Iacobus (21 page)

I found it nearby the Convent of St. Dominic, on the hillside above the Church of Santa Maria de Jus del Castillo. They were just about to close the doors of the madinat al yahud
(27)
and I had to beg the bedin
(28)
to let me in.

“What are you looking for at this time of night, good sir?”

“I am looking for information about a group of Hebrew pilgrims who must have come though Estella recently and who are headed to Leon.”

“Did they come from France?” he asked, thinking.

“Yes! Did you see them?”

“Oh, yes! They came through here yesterday morning. They were the distinguished families Ha-Levi and Efrain, from the French city of Perigueux,” he told me. “They didn’t stay for long.

They ate with the muccadim
(29)
and then left. There was a woman traveling with them who stayed behind with us until today. But she left at dawn, on her own. A real berrieh
(30)
,” he muttered.

“Was her name Sara, by any chance? Sara from Paris?”

“It was.”

“You’re right, bedin, she is undoubtedly a woman of character. And she is the person I am looking for. What can you tell me?”

“Oh, not much! She seemed to have a problem with the Ha-Levis and decided to split up from the group. She bought a horse yesterday afternoon in Estella and left first thing this morning. I think she went to Burgos.”

“The woman you speak of …,” I wanted to be sure so as not to make a mistake, “did she have white hair?”

“And moles, lots of moles! The truth is that it’s rare for a Jewish woman to have so many marks on her skin like she did. At least here, in Navarre; we’d never seen anything like it before.”

“Thank you, bedin. I don’t need to go inside now. You’ve told me everything I needed to know.”

“Sir, if you don’t mind my asking …,” he said when I had already began to walk away.

“What is it?”

“Why are you looking for her?”

“That’s what I would like to know, bedin,” I replied, shaking my head. “That’s what I would like to know ….”

Every time we reached a town, Sara had just left. Everyone we asked about her in Ayegui, Azqueta, Urbiola, Los Arcos, Desojo and Sansol, gave us information with no difficulty but it seemed that a cursed fate always kept her at the same distance from us. I despaired at the painful slowness of our pace because although we were pushing our horses as as fast as they could go, ever since leaving Estella we had had to fight against a raging wind that was coming at us and persistent rain that turned the roads and paths we followed into porridge.

We were held up for a while in the town of Torres del Rio, just less than half a day from Logroño, because when I saw the solemn church tower from afar, I knew that we could not pass by that site. It was a tiny collection of houses sandwiched around a beautiful octagonal temple.

In order to stop there and visit the Templar chapel, I had to overcome stiff resistance from Nobody, who seemed more interested than us in catching up with Sara. I gave him a trivial explanation about prayers, promises and aspirations but it didn’t seem to convince him at all, and while we were inside the enclosure, an unexpected double of Eunate, he didn’t stop pestering and annoying us with stupid observations and obnoxiously interfering in the few things I tried to say to the boy so he could learn about the important details of what we were seeing.

The differences between the Templar chapels of Eunate and Torres del Rio were imperceptible. Both had the same structure and the same representations, and again, a single capital that was different from all the others, the one located on the right of the apse, with an evangelic message with an error. This time it wasn’t the miraculous resurrection of Lazerus but of Jesus himself, with two women inexpressively looking at the empty Holy Tomb with the slab ajar. Their stillness was absolute, their inexpressiveness frightening. It seemed as if the impression had killed them. However, the real extravagance of the scene was in the apocryphal quality of the vacant Tomb emitting a cloud of smoke which rose in a kind of spiral labyrinth. In which passage of the Scriptures does it say that Jesus Christ had turned into smoke?

As was now habitual, at the aljama in Torreviento, Viana, they informed us that Sara had left just a few hours before. We were so worn out from the battle against the storm that we stopped to rest in a hostel in the city, that of Our Lady of the Inn, where servants offered us a loaf of excellent bread and an amphora of unbeatable local wine. Jonas, who was deathly quiet from pure exhaustion, lay down on the bench he had been sitting on and disappeared from my sight behind the table.

“The boy is worn out,” muttered Nobody, looking at him with affection.

“We are all worn out. This galloping against the storm would exhaust anyone.”

“I have an excellent idea to cheer us up!” he suddenly exclaimed, merrily. “Garcia, hey, Garcia, open your eyes!”

“What’s going on?” asked a weary voice from underneath the wooden table.

“I’m going to teach you an extraordinary game.”

“I don’t want to play!”

“I bet you do! You have never seen anything like it. It’s such a fun and puzzling game that it will have you back on your feet in no time.”

The old man took a small pouch and a square piece of cloth from his bag which he carefully unfolded on the table. Jonas peered over the edge of the table and took a quick look, with his eyes half-shut. The cloth had a spiral circuit draw on it which was divided into sixty-three squares decorated with beautiful emblems, some fixed and some changeable. Nobody carefully untied the strings of a small bag and took out a pair of bone dice and several wooden blocks painted in different colors.

“Which do you prefer?” he asked Jonas.

“The green one.”

“And you, Don Galceran?”

“The blue one, no doubt about it,” I said smiling, making myself more comfortable to see the squares better. Jonas did the same. I have always loved board games and luckily for me, the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (unlike most of the Orders), allowed them and even encouraged them. In my youth, chess was one of my great passions, and during my studies in Syria and Damascus I had really enjoyed taking part in long games of Royal Flush of Ur and checkers. It was the first time I had seen the game that Nobody was showing us which was strange because I knew almost all of them (at least, all the ones played in the East).

“I’ll have the red block,” he said. “O.K., this game is a favorite amongst the Compostela pilgrims. It’s called The Goose and consists of throwing the dice and moving the same number of squares as the points you get. The first person to reach the last square wins.

“That’s it?” asked Jonas contemptuously, leaning back.

“It’s not as easy as it seems, young Garcia. In this game there are many factors that make it exciting. Winning is not what counts. What counts is your perseverance to reach the end. You’ll see.”

Nobody put our three pieces next to each other in the first square on the cloth, the number one, and threw the dice. I thought that like with all board games where you have to go around the board, The Goose had to hold some ancient initiatory meaning in its inner most secrets. Since the most remote and forgotten ancient cultures, this magnificent bird has been a beneficial deity who accompanies souls to the beyond. It was a flock of geese that warned the citizens of Rome of the arrival of the Barbarians, saving the city. The Egyptians, for example, had a very specific saying — ‘from goose to goose’ —, to express the inverse transit of reincarnation from death until birth, as this bird transports the soul from one point to another. The strong will to reach the end of the game that Nobody was talking about must be a metaphor of the tenacity needed to travel the long and difficult inner journey that leads to initiation which the board intended to represent figuratively. I noticed that on every ninth square (those numbered 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54 and 63), there was one of those sacred web-footed birds, whose leg was a symbol of the initiated masters; there were bridges in squares 6 and 12; a pair of dice in 26 and 53; a well in 31; a labyrinth in 42; and Death in 58.

Nobody’s throw came to 7, Jonas’ 3 and mine 12, so I began. The dice gave me five points.

“Seeing as you got a five on your first throw,” explained Nobody happily, “you have to go straight to square number 53 and throw again.”

“What nonsense,” scoffed Jonas.

“Those are the rules of the game, boy,” snapped Nobody with a serious face. “There are also lucky breaks in real life.”

I picked up the dice and threw again: six and four, ten points in total. I’d gone straight to the last square with only two throws!

“That’s not fair! I haven’t even started yet,” protested the boy, looking at my piece in the center in disbelief.

“I already told you,” Nobody patiently explained, “that those are the rules of the game. If your father reached the end with such good luck, it must be for some reason. There are no coincidences. You, Don Galceran, have already reached the finish, you have traveled the route in the fastest way possible. Think about it. Now it’s my turn.”

He shook the dice between his hands and threw them onto the table. The pieces of bone showed a six and a one. In other words, a total of seven.

“Have you noticed that the dice, on their opposite scores, always add up to seven, the magic number?” he asked as he moved his piece and placed it on the image of a fisherman.

“Now it’s my turn …,” said Jonas, reaching for the dice.

The boy got a three and a four. “Seven as well!” he exclaimed, placing his piece next to Nobody’s.

“None of that, Garcia,” he said, picking up the green piece of wood. “If a player repeats a previous number on their first turn, they have to stay in the first square. So, back to the beginning.”

“This game is stupid! I don’t want to play anymore!”

“If you have started, you must finish it. You must never leave a game half way through, just as you shouldn’t leave a task or a duty without finishing it.”

The old man shook the dice again and threw them onto the cloth. Four and six, ten, like my last throw. Then it was Jonas’ turn: two and one, three. Then on his third throw, Nobody reached square number 27 which had a goose.

“From goose to goose, I throw and you can’t refuse!” he shouted excitedly, putting his piece on square number 36 and shaking the bone cubes again. He got a six in total. His red piece of wood moved like lightening to square 42, where, however, a labyrinth stopped him in his tracks.

“Now I miss a turn and I’ll then have to go back to square 30.”

“What did you say before?” I asked impressed.

“That I’ll have to miss a turn.”

“No, before that!”

“From goose to goose, I throw and you can’t refuse. Is that what you’re referring to?”

“From goose to goose …?” I smiled. “Do you know the origin of that saying and its meaning?”

“As far as I know,” he mumbled moodily, “it’s just a phrase from the game but you seem to know more.”

“No, no,” I lied, “the verse just amused me.”

The game continued for a while longer between the two of them. I watched how it unfolded with great interest, because the truth is that that game gave no respite to whoever had to take the slowest route. When Jonas ‘fell’ into the Inn, he missed two throws, in the Well he had to wait until Nobody also ‘fell’ in to be able to get out of there and finally the dice made him get ‘lost’ in the Labyrinth, while Nobody had a good run and jumped ‘from goose to goose’ until the end.

“Well, if the game is over,” said Jonas, standing up, “let’s go. At this rate we’ll never get to Logroño.”

“The game is not over, young Garcia. You still haven’t reached Paradise.”

“What Paradise?”

“Can’t you see that the last square, the big one in the middle, has a drawing of the garden of Eden? Look at the springs and the lakes, the green meadows and the sun.”

“I have to finish on my own, without playing against anyone else?” he inquired, surprised. “What a strange game!”

“The objective of the game is to be the first person to reach the last square but the fact that somebody else gets there before you doesn’t mean that you’ve finished. You have to take your own route, face the difficulties and overcome them before you reach Paradise.”

“And what happens if I land on that square, the one with the skull?” he said pointing to it.

“Square 58 is death but in the game death is not final. If you land on it you just have to go back to number 1 and start again.”

“Fine, I’ll play … but another day. Now I really want to go.”

There was such sincerity and exhaustion in his voice that Nobody picked up his things and we went out to the stables without saying another word. That night we slept in Logroño and the next day we headed towards Najera and Santo Domingo de la Calzada. The wind and the rain continued to make our journey unpleasant, hindering our progress and excessively tiring the animals who writhed and refused to cooperate with the orders from the bridles. If there is one natural phenomenon that changes one’s mood, it’s the wind. It’s difficult to understand why but just as the sun enlivens the spirit and the rain saddens it, the wind always disturbs and upsets it. I myself felt distrusting and annoyed but in my case, there was a good reason. Upon waking at dawn in Logroño, I had found a note stabbed to the straw of my mattress with a dagger, right next to my face, that said: ‘Beatus vir qui timet dominum’
(31)
. Just as I had imagined, Count Joffroi of Le Mans was losing his patience and wanted results but what more could I do? I quickly hid the dagger that was holding the letter in my clothes and crumpled the message before throwing it on the floor and kicking it away with my foot. Knowing that the Pope would not harm us until we had at least found the gold did very little to settle my nerves.

We crossed the wide plain of the River Ebro under an overcast sky, traveling through a landscape of vineyards and work fields, cut at the south by the snowy peaks of the Sierra de la Demanda. After a tough slope, we came across the city of Navarette, a prosperous and artesian village, with very good hospitals for pilgrims. We crossed its street, following the path of the Camino, admiring the numerous emblazoned houses and palaces we saw to our left and right. The locals, more good-natured then most, greeted us with courtesy and kindness.