City of Pearl

by Alys Clare

  He said, ‘How do you propose to pay for this horse and cart?’

  ‘I have money.’ I lifted my chin, proud to be able to make the claim, warmed once more by the thought that I was in this happy situation because Rollo had endowed me with his wealth. But hard on the heels of that came the reminder that he was dead, and my momentary pleasure vanished.

  Gurdyman understood. He put an arm around my shoulders and said, ‘It is a high price to pay. You would say, no doubt, like all those who lose people they love, that you would far rather have the person than the wealth.’

  He gave me a moment to dry my eyes, then went on. ‘Assuming that Iago has fulfilled his mission, we should purchase all the provisions that we can.’ He added something else, and it sounded like Before word goes round the whole village. But when I asked him to repeat it, he shook his head.

  Iago had acquired a short-legged, stout-bodied pony and a cart that was exactly the same in size and form as those I had been noticing. It was about a man’s height in length, a little less in breadth, and the planks of its base rested on a frame attached to which were four spoked wooden wheels. The space was enclosed by raised sides and front formed from crudely-hewn planks to roughly shoulder height for someone sitting in the cart, and it was open at the back. Set sideways across the plank at the front there was a sack stuffed with straw for the comfort of whoever held the reins.

  As we approached I saw that our bags were already stowed on the cart. In addition there were three or four thick blankets and a couple of pillows, a bulging bag of provisions and a small barrel of either ale or water.

  Gurdyman stared levelly at Iago. ‘You want us gone.’

  Iago protested, but it was half-hearted. Then Maria came out to join him. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘but people are talking. They know you are here. It is bad for business,’ she added bluntly.

  ‘I have made no secret of my presence,’ Gurdyman said mildly.

  ‘Then perhaps you should have!’ Maria hissed back. Quickly recovering herself, she turned to me, holding out some coins. ‘You gave Iago too much money,’ she said, and her tone was chilly. ‘He has paid for the pony and cart and I have taken the cost of the provisions and for your accommodation last night. You pay full rate because we all know you are not here as pilgrims,’ she added, although neither Gurdyman nor I had protested.

  ‘Thank you.’ I put the coins away in my purse.

  My failure to be stung to a sharp reply seemed to mollify her. Coming to stand close to me, she muttered, ‘You must understand, we have our livelihood to consider. We need our guests and we cannot afford to become—’ She paused as if searching for the right word. ‘Unpopular,’ she said, but I didn’t believe it was what she had originally intended: outcasts had leapt into my own mind, although I wasn’t quite sure why.

  ‘I do understand,’ I replied. ‘I am sorry we have inconvenienced you.’

  Then, before she could answer, I helped Gurdyman up onto the cart, sat myself on the straw-filled sack and, clicking my tongue to the pony, set off along the narrow street.

  I tried to control my fear but I couldn’t. Thankfully there were not many people about, but the few that there were seemed hostile. Somebody hissed. There were mutterings, and I saw one woman make the universal sign against the evil eye. We emerged into the square, crossed it and, on a wider road now that went steadily downhill, I slapped the reins on the pony’s backside and he increased his pace to a trot.

  Now the fear was racing through me, for ahead of us four men stood right across our path. I hesitated, unsure what to do, and from behind me Gurdyman shouted, ‘Go on!’ So I slapped the reins again, yelled to the pony and, faster now, drove straight at the quartet blocking the way. Perhaps they thought I would pull up, and when I didn’t – when, far from doing so, instead I urged the pony on – their eyes widened and one by one they leapt off the track. As we flew between them, two on each side, there were cries of ‘Brujo! BRUJO!’

  But we were past. We were, I hoped, safe.

  I risked a glance back over my shoulder, and saw two of the men shaking raised fists at us. One of the others, just like the woman in the village, was making the sign. I kept the pony at the canter, for the slope was still to our advantage, and only when we were down in the valley and the track was levelling out did I slow him down.

  I tried to slow my breathing, tried to calm myself and steady my terrified heartbeat. The pony decreased his pace from a trot to a walk. We were ambling along, both Gurdyman and I still silent from shock, when I heard him chuckle.

  ‘For the life of me, Gurdyman, I can’t see that it is anything to laugh at!’ I snapped.

  ‘You are quite right, child, and I apologize,’ he replied. But he chuckled again. ‘Their faces!’ Then, in a far more sombre tone, ‘You did well, Lassair. You got us away, and you have my gratitude.’

  He said no more.

  All things considered, it did not seem the right time to demand answers to all my questions, and we went on our way in silence.

  SEVEN

  The cart and the sturdy, calm-natured pony were like a gift from heaven. Gurdyman made himself comfortable, padded with blankets and with a pillow behind his back, and, after our dramatic exit from the village, I found that driving the little conveyance on reasonably good roads was quite straightforward. The best of it, however, was that whereas on foot we had been the laggards, now we overtook all other traffic save people mounted on good horses.

  To begin with we were on one of the main pilgrimage routes across northern Spain. It was obviously very well-used, and there were hostels and little stalls selling food and drink at regular intervals. I couldn’t help noticing, however, that many of the hostels seemed dead. In places, too, there were signs of destruction, as if there had been fierce fighting in the area. If that was so – and I didn’t dare ask Gurdyman – then the deteriorating weather must have temporarily put a stop to it and sent the soldiers home. Along with the snow now visible on the mountaintops to our north, these were further unwelcome reminders that we were now into winter.

  During the four days it took us to reach the next waymarker in this journey into the unknown – unknown to me, anyway – the temperature rose a little, and in the main we travelled in sunshine. But the days were short now, and neither Gurdyman nor I had any wish to go on after dark.

  We reached a place that Gurdyman said was called Astorga, where there was a bifurcation of two major routes. The one we had been on continued eastwards; the second branched off to the south.

  ‘This is the Via de la Plata,’ Gurdyman said as we turned towards the noon sun. ‘It is an ancient road that leads to the great cities of the south: to Seville, Granada, Cordoba, and, beyond them, to the sea.’

  There was a dream-like note in his voice. ‘You have been this way before,’ I said.

  ‘I have. I told you, child, I went into Moorish Spain and I lived there for … oh, for many years.’

  ‘You saw those cities?’

  ‘I did. I remember Granada in the early morning, with the long rays of the rising sun turning the stones to orange, to ochre, to gold. It became the capital of the region and accordingly the vizier renovated the old fortress, making structures of such beauty that you could not believe they were made of stone.’

  Much as I had wanted Gurdyman to draw back the veil and begin to tell me more about his past, there were matters I was far more eager to have him explain. I had secretly been hoping that this day, when we left the west–east road and turned south, he would at last be open to questions about what had happened back in his parents’ village. In truth, he ought to have told me straight away, as soon as we were out of danger. But he had not so much as mentioned what had happened, and I had felt uneasy about pushing him. I had gone on reassuring myself that he would tell me in his own good time, once we were on the next phase of our journey.

  But now here he was telling me about the travels of his youth, so it looked as if I was going to have to prompt him.

&n
bsp; ‘That all sounds very beautiful, Gurdyman,’ I said in my firmest voice, ‘but before you go on, I’d like you to explain why back in the village they called you brujo, why being named a magician when that’s what you are should cause you such fear, and why we had to run away.’

  There was a short silence, as if he was framing the words with which to answer me. But then he said, ‘Moorish Spain was a land to fall in love with, and that is what I did.’

  And I realized with dismay and a grim sense of foreboding that either he had not heard or he was choosing to ignore me. I turned round and looked at him. His eyes were staring into the distance, right through me, and it seemed he couldn’t see me, which supported the alarming idea that he wasn’t hearing me either.

  My anxiety increased.

  I wondered what to do. There were other people on the road, although no longer that many. Since we had turned off the west–east road we had passed a couple of quite large groups and been overtaken by a few horsemen. Those we met were all going south: no pilgrims were risking the roads to Santiago now. There were hostels on this track but they did not crop up with nearly the frequency that they had done on the previous roads we had travelled. If Gurdyman became unwell, I thought with a shiver, it was likely I would be caring for him by myself.

  You’re a healer, I reminded myself. You’ll know what to do.

  I gave him my full attention, listened to him as he continued to describe the beauties of the places he had known in his youth. To judge by the strength of his voice and the sense of his delight in what he was relating, there wasn’t much wrong with him at this moment.

  If he wasn’t going to provide the answers I so badly wanted, I thought, I may as well listen to what he was revealing. So, giving myself up to his tale, I did.

  ‘I could not believe the extent of the Moorish scholars’ knowledge, or the limitlessness of their curiosity and their imagination,’ he was saying now. ‘They were the heirs to ancient knowledge, for they knew the lands of the Greeks and the Persians, and their wise men had translated the old texts into their own language. It was as if there had been a series of locked boxes full of what the people of earlier civilizations had discovered, and the Muslim sages prised them open and let it all out, looking further, deeper, absorbing what had already become known and pushing it ever onwards. And where they were faced with the limits of their own eyes, they invented instruments to help them. The astrolabe, for example, enabled them to make a map of the skies, and they named the stars in their own beautiful tongue: Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Deneb, Altair, Sirius.’

  A map of the skies. A wonder indeed, I thought.

  ‘In the field of medicine, too, they were intelligent practitioners and far-seeing innovators, writing books on their work for the benefit of those who would learn from them, and developing precise and clever instruments to aid them in the art of surgery. And medical texts were not all they wrote, for literacy is widespread among the Moors and they have collections of manuscripts in their major cities which everyone may read.’

  He was painting a new world for me. I could hardly believe what he was describing.

  ‘Oh, but they were heady times for a young man born in the cold, unlearned north!’ Gurdyman exclaimed. ‘I went from the most basic of shelters which, while it was the best that my parents could contrive with limited funds and by no means any worse than what everyone else had, nevertheless was cramped, dark and not very clean. What a revelation it was to live in a southern house! Men and women there are clean and sweet-smelling, their dwellings are cool, despite the great heat, and sparsely furnished with objects that are pleasing to the eye. People’s manners are elegant, they prize learning and they strive to dispel ignorance and superstition. They—’

  But, stung by his slur on his childhood home and the parents who had done their best for him, I interrupted. ‘Did you never spare a backward glance for your ignorant, superstitious, not very clean parents?’ I demanded.

  He didn’t say anything for quite some time. Then, in a very different tone, he said, ‘I wish I could say that I did. But it would be a lie.’

  I was about to say something but he went on, ‘And I did not intend my description of my former life with them to sound so critical. They worked hard, and by the standards of their own people, they did well. Haven’t I told you many times of my father’s skill at brewing ale? That was what people came for, and it didn’t matter in the least if the beds had vermin and the floors were always muddy, for that was what they were used to.’

  ‘But you didn’t go back.’

  ‘No.’

  I was realizing very quickly how little I really knew of his past.

  For some reason it gave me a shiver of alarm.

  Quickly, trying to banish my apprehension, I said, ‘Did you go to see them on your way from the south back to England?’

  ‘Back to … Oh, I see. You imagine, I suppose, that I went straight from the City of— straight from Moorish Spain to Cambridge?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I don’t believe you have ever suggested otherwise.’

  ‘Did I not?’ He sounded distant, as if in his mind he was far away. ‘I thought I had told you something of my travels, but perhaps I didn’t. But I did not go straight from the one home to the other, child. I became a wanderer, and my journey extended for many years and thousands of miles.’

  ‘But did it include a visit to your parents?’ I repeated with irritated impatience.

  He grew irritated in his turn. ‘Once. I went back once.’

  And something in his voice told me not to pursue it.

  It was hard to keep track of the days, but I think we had been travelling south for about a week when I first became seriously worried about Gurdyman. He was pale, at times he struggled for breath and occasionally his lips had a blueish tinge. In happier times he had occasionally given up his place on the cart to walk for a few miles, sometimes to let somebody whose need was greater have a ride – a very old man with a sore hip, a young woman with a baby at the breast – and sometimes merely to stretch his legs. Now, I reflected as I shot yet another anxious look at him, there would have been no possibility of that, even had there been people around in need of respite from the endless miles of the road.

  For we were on our own.

  We had long ago left the last town behind us. It had been a poor sort of place, or perhaps it was merely that it was showing us its winter face; whichever was true, the result was the same, and we’d had a struggle to find supplies. I had recently realized, with a sinking of the heart, that we had barely enough for a couple of days.

  We had neither passed nor been passed by anybody for a long time. We hadn’t come across a hostel that was open for business since the day after we had left the last town, and we faced the dismal prospect of a third night spent in the cart. Not that it was too bad, for we had cloaks, blankets and pillows, and while the food lasted we would not starve. I was eking it out now, and it seemed a long time since either of us had eaten our fill. I could, or so I hoped, replenish our water from streams. If there were any.

  I was worried about the pony, however. While we were still in the northern regions there was grass and other vegetation, and I had discovered a sack of feed tucked away beneath the cart. Water hadn’t been a problem either, for we had come across plenty of streams and even a river or two. Now the land was changing, and the landscape was far less verdant. Moreover, the terrain through which we now passed had clearly suffered from a hot summer and it was arid and inhospitable.

  We were travelling across a plateau: dry, underpopulated and high. Presently I began to make out rising ground ahead and to the left; to the south-east of us, I calculated. As we drew steadily nearer, I saw heights climbing in the distance and peaks topped with white.

  And, behind me in the cart, for all that he had not exerted himself at all since he clambered aboard after our last brief stop, Gurdyman was panting.

  The air, I realized with a frisson of alarm, was getting thinner.
r />   I made up my mind that we would stop in good time that evening. I would make a fire – with what? I wondered – and try to serve up something hot and appetizing instead of the dried meat and crusts of old bread that we had been subsisting on. Then I would prepare a remedy to restore Gurdyman. As we went on, I pictured the contents of my satchel and wondered what would be best.

  The fire was a total failure. Our evening meal was the same as it had been for far too many days, and we ate the last of the bread.

  Without the fire I could not heat water to infuse herbs. I had a small jar containing a digitalis preparation, and I gave Gurdyman a few drops in half a mug of cold water. He grunted his appreciation, and I thought a little colour came back into his deathly pale face.

  He pointed at his own pack and I nodded, thinking he wanted me to take out his cloak and blanket and help him settle down for sleep. But he shook his head and pointed again, waggling his hand up and down for emphasis. ‘Reach inside the pocket at the side,’ he gasped.

  I did as he told me. My hand closed on a little glass bottle, and my heart gave a lurch. For it was one of my aunt Edild’s, and I knew it by touch even before I brought it out into the fading light. I wondered how many times I had handled it, or one just like it; washed it, refilled it, checked it as I counted supplies on her neatly arranged shelves. Edild! An image of her filled my mind and for a moment the wave of homesickness and longing that rose up in me was almost unbearable.

  You have to bear it, a voice said clearly in my head.

  To distract myself from my misery I wondered how Gurdyman came to have one of my aunt’s remedies in his possession, and instantly I thought, Hrype must have given it to him. Hrype, presumably, had described his old friend’s symptoms to his wife, and Edild had diagnosed the problem from afar and provided help. I took the stopper out of the little bottle and sniffed, then poured the smallest drop into my palm.