Scarlet From Gold (Book 3) (2 page)

Between the passengers and the crew, the odd young man named Marco, the boy who had arisen from the cave of the dead with no memory, had been thoroughly watched after.  The passengers had talked with and educated him, while the crew had groomed him, cutting his unruly hair to a short length, and clothing him in clean clothes, excess slops that the ship carried, that turned out to be in much better condition than the worn, torn, and stained clothes that Marco wore when he boarded the ship.

He therefore didn’t stand out drastically as he wove his way through the Lacarona crowd on his way to the road to Compostela.  The road would take him east to the great cathedral city, and then the continuation of the road would take him further east from there, all the way across Iberia to the eastern coast, where the modest-sized city of Barcelon awaited his arrival.  The city, and the priestess named Folence who served there, would provide Marco with the completion of the task that was his compulsion, his sole, consuming, overwhelming, single-minded obsession.

The ship arrived at Lacarona at midday, and Marco was astride the road to Compostela within half an hour.  He still carried the torn and tattered backpack that he had possessed when he arose from the cave on Station Island, with a pair of small, sealed jars, a few dried foodstuffs, and not much else.  He wore a sword and a bow and a nearly empty purse with some silver and brass coins.  He didn’t think he needed anything else.

So it was that in the middle of the afternoon he reached the top of the hill that was east of Lacarona, where the Pilgrim’s Way crested the hill and gave him one last opportunity to look down and see the ships in the harbor before he went inland and lost sight of the ocean behind it.

“Here now, slow down.  That’s not how a pilgrim travels,” a voice called out to him as he turned and began to stride purposefully forward.

Marco looked around, and saw two elderly men sitting on stones nearby, both looking at him.

“Were you talking to me?” he asked.

“He was; I was listening,” one of the men said.  “He had it right though.  You can’t be a pilgrim and feel the joy of the blessings if you don’t slow down and take a little time to contemplate your journey.”

“I’m not really a pilgrim,” Marco answered.

“Are you a perfect human being?  If not, you’re a pilgrim, whether you know it or not,” asserted the man who had spoken first.  “And you’re on the road to the greatest pilgrimage in all of the Old Empire of Clovis; you ought to slow down.  Here, take your time and walk with us for a while.  We’ll put your heart in the right place.  You’ll forget you’re carrying that shiny sword on your hip.”

Marco looked at the two old men.  They smiled at him in a friendly way.  They weren’t seeking to distract him from following his compulsion, it seemed, only trying to alter the pace of his travel.  “You’re going to Compostela?” he asked to assure himself.

“That’s where this road goes,” agreed the man who wore a red hat.  “Come along with us.  Take it at a gentle pace.  See the world as you pass through it,” he urged.

Marco felt a gentle wave of agreement wash through his thoughts.  Surely there would be no harm in traveling a little more slowly, he told himself.  “Alright,” he agreed.  “I’ll join you on the pilgrimage.”

The two men grinned.  “It’s always good to have someone to pass a tradition down to,” said the man with the full, gray beard.  “We’ve been making this pilgrim’s journey together every ten years, and this is the fifth time we’ve done it.”  The man with the beard stood up, then helped the other one rise, and they walked over to Marco.  “So let’s get going,” the bearded man said, and they started walking.

“My name is Pivot,” the red-hatted man introduced himself.  “And this is my son, Dex,” he motioned to his bearded companion.

“Son?” Marco blurted out.

“I’m not his grandson,” Dex responded.   “I know I look that much younger than him, but looks can be deceiving.

“We take this pilgrimage every ten years, since I was a little fellow,” Dex repeated as they started to walk.  “See that?” he pointed to the side of the road.

“The house?” Marco asked, looking at a cottage set on a knoll just above the roadway.

“The lintel,” Dex specified, “the stone beam over the door.  See the bird’s figure that is carved in the stone?  It’s a swift.

“The swift is the symbol of the pilgrimage.  The pilgrims start coming to the road to Compostela in the spring time, just when the swifts return to the holy site to build their nests,” Dex explained.  “And a home that shows a pilgrim’s symbol is a place that will allow pilgrims to rest during their journey.”

Marco stared up at the symbol of the bird, fascinated by the story.  “Why do they do that?”

“The swifts?” Pivot asked.

“No, the homes with the symbols,” Marco answered, then looked over and saw the grins on the faces of the two men, and he grinned as well.

“The folks who open their homes do it for their own reasons,” Dex answered.  “Some have been pilgrims themselves, some simply want to do good.”

They walked along the road, and Marco looked at the doorways of the homes they passed.  “There aren’t many homes with the swift,” he observed after an hour.

“We’re pretty close to Lacarona,” Pivot said.  “There isn’t much need for many pilgrims to stop this close to where they just got off the boat.”

“And not everyone is going to want to help strangers anyway,” Dex added.

“We’ll come to the pink barn in about an hour,” Pivot said.  “We can stop there for the night and get some dinner.”

“How do you know?” Marco asked.

“We’ve stopped there the last three times we’ve come on the pilgrimage.  The farm wife who lives there was a pretty young thing when we spent our first night there,” Pivot answered.

“But she’s grown older every time we’ve returned, while we’ve stayed the same,” Dex laughed, drawing an answering laugh from his father.

“We’ll help milk the goats.  Have you ever milked a goat?”

Marco shook his head in the negative.

“Well, they’re easier than cows in some ways, ‘cause they’re not so big, but they’re more nimble than cows too – harder to catch,” Pivot explained.

“So, are you going to tell us?” Dex asked as they continued to walk along at a casual pace, slower than Marco would have walked on his own.

“Tell you what?  Tell you why I’m on the pilgrimage?” Marco asked.  “Or tell you my name?”

“What do you want to tell us?” Pivot asked.  They started to climb up a hillside, as a group of five other pilgrims passed them.

“I can’t tell you much.  I’m not really on the pilgrimage.  I’m on my way to Barcelon, to see the Lady Folence there,” Marco explained.

“The Lady Folence?  Is she a relative?” Pivot asked.

“No, she’s in charge of the temple of Ophiuchus,” Marco answered.

“Are you ill?” Dex asked.  “Do you need healing?”

“No, I feel pretty good,” Marco answered.

“Is your mother or your sister ill?” Pivot plied the next question.

“I don’t know,” Marco answered.  “I don’t know much of anything.  I only know that I have to go see the Lady Folence.  I don’t know who my family is, or where I came from, or why my hand is golden,” he had fielded questions about that on board the ship, “or even who I’m married to,” another pilgrim on the ship understood the meaning of his golden torq.  “I just know that the only thing I want to do is see the Lady.”

“Are you under a bewitchment?” Pivot asked.

“A geas?” Dex asked.

“I don’t know,” Marco expressed his frustration.

“Maybe your beautiful wife put you under a geas and sent you to the Cult to pray for her healing,” Dex suggested.

“It could be anything,” Marco said.

“Is that the pink barn?” Marco pointed far ahead, desperate to change the topic.

“I don’t see it.  We need to go a bit further,” Pivot answered.  He sensed that Marco had no wish to speculate further on his mysterious condition.

“So what’s your name?  Do you know that?” the elder traveler asked.

“Marco; I’m sure of that,” Marco answered immediately.

“Well Marco, maybe you should pray at the shrine at the cathedral for your memory to be restored,” Dex suggested.

“That’s an excellent idea,” Pivot agreed.  “We’ll pray for you as well.

“We can ask the other pilgrims to put you on their prayer list,” the elderly traveler added.

“Which other pilgrims?” Marco asked.

“The ones we’ll meet along the way,” Dex replied.  “We’ll talk to other pilgrims every day, maybe even walk with them if we decide to, just like we’re doing with you.”

“Ah, there’s the barn.  Let’s hope the excellent madam Roural is still the mistress of the farm,” he pointed ahead.

They walked up the road, then down the farm lane to the house and pink barn built at the foot of a tall hill, where cattle were slowly trodding along a narrow path that wove among the stone walls of the fields that checkered the hillside. 

“Looks like we’ll be milking cows,” Dex said breezily.

They walked up to the back door of the farmstead and knocked, then waited below the steps until a matronly lady opened the door and looked at them.  A swift was painted on the doorframe.  The woman  squinted at her visitors closely for a moment, as the three of them stood looking up at her, the two older men with their hats removed and held in their hands.

“I know you two, don’t I?” the farmwife asked.  “You’re pilgrims – you’ve been here before.  And who’s this?  Did you bring your grandson?” she asked Dex.

“Please madam, he might be my younger brother, or at most, my son,” Dex grinned up at her as her face broke into a smile.

“You rascals!” the woman laughed.  “Father Pivot, you come into the house and sit with me; you youngsters go milk the cows,” she directed as she held her door open for Pivot to enter, sending Dex and Marco off to the barn.

Regular farm hands were already at work leading the cattle into their stalls, and one worker gave Marco a cursory lesson before setting him on a stool with a bucket and letting him work.  Marco’s initial efforts produced more sounds of protest from the cow than milk, but over time he improved his methods with the help of a remedial lesson from Dex, and by sunset the two men carried in several buckets of rich milk.

“We carry this downstairs,” Dex advised as they entered the kitchen door.  He grabbed a lantern and awkwardly led the way down a narrow set of whitewashed steps, into a set of rooms that were also whitewashed on the walls and ceiling. 

“Put the buckets here for now,” he raised his buckets to a counter, and when Marco had done the same, he led the way down a small half flight of stairs and lifted a trap door from the floor.  Inside were small barrels immersed in water.

“They’ve got a spring house right here in the cellar,” he commented, “which makes the farm a pretty convenient place to produce butter and cheese.”  They lifted a pair of kegs from the trough the chilly spring water flowed through, and took them out, then poured the newly produced milk into kegs that they added back to the spring.

And so it was, after skimming off the cream from the kegs of milk that had separated, Marco found himself churning butter while he listened to Pivot and the farm wife talk in the kitchen, as the stew that was to be the evening dinner slowly cooked in a pot in the fireplace.  Marco switched arms from time to time as his churning tired his muscles, and listened with interest to the stories that the pair, along with Dex, told one another.

“They say that the Duke of Barcelon is building his own navy to fight off the barbarian raiders who are appearing all over the Great Sea.  Nappanee and Marseals have been attacked, and the Lion City has fought off a couple of raids,” the lady of the farm told the others.

“Doesn’t Barcelon have some great new champion who can protect them?” Dex asked.

“He’s disappeared.  The women of the Ophiuchus cult took him to their island and he never came back.  The Duke’s upset about that, I hear.  The champion’s lady traveled through the snows to go to the Duke to beg him to find the missing stalwart, but neither she nor the Duke have had any luck with the cult,” Roural answered.

“A man on the island of Ophiuchus?” Pivot snorted, though he looked at Marco out of the corner of his eye, as he remembered his companion’s obligation to visit the leader of the order in Barcelon.

“I know, I know, it’s crazy,” the woman answered as she arose from her seat to stir the stew, then came over to check on Marco’s butter.

“Your work is done.  You can take this back down to the butter room and squeeze the butter milk out, then put this into the cask of butter under the shelves,” she directed Marco.  “And what is your name anyway, and how did you get mixed up with these two rascals?”

“We met him on the way, and asked him to come with us,” Pivot answered for Marco.  “We think he’s under a geas; he’s on the way to Barcelon, speaking of that city, and we told him to make it a pilgrimage for these first few miles of his journey.”

“Where’d you come from?” Roural placed her fingers on his chin and held his face as she studied him.  “That’s a princely piece of gold you’ve got knotted around your neck.”

“I don’t know,” Marco answered.  “I don’t remember anything before I got to Station Island, and all I know is that I have to go see the Lady Folence in Barcelon.”

“The Lady Folence?  The Barcelon priestess of the cult?  You’ll be stepping into a hot oven there, as you just heard us say,” Roural told him.  “Well, get on down there and do your work, and I’ll call the others in for dinner in a few minutes,” she finished as she stood up and walked away from him, but she turned and studied him closely as he carried his butter churn back to the basement.

When he returned from his work a half hour later, the kitchen porch was full of pungent odors, as the farm workers came to receive their over-sized bowls of hearty stew and individual loaves of bread.  Roural’s husband was among them and led the group in saying grace, before the dozen folks scattered to their separate areas to sit and eat and talk before the end of the day.

“We’ll get a spot in the hayloft,” Dex told Marco as they finished scooping their bread around the inside of their empty stew bowls; the meal had been satisfying and filling.  “Except Dad – they’ll let him sleep in the house, though he’ll object.”