Well in Time (16 page)

Yet my heart was not content, for when I embarked on my pilgrimage I did so with one prayer in my heart and this was it: that somewhere in my wanderings I might meet and study with a living saint so steeped in the Holy Spirit that he would be able to ignite my slumbering spirit, as well.

For you see, I had in my country a wife and three children, whom I loved beyond all things. In the year before my journey began, each of these beloved ones was carried away into death. Two of my children fell ill with fever and died. My oldest child, a son, fell from a cliff while hunting and was shattered like an egg.

At last, there was only my wife and me and she was with child. Crushed as my heart was, I had hopes that we might begin again to build our family. The grief of our losses, however, caused complications with her pregnancy. She began to deliver early and in so doing lost great quantities of blood. She died, taking our unborn child with her.

So great was my grief that I went quite mad. I raved against the God whom I had worshipped from my childhood and I questioned His mercy and justice. At last, after days when I was too morose to attend to affairs of state or even to feed myself, I reached a decision. I would go on pilgrimage and seek through all the world for one who, through their great saintliness, would answer for me this one terrible and burning question:
Why?

I left my brother to govern the country in my stead, and with the sixty brave souls I have already mentioned, I set out. So great was my bitterness that I watched my companions drop along the way without surprise. I considered myself accursed, so that everyone around me would sicken and die. My wish was that I, too, might pass into death and so leave my troubles behind me but this fate was not to be mine.

§

The time in Constantinople healed my body and brought back to my fevered mind an interest in things of this world but it did nothing to heal my soul. Still I longed, and with growing ardor, for one whose touch or look would be a balm to me. I sought the impossible, for in my madness, I came to believe that only the Savior Himself could heal me.

So after many months as the guest of Alexius, I took my leave and embarked upon a ship bound for Rome, leaving behind me my two remaining subjects, who were happily adapted to their new city. In Rome, I gained audience with Pope Innocent III and while I found him a stern man and an able administrator, I knew immediately that he had nothing that would soothe my wounded spirit. He gave me his blessing when I departed the Vatican that day, but I left its gates as barren as when I entered.

I did not tarry in the city of Rome, for after Constantinople it was squalid and hostile with political strivings. I once again embarked, this time on a boat bound for your country, France.

After a long sea voyage, I passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and up the Atlantic coast to an obscure port in Normandy, from whence I made my way to the great Abbey of Mont St-Michel. There I was received kindly but the Benedictine fathers had nothing that would feed my growing spiritual hunger. So I soon traveled on to Paris, where I beheld the great Cathédrale de Notre Dame under construction and prayed before the relics of Sainte Geneviève, the patron saint of that fair city.

All the while I traveled, I repeated my prayer again and again: to be led by the Goodness of God to a great saint, with whom in personal conversation I might discuss the sad events of my life, and through whose pure emission of Divine energies I might be instantly and completely healed in my soul. Perhaps you will think this was an heretical desire. For does not the church claim for itself the right to forgive sins and to intercede in our behalf with the Savior? Perhaps you believe that I was asking too much of God or the wrong thing. But as I traveled, I grew in the conviction that, sooner or later, my faith would be rewarded, and I would meet one of those holy ones of whom Jesus said,
Ye are as gods. All that I do, you can do and more
.

Departing Paris, I turned southward, intending to go to Spain to the shrine of Saint James at Compostela. I booked passage on a boat heading down the Rhone River and there, a strange thing happened.

§

We had stopped one day, somewhere in the heart of your fair country at a little village, to take on grain and to purchase perishables for our evening meal. As I wandered through the streets of this nameless place, an old woman approached me. Her hair was long and wild and gray. She had no teeth and her clothing was an exotic mixture of gay colors and tattered rags.

She was, it seems, a gypsy, that being an ancient race called Romany, whose origins are so distant in antiquity that no one remembers them. These people, as you may know, are nomadic and make their way through the countryside of all Europe, pillaging chicken flocks, mending pots and telling fortunes. And this is exactly what this old dame offered to do for me.

Having nothing better to while away an afternoon in a small and sleepy village, I agreed. She sat me down on a wall beneath a shady apple tree and took my black hand into her grimed and wrinkled one. Long she gazed upon my palm, making grunts and wheezes as she did so. She had the animated expression of a monkey I used to keep near me at my court, and I was becoming increasingly amused by her expressive brow and was about to burst into laughter, when she fixed me with a stare as burning as coals themselves and began to speak.

“I see,” she said, “that you have a strange and terrible destiny. You are one imposed by fate to lose everything, that you may find something of still greater value. The first half of your life has been spent in loss and grief and terrible suffering. You have wandered long and far.”

She had now my full attention, as you may well imagine. For here, it seemed, was the first person on my journey who understood part or perhaps all of what I had suffered, and that which I was seeking. No longer amusing myself at her expense, I begged her to continue.

She regarded my palm another long while. Finally, she said with great compassion in her voice, “That which you seek is not here, but you are drawing closer. You must continue southward three days more, to the
Bouches-du-Rhone
. There, in the swamps of the
Camargue
, you will find a clue that will lead you to your goal. I can say no more.”

With that, she dropped my hand and turned to depart. I hastened beside her, offering her a large sum of money, for I felt in my heart that she had seen me truly and guided me well. But this old woman, who had spent her life, I was sure, bereft of all material comforts and begging and scratching for the meagerest living, refused my coins.

“No, my son,” she said, piercing me again with her burning eyes, “one never accepts payment from those who are involved in their true destiny. Only from
les perdues—
the lost ones.” And with that, she turned firmly from me and stumped away down the street.

You may be sure that I passed the next three days on the boat in a fever of anticipation. The long stops at obscure villages seemed now a torment, and we could never break our night’s mooring early enough in the morning to satisfy my urgency.

On the third day, we arrived at the river town of Arles, where my boat had achieved her destination. I questioned the captain closely before I disembarked. “Are there swamps near at hand?” I asked him.

“
Mais oc!”
he answered immediately, as if it were the most self-evident thing in the world. Pointing down the river he said, “You may find a boat of some local fisherman and go down river, clear to Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. There, you will find swamps, to be sure.”

The charms of this famous town of Arles, of ancient and fascinating Roman manufacture, were completely lost on me. Even though I could see the Roman coliseum rising on the hill above the stone quays, I was not tempted to investigate the sights. My one and only objective was to locate a boat going down river to the swamps.

To this end, I went to take my breakfast in an inn nearby the quay, hoping to find there some local folk who could guide me. My luck was good, for as I was relishing my meat, I chanced to overhear a man saying he was leaving momentarily for Les-Saintes-Maries. Immediately, I accosted him and begged passage on his boat, and as I offered him a good price, he was only too happy to oblige.

Before the morning was half passed, I was seated in the prow of a small fishing boat as it made good progress down toward the sea. The river was broad and deep, the color of a turtle’s carapace. The wind was coming at our backs and the captain raised a small sail, so that we seemed to fly over the smooth waters.

As we went along, I asked this good man some questions about our destination. In answer, he commenced a tale, which was so strange and wondrous that I will tell it to you now, in its entirety.

§

We are a blessed people, began this worthy man, for we have received, in times long past, the holy presence of the very companions of the Christ. This was seven years after the murder of our dear Lord and Savior upon the Cross.

The Romans in Jerusalem would harry and persecute His followers still. Finally, those closest to Him were brought before Pilate, as was Our Lord before them. The great man was tormented by his role in the murder of the Lord, and could not bring himself to pronounce the death sentence upon these good people. So to relieve his conscience, he decreed that they were to be set adrift in an open boat, with no rudder and no sails. This was as good as a death sentence, mind you, but Pilate could flatter himself, you see, with the lie that he was actually saving their lives. But in this, as you will see, the hand of Our Lord was active.

So it came to pass that five people were placed in a boat on the shore of the sea: Mary Salome, who was the aunt of Our Dear Lord; Mary Jacob, the wife of His uncle; Mary Magdalene and her sister, Saint Martha; and Joseph of Arimathea, he who supplied the sepulcher for our Blessed Savior. When they were all loaded aboard, with no provisions even for the sake of appearances, they were cut adrift and the out-going tide caught them and bore them away.

Many there were who stood upon the shore and wept, all followers of Our Lord who grieved to see their saints thus misused, but who were unable to help their cause. Among them was a servant girl named Sarah, whose wailing rose above all others, for she had great love of her mistress, Martha.

Now, they be some who say it different, mind you. The gypsy folk call this Sarah
Sarah-la-Kali
, meaning Sara the Black, and they say she was as black as you yourself, sir. And then they be those—who whisper it, to be sure—who say this Sarah was the daughter of Mary Magdalene, and that the father of this Sarah was Our Lord Himself!”

The fisherman stopped to cross himself conspicuously, before continuing.

Now, as the boat was cut loose and began to move from the shore, this Sarah broke from the others, ran to the quay and without hesitation threw herself into the waves. She floundered her way toward the boat and upon reaching it—more by agency of the waves than by her skill as a swimmer, I’ll wager—she begged to be pulled on board.

All the passengers decreed she should turn back, for they knew their voyage was a dark-fated one, doomed beyond doubt to thirst, privation and then capsizing in the first rough sea, their boat being oarless and rudderless as it was.

But the girl was half-drowned already. She swore that she would give up all struggle and sink like a stone, rather than return to shore.

Finally, her will won her what she desired. One of the Marys threw her coat upon the water, and it magically turned into a raft, sir, which buoyed the girl up until she could be pulled aboard by the others.

In normal course of events, a boat without rudder, oars, or sails would be swept out into the open sea, there to capsize, when the winds grew strong over the open waters and the waves were high. You must see, however, that this was no ordinary vessel, for these passengers were not regular persons but those especially beloved of Our Lord. And so it happened that the sea remained calm and a wind was always at their back, pushing them along.

After many a day, God in His Mercy brought these poor outcasts to rest on this very coast, at the very place to which we are journeying now, named after the three Saints Mary, come from the sea. And each as hale and hearty as if naught had been amiss with their voyage.

Mary Salome, Mary Jacob, and this black Sarah, too, founded a church on the very spot where they came ashore, on the site of an ancient pagan temple, they say. Martha went off to slay a dragon in Tarascon. And Mary Magdalene straight away went up into the hills to live all by herself in a cave. They say each day she was raised to the cliff tops to pray by a band of angels. And Joseph went over the sea to Britain, carrying with him the Holy Grail.

It is a curious tale, is it not? And strange it is that, as the church is dedicated to the Marys, it is really Saint Sarah who reigns there. When we come there, you will find a statue of her under the altar, in the crypt. She is dressed in fancy garments brought by the pilgrims, but her face, sir, is completely black, because of which they call her “The Egyptian
.”
It is a face of such beauty that I believe, sir, you will be moved by her, in spite of yourself.

§

Thus saying, he ended his tale. My pulse pounded, for I felt assured that he had given me the clue of which the gypsy had spoken. I now was determined to proceed directly to the crypt in Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.

By now, the main channel of the Rhone had narrowed, with side channels branching off. The fisherman explained that we had reached the estuary, where the great river sank into a maze of marshes and winding waterways, before finally flowing into the sea.

He began to turn his boat skillfully this way and that, maneuvering through the mazy channels, where any but the most experienced person would speedily have become irrevocably lost. He told me that many there were who had come this way to their peril, for the swamps were filled with quicksand bogs into which, once fallen, one would never again emerge.