The Road to Damietta

by Scott O'Dell

  The day after the Christian victory, Francis disappeared from camp. Brother Illuminato thought that he might be hiding in one of the mosques that was not ablaze. He was gone for more than a week, and when he returned he had little to say. He kept passing a hand over his haunted eyes, as if to brush away a nightmare from which he had not fully awakened. And when Pelagius asked him to speak at a victory feast, seemingly in an effort to humble him further, Francis refused.

  "It is not a victory you celebrate," he told the cardinal. "It is a defeat and a humiliation."

  "What would you have me do—sit and wring my hands?" the cardinal asked.

  "Yes, sit, but do not wring your hands. Instead, ponder, knowing that the city of Jerusalem is not worth the lives of the thousands who starved to death in Damietta, not worth the death of the least among them, the lamb in the field, the dog in the street."

  The meeting between the two men took place in the dining tent during the feast of victory. At Francis's words, the crowd jeered and banged on the table with their knives. Someone shouted, "Heretic!" Buonaguisa dei Buonaguisi, the brave Florentine who had raised the red and white flag of his commune upon Damietta's tallest barbican, mumbled a threat. The cardinal glared, his face drenched with the hatred that had prompted his letter to the pope so long before.

  Francis waited until it was quiet. "I can't forget the furrowed fields sown with bodies, not with wheat," he said. "Nor the dead children held in the arms of their dead mothers." He had not touched his food, but he rose and left the table. At the tent door he said, "I will never forget these horrors and neither should you, Cardinal Pelagius."

  The next day at dawn he left Damietta. Raul and I would have gone with him had not the boat, a leaky tub, been bound for Syria. We stood on the bank, waiting for the boat to anchor. A wind from the sea flapped Francis's tattered robe around his knees.

  Brother Illuminato said, "And to think that the bridge was nearly complete."

  "What bridge?" Francis asked.

  "The bridge between the sultan and you. The bridge called love, whose stone pillars are Christ, our Lord and Redeemer."

  Francis smiled. "Once long ago Brother Illuminato was a builder of bridges," he explained. "The builder of the pretty little bridge below Assisi and two big ugly bridges near Perugia and a half a dozen middling ones in other places. He's built so many bridges that he thinks and speaks and dreams only of bridges. Love is a bridge but it's not made of stones. It's made of the dew on the rose, the flaming bush, the shy smiles of children, birds in the meadow, a fall of snow on a winter day. And more, more."

  Expecting Francis to go on with his poem, naming the signs of God's love, I waited for him to finish so I could ask him if Damietta was also a sign of God's love. But he was silent for a while; then he broke into his little dance, stepping lightly from side to side, clapping his hands above his head. Finally, he took a leap, as if he were about to leap through heavens door. But he fell back to earth. He frowned and picked himself up and made the sign of the cross.

  Our parting was awkward. Francis put a hand on my forehead. As he blessed me without words, tears sprang to his haunted eyes. The wind had shifted from the sea. It now blew in gusts from the smoldering city. We held our noses. The boatmen had trouble with the current and cursed us instead of the river.

  The boat pulled to the shore as close as it could, but the two men had to wade. Francis was so thin that he looked like a stork striding through the water. In silence Raul and I watched them clamber aboard and the boat slip away on the current. A flight of silver gulls flew low above the water, following in the boat's wake, following him whom I no longer followed. The sun was bright in a cloudless sky. It sparkled on the river and turned the ruined walls of Damietta to gold. I turned away from everything. I closed my eyes and wept.

  36

  Raul and I learned very soon that we should have embarked on the leaky tub bound for Syria and, once there, taken our chances on finding a ship sailing to Ostia or Ancona or Venice. For on that day Cardinal Pelagius issued an order prohibiting all vessels of whatever size from leaving the port of Damietta.

  His reason was simple. Every ship in the harbor was crammed with loot. The looters, fearing that the sultan might rally his forces and seize their treasures, were anxious to leave the fallen city.

  The loot-laden ships did not sail. The crusaders did not leave the camp. And the sultan did not attack. Instead, after weeks of mourning, he changed from the friendly man I had known and dispatched heralds to the four corners of his kingdom, announcing that whoever brought him a Christian head would be given a purse filled with the purest gold.

  Obsessed, Pelagius saw a chance to strike a last, crushing blow. Drums beat, trumpets roused the camp. Crusaders, dreaming of home, fearing the loss of their treasures, reluctantly heeded his call. In less than a month an army of thousands was in pursuit of the sultan. Fortunately, Raul and I remained in camp, assigned to care for those who had been wounded during the two-year battle for Damietta and those who were yet to come from the battle in the south.

  Weeks passed and no wounded came. Then, in the midst of a wild sandstorm, a lone horseman rode into camp to report disaster. The Christian army had been trapped on the Nile, near the moated city of Tanis, trapped by the sultan and the clever use of a river in flood. The Christians suddenly found themselves caught between the Nile and a deep lake, in swift-running water. All would have perished had not the sultan, overcome by a generous mood (some said that he called out the name of Francis Bernardone as his men rescued the floundering crusaders), saved them. Thus ended the Fifth Crusade.

  That night, defying the order of Cardinal Pelagius, ships sailed out of the harbor. Raul and I sailed two days later, bound for Venice with an honest-looking bark and a dishonest captain, who put us ashore at Kefallinia in Greece and told us we were now in Ancona, not far from Assisi, and bade us Godspeed as he headed back to Damietta. The great flock of swallows, moving north for the spring, that had roosted on our masts since the day we left Damietta knew more than we did. They wisely flew on, while we were stranded in Greece for two long months.

  At last we found a ship, crossed the Mare Adriaticus, and landed on the beach at Ancona, just over the mountain from Assisi. Though we were held up on the way from Ancona and robbed of everything we owned except the scroll of essays by Maimonides, which after a short examination the brigands deemed worthless, we arrived home in midsummer.

  The city held a grand festival for their crusading hero and heroine. My father prevailed upon the commune to declare two days of celebration instead of one. Church bells rang. Smoke curled up blue from busy ovens. There were three parades, three masses in the cathedral, and a concert of minstrels in San Rufino Square. Assisi loved festivals even more than they loved us.

  On the last night of the celebration, while Raul and I were on the balcony watching the crowded square, a minstrel was tuning up his lute. He was directly below us, his face upturned. Thinking of Francis and the nights he had sung beneath the balcony, I let a lingering sigh escape me.

  Raul said, "I see that you haven't forgotten."

  Sailing home from Damietta, I had not mentioned Francis's name once. Indeed, one night in the harbor at Kefallinia while we were waiting for a ship, and the breeze was scented with oranges, I had taken Raul's hand and kissed his cheek, feeling that when I was wedded it would be to him, my valued tutor and dear friend since childhood, so kind and darkly handsome.

  "You haven't forgotten, have you?" he said.

  "No," I said, speaking the truth.

  "You still think that one of these days you will have him back."

  "Not back, because I never had him."

  "But you moon."

  I kissed Raul again, the second time since the night in Cyprus, but he didn't return the kiss. There was no response from him, not a word, nothing.

  "And I don't moon," I said. "I never mooned. I was in love with Francis Bernardone but I never mooned."

  "Your heart bled
; is that better?"

  "Yes."

  "And now it doesn't?"

  "Yes."

  The lutist's voice rose around us in a plaintive song. Raul was leaning against a column. He looked very much like the column, cold and stiff and remote.

  He said, "After all that happened in Damietta, it will be difficult for you to settle down in the scriptorium."

  "I start in the morning. But I'll need your help. I've peeked at Maimonides. His Arabic is quite difficult and his ideas are somewhat beyond me. He writes about Plato and Aristotle a lot. I'll need your help, Raul. Shall we start early or late in the morning? Early, I hope."

  "Early."

  "At dawn?"

  "At dawn. Because at noon or soon after, I leave for Córdoba."

  I drew a breath. "Why Córdoba, pray tell?"

  "To see if I can find the first essays Maimonides wrote. He was born in Córdoba, you know, and wrote there before the Christians drove him out with the rest of the Jews."

  "But we have a scroll of his essays here. The one we brought from Damietta."

  "Afterward I'll go to Morocco. Maimonides lived there for a while. Some of his essays are in the library at Fez."

  "But all this will take you weeks and weeks. How long will it take?"

  Standing against the pillar, like an actor about to make a speech, he didn't answer.

  "I don't know how I will ever manage without you," I said.

  "You will," he said. "You've become very good at copying and an artist at illumination. I have nothing more to teach you."

  "In the morning you'll show me how to work with Maimonides. He can be very prolix. He'll take me all winter. By summer you'll be home."

  Raul turned his back and said over his shoulder in the voice he used when imparting some detail about the art of illumination or Arabic, "As much as it distresses me, I must tell you that I'll be gone longer than next summer."

  I was silent for a while, planning how best to calm his anger or salve his hurt feelings or whatever it was that suddenly had come over him.

  The bells of San Rufino rang out, and one by one, sheep following their shepherd, other churches joined in. I had always liked the sound of bells, especially the merry bells of the smaller churches, but at this moment they all had a discordant ring.

  I didn't plan it, but suddenly hot tears welled up in my eyes and ran down my cheeks. They must have glistened in the torchlight for Raul stepped forward and wiped them away.

  "How old are you?" he asked.

  "Too old to cry," I said.

  He was standing so close now I expected him to take me in his arms. Instead, he cleared his throat.

  "You wait breathlessly for more of the remarks I made before you left for Venice. But those accomplished little. More, if I wished to bother, would accomplish even less. You're a heedless girl, Ricca di Montanaro, heedless of all save your own large pleasures and small pains. You wince, you weep—"

  He broke off in midsentence, before he was fairly launched on the list of my shortcomings. "Enough," he added and took a step toward the iron-banded door.

  There was a sound to his voice that I had never heard before. I stepped in front of him to bar his way.

  "Wait and we'll talk about everything," I cried. "You can't go running off and leave me here for months and months. What will I ever do?"

  "Now that Francis has left, I don't know what you'll do. And it may surprise you to know that I don't care."

  I was speechless. His back was toward the torchlight streaming up from the square, where revelers danced. His face was hidden from me. 1 didn't need to see it. In desperation I flung my arms wide, across the doorway.

  "I don't believe you," I cried. "You're lying. You do care. I can tell. You have always cared!"

  He escaped my arms and went quickly through the door. He paused at the stairs and said in the quietest of voices, "And what's more, Ricca di Montanaro, I'll not be back in a few months or in a year. In truth, I shall never come back."

  I listened to his footsteps on the stairs as they slowly faded away and were lost in an awful silence.

  37

  I saw Francis only once again, a few months before his death. It was at Porziuncola on a day of blue skies and birds singing in the fields and trees blossoming, a day like those he especially loved and wrote poems about. But as he faced the crowded church, holding flowers in his hand, he was far from joyous.

  Brother Illuminato had warned me that Francis was changed. "Don't expect too much of him," he had said. "For months now, through part of the winter, he's lived alone at La Verna, high in the clouds, starving to bring himself closer to God."

  I knew La Verna only from a distance; I had looked up at it from the plain as I rode by. A harsh cliff surrounded on all sides by a mountain, crested by perpetual clouds and swept by violent winds, it was the home of falcons and wild beasts. I had always shuddered to see it soaring far above me.

  "Francis went there seeking God," Illuminato said. "Whether he found Him I don't know. He has never told me, but he came down from the mountain in a quiet mood. You will find him very weak and distraught."

  Despite this warning, I was shocked by the man I saw at the altar holding a bunch of spring flowers. He was pale and thin—this I had expected—but I had not thought to find him nearly blind, groping for the lectern when he began to talk.

  From time to time I'd heard that doctors were treating his eyes with burning irons. The signs of this treatment, in scars and furrowed flesh, wrung my heart. They said that he had contracted an eye disease in Syria, known for its diseases, but I knew the truth. The blindness had come upon him that morning in Damietta when he looked out at its broken walls and burning mosques, the streets peopled with the dead and dying, when he realized that all this had been done by Christians in the name of Christ.

  He spoke briefly to those who had gathered, ending his talk with a benediction, in a voice that smoldered with fire.

  "Lord, make us an instrument of Thy peace," he said. "Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy."

  Worshipers ran forward to crowd around him and touch his robe. Fearful of old memories, I didn't join them, but when I returned to Assisi I went to San Rufino and prayed for his soul and for mine also.

  There were many rumors during the next few weeks. The city was saddened by them. People wept openly in the streets, and the churches were filled. Some of the rumors were true. The truest: Francis was dying.

  The doctors strove mightily, trying to restore his wasted body and his sight also, because he kept asking to see the sun and the moon and the stars. They heated an iron in the fire and drew it out, shining hot. Before they used it on his eyes, Francis stirred himself and sang a hymn in praise of Brother Fire, asking him to be kind and courteous in this hour of need.

  Days passed in the quiet city. Word came that Francis wished to be moved from the bishop's fine palace where he lay. He asked that they build him a hut of straw and timber at Porziuncola, and though many feared that if this were done, if he were left alone, he would be snatched from the hut by those who were envious of Assisi, the hut was built and he was taken there.

  Beyond Valecchi, the dreadful village that furnished Assisi with all its executioners, at the crossing of two narrow roads, Francis asked that his bed be set down. There, though he was blind, he raised his eyes and blessed the place of his birth.

  Word raced through the city that he was dead. But other news came: Francis was alive and had asked the brothers who were with him to remove his clothes and his bandages and place him upon the earth. Weeping when they saw his ruined face and body, they dressed him again in cloak and hood.

  Days went by. Then word came that Francis was dead and that at the moment of his death an exaltation of larks had been seen above the hut where he lay. There was an exaltation in Assisi, too. People wept but also raised their voices, joyful that Francis had
been released from his earthly ills. There were those, however, who were secretly glad to be rid of him, among them my father and Rinaldo. My mother remained in her rooms until the day of the burial.

  It was a sparkling day with a breath of winter in the October air. Leagues long, the cortege moved away from the hut at Porziuncola to the sound of bells and trumpets, up the winding road to Assisi, and through the big gate to the church of San Giorgio.

  After the service, while my mother lay weeping on the stones before the altar, I sought out Clare di Scifi. I found her on the church steps waiting for me. She was dressed in the white and black garments of the Poor Clares, which, severe though they were, did nothing to dim her beauty; indeed, they seemed to enhance it.

  I smiled and kissed her because we were rivals no longer, and we talked for a while about how well behaved were those who had come from other places, even the people from the jealous town of Perugia. When we ran out of chatter, in the midst of the silence that fell between us, Clare said:

  "You've loved Francis Bernardone for years."

  "How do you know so much?" I asked.

  "It's not a secret. It's a scandal. Everyone knows that you have been in love with him since the day you disrobed on the cathedral steps."

  "Long before that," I said. "I was born in love with him."

  Clare started to smile.

  "It is possible," I said.

  She shook her head. "I can imagine you loving Christ when you were born because He is divine and divine love is everlasting. It exists always, from the beginning to the end."

  "Human love is divine also," I said. "I heard Francis say so, once in Porziuncola. I remember the hour and the day and the month."

  "And the year, of course."

  "I remember him saying, 'O Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. Love is...'"

  Trumpets drowned out my words and a chorus of bells rang forth. As Francis was borne away, we followed him.