Crossing To Paradise (21 page)

The
prison or pound, or whatever it was, was surrounded by high, windowless walls and stretched about one hundred paces in each direction. On the far side was a row of columns and a covered arcade.

Two small huddles of people were sitting in this large enclosure, and a dozen or so were walking around on their own. The light was so bright that Gatty had to screw up her eyes to look at them.

A puff of wind vaulted the walls and stirred up the fine sand and grit underfoot. The whole enclosure was a swirling bowl of dust, thick and turbulent as smoke from unseasoned wood. It got into Gatty's mouth and nose. Then slowly it began to settle again, and all the people around her reappeared, shimmering.

“What is this place?” asked Gatty. “What are we going to do?”

“Find someone to talk to,” said Snout, “and get out of here. Brother Antony said Acre's Christian.”

Gatty pulled back her arms until they tugged at her shoulder blades. “I'm the wrong shape,” she grumbled, “cooped up on that boat.”

“Me too,” said Snout.

“Come on! We can ask that man. The one on his own.”

The high walls blunted the world's sharp noises. Street cries and shouts and songs, barking and braying, grating and grinding and cracking: They became one thick underhum.

Gatty and Snout walked towards the little figure sitting cross-legged. Then they saw he was alone but not alone. He was playing his reed flute to a snake!

The snake was as thick as Snout's forearm; it had hooded eyes and glistening scales, black-and-white, just like the little tiles in Saint Mark's in Venice. For as long as the man played, the snake reached up out of the
mouth of a wicker basket, it stretched and sidled and dipped; but the moment he stopped, the snake stopped too, in midair, and looked straight at Gatty.

Gatty gripped Snout's right elbow.

But then the man played a soothing tune, and the snake somehow tightened into itself. It oozed back down into its basket.

“God's guts!” gasped Gatty. “It's a good thing he knows how to play it back in.”

“Excuse me!” Snout said politely to the man. “Do you speak English?”

The man went on playing his flute.

“English,” Gatty repeated.

The snake charmer shrugged. Then he put his hand on his heart and smiled at Gatty, and she smiled back.

“Come on!” said Snout. “We got to find someone in charge.”

In the gloom of the arcade, the pilgrims were astonished to find dozens and dozens more people, some standing, some leaning against the wall, some sitting or stretched out and sleeping.

“It's so bright out there and so dark in here we couldn't even see them,” Snout observed.

“They're lost people,” said Gatty, shaking her head.

One man, bald and grey-bearded, was singing quietly to himself. When Gatty tried to speak to him, he completely ignored her.

“He looks like Abraham,” she told Snout. “In our painting at Caldicot. Snout, I don't like this.”

Further down the arcade, a dark-skinned man with a turban and a black beard was sitting in the middle of a small circle of children.

“Children!” exclaimed Gatty. “What's going on? What have they done wrong?”

Snout looked at Gatty with a Sunday face. “You don't have to do wrong to do wrong,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Or be grown-up either. Sometimes people just say you're wrong—when you're not.”

The circle of children gasped. In his right hand, the man was holding up the most beautiful transparent red stone as big as a front tooth.

The man closed his hand, waved his fist, and opened it. The stone had disappeared!

“Come on, Snout,” said Gatty. “We've got to find someone.”

“I've done that with Hew,” said Snout, smiling.

The children pointed to the conjuror's baggy sleeves and began to shout. But when the man stretched out his arms, and two children searched them, the stone was not there.

The conjuror covered his mustache and his nose with both hands, and stared at the children over his fingertips. Then he took away his hands, and his beard had changed color. It was dark red.

All the children cried out in wonder and laughed.

“Come on!” said Gatty, pulling at Snout's arm.

But then the conjuror pointed at Gatty, and with his little finger, he beckoned her to come closer…yes, closer…He reached up and pulled out of Gatty's right ear a hunk of wax as big as a gourd-stopper.

All the children hugged themselves with delight. The conjuror stared intently at the wax. Then he squelched it, and out of it he squeezed—the red stone!

Further down the arcade, Gatty and Snout saw a woman molding a large lump of clay into a monster, and another trying to nurse her howling baby, a boy pulling the wings off a butterfly, a black man who glared angrily at them and spat at their feet.

“It's not safe here,” said Gatty.

“It's all right, girl,” Snout said warily. “Let's go back to the gate.”

“Where is this place?” demanded Gatty. She gripped the iron bars and yelled. “Help!” she shouted. “Pilgrims! English!”

For an hour at least, Gatty and Snout tried to attract attention.

“We haven't done nothing wrong,” Gatty said hoarsely. “What are they doing, locking us up?”

At last two men came out of the stone building and walked up to the gate. One of them was the guard who had let them in.

Gatty angrily rattled the bars.

“English!” said Snout loudly. “Do you speak English?”

The men looked at Gatty and Snout through the bars.

Gatty grabbed her cloak and pointed to the scarlet cross. “Pilgrims!” she insisted. “We're Christians!”

One of the men sniffed and said something to the other. Then the two of them turned away and disappeared into the building again.

Gatty was so vexed that she was trembling.

“We don't know why we're here,” she said. “We don't know how to get out. No one can understand us.”

“English?” said a voice behind her.

Gatty whirled round. Standing there was a very old man stripped to the waist. His skin was more grey than olive, and only loosely attached to the flesh beneath. It hung in two small bags under his nipples.

The old man smiled cheerfully. “English?” he asked again.

“Yes!” said Gatty.

The old man raised his left hand, and Gatty saw the withered underside of his arm. “You want to know why we're here.”

“Yes,” said Gatty. “Yes, we do.”

“So do I,” he said, smiling. “So do we all.”

“We're pilgrims, sir,” said Snout.

“In here,” said the old man, “we're all pilgrims.”

“Are you Christian, then?” asked Snout.

“Pilgrims between life and death.” The old man sat down against the wall and gestured to Gatty and Snout to sit down beside him. “We're all Saracens and we're all under suspicion.”

“What for?” asked Gatty.

“Just being different,” said the old man. “Our beliefs. Our customs. The color of our skins.”

“But those children…” Snout began.

“Difference,” the old man told them, “it can be a threat and it can be a wonder. We Saracens say, how far is it from the tip of your nose to paradise?”

“How far?” asked Gatty.

“Lift your head and see!” the old man replied.

“Oh!” said Gatty. “You mean, paradise is all around us. Each different thing. I see!”

The old man smiled. “You do see,” he said contentedly.

“But how are we going to get out of here?” Gatty asked him. “We got to go to Jerusalem.”

“Another Saracen saying,” the old man replied. “Patience can move mountains.” He fiddled for a while with a little leather pouch.

“What's that?” asked Gatty.

“Put out your tongue,” the old man said. “And you,” he told Snout. He pinched a little powder out of the pouch and touched it to Gatty's and Snout's tongues.

“What is it?” asked Gatty.

“Sleeping salts,” the old man said. “Dream-salts. When you wake, you'll be able to continue your journey.”

To begin with, the salts made Gatty feel calm. Her anxiety somehow dissolved. Then she could hear herself—her shallow breathing—and, hot as the day was, she started to feel cold. She rolled over and, with a sweet sigh, fell asleep.

Gatty didn't wake until dawn the next day. In her vivid dreams, she was living inside the pound. Puffs of colored smoke came wafting over the walls. At times all the people confined with her shone through this smoke like bars of bright light, but then the wind got up and laughed and turned them into amber circles and ruby triangles and sapphire rectangles and emerald squares.

“Wake up!” said a strange man, shaking Gatty's right shoulder. “Wake up!”

Gatty snorted.

“Wake up!” the man urged her. “You're the English girl?”

“Yes!” exclaimed Gatty.

“You were snoring.”

“I wasn't!” Gatty pointed to the inert figure jammed against the wall. “It's Snout who snores. Because of his nostrils. Who are you?”

“A pound guard came and told us about you,” the man replied.

Gatty had a strange taste in her mouth. She rubbed her eyes. She looked around for the withered old man—but he had disappeared.

“Snout!” said Gatty. “Wake up! Wake up!”

Snout groaned, and yawned.

“The guards should never have imprisoned you,” the man told them. “Christian pilgrims!”

“Are
you a knight or a brother?” asked Gatty.

“Both,” said the man.

Gatty wrinkled her forehead. “You can't be both.”

Brother Gabriel offered Gatty the sweet smile of one who has seen much suffering.

“That's what we are, though,” he said. “Now come with me.”

Brother Gabriel led Gatty and Snout out of the compound and north across the city to a handsome new stone building. The three of them sat down in a shady corner of the courtyard.

“Yes,” said Brother Gabriel. “We're Hospitallers. Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, and this is our compound here in Acre. We take the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, like the monks of Saint Augustine…”

“They looked after us in Cyprus,” Snout said.

“…but we're military men, and our duty is to protect and care for pilgrims visiting the Holy Land.”

“God be praised!” exclaimed Snout.

“Why can you speak English?” Gatty asked him.

“My uncle taught me,” said Brother Gabriel. “Now tell me who you are. What is your story?”

The knight-brother's courteous attention and patience were such that Gatty told him a good deal more than he needed to know, beginning with Lady Gwyneth's death in Venice.

“Ga-tty!” interrupted Snout in an exasperated voice, and he smiled at Brother Gabriel. “She does go on, sometimes.”

“Sometimes we need to,” the knight-brother replied.

Gatty noticed how still he sat; how he wasted no words.

“Well, you're in luck,” he said. “I've just been summoned to Jerusalem.”

“Oh!” cried Gatty. “You mean we can come with you?” She leaped up and grabbed Snout's right arm.

Brother Gabriel held up a forefinger. “It may not be very far…”

“How far?” interrupted Gatty.

“Three days.”

“You been there before?”

“Oh yes!” the knight-brother replied. “Many times.”

Gatty looked at Brother Gabriel in awe. “Three days. Riding?”

“Mules,” said Brother Gabriel with a smile.

“We got horses waiting for us near Venice,” Gatty told him. She delved into her cloak pocket. “Look! Mine's a Welsh cob. She's called Syndod. Emrys the stableman carved her for me.”

The knight-brother nodded and smiled. “I was going to say, it may not be far but it's certainly very dangerous.”

“Why?” asked Snout.

“Brigands,” said Brother Gabriel. “Bedouin nomads. Gatty, you must disguise yourself.”

Gatty clicked her teeth. “I'm tired of not being myself!”

Brother Gabriel smiled. “As a pretty boy!”

“I already met Saracens,” Gatty said. “Traders in Venice, and Osman, and that old man last night.”

“Of course there are peaceable Saracens,” Brother Gabriel acknowledged. “Plenty of them. But there are also ruffians, armed soldiers, Bedouin tribesmen, Assassins.”

“Assassins?” asked Snout.

Brother Gabriel nodded. “I'm afraid so. Slices of white moon between their teeth.”

“What white moon?” asked Gatty.

“The scimitar,” said the knight-brother and he slowly drew his left forefinger across his throat.

Gatty caught her breath.

Brother Gabriel just smiled. “God willing, you'll get there,” he told them.

“I have to,” Gatty informed him in a matter-of-fact voice.

“It's the whole reason for our journey,” said Snout, “getting to Jerusalem.”

“No,” said Brother Gabriel. “The point of a pilgrimage is the journey, not the destination.”

“An old man in the pound said we're all pilgrims, between life and death,” Gatty told him. “What was that place, anyway?”

“It's where the authorities hold anyone they suspect, and the truth is they suspect too many Saracens and Jews. There are people in there for very little reason and people there for no reason at all. It's unjust. But as I said,” Brother Gabriel continued, “our mission is to protect and care for pilgrims. Some arrive and never leave.”

“What do you mean?” asked Snout.

“I don't mean they die,” Brother Gabriel said, “though I've seen as many as ten carried out of our infirmary on a single day.”

Gatty and Snout lowered their eyes.

“No, they choose to stay and work with us. We have more than one thousand beds in our hospital.”

“One thousand!” Gatty exclaimed.

“I can help you get to Jerusalem,” Brother Gabriel said, “and my brothers may even be able to get you back here again. But Venice? England?” The knight-brother blew out his cheeks.

The sleeping salts had not finished with Gatty. In the cool of the Hospitallers' compound, she dozed, she daydreamed. Something about Saladin, the Saracen leader, visiting this very hospice, here in Acre. Something about the Hospitallers fighting shoulder to shoulder with the crusaders…No, she couldn't remember.

Next morning, early, Gatty woke keen as a newly sharpened scythe, eager to resume their journey.

“And so we will,” Brother Gabriel told her. “Tomorrow, God willing.”

“Tomorrow,” said Gatty, disappointed.

“Today I have business here in the hospital, and down in the town; and I must hire mules for you and Snout.”

“I'll come with you,” said Gatty.

The knight-brother shook his head. “My uncle wishes to meet you.”

Gatty gave a small sigh.

“The one who taught me English,” Brother Gabriel told her.

“You didn't say he was here,” Gatty said. “Is he a hosp…a whatever you are?”

The knight-brother fingered his white cross. “No, no, not at all. He was a crusader.”

“An English one?”

“No, Norman—like I am. But he was brought up in England,” Brother Gabriel said. “In the east. Lynn, or something.”

“What's his name?” asked Gatty. “Why didn't he go home?”

The knight-brother smiled. “You and your questions!” he said. “His name? Sir Faramond. Let me explain.”

At this moment, Snout stepped into the cloister.

“You're up early,” he called out.

“God go with you!” said the knight-brother.

Snout crossed himself. “And with you,” he said.

“We're going to meet Sir Faramond,” Gatty told him.

“My uncle,” Brother Gabriel explained. “He fought under Coeur-de-Lion. He was here when we besieged Acre, twelve years ago, and the Saracens surrendered…” The knight-brother explored Gatty's and Snout's faces.

“What?” asked Gatty.

“Saladin was unwilling—unwilling or unable to pay the ransom for them, and so the crusaders put the whole lot to the sword.”

“Killed them, you mean?”

“Massacred them,” Snout added.

“Three thousand Saracens. Not only the men. Women and children as well.”

Gatty shook her head angrily. “Cruel!” she cried.

“Cruel, yes,” Brother Gabriel said.

“Why?” demanded Gatty.

The knight-brother shook his head and sighed. “This is a just war,” he said. “At all events, Sir Faramond was here, and he was badly wounded.”

“But you said the Saracens surrendered,” said Gatty, frowning.

“They did. He was wounded by his own companions.”

“Why?” demanded Gatty, much more loudly than she meant to. Her voice ricocheted round the cloister.

“He was trying to protect a Saracen girl. She was just nine, and curled up like a wood louse. Sir Faramond stood over her and his companions hacked at him until he fell over her. Then they all ran off.”

Gatty's breathing quickened. “Did he save her?”

Brother Gabriel gave Gatty a tender smile. “Oh yes!” he said. “Here in this hospice Sir Faramond was nursed back to health—and we took the girl in too.”

“A Saracen,” said Snout.

“Most of our patients are pilgrims,” said Brother Gabriel, “but we have no rule against admitting infidels.”

Gatty frowned. “You said it's just to kill them.”

“I said our cause is just. We must recover Jerusalem for Christendom.” Brother Gabriel crossed himself.

“But Sir Faramond,” said Gatty, “why didn't he go home?”

“He married Saffiya.”

“Who?”

“The Saracen girl.”

Gatty put her hand over her mouth and looked at Brother Gabriel in joyous disbelief.

“Her parents were killed in the massacre, and so we looked after her and she worked here as a servant. Sir Faramond married her when she was sixteen.” Brother Gabriel smiled. “I came out to Acre ten years ago to
bring my uncle home, but instead I joined the Order and stayed.” He shook his head at the unpredictability of it all.

“Saffiya,” said Gatty, exploring the name.

“A marriage of this kind is unusual,” Brother Gabriel said. “Most unusual. Saffiya is a very clever young woman. She taught me and some of the other brothers here to speak Arabic. You'll see.”