The Blessing Stone (51 page)

Asmahan held up a jeweled hand. “I do it for my son, and no other reason. Keep him safe, and speak to him often of me.”

Katharina did not see Adriano again after that, for as a man he was not allowed in the company of the women and therefore was only with the boy when Bulbul was summoned to the sultan’s private apartments. But Katharina continued to visit Asmahan each evening, taking silks and embroidery, and every morning reported to the sultana that Asmahan had gossiped about the other concubines and harem politics, wondering if the sharp-eyed woman could see through her subterfuge. Each night, in her alcove in the dormitory, Katharina gazed at the painting of St. Amelia’s Stone and felt her heart race with hope: very soon now, she and Adriano would once again be free and she would be once more on the road to the blue crystal and, God willing, her family.

Two days before they were to execute their plan of escape, word spread through the palace like fire: Safiya was in labor. All activities were suspended as everyone waited anxiously for news. Asmahan kept Bulbul close, while Katharina waited in the dormitory for word.

And then it came: the sultana had given birth to a son.

They had run out of time. The instant the newborn was placed at her breast, Safiya claimed her legal right to have Asmahan’s son locked in the Cage. Almost at once the younger concubine’s eunuchs and guards deserted her. There was no longer any question of going to the mosque to offer prayers for her father. It was only a matter of hours before the sultana’s eunuchs arrived to take Bulbul away.

Although Adriano still believed all Turks to be godless heathens and his sworn enemies, nonetheless this concubine had saved his life and reunited him with Katharina, and so he was her avowed protector. At least, protector of her son, for ultimately nothing could be done to save Asmahan. With the aid of her faithful eunuch, Adriano scaled the garden wall and, with Bulbul strapped to his back—asleep, as he had been given milk laced with poppy juice—went back over the wall, helping Katharina up behind him. Under the cover of night, they followed the eunuch through the maze of outer walls and alleys that surrounded the palace, and eventually into the labyrinthine warren of streets and hovels of the city. Before they left, Asmahan had given Katharina a small wooden chest filled with gold dinars, the coin of the Ottoman Empire. They had embraced and Asmahan kissed her son for the last time. Now, as Katharina and Adriano followed the eunuch to the vast caravan encampment, she knew the fate that awaited Asmahan once her deceit was discovered, it was the same punishment for all harem women who transgressed the sultan’s rules: she would be sealed in a sack with a cat and a snake and thrown into the waters of the Bosporus.

The caravan departed at dawn, a thousand-camel train that carried perfume and cosmetics from Egypt and along the way would pick up colored glass in Syria and fur from the Eurasian steppes—all bound for China where the people had a passion for such things—to be exchanged for silk and jade, which would then be brought back to the western nations where people had a passion for such things. Along the way they met entertainers bound for China—jugglers, acrobats, singers, magicians—and coming from the East, monks, scholars, and explorers bound for Europe. Although they would find wildlife along the way, Katharina and Adriano took along provisions of bread, dried fruit, salted meat, and hard cheese, as well as plenty of water. And they delighted in being a carefree threesome: Adriano the protector, Katharina the nurturer, and Bulbul their “son.” As Constantinople and its terrors fell behind them, as they rode beneath the sun and in the fresh air, and ate wholesome food and found myriad things to laugh at, the life and strength returned to Adriano. His body fleshed out and his spirits began to shine again through his eyes. Katharina told him only once that he was free to go to Jerusalem now, that he was not obligated to make the long journey to Samarkand with her, but he silenced her with a vow not to leave her side until her promise to Asmahan had been fulfilled. After that, he said, they would return to Jerusalem together.

As the caravan snaked its way eastward, Katharina—who had once thought, just a few miles onto the Adriatic, that she had seen most of the world—encountered the desert for the first time, and the terrible wonder of sandstorms that rose up with such suddenness that death claimed the traveler who was not alert. She and Adriano soon learned to watch their camels; if the beasts suddenly started snarling and burying their faces in the sand, it meant a sandstorm was coming, even though the day was clear. Riders immediately wrapped their noses and mouths with cloth, and all of a sudden the storm was there, fierce and swift, and over in an instant.

Along the way they mostly camped in the open, under the stars, at oases and crossroads, but sometimes they stopped at garrisons and caravansaries, where they found inns and proper beds, and musicians and lively entertainment. As they passed between golden sands and deep blue sky, beneath scudding white clouds and the shade of emerald-green palm trees, the journey took on an unreal aspect for Katharina, who held Bulbul in her arms as their camel swayed and rocked them into semislumber. Ahead she watched Adriano, with his broad shoulders and straight back, a man of deep convictions and devotion to God, a man of mystery, too.

The moment of falling in love, she could not pinpoint. Perhaps it had even been as far back as her first sight of him on the docks in Venice. Or watching him at prayer on the deck of the Portuguese ship. Or as they slept in each other’s arms on a deserted island, feeling like the last two people on earth. Whenever and wherever her love for him began, she kept it a secret, for Adriano had his own road to travel, as she had hers. She would never speak her heart, but keep her love close to her, protecting it in the special chamber where she held her mother, and her father, and now even the tragic concubine Asmahan who had saved their lives.

But these strange new emotions startled her, for she had not experienced such passion for Hans Roth. It seemed incomprehensible to her now, as she caught on fire with Adriano’s every glance and sound of his voice, that she had once thought romantic love a myth. Her desire for Adriano was greater than any hunger or thirst she had ever known; it was a yearning of the spirit that occupied her mind night and day. Therefore did Katharina’s love need an outlet, and she found it in the making of a new cloak for him. Having secretly bartered in the marketplace of Ankara for a new white mantle and some silk thread and needles, she worked on her labor of love at each day’s rest, when Adriano went out with the men to hunt or gather wood for the fires. She knew he bore a pain deep within him, deeper than the scars on his poor tortured body, a pain she had first glimpsed in the deep lines that etched his face, and had heard in his voice when, on that deserted island, he had spoken of a woman he had once loved. While Katharina knew she could never hope to be balm to that deep pain, it was her prayer that the new cloak would help restore some measure of his dignity.

Adriano also occupied her thoughts because of something that puzzled her, a puzzle that deepened with each passing day. He had told her that he had taken vows of celibacy and austerity when he had joined the brotherhood, and that these vows had been taken as penance for having killed a man. But now that they were spending nights and days in close company, sharing food and shelter, pretending to be father and mother to the delightful little Bulbul, Katharina was becoming aware of the true breadth and depth of those vows. Days and nights on a Portuguese ship, and a few days stranded on an island had not been enough for her to truly observe the man. But out here on the boundless desert beneath a sky that stretched into eternity, Katharina watched Adriano with a clarity that was as clear as glass. And it seemed to her that his vow of abstinence and austerity went beyond reasonable bounds, for he not only denied himself meat and wine, but food in adequate supply. He seemed almost to starve himself and to need to punish his body, pushing himself beyond daily endurance, continuing to work and hunt and chop wood long after the other men had retired to their campfires. The crime he had committed (and she was not certain it was a crime, for was not fighting for a woman he loved fighting for his rights?) had taken place over twenty years ago. Had he not paid penance enough? Or—and this suspicion grew with each mile that fell behind them as the caravan pushed eastward—was there more to his story than he had revealed?

She realized that her obsession with him was overshadowing the central purpose of her life: to find her father. And so she had to rely more and more upon the portrait of St. Amelia to remind her of that purpose. Like a suppliant in church with a genuine desire to offer prayers but whose wayward mind was straying beyond the stained-glass windows to the fields of daisies beyond, Katharina needed more and more to draw upon will power to keep her heart to its course. Night after night, in what had become a ritual, she brought the little painting to light and gazed at the blue crystal as she silently recited the litany,
This is where my destiny lies.

As soon as Bulbul was restored to his mother’s people, Katharina was going to turn around and head back to Jerusalem, to search for the blue crystal, to find her father.

And Adriano must follow wherever his stars led.

The caravan was a dynamic and ever-changing creature, with people leaving and joining, whole clans or lone riders, causing the train to shrink and expand snakelike as it slithered through desert, grassland, hill country. Feeling safe now in their false personas, and being so far east from Constantinople and the danger of being found out, Katharina and Adriano made friends with newcomers, sharing their fire and their food, and then bade farewell to them along the way and welcomed the company of new acquaintances.

The matter of language started to become a problem as they moved eastward, for they encountered new dialects and mutations of tongues they had thought they were familiar with. Arabic became increasingly difficult for Katharina, and Adriano’s Greek became less and less helpful. Although Latin had been carried east for over a thousand years, Katharina and Adriano found it harder and harder to understand as the ancient language had mutated and adapted to local regions. But they understood each other; their private communication began less to rely upon words as upon gestures, facial expressions, and silences filled with meaningful looks. It was, they were beginning to realize as they spent day and night in each other’s company, all they needed.

In northern Persia, the caravan stopped in a small valley between two rugged ranges, and here they found a most remarkable stream: no vegetation grew along its banks, all around was rocky and barren, but the water ran warm, and to everyone’s amazement, it ran bright green. This was a result of mineral deposits at its source, the caravan leader explained. These gave the water its remarkable emerald tint. But it was drinkable and even, some claimed, healthful. And so they camped beside the emerald spring, a thousand tents and a hundred campfires in the moonlight.

Katherina welcomed the opportunity to give her hair a good washing at last. Although she had, over the weeks, occasionally washed it, the water had been in short supply. To keep her hair clean she had used a trick learned from local Bedouins whose women rubbed a mixture of ash and soda into their hair and then spent hours combing it through. In this way had the dark dye, applied back in Venice to make her look like an Arab youth, begun to fade to a dun brown, with her newly grown roots giving her a blond “cap.” But now she used proper soap and lathered and scrubbed and massaged and rinsed, and did it all over again. And when she was done, and drying her hair in the breeze so that it billowed like a golden mane, the effect was such that nearly everyone in the encampment was brought to a halt to stare.

Adriano most of all.

That night, beneath an effulgent moon, Katharina gave Adriano the new cloak she had embroidered and he was moved beyond words. He had his emblem back, the dark blue, eight-pointed cross of his brotherhood that gave meaning to his life. Once again he would wear his dignity as if it were a garment, and proclaim to the world his dedication to the Blessed Virgin.

And finally here, beneath the stars, Adriano told Katharina his whole story.

She already knew that over twenty years ago, back in Aragon, he had been passionately in love with a girl named Maria, that he had assumed they would marry, and that she had then confessed she was in love with another. Adriano had flown into a rage and challenged the other man. They fought. Adriano slew him and Maria withdrew in grief into a cloistered convent where he supposed she still lived to this day. That was what Katharina knew of his story. But this night, with the moon large and fat and majestic in the night sky, and the emerald stream gurgling softly in its stony bed, Adriano confessed the pain that filled him every day of his life.

“I knew,” he said softly, gathering his knight’s cloak about him, “I knew in my heart of hearts that Maria did not love me. It was pride and arrogance that blinded me to this fact. I believed I could make her love me in time. But the other man…if it had been any other man, I might have let it go. I might have turned a blind eye and waited for Maria to come to me. But the other man was my brother, and this I could not bear.”

He turned anguished eyes to Katharina. “Yes, the man I killed was my brother. I slew him out of blind jealousy. He was innocent of any crime or wrongdoing against me. I have no right to happiness, Katharina. I have no right to love you or to be loved by you.”

He broke down in bitter sobbing and she put her arms around him. He buried his face in her clean, golden hair and felt her warm young body against his, her lips on his cheeks and neck, her tears mingling with his, until finally his mouth found hers, and they both lay beneath the knight’s cloak with its blue cross, and found solace in love at last.

Later, when they woke, Adriano rose and took Katharina by the hand to the bank of the emerald stream. Here he thrust his sword into the ground, the handsome gold-hilted weapon Asmahan had given to him for the protection of her son. There he and Katharina knelt, as if kneeling before a cross, and taking her hand in his, said, “Though we are far from priests and churches, we are visible to God, the Blessed Mother, and all the saints. It is before these exhaled witnesses, my beloved Katharina, that I declare you to be my wife, and I your husband, and I pledge my soul and body to you, my love and my devotion, for the rest of my life, and after we are dead and united in Heaven.”