Night Pilgrims

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “I doubt he will let you have the rooms for less. Business is slow now, so he is offering good value, considering the time of year and where we are. He would rather have you here than elsewhere.” Firouz turned to Sandjer’min. “You will share your room with your manservant. The rest of the servants and slaves will sleep in one of two rooms.”

  “Thank you,” said Sandjer’min, nodding once, then asked deferentially, “What about the women? That room for three?”

  Now Firouz frowned. “It will take some arranging. He”—he nodded to the innkeeper—“is not comfortable having women without husbands or fathers staying here.”

  “There is Heneri,” Sandjer’min reminded Firouz. “He is young, but he is half-brother to Sorer Imogen and half-brother-in-law to Bondame Margrethe.”

  “He is too young,” Firouz explained, a bit too quickly. “Were he a year or two older, he might suffice, but fifteen and unmarried? That would ensure nothing. In this place Heneri’s presence would not be deemed sufficient, not with Sorer Imogen in such travail.” He hitched up one shoulder.

  “Then the women must stay together,” Sieur Horembaud declared when Sandjer’min explained the problem to him. “That way, none of our pilgrims’ vows will be compromised, including Heneri’s.”

  Sandjer’min spoke to the landlord in Coptic. “Give the women your best room; they will need three beds; you will post a servant at their door. I will pay for the room and the servant—would two ducats a night be acceptable?”

  The innkeeper boggled at the sum. “Yes. Yes. Most acceptable, Sidi,” he was able to say as his eyes remained fixed on Sandjer’min’s face.

  “They will need to walk in your courtyard in the evening, if that can be arranged?” He studied the innkeeper’s demeanor. “If you have a female servant to wait upon them, I will pay for that service also.” He did not reveal that he had seen Sieur Horembaud’s grimace of distaste.

  “I have two female slaves. One of them will tend to your women.” The innkeeper put slight emphasis on your, then shook his head.

  Sandjer’min chuckled. “Hardly mine. One of them is … unwell, and I have been treating her. None of us wants to see her become worse.”

  The innkeeper drew back in alarm. “I want no disease in this place,” he began, but Sandjer’min interrupted.

  “Her affliction cannot be given to others, or I would ask her to be housed apart from the rest of the company.” He slipped his hand inside the capacious sleeve of his black cotehardie and brought out a good-sized purse from which he removed thirty ducats and set them on the table between them. “Here. This should take care of the room for the women.”

  Sieur Horembaud was staring openly at the gold coins. “What’s going on, Sandjer’min? What are you doing?”

  “I am ensuring that the women have suitable lodging,” he said in Anglo-French, and turned back to the innkeeper, speaking again in Nubian Coptic. “We will want water to drink, baths if you have them, then a large meal at mid-day, with tea as well as wine. I will pay for that. If you have ducks you can prepare, and eggs as well, they would be welcome; cook them with onions or garlic. Green beans, if you grow them in your fields, or peas. Do you have a young sheep or goat you could serve?” He saw the innkeeper’s smile widen. “Very good. Then after the meal, we’ll rest until late afternoon. All of us, including the servants and slaves. If your grooms will see to our animals, I will cover that cost as well.”

  “It is an honor to have so gracious a guest as you are,” said the innkeeper, sliding the ducats Sandjer’min had paid him into a metal box set on a shelf behind him.

  “Tell me what you have arranged,” Sieur Horembaud demanded. “This is my company and I have to know.”

  Sandjer’min explained about the arrangements he and the innkeeper had agreed upon, then turned to the innkeeper once more. “Do you have baths? Simple ones would be fine.”

  “We do, and more extensive ones; pilgrims prefer them. They have a warm pool and a cool one, and couches for relaxing between the two,” he said. “I will send servants to make them ready. In the meantime, I will show your company to your rooms, if you will have them come into the courtyard.” He bowed and called out for three men, rattling off orders to them as they came into the reception room.

  “What do we do now?” Sieur Horembaud asked Sandjer’min.

  “Have your company meet in here. The servants will show them where they are to sleep once you decide how the men shall be divided up.” He inclined his head respectfully, then went out into the courtyard and motioned to the seven pilgrims who had come into that part of the inn. “Rooms are being readied,” he said, first in Anglo-French, then in the northern Italian dialect. “Sieur Horembaud will assign you as he thinks appropriate. The women will share a separate room.”

  Agnolus dei Causi frowned. “What about our servants?”

  “That, too, is being settled.” Sandjer’min waited while most of the company wandered into the courtyard, then told them, “There will be baths ready in a while. And after mid-day, a meal for all of us.”

  “Except you,” Heneri interjected.

  Sandjer’min paid him no heed. “When that is done, we can retire to our rooms to rest through the heat of the day.”

  Sieur Horembaud appeared in the door. “Come inside. We have worked out the arrangement for rooms. Firouz will assist you if you require it.” He watched Sandjer’min through narrowed eyes.

  “He doesn’t speak our language,” Vidame Bonnefiles complained.

  Sieur Horembaud made an effort to control his temper, forcing himself to speak calmly. “Then talk to Sandjer’min. He should be able to handle all your questions.” In spite of his intention, there was an edge of annoyance in this admission; he saw Bondame Margrethe and Lalagia leading a languid Sorer Imogen into the courtyard. “There’s something being done for the three of you.”

  “God be thanked,” said Noreberht lo Avocat.

  “This woman needs your help, not your scorn,” Cristofo d’Urbineau told Noreberht.

  “Be quiet, the both of you,” Sieur Horembaud snapped.

  “It isn’t good to keep the afflicted too close to the rest of us,” d’Urbineau said.

  “Then what do we do for the women?” Vidame Bonnefiles asked. “Find an empty house in the village they can occupy?”

  “The women will keep to their quarters for most of the day, except to go to church if they desire to,” Sieur Horembaud announced. “They will have their own servant to wait upon them, and their room will be guarded at night. They will be permitted to walk in the courtyard every day at sundown for as long as we are here.”

  Frater Anteus looked troubled by this. “For Bondame Margrethe and even Lalagia there is no difficulty, but Sorer Imogen? She cannot be left alone in their room, and it would not be wise to permit her into the courtyard. Who knows when another fit will come upon her?”

  Vidame Bonnefiles said, “Frater Anteus makes a good point. Sorer Imogen must never be alone.”

  “Then I will sit with her, with a guard, if it is necessary,” said Jiochim Menines.

  “Do you realize you may be putting yourself in danger?” asked Sieur Horembaud. “And that she may accuse you of outrages on her person?”

  “I have vowed to maintain my virtue on this pilgrimage,” Menines said, unusually unflustered by the implications in Sieur Horembaud’s questions. “I will continue to do so. You may have the servant watch her while I am with her, if you have any reservations about my conduct.”

  “For now, this will do,” Sieur Horembaud decided. “All but the women, go inside and have your rooms assigned to you. Noreberht and Howe will have the same room. D’Urbineau and dei Causi will have the same room. De Saunte-Foi will share with me. Vidame Bonnefiles and Menines will share. Methodus Temi will sleep in the stable in order to guard our animals. Firouz will tell our slaves and servants where they are to sleep; he is making arrangements for himself and Heneri.”

  The pilgrims moved slowly inside, except for
the three women; Sorer Imogen had dropped to her knees beneath a Coptic cross fitted into the wall, and was almost at once lost in prayer. Margrethe approached Sandjer’min carefully. “You are very good to my sister-in-law,” she said, not quite looking at him. “I don’t know how we could have got her so far without your help.” How much his nearness unsettled her!

  “Sorer Imogen needs care,” he said, and touched her hand. “You have done well by her.”

  Now she looked at him with grateful eyes. “I hope I have. I’m at a loss where she is concerned. Nothing I do seems to ease her distress.” Abruptly she seized his hand and kissed it. “I cannot thank you enough. Without your tincture, and all your help with her, I don’t know what we would do.”

  He lowered his hand. “The servants are watching.”

  “Then they know that this is my expression of gratitude,” Margrethe said with more force than she realized. “I am much obliged to you.”

  “You needn’t be,” he said, sensing her attraction to him more strongly than he had before, and her shame at her desire. “I have done what Sieur Horembaud has required of me.” He saw dejection in her features, and a kind of hopelessness that troubled him. “But I thank you for your kindness, Bondame Margrethe. I am only sorry I can do so little for Sorer Imogen.”

  She moved an arm’s-length away from him, color rising in her cheeks. “She is in God’s Hands.”

  “Then we must hope He will be kind to her.” He was about to move away when he heard Margrethe speak and turned back.

  “I thought it would be different,” she said, staring out the gate into the market-square. “I thought the pilgrimage would be … I don’t know … freeing somehow, that if I observed the Commandments and maintained my virtue, I would be able to deliver my husband from his affliction. But it isn’t freeing, or inspiring, and hasn’t been from the first.” She sat down on a simple bench built on the edge of the pond, her eyes still fixed in the distance. “The galley we boarded at Genova stank, the quarters were cramped, the seas were rough, and when we reached Alexandria, we were charged far more than we had expected for our lodging and food. Several of the Alexandrians said we were fools to go all the way to Ethiopia, that there were shrines and chapels in plenty in Egypt that would be sufficient to our needs. Frater Anteus, who joined us at Alexandria, was tasked to accompany us, to monitor us for the Church. He swore the same oath the rest of us did, but he also vowed to speak truth of our conduct when we returned.”

  “That is not uncommon,” said Sandjer’min.

  “It was just the beginning. Oh, Sandjer’min, how much I disliked it when we took boats up-river. We saw wonderful sights, but Sieur Horembaud would not stop to look at them because they were made by pagans as idols, and we could be accused of heresy or apostasy for our interest in them.” She sighed wistfully. “I thought the Nile would be beautiful, like the Thames and the Gwash, framed by trees and faced by villages, but I didn’t understand about Egypt, nor did I consider the dangers. Crocodiles and hippopotami in the water, and vultures and jackals out of it. Horrible beasts, all of them. Many, many cats everywhere, all of them capable of being possessed by devils, and lions near the river. Seeing Torquil burn slowly to death made me dread the sunlight on the water. Then, when we left the river to travel by night, other trials awaited us.” She took a deep breath, trying to keep from talking, but unable to do so. “Journeying through the wastes was nothing like what our priests promised, who likened our pilgrimage to the Holy Family’s escape into Egypt, not what we have endured, though it is supposed to benefit us, for those whom God loves most He tests most, therefore we should welcome our hardships and praise Him for His favor. It is enough to make one want to shout and scream, those hours of silence going through the night, only the wind and the sand making noise.”

  “But for Sorer Imogen,” he said.

  “Do you mean you think the emptiness and silence have driven her mad? Is that why she screams?” She turned to him at last. “Can such a thing happen?”

  “It is possible,” he said, pursuing the matter. “Has she always been very devout?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She prays constantly for God to forgive her sins; are there really so many of them?” His voice was kind, but still Margrethe winced.

  “Since I married her brother, she has been in Orders, and credited with true zeal,” she said.

  “Can you tell me something of her life before she entered the convent? Do you know why she took up the pious life?” Again, he spoke gently, and this time she rested her hand over his, saying nothing for a short while, then nodded.

  “I’ll tell you what I have been told.” Margrethe spoke as if dazed, with little inflection in her words, as if saying them gave her relief beyond what she imparted to him. “Before he suffered his injury, my husband said to me that she had been a fervent girl, single-minded and disciplined more than most young women were; she supervised the maintenance of her chamber, she also insisted on learning to read, and was taught her numbers. She scorned religion when she was a child, according to Dagoberht, so much so that the priest said she could well be an agent of Satan, sent to put all of her family in peril. But then a new priest—one of the ardent preachers, who captivated her—urged her to seek for truth in God, to repent her unruliness and devote herself to acts of piety.” She stared off into the distance, recalling those times as if she could see them before her. “For two years she resisted him, and then, when her step-mother died, she saw it was her sins that had brought it about. She professed her vocation when she was fifteen and entered the convent a year later after refusing two handsome offers of marriage, which the family had sought for her, saying she had much to expiate and would not drag a husband into her errors and wickedness. From that time on, she was a model novice and a highly regarded nun; many called her a living saint. I … I have thought, now and again, that her—” She broke off as Firouz came into the courtyard again. “I am saying too much.”

  Firouz sala’amed. “Your room is being made ready. It is beyond the kitchen. You will be guarded by the slave who sleeps in the storeroom.” He glanced at Sorer Imogen. “She will need a slave to tend her.”

  “Choose a woman of steady temperament who will not be distressed or angry with her behavior,” Sandjer’min recommended.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Firouz promised, noticing the confusion Margrethe was attempting to conceal. “The baths will be ready shortly.” He gave a quick glance in Sorer Imogen’s direction, then stepped back into the reception room.

  Margrethe hung her head. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”

  He turned his hand over and held hers before she could pull it away from him. “I’m not. You speak what you feel, which is an honor to me, a sign of friendship.”

  She turned to him, the brightness returning to her pale-blue eyes. “Is that what it is?”

  He did not quite smile, but he nodded. “If friendship is what you want it to be,” he said softly.

  Margrethe was about to speak when Sorer Imogen began to scream. With a little shake of her head, Margrethe rose and went to try to calm her overwrought sister-in-law, leaving Sandjer’min to ponder what he would use to quieten Sorer Imogen when he ran out of tincture of poppies.

  * * *

  Text of a letter from Heneri Gosland to Guillaume des Grossierterres, Seneschal to Sieur Dagoberht Gosland, Baron du Creisse-en-Aquitaine, Sieur of the fief of Saunt-Didier, written with ink on papyrus in Church Latin on June 17, 1225, delivered ten months later by Hospitaller courier.

  To Guillaume des Grossierterres, Seneschal to my half-brother, Sieur Dagoberht Gosland, may God improve his capacity to think, on this last day that I am a Christian;

  Seneschal,

  In my travels, I have come to accept the teachings of Mohammed as more holy than those of Jesus, and I will profess my faith in the mosque in this town, Baruta, on the River Nile in the Nubian Desert, and then Firouz will take all the camels that are part of Sieur Horembaud’s animals,
replace them with horses and asses, which Sieur Horembaud’s company will need for their climb into the Ethiopian Highland, whither they are bound; we will purchase our own animals.

  Sieur Horembaud’s company has lain here at Baruta now for fifteen days, unable to continue due to Sorer Imogen’s fits. I begin to fear that such afflictions are likely to occur in the children of my father’s first wife, Elinor de Saunt-Norme of Brittany, for first my brother is incapacitated by a blow to the head ending in a fall, and now Sorer Imogen is reduced to praying constantly for all her sins, though what sins those might be, none of us can know. Firouz, who has been the company’s guide and my instructor, and I will go to the oasis of the Three Djinni two days to the northeast, where I will finally study Arabic and the Qran, and will remain there until the Inundation ends, at which time we will travel back to Baruta to take up other travelers to guide them across the Nubian Desert to reach the Nile at Abu Simbel, a town of great antiquity and the crossroad for merchants from Darfur bound to Alexandria, and pilgrims returning from places to the south.

  I ask you do not attempt to find me to dissuade me from my decision, for I am content that Allah has shown me the way. I had the same dream on five nights, when I bowed on a prayer-rug and was allowed to have a look at Paradise, at the gardens and the beautiful virgins who will serve me through eternity. I will take a Muslim name and live as they live. If I speak Church Latin or my native tongue again, it will be to translate for Muslim travelers dealing with Christians, as Firouz has done for Sieur Horembaud’s company. I think it will be a good life, if Allah wills.

  Tell my brother and Frater Misericorde what I have done and tell them that I do not do this to shame my House, but to follow where my faith leads me. The pilgrims may be distressed when they discover what I have done, but they may look upon it as God’s test of the strength of their love for Him. I have no wish to harm any of them through my actions, but I cannot continue on this mission without betraying my beliefs, which would offend both Christ and Allah, for Jesus is a prophet of Islam, and regarded highly by the faithful, who venerate his memory and honor his teaching. I hope Sieur Dagoberht understands what I do, and remembers me with Christian charity.