The Storyteller's Granddaughter

by Margaret Redfern

  They were glaring at each other, she and the dark man, and she wished it were otherwise, and wished that it had been he who knew her secret. How could he ever trust her now?

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘so you are his friend. As I said, his good friend.’ He paused. ‘His very good friend.’ His voice was heavy with meaning.

  ‘In that you are wrong as well. As I said, he keeps my secrets.’ She looked away. ‘Perhaps, some day, I must tell you all.’

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me now?’

  She shook her head. ‘I cannot. This is not a good time. Listen! He is calling for me.’

  ‘Better hurry then, Kazan.’

  She was troubled, and this should have been a joyous time, to have won Niko out of slavery from the loathsome Vecdet; and his sister, and the two who had been his friends, but there was the dead child, and Dai so cold and angry, and Thomas suspicious and all but accusing her of terrible things…

  ‘Kazan, quickly. Stop dragging your steps. You are needed here. Go with Edgar to the physician. The boy’s arm needs attention. The woman as well – see what he can do for that gash on her forehead. The man and the girl – make sure they are in good enough health. God willing, they need nothing more than warm clothes and food in their bellies and rest. Well, what are you waiting for?’

  Nothing, she thought, but a soft word, but already he had gone. The woman Hatice tugged on her arm.

  ‘This master of yours – he is a strange mix of care and harshness. He will treat us badly, do you think?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. He is a fair man. A good man.’ She hesitated. ‘He does not keep slaves.’

  ‘No slaves?’

  ‘He is an honourable man. He does not believe in a slave system – like the great Mevlana, remember?’

  ‘I have heard them speak of this prophet but I know nothing of him.’

  ‘He was the great man of these places. He is much revered. He has his shrine in Konya. He would not have slaves.’

  ‘And your master thinks like this?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Then will he cast us off?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Then what will become of us? Asperto – he is ill with the falling sickness. He cannot work. He can fetch no price. Vecdet was ready to kill him, I know. If he does not believe in keeping slaves why has this man bought him? And paid good money?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘And the young boy and his sister – still a virgin, thank the good God – what will he do with her? Is there no hope for her?’

  ‘I do not know. I know only that he is a fair man, an honest man.’

  ‘He is a dangerous man, that one.’

  Kazan shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But he will not leave you destitute and without protection. Of this I am sure. Now we must do as he says and go to the physician and after the hamam and then we shall find a way of giving the little boy a fitting burial.’

  ‘But there is no church here and the little boy was Christian, as I am.’

  ‘As I am also. Do not torment yourself, my friend. All will be well. You shall see. For now, comfort yourself and the girl in the hamam. Make yourself clean and fitting for the child’s sake. Afterwards, it is your care to wash him and dress him for his burial.’

  Hatice stared at her… ‘You are the boy Niko rescued. You are very young to speak so wisely.’

  She smiled sadly. ‘Boy.’ So Niko had not betrayed her secret, not even to his good friends. ‘Niko is much younger than I, and braver than I could ever be. When he rescued me from that evil man I promised I would come back for him.’

  She laid a hand gently on the boy’s curly head. So quiet, so subdued. Had Vecdet broken his spirit entirely? Had his rescue come too late? She couldn’t bear to think of it. ‘Come, Niko. We must do as Dai has said and see the physician.’

  It was late morning before they gathered together around the pitifully small wooden box one of the town carpenters had hastily made. Homage, he said, to the strangers who had shown such courage and goodness. Homage too to the small soul who had not deserved to die so young – who should never have been taken from his family. Shame on the mother and father who would part with such a child. Shame on the evil man who would treat him so.

  Word had spread throughout the town: there was no need to find clothing; the townswomen were generous in their gifts so that Amir’s cousin, belatedly arriving, was too late with his offers of help. The Imam himself had come to see the dead child. Gravely, he offered a small space in the garden of the mosque. ‘Not Christian, I know, but your prophets are our prophets; your Jesus is one of our prophets. Allah will watch over one so young even if he was not born into our faith.’ Yes, he said, they could place a cross, if that would give them comfort. He offered to speak holy words but in the end that was not needed because a caravan arrived, seeking shelter from the rain that was falling heavily now, and with the caravan was a Franciscan friar travelling with it for safety.

  Kazan knew she would never forget that forlorn day. Rain was falling as the coffin was lowered into its grave; sharp, sleety rain that swept down from the mountains, rustling the reeds and raising an earthy, swampy smell from the muddy shoreline; obscuring rain that enveloped them all in its grey shroud. The unknown friar in his homespun brown habit bound by its white cord, his sandalled feet bare despite the cold, weary from his journey, devoutly speaking words of comfort and hope and Our Lord’s love for the children of this earth that gave them a place in Heaven at His side; Hatice, composed now, clean and dignified, holding in her grief, her head covered in the indigo-dyed bonnet Blue had given to her. Help heal the wounds to her heart and her head, he said, and to ‘Think nowt on it.’ Who was the more astonished was not clear; the big, clumsy fen-man or the gaunt-faced, haggard woman. Asperto, clean-shaven, his white hair tamed, was wrapped in cloth of indigo – good for the falling sickness, both Sakoura and Blue reminded them, and no one was minded to scoff, not even Thomas Archer. Edgar, eyes glistening with new love, standing watchful by frail, pale, beautiful Agathi; Niko by her side, his arm soothed with salve and bound with clean linen; no break, said the physician, but savagely bruised, but the boy was young, the bruising would quickly fade. Ah, she thought, but what of the bruising of his soul and spirit? Thomas and Giles standing straight, like soldiers on guard. Dai, impassive, unreadable; a quiet, brown, kind man who they said was dangerous.

  Mountains, lake, rocks, reeds, earth were lost in the obliterating rain. Rain lashed the buildings. It swept through the town until the streets themselves became rivers carrying all the debris of a busy town on a busy trade route. All day came the rattling and jiggling of boats and their rigging. There would be no sailing tonight for the men of the town. No travelling for the merchants and their caravans. There was nothing for it but for all to remain indoors. The rising wind moaned through doorways and windows and howled round corners. Inside their lodging, the wind gusted down the kitchen chimneys and the smoke from the fires billowed out into the rooms until the air was choking. When Blue came in through the outer door, the cloud shifted and lifted but didn’t disperse.

  ‘It’s thick-wet out theer,’ he said, shaking the rain from his cloak. ‘Yer’ll get yer death o’ cold.’

  ‘It’s as well we didn’t set out today,’ Edgar said. ‘There’s no travelling in weather like this.’

  ‘Even so,’ Thomas said, ‘it puts us back again.’ He stared out moodily at the lashing rain. ‘Wonder how long it’ll keep this up?’

  ‘The old men say it should blow itself out by morning, and they’re usually in the right of it,’ Dai said. ‘If we start out early, travel the Seydis¸ehir road, we can be well on the way to Manavgat by evening and then the coast road to Attaleia.’

  ‘If it blows itself out,’ Tom said.

  ‘Where is Kazan? And the boy?’

  ‘Stables,’ Blue said. ‘R˙emi’s gone wi’ them. Like A telled him, yer’ll get yer death o’ coöld but he wasn’t having nowt. Wants to see the chestnut
, he says.’

  ‘What state was it in?’

  ‘Better than what them poor beings are in – and better stabling than what they’ve got an’ all.’

  ‘The “poor beings” cost you dear. What do you you plan for them, Dafydd?’

  ‘Nothing. They are free to do as they wish.’

  ‘You mean to leave them here?’

  Dai sighed. ‘What could those two do here? A man with the falling sickness and a half-crazed creature? They are free to choose but I hope they accept our protection down to the coast at least. Better weather, more choice, a Christian community to provide for them.’

  ‘You’re not taking them on to Ieper then?’

  ‘Not these two. They belong here.’

  ‘And the boy and his sister?’

  ‘Ah, there’s the problem, isn’t it? The boy and his sister. What is to become of them?’

  The chestnut mare was calmer, soothed by soft words and a voice she recognised and the rhythmic brushing as the girl set about restoring some of the glossiness of the chestnut coat.

  ‘What is she called?’ Niko asked. It was almost the first words he had volunteered. When the physician had probed his injured arm, he had gritted his teeth and only a sucked-in breath betrayed the pain it caused him. Now, his young face was already less care-worn. Food, and warmth, and the comfort of good people, she thought, made all the difference.

  ‘Rüzgâr.’ The wind.

  ‘Rüzgâr,’ he murmured and stretched up his good arm to stroke the white blaze down her nose.

  ‘She is not mine, not really. She belongs to the tribe. It was wrong of me to take her.’

  ‘But you had no choice. It was a matter of life or death to you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Life or death: Niko was right. She gave the mare a final pat and moved over to the piebald. ‘This is Yıldız. She is not mine, either. She is a gift from Mehmi’s father to Dai.’

  ‘Dai. That is the man called Dafydd. The man who bought Hatice and Asperto. Has he bought Agathi and me as well?’

  ‘He bought your freedom, Niko, not you.’

  Niko considered this. ‘And you? Has he bought your freedom?’

  ‘No, but I owe him my loyalty and my life.’

  ‘Does he know who you are?’

  She glanced to where Rémi was grooming the big brown horse Dai rode. He was crooning under his breath, absorbed in his task. ‘Dai knows. The rest do not.’

  ‘Why does he do this for you?’

  ‘It is how he is. It is what he does for all of us. For Rémi. For Edgar and Blue who were both chance-met and who now travel with him. Besides, Dai and Thomas – the dark man who bargained for you – came to our summer camp in search of my grandmother but they came too late and she was new-dead. They spoke to me and I gave them medicines for Edgar, who was sick. Dai recognised me when we met again.’

  ‘But not the dark man. Isn’t that strange?’

  She shook her head. ‘Dai is a man who sees much that others do not.’ She hesitated. ‘I believe he is a good man, whatever his past has been.’

  ‘His past? You know of this?’

  She gave a jerk of head that meant no. ‘He does not talk of it but sometimes I see him look into the past and it is unhappy for him.’

  ‘I think you see much as well, Kazan.’

  ‘I see that they hurt you. Was that because of me?’

  Niko shrugged. ‘Vecdet was angry with me when I said I had hidden myself with the donkeys when they were searching for you.’ At last he grinned. ‘I think he knew I called him “donkey” and I was making fun of him. He grabbed me by this arm and shook me and threw me across the floor. I crashed against that big chest he carries with him. That is how the bruising came but I don’t remember very much.’

  ‘Poor Niko.’

  ‘It hurt then but it is much better now. Everything is better now, except the little one is dead and Hatice mourns for him.’ Niko shrugged again with a child’s pragmatic callousness. ‘He would have died anyway. He was ill with a fever and would not eat.’

  They were sitting side by side now on a heap of hay. Outside, the rain fell incessantly. ‘It is like the waterfall,’ Niko said. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They talked then, of what had happened to each of them after Niko had left her that night. Rémi joined them, peeling straws and plaiting them, listening to the talk and confessions of fear, smiling his snail-trail smile and snorting laughter when they laughed. Niko touched the pale scars with his fingertips.

  ‘What are these, Rémi?’

  ‘Dai.’ The name was unmistakeable. Niko and Kazan exchanged looks. Rémi shook his head; he had no signs to convey what he wanted to say. ‘Dai,’ he repeated and gave his thumbs-up sign. He thought a moment. ‘Good Dai,’ he signed and grinned gummily.

  They all ate together, every one of them, muleteers and cameleteers elbow to elbow with the rescued and rescuers alike, eating right-handed from the common platter of new-killed sheep, still new-tough. Brother Jerome was with them, his tonsure shining pink in the torchlight, the short finger-breadth fringing of hair shining silver-grey. A pink-and-grey little friar, thought Dai, rosy cheeked and cheerful. He leaned now towards Giles.

  ‘It is you, my son. I thought so, though it has been many summers since we last met. And your brother? How is he? I’ve had no word of him since we fled the country with William Ockham.’

  ‘He is dead, Father.’

  ‘Dead? How?’

  Giles fixed his gaze on his hands, clenched on the table.

  ‘He did not escape?’

  ‘From this life, yes. It is not a fit tale for this company nor this night, Father.’

  ‘Before we part I would hear this tale.’

  ‘As you wish, Father.’

  Dai regarded the two, Brother Jerome sombre faced, Giles rigid. He felt a tugging on his sleeve, Rémi gurgling his words.

  ‘Sure of this, boy?’ A nod. ‘Rémi would like you all to hear his story.’ Dai shrugged. ‘And I must needs tell it, though I’ve no gift for telling tales.’

  19

  Rémi’s Story

  ‘This is part my story as well because it concerns our master, Heinrijc Mertens. Without him, Rémi and me wouldn’t be alive today. A good man he is, Heinrijc Mertens, isn’t he now, Rémi?’ The boy nodded vigorously. ‘Well now, like this it was.’

  He paused, gathering his words to keep pace with his thoughts, his memories. ‘Ten years since, it was. I’d not been long in Flanders, and not long with the man who has since been my master.’ Dai stopped again, rubbed the side of his nose in unfamiliar embarrassment. ‘Tell the truth now, give you an idea of what manner of man he is, I was caught in his house, red-handed, stealing.’ Dai smiled, remembering, hardly aware of his audience until Edgar prompted, ‘Stealing, Dai?’ There was doubt in his voice.

  ‘Stealing,’ Dai repeated. ‘From his kitchens. As Twm would say, my mind was on my stomach and my wits had gone begging.’

  ‘Starved were yer, Dai?’

  Starved? Yes, he was always hungry in those days. Had been all his life. He’d taken a chance that winter’s day. Freezing cold, and him penniless and in rags, the aroma of basting meat wafting from the window of the grand town house, so he’d sneaked into the old man’s kitchens, snatched what he could, filled his mouth with half-cooked pastry that he hadn’t time to swallow before he was seen and grabbed and hustled out. The old man had come to see what the commotion was. All rigged out in one of those velvet robes of his, all lavish embroidery, and those ridiculous shoes with curling toes. Dai had gazed at him mouth-wide-open, the clogging pastry there for all to see.

  ‘Yes, I was hungry so I stole food. They caught me and all Heinrijc Mertens said was, “You’d best sit yourself by the fire – you’ll be more comfortable there.” Ordered his man to cut me a slice of meat pie, bring broth. “No one should go hungry.” He was fond of saying that, just like Kara Kemal.’ He smiled across at Mehmi. ‘Two of a kind they are, for a
ll the differences in country and religion. He shamed me with his goodness.

  ‘So when I came across Rémi here, begging in the streets, I knew just where to take him. A scrawny little dwt, you were, knee-high to a grasshopper, isn’t it now? And in those days he’d an ugly little mug on him – that right, isn’t it now?’ The boy grinned and nodded and drew his forefinger over his top lip.

  ‘He’d a harelip. Don’t know if you’ve seen one – cleft lip, some say, but looks like nothing as much as a hare’s lip turned up over its nostrils. Poor little devil was begging for scraps he could hardly eat. How he’d survived six winters I’ll never know. Never did know. No family, no one of his own. A dwt of six years begging in the streets on an icy winter’s day and no one to care.’ Rémi murmured something they couldn’t understand but his gesture was clear; he took Dai’s broad, brown hand in his and kissed it. ‘Enough of that, boy,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t I who healed you – or had money to buy you healing.’

  ‘But you cared,’ Kazan said. ‘That is Rémi’s meaning. You did not walk by on the other side.’ She saw the boy’s intention, how he had heard the talk about his master and it had troubled him; he wanted them all to know that Dai was a good man. A man who cared for others.

  ‘Well, that’s as may be. But it was Heinrijc who knew best what to do.’

  Heinrijc, he remembered, who hadn’t turned a hair when his new protégé came back from his first commission with a ragged, ailing, ugly-mugged scrap of a dwt. ‘I do not know how to heal him,’ he’d said, ‘but I am acquainted with one who has experience of these defects. Come, Dafydd-the-Welshman, let us see if Master Jehann Ieperman can perform for us a small miracle.’ Dai shook himself back from the memory of the old man and the comfortable room with its blazing fire and the huddled child hardly daring to trust these strangers. Then, he could barely understand what was said to him and he had no speech.

  ‘Heinrijc was friendly with a physician,’ Dai continued, ‘who’d made a name for himself in the Low Country. Jehan Ieperman. He was trained at the University of Paris and proud of it, though he didn’t come from a wealthy family. Afterwards, what he’d learned in Paris he put into practice on the battle fields of Flanders. He worked in the hospital Del Belle in Ieper most of his life, caring for rich and poor alike, and that was where we took Rémi. A clever surgeon, skilled above all others. I watched him work on Rémi.’