“How long is the bridge?” Margrethe asked him.
“Pendibe says it is thirty paces, more or less.” He had perused the bridge when he approached it earlier, and reckoned that the length was slightly more.
“Will you give us something to help calm her?” Margrethe took his hand again, and this time, there was more in his grasp than worry.
“I have two treatments in my medicaments bag that should reduce her fright,” he said, struggling to keep his mind on the crossing and not to be distracted by Margrethe’s eager desire. “I’ll go get them and explain them to you.”
“You are very good to us,” said Margrethe.
“And then we’ll move you up in the line,” Sandjer’min told her as he stepped back from her, then turned and made his way along the narrow track to where Ruthier waited, Jiochim Menines immediately behind him, two of Pater Venformir’s company ahead of him. He raised his hand as he neared Ruthier.
“Has the crossing been arranged?” Ruthier asked in old-fashioned Spanish for Menines’ benefit.
“For the most part,” Sandjer’min said in Imperial Latin, though he was aware that Menines understood a good deal of it. “We will have to move farther up in the line, so we can cross behind the women. Sieur Horembaud wants you to cross with other servants, but you will be just behind me, so that will put us on the same side of the river at almost the same time.”
“And I take it we’re to look after the women?” Ruthier asked without seeming too surprised.
“Yes. Better us than Howe, or Micheu, don’t you think,” said Sandjer’min with a sardonic smile.
“Or any of the others, including myself, given how Sorer Imogen sees men,” said Menines, his Imperial Latin stilted but comprehensible. “How long before our crossing begins?”
“A while yet, but Sieur Horembaud is in a hurry to have us on our way again, and that should speed up our crossing.” Sandjer’min went to take his medicaments sack from one of their two asses saddle. “I have something for Sorer Imogen that will help her during the crossing.”
“No doubt she will need it,” said Ruthier. “Should I move up now, or wait a bit?”
“If I were you, I’d move up now, and escort the women forward,” said Sandjer’min. “The more confusion she encounters, the more distressed Sorer Imogen is likely to be.”
“I’ll attend to it, my master,” Ruthier told him.
“Bring Melech with you. I’d prefer he stay in your hands until I lead him across.” Sandjer’min slung the strap of the bag over his shoulder and started back along the line toward the three women. “I have something for you,” he said in Anglo-French as he approached the three women.
“Tell me what to do,” Margrethe said to him.
“That I will,” Sandjer’min assured her, slipping the strap off his shoulder and opening the bag. He withdrew two round jars, both about the size of a lemon. “The one with the glass stopper is the more potent, and must be diluted in water or it will sting her mouth. The one with the leather stopper is soothing and is to be used after the first.” He reached into his sack again and brought out a shallow cup. “One full measure in the spoon you have of the first in a cup of water, then one full measure directly to her of the second,” he said. “And if you will follow me now, we will find you where you are to be in line to go across.”
For a while the activity along the narrow path increased as pilgrims, servants, slaves, and animals jostled to their appointed position, but finally Pendibe stepped onto the bridge, leading his horse. Tsega and Teklile Brehane followed him out onto the bridge, each leading a horse, as Pendibe passed the mid-point of the span. After them came Pater Venformir, leading the ass he preferred, since the Bible reported that the Christ had ridden an ass into Jerusalem before His sacrifice; as a priest, Pater Venformir was eager to emulate his Savior.
It took the three women more time to cross than it had the men before them: Lalagia kept the ass at a slow walk, not only to diminish the sway of the bridge, but to ensure that Sorer Imogen was not twisting or squirming in her saddle. Margrethe walked beside her, speaking reassuringly over the noise of the tumultuous Atbara, repeating the Magnificat when Sorer Imogen seemed restless or anxious. Once Sorer Imogen kicked out at Margrethe, and once she tugged on the two leather straps that held her in the saddle. As the women passed mid-point, Sandjer’min led Melech onto the bridge and set his pace to the women’s. Reaching the far end of the bridge, Sorer Imogen began to sing the Agnus Dei, gesturing to those who had already crossed to join with her in this expression of gratitude for their deliverance. Soon a few of the pilgrims on both ends of the bridge were praying together, their prayers a chant.
Sandjer’min was almost at the center of the bridge when somewhere off in the night, a lion bellowed; Melech froze, legs locked, neck craned out, and ears flat back as the roar sounded again. Everyone in the two pilgrims’ companies stopped what they were doing and peered into the night. Horses and asses fretted and strained on their leads; one of the asses that had just crossed the bridge broke away from its handler, hurtling into the darkness, screaming in dread.
Lalagia pulled firmly on Sorer Imogen’s ass’ lead and got the animal moving again so they could get clear of the bridge; Margrethe did her best to reassure her sister-in-law, keeping her voice much more composed than she felt. She looked back to be sure that Sandjer’min was moving with them.
“More lanthorns!” Pendibe shouted from the broad clear space on the plateau. “Build up the fire!”
Sorer Imogen moaned and rocked in her saddle, transfixed with fear, while Lalagia patted the ass the nun rode and Margrethe did her best to dismiss Sorer Imogen’s terrors by reciting Psalms.
From his place at the end of the line of those waiting to cross, Sieur Horembaud shouted, “Torches! We need torches around the camp!”
“We haven’t enough wood for torches!” Pendibe called back.
Sandjer’min cajoled Melech with kind words and a promise of figs, and gradually the gelding stopped panting and tucked in his head; he moved watchfully forward, the lead still taut as he minced along.
From some distance away they heard a sudden scuffle, a sound between a bark and a growl, then thrashing, then a kind of predatory rumble, a low, sinister noise from many throats.
“Lions,” said Pendibe to Pater Venformir. “They found the ass.”
“They’re nearby,” said Pater Venformir, crossing himself. “Am I right that there is more than one lion to be dealt with.”
“Probably a group of females with young, and a big male or two to scare away others,” said Tsega when Pendibe explained what had passed between him and the Moravian priest. “You don’t often find them here, but the Inundation must have driven them to higher ground; they’ll be hungry.”
“Are we in any danger?” Pater Venformir asked, not persuaded by Pendibe’s equanimity.
“Everyone, everywhere is always in some sort of danger,” said Tsega, and turned away, his remarks untranslated for Pater Venformir.
“Let us hope we move on tonight,” said Pendibe in Coptic.
Pater Venformir crossed himself. “Amen.”
More leonine muttering came from the kill, and a shriek of complaint from one of the hungry cats.
“How are we to protect our animals?” Vidame Bonnefiles asked Pater Venformir. “We must keep the lions at a distance, or all the horses and asses will balk at crossing the river.”
“With torches and lanthorns and guards with cudgels, I should imagine,” said Pater Venformir. “And prayer.”
There was a bustle at the bridgehead as Lalagia stepped off the last plank, and urged the ass to come on. A small spate of thanks to God rose into the night as Margrethe joined the other two women on the west side of the river; on the bridge, Sandjer’min urged Melech to move a little more quickly, which the gelding was willing to do, walking carefully, his ears turning to catch any sound of lions ahead.
“Are we going to erect tents here?” Margrethe asked Sandjer�
��min as he and Melech came off the bridge.
“Sieur Horembaud wants us to continue on tonight, and both of the companies agree, especially since the lions arrived. There will be a supper here, and the animals will be fed, but unless something delays us, we should be a league away from here by dawn. That should put us at the monastery near midnight tomorrow night.”
“And then we climb into the mountains,” said Margrethe, adding, “I wish I could go back to Alexandria with Lalagia and Temi.”
“Do you?” Sandjer’min was surprised to hear her say this.
“Yes. I know it is wrong of me, but … I think of my husband and I wonder if he will even know me when I return to Creisse-en-Aquitaine. He forgot Guillaume des Grossierterres, his seneschal, when he had been away for a summer; I will have been gone more than two years and I have failed him so badly, how can climbing mountains erase any of it?”
“What answer do you want? what the Church expects, what your family expects? Do you want approval or disapprobation? Or something else?” He felt her pale eyes on him, and he turned to meet her gaze.
“I want your answer,” she told him, putting a little emphasis on your.
When he spoke again, his voice was more musical than she had ever heard it. “I think that so long as you find merit in the pilgrimage, you deserve to remain with it. If it no longer comforts you or reveals what you seek, then it becomes a torment, and loses whatever virtue it may have had, and you need not remain.”
“The pilgrimage is to test the soul, not to provide comfort, or strange lands to marvel at,” she corrected him. “You know that; we’ve talked about it.”
“Do you still believe that it does?” he asked her gently.
Instead of replying, she pointed to the bridge: Ruthier was coming off it with a horse and an ass behind him; he went to set up their remuda-lines. He offered Sandjer’min a sardonic Roman salute, then set a ringed spike into the rock, his mallet thudding at every blow. “It’s getting noisy,” she said as an excuse for not answering his question. “I’d better help Lalagia with getting Sorer Imogen out of the saddle.”
Sandjer’min kissed her hand. “I have more calmative in my red-lacquer chest; I’ll bring it to you after the midnight meal.”
“Will we all be across by then, I wonder?” she mused.
“I trust so,” he said, and went back toward the bridge to help unload the heavily laden ass that Vitalis led.
The perimeter of the camp and the approach to the bridge were bristling with lanthorns and occasional torches, providing rich, golden light for all those still coming from the far side. There were sixteen more pilgrims and servants to cross, and twenty animals; Sieur Horembaud stood at the bridgehead, urging the men to cross without stopping. He was growing hoarse from shouting orders, but his face was alight with purpose, and he persisted in his task eagerly, reminding the pilgrims that at the end of the following night, they would rest on holy ground at the Monastery of the Redeemer. He admonished them all in very poor Church Latin to be diligent, to do as they were pledged to do, to show God the strength of their faith. Beside him, the copper-dun chafed at her bit, taking his state of mind for her own.
An old man from Pater Venformir’s company faltered as he approached the bridge; he crossed himself, and hesitated moving forward, clearly terrified of walking on the swaying span. Behind him, Magister Clothwig murmured encouragement to the frightened man, who turned to Sieur Horembaud and said something incomprehensible, which only served to annoy him. With an oath that bordered on blasphemy, Sieur Horembaud grabbed the old man’s arm and shoved him forward. The old man howled with terror.
“Please,” Magister Clothwig said, reaching to pull the old man back. “He’s scared.”
“I can see that,” said Sieur Horembaud.
“Let me speak with him, reassure him, and then—”
Sieur Horembaud cut the scholar short. “We haven’t time for that.”
Magister Clothwig was prepared to object, but Sieur Horembaud paid no attention. “Micheu! Get this man across! I’ll have someone else lead your horse!” He stood blocking the bridgehead so that the old man could not come back off the span until Micheu de Saunte-Foi walked up to him.
“How shall I do it?” Micheu asked Sieur Horembaud.
“I don’t care.” Sieur Horembaud gave a loud whistle. “Sling him over your shoulder if you must, but get him over the river—alive, if you please.”
“As you wish,” said Micheu, and stepped around Sieur Horembaud, saying as he approached the immobilized old man, “There, Grandfather, don’t tremble so. I will protect you. Give me your arm and we shall cross together.” He said this easily enough, but there was iron purpose in every movement.
“I … I … can’t,” the old man quavered out.
“Then lean on God and me, and we will get you to the other side.” He took hold of the old man’s arm and, by pressure on the man’s back, propelled him reluctantly forward. The old man shuddered and almost sank to his knees, but Micheu kept him up.
After what seemed half the night, the pair reached the other side. “No more bridges. Go get something to eat,” said Micheu with unexpected kindness before he turned and waved to Sieur Horembaud at the other end of the span. As he watched, Sieur Horembaud signaled again, indicating his desire to finish the crossing soon.
“Not too many left to cross,” said Sandjer’min as Micheu came up to him.
“Thank God,” said Micheu, blessing himself. “As things are, we should be a league or two nearer the monastery before we camp.”
“We won’t leave here until everyone’s on this side, including Sieur Horembaud,” Sandjer’min reminded him.
In the center of the ring of lanthorns and torches, the cooking-fire was alight, and the men whose work it was to cook were readying their griddles and cauldrons to make supper.
“That should urge them on,” said Micheu, nodding in the direction of the fire, then went toward it himself. “The lions will be curious, too.”
Those who had the first lentil cakes and onion-and-eggplant stew were finished with their meal by the time the last slave came across, bringing three asses and two horses on a very long multiple lead-line with him.
At the far end of the bridge, Sieur Horembaud swung up onto the copper-dun mare; on guard at the bridgehead, Sandjer’min muttered, “Stupid and vain,” in a language no one on the pilgrimage spoke except himself.
“God save him,” said Almeric, and, like the Copts, raised his arms with palms turned toward the starry heavens in prayer.
The copper-dun mare took a few steps, then, as the bridge swayed, she balked and attempted to back up. Sieur Horembaud slapped her rump with a hunting bat and spurred her sides; she moved forward, but stiffly, in little steps, her head up, the whites of her eyes showing, her head tossing as she moved farther out on the span.
“Dismount!” Vidame Bonnefiles shouted.
In the camp everyone but Sorer Imogen stared at Sieur Horembaud, some eagerly, some in dread. One of the Moravians called out in Church Latin, “Anyone want to make a wager on his chances?”
“Don’t say such things,” Pater Venformir admonished him. “You’ll pray the Psalms for that remark, and beg your bread once we reach the monastery.”
The Atbara’s furor kept the silence of the two companies from being eerie, and as Sieur Horembaud gripped the mare with his lower legs, forcing her to go on, it became noticeable that the horse was favoring her injured leg.
“There’s too much for her to balance. No wonder she’s having trouble,” Temi said quietly to Lalagia, who stood with him at the edge of the remuda-lines.
The pilgrims whispered and pointed as the copper-dun moved, hesitating as the plank under her front hooves moved; she was inching forward when a loud roar a quarter of a circle away from the feeding pride, and no more than twenty paces away from the lanthorns and torches, shredded the stillness, and set off an exchange of challenges. On the bridge, the copper-dun reared and tried to spin; Sieur
Horembaud stopped her from turning more than a little, and she came down with her front legs straddling the upper southern cable, which put her into a full-fledged panic. She reared again, pawing at the air, and it was clear her splint was worse. As she came down, she bucked, screaming in pain, and threw Sieur Horembaud from his saddle, and over the side of the bridge.
The lions were in the heat of battle now, roars and coughs and screams drowning out the shrieks of the horse and the ominous thud as Sieur Horembaud landed on a narrow shelf about nine cloth-yards below the end of the bridge.
“Get more fire on the west cliff!” Pendibe shouted; Tsega, Olu’we, and Teklile Brehane all rushed to obey him. As Temi realized what they were doing, he and two of the Bohemians joined them.
In a last, desperate attempt to free herself from the ropes and cables of the bridge, the copper-dun mare leaned heavily against the south side of the bridge which was now swaying and dangerously canted. The mare struggled to pull her damaged leg free, and rolled off the bridge, dropping to bounce off the stones and into the flooding Atbara, vanishing immediately from sight as the river swept her northward.
The stunned silence at the mare’s fall from the twisting bridge was broken by a howl from below the bridge. “I’m HURT!”
The pilgrims were seized with confusion, no one knowing what to do. Finally someone shone a lanthorn down in the direction of his voice. Sieur Horembaud lay on his back on the narrow ledge, about two cloth-yards from the bridge; he waved his arm as the feeble light from the lanthorn reached him. “Get me UP!”
Night Pilgrims Page 38