The Road to Damietta

by Scott O'Dell

  When they insisted upon sailing to Egypt instead, to confront the sultan in his lair, the doge broke the bargain. Malik-al-Kamil, sultan of Egypt, was a business friend who favored Venetian ships above all others. The doge's ships carried silk and glassware to Egypt and returned with ivory, gold, and precious gems, making him and the merchants of Venice fabulously rich. Because of the risk to his friendship with Malik-al-Kamil, the doge demanded an additional sum, and after days of haggling the crusaders finally agreed to pay it.

  Adding to the confusion, knights and priests and leading nobles were warring among themselves, seeking favors from the doge. Set into the walls of his palace were a dozen and more marble masks shaped in the form of lions' heads, each of the beasts having a wide slit for a mouth. If you wished to accuse someone—a relative, a rival in love, a beater of wives and children, usurers, givers of false promises, neighbors, a thief, a scoundrel—you wrote out a note of denunciation and slipped it into the appropriate mouth, unsigned.

  On the other side of the slits, within the palace, sat an army of the commune's spies, ready and anxious to punish the accused. It was not a difficult task, since to escape punishment the accused must give proof of his innocence.

  Whenever I passed this row of forbidding masks, their mouths worn thin by many notes through countless years, I was always impressed by the number at the scene. But now that the nobles and knights were quarreling among themselves for preference, the place was far busier than before. A long line of complainants reached from the palace to San Marco Square.

  Hundreds grew discouraged at the delay, packed their belongings, and went home, including Princess Marianne. The day she left, Nicola and I moved back to our rooms and resumed work on the Guide for the Perplexed, burning candles well into the night, rising at dawn to make up for the hours lost.

  It was shortly before nones, six days after we moved out of the doghole, when I was called to the door. My brother Rinaldo stood on the steps, blinking in the sun. He was dressed in the garb of a crusader, a red cross on the breast of his travel-stained tunic, armed with dagger and sword. Behind him stood three young men similarly garbed.

  "We are here asking for help," he said with a courtly bow, as if I were some precious damsel and not his sister. "The streets overflow. We'll be swept into the sea with the next tide unless we find shelter."

  I beckoned Aunt Sofia, who let them in but quartered them in the dank doghole in the far end of the monastery.

  That evening, however, she had a special table prepared in the courtyard and asked them to partake of supper. She was keenly interested in the crusade. Indeed, during the past weeks as the hordes gathered in Venice, she had invited a chosen few to supper, notably Prince Rupert of Moravia and the Marquis de Tocqueville, who brought with him a brace of fat pigs and a goat as well as a retinue of ten.

  Rinaldo and his noblemen friends appeared in the best of spirits, freshly bathed, with hair curled in ringlets. It was Friday, and usually on that day we ate cabbage and crusts, but on this occasion Aunt Sofia served eel, sea fish, and caramel custard. Hungry after the long journey, the men finished the food on their plates without speaking, but after the custard one of the noblemen said, "In Assisi there is a spate of rumors, concocted and passed along embellished."

  "We've had a spring of rumors," Aunt Sofia said. "But word came Monday last that can be believed. It came from a fleet of pearlers fishing off the island of Crete. According to the captain, King Jean de Brienne, Leopoldo, duke of Austria, and William of Holland have sailed from the port of Acre with two hundred ships."

  "Bound whither?" Rinaldo asked.

  "To Damietta."

  "Damietta?"

  "A city at the mouth of the Nile River," Mother Sofia explained. She taught algebra and geography to the young nuns and to those of the older nuns who were ignorant. "Three of our sisters have made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, traveling through Damietta. If you wish to know more about this city, they will be most happy to inform you."

  Rinaldo nodded, uninterested, and turned to me with the welcome news that the family was well. Not until we were alone after supper did he divulge the real news.

  "Tomorrow, at last, you will be on your way home. Our caravan leaves the warehouse at noon. There'll be an escort, of course, and comforts. The weather is fine. You will be greeted warmly at home. Everyone has missed you. I trust that you missed them as much. Also, that you have learned a lesson or two."

  I had learned nothing. Nothing except that I couldn't live without Francis Bernardone. I waited now for news of him, as I had waited many times before.

  "There'll be an array of knights to greet you," Rinaldo said. "Since you're no longer a gawky child, your madness has come to an end." He paused. "And Bernardone the barefooted mendicant will not be there to tempt you further."

  Where was he? Where? Could something have happened? Was he dead? My throat tightened. Moments passed. I framed a lie and calmly said, "I have heard that Francis Bernardone is in the Holy Land. Mother Sofia spoke of this only yesterday."

  "Little good he'll do in the Holy Land. Imagine, if you can, a weaponless crusader, facing the infidels with a begging bowl. But enough of the clown. I remind you, be at the warehouse no later than noon."

  As he started away, suspicion caught my breath. Francis Bernardone was not in the Holy Land. He was here in the city of Venice. He was waiting, like thousands of others, for the fleet to sail. For what other reason would I be summoned home on a moment's notice? Why else would Rinaldo insist upon my being at the warehouse promptly at noon?

  "It's not possible to leave tomorrow," I called after him. "There's a book to take to the bindery. And other things I need to do."

  He returned to where I stood. "At noon tomorrow," he said, "you'll be at the warehouse, as your father wishes."

  26

  While we were making ready for bed that night, having said my prayers, I asked Nicola if she had thought of joining the new crusade. The nightgown she was half into fell to the floor and she stared at me with startled eyes.

  "No," she cried, "not again!" She picked up her gown, slipped it over her head, and kept staring. "You're not, are you? Yes, you are, I can tell by your face, by your voice, by everything..."

  "Who said I was going?"

  "No one."

  "Then don't worry."

  She crawled into bed and disappeared under the blanket. After a long silence she mumbled, "I shouldn't tell you."

  I pulled back the covers. "Tell me what?"

  "One of the sisters, Sister Angela, saw him in San Marco today. Inside the church, on his knees, praying,"

  "Saw whom?"

  "Francis Bernardone. But don't you dare follow him to Egypt. You'll be sick and die out there in the desert." She sat up in bed and began to shiver. "Promise you won't go."

  "I promise," I said, to calm her.

  Dreading tearful farewells, I left the monastery before dawn, as the bells rang for lauds, and quietly made my way to the warehouse. Arriving there well before noon, I was greeted warmly by Rinaldo, who was still in crusader's garb although he had come to Venice only to take me home. At midafternoon we were on our way in the wake of gondolas stacked with merchandise, and by nightfall we had reached the salt meadow, where the goods were unloaded and made ready to reload in the morning.

  After supper I went to my tent—the same one I had used on the journey to Venice. It was pitched among the other tents, next to Rinaldo's. I got into bed and waited. Instead of hiding in the city and taking the chance of being caught, I deemed it best to go through this charade and thus put him off my track.

  Near midnight, as the fog began to settle, I walked quietly out of the camp, through the meadow, and to the canal. I had to wait until dawn for a gondola. The problem then was where to hide in Venice.

  "If you wished to go someplace where no one could find you, where would it be?" I asked the gondolier, an old man bent double by years of wielding an oar.

  The man thought as he pushed
the long black oar against the current.

  We went under the Rialto bridge, then through the heart of the doge's fleet, stretched along the Grand Canal. The gondola was covered with a canopy and little could be seen of the men who crowded the ships, but I saw enough to tell me that the fleet was making ready to sail.

  "I know a place, but don't expect too much," he said, turning into a narrow canal bordered on both sides by abandoned shacks.

  The canal ended shortly on a mud flat. A derelict hulk lay keeled over at an angle, half sunk in mud. A seagull was sitting on the stump of a mast.

  "When the tide is low," he warned me, "you can't go ashore because of the mud. This happens only twice each day, however. When the tide's high, you can tie a flag to the mast, a petticoat—anything will do—and I'll come and gather you up."

  Not bothering to go aboard, I paid a week's rent and, wrapped in my heavy traveling cloak, was rowed to the San Marco landing. San Marco's main door was blocked by a shouting mob, so I used the small door beyond it. The church was bursting with crusaders, kneeling on the stones, weapons at their sides, in the white tunics marked by red crosses.

  I was certain that Francis was among them. He had to be. I searched their ranks for a modest robe. At last I found it before the altar, in the midst of resplendent figures clothed in churchly gold and lace.

  The painted angels fluttered down from the vault and surrounded me. My head went round and round in giddy circles. I would have fallen had I not been held up by a solid wall of crusaders.

  A sermon was given, which I didn't listen to. Then after another sermon, a long one, Francis came to the altar and raised his hands in a benediction. Speaking quietly but with passion, his eyes glowing, he said:

  "My dear sons, so that you may fulfill the commandments of God, look to the health of your souls and see that there is peace and concord among you. Flee from envy, the beginning of the road to destruction. Be patient in tribulation, humble in success, and thus always in the battles that come be the victor. Be imitators of Christ in obedience and chastity. May God guard you always in the trying days ahead."

  As the service ended I was swept away, out into the square, by a stampeding mob. I caught my breath and went back into the church and down the aisle. At the altar I called his name. He didn't recognize my voice. Shielding his eyes from the altar lamps, he glanced down at me.

  "Ricca," I said.

  He seemed puzzled, as though he had never heard the name before.

  "Ricca di Montanaro," I cried.

  I waited for an answer. None came. He turned away and for a time I lost sight of him. Then he was coming toward me, walking with the same lithesome step I remembered. Then he was beside me. Wordlessly, I fell to my knees at his feet.

  "Ricca di Montanaro, of course, of course," he said. "You're not here for the pope's crusade?" His voice sounded reproving.

  I jumped up. It was always this way. One minute I was fainting at his feet, the next moment I was angry with him.

  "Why not?" I demanded.

  "Judging from your letters, you are not much given to Christian thought," he said, so gently it angered me the more.

  "In the old days," I reminded him, "you yourself were not much given to Christian thought. I recall those days and nights very well."

  "You shouldn't," he said with a smile.

  "Why? Because you are now a saint? Because people speak of you, I hear, as Saint Francis of Assisi? I also hear that The-ophanes, the most famous painter in Venice, traveled all the way to Assisi to paint your picture."

  His smile faded. He looked at me in a way that wrung my heart, like a child who has been wrongfully accused. I wanted to clasp him in my arms. And I would have done so had it not been for a pig that came down the aisle, chased by a gang of red-faced crusaders, then circled the walls and fled squealing from the church and into San Marco Square.

  "Return to Assisi; you are needed there," Francis said. "Your dear friend Clare has done wonders but she needs help."

  My dear friend Clare di Scifi. Dear, indeed!

  "Dozens of girls and women, many you know, have joined her. Yet she's in need of workers. The task is great."

  "You just said that my thoughts were too heathenish for me to join the crusade, yet now you ask me to join the Poor Clares. I am to take the oath of poverty. Beg for my bread. And so forth. And please don't tell me that all the thousands of crusaders milling around in Venice have Christian thoughts. Perhaps you are the only one."

  "There's danger in Egypt," he said. "If you are captured, you'll be sold as a slave, or more likely given to the sultan as an ornament. If you are wounded, you may die for lack of care. If you die, and many have died, you'll not be buried in Christian ground."

  I doubted that his concern was for my life or my soul. He was afraid that I planned to chase after him, afraid that I would hound his footsteps into Egypt.

  "Why do you, this saint who goes around preaching the Lord's commandment about loving your neighbor, hurry off to fight people whom you don't know and who haven't harmed you?" I asked.

  "I am not going to Damietta to fight. I go there to talk to the sultan of Egypt. If he will listen to me and become a Christian, the fighting that has lasted for more than a hundred years will come to an end."

  "Being a Moslem, the sultan will never listen to you."

  "We shall see."

  He was ready to say more when shouts came from the square, followed by another rout, this one in pursuit of an unshorn lamb. The animal fled past me and up the steps to the altar. Instead of hastening away as the pig had done, it came up and stood beside Francis. He took the panting animal in his arms.

  Quietly he calmed its fears and gave it back to the anxious owner who had appeared on the scene. Then he turned his thoughts elsewhere, upon me as I stood below him at the rail, trembling and fearful that by the power of his will I would be forced to stay in Venice.

  I returned his gaze. I put on my cloak, pulled up the collar to hide all but my eyes, and fled. I ran the short distance to the Grand Canal, to where the doge's fleet lay moored.

  27

  Ships of all descriptions lay side by side along the canal, farther than my eye could reach, bows and bowsprits hanging over the street so that I had to duck my head at every step. Among all these hundreds I surely could find passage, but my search lasted until dark and ended only by a chance encounter with a black-hulled ship decorated at stern and bow by red unicorns.

  In the light of a ships lantern I noticed a man standing on deck, counting wine casks as they came aboard. I recognized him at once as Leonardo di Gislerio, the well-known, bad-tempered lord of Monte Sasso, a Perugian lately turned monk.

  I informed him that I was seeking passage to Egypt and that I had been sent to him by Francis Bernardone—a lie, of course. He smiled and told me that this was the ship Bernardone was sailing on, but that I had come too late.

  "Alas, we're filled. Passengers are sleeping in the bilge, on the deck, but you'll find a barque called the Mermaid farther along, past a dozen ships or so. Painted white, her name on the bow in gold letters. She's only for women."

  He leaned over the rail and added, "You haven't had your supper, young lady. You're hungry. Come, I'll see that you're properly fed. You can't start out for Egypt on an empty stomach. A cup of wine first."

  He pointed to the boarding plank, but as he held out his bony hand I moved away. Despite the glow of lanterns now that it was night, all the ships looked the same. I moved from one to the other and at last I heard a burst of a woman's laughter and made out the name Mermaid on the bow.

  A young woman sat astride the rail. A giant of a man with rings in his ears held a lantern and a mirror while she braided her hair and tied it with ribbons. Without taking his eyes from her, he asked me why I was standing there agape. When I told him, he waited until the woman had piled her hair on her head, then disappeared.

  The woman—from what I could see of her in the dim light she was no older than I—introduced h
erself as Rosanna. She asked my name and wanted to know where I had come from and how I had learned about the Mermaid. She spoke curtly in an unfriendly voice, as though I were an interloper.

  "Who sent you here?" she said.

  "Signor Gislerio."

  "Who's Gislerio? What's he look like?"

  "He's very tall, has a black beard, goes about in a black and white robe and bare feet."

  "Bare feet?"

  "He poses as a monk."

  "How would a barefooted monk know about the Mermaid?"

  I shrugged.

  "He hasn't been here," she said. "And if he did come, Captain Vitale would never allow him and his bare feet on the ship. The captain is very particular. A nobleman from Paris came last night dressed in a monkey suit with a long green tail and a pink behind—the kind you wear at masquerades—and the captain refused him."

  The laughter I heard when I was searching for the ship burst forth again. Two men came from below and disappeared in the night. It was then, as I listened to the laughter and the sound of men's footsteps moving away on the esplanade, that I realized the Mermaid was a brothel and Rosanna a harlot. I should have known this long before. At the moment Gislerio said that there were only women on the ship, I should have sensed it.

  The laughter ceased. The giant came on deck, followed by a man with a pale, bald head who looked like a clerk but was Emilio Vitale, captain of the Mermaid.

  He held the lantern high so he could see me better and said, "You have a serious mien, an air about you that I find depressing—due to what, I don't know. But step aboard, we'll see where to put you. Rosanna, you do have an extra bed."

  Rosanna gave him a sullen nod. Apparently she thought of me as a rival for the captain's favors.

  "Take her below. Freshen her up a bit," Vitale said. "She looks frowzy. Escort her to the cabin. And do not dally."

  I held my tongue. For hours I had traveled the esplanade and found nothing. It had taken the doge a year to assemble his ships. Months would likely pass before more ships were assembled for the perilous journey. From what I had heard, ships moved across the Mediterranean only in flocks like the swallows, twice each year, for protection from sea pirates.