King of the Middle March (24 page)

I
FELT MY BRAINS SOMERSAULT,” SIR GAWAIN TELLS KING
Arthur. “For four weeks I've been unable to see straight. To think straight.”

They're sitting on soft deerskins in a spatter of primrose-and-violet light. Beside the king lies his Bible, open, and on it rests the beautiful reading-pointer given to him by King Pellam, Guardian of the Grail. Ivory and gold and obsidian…Above them, the poplar trembles and whirrs.

“That's how hard Sir Lancelot clouted me,” Sir Gawain says, nursing the side of his head. “But now! Spring in the air! Spring in my blood! In three days I'll be able to fight the traitor again.”

Now a horseman gallops up to them, and both men stiffen and scramble to their feet.

“Arthur, King of Britain!”

“Take your time, man,” says Arthur-in-the-stone. “Words need breath.”

“From the Archbishop of Canterbury, sire. Sir Mordred has concocted a letter—a letter, he says, from Sir Gawain—announcing you are dead.”

“The traitor!” shouts Sir Gawain.

“He has seized your throne, sire! He says he'll marry your queen.”

The king clenches both his hands.

“She's taken refuge in the Tower of London, and Sir Mordred's laying siege to it. He threatens to cut off the archbishop's head.”

A gust of wind shakes the poplar and the primrose-and-violet spots shudder and dance.

“Half the men left in England have rallied to him, sire,” the messenger pants.

“I see,” the king says quietly. “This is how he repays his father's trust.”

Slowly he walks away. He paces around the poplar tree; Sir Gawain and the messenger watch him.

“My son,” he says to himself. “My own son. A monster.” He pauses, then strides back to the waiting men.

“Each day you're out of England, sire…,” the messenger begins.

King Arthur looks him in the eye. “When I need advice,” he says, “I'll ask for it. Raise the siege, Gawain!”

“But—”

“First things come first. My kingdom. My poor people. My suffering wife. We'll sail home and pursue Mordred. Then and only then will we fight Sir Lancelot.”

“Yes, sire,” says Gawain in obedience.

“Ah!” says the king. “But if only Sir Lancelot were to sail with us now.”

S
IMONA AND I BOTH HAVE TO DO THE SAME THING: WE
have to bring home the news about our fathers. She has to tell her mother that Silvano was drowned when the
Violetta
sank—the ship he named after her. I have to tell Lady Alice about Sir William, and how he attacked Lord Stephen.

At least Simona loved her father and he loved her.

“What about Lady Alice?” Simona asked me. “Will she be sad?”

“Sir William beat her.”

Simona shrugged. “My father beat my mother,” she said.

“And he was away half the time, with Lady Cécile. So she had to manage two manors, and do the accounts, and it made her weep. He was twice as old as she was. But maybe…maybe she will miss him.”

“First yes, then no,” Simona said.

When we sailed in through the Porto early yesterday morning, the water became less rough. Gently it rocked us, and the oarsmen cheered. Each man raised one hand from his oar and waved.

I stared at Saint Nicholas. We passed so close to our camp. There was no one there.

Once, Serle and I rode to a hill where there had been a battle between the Welsh and the Saxons hundreds of years ago, and the Welsh won. There was nothing to see. Nothing to touch or hear. And yet somehow there was.

I think it will be the same on Saint Nicholas. A hundred years from now, our huge, restless army will still be in the air.

Yesterday, Simona and I talked to the captain. He's called Hamadat. His mother's a Christian, but his father's a Saracen.

“I've never heard of that before,” I said.

Hamadat's eyes were deepset; his skin was cracked and dark as a date.

“In Aleppo, yes,” he said. “And Nablus. Saracens and infidel women, Saracen women and infidel men.”

“But how do they meet?”

Hamadat shrugged. “Trade. Crusade. Pilgrimage.”

“What do their families think?”

“My mother's father,” the captain said, “he would not pay dowry.”

“The more I find out,” I said, “the more I realize how little I know.”

When I told Hamadat we were going to cross the Alps, he threw up his hands.
“Stupido!”
he exclaimed. “May the prophet preserve you!”

He said that if I take Lord Stephen overland all the way to England, I must be intending to kill him, because he'd be jolted to death. Besides, he said, unless we joined a larger group, we'd certainly be attacked by robbers. And he told us in any case Mont Cénis and the other mountain passes will be snowbound for at least another six weeks.

“It's safer and quicker to go by ship,” Hamadat said, “and for Lord Stephen more comfortable. Genoa! Take horses and cross to Genoa. It's a good road. It's Roman.”

“How far is that?”

“Hmm!” Hamadat grunted, and he pursed his dry lips. “Twenty days. No more. You go with my merchants. They take cargo to Genoa. Silks, perfumes, carpets, pearls!”

“I must talk to Turold and Rhys,” I told Hamadat.

“Thank Allah!” said Hamadat.

“After Genoa,” I asked, “where then?”

“Easy! You find merchant ship to France…England…”

While I was talking to Hamadat, I kept thinking that I have to choose which way we are to go, and it made me excited and nervous. I must decide. It is up to me.

Hamadat's right: Crossing the Alps would be much more uncomfortable for Lord Stephen, and less safe. So even if it's not as easy to find a ship as he says, even if we have to wait there for several weeks, it must be better to cross to Genoa.

So that's what we're going to try to do.

As soon as we had docked on the Rialto, quite close to Saint Mark's, Simona went off to find us accommodation, and before long she came back smiling and saying she'd found us places in a Benedictine monastery. We carried Lord Stephen there, and the monks welcomed us and took Lord Stephen to the infirmary, and then Simona hurried off again to find her mother and brothers. We didn't see any more of her until this morning.

Lord Stephen hasn't spoken another word since he asked me where we were, and I told him we were aboard a boat. He's like a baby again, except he doesn't howl. He sleeps and sleeps, he wakes to drink and eat a little, he passes water and messes himself, and
then he goes to sleep again. I wish he would stay awake. I wish he'd start to ask questions, and complain a little, and cluck, and blink.

“The trouble with you, Arthur,” Turold told me, “is you always want things to happen now. Or yesterday. Lord Stephen's asleep because he needs to sleep.”

Yesterday afternoon, the two monks in the infirmary stripped Lord Stephen, and washed him from head to toe, and changed his poultices. They fed him boiled breast of chicken, minced and mixed with well-baked apples.

“As soon as he's a little stronger,” said one monk, “we'll give him milk-soaked venison. That will clean out the wound-filth and wound-slime inside him.”

“Here!” said another. “Chew on this.”

“What is it?”

“Fennel. To sweeten your breath.”

“Your whole body,” the first monk said. And he smiled.

Since leaving Zara, we've taken it in turns to sit beside Lord Stephen, but here two monks are always on duty in the infirmary.

So when Simona came this morning, I went with her to find the Saracen traders in the
campo.

They were sitting in their rug-tent, and recognized me at once. One of them called out.

“What's he saying?” I asked Simona.

“Ostrich-head!” Simona exclaimed.

I laughed, and clasped the hands of the two men, and bowed to the woman.

The woman frowned, and pointed to the creature on one of their rugs, half-bird, half-beast.

“She says where is your blue-white friend?” Simona said.

“Bertie?”

“Not dead?” the woman asked.

“Oh no!” I said. “He's…on the crusade.”

“Yach!” exclaimed both men in disgust.

“She says why aren't you there too?” Simona asked me.

“My lord has been wounded.”

I felt so glad to see them again. I know they're Saracens, but they're open and warm.

“I want to buy some spices,” I said.

All three narrowed their eyes and drew in their breath, as if I were asking for slices of the moon.

“Ginger, cumin, things like that.”

The woman laid out little bags of ginger and cumin and cinnamon and mace and coriander.

“You must bargain with them,” said Simona. “They like word-jousting.”

Simona was right. It was like Ludlow Fair.

“Ten marks,” said one of the men.

“Ten!”

“Cheap. Cheap for ostrich-head!”

“I can't afford ten,” I said. “That's as much as it costs to feed two horses for a year.”

“Nine. Cheapest.”

“No! They're not for me, you know. They're for a lady. Lady Judith, in England.”

“Ah! Spices for lady. Eight!”

“Eight marks. Last price,” the other man said.

“What do you think?” I asked Simona.

Simona smiled. “I think…less than the cost of feeding one horse,” she said carefully.

In the end, I agreed to pay six marks, and the two men grinned and we clasped hands again.

“Word-jousting,” I said. “Yes. If only we'd word-jousted with the Saracens…with everyone in Zara.”

The Saracen woman reached out and took my right hand, and murmured.

“She says it's your turn,” Simona translated. “They'll tell your hand.”

“Oh no!” I said. “Well…”

At once the man who told Bertie's palm stared at mine.

“I'm left-handed,” I said.

The trader took my left wrist, and at once he whistled.

“What is it?”

The man shook his head, and began to talk very fast.

“What's he saying?” I demanded. “It's my hand, not his.”

“He says he's never seen this before,” Simona replied. “Your head-line and your heart-line are not separate. They are one. One line…”

“What does that mean?”

“He says you'll live many years. Sixty, even. And you'll have three children. Maybe sons, maybe daughters. He can't tell.”

“And my head-line and heart-line?”

Simona talked for a while to the trader. “He says you will never
have a thought in your head without your heart feeling it—joy or hope or fear or sorrow. And you will never feel emotion in your heart without your head seeking to understand it.”

“I hope that's true,” I said.

“He says this can be a great weakness or a great strength,” said Simona. “That's up to you.”

I
'VE HEARD ABOUT GREAT BEDS. NOT SIR JOHN'S AND LADY
Helen's, that's just their name for it. The one in Chester sleeps thirteen people, and the one in Canterbury fourteen. But the Great Bed here holds sixteen!

I can't get back to sleep, so I've put on some clothes and come across the courtyard to sit with Lord Stephen and write.

What with buying the horses, and having them shod, and hiring a man to make a litter with straps for Lord Stephen, so he can lie between two horses and it's not too bumpy for him, we stayed five nights in Venice.

When it was time to leave, Simona and I had very little to say. I don't suppose we'll ever see each other again, and without hope, words soon run out of breath.

“What's England like?” she asked.

All at once, I saw Tumber Hill. Green and growing. Wild raspberries. The new beech leaves, soft as fingertips…

I swallowed. “Well, it's home!” I said. “An ostrich's head!”

“Why did the trader say that?”

“Because England looks like that on a map. That's what he told me before.”

We sat side by side, staring at the dancing water.

“You made Serle happy,” I said.

Simona didn't say anything.

“That's what I'll remember most,” I said. “Yes, and you knowing about love and being betrothed to an Englishman, and being a boygirl, and teasing Lord Stephen, and that periwinkle, and looking like an apricot!”

“Oh Arthur!” cried Simona. She crowded against me, then she hugged me. “You!” she said. “You saved my life.”

“Sometimes the full moon looks like an apricot,” I said.

“Sometimes like an ostrich-head!” Simona replied. She was laughing and sobbing.

“I know!” I said. “Let's think of each other at each full moon.”

“And send a blessing,” said Simona. “I'll send you a blessing and say a prayer for Lord Stephen.”

As soon as we left Venice, we saw wonders. First a trembling rainbow encased us, and painted us orange and green and blue and violet.

Merlin told me rainbows are spirit-bridges between earth and heaven. Lying in the quivering light, Lord Stephen kept smiling and nodding; he looked quite blissful, as if the rainbow were all his idea.

Between Padua and Vicenza, we saw a tree throbbing with goldcrests, hundreds of them, all twittering; and then in a forest glade on the way to Verona, we met a wandering scholar with his back against a tree, reading a little book of poems. He had a pointed black beard, and was wearing a dirty old sheepskin.

“Rus habet in silva patruus meus,”
he said.

“What does that mean?”

“My father's brother has a farm in the middle of a forest.”

“So does mine,” I said. “Sir John de Caldicot. In England.”

“Huc mihi saepe…,”
the scholar went on. “I often go there to get
away from ugly, unhappy things.” He looked up. “Do you go to quiet places?” he asked me.

“Yes, a glade like this,” I said. “And my climbing-tree.”

“Go there again,” the scholar told me earnestly,
“…et me mihi reddunt.
These places give us back ourselves.”

“I will,” I said.

Between Verona and Cremona, we met a knight out hunting with his hawks. His falconer was carrying a muzzled animal. Its coat was fawn with dark brown spots.

“I've never seen a beast like that before,” I said in English, then in French. “What is it called, sir?”

“Pard,” the knight replied. “Some people say Leo-Pard.”

“Leopard!” I exclaimed, and I remembered our steersman Piero telling me about the beast in the church north of Zara that leaps out and attacks crusaders. “He's very beautiful.”

“She,” said the knight.

“Did you catch her?”

The knight laughed. “Here in Lombardy? No, she comes from Tartary. Far east. Beyond the Saracen lands.”

“Do you hunt with her?”

“One leap,” said the knight, “and she kills a deer or a goat—meat for me and my hawks.”

I gave the leopard a long, wary look. And with her burning eyes, she gazed at me.

The knight smiled and rubbed the leopard's white belly. “Like Italian girl, yes?”

“Well…yes,” I said.

All this, and then in Piacenza I started talking to a trader in the
market, and ended by buying a glass wand with a curved handle. It's full of thousands of tiny, colored seeds and the trader told me that if I put it in Lord Stephen's bed it will protect him from night demons. He said as soon as a demon sees the wand, he has to count all the seeds, and that keeps him busy all night.

Why did I half-believe him?

Because I'll do anything to help Lord Stephen to get well again, I suppose.

Yes, and now this Great Bed.

The straw mattress is covered with several layers of dried bracken, and the men sleep on one side, the women on the other, separated by a long bolster.

Until I got up, there were thirteen of us mother-naked under the men's bedcover—the six merchants we're traveling with, and Turold and Rhys and me, and two pilgrims and a trader and a messenger—and I've never heard so much belching and farting and snorting and gurgling.

There were three women on the other side: a mother with a squashed nose, and her pretty daughter, and a French nun.

“If two or three lie together, then they have heat,” the nun said, “but how can one be warm alone?” She peeled off her habit and crossed herself, and then the mother and her daughter made a tent of their bedcover and took off their clothes too.

“Amen,” said the woman with the squashed nose. “May God save us from the dangers of this night.”

Then the three women snuggled into one another, and scarcely made another sound.

For a long while the men sang songs, and told jokes, and
guffawed, and snatched the bedcover off each other. But at long last, it grew more quiet, and I couldn't stop yawning. I must have fallen asleep.…

What woke me up were the women's squeals.

Turold had got up in the dark and pissed in the pot outside the door, and then he carefully felt his way back into the wrong side of the bed.

“Let go!”

“Wooh!”

“You hairy warthog!”

It was only when I heard Turold harrumphing and groaning that I knew for sure it was him.

“Go on!”

“Get off me!”

Turold rolled over the bolster and right onto me, and of course by then most of the men were awake.

“You over there!”

“Squash nose!”

“What about me?”

“Have pity on a poor pilgrim!”

The women giggled a little, and I could hear them whispering, but they didn't reply, and after a while it grew quiet again.

I couldn't get back to sleep, though.

Lord Stephen is making little sipping and sucking sounds.