The Jerusalem Parchment

by Tuvia Fogel

  She raised the hem of the white habit that now replaced her whole wardrobe, glanced around like a little bird, and pulled up her woolen socks. She was curious about the French guest but was reluctant to go into the frolicking crowd and profane her vows on the day she’d taken them. Besides, the thought of Lupo and Galgano at the table, inciting each other to mock everything and everyone, as if conversations were nothing but hunts with words instead of arrows, repelled her like a bad smell.

  She moved aside the first curtain a hand’s width and saw that the raised platform on which the long table of the notables was placed made her gaze level with their buttocks, not their heads. She smiled. All those important people were unknowingly in her power. She would hear every word they said, even when they leaned toward their neighbors not to be heard by the others. None of them would know that poor, indisposed Sister Galatea was eavesdropping on their malicious gossip, like an angel ready to fly to the Most High and reveal all their secrets. The childish thrill of the new game made her temporarily forget the pain in her belly.

  Through the window in the corner, the closest to the staircase, she recognized the voices of Father Rainerio, Griffo de’ Berardenghi, and Don Siricio, the abbey’s prior. She ran to check the last window and concluded, as she’d expected, that the count, her mother, and the town’s pride, Cardinal Uffredo de’ Pepi—a Monte Alcino boy who’d made good—must be behind the central curtain.

  After a while she’d recognized everyone at the table apart from the strangers, whom she hadn’t even glimpsed yet. She thought that in Torcello she would recognize nobody. She whispered to herself, “Stop being afraid! Stop thinking like a child; think like an adult. After a while, you’ll know everyone there, too. You are the daughter of Orlando d’Ardenga, and you’re afraid of nothing!”

  Eventually she discovered that the French knight and his squires, all the chairs behind the table being taken, had brought up chairs in front of the count and the cardinal. This meant that the only position from which she might see him was a mere foot behind her stepfather. As if that weren’t enough, the raised platform made it so that she could only see someone on the other side of the table if he stood up.

  Summoning all her courage, she moved the curtain aside.

  Lupo was the center of attention of the long table and butted into all conversations, raising his voice to partake in the more distant ones. His smile was both winning and vaguely unsettling, for he could never hide all traces of his contempt for others. The lord of Ardenga was an ambitious wolf, whose enemies went as far as to suggest he’d sent assassins to Syria to get rid of his brother and grab title, lands, and wife. In Monte Alcino people said that if Lupo were to—by some mistake—end up in paradise, he was sure to try to lie down in the Almighty’s bed.

  The count assaulted roast herons, hares, and baby boars indifferently, pontificating as he tore meat off the game with his teeth. Only occasionally, an imploring look from Blanche convinced him to cut the meat with his dagger and dip it in the sauces, which Lupo preferred to do with his hands.

  Galatea moved her head up and down, looking for a position that would allow her to glimpse the French knight, without succeeding. But she heard him talking with Abbot Rainerio in a warm and musical voice. He was defending the honor of the Order of the Temple.

  “With all due respect, revered abbot, how can you speak of him like that? He and his men were flayed on the spot for refusing to abjure their faith! And it’s a good death one meets in the Holy Land!”

  Abbot Rainerio glowered at the knight. “The pusillanimous traitors handed the city to Saladin without a fight! The seneschal of the temple had more than enough gold to ransom every Christian in Jerusalem—you can believe me, I heard it from the pope himself—but everyone knows the Templars felt less pity for those unfortunate souls than did Saladin himself!” Rainerio seemed to have a score to settle with the order.

  “Templars. Bah! They’re all the same; they love money more than Jews do! I heard that Philippe de Plessis, the new master, chops the hands and tongues of prisoners . . .”

  “What’s strange about that, revered abbot? Saracens chop the head off every Templar they capture.” Rainerio was starting to find the knight rather flippant.

  “Exactly! It’s like a private war of theirs or something! To hear Templars talk, God created Heaven and Earth for the exclusive benefit of their order!”

  Lupo didn’t like the old vulture heaping insults on defeated soldiers. Besides, he could control the abbot, while the stranger was an unknown, so he arbitrarily entered the exchange on the side of the knight. “They were Christian armed monks, Don Rainerio! I won’t let you besmirch their memory!” Then, to the Frenchman, “The time to take the cross is over, mon brave seigneur! But if you’re looking for the purity and loyalty of knighthood, you’re right to go back to Syria! By my beard, it’s nearly twenty years since the sepulchre fell to the infidel, and no Christian is man enough to take it back! Instead, we philosophize, sing romances, and praise reason, which is in God’s image . . . Puah!”

  The Frenchman, grateful to the count for rescuing him from Father Rainerio’s claws, applauded his sarcasm as he slapped the backs of his young squires.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised, mon cher ami,” went on Lupo, “if we lived to see the Saracens watering their horses at the Lateran, with the approval of the Vicar of Peter! And maybe—judging by how Christians and Mohammedans have changed their faith at the end of battles—maybe Innocent, young and ambitious as he is, instead of martyrdom . . . he, he . . . will choose to live as a mamluk slave.”

  Lupo got up and mimed Innocent III waving a fan behind the sultan amid laughter. The cardinal, as cynical a Tuscan as the count, had to blush at this insolence; his crimson cloak demanded it. “Please moderate your jibes at the Holy Father, Lupo; enough heretics indulge them these days.”

  Count and knight were laughing openly, and the table felt entitled to share in the joke as the clerics swallowed their bile. Finally Lupo, wiping a tear with his sleeve, regained control. “You must admit, Uffredo, it’s not easy to feel respect for popes who have to wander for years from Pisa to Lucca, to Ferrara, to Verona because Roman citizens won’t grant them access to the Eternal City, he, he . . . or to have respect for poor Gregory VIII, a pope so beloved to the Lord that he spent fifty-three days on the throne . . . and they were enough for him to lose Jerusalem! He, he, he . . .”

  The Frenchman got up and leaned across the table to whisper something to Lupo he didn’t think others should hear. That was when he saw the perfect visage of a girl in the lower corner of the window behind the count. At first she looked terrified, and then she put a slender finger to her lips, unbelievable violet eyes begging him not to betray her.

  Galatea burned with shame. Orlando’s daughter—worse, a nun who had just renounced this world!—caught eavesdropping on the lords like the lowliest of servants! She remained lucid enough to realize that if she just pulled the curtain shut, the knight would conclude that she was a servant and might alert Lupo. So she tried to make an accomplice of him and, already aware of the effect her eyes had on men, signaled to him to keep his silence.

  The knight, when the count wasn’t looking, winked at the beautiful wench in a nun’s habit, sure that her quick reaction was a sign of noble lineage. Then, with an eloquence Galatea couldn’t help but admire, he steered the conversation to how badly the faithful viewed secluded monks, saying they should go out into the world to do God’s work, rather than hide behind the windows of their monasteries.

  Galatea clapped her hands, won over by the charm and irony of the knight, and headed out to the court, relieved at not being caught. She climbed on the platform and curtsied to everyone and then brought up a stool across from her mother.

  The knight introduced himself. “I am Arnaud de Cérisiére, sister, and Girard and Joceran de Vignory are my trusty squires. I had the fortune to visit your family’s manor on my way to Acre, to do my part in the retaking of the Holy City.”
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br />   Galatea had dreamed of Jerusalem for years and asked him, sincerely curious of his answer, “Tell me, Monsieur Arnaud, did you ever see any nuns on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre?”

  Before the knight could answer, Galgano lashed out acidly from the far end of the table.

  “Ha! You, of all people! Poor thing, don’t you know you’ll never cross the walls of your convent?”

  Arnaud was about to rebuke the irreverent new knight, but the Italian-style squabble was too fast for him. Galatea immediately shot back at her stepbrother, “Your uncouth opinions no longer concern me, enemy of God! If an angel appeared to take you to Heaven, you would plunge a dagger in his gut, because it’s the only thing you know how to do!”

  Everyone laughed at the young novice’s retort, except Lupo. Today Galgano was a knight and Galatea had left the secular world, so they could abandon all caution with words and sling them like rocks.

  A heavy smell of sweat and ill-digested wine filled the air. The wine raised everyone’s voice, and soon Joceran and Galgano found a way to slight each other. Lupo and Arnaud intervened before the youngsters could draw swords. Galatea heard Arnaud shout to his squire, “You never back down because you have the brains of a boar!”

  Lupo slapped his newly knighted son across the face. Galatea thought they all looked like a pack of wolves, barely controlled by the oldest male. Cramps and headache had started plaguing her again. She brusquely took her leave and walked round the fortress to the small chapel behind it.

  She crossed herself at the baptismal font, hurried to the altar, and recited her prayers distractedly, still prey to the day’s emotions. After a life in Lupo’s shadow, the peace of the cloister would be like entering paradise. “My destiny is in my visions, I know that! The first step is to get away from this place!”

  She stood up, somewhat calmer, and crossed herself again in the falling darkness, murmuring, “In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti . . .”

  Then, walking backward, she left the chapel.

  As Galatea crossed herself, on the outskirts of Jerusalem a man walked briskly, despite a limp, along whitewashed walls pierced by rare, small windows.

  By a fountain in an opening where three alleys met, two veiled women, wrists heavy with bracelets, carried jugs on their heads. An old man, legs naked, pulled on the reins of an unmovable donkey as an Armenian deacon in a long black habit walked past.

  Passing under a low arch, the man entered a rectangular courtyard, in the center of which were a round fountain and a eucalyptus tree. Five people, two Jews and three Mohammedans, sat under the tree chatting and sipping wine in the warm light of torches stuck in iron rings hanging from the walls.

  After some greetings, the man was taken to the takhtabush, a room open to the courtyard with a central column supporting the floor of the harem above it and two or three ample cushions on a wooden platform on one side. The man waiting on the cushions was Shimon called the Pious, head of the Jerusalem Karaites,*35 who had recently settled at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

  The visitor made a half bow and pushed back his hood. It was a Frank, as old as Methuselah.

  “Well?” he asked hoarsely in Greek, “Did you discover anything?”

  “Yes. The Hebrew parchments you’re looking for were found four hundred years ago, near Jericho. The one with the circles became a relic almost right away, so the vizir called on the Jews to explain it. The rabbis imposed silence—on pain of death—on what the parchment said, but years later the Karaites made a Greek copy and gifted it to the Johannites. Then, eighty-five years ago, the knights from Champagne must have found the original, for they suddenly started digging in Solomon’s stables.”

  “I knew it, I knew it!” croaked the old man. “And you don’t know the half of it, Shimon! The entire enterprise to reconquer Christ’s sepulchre was born of the necessity to dig under the Temple Mount to look for a parchment that would put the church in the hands of those who found it!” A sudden fit of coughing shook him.

  “You shouldn’t get so excited, or your strength won’t suffice for what you plan to do,” said Shimon.

  “Oh, you needn’t worry about my health, my friend,” laughed the old man. “I died last year!”

  CHAPTER 13

  VAYEHI EREV

  And There Was Evening

  THE SAME 26TH APRIL 1204, IN FUSTAT, NEAR AL-KAHIRA

  “We discussed ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ last Shabbat, Hezki, so stop insisting, or I won’t live long enough to finish the first chapter of Bereshit with you! Then again, your grandfather was a far better man than you, and he could never repress his curiosity for secret meanings.”

  Moshe ben Maimon, the man who had whispered those words, was known to all Jews as Light of the East and West, Sole Teacher, and Wonder of the Generation. Maimonides, as the Latins called him, had been personal medicus to Salah ad-Din and now looked after his brother, Sultan al-‘Adil. Ishmaelites, who knew him as Musa ibn Maimun, were proud of his presence on the Nile.

  Sitting on silk cushions in a beautiful high-backed chair, he pronounced the phrase “a far better man than you” in elegant, punctilious Arabic, an ironic critique of his pupil’s use of the Cairene Jewish dialect, an amalgam of Arabic, Hebrew, and Spanish spoken by families who came to Egypt from Spain. Yehezkel was used to his mentor’s good-natured barbs and gave as good as he got, as disciples have done since time immemorial.

  “As you wish, Rabbi,” said Yehezkel respectfully. “Let today’s lesson be on the second verse.”

  They were on the upper floor of a modest house by the Nile, a big room divided by a curtain, on one side a bed and on the other the study where Maimonides received patients, and where he’d written books that made his name synonymous with erudition. Rav Moshe shifted in his chair and began the lesson.“I don’t intend to bore you, Hezki, with the literal meaning of the second verse. I would like instead to establish a connection between the primordial abyss—and through it, the seas—and the presence of evil in the world, as symbolized by darkness.”

  The words were enough for Yehezkel to forget his surroundings, knit his brows, and lower himself mind and soul into Torah study. Maimonides saw this reaction and went on, satisfied. “I want you to consider that although the first two verses are, essentially, a preamble to God’s first ‘creating’ pronouncement—Let there be light—the sequence in the first three verses implies that darkness existed before light was created . . . and, by analogy, that Evil was created before Good!”

  By now Yehezkel was far from the room and from Egypt, immersed in the creation. He struggled to gather his thoughts, scattered by his teacher’s suggestion, and put them into words. “Yes, Rav Moshe, some sages deduced that if Good and Evil were twins, then Evil was the firstborn. But how do you plan to tie the qualities of darkness to those of the primordial waters, which, after all, were also the origin of the heavens, and of all the angelic creatures that inhabit them?”

  “Ahh, well said, Hezki!” smiled Maimonides, starting to enjoy himself. “But aren’t you forgetting that the heavens were created from the waters above, after their separation from the waters below? Supposing the qualities of darkness were present in the primordial, as yet undivided waters of the second verse, where did they end up after the firmament separated waters above from waters below? I suggest that, precisely so that the waters above should be free of those qualities, the Creator assigned them to the waters below, which, as you know, when ‘gathered together’ in the ninth verse, became the seas!”

  The old man’s visage was carved by illness, his beard, once a source of pride, skimpy and gray as if the disease had thinned his features hadn’t wanted to neglect facial hair. But his eyes, black as night and always on the point of smiling, belied the air of consumption.

  It being Shabbat, he was wearing his most expensive caftan, woven from the lightest camel wool, dyed a deep cobalt blue, and decorated round the neck and wide sleeves with gold thread arabesques so int
ricate they used to mesmerize Yehezkel as a child like flames. On his head sat a light blue turban wrapped around a central, white protuberance—a flat-topped, fez-like affair poking out from azure silk spires.

  “You think abyss and waters are synonyms!” Maimonides accused his pupil. “Well, I intend to show that tehom, the abyss, is nothing if not a symbol of the future waters below, while mayim, the waters, are a symbol of the future waters above. That is why the Torah says that over the former was darkness, while over the latter God’s Spirit already hovered. Think, Yehezkel, if light had not yet been created, how could darkness be over one thing and not over the other?”

  The old man’s eyes, while shining with the thrill of catching out the Almighty on a point of logic, were damp with the emotion that the infinite wisdom of the divine text always sparked in him. He concluded, “What the Torah is saying is that in the undivided, primordial waters both ‘ideas,’ as Plato would call them, were already there. Tehom prefigured the seas, and over it was the darkness that is the sea, while mayim prefigured the heavens and God’s Spirit already hovered over them like an eagle over its brood.”

  Yehezkel was used to the formal elegance of his teacher’s arguments and the detached way in which he presented them, so he was surprised by Rav Moshe’s excited tones that Shabbat, as if the interpretation of the primordial waters somehow concerned him personally, and convincing his pupil of the association between tehom and the sea were of the utmost importance.

  He nodded for his teacher to go on, but there was a knock on the door. The tingling that Yehezkel always felt in the back of his neck when studying Torah instantly vanished, as if a spell had been broken.