by Noah Gordon
Rob leaned forward. “That would have been in Kilmarnock, where you have your family holding?”
“No, it was not, ‘twas in Saltcoats. Her mother was a Tedder of Saltcoats. I had taken Jura to her old Tedder home because in her heaviness she had a great longing for her mother, and we were celebrated and coddled for weeks and overstayed her time. She was caught out with labor, and so it was that instead of in Kilmarnock like a proper Cullen, Mary Margaret was born in her grandfather Tedder’s house overlooking the Firth of Clyde.”
“Father,” she said gently. “Master Cole can have no interest in the day of my birth.”
“On the contrary,” Rob said, and he asked question after question of her father and listened at length.
She sat and prayed that the lightning would not resume, for she had no wish for her father to see that the barber-surgeon’s hand rested on her bare arm. His touch was like thistledown but her flesh was all stirred feelings and dither bumps, as though the future had brushed her or the night were chill.
On the eleventh of May the caravan reached the western bank of the Arda River and Kerl Fritta decided to camp there an extra day to allow for wagon repairs and the buying of supplies from nearby farmers. Her father took Seredy and paid a guide to go with them across the river into Turkey, impatient as a boy to begin his search for the fat-tailed sheep.
An hour later, she and Rob mounted double on her saddleless black horse and rode away from the noise and confusion. As they passed the Jews’ encampment she saw the thin young one ogling. Simon it was, the youth who served as Rob’s teacher; he grinned and nudged one of the others in the ribs to watch them ride by.
She scarcely cared. She felt dizzy, perhaps because of the heat, for the morning sun was a fireball. She put her arms around his chest so as not to fall off the horse and closed her eyes and leaned her head against his broad back.
A distance from the caravan they passed two sullen peasants leading a donkey laden with firewood. The men stared but didn’t return their greeting. Perhaps they had come from afar, for there were no trees in that place, only broad fields empty of workers because planting was long since over and the crops weren’t yet ripe enough to be reaped.
When they came to a brook, Rob tethered the horse to a bush and they left their shoes and waded down a dazzling brightness. On both sides of the reflecting water grew a wheat field and he showed her how the tall stalks shaded the ground and made it invitingly dark and cool.
“Come,” he said, “it’s like a cave,” and crawled into it as if he were a great child.
She followed more slowly. Nearby a small living thing rustled through the tall ripening grain and she gave a start.
“Just a tiny mouse, already frightened off,” he said. As he moved to her in the cool, dappled place, they contemplated one another.
“I don’t want to, Rob.”
“Well, then you won’t, Mary,” he said, although she could see in his eyes how thwarted he felt.
“Could you merely kiss me, please?” she asked humbly.
So their first overt intimacy became a clumsy, moody kiss doomed by her apprehension.
“I don’t like the other. I’ve done it, you see,” she said all in a rush, and the moment she had dreaded was accomplished.
“You’ve experience, then?”
“Only once, with my cousin in Kilmarnock. He hurt me awfully.”
He kissed her eyes and her nose, her mouth softly, while she fought her doubts. After all, who was this? Stephen Tedder had been someone she had known all her life, her cousin and her friend, and he had caused her true agony. And afterward had roared with laughter at her discomfort, as if it were clumsily funny of her to have let him do such a thing to her, like allowing him to push her onto her bottom in a mud slough.
And while she was thinking these unpleasant thoughts, this Englishman had changed the nature of his kisses, his tongue caressing the inside of her lips. It was not unpleasant and when she tried to imitate him, he sucked her tongue! But she began to tremble again when he undid her bodice.
“I just want to kiss them,” he said urgently, and she had the odd experience of looking down at his face moving toward her teats, which she had to acknowledge with grudging satisfaction were heavy but high and firm, already flushed with rosy color.
His tongue gently rasped the pink border and made it all bumps. It moved in narrowing circles until it was flicking her hardened rose-colored nipple, which he drew on as if he were a babe when it was between his lips, all the while stroking her behind the knees and inside her legs. But when his hand went to the mound she went all rigid. She could feel the muscles in her thighs and stomach lock, she was that tense and fearful until he took his hand away.
He fumbled his clothing and then found her hand and made her a gift. She had glimpsed men before by accident, coming upon her father or one of the workers urinating behind a bush. And she had witnessed more on those occasions than when she had been with Stephen Tedder; so she had never seen, and now she couldn’t refrain from studying him. She hadn’t expected it to be so … thick, she thought accusingly, as if it were his fault. Gaining courage, she stroked the cods and gave a low laugh when it made him twitch. It was the bonniest thing!
So she was soothed as they fondled each other, until she was trying on her own to consume his mouth. Soon their bodies were all warm fruits and it wasn’t so terrible when his hand left off making her buttocks feel firm and round and came back between her legs to dabble richly.
She was at a loss about what to do with her hands. She put a finger between his lips and felt his saliva and teeth and tongue, but he pulled away to suck her breasts again and kiss her belly and thighs. He found his way into her first with one finger and then with two, wooing the little pea in quickening circles.
“Ah,” she said faintly, lifting her knees.
But instead of the martyrdom for which her mind was prepared, she was amazed to feel the warmth of his breath on her. And his fish of a tongue swam into her wetness between the hairy folds she herself was shamed to touch! How ever shall I face this man again? she asked herself, but the question was quickly gone, strangely and wonderfully vanished, for she was already shuddering and bucking wickedly, her eyes closed and her silent mouth half open.
Before she had returned to her senses he had insinuated himself. They were truly linked, he was an extension of snug, silken warmth in her very core. There was no pain, only a certain feeling of tightness that presently eased as he moved slowly.
Once, he stopped. “All right?”
“Yes,” she said, and he resumed.
Directly she found herself moving her body to meet his. Soon it became impossible for him to exercise restraint and he moved faster and from a greater distance, jarringly. She wanted to reassure him, but as she studied him through slitted eyes she saw him rear his head back and arch into her.
How singular to feel his great trembling, to hear his snarl of what seemed to be overwhelming relief as he emptied into her!
For a long time then in the dimness of the man-tall grain they scarcely moved. They were quiet together, one of her long limbs flung across him and the sweat and the liquids drying.
“You might get to like it,” he said finally. “Like malt ale.”
She pinched his arm as sharply as she could. But she was pensive. “Why do we like it?” she asked. “I have watched horses. Why do animals like it?”
He appeared startled. Years later, she would understand that the question separated her from any woman he had known, but now all she knew was that he was studying her.
She couldn’t bring herself to say so, but he was already separated from other males in her mind. She sensed he had been remarkably kind to her in a way she didn’t fully comprehend, save that she had a prior boorishness as comparison.
“You thought more of me than of yourself,” she said.
“I didn’t suffer.”
She stroked his face and held her hand there while he kissed her palm. “
Most men … most people are not so. I know it.”
“You must forget the damned cousin in Kilmarnock,” he told her.
32
THE OFFER
Rob gained some patients from among the newcomers and was amused when he was told that when Kerl Fritta had recruited them he boasted that his caravan was doctored by a masterful barber-surgeon.
It gave his spirits a special lift to see those he had treated during the first part of the journey, for never before had he tended to the health needs of anyone for so long a time.
People told him the big grinning Frankish drover whom he had treated for bubo had died of the disease in Gabrovo in midwinter. He had known it would happen and had told the man of his coming fate, yet the news threw him into gloom.
“What’s gratifying is an injury I know how to mend,” he told Mary. “A broken bone, a gaping wound, when the person is hurt and I’m secure in what must be done to make him well. It’s the mysteries I loathe. Diseases about which I know nothing at all, perhaps less than the afflicted. Ailments that appear out of the air and defy all reasonable explanation or plan of treatment. Ah, Mary, I know so little. I know nothing at all, yet I’m all they have.”
Without understanding everything he said, she comforted him. For her part, she drew no small comfort from him; one night she came to him bleeding and racked with cramp, and she spoke of her mother. Jura Cullen had started her monthly course on a fine summer’s day and the flow had turned to gush and then to hemorrhage. When she died Mary had been too torn by grief to cry, and now each month when her flux came she expected it to kill her.
“Hush! It wasn’t ordinary monthly bleeding, it had to be something more. You know that’s true,” he said, holding a warm and soothing palm to her belly and solacing her with kisses.
A few days later, riding with her on the wagon, he found himself talking of things he had never told anyone: the deaths of his parents, the separation of the children and their loss. She wept as though she could never stop, twisting in the seat so her father wouldn’t see.
“How I love you!” she whispered.
“I love you,” he said slowly and to his own amazement. He had never said the words to anyone.
“I never want to leave you,” she said.
After that, when they were on the trail often she turned in the saddle on her black gelding and looked at him. Their secret sign was the fingers of the right hand touched to the lips, as if to brush away an insect or a bit of dust.
James Cullen still sought forgetfulness in the bottle and sometimes she came to Rob after her father had been drinking and was sleeping soundly. He tried to discourage her from doing this because the sentries usually were nervous and it was dangerous to move about the camp at night. But she was a headstrong woman and came anyway, and he was always glad.
She was a quick learner. Very soon they knew each other’s every feature and blemish like old friends. Their largeness was part of the magic and sometimes when they moved together he thought of mammoth beasts coupling to thunder. It was as new to him as to her, in a way; he had had a lot of females but never had made love before. Now he wanted only to give her pleasure.
He was troubled and struck dumb, unable to understand what had befallen him in so short a time.
They pushed ever deeper into European Turkey, a part of the country known as Thrace. The wheat fields became rolling plains of rich grasslands and they began to see flocks of sheep.
“My father is coming alive,” Mary told him.
Whenever they came to sheep Rob saw James Cullen and the indispensable Seredy galloping out to talk with the shepherds. The brown-skinned men carried long crooks and wore long-sleeved shirts and loose trousers pulled tight at the knees.
One evening Cullen came alone to call on Rob. He settled himself by the fire and cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“I wouldn’t have you think me blind.”
“I hadn’t supposed you were,” Rob said, but with respect.
“Let me tell you about my daughter. She has some learning. She has Latin.”
“My mother had Latin. She taught some to me.”
“Mary has a good deal of Latin. It is an excellent thing to have in foreign lands, because with it one can talk with officials and churchmen. I sent her to the nuns at Walkirk for teaching. They took her because they thought they would lure her into the order, but I knew better. She doesn’t take to languages, but after I told her she must have Latin, she worked at it. Even then I dreamed of traveling to the East for fine sheep.”
“Can you get sheep back to your home alive?” Rob doubted it.
“I can do it. I’m a good man with the sheep,” Cullen said with pride. “It was always just a dream, but when my wife died I decided we would go. My kinsmen said I was fleeing because I was mad with grief, but it was more than that.”
They sat in a thick silence.
“You’ve been to Scotland, boy?” Cullen asked finally.
He shook his head. “Closest I’ve come is the English north and the Cheviot Hills.”
Cullen snorted. “Close to the border perhaps, but not even close to the real Scotland. Scotland is higher, you see, and the rocks are bonier. The mountains have good streams full of fish and plenty of water left over for grass. Our holding is in rugged hills, a very large holding. Vast flocks.”
He paused, as though to choose his words carefully. “The man who marries Mary will take them over, be he the right sort,” he said finally.
He leaned toward Rob. “In four days’ time we’ll reach the town of Babaeski. There my daughter and I shall leave the caravan. We’ll swing due south to the town of Malkara, where there is a large animal market at which I expect to buy sheep. And then travel to the Anatolian Plateau, where I place my highest hopes. I would be content if you were to accompany us.” He sighed and gave Rob a level look. “You’re strong and in health. You’ve courage, else you wouldn’t venture so far to do business and better your position in the world. You are not what I would have chosen for her, but she wants you. I love her and wish her happiness. She is all I have.”
“Master Cullen,” he said, but the sheep raiser stopped him.
“It’s not something to be offered or acted upon lightly. You want to think on it, man, as I have.”
Rob thanked him politely, as if he had been offered an apple or a sweetmeat, and Cullen returned to his own camp.
He spent a sleepless night, staring at the sky. He was not so great a fool not to recognize that she was rare. And miraculously, she loved him. He would never meet such a woman again.
And land. Good God, land.
He was offered a life such as his father had never dreamed, nor any of their forebears. There would be assured labor and income, respect and responsibilities. Property to be handed down to sons. A different existence than he had ever known was being handed to him—a loving female with whom he was besotted, and an assured future as one of the world’s few, those who owned land.
He tossed and turned.
Next day she came with her father’s razor and proceeded to trim his hair.
“Not near the ears.”
“It is there it has gotten especially unruly. And why don’t you shave? The stubble makes you look wild.”
“I’ll trim it when it’s longer.” He pulled the cloth from his neck. “You know that your father spoke to me?”
“He spoke to me first, of course.”
“I’m not going to Malkara with you, Mary.”
Only her mouth indicated what she was feeling, and her hands. Her hands appeared to be in repose against her skirt but grasped the razor so tightly the knuckles showed white through her translucent skin.
“Will you be joining us elsewhere?”
“No,” he said. It was difficult. He was unaccustomed to speaking honestly to women. “I’m going to Persia, Mary.”
“You do not want me.”
The stunned bleakness in her voice made him realize how unprepared she was for such an eve
ntuality.
“I want you, but I’ve turned it over and over in my mind and it isn’t possible.”
“Why, impossible? Have you already a wife?”
“No, no. But I’m going to Ispahan, in Persia. Not to seek opportunity in commerce, as I had told you, but to study medicine.”
Her confusion was in her face, asking what medicine was, compared to the Cullen holding.
“I must be a physician.” It seemed an unlikely excuse. He felt a strange kind of shame, as though he were acknowledging a vice or other weakness. He made no attempt to explain, for it was complicated and he didn’t understand it himself.
“Your work gives you misery. You know that to be fact. You came to me and told me so, complaining that it torments you.”
“What torments me is my own ignorance and inability. In Ispahan, I can learn to help those for whom now I do nothing.”
“Cannot I be with you? My father could come with us and buy sheep there.” The pleading in her voice and the hope in her eyes caused him to steel himself against comforting her.
He explained the Church’s ban against attending Islamic academies, and he told her what he intended to do.
She had paled as she gained understanding. “You are risking eternal damnation.”
“I cannot believe my soul will be forfeit.”
“A Jew!” She wiped the razor clean on the cloth with preoccupied movements and returned it to its little leather bag.
“Yes. So you see, it’s something I must do alone.”
“What I see is a man who is mad. I have closed my eyes to the fact that I know nothing about you. I think you have said farewells to many women. It is true, is it not?”
“This is not the same.” He wanted to explain the difference but she wouldn’t allow it. She had listened well and now he saw the depth of the wound he had made.
“Do you not fear I’ll tell my father you’ve used me, so he may pay to see your death? Or that I’ll hasten to the first priest I meet and whisper the destination of a Christian who makes mockery of Holy Mother Church?”
