STRANGE TONGUES
When Rob asked Charbonneau where he had learned to throw a knife, the old Frenchman said he had been taught by the pirates of his youth. “It was a handy skill to have while fighting the damned Danish and seizing their ships.” He hesitated. “And while fighting the damned English and seizing their ships,” he said slyly. By that time they weren’t bothered by the old national rivalries and neither had any doubts left about his companion’s worthiness. They grinned at one another.
“Will you show me?”
“If you’ll teach me to juggle,” Charbonneau said, and Rob agreed eagerly. The bargain was one-sided, for it was too late in life for Charbonneau to master a new and difficult dexterity, and in the little time they had left together he learned only to pop two balls, although he derived much pleasure from tossing and catching them.
Rob had the advantage of youth, and years of juggling had given him strong and wiry wrists, as well as a sharp eye and balance and timing.
“It takes a special knife. Your dagger has a fine blade which would soon be snapped if you started throwing it, or the hilt would be ruined, for the hilt is the center of an ordinary dagger’s weight and balance. A throwing knife is weighted in the blade, so that a quick snap of the wrist sends it easily on its way point first.”
Rob quickly learned how to throw Charbonneau’s knife so it presented its sharp blade first. It was harder to become skilled at hitting targets where he aimed, but he was accustomed to the discipline of practice and threw the knife at a mark on a broad tree whenever he had a chance.
They kept to the Roman roads, which were crowded with a polyglot mixture of people. A French cardinal’s party once forced them off the road. The prelate rode past surrounded by two hundred mounted troops and a hundred and fifty servants, and wearing scarlet shoes and hat and a gray cope over a once-white chasuble made darker than the cope by the dust of the road. Pilgrims moved in the general direction of Jerusalem singly or in small or large groups; sometimes they were led or lectured by palmers, religious votaries who signaled that they had accomplished sacred travel by wearing two crossed palm leaves picked in the Holy Land. Bands of armored knights galloped by with shouts and war cries, often drunk, usually pugnacious and always hungry for glory, loot, and deviltry. Some of the religious zealots wore hair shirts and crawled toward Palestine on bloody hands and knees to fulfill vows made to God or a saint. Exhausted and defenseless, they were easy prey. Criminals abounded on the highways, and law enforcement by officials was perfunctory at best; when a thief or highwayman was caught in the act he was executed on the spot by the travelers themselves, without trial.
Rob kept his weapons loose and ready, half expecting the man with the missing ear to lead a pack of riders down on them for vengeance. His size, the broken nose, and the striped facial wounds combined to make him appear formidable, but he realized with amusement that his best protection was the frail-looking old man he had hired because of his knowledge of English.
They bought provision in Augsburg, a bustling trade center founded by the Roman emperor Augustus in 12 B.C. Augsburg was a center of transactions between Germany and Italy, crowded with people and busy with its preoccupation, which was commerce. Charbonneau pointed out Italian merchants, conspicuous in shoes of expensive fabric which rose to curling points at the toes. For some time Rob had seen Jews in increasing number, but in Augsburg’s markets he noticed more of them than ever, instantly identifiable in their black caftans and narrow-brim, bell-shaped leather hats.
Rob put on an entertainment in Augsburg but didn’t sell as much Specific as he had previously, perhaps because Charbonneau translated with less zest when forced to use the guttural language of the Franks.
It didn’t matter, for his purse was fat; at any rate, ten days later when they reached Salzburg, Charbonneau told him that the entertainment in that town would be their final one together.
“In three days’ time we come to the Danube River, and there I leave you and turn back to France.”
Rob nodded.
“I’m of no further use to you. Beyond the Danube is Bohemia, where the people speak a language strange to me.”
“You’re welcome to come with me, whether or not you translate.”
But Charbonneau smiled and shook his head. “Time for me to go home, this time to stay.”
At an inn that night they bought a farewell feast of the food of the land: smoked meat stewed with lard, pickled cabbage, and flour. They didn’t like it and got mildly drunk on heavy red wine. He paid off the old man handsomely.
Charbonneau had a last, sobering piece of advice. “A dangerous countryside lies ahead of you. It’s said that in Bohemia one can’t tell the difference between wild bandits and the hirelings of the local lords. In order to pass through such a land unharmed, you must have the company of others.”
Rob promised he would seek to join a strong group.
When they saw the Danube it was a more muscular river than he had expected, fast-flowing and with the menacing oily surface that he knew denoted deep and dangerous water. Charbonneau stayed a day longer than promised, insisting on riding downstream with him to the wild and halfsettled village of Linz, where a large log-raft ferry took passengers and freight across a quiet stretch of the wide waterway.
“Well,” the Frenchman said.
“Perhaps one day we’ll see each other again.”
“I don’t think so,” Charbonneau said.
They embraced.
“Live forever, Rob J. Cole.”
“Live forever, Louis Charbonneau.”
He got down from the wagon and went to arrange his passage as the old man rode away, leading the bony brown horse. The ferryman was a sullen hulk with a bad cold who kept removing the snot from his upper lip with his tongue. The matter of the fare was difficult because Rob didn’t have the Bohemian language, and in the end he felt he had been overcharged. When he returned to the wagon after hard sign-language bargaining, Charbonneau had already ridden out of sight.
On his third day of moving into Bohemia he met up with five fat and ruddy Germans and tried to convey the idea that he wanted to travel with them. His manner was polite; he offered gold and indicated he’d be willing to cook and do other camp chores, but there wasn’t a smile from any of them, only hands on the hilts of five swords.
“Fucks,” he said finally, and turned away. But he couldn’t blame them, for their party already had some strength and he was unknown, a danger.
Horse drew him from the mountains into a great saucer-shaped plateau ringed by green hills. There were cultivated fields of gray earth in which men and women toiled over wheat, barley, rye, and beets, but most of it was mixed forest. In the night, not far away, he heard the howling of wolves. He kept a fire burning although it wasn’t cold, and Mistress Buffington mewed at the wild animal sounds, sleeping with the spiny ridge of her back hard against him.
He had depended on Charbonneau for many things, but he found that not the least of these had been companionship. Now he drove down the Roman road and knew the meaning of the word alone, for he couldn’t speak to any of the people he met.
A week after he and Charbonneau had parted, one morning he came upon the stripped and mutilated body of a man hanging from a tree by the side of the road. The hanged man was slight and ferret-faced and was missing his left ear.
Rob regretted that he wasn’t able to inform Charbonneau that others had caught up with their third highwayman.