Crusade

by Elizabeth Laird

  ‘Of course she does. We all do. Specially me.’ But there was no sting in his voice for once.

  Salim stepped backwards away from them all.

  ‘You can’t do this, Baba. I don’t know Dr Musa. I don’t know anything about being a doctor. I want to stay at home and fight the Franks. You’ve got to let me!’

  Adil had already drawn back the heavy bolts and opened the street door. He lashed out suddenly with his hand and caught Salim a stinging blow on the side of his head.

  ‘You think I’ve got all day? Come on.’

  Salim had never disobeyed his father and he couldn’t now. He clutched the bundle to his chest and began to limp after him. Before he had gone more than a few paces he felt Ali’s hand on his arm. He flinched, expecting a slap or a pinch, but Ali put a rough hand round his shoulders and squeezed them.

  ‘Rahmat Allah aleik, little brother,’ he said. ‘God bless you. Admit it, you’d have been a useless merchant.’

  The streets of Acre were unusually crowded at such an early hour. People were hurrying grim-faced towards the food bazaar, and some were already returning, driving donkeys laden with sacks of corn and jars of oil.

  ‘The prices will be out of reach by midday,’ Adil muttered. ‘Come on, Salim. Don’t dawdle like that.’

  That stupid doctor won’t take me. He won’t want me. We’ll be home again soon, Salim kept saying to himself.

  Dr Musa’s home was on the far side of the city, in the Jewish quarter. The narrow streets were so packed that Adil and Salim could barely cut their way through. People were throwing bales and bundles out of the windows, loading pots and pans chaotically into carts, tying chests to the backs of protesting mules and screeching to children to get out of the way.

  Adil turned out of the main thoroughfare into a dead end.

  ‘This is the place, I’m sure of it,’ he said uncertainly.

  A lattice window above rattled open and Dr Musa’s bare head poked out.

  ‘Is that you, ya-Adil? I’m coming down.’

  A moment later, Salim heard the bolts on the street door squeak back and they were inside a cool narrow passageway.

  ‘This comes at a fortunate time,’ Dr Musa said, running a hand through his thick curly hair. ‘My rascal of a servant came to me last night. Pleaded with me to let him go. His wife – sick in Haifa. What could I say? I was in two minds about the boy, but that’s settled it. I’ll take him. Am I insane? Of course I am! Anyway, it’ll have to be an informal arrangement till things settle down. I’m not committing myself to keeping him if he doesn’t suit me. If there’s laziness or bad behaviour – but I’m sure you’ve trained him too well for that.’

  Salim’s heart plummeted. He took a step back, and had to stop himself crying out in protest. Then he saw with disgust that his father was almost cringing with gratitude in front of the doctor, and felt a wave of shame and anger.

  ‘The first test comes today.’ Dr Musa looked harassed and spoke briskly. ‘I’m leaving now, for Damascus. We’ll be walking all day. You can walk far and fast, Salim, on that leg?’

  No, Salim wanted to say. I can’t walk far at all. I’m not used to it.

  ‘He’ll be fine.’ Adil was groping inside his cloak. ‘He’s much stronger than he looks. He’s been spoiled by his mother. Toughening up will do him good. Don’t let him fool you with his play-acting. Don’t stand any of his nonsense!’ He took out a leather pouch and put it in the doctor’s hand. ‘We haven’t discussed the terms of the apprenticeship, doctor, but there are ten gold pieces in there.’

  ‘Good. That’ll do.’ Dr Musa pocketed the money. ‘I would ask you to seal the matter with a sherbet, but I must be off this morning. The long road to Jerusalem! Think of it. At my age! Say goodbye to your father, boy.’

  Salim, looking up through eyes blurred with tears, heard his father’s impatient words of blessing and felt his hand rest briefly on his shoulder. He wanted to protest, to dig his heels in and refuse to budge, but he knew it would do no good. Questions raged through him. Would his family be staying in Acre, braving the Frankish army? And if they fled, where would they go? How would he ever find them again? How long was he supposed to stay with this stupid doctor anyway?

  But Adil had already turned and was hurrying away.

  ‘Goodbye, Baba,’ Salim called out miserably after him.

  Far to the west of Acre, in a fertile valley in the centre of England, a village lies under the hazy August sun. A couple of miles away, the huge grey castle of Fortis rears like a mailed fist above the surrounding woods and fields, where men and women work in bonded servitude to the lord of Fortis, Baron Guy de Martel.

  There was no coffin for the woman’s body, not even a linen shroud. She had simply been wrapped in her ragged woollen cloak and laid on the bier, which two men were carrying down the rough lane towards the church in the valley below.

  The man in front slipped on a loose stone and stumbled, but he bit back his curse out of respect for the dead woman, and to save the ears of the priest who walked in front. The only other member of the little procession was a boy, tall for his age and big-boned, but thin.

  New life was bursting out of the banks on either side of the lane. Bumblebees fussed in the hawthorn blossom and cowslips and violets jostled for space in the lush grass.

  The boy didn’t hear their incessant buzzing. He was thinking only of his mother, who had coughed out her last breath the night before as she lay on the pile of straw in a corner of their hut. He had held on to her arms, shaking them and calling out, ‘Don’t go, Ma! Don’t!’ but she had died anyway.

  He kept his eyes fixed on the back of her head. The cloak had come loose with the jolting of the bier, and a strand of her dark hair had escaped. It fluttered in the breeze, and looked so alive that his heart leaped for an ecstatic moment.

  She’s going to sit up! She’s going to say something! he thought.

  But then her head lolled sickeningly to the side, and his hope died.

  They were only a few paces away now from the huddle of thatched cottages in the centre of the village.

  ‘Tom!’ the boy called out to the man in front. ‘Stop a minute. Her cloak’s coming off.’

  He couldn’t bear the shame of the villagers seeing his mother’s gaunt dead face.

  The men grunted, but stopped and lowered the bier from their shoulders. The boy tucked the old blue cloak more firmly round the body. He shivered at the feel of her coldness, in spite of the warmth of the bright morning.

  ‘That’s all right, son. She’s all right now,’ Tom Bate said with awkward sympathy.

  The priest turned at the sound of his voice, and frowned, his bloodshot eyes narrowed with disapproval.

  ‘All right? All right? Dying unconfessed? Without a priest? A soul in mortal peril!’ He stabbed a dirty fat forefinger at the boy. ‘You’ll have to perform a lifetime’s penance. God only knows how many masses can save her soul from the fiery torments of hell.’

  The boy’s black brows twitched together.

  ‘I came for you, Father. I ran all the way, and begged you. And you wouldn’t come to hear her confession.’

  Tom Bate and the other bier carrier sucked in their breath and looked accusingly at the priest, who shifted his eyes uncomfortably, then turned his back on them and walked on unsteadily down the lane.

  Another few steps took them to the stone cross that stood in the centre of the village. No one was about, except for a small girl who was minding a flock of geese by the pond. The little procession was about to turn up the path that led to the church, when a clatter of hooves and jingle of harness brought them once more to a halt.

  Two horsemen were trotting down the rough track from the castle of Fortis, whose mighty walls rose up on the great grass mound a mile or two from the village.

  ‘It’s Lord Guy. Lord Guy!’ the bier carriers muttered. They lowered the bier to the ground again, and stood respectfully, waiting for the baron to go past.

  Lord Guy de Marte
l, a heavy, florid man, sat easily on his horse, a hooded hawk on his wrist. His falconer, in the plainer, workaday clothes of a servant, rode on a smaller horse beside him, the lures for the bird slung across his saddle.

  Lord Guy’s eyes swept indifferently across the little funeral procession, and he seemed about to trot on, but, whether from boredom or curiosity, he reined his horse in and nodded at the priest.

  ‘Who’s died?’

  The boy, though he’d often seen Lord Guy in the distance, had never heard him speak before, and he could follow his aristocratic Norman French only with difficulty.

  ‘Strangia, my lord,’ the priest answered, a smile of sickly humility on his round face. ‘Gervase’s woman.’

  A sudden movement of Lord Guy’s knee made the horse trample restlessly, and the baron’s attention was distracted as he tried to control him.

  ‘What did she die of? There’s no plague in the village, I hope?’

  ‘No, my lord. She had some kind of a fever. And a cough.’

  Lord Guy’s eyes had settled on the boy.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Strangia’s son. Adam.’

  The boy shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable under the gaze of the baron’s hot blue eyes.

  ‘What age?’

  The priest dug Adam sharply in the ribs.

  ‘Answer Lord Guy,’ he hissed.

  ‘Fourteen last month,’ Adam mumbled. His heart was pounding. Attracting the attention of Lord Guy was likely to be the start of trouble, as anyone in the village could tell.

  ‘Is the boy destitute? Are there relatives?’

  Tom Bate shot a sympathetic look at Adam.

  ‘No, my lord,’ he said. ‘Strangia died poor. There was only her little croft, and the hovel on it. Not enough to feed a rat after Gervase died.’

  Lord Guy’s blue eyes were still fixed on Adam’s face. On his own right cheek a patch of red roughened skin was flaring uncomfortably.

  ‘Bury your mother,’ he said, ‘then come up to the castle. I suppose I need a dog boy in the kennels.’ He turned to the falconer. ‘You’ll inform the kennel master.’

  ‘Aye, my lord,’ the falconer said.

  A moment later, the two horses had clattered on.

  ‘Think of that!’ Tom Bate gave Adam a hearty clap on the shoulder. ‘Dog boy! Keep out of trouble, young Adam, and do as you’re told, and you’ll rise to kennel master yourself, or even falconer, before you’re much older.’

  Panic was rising in Adam’s chest, threatening to stifle him.

  ‘When have I got to go?’ he asked no one in particular.

  ‘Go?’ Tom said. ‘You heard Lord Guy. When you’ve buried your ma. Today, at once, before he puts you out of his mind.’

  Adam bit his lip, trying to control the tears that pricked his eyes. He’d had no idea what he would do when his mother was safe in the churchyard. He’d only vaguely assumed that he would go home, to the hut that Tom had called a hovel, and see if some little part of her spirit might still be there in the blanket which she’d wrapped round him on cold nights, or in the iron pot in which she had cooked his food, or by the chipped wooden spade that still stood beside the door, with which she’d feebly tried to turn the heavy soil two short weeks ago.

  His loss was suddenly unbearable.

  The little procession had set off for the last time and was turning into the gate of the churchyard. Adam gave up trying to suppress his tears, and as they reached the freshly dug grave in the corner by the yew tree, they streamed freely down his cheeks.

  The short ceremony was over fifteen minutes later. The priest had mumbled the last Latin phrase, and clods of earth were already raining down into the grave from the sexton’s shovel.

  Adam watched till the hole had been quite filled in, then he ran across to the edge of the graveyard and was sick behind a tree.

  When he’d finished, and had wiped his face and hands on a clump of torn-up grass, the priest and the second bier carrier had gone, but Tom Bate was still there, rubbing his huge hands together as if he didn’t know what to say.

  He came over and put an awkward arm round Adam’s shoulders.

  ‘It’s for the best. She’s been suffering for months. Last time I saw her – last week it must have been – I thought the breeze would blow her away, she was so thin. Now she’s in Paradise, sitting with the Virgin.’

  Adam shrugged his arm away.

  ‘Father Gilbert says she’ll have gone to hell, because she never made her last confession.’

  ‘Him?’ Tom Bate spat. ‘Lazy old sot! He’s drunk half the time – what does he know? Didn’t she confess to you?’

  ‘I saw her lips moving. I knelt down close, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.’

  ‘But she was confessing. You can be sure she was. And you said a prayer?’

  ‘A paternoster. Twice.’

  ‘There you are then. She died confessed.’

  But there was a slight frown on his forehead, and his eyes didn’t meet Adam’s.

  ‘Masses for her soul, Father Gilbert said.’ Adam’s face was screwed up with worry. ‘How can I pay for them? I’ve got no money. Burning in hell, he said. For ever and ever. She mustn’t! She can’t! What’ll I do?’

  ‘There is a thing,’ Tom said uncertainly. ‘I was in Ashton at the fair last week. There was a man. He was just a pedlar, really, but there was something about him. He had a little bottle of special dust, dust from the Holy Land, from Jerusalem. Trodden by the feet of Our Lord. If you sprinkle it on the grave of your loved ones, he said, their souls will go straight to Paradise.’

  Adam drew a deep breath.

  ‘He was a cheat, most likely.’

  ‘I don’t think so, because I asked a monk. He said it was true. The dust of Jerusalem works all right. Straight to heaven the soul goes, so he said.’

  ‘He was selling it then, this pedlar? The dust?’

  ‘Yes. A penny for the bottle.’

  Adam’s hands were clenching and unclenching.

  ‘A penny. I’ve got a penny. That’s all I’ve got. Are you going back to Ashton, Tom? Will you buy it for me?’

  ‘Nay, lad. He won’t be there now. Moving around all the time, pedlars are. But he’ll be here any day now. This afternoon even, I shouldn’t be surprised. There’s good business for him at Fortis, up at the castle and here in the village.’

  Adam looked up at Tom, his eyes pleading.

  ‘And you think I’ll be able to rescue her from hell, with the dust of Jerusalem? You’re not teasing me, Tom?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, Adam. I know your ma had sinned, but . . .’

  Adam’s thin face closed.

  ‘What do you mean? She never sinned. She was good, all the time.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Tom Bate said hastily, looking away. ‘I only meant – we’re all sinners, aren’t we? No point in worrying about what’s behind you. You’ve got to think of the future. You’d better fetch what’s yours from the cottage, and get on up to the castle. What a chance, eh? Dog boy! Look out for my Jennet. Laundry maid she is now, to Lady Ysabel.’

  He couldn’t keep the pride out of his voice.

  ‘I know.’

  Adam’s spirits lifted a little. He’d always liked Jennet Bate. They’d grown up almost alongside each other on neighbouring crofts. Jennet was five years older than Adam, and she’d carried him round on her hip when he could barely walk. Later, he’d gone out with her to mind the sheep. She’d looked after him in a rough and ready way and been patient with him most of the time, except once, when he’d shut her hand accidentally in a door, and she’d pushed him into the nettles by way of a thank you. When her mother had died, he’d picked her a bunch of dandelions in a fruitless attempt to cheer her up. At least he’d have one friend up at the castle.

  A thought struck him as he walked up the lane behind Tom Bate.

  ‘The cottage and the croft. Am I the holder of them now?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Adam. Your
mother was a tenant for life. It was all settled after Gervase died. The little bit of land and everything on it goes back to Lord Guy.’

  ‘Not Mother’s hens?’

  ‘Strangia’s hens? Who’s to know about them?’

  ‘I’ll give them to you then, Tom. And her stool. And the cooking pot and spade.’

  Tom turned round. A slow smile crossed his face.

  ‘Kindly meant, Adam, and kindly received. I’ll look after them for you. If you ever come back, and take a new lease on the croft, your hens will have chicked themselves into a whole flock!’

  Less than an hour later, Adam was trudging down the hill again. He’d run back home, picked up his blanket and spare jerkin, and searched every corner of the bare hut in case he’d missed a coin or anything that might be of value. There was no sense of his mother there any more, just an awful, silent emptiness. He was glad in the end to shut the door behind him, whistle one last time to the few hens by way of goodbye, and set out for Fortis castle.

  The village cross had been all but deserted that morning, but a sizeable crowd had gathered now. They were mostly women, pressing eagerly round a tall, thin man in tattered clothing, who was displaying wares for sale from a box slung from his neck on a leather strap.

  ‘Ribbons, my sweethearts! Luvverly, luvverly colours! Of the rainbow!’ he was singing out cheerfully. ‘Giving them away to you since you’re all so beautiful! Cheap today, they are, because it’s my birthday.’

  One of the women burst out laughing.

  ‘Don’t give us that, Jacques! That’s what you was saying Wednesday last, when I saw you up to your tricks at Ashton fair!’

  ‘That was my bath day, mistress,’ the pedlar said, winking at the other women. ‘Now then, a jewel for your finger, a knife for your pocket, a comb for your hair . . .’ He caught sight of Adam, who was trying to elbow his way through the crowd of women. ‘Here’s a young man wants something special, I can tell. What is it, son? A token for your lady love? A—’

  ‘The dust of Jerusalem!’ Adam burst out. ‘Are you the man who was selling it in Ashton? I need it for my mother’s grave.’

  The women had parted to let Adam through, and were murmuring sympathetically.