A Stolen Tongue (32 page)

Look not away from the dreaded Troyp, brothers.

When you can bear to see yourself no longer, that is when he devours you.

D
ESERT OF THE
S
INAI
T
HE
V
ALLEY OF
M
INSCHENE
S
UMMER
1483

We fight over everything, but nothing more so than water.

We fight over how much of it we are allowed, how far out of our way to go to find it, if it is drinkable, if we need it. We fight incessantly with our camel drivers, who disdain to load the four enormous sealed earthenware jugs of pure water I purchased in Gazara to drink in case of emergency. At first they refused to carry the water at all, calling it foolish and heavy, and raised such a hue and cry that Elphahallo, in disgust, commissioned two more beasts simply to transport the jugs. I can only console myself with dreams of those camel drivers, their tongues swollen and black, crawling across the parched plain to beg some of Friar Felix's cool, clean Gazara water. Shall I laugh to scorn at them, brothers, tilting back my head to let the life-giving liquid trickle through my beard? Tempt me not, for a good Christian struggles mightily sometimes to turn the other cheek.

But now we wait anxiously for these same drivers, here in the white valley of Minschene, where burned lime cliffs hide like a secret leper colony inside the red desert. We have seen no live vegetation all day, brothers, but our camel drivers swore there was a marsh some few miles away and, taking with them our animals and water skins, have gone off in search of it. It is getting dark, and they have not yet returned. We are counting on that water for dinner.

“Gather your branches and eat cooked meat while you may,” said Elphahallo, who, seeing us fret, dispatched us to scour the chalky
torrent bed for firewood. “Soon you will find not another living thing to burn.”

He sent us out to take our minds off the water, brothers, for Calinus knows we worry each time the Arabs leave us that this will be the night they don't come back; tonight they will leave us stranded in the desert. A few yards beyond me, Lord Tucher weakly searches the torrent bed for sticks, sifting through the albescent sand. I have not had the heart to tell him the Arabs believe he has hired Christian spies to kidnap their children. He would merely smile beatifically if I did.

“Think they'll be back soon?” Conrad joins me by the spot we have cleared for the anticipated fire. I throw upon it the confection of dried vine I found.

“Elphahallo said the marsh was several hours away,” I reassure him, pretending a confidence I do not feel. “And the animals must drink.”

Conrad glances at me worriedly. “You don't look good, Felix,” says our barber. “Really, we should open the water jars.”

I look over at the four huge earthenware containers jumbled together with our other bedraggled possessions. These four jars, brothers, are far more precious than the bolts of red silk the Tuchers bought in Jerusalem, or the silver inlaid trays, or the august bags of cloves, cinnamon, and mace they intend to take back to Swabia. Without water, a man would die inside two days, for the heat in this desert reaches deep into his body and steals water from wherever she finds it. A man's two eyes, like islands in a dredged marshland, sink back into his head; his open mouth, no longer lubricated with saliva, fills with sand; his every organ dries up, brothers, and blows away.

“They are only for emergency,” I tell Conrad. “They must get us to the mountain.”

“Take a sip of wine then,” he orders. “You need to keep your strength.”

I agree to taste a little from our precious store of wine, well hidden from the felonious Arabs in a burlap bag of salt pork, for in fact I do feel very dizzy. This malady that has gripped me, brothers, comes in waves, like seasickness, leaving me barely able to stand.

“Did you move it?” Conrad asks, rummaging in the bag of salt pork.

I reply that I did not and join him to more closely search our baggage.

Our flagon of wine is nowhere to be found, brothers, and this is a serious matter. Water we need for survival, but wine we need for health. To cross the desert with no medicinal spirits is the height of folly; ask any doctor you know. I resolved where to hide the wine when I recalled the story of Saint Mark's relics being spirited out of Alexandria under layers of pork. The scrupulous Muslims would not touch the barrels to inspect them, and thus the clever Venetian thieves made away with their patron saint. I cannot believe our Arabs would be so undevout as to rifle through the filthy pig for a few swigs of alcohol, and yet it is well known they become terrible drunkards whenever they are able, being denied by their faith even a sip of the stuff.

Conrad looks grim. He has been nursing Lord Tucher back to health with three sips of wine before bedtime. Behind the camp, our guide, Elphahallo, drives the tent poles deeper into the earth with his shoe. I storm over to confront him.

He nods to me as I approach. “Failisk.”

“Calinus.” I frown. “The camel drivers have now stolen our wine.”

Expertly, he reties the tent flaps, brushes away the creeping sand. At this news, he straightens up.

“Are you certain?” he asks. “It is prohibited by our faith.”

“They are thieves, Elphahallo,” I tell him. “Every night some bit of food goes missing, and now our wine. I want it back.”

“I will speak to them, my friend,” Calinus reassures me. “Try not to make a scene. Things are tense enough as it is.”

Remembering the rumor spread against Lord Tucher, a terrible fear strikes me, brothers.

“You don't suppose they will get drunk in the wilderness and forget to come back?”

Elphahallo laughs, I think inappropriately.

“There is little chance of that,” he says. “If you are thirsty, my friend, drink this. It will make you feel better.”

Elphahallo holds out his own tanned water skin, but I shake my head. I have seen the water that comes from these; not only is it red as blood but it smells as if it has been stored in an animal's stomach for three days, then spit back out. The Saracens slurp the stinking stuff with relish, but I am not so bad off, brothers. Elphahallo shrugs, but before he can move on to the next tent, we hear it. As one, Calinus and I prick up our ears.

Han na yo yo an ho ho oyo o ho! Han na yo yo an ho ho oyo o ho!

The camel drivers' song comes over the torrent bed like a throaty bird call, the rhythm of our traveling. A camel will not suffer herself to be goaded or scourged, brothers; the only way to move her is to sing soothingly as to a child.

“Friar!” Ursus clambers down the other side of the wadi from where he has been looking fruitlessly for sticks. He too has seen the camels return. “The water's here!”

We will not assail them, as much as we would like to rip the water skins from their saddles and greedily gulp their contents. We watch the camels pick their way down the torrent bed, tentatively advance a spindly leg, shifting their weight behind them. Conrad joins us, and we wait like a party of angry yet lascivious wives for our husbands back from the tavern.

Elphahallo helps the last camel driver encourage his beast into camp, where we pounce upon them. The beleaguered drivers toss us our skins.

“It's white!” Ursus shrieks when the liquid hits his cupped palms. “Friar, look!”

I examine my own handful and sniff. Indeed, brothers, the liquid they have brought us back is thick and white, more like milk than water, and gives off the gag-inducing aroma of rotted plants! I show it to Elphahallo, and even he wrinkles his nose.

“There is nothing to be done about it,” he tells us, after a long conversation with the drivers. “They say the marsh was almost dry and they had to dig even for this.

“And,” he adds, “they swear they did not even know you had wine.”

“We can't drink it!” Ursus cries.

“Perhaps we should open the jugs,” our barber suggests.

“No,” I say firmly. “Calinus says we will soon come upon much harder times. When the others come back with firewood, we can boil this.”

We have another eight days ahead of us, brothers, traveling through a land cursed by God. Calinus tells us wells are few and far between in this, the deepest part of Sinai; they are guarded by tribes of fierce desert nomads, where the heat allows, and by venomous snakes where no human can survive. We can only wait for firewood.

We have a long time to wait before the next pilgrim makes it back to camp. Ser Niccolo hobbles down the torrent bed, crutched upon a single large stick. When he reaches us, he empties his pockets of some more tangled vine and a few twigs, barely enough for kindling.

“What happened to your ankle?” Conrad asks. When Niccolo removes his boot, we see it has swollen to twice its normal size.

“Snake holes, everywhere.” He touches the sprain tenderly. “It was like walking across a sieve.”

“You saw snakes?” I ask.

“Hundreds of them. And thousands of holes.”

“I have read of a certain snake that lives in the desert called
dipsades,
” I volunteer. “Its bite causes intolerable thirst.”

“Don't talk about snakes,” Conrad says.

“Where
is
the water?” the translator asks. “I am thirsty.”

I explain about the dry marsh and how, unless we have a fire to make it drinkable, we will have no water tonight.

“Let's open the jars,” he says.

Can no one think to conserve except for me, brothers? I am dripping with sweat even though the night is cool, my stomach cramps, and my bowels rebel, but at least my head is clear enough to know we will need this water far more, later.

“No,” I say. “We are saving that.”

“Saving it for what?”

“For the dangerous days.”

“Those days are upon us, Friar,” the translator says, stumping off to his tent to retire for the night.

“Don't you want to wait for John?” I call. “He might bring wood and we can boil what we have.”

“He will find nothing in this valley,” Niccolo says over his shoulder. “And I have work to do.”

A lantern always burns inside Niccolo's tent, brothers, sometimes even until dawn, and I have no need to spy to know he is hunched beside it, frantically scratching away at his lost saint's vita. Every night when the others have sat around the campfire trading stories of home, and I, keeping company, have perhaps scribbled in this little book for you, Niccolo has retired to his tent to add another chapter to his secret translation. It is no use asking to read it, brothers; he only shakes his head and says, “Soon, Friar. Soon.”

The translator's prediction proves sadly correct. We wait another hour, until the mountains have soaked up the last of the sun, and John comes dragging home, defeated, with not a single shrub. There is nothing to do but gnaw some hard biscuit, wash it down with our own saliva, and go to bed.

Dejectedly, John and I retire to the close leather tent we share with Conrad, whose turn at watch it is: there, to strip as we did each night at sea and pick our gelatinous vermin. Before we might lie down, Calinus warned us always to check for biting sand fleas and their far more lethal cousins, the Pharaoh's Lice. These black worms, about the size of a hazelnut, crawl up from the ground to suck a man's blood like gruesome ticks. After their bite there remains a scar, a livid blue mark streaked with a red cross, about the size of a penny. If this scar is not immediately anointed with lemon juice, it will turn into an incurable foul wound.

While John checks himself, I strip down to my breeches and money pouch, remove Saint Katherine's tongue, and kiss it. This token is the only piece of her I know is safe, this voiceless instrument, this unpaired fifth of a mouth. I thought I understood her desire when I read the words of Saint Jerome, but now I know not whom to trust. Even my old friend John watches me suspiciously from across the tent, certain I betrayed the Tongue when I accepted this organ in her stead. John Lazinus joined our party in Venice, brothers; he was under no obligation to come to Sinai. Sometimes I believe he accompanies us solely out of spite.

I set the tongue before our lantern and close my aching eyes to say my silent prayers.

Lord, I used to have such deep desires. I yearned for enlightenment, for peace among our brothers, for a German Pope in Rome; and every night I devoutly prayed for these. Sometimes You heeded my prayers; sometimes, as is Your will, You chose not to grant my idle supplications. Once when Abbot Fuchs had fallen down the stairs and it seemed unlikely he should live, I prayed with such frightened coursing tears that You took pity and spared our gentle Abbot. I have no tears tonight, Lord, for there is no water in my body to offer up, but if there were, You should see it streaming down my cheeks. Your servant Lord John Tucher needs water to recover, Lord. He is ill from excesses of devotion and even now lies weakly in his tent. Your servant Friar Felix Fabri suffers on again and off again with fever, Lord, and nothing seems to hold his interest long but the idea of cold, clean water. I fear there is trouble brewing in our camp, O gentle Father, and water might be the only antidote. We snap and bicker over water; our numbers grow weak from the lack of water; friend sides against friend over a simple swallow and soon will come to blows. O Lord, let this simple tongue before me act as a divining rod and lead us on to water. It is all I ask, the most elemental prayer. In Jesus' name.

Amen.

When I open my eyes, brothers, our divining rod, Saint Katherine's tongue, is gone.

John smirks at me, his hands cupped like a child's holding a squirming toad.

“John,” I say. “Give that back.”

“Not until you tell me what is going on.”

“This is not funny.”

“I haven't laughed in weeks.”

“I mean it.” I lunge for him, feeling the fever surge behind my eyes. “Give it back!”