SIMONA AND I BOTH HAVE TO DO THE SAME THING: WE have to bring home the news about our fathers. She has to tell her mother that Silvano was drowned when the Violetta sank—the ship he named after her. I have to tell Lady Alice about Sir William, and how he attacked Lord Stephen.
At least Simona loved her father and he loved her.
“What about Lady Alice?” Simona asked me. “Will she be sad?”
“Sir William beat her.”
Simona shrugged. “My father beat my mother,” she said.
“And he was away half the time, with Lady Cécile. So she had to manage two manors, and do the accounts, and it made her weep. He was twice as old as she was. But maybe…maybe she will miss him.”
“First yes, then no,” Simona said.
When we sailed in through the Porto early yesterday morning, the water became less rough. Gently it rocked us, and the oarsmen cheered. Each man raised one hand from his oar and waved.
I stared at Saint Nicholas. We passed so close to our camp. There was no one there.
Once, Serle and I rode to a hill where there had been a battle between the Welsh and the Saxons hundreds of years ago, and the Welsh won. There was nothing to see. Nothing to touch or hear. And yet somehow there was.
I think it will be the same on Saint Nicholas. A hundred years from now, our huge, restless army will still be in the air.
Yesterday, Simona and I talked to the captain. He’s called Hamadat. His mother’s a Christian, but his father’s a Saracen.
“I’ve never heard of that before,” I said.
Hamadat’s eyes were deepset; his skin was cracked and dark as a date.
“In Aleppo, yes,” he said. “And Nablus. Saracens and infidel women, Saracen women and infidel men.”
“But how do they meet?”
Hamadat shrugged. “Trade. Crusade. Pilgrimage.”
“What do their families think?”
“My mother’s father,” the captain said, “he would not pay dowry.”
“The more I find out,” I said, “the more I realize how little I know.”
When I told Hamadat we were going to cross the Alps, he threw up his hands. “Stupido!” he exclaimed. “May the prophet preserve you!”
He said that if I take Lord Stephen overland all the way to England, I must be intending to kill him, because he’d be jolted to death. Besides, he said, unless we joined a larger group, we’d certainly be attacked by robbers. And he told us in any case Mont Cénis and the other mountain passes will be snowbound for at least another six weeks.
“It’s safer and quicker to go by ship,” Hamadat said, “and for Lord Stephen more comfortable. Genoa! Take horses and cross to Genoa. It’s a good road. It’s Roman.”
“Hmm!” Hamadat grunted, and he pursed his dry lips. “Twenty days. No more. You go with my merchants. They take cargo to Genoa. Silks, perfumes, carpets, pearls!”
“I must talk to Turold and Rhys,” I told Hamadat.
“Thank Allah!” said Hamadat.
“After Genoa,” I asked, “where then?”
“Easy! You find merchant ship to France…England…”
While I was talking to Hamadat, I kept thinking that I have to choose which way we are to go, and it made me excited and nervous. I must decide. It is up to me.
Hamadat’s right: Crossing the Alps would be much more uncomfortable for Lord Stephen, and less safe. So even if it’s not as easy to find a ship as he says, even if we have to wait there for several weeks, it must be better to cross to Genoa.
So that’s what we’re going to try to do.
As soon as we had docked on the Rialto, quite close to Saint Mark’s, Simona went off to find us accommodation, and before long she came back smiling and saying she’d found us places in a Benedictine monastery. We carried Lord Stephen there, and the monks welcomed us and took Lord Stephen to the infirmary, and then Simona hurried off again to find her mother and brothers. We didn’t see any more of her until this morning.
Lord Stephen hasn’t spoken another word since he asked me where we were, and I told him we were aboard a boat. He’s like a baby again, except he doesn’t howl. He sleeps and sleeps, he wakes to drink and eat a little, he passes water and messes himself, and then he goes to sleep again. I wish he would stay awake. I wish he’d start to ask questions, and complain a little, and cluck, and blink.
“The trouble with you, Arthur,” Turold told me, “is you always want things to happen now. Or yesterday. Lord Stephen’s asleep because he needs to sleep.”
Yesterday afternoon, the two monks in the infirmary stripped Lord Stephen, and washed him from head to toe, and changed his poultices. They fed him boiled breast of chicken, minced and mixed with well-baked apples.
“As soon as he’s a little stronger,” said one monk, “we’ll give him milk-soaked venison. That will clean out the wound-filth and wound-slime inside him.”
“Here!” said another. “Chew on this.”
“What is it?”
“Fennel. To sweeten your breath.”
“Your whole body,” the first monk said. And he smiled.
Since leaving Zara, we’ve taken it in turns to sit beside Lord Stephen, but here two monks are always on duty in the infirmary.
So when Simona came this morning, I went with her to find the Saracen traders in the campo.
They were sitting in their rug-tent, and recognized me at once. One of them called out.
“What’s he saying?” I asked Simona.
“Ostrich-head!” Simona exclaimed.
I laughed, and clasped the hands of the two men, and bowed to the woman.
The woman frowned, and pointed to the creature on one of their rugs, half-bird, half-beast.
“She says where is your blue-white friend?” Simona said.
“Bertie?”
“Not dead?” the woman asked.
“Oh no!” I said. “He’s…on the crusade.”
“Yach!” exclaimed both men in disgust.
“She says why aren’t you there too?” Simona asked me.
“My lord has been wounded.”
I felt so glad to see them again. I know they’re Saracens, but they’re open and warm.
“I want to buy some spices,” I said.
All three narrowed their eyes and drew in their breath, as if I were asking for slices of the moon.
“Ginger, cumin, things like that.”
The woman laid out little bags of ginger and cumin and cinnamon and mace and coriander.
“You must bargain with them,” said Simona. “They like word-jousting.”
Simona was right. It was like Ludlow Fair.
“Ten marks,” said one of the men.
“Ten!”
“Cheap. Cheap for ostrich-head!”
“I can’t afford ten,” I said. “That’s as much as it costs to feed two horses for a year.”
“Nine. Cheapest.”
“No! They’re not for me, you know. They’re for a lady. Lady Judith, in England.”
“Ah! Spices for lady. Eight!”
“Eight marks. Last price,” the other man said.
“What do you think?” I asked Simona.
Simona smiled. “I think…less than the cost of feeding one horse,” she said carefully.
In the end, I agreed to pay six marks, and the two men grinned and we clasped hands again.
“Word-jousting,” I said. “Yes. If only we’d word-jousted with the Saracens…with everyone in Zara.”
The Saracen woman reached out and took my right hand, and murmured.
“She says it’s your turn,” Simona translated. “They’ll tell your hand.”
“Oh no!” I said. “Well…”
At once the man who told Bertie’s palm stared at mine.
“I’m left-handed,” I said.
The trader took my left wrist, and at once he whistled.
“What is it?”
The man shook his head, and began to talk very fast.
“What’s he saying?” I demanded. “It’s my hand, not his.”
“He says he’s never seen this before,” Simona replied. “Your head-line and your heart-line are not separate. They are one. One line…”
“What does that mean?”
“He says you’ll live many years. Sixty, even. And you’ll have three children. Maybe sons, maybe daughters. He can’t tell.”
“And my head-line and heart-line?”
Simona talked for a while to the trader. “He says you will never have a thought in your head without your heart feeling it—joy or hope or fear or sorrow. And you will never feel emotion in your heart without your head seeking to understand it.”
“I hope that’s true,” I said.
“He says this can be a great weakness or a great strength,” said Simona. “That’s up to you.”