The Convert

  The road leads through a wide mountain pass, the Col de l’Homme Mort. The views are endless: Mont Ventoux behind me, Montagne de Lure far ahead.

  I hike down the lonesome motorway to the lifeless village of Séderon, lose my car keys along the way, and wander the many desolate kilometres back over the row of hills, grimly scrutinising every patch of ground until, out of breath, I see something glittering among the wild stock flowers and sink to my knees as if I’ve found the Holy Grail.

  I drive on. La Calandre, Serre des Ormes. Birds of prey. Crushing silence, thudding gusts of wind – les rafales.

  Here’s the narrow Méouge canyon. I follow the tortuous course of the near-dry river. The landscape here is prehistoric and utterly deserted. Challenging, perhaps even punishing terrain for an inexperienced army. The crusaders didn’t have much choice; if they headed for Montgenèvre, the mountain pass near Briançon, as most historians suppose, then they must have come this way. Slopes and pits, shifting scree underfoot and steep cliffs towering above that might conceal all sorts of dangers. Here and there, a thin trickle of water loses itself in some dark crevice.

  I follow the smallest byroads, sometimes going for hours without running into another living being. The poetry of place names: Laragne-Montéglin, Ventavon, Col de Faye, Barcillonnette, La Saulce. Jean Giono’s beloved highlands. At the Château de Tallard I get out and visit the impressive castle, every detail of which attests to the crusaders’ overweening pride. But it wasn’t built until the fourteenth century. Flapping pennants in an elevated courtyard; bucolic views through glassless windows; tall Gothic arches. The stuff of medieval fantasies.

  Should I drive towards Gap or take a more direct route east, towards the large Lac de Serre-Ponçon? The latter, I decide. The heights, with their thin scattering of pines, exude the atmosphere of a cheap skiing holiday. Think of all the human effort spent on that First Crusade. Where are Yaakov and Justa? Bumping along on the back of a cart? Have they already been left behind? Were they still alive when the armies passed this way?

  I have to head towards Briançon. Massif des Écrins? Not an easy path for an army trailed by a migratory multitude. Imagine the exhaustion. I follow their route through Embrun to Mont Dauphin. Why did they cross the Italian border so far to the north? Did they hope to join the armies going by way of Germany? In the Durance Valley I see snow-caps on the Alps. After the Gourfouran canyon and the wild landscape around the impressive Gorges du Guil, after La Roche-de-Rame and just before L’Argentière-la-Bessée, they have nowhere to go but into the forbidding mountains. Puy-Saint-Pierre, Croix de Toulouse, now it’s getting serious. Lugging, wheezing, pushing their carts uphill, beating their straining, baulking horses, scraping their arms and legs, aching with fatigue in every muscle, pierced with cold when it rains, bedding down on inhospitable ground.

  I choose the road to the west of Briançon, drive as far as Serre Chevalier, and am astounded by the view. Wind in my face. A dead end, I have to go back. Finally, the Montgenèvre pass. Bad weather, poor visibility, dark clouds, danger. What an idiotic venture. The second large castle designed by the architect Vauban, after the one on Mont Dauphin. A car park, entrance tickets, school picnics. Knights’ footsteps, imagination. Steep mountain paths, majestic views when the sun breaks through again. Approaching the Italian border. Below lie Sestriere and the Passo della Banchetta. After that, they’ll have to pass through the Po Valley. I lose their trail and, exhausted, check into a small, musty hotel. The next day I drive all the way back to Monieux.

  Yaakov and Justa? No idea.

  The whole Mediterranean rim is afoam with the confused activity accompanying the recent waves of migration. More and more refugees are on the move. There is plunder and pillage – not only by the army’s embattled rearguard, where anarchy and cruelty prevail, but also by locals chased out of their homes and onto the roads, who are out for vengeance. Sometimes they simply join the passing mob in search of adventure, easy women, an indulgence or a better life. Some people try to escape the raids by setting out to sea in small boats. Many drown, overcome by the waves, dying unremarked in the stiff wind and glaring sun.

  These bands of migrants bring many prostitutes, abandoned women trying to survive by hawking their bodies. There is no way Pope Urban could have anticipated the moral turpitude, the atrocities, and the general callousness that would issue from his high-minded urgings to join the crusade. The northern routes, where fanatical leaders like Peter the Hermit are in charge, are no better: robbery, rape, sadistic pogroms, violent resistance by the plundered populace – retaliation and counter-retaliation.

  The chaotic rearguard are struck down pitilessly, their meagre provisions stolen. One large group marches towards Macedonia; others scatter, or rush to find boats along the steep coasts of Montenegro – usually an impossible task.

  The old world has been thrown out of joint; the delicate balances of earlier days are teetering. Where oh where are her children?

  4

  Marseilles bathes in bright sun. I’ve visited ten times or more – this is the city that ties me to the start of another world, radiating a feeling of hope, a sense of freedom, which need never be pinned down but is simply present, a form of relief and joy. I walk among the hipsters with their unlovely tattoos and the Ethiopians selling fake Ray-Bans, past the pot-smoking backpackers, the sharp-eyed dealers and the old men who take their first measured sips of pastis around ten in the morning, through the polychrome souk with its live chickens and its pervasive odour of marijuana, mint, stockfish, olives and cinnamon. Water runs over the old paving stones in the blue shade; the plane trees are gathering dust. I feel a hankering for a cup of strong coffee, and my throat itches to start smoking again. I think of the ports across the sea – how could I not? I feel like boarding a boat and slipping out of my life. In the morning paper, I read yet another article about dozens of migrants drowning off the Greek coast.

  At the start of the Seventh Crusade – yes, six crusades later – the thirteenth-century French chronicler Jean de Joinville wrote, ‘Au mois d’aoust entrames en nos nefs à la Roche de Marseille’ – in the month of August we arrived in our ships at the rock of Marseilles. The words evoke iconic scenes of ships sailing through the narrow entrance to the ancient harbour, where the Quai de Belges is found today. The rowers can finally rest after their ordeal; the rigging creaks, the first mate hops on shore and throws huge ropes around the mooring post. From the waterside, I try to get a sense not so much of how it was to arrive but of how it felt to depart. Warm salt wind, white-crested waves just beyond the breakwaters, a colourful crowd waiting and jostling on shore.

  Here Hamoutal enters another world, in no way resembling the sedate, conventional city of Narbonne where she lived with her husband’s family, and even less like northerly Rouen, her childhood home. Marseilles is Greek in origin; in those days, the city was sometimes called Massilia, and it was known throughout the Mediterranean region as a cosmopolitan destination, kaleidoscopic and easy to reach. Even back then, the city and harbour were teeming with Maghribis, Africans, Byzantines, Montenegrins, Albanians, Syrians, Sardinians and Sicilians. Jews, Copts, Muslims and Orthodox Christians lived side by side. The city’s districts were dirty and chaotic; life there was intense and edged with danger – the same images still reinforced with some regularity today on the French TV news. Since long before the Christian era, it has been a city of soaps, exotic woods, olive oil, imported Oriental spices and textiles, and a city of fishermen. Then as now, passers-by stopped to watch large tuna being cut on the wharf. There was shipbuilding, a lively black market, open prostitution. Street musicians stood along the quays; there were acrobats, conjurors, preachers, shady dealers and con artists. You could buy rough home-brewed spirits, drown your sorrows in a murky tavern, or pick fights in dangerous brothels. You might catch a disease or live on fleeting excitement, brawls and religious delusions, amid a cacophony of countless tongues. Veni Creator Spiritus! the adventurers would shout before going to chu
rch to pray for forgiveness of their foul sins – which, after absolution, they returned to with undiminished enthusiasm.

  Unworldly Hamoutal hopes to board a ship bound for Jerusalem that very day, but of course no such vessel exists. The galleys crossing the Mediterranean go to Tunis or Alexandria. From there, she can arrange to journey on. She tucks away her unwashed blonde locks under a black shawl, screws up her courage, and approaches sailors to ask which ships sail where. Since she has no money, she can’t travel with the better classes; the remaining option is to be crammed into the hold of a cargo ship among crowds of paupers and to find some way to survive the trip unharmed. She sleeps in a run-down building in a labourers’ district, barricading her door with a heavy stone for fear of being raped. The next morning, she walks along the docks. Three ships creak into their moorings: one is leaving for Cagliari and Tunis in two days. From there, she hopes to go on to Alexandria. She is nervous and restless, eager to move as soon as she can. A round-bellied man with just one brown tooth left in his grinning, unshaven face tells her she can travel with them – refugees hop on the boats almost every day, he says – but she’ll have to render services in exchange. He gives her a lewd wink, squeezes his crotch and leers. Her stomach churns, and she walks away fast. The baby she holds to her chest protects her from most of the unsavoury characters who shout filth at every passing woman. It seems a shard of respect for motherly virtue is still lodged somewhere inside them; she is treated with more pity than she had expected. But she can hardly imagine knocking on the door of some upper-class family, as dirty and penniless as she is now. Yet in her desperation, she does precisely that. Like a beggar, she goes to the portal of a wealthy Jewish shipowner she’s heard stories about.

  As soon as the guard who opens the door looks at her, he tries to slam it in her face. Hamoutal mutters a few words of Hebrew, and he leaves it ajar. She pulls out the letter from Joshuah Obadiah. The illiterate man takes a quick look and motions with his head for her to enter.

  Half an hour later, the shipowner’s wife comes into the blue-tiled room where Hamoutal is waiting. Again, she produces the letter from Rabbi Obadiah. The woman reads it and takes a long look at Hamoutal. Her eyes growing moist, she smiles and says, Come with me.

  Hamoutal is led into the opulent back room of the house, where a fountain splashes in a blue limestone basin. Light is filtered through pearl curtains; a linen sheet is stretched over the courtyard. There are budding oleanders in large pots and, against a wall, a hibiscus in blossom. An ice-blue bird in a wooden cage under an orange tree lets out strange cries. A maidservant takes her child, who is rolling his head feverishly, washes him, tends to the scabies rashes forming on his skin, applies herbal ointment, wraps him in fresh linen, and lays him down to sleep under netting on the cool side of the courtyard. Hamoutal is given warm milk with saffron to drink. She means to start telling her sad story to this refined woman, whose eyes are full of questions and compassion, but she cannot: with every word she tries to utter, she has to gulp so hard that nothing coherent comes out of her.

  She is shown to a cool room where a copper bowl of lemon water awaits her. Through the open window, the heavenly fragrance of orange blossom drifts inside. A dove is cooing on a roof. Now, as she washes, the tears burst out of her in a kind of dumb, primal relief. Sobbing, she washes herself and combs the tangles out of her hair. Simple black clothes have been laid out for her. As soon as she lies down on the bed, exhausted, she sinks away into a large warm darkness.

  When she wakes up, it’s pitch-black.

  Somewhere close by, she hears the small, familiar breath of her one remaining child, the child whose name is unknown to posterity.

  She falls back to sleep.

  5

  Seagulls and storm winds the next morning; pounding gusts, harsh sunlight.

  She takes her baby to her breast to soothe him. She stays in her room until she hears stirrings in the house.

  When she slips into the back room, the maid is already at work. The shipowner’s there too. They exchange greetings; he has read the letter. He treats her with measured respect and assures her that he will help. He doesn’t give her much hope of finding her children but acknowledges that Jerusalem is the only good bet. When he hears of the galley bound for Tunis that she’d planned to board, his words are harsh: most women passengers are abused or sold as slaves by the scum on those freighters. Tunis and the whole North African coast is a preposterous route, in his opinion, because of the dangers; she must avoid all the old pilgrim routes through the Maghrib and Syria in view of the recent tensions throughout the known world. One of his ships will set sail for Genoa in a week. There’s a closed deck for well-born Jewish travellers, his main customers. In the meantime, she can stay in his house and regain her strength. Hamoutal listens without speaking. She bends her knee and reaches for his hand to kiss. The man waves her off, saying she owes him nothing, and is gone for the rest of the day.

  She sees him only once more, just before she leaves. He shows up by the harbour to escort her to her ship and hands her a purse of silver coins and a second letter of recommendation permitting her to travel from Genoa to Palermo at his expense. And there comes the maid, with a bundle of clothing prepared for her. The shipowner’s wife comes to see her off too. It’s a tearful farewell; Hamoutal has latched on to these people like a drowning woman. They say little; the wind has died down a bit, and the bobbing ship remains docked until well into the afternoon. She hears shouted orders and banging below deck. Then the ship casts off and raises its sails, which immediately swell. The wind has soon carried it out of the harbour, past the rock later known as the Château d’If. The sea blinds her, endless dots of light shine in her eyes; she holds her sleeping baby close and takes deep breaths of sea air. But she feels no relief.

  Nothing of Genoa will remain in her memory except that one Norman knight from Rouen she recognises at once as a distant cousin, who also seems to recognise her. He is grooming his horse; he gives her a long stare, and it seems he intends to approach her. She turns to go; he calls after her, but she lumbers down the street as fast as she can with her child and her bag, slips through an open gate and squats behind the bushes in a courtyard, covering her whining baby’s mouth with her hand. She thinks she can hear his steps as he passes; the wild racing of her heart makes her feel sick. She waits there, curled into a ball, until it grows dark, then creeps back to the harbour, rents a room in an inn, and lies in bed, sleepless, alert to every noise.

  The city echoes all night with footfall, back and forth, and men’s excited voices. The dockworkers trudge and toil without stop, preparing ships to carry crusaders and adventurous zealots across the sea. Light flickers on the ceiling from the torches carried through the streets. Hamoutal dives deep under the coarse sheets with her child in her arms and cries herself to sleep.

  The next morning she pulls her shawl over her face like a veil. She lugs her travel bag through the streets; the child is whimpering again and throws up in the sling as she crosses the plank. She reels for a moment, between ship and shore, at the sight of the water below, its dark and frightful churning; she smells the sour odour coming from the child and stumbles onto the galley, almost tripping. The sea is calm; the sun is rising over the harbour, which reeks of dead fish. The ship moves forward into the wind; she can hear the drumbeat and the chanting oarsmen in the darkness below deck. The mast creaks, gulls fly low over the rubbish drifting offshore, and above deck, people walk back and forth. She is on her way to Palermo. The galley is called the Pomella; according to the chronicler Caffaro, Godfrey of Bouillon took the same ship to Alexandria a few years earlier, in 1093; but David Abulafia, a leading historian of Mediterranean navigation, has shown that to be a mere fiction.

  The voyage takes a week.

  The ship follows the Gulf of La Spezia, staying close to the Italian coastline, and passes Livorno, heading towards Piombino. The winds are favourable; all the ship has to do is follow the strong current that meanders all the w
ay around the Mediterranean rim. Near Follonica, she sees an island to starboard; it’s Elba, a rocky protrusion in the form of a giant fish flashing its tailfins at the Italian mainland. But she can’t see that from the ship, and certainly not on eleventh-century maps, which look much like the doodles of a dreamy child. The sailors are nervous as they pass the island, a notorious base for pirate attacks.

  After two days, they dock in Porto Santo Stefano, unloading cargo and taking on fresh supplies. Hamoutal walks on the beach with her baby, the only constant in her life, sleeping in the shawl on her back. Somewhere in a small garden under a tall tamarisk, she sees a short, bald man bowed over a writing desk, the very image of calm and quiet. It is the great scribe Guilielmus of Hansea, who is staying in the port town. The man looks up, and his lips curve slightly into a refined, ironic smile. It throws her off for a moment. Long gone are the days of delicate fabrics and white fingers; her hands smell of fish and salt. The wind is mild and gentle; the sky above is filled with dazzling sunlight. No crusaders here, not even any Normans: quiet and calm. She sleeps for an hour under a myrtle tree with her baby beside her, returns to the harbour, and spends the night in her berth on board, which bobs, creaking peacefully, under the star-strewn darkness.

  Over the next few days, they sail past Ostia and Naples, putting in at Sorrento. Hamoutal gives herself over to the rolling of the peaceful waves on the purple-tinged Tyrrhenian. The thin line marking the edge of the Italian peninsula is always shimmering on their port side; dolphins leap in silhouette as the light fans out behind them. A man plays a simple hurdy-gurdy and sings lewd ditties. An abbot on the ship has words with him: he is doing the Devil’s work, he must stop at once.