WHEN WE REACHED VENICE, BERTIE WAS MORE like a hound than a human. He ran to and fro, put his nose into this and that, yelped with excitement; it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d lifted a leg.
“Come on!” I said.
“Which way?”
“I don’t know. Let’s head north.”
“Why?”
“Because then we can head south later on, and find our way back to the boat.”
“You’re always working things out,” Bertie said.
But walking north in Venice isn’t as easy as all that. The streets and passages keep swerving and turning to avoid all the canals that lace the city the way our bodies are tangled with veins and arteries. Some come to dead ends, some cross stone bridges, and some are so narrow, people can reach out from second—and third-story windows on either side and touch fingertips. In them, it’s gloomy and impossible to tell whether one is heading north or east or west or even back south again.
After a while, though, Bertie and I came to a campo—a kind of square space surrounded by buildings—where there’s a market. In the back streets, it’s so quiet you can hear the echoes of voices and footsteps, the swishing of water. But the campo was noisy and packed with people.
One stall was like a small open-sided tent made of rugs decorated with crimson-and-sepia dragons and turquoise peacocks, and a phoenix perched above swirling orange flames, and all kinds of other beasts. Three dark-skinned traders were sitting on stools inside it.
Bertie and I were staring at this stall when someone clamped his hand on my right shoulder.
When I turned round, I found myself looking up into the tanned face of Silvano, the Master Shipwright.
“Artù?” he said. “Yes. You Artù.”
“Yes. I am.”
“Where is Lord Stephen?”
“Not here,” I said nervously.
“Ah!” said Silvano. “Money! He get money?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Soon. Very soon.”
“Who he?” the shipwright asked.
“Bertie,” I said. “Bertrand de Sully. Milon de Provins’s squire.”
“How old?”
“Thirteen,” said Bertie.
“Not!” said Silvano, laughing. “Nine-thirteen. Ten-thirteen.”
Bertie scowled. “I said thirteen,” he repeated.
“This stall,” I said. “It’s wonderful.”
“Si!” said Silvano. “Saracen carpets.”
“Saracens!” squeaked Bertie. “You mean…like we’re going to fight?”
Silvano shook his head. “Traders! Not fighting men.”
The three traders stood up and stepped out of the stall. Hot as it was, they were all wearing gowns that came down to their wrists and ankles, and their faces were even darker than the darkest Venetians’. Their watchful eyes reminded me of the gentle trader I talked to in Coucy. But they weren’t wearing skullcaps, and the woman’s hair was covered with a kind of wimple.
“But they’re Saracens,” said Bertie.
“Man and wifeman and brother,” said the shipwright. “Old friends! Saracens trade in Venice with no trouble.…”
“And in Champagne,” I added.
“I didn’t know that,” said Bertie.
“And Venetians trade in Damascus,” Silvano added. “In Aleppo and Amman. We pay tax for full security. Venetians trade much in Egypt. Very important.” Then he stepped forward and greeted the traders—giving each man a handclasp, and bowing slightly to the woman.
“They ask where you come from,” the shipwright said.
“England,” I said.
“L’Inghilterra,” Silvano translated, and one of the traders clutched his neck, and all four of them laughed.
“He says he has seen a map,” the shipwright said. “A map of your country across the Sea of Darkness, and it looks like an ostrich’s head.”
“What’s an ostrich?” Bertie and I asked at the same time.
The Saracen woman put her hand over her mouth in surprise; then she pointed to an absurd-looking bird decorating one of the rugs, and the four of them laughed again.
I’d never seen a map of England. I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m French and English,” Bertie announced. “Tell them that.” Hearing this, the traders laughed again and pointed out an animal on another rug that was half-bird and half-beast.
“They say your skin is so white, it is almost blue,” Silvano told Bertie.
“It’s not,” Bertie protested. “It’s they who look strange, not us.”
“Where do they come from,” I asked, “and what are they selling?”
“Alexandria,” replied the shipwright. And then, seeing my blank face, “Egypt! They sell many. Pepper and ginger, cinnamon and mace. Sponges. Perfumes.” Silvano smiled. “Perfumes for my daughter! They sell gold.”
“Gold!” exclaimed Bertie. “Let’s see.”
“Traders say they tell your fortune,” Silvano told me.
“How?”
“Your hand.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I mean, I want to find out for myself.”
“I will!” said Bertie, sticking out his right hand. “Tell mine!”
One of the traders held Bertie’s little wrist. He stared at his palm, and suddenly I was aware of his silence, the quiet gaze of the others, and the hubbub of the market around us.
“What does it say?” asked Bertie.
“Nothing,” Silvano said. “He says it tells nothing.”
“What do you mean—nothing? Why won’t he tell me?”
The Saracen shrugged.
“Does it say I’ll die?”
“We all die,” Silvano replied.
“I mean…,” Bertie began, but then he faltered. “You know what I mean.”
The trader looked levelly at Bertie, but then his expression softened, and for a moment I thought he was going to embrace him. But instead he said something very quietly.
“Bertie,” Silvano said, “he says he can tell you nothing you do not know yourself.”
In one corner of the campo, someone began to bang a drum. Thump. Double-thump. Thump. Double-thump.
Then I saw four monks, carrying a roughly hewn cross, and a fifth swinging an incense burner; whenever they paused, the stallholders rushed forward to kiss the cross, and the monks were advancing towards us.
“Baciate! Baciate il crocifisso! Kiss the cross.”
The traders screwed up their faces, and so did I, at the stink of the incense; the people around us yelled, and the traders yelled back at them.
“They say incense is made from excrement,” the shipwright told us. “Excrement of Patriarch in Constantinople, and excrement of other Christian priests. All Saracens know that!”
“They can’t say that!” I exclaimed. “Why do you let them?”
But after yelling and jeering at the Saracen traders, the crowd moved on, following the priests, shouting, “Baciate! Baciate il crocifisso!” The traders shrugged, then grinned at the shipwright.
“Each day!” Silvano told us. “They say same thing happen each day. Christians never learn.”
“Why should they think they’re superior?” I protested. “They worship a false prophet.”
Silvano smiled and put his large hand on my right shoulder again. “For traders,” he said, “trade is most important.”
“But that’s wrong,” said Bertie.
One of the traders stepped forward and gave me a handclasp.
“He says the prophet Muhammad…he says was a trader,” Silvano told me. “Oversea.”
And when I looked into the trader’s dark eyes, I saw they were dancing.
“He says, glory to God! May the Lord of the Universe protect you both,” the shipwright said.
On our way back, I asked Bertie about his palm, and why he was afraid.
“I’m not afraid.”
“No, but…you asked about dying.”
Bertie reached over the side of the barge and trailed his hand in the water.
“Everyone’s afraid of dying,” I said. “I am.”
Bertie rinsed his hand; he purified it. “This is the third time my fortune has been told,” he said in a flat voice. “The first man said I would never live to grow old. The woman at Soissons Fair told me I would die before I was a man.”