DO YOU KNOW ABOUT SAINT PLACID?” LORD STEPHEN asked.
Turold shook his head and grunted.
“What about Maurus?”
“No, sir.”
“Novices. Both of them. When he was seven, Placid almost drowned in a lake, but Maurus walked on the water without realizing it, and saved him.”
Turold crossed himself.
“For martyrdom,” Lord Stephen added grimly. “Sicilian pirates cooked him in a pot.”
“They think the English all have tails,” I told Turold.
Lord Stephen and Turold and I watched as our oarsmen eased us into the port of Pirano, just southwest of the city of Trieste. I’m going to be able to disembark Bonamy tomorrow and exercise him here.
“Saint Placid and Saint Maurus share the same day—the fifth of October—the day the Violetta sank,” Lord Stephen said. “Our saints are so untrustworthy. Sometimes they hear our cries and help us, sometimes their ears are stopped with wax.”
“Like Sir Lancelot,” I said.
“Who?” Lord Stephen asked.
“This whole ship’s sopping,” Turold observed. “It’s as well your armor is well wrapped.”
“As well for you,” Lord Stephen said tersely.
Lord Stephen isn’t often tetchy or downcast, and I could tell he must be worried. I don’t think it’s anything to do with me. Maybe it’s Simona, alone now and far from home. Or maybe he started thinking of Holt and Lady Judith, and Welsh raiders. But he doesn’t usually worry over things he can do nothing about.
There’s a long deepwater jetty at Pirano, so we didn’t have to use the skiffs. When I stepped ashore, it took me some time to find my land legs. I tottered around like a two-year-old, and felt light-headed.
My father couldn’t stay on his feet at all. He just plumped down on the quay in everyone’s way. He protested he had bone disease, but for all that he looked cherub-cheeked and kept crowing and telling everyone today is his sixty-eighth birthday. Now the crusade is actually underway, he has somehow come into his true kingdom.
He’s all impulse and appetite and argument and action.
Many crusaders whooped as they came ashore. I could hear some of the Norman foot soldiers shouting, “Glory to God! There is no God but God. Lord of the Universe!”
That sounded strange because those are the same words the Saracen traders used.
Bertie and I followed three of them as they lurched up the street. At the far end, it widened and there were a number of stalls. One was decorated with patterned rugs and burned orange hangings. It was a Saracen stall.
The Normans swore and made coarse jokes, then they rushed at it and started kicking at the supports.
The stall collapsed and when two grey-haired men struggled out from under the hangings, the foot soldiers leaped forward. They punched the Saracens’ noses.
“No!” I yelled. “Don’t! They’re traders!”
The Normans took no notice at all. They kicked them in the testicles.
“Don’t!” I cried. “Leave them alone!”
One man rounded on me. “What’s wrong with you?” he snarled. “You want a kicking too?”
“You can’t say that,” Bertie protested. “He’s a knight!”
After this the three Normans cursed and spat on the groveling traders, and then they lurched on up the street.
I bent down and took one of the traders’ arms. He was gasping and blowing bubbles of blood. But then some of the other traders left their stalls and began to shout angrily at Bertie and me. One woman came right up to me and screamed. She pushed me.
“They don’t understand,” I said.
“And you can’t explain,” Bertie replied. “Come on!”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me away, and we slowly walked back down the street.
Is this how things are going to be? Dishonorable and lawless and vile? We’ve come to fight the Saracens, army against army, not to attack traders who can’t defend themselves. They were just old men.
On the quay, men were talking about the Violetta, and who was to blame. One knight from Champagne said it was the caulkers, and too little goat hair had been mixed with the pitch; and another man thought there wasn’t enough ballast, and the huge siege engines made the boat top-heavy; a third man said she was holed on a reef, and another told us there’s a huge Adriatic sea-beast and this isn’t the first time it has seized a ship in its jaws.
“It’s because a girl was aboard,” Serle told us. “That’s what all our oarsmen think.”
“Well, Arthur,” said my father, “at least you threw away that blasted flower. Otherwise, we’d be at the bottom too.”
Some crusaders, the French especially, think we took a great risk in rescuing people from the water. They say that when the sea’s hungry she’s hungry, and if you rescue someone, she’ll drown you instead. You or someone else. The sea’s entitled, and we’re her lawful prey.
When we were on our own, I asked Lord Stephen whether he believed this.
Lord Stephen blinked. “It didn’t seem to bother our oarsmen,” he said. “And a good many other boats tried to pick up survivors. I don’t know. I don’t think I could leave people to drown, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Neither could I,” I said.
“So if there is a risk, it’s a risk worth running.”
“Yes, sir.”
After this, Lord Stephen told me about the Seven Whistlers.
“Except there are six,” he said. “They’re lapwings. Six spirits of drowned men whistling and searching for the seventh. And long may they search!”
“Why, sir?”
Lord Stephen laced his fingers over his stomach. “Because when they find him, this world of ours will end.”
Our horse carrier didn’t dock until it was almost dark, so I won’t be able to see Bonamy until tomorrow. I did want to write about a very unpleasant rumor I heard, but I’m running out of ink, and it’s too late to mix more. Anyhow, everyone else aboard is already asleep, and I keep yawning.