Mounts of Venus to the cave’s center.
“Contarini is here?” John looks over my shoulder. He has not spoken since we left Emelia Priuli’s grave, and his voice sounds small.
“Yes,” I answer.
Had that wretched Mameluke not left me behind on Contarini’s ship, none of this would have happened. We would be on our way to Jerusalem by now. My friend John looks ten years older than when we began our pilgrimage, as haggard as Constantine before he died. Does the Tongue have this effect on all men?
“I am glad she got away before they docked,” he says.
Until recently, brothers, I had mistaken John Lazinus for a man of good sense. He had been nearly destroyed by the tragedy that befell his convent, that I knew, but his faith was intact; he was on pilgrimage to make peace with his past. Something must have changed the evening he spent alone with the Tongue in the ladies’ cabin; while Conrad and I worked to preserve Constantine, Arsinoë was busy replacing one protector with another. John’s heart was secured by the time we put the last stitch in the merchant’s chest. By Christ, brothers, if I cannot get outside to warn the translator, I can, at least, get to the bottom of John’s fixation. Without speaking, I lead the Archdeacon away from the cellar’s mouth, back to that smudge of ash that was once La Priuli’s crimson dress. I feel his resistance the closer we get to the spot.
“In this place,” I say sternly, “a lady was killed. I had no fondness for her. She bewitched my patron and undermined my pilgrimage, but she was one of God’s children. She was about to take her vows as a Bride of Christ. She would have been one of us.”
“Why are you doing this?” The Archdeacon turns his face away, pretends not to smell the roasted-pork crispness of the flesh that melted into the cave floor. He cannot defend her, his Tongue, here in this place.
“I want to know what Arsinoë said to you the night of the storm.”
“What do you care about that night?” he says protectively, as if it could be stolen from him, like a hand or an ear. “Didn’t you do enough?”
“I care,” I say slowly, “because that’s the night you ceased being my friend.”
I do not mean to say this, brothers. I do not mean to increase the distance growing between us. He is the only one who understood my need to reach Sinai, who never teased when I stopped in every church that had so much as a carving of Katherine in the nave. He accompanied me to Rhodes, to Cyprus; he sat with me over Constantine’s voiding, exhausted body; why do I need to wound him? Why did he have to give his heart to her?
“You said last night that you loved her, even after she set Emelia on fire,” I prompt. “Why, John? What did she promise you that night?”
“Don’t you understand, Felix?” John Lazinus whispers angrily, pointing to the thin skin of ashes on the floor. “Don’t you see this is my punishment? How many women have I already watched burn? Do you not think God saw my sin and set alight another?”
The Archdeacon throws himself into the corner of the cave, still sticky with the Saracens’ filth. Several nosy pilgrims approach us, but I wave them off impatiently. Cautiously, I crouch beside my friend.
“I am still your confessor if you want me.” I take his hand, as I saw Arsinoë do on the beach, and prepare to hear the worst. “I can still absolve you if you desire absolution.”
“I was so weak that night,” he says, so softly I have to bend down to hear him. “To have used her after she had been violated.”
So it is true. I try to swallow my bitter disappointment.
“John, you are a man,” I finally say. “And chastity is a nearly impossible vow.”
He turns on me horrified. “You think that? My God, Felix, what sort of fiend do you take me for? Listen to me.” He laughs ruefully. “What right do I have to be offended when what I did was so much worse?”
“What did you do?”
He shakes his head. “She was exhausted. She was sick. I forced her into it.”
“Into what?”
“Into calling Saint Katherine!” he yells, furious at me for goading him into this. “I believe in her because I saw. Katherine was with us the night of the storm.”
Can he possibly be telling the truth? To have withheld this from me, when he knew; when he, of all men on earth, knew the anguish I felt at having lost her. I stare at him, speechless, sickened, mortified.
“At first she said Katherine wouldn’t come without her brother present.” John speaks, but I look at anything but him: Conrad giving my patron’s son his first unnecessary shave, two French pilgrims arm wrestling; a Saracen merchant pleading with our guard to let him enter and sell us yogurt. Though life continues in the cellar, I am numb to all but John’s relentless voice.
“When she saw I was about to leave her, to go find you and give her up, she pulled me back into the room. ‘Wait,’ she said, in a voice beyond all human exhaustion, ‘what do you want to know?’
“I looked on her then, Felix, with wolfish eyes. Not on her bruised and battered body newly covered with Constantine’s robes, nor on her aching, uncertain face, nor on her eyes, filled with the pain and humiliation I’d seen in sixty other pairs of eyes when, God forgive me, they still had eyes. I ignored every part of her that was still a woman and searched for that place beyond her that I needed to find, if I was to believe.
“‘Prove she speaks to you,’ I ordered. ‘Ask her what has become of my sixty nuns.’”
John drops his head into his lap and covers his face.
“Are we not each of us greedy for Heaven’s attention?” he asks. “Is it not greed that sends a young girl to a fortune-teller or a duke to an astrologer? Was it not greed that made me force Arsinoë open, even after sh
e had already been pried apart by a force larger than herself? A man is not allowed the luxury of remorse like mine unless he has already gone too far or taken too much. We are the plunderers of Heaven, Felix, we greedy mortals.”
And yet, I think to myself, you at least, John, have seen the riches that are to be had. You have heard Katherine with your own ears, looked upon her with your own eyes. I cannot plunder if I am no more than a beggar at the gate, and it appears that is all I am ever likely to be.
“What did Katherine say?” I ask roughly.
John’s eyes fill with tears, and he swipes them away. “That she had gathered my poor slain daughters to her. She was tending their burns with sweet heavenly ointments; she was brushing their hair to encourage it to grow. They were not restored yet, but they were on the mend.”
My need to know is as great as John’s, and yet I almost choke on the words. “What was she like, Saint Katherine?”
“Like fire on a mountain,” he says.
“Damn you, John Lazinus!” I shout, rising to leave. Across the cave, Ursus’s troubled eyes are on me, wondering what has made his friar angry now. I have been convinced of Arsinoë’s madness since we opened her trunk to find it empty, since she took on the life of a dead man and walked the ship in his clothes. Now my own friend, a man I have trusted and depended upon, says he saw Heaven through this woman, that my own wife spoke to him through her. What am I to believe?
“Come back, Felix.” He pulls me down to him by my robe. “Katherine commanded us to help her. We were to make certain Arsinoë conveys her relics safely to Sinai. It is her will.”
“How can it be her will if there are no bones?” I snap. “This is further proof of the Tongue’s madness, don’t you see? Her brother told me all the bones those crazy peasants brought were buried behind their slaughterhouse!”
“When did her brother tell you this?” he asks sharply.
I feel my face turn red. For the first time since I boarded Contarini’s galley, I feel the furtiveness of what I’ve done.
“Last night,” I say finally. “I was on his ship.”
