They played like a pair of dolphins, twisting and turning in the water until they were breathless and laughing, and then Ishraq went to the side of the pool where they had left their clothes and gave Isolde a bar of coarse lye soap.
‘I know,’ she said at Isolde’s little disappointed sniff. ‘But it’s all they had. And I have some oil for our hair.’
Isolde stood knee deep in the water and lathered herself all over, and then passing the soap to Ishraq, lowered herself into the clean water, and stepped out of the pool. She stripped off her wet chemise and wrapped herself in the linen towel, then held a towel for Ishraq who, washed and rinsed, came out too, teeth chattering.
Warmly wrapped, they combed their wet hair and smoothed the rose-perfumed oil from scalp to tip, and then Isolde turned her back to Ishraq, who twisted her golden locks into a plait and then turned her own back as Isolde plaited Ishraq’s dark hair into a coil at the nape of her neck.
‘Elegant,’ Isolde said with pleasure in her own handiwork.
‘Wasted,’ Ishraq pointed out as she threw on her dress and pulled the hood of her cape over her head. ‘Who ever sees me?’
‘Yes, but at least we know we are clean and our hair plaited,’ Isolde said. ‘And we are making a long journey tomorrow, and who knows when we will be able to wash again?’
‘I hope it’s hot water next time,’ Ishraq remarked as they took up their little bundles and set off down the road. ‘Do you remember in Granada, the Moorish baths with hot steam and hot water and heated towels?
Isolde sighed. ‘And in the women’s bathhouses the old lady who scrubs you with soap, and rinses you with rose-water, and then washes your hair and oils it and combs it out?’
Ishraq smiled. ‘Now that is civilised.’
‘Perhaps in Acre?’ Isolde asked.
‘In Acre for sure.’ Ishraq smiled. ‘Perhaps our next bath will be a proper Moorish bath in the Acre bathhouse!’
The girls got back to the inn unnoticed, and were on time for dinner that evening, ready to plan for their departure with the pilgrimage on the next day. Luca was clear that he could not ride while children walked, could not bring himself to be mounted high on an expensive horse while Johann led everyone else on foot. He was going to walk alongside them to Bari. Ishraq and Isolde said that he was right, and they would walk also; Brother Peter agreed. Only Freize pointed out that it was too far for the young women to walk without exhaustion and discomfort, that if they travelled alongside the pilgrimage they would have to stop and eat where the children ate, and that would mean that food would be scarce and poor. Were they to eat nothing but rye bread and drink water from streams? Were the ladies to sleep in barns and in fields? he demanded irritably. And how were they to carry the tools of the inquirer’s trade: Brother Peter’s little writing desk, the manuscripts for reference, the Bible, the money bag? How were they to carry their luggage: the ladies’ clothes and shoes, their combs, their hand mirrors, their little pots of scented oils? Would it satisfy their desire to appear more humble if they walked like poor people, but Freize followed behind them riding one horse, leading four others, and the donkey with the baggage tied at the end of the string? Would they not be play-acting a pilgrimage and pretending to poverty? And how was that more holy?
‘Surely we can walk with them during the day, and stay in pilgrim houses or inns for the night?’ Isolde asked.
‘Walk away and leave them sleeping in a bare field?’ Freize suggested. ‘Join them in the morning after you’ve had a good sleep and a hearty breakfast? And then there’s illness. One of you is almost certain to take a fever, and then either you’ll be left behind or we’ll all have to stay with you, and nobody going anywhere.’
‘He’s right. This is ridiculous. And you can’t walk all that way,’ Luca said to Isolde.
‘I could not allow it,’ Freize said pompously.
‘I can walk!’ Isolde said indignantly. ‘I can walk with the children. I’m not afraid of discomfort.’
‘You’ll get headlice,’ Freize warned her. ‘And fleas. It’s not a beautiful mortification of the flesh that you’ll look back on with secret pride: it’s dirt and bites and rats and disease. And long tedious days of trudging along while your boots rub your feet raw and you hobble like an old lady with aching bones.’
‘Freize,’ she said. ‘I am determined to go to the Holy Land.’
‘You’ll get corns on your feet,’ he warned her. ‘And you’ll never be able to wear a pretty shoe again.’
It was inarguable, and he knew it. Despite her serious intentions she was silenced.
‘You’ll smell,’ he said, clinching the argument with a mighty blow. ‘And you’ll get spots.’
‘Freize,’ she said. ‘This is not a whim, it is a vision. I am sure that my father would want me to go. Ishraq is determined to go. We are going. Nothing will stop us.’
‘What about a nice boat to Bari?’ Freize suggested.
‘What?’
‘Go by boat,’ Freize repeated. ‘We can ship the horses and the baggage and the ladies by boat, we three men can walk with the children and help as we are required to do. The ladies can get there without walking, get there before us, find themselves an inn and wait in comfort till we arrive.’
He looked at Isolde’s mutinous face. ‘My lady, dearest lady, you will have to travel in heat and dirt when you get to the Holy Land. Don’t think you are taking the easy way. Discomfort will come. If you want to trudge along in burning heat and miserable dirt, attacked half the time by madmen in turbans, scratching yourself raw with flea-bites, sleeping in sand with cobras under your pillow, your ambition will be satisfied. But do it when you get to the Holy Land. There’s no particular merit in walking on rough ground in Italy.’
‘Actually,’ Brother Peter intervened. ‘If the ladies were to be at Bari first then they could make sure that the ships were waiting for us. We’ll be – what? – three days on the road? Perhaps four?’ He turned to the two of them. ‘If you were willing to go ahead, I could give you the papal letters of authorisation, and you could get the food ready for the children, and make sure there were enough ships. It would be very helpful.’
‘You would be helping the pilgrimage, not escaping the walk,’ Luca said to Isolde. ‘This is important.’
‘I don’t know . . .’ She hesitated.
‘Perhaps they can’t do it alone,’ Freize said. ‘I could go too. Perhaps I had better accompany them.’
Luca gave him a long narrow gaze from his hazel eyes. ‘You go by boat as well?’
‘Just to help,’ Freize said. ‘And guard them.’
‘And so you go by comfort in the ship and escape a long and uncomfortable walk,’ Luca accused.
‘Why not?’ Freize asked him. ‘If my faithless heart is not in it? If I would only blunt your resolve with my sinful doubts? Better keep me out of it. Better by far that only those who have the vision should take the walk.’
‘Oh very well,’ Luca ruled. ‘Isolde, you and Ishraq and Freize will go by boat to Bari, take all the horses, and we will join you there within three days. Freize, you will keep the girls safe, and you will find ships that will take the children to Rhodes, agree a price, and take the papal letter of credit to the priest and to the moneylenders.’
‘I want to walk,’ Isolde demurred.
‘I don’t,’ Ishraq said frankly. ‘Freize is right, we’ll walk enough when we get there.’
‘So we are agreed,’ Brother Peter said. He opened his little writing desk and took out the papal letters. ‘These will draw on credit with the goldsmiths of Bari,’ he said. ‘They will no doubt be Jews, but they will recognise the authority; do the best you can to get a good price. They are a wicked people. They have a guilt of blood on their heads and will carry it forever.’
Ishraq took the paper and tucked it in her sleeve. ‘And yet you are depending on their honesty and their trustworthiness,’ she observed tartly. ‘You are sending them a letter and expecting them to give you cred
it on that alone. You know that they will understand the authorisation and they will lend you money. That’s hardly wicked. I would have thought it was very obliging. The Pope himself is trusting them, they are doing the work that you allow them to do, they are doing it with care and good stewardship. I don’t see why you would call them wicked.’
‘They are heathens and infidels,’ Brother Peter said firmly.
‘Like me,’ she reminded him.
‘You are in service to a Christian lady,’ Peter avoided her challenge. ‘And anyway, I have seen that you are a good and loyal companion.’
‘Like the women of my race,’ she pressed. ‘Like the other infidels.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘We’ll know more when we have landed in the Holy Land.’
Isolde gave a little shiver of joy. ‘I can’t imagine it.’
Ishraq smiled at her. ‘Me neither.’
In the morning, after breakfast, the two girls, with the hoods of their capes pulled forward for modesty, came out of the inn door and walked along the quayside where Freize was loading the horses onto the ship which would take them south down the coast to Bari. Luca and Brother Peter went with them, Brother Peter carrying the precious manuscripts stitched into packages of oiled sheepskin against the damp, his writing box strapped on his back. On the quayside, amid the ships returning from their dawn fishing voyages, Freize was loading the donkey and the five horses.
The gangplank was wide and strong from the quayside onto the deck of the boat, and the first three horses went easily across the little bridge and into their stalls for the journey. Ishraq watched as the last horse, Brother Peter’s mount, jibbed at the gangplank and tried to back away. Freize put a hand on its neck and whispered to it, a few quiet words, and then unclipped the halter so the horse was quite free. Brother Peter exclaimed and looked around, ready to summon help to catch a loose horse, but Luca shook his head. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’
For a moment the horse stood still, realising that it had been loosed, and then Freize touched its neck once more and turned his back on it, walking across the gangplank on his own. The horse pricked its ears forwards as it watched him, and then delicately followed, its hooves echoing on the wooden bridge. When it came freely onto the deck, Freize patted it with a few words of quiet praise, and then clipped the rope on again and led it into the stalls in the ship.
‘They love him,’ Luca remarked, coming beside the two young women. ‘They really do. All animals trust him. It’s a gift. It’s like St Francis of Assisi.’
‘Does he have a kitten in his pocket?’ Ishraq asked, making Luca laugh.
‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘I think he has been feeding a stray kitten and carrying it around,’ she said. ‘I moved his jacket from the dining room chair last night, and it squeaked.’
Isolde laughed. ‘It’s a ginger kitten – he found it days ago. I didn’t know he still had it.’
Freize came back off the boat. ‘There’s a little cabin and a cooking brazier,’ he told the girls. ‘You should be comfortable enough. And the weather is supposed to be good, and we will be there in a few hours. We should get into port at about dinner time.’
‘Shall we go aboard?’ Isolde asked Luca. The master was on the ship, shouting orders, the sailors ready to let go the ropes. The children of the crusade idly watched the preparations.
‘God bless them,’ Isolde said earnestly, one foot on the gangplank, her hand in Luca’s grasp. ‘And God bless you too, Luca. I will see you in Bari.’
‘In just a few days’ time,’ he said quietly to her. ‘It’s better that you travel like this, although I will miss you on the road. I won’t fail you. I shall see you there soon.’
‘Cast off!’ the master shouted. ‘All aboard!’
Brother Peter handed his box of manuscripts and his precious writing case to Freize to take into the little cabin. Isolde turned to go up the gangplank when she felt the quayside suddenly shake beneath her feet. For a moment she thought that a ship had knocked against the quay and shaken the great slabs of stone, and she put out her hand and grasped the gangplank’s end beam. But then the shake came again and a deep low rumble, a noise so massive and yet hushed that she snatched Ishraq’s hand for fear and looked around. At once there was an anxious slapping on the side of the quay as a thousand little waves rippled in, as if blown by a sudden gale, though the sea was flat calm.
The children on the quayside jumped to their feet, as the ground shook beneath them, the younger ones cried out in fear. ‘Help me! Help me!’
‘What was that?’ Isolde asked. ‘Did you hear it? That terrible noise?’
Ishraq shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Something strange.’
‘I know that my Redeemer lives!’ Johann called out. Everyone turned to look at him. He was quite undisturbed. He spread his arms and smiled. ‘Do you hear the voice of God? Do you feel the touch of His holy hand?’
Luca stepped forwards to the girls. ‘Better go back to the inn . . .’ he started. ‘Something is wrong . . .’
The great noise came again, like a groan, so deep and so close that they looked up at the clear sky though there were no thunderclouds, and down again to the sea which was stirred with quick little waves.
‘God is speaking to us!’ Johann called to his followers, his voice clear over their questions. ‘Can you hear Him? Can you hear Him speaking through earthquake, wind and fire? Blessed be His Name. He is calling us to His service! I can hear Him. I can hear Him!’
‘Hear Him!’ the children repeated, the volume of their voices swelling like a chorus. ‘Hear Him!’
‘Earthquake?’ Isolde asked. ‘He said: earthquake, wind and fire?’
‘We’d better wait at the inn,’ Ishraq said uneasily. ‘We’d better not get on the boat. We’d better get under cover. If a storm is coming . . .’
Isolde turned with her, to go to the inn, when one of the children shouted, ‘Look! Look at that!’
Everyone looked where the child was pointing, to the steps of the quay where the water was splashing over the lower steps in an anxious rapid rhythm. As they watched, they saw an extraordinary thing. The tide was going out, ebbing at extraordinary speed, rushing like a river in spate, faster than any tide could go. The wet step dried in the bright sunshine as the next step was laid bare. Then, as the water receded, the green weed of the step beneath came into view, and the step below that, all the way down to the floor of the harbour. Water was pouring off the steps like a sudden waterfall, steps that no-one had seen since they were built in ancient times were now suddenly dry and in the open air, and in the harbour bed the sea was flowing backwards, running away from the land, falling away from the walls so that the depths were revealing all the secrets and becoming dry land once more.
It was a strange and hypnotic sight. Brother Peter joined the others as they crowded to the edge of the quay and gazed down as the water seeped away. The sea revealed more and more land as it crept further and further out. The horses on the deck neighed in terror as their boat grounded heavily on the harbour floor, other boats nearby hung on their ropes at the quayside wall or, further out in what had been deeper water, dropped and then rolled sideways as the sea fled away from them, leaving them abandoned and their anchors helplessly exposed, thrust naked into the silt – huge and heavy and useless.
‘And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided!’ Johann cried from the back of the crowd. There were screams of joy, and children crying with fear, as he walked through them all to stand on the brink of the quayside and look down into the harbour, where crabs were scuttling across the silt of the harbour floor and fish were slapping their tails in trapped pools of water. ‘And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were
divided!’ he said again. ‘See – God has made the sea into dry land – just for us. This is the way to Jerusalem!’
Isolde’s cold hand crept into Luca’s. ‘I’m afraid.’
Luca was breathless with excitement. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t dream it could happen! He said it would happen but I couldn’t believe it.’
Ishraq exchanged one frightened glance with Isolde. ‘Is this a miracle of your God?’ she demanded. ‘Is He doing it? Right now?’
On board the grounded ship, the tethered horses and the donkey were rearing against their ropes. Freize walked among them, trying to calm them down as they pulled their heads away from their halters, their hooves clattering against the wooden stalls. The wooden gangplank had sunk down at one end with the ship. Now it splintered and broke, falling down into the silt of the harbour.
‘Hush, my lovelies, be calm! Be calm!’ Freize called to the horses. ‘We’re all settled here now. High and dry, nothing to fear, I am sure. Be calm and in a moment I’ll have you out of here.’
‘Follow me! Follow me!’ Johann cried, and started down the stone steps of the quay. ‘This is the way, this is the way to Jerusalem! This is the way made straight!’
The children followed him at once, filled with excitement at the adventure. At the back someone started to sing the Canticle of Simeon: ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou has prepared before the face of all people . . .’
‘God shows us the way!’ Johann cried out. ‘God leads us to the Promised Land. He makes the wet places dry and we shall walk to the Holy Land!’
‘Should we go with him?’ Isolde asked Luca, trembling with hope and fear. ‘Is this truly a miracle?’
Luca’s face was alight. ‘I can’t believe it! But it must be. Johann said that there would be dry land to Jerusalem, and here is the sea pouring away from the land!’
Stormbringers Page 8
