THE BALKANS
Now Kerl Fritta came into his own and for the first time Rob looked at him with admiration, for the caravan leader seemed to be everywhere, helping with wagon breakdowns, urging and exhorting people the way a good drover encourages dumb beasts. The way was stony. On October first they lost half a day while men of the caravan were impressed to remove rocks that had fallen across the trail. Accidents happened frequently now and Rob set two broken arms in the space of a week. A Norman merchant’s horse bolted and his wagon overturned on him, smashing his leg. He had to be carried on a litter slung between two horses until they came to a farmhouse whose occupants agreed to nurse him. They left the injured man there, Rob devoutly hoping that the farmer didn’t murder him for his belongings as soon as the caravan was out of sight.
“We’ve passed beyond the land of the Magyar and are now in Bulgaria,” Meir told him one morning.
It mattered little, since the hostile nature of the rocks was unchanged and the wind continued to batter them on the high places. As the weather grew raw the people of the caravan began to wear a variety of outer garments, most of them warmer than they were fashionable, until they were a strange-looking collection of ragged and padded creatures.
On a sunless morning, the pack mule Gershom ben Shemuel was leading behind his horse stumbled and fell, front limbs splayed painfully until the left one snapped audibly under the considerable weight of the pack on the animal’s back. The doomed mule screamed in agony like a human being.
“Help him!” Rob called, and Meir ben Asher drew a long knife and helped him in the only way possible, by slitting the quivering throat.
They began at once to unpack the bundle that was on the dead mule. When they came to the narrow leather bag Gershom and Judah had to lift it off together, and an argument ensued in their own language. The remaining pack mule already bore one of the heavy leather bags and Rob was able to see that Gershom was protesting, with justification, that the second bag would quickly overtax the animal.
In the stalled caravan to their rear there were outraged shouts from those who didn’t countenance falling behind the main body.
Rob ran back to the Jews. “Throw the bag into my wagon.”
Meir hesitated, then he shook his head. “No.”
“Then go to hell,” Rob said roughly, enraged at the implied lack of trust.
Meir said something and Simon ran after him. “They’ll lash the pack onto my horse. May I ride in the wagon? Only until we’re able to buy another mule.”
Rob motioned him onto the seat and climbed up himself. He drove for a long time in silence, for he wasn’t in a mood for Persian lessons.
“You don’t understand,” Simon said. “Meir must keep the bags with him. It isn’t his money. Some belongs to the family and most is owed to investors. The money is his responsibility.”
The words made him feel better. But it continued to be a bad day. The way was hard and the presence of a second person in the wagon increased Horse’s labor so that she was visibly fatigued when dusk caught them on a mountaintop and they were required to make camp.
Before he or Simon could eat their supper they had to go to see patients. The wind was so strong it forced them behind Kerl Fritta’s wagon. Only a handful of people were there to see him, and to his surprise, and Simon’s, among them was Gershom ben Shemuel. The tough, chunky Jew lifted his caftan and dropped his trousers and Rob saw an ugly purple boil on the right cheek of his arse.
“Tell him to bend over.”
Gershom grunted as the point of Rob’s scalpel bit, making yellow pus spurt, and he groaned and cursed in his own language as Rob squeezed the boil until all the putrescence was gone and only bright blood appeared.
“He won’t be able to sit a saddle. Not for several days.”
“He must,” Simon said. “We can’t leave Gershom.”
Rob sighed. The Jews were proving to be a trial today. “You can take his horse and he’ll ride in the back of my wagon.”
Simon nodded.
The smiling Frankish drover was next. This time new tiny buboes covered his groin. The lumps in his armpits and behind his knees were larger and more tender than they had been, and when Rob asked, the big Frank said they had begun to pain him.
He took the drover’s hand into his own. “Tell him he’s going to die.”
Simon glared. “Be damned,” he said.
“Tell him I say he’s going to die.”
Simon swallowed and began to speak softly in German. Rob watched the smile dwindle from the big, stupid face, then the Frank pulled his hands from Rob’s grasp and raised the right one, turning it into a fist the size of a small ham. He spoke in a growl.
“Says you’re a fucking liar,” Simon said.
Rob stood and waited, his eyes meeting the drover’s, and finally the man spat at his feet and shambled away.
Rob sold spirits to two men with ragged coughs and then treated a whimpering Magyar with a disjointed thumb—he had caught it in the saddle girth and his horse had moved.
Then he left Simon, wanting to escape this place and these people. The caravan was spread out; everyone had sought a large boulder to camp behind, as protection from the wind. He walked beyond the final wagon and saw Mary Cullen standing on a rock above the trail.
She was unearthly. She stood holding open her heavy sheepskin coat with both arms spread wide, her head back and her eyes closed as if she were being purified by the full wash of the wind that swept against her with all the strength of water in full flow. The coat billowed and flapped. Her black gown was plastered against her long body, outlining heavy breasts and rich nipples, a soft roundness of belly and a wide navel, a sweet cleft joining strong thighs. He felt a strange warm tenderness that surely was part of a spell, for she looked like a witch. Her long hair streamed behind her, playing like writhing red fire.
He couldn’t tolerate the thought of her opening her eyes and seeing him watching her, and he turned and walked away.
At his own wagon he gloomily contemplated the fact that its interior was too fully packed to carry Gershom lying on his stomach. The only way to supply the needed space was to abandon the bank. He carried out the three sections and stared at them, remembering the countless times he and Barber had stood on the little stage and entertained their audience. Then he shrugged and, picking up a large rock, smashed the bank into firewood. There were coals in the firepot and he coaxed a fire to life in the lee of the wagon. In the growing darkness he sat and fed the pieces of the bank to the flames.
It was unlikely that the name Anne Mary would have been changed to Mary Margaret. And a baby’s brown hair, even though it had reddish tints, wouldn’t have grown into such an auburn magnificence, he told himself as Mistress Buffington came and mewed and lay next to him close to the fire and out of the wind.
Midmorning on October twenty-second, hard white grains filled the air, flying before the wind and stinging when they struck bare skin.
“Early for this shit,” Rob said morosely to Simon, who was back in the wagon seat, Gershom having toughened his cheek and returned to his horse.
“Not for the Balkans,” Simon said.
They were into loftier and more rugged steeps, mostly forested with beech, oak, and pine, but with entire slopes as bare and rocky as though an angry deity had wiped away part of the mountain. There were tiny lakes made by high waterfalls that plummeted into deep gorges.
Ahead of him, Cullen father and Cullen daughter were twin figures in their long sheepskin coats and hats, indistinguishable save that he was able to watch the bulky figure on the black horse and know it was Mary.
The snow didn’t accumulate and the travelers struggled against it and made headway, but not fast enough for Kerl Fritta, who raged up and down the line of march, urging greater speed.
“Something has put fear of Christ in Fritta,” Rob said.
Simon gave him the quick, guarded glance Rob had noted among the Jews whenever he mentioned Jesus. “He must get us to the town of Gabrovo before the heavy snows. The way through these mountains is the great pass called the Balkan Gate, but it’s already closed. The caravan will winter in Gabrovo, close to the entrance to the gate. In that town there are inns and houses which take in travelers. No other town near the pass is large enough to harbor a caravan as large as this one.”
Rob nodded, able to see advantages. “I can study my Persian all winter.”
“You won’t have the book,” Simon said. “We shan’t stay in Gabrovo with the caravan. We go to the town of Tryavna, a short distance away, where there are Jews.”
“But I must have the book. And I need your lessons!”
Simon shrugged.
That evening, after he had tended to Horse, Rob went to the Jews’ camp and found them examining some special cleated horseshoes. Meir handed one to Rob. “You should have a set made for your mare. They keep the animal from slipping on snow and ice.”
“Can I not come to Tryavna?”
Meir and Simon exchanged a glance; it was apparent they had discussed him. “It’s not in my power to grant you the hospitality of Tryavna.”
“Who has such power?”
“The Jews there are led by a great sage, the rabbenu Shlomo ben Eliahu.”
“A scholar. In our language rabbenu means ‘our teacher’ and is a term of the highest honor.”
“This Shlomo, this sage. Is he a haughty man, cold to strangers? Stiff and unapproachable?”
Meir smiled and shook his head.
“Then may I not go to him and ask to be allowed to stay near your book and Simon’s lessons?”
Meir looked at Rob and didn’t pretend to be happy with the question. He was silent for a long moment, but when it was clear that Rob was prepared to wait stubbornly for a reply, he sighed and shook his head. “We will take you to the rabbenu,” he said.