The Religion (37 page)

Angelu, she realized, was to be the test of her devotion.

Carla sat with him all day long and the man uttered not a word. To some of her questions he replied with a single nod; to others he shook his head. The questions were simple, for her Maltese was poor. Although she'd grown up here it had been a language used only for speaking to servants and grooms and this fact now shamed her, for this man and thousands like him were dying in her defense. Yet her voice provoked some animation in his twisted posture. Within the dark torture chamber that his body had become, he was aware. She took out her rosary and prayed and in his silent and sightless vigil Angelu prayed with her. At least so she believed.

At times pity overcame her and tears rolled down her face and her voice faltered, but she offered her pity to God and begged His forgiveness for her selfish concerns. She fed Angelu and lifted cups of wine and water to his lips. She wondered why he didn't speak and if, perhaps, he couldn't-if perhaps the fire had scorched his throat raw too-but it wasn't her place to ask, only to serve. She prayed with him and for him and for them all and as the hours passed and
Aves
flowed through her like an endless and sacred song, her horror vanished, for horror was merely the complaint of her own fragile senses and was itself another wound to
the man so afflicted before her. Then her pity vanished too, for pity was to see him as less human than she. And even her sorrow subsided to its embers and an incandescent Love filled her being, and she realized that Christ had entered her, body and soul, with a power beyond her experience or vision. Christ's love surged through her with the force of revelation and she understood, and she knew, that through such love all sins were forgiven, even those atrocities that surrounded her in such profusion. She wanted to tell Angelu and opened her eyes to look at him: at his half skull and half face, at the opaque, blistered orbs that bulged beneath shriveled eyelids and sloughing brows, at the withered claws that quivered at the ends of his arms. Angelu was walking his own road to Golgotha. It was he who had invited Christ into her heart.

She said, "Jesus loves you."

Angelu's head jerked back and his mouth twisted open, and she didn't know what this meant, or if she'd hurt him, or if he hadn't heard what she'd said. For a moment she was afraid.

She said again, "Jesus loves you." Then she said, "I love you."

Angelu's lips trembled. His breath shuddered. She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. It was the first time she'd dared touch him. Quietly, for even in this darkness his strength had not deserted him entire, Angelu lowered his head and started to cry.

Later they heard Mass and she helped him to kneel while they took Communion, and if he said "Amen" neither she nor the chaplain heard him. Afterward, she served him beef broth from the silver bowl, and seeing that he had no appetite, she put the food aside, and since the ward was busy with the mealtime, and suddenly thinking that it might disturb him not to know who his strange companion was, she told him, as best she could, something of herself, and her purpose in returning here, which was to find her lost son, whose name she did not know. Angelu said nothing throughout and by now she was sure that he was quite unable to do so. Then Carla too fell silent and she wondered if she should not tell him too about Mattias Tannhauser.

That day she'd prayed for Mattias, with his image in her heart, more often than for any other. He was German-a Saxon-a race of which she'd neither knowledge nor experience, but which by reputation was
marked by brilliance and barbarity in equal measure. He'd not a drop of noble blood in his body, yet carried himself among the Knights of Saint John-a sect obsessed with such notions-as if born into the purple. His admiration of the Turks seemed to exceed his opinions of those he called the Franks, yet he'd turned his hand against them. He'd murdered a priest without a tremor of conscience, yet gentleness and courtesy were rooted in his nature to a depth she'd seen in no other man she'd known. He believed in no God that he could name yet was filled with spirit. His carnal appetites, like his passions for beauty and knowledge, were uninhibited and vast, yet he'd watched everything he owned burn to ashes without a word of regret or reproach. For all his brutal pragmatism, he'd taken her part on a whim and was even now chasing a phantom across this deadliest of terrains. He perplexed her utterly.

Was this man really to become her husband? Was she to become his wife?

His affair with Amparo, the vehement erotism of its conduct and of the feelings it had stirred within her own nocturnal thoughts, had challenged her emotions to a struggle she'd fought hard to master. The man was entitled to his fancies; he was a soldier of fortune and a man of the widest world; she could expect no less; and he'd given her no promise in respect of romance. The marriage was a contract as dry as those he struck for timber and lead. But could that really be so? Had she not felt in him something more? Or had he only sensed her fear of carnal relations? That fear was deep and unexamined, for to examine it was impossible without the resurrection of her memories of Ludovico.

Her physical passion for Ludovico had been every bit as ecstatic and uninhibited as Amparo's was for Mattias; perhaps more so, for the latter pair had crossed no forbidden boundaries, while she and Ludovico had shattered every rule both sacred and profane. That transgression had lent their ardor a compulsive, delirious intensity that had lured her so far into madness that she was terrified of going near it ever again. And not merely into madness but into a tragedy that laid waste to her life and to her family, that had cost her her nameless child, and whose consequences even now threatened the lives of those she loved. Memory still made her nauseous with fear and guilt and shame. Memory still aroused her most painful sexual longings-when she let it do so, which she did not. Dry as timber and lead was the way her marriage to Mattias ought to be. She
would be a spinster wife and cause no more chaos. And if, despite her waning hopes, she found her son, that would be an outcome for which she'd always thank God.

Even so, jealousy tormented her.

She wanted Amparo to be happy; to see her so filled Carla with joy. And yet, at one and the same time, it also dripped acid on her heart. The crudeness of her fantasies revolted her: but yes, Carla wished that it was she who moaned in the night beneath Tannhauser's brawn. She craved tenderness and kisses and the look of love. She wished that he'd brought her a silvered comb from the Turkish bazaar. Such pettiness filled her with self-loathing, and to spare herself she'd started avoiding Amparo. Yet Amparo was not to be blamed for giving herself to such a man. Amparo tolerated moderation as a wild horse the bridle. Amparo had known tragedy that made her own seem trite. If either deserved such happiness, it was the girl. And in this God was just and all-wise. He'd given Carla this trial to strengthen her soul. She would see it through. The thread that bound the three of them together was fragile, and around them violent forces were daily unleashed. Carla prayed that she wouldn't be the one to break it. No matter what she felt, she would do nothing to come between them. This, she realized, was the reason she found herself in the infirmary. In the infirmary, problems such as jealousy were trifles.

Dusk fell and the monks lit three lamps, which would burn all night, to protect the sick from illusions, dubiousness, and error. The two serving brethren assigned to the night watch moved from bed to bed with a candle in one hand and a jug in the other. "Water and wine from God," they said to each patient. La Valette paid a visit before the darkness outside was complete. He said little, and possessed little natural warmth that Carla could feel, yet his presence was an inspiration to the wounded men, who all but climbed from their sickbeds to salute him. He noted Carla sitting by Angelu and one brow briefly rose on his high forehead. He said nothing to her and left soon thereafter to a valiant chorus of cheers.

As La Valette disappeared, Father Lazaro came up to Carla and indicated it was time for her to leave. He offered no words of praise, yet his manner seemed warmer than before and she sensed she'd acquitted herself with honor. As Lazaro walked away, she turned to Angelu.

"I must go now, Angelu," she said. "Thank you for all you've given me."

She stood up.

"Will you come back again, my lady?" said Angelu.

She looked at him. It was the first time he'd spoken all day. And by the way he asked the question she felt as if he'd placed his life in her hands. For a moment she was choked.

"Yes, of course," she said. "First thing tomorrow."

Angelu held out his two congealed fists, as if he'd clasp them together if he could. "God bless you, my lady. May He guide you safe and sound to your boy."

Carla's eyes filled. Her voice deserted her. She turned and hurried away for the arch.

Carla left the ward with her chest constricted by turbulent emotions. She'd given something of herself, something pleasing to God. The feeling was unfamiliar. And marvelous. Her life had been one of taking and being taken from. She'd bobbed like a cork on its waters. Her acts of charity had been abstract, investments in an eternity she didn't deserve. She'd adopted Amparo to assuage her own isolation. To have someone to mother. Even her quest to find her boy was, in part, to allay the guilt that gnawed at her heart. But today Christ had filled her with Divine Love, a love of all Creation, a love even of her own wretchedness, for it was true, after all, that it was here among the wretched that Christ was most readily found. She passed back between the rows of the wounded, their pain transmuted into murmured prayer, their moans stifled by the stoical pride that bound them. Later, when the night boats from Saint Elmo brought fresh mayhem, there would be screams from the surgical slabs where Lazaro would spend the hours of darkness steeped to the elbows in gore.

The evening air at the threshold was so sweet that her senses swooned and her head whirled about and she stopped and closed her eyes for fear of falling. Cannon still crashed to the north, louder out here. As her throat cleared of incense she detected on the breeze the smell of cooking fires and meat and she felt hungry. Hunger as she'd never known it. Hunger earned. How strange to feel so alive at the center of so much death. How terrible. In all the world there was no more tragic place than this, yet she wouldn't have wished herself anywhere else. The life she'd known, the woman she'd been, seemed infinitely far away. What would she become when this was over?

She felt a hand on her arm. "Carla?"

She opened her eyes and found Amparo looking at her. There was a brightness in her eyes, a love that filled her. In her hair was the ivory comb, beautifully worked. Carla found that this gift no longer galled her, and she was relieved. Amparo appeared radiant. Or was it that Carla now saw the world anew and could see the radiance in things she'd been blind to before? Emotion rose again in Carla's throat, joy and sadness intermingled. Without speaking, Amparo embraced her and Carla clung to the girl and felt strangely like a child, the more so for the strength in Amparo's arms, a strength she hadn't known was there for she'd never leaned on it. Carla's world was turned upside down. Yet, suddenly, she felt free. Amparo stroked her hair.

"Are you sad?" Amparo asked.

"Yes." Carla raised her head. "No. Sad but in a good way."

"Sadness is never bad," said Amparo. "Sadness is the mirror of being happy."

Carla smiled. "I'm happy too. Especially to see you. I've missed you."

Amparo said, "I want you to meet my friends."

Amparo had never claimed friends before, but she'd changed too in these days. No longer confined to the round of Carla's life, she came and went like a bird uncaged. She was closer in spirit to these people than Carla could ever be, and she wandered their streets and wharves with an anonymous liberty that Carla could never know. Carla looked down the hospital steps, where two young Maltese stood waiting. The older of the two, perhaps twenty, had a freshly bandaged stump where his right forearm had been. She recognized him from the ward. He'd arrived last night and had been discharged this evening. His face was still gray with pain, his eyes still hollowed and stunned by the shock of battle.

The younger, not much more than a boy, perhaps fourteen, was barefoot and unwashed. The smooth adolescent flesh that might have softened his features had been burned away by the life he'd led to leave razor cheekbones and an aquiline nose. His eyes were dark and wild, as if he could scarce contain the energies locked within him. He carried a cuirass and helmet slung across the blade of a sheathed sword, which she assumed belonged to the other. Unlike his companion, who'd dropped his eyes when she looked at him, he looked at her with a brazen curiosity. She wondered, in her heightened state of mind, what it was that he saw.

Amparo introduced the armless man as Tomaso. He backed away, dipping
his head in respect. The younger, taller youth made a poor job of stifling a grin of delight.

"This is Orlandu," said Amparo.

Orlandu gave an elaborate bow and she wondered if he were not mocking her. "Orlandu di Borgo," he said. With glee he added, "At your service, Madame."

His teeth were bright in his dirty, sunburned face. Carla stifled a smile of her own. "You speak French," she said.

He shrugged. "French, Italian, Spanish. All. Spanish, very good. Very good. From the harbor, the knights, the voyagers." He pointed a finger at his ear, then his eye. "I listen, I watch. Some Arabic too, from the slaves.
Assalaamu alaykum
. This means 'Peace be upon you.'"