The Jerusalem Parchment

by Tuvia Fogel

  The abbess was staring at him, violet eyes wide, incredulous and concerned. Was her teacher really about to use Kabbalah against the pirates? Would he summon spirits, like a necromancer? Would she hear his voice turn into that unearthly roar again?

  Yehezkel saw Aillil get up to go aft with Galatea, grabbed his collar, and told him to stay. He told Spiro that when they were close enough, he would signal to him to drop the mainsail and turn the tareta around so that the prow, with the conjuring rabbi on it, would face the oncoming dhow. Turning his back to the Christians in the stern, he opened the linen wrapping and told Aillil to pull out his sling, which was always in the boy’s trousers.

  Yehezkel knew from Torcello at which range the boy’s slinging was most precise, and when the war cries of the savage marauders already filled the air, he judged the moment right and signaled to Spiridione, who gave the order to stop the tareta and turn it around to welcome the dhow. It was what Spiridione was going to do in any case, as a way of signaling to the pirates that he wanted to negotiate, not escape. He was laughing out loud as he called for the mainsail to come down. It was too late now for the Jew to save the day, whatever Hebrew curses he came up with!

  When the mugs of the raiders leaning from the bow of the dhow could be made out—by now Gudrun’s sharp shrieks were louder than anything the pirates could muster to scare their prey—Yehezkel rubbed his flint on its iron ore mate and directed the sparks toward the projectile in Aillil’s sling until it caught fire. Then he winked at the boy, nodding toward the pirate boat, some three hundred paces away. “This should be easier than hitting ducks over the willows in the lagoon!” he laughed.

  Suddenly, all eyes on both vessels were following the trajectory of the burning glob of Greek fire Aillil lobbed through the air. It didn’t just hit the dhow; it landed at the foot of the single structure on the boat’s deck, splintering into a hundred inextinguishable flamelets.

  Spiro was jumping up and down, excited as he hadn’t been since Isaac Doukas called Margaritone to rescue Cyprus for him, which was the last time he’d seen Greek fire.

  The first projectile failed to set the dhow alight. The pirates knew Greek fire and knew that seawater would not put it out. Christians and Jew on the tareta watched them as they flung themselves on every flame with rags and clothes, choking them before they could spread. Yehezkel saw some of them piss on the flames, one of the few things that was said to put out fires started by the diabolical substance.

  The second glob Aillil threw struck the center of the dhow’s lateen sail.

  In seconds, sail and mast were in flames. The dhow was a hundred paces from the tareta when its mast crashed on deck, setting everything alight from bow to stern. It happened so quickly that the onlookers were as astonished as the sailors on the burning boat. The whole thing, amidst the panicked screams of the pirates, was over in the time it takes to say three paternosters.

  Then the screaming stopped, and an unnatural silence fell in which the only sounds were the crackling of the flames engulfing the burning wreck and the splash of pirates jumping overboard.

  Yehezkel turned aft with a triumphant smile. Pilgrims and sailors were crossing themselves repeatedly, speechless. They had been certain of death or slavery, and some even started cheering the Jew. Spiridione smiled an obscene smile.

  As often happened in such cases, the survivors from the sinking ship cried out Muhammad’s name and spat in the water, swore in Greek that they would accept baptism, and implored with guttural shrieks not to let them drown. Spiro—not vengefully, but knowing they couldn’t be trusted—hoisted his mainsail and left without turning around. The dhow’s long bowsprit vanished into a stretch of water strewn with burning wreckage and oily patches of what looked like flaming sea.

  The company was shaken but understood the need for such harshness. The women would remember the desperate screams chasing the tareta as she resumed her course to Cyprus for the rest of their lives. Spiridione walked to the bow to congratulate the Jew, still irrepressibly excited to have seen Greek fire again. Erratic movements of his eyebrows and moustache made his smile at once comical and sinister. “Your excellency, my honored guest, light of Eastern and Western knowledge! Come, Master Ezekiel, at least tell me if you received the fire ready to be used, or if you know its secret formula! Please?”

  Yehezkel ignored him, not without a smug grin. The Greek, eyes sparkling, wouldn’t give up. “Because you see, my friend among friends, if you possess that formula, I can make you the richest Jew in Christendom in a few months!”

  IN SIGHT OF CYPRUS, 20TH JUNE 1219

  At dawn the next day, the sixth of the passage, Yehezkel stood behind the prow, an arm around the forestay, peering at the profile of the Troodos range, some fifteen leagues to the southeast, trying to determine the right course to leave the island on port and sail around to its southern coast. In front of the tareta, he noticed the morning mist starting to thicken into the first strands of a summer fog.

  “I’ve seen June fogs like this before,” he thought. “Soon even the tops of the mountains will vanish. I’d better take a bearing of them while I still can.”

  He fetched the clay bowl from the chest and, checking that Spiridione wasn’t keeping an eye on him, pulled out his loadstone and floated it. Once he knew where north was, he guessed the bearing of the peak and the course they should follow to clear Cape Amautis, the westernmost point of the island.

  It was still early, and Galatea watched the rabbi fidget for a while before getting up and stretching by the gunwale. She noticed the thickening fog between them and the island and suddenly felt a pang of fear in her gut. Feeling them move in the breeze, she realized the hairs on her neck were upright.

  “Rabbi,” she whispered weakly, tugging at the sleeve of his sarbel and pointing at the whitish haze.

  “It’s a perfectly normal summer fog, madame,” he reassured her, compensating the movements of the bowl to check the island’s bearing again before the spires of fog swirling in the breeze hid it altogether. “Swirling spires?” he caught himself. “I never saw fog and breeze in the same stretch of sea before.”

  Later, Yehezkel would reflect that all his Kabbalah hadn’t helped him to recognize that this was no “perfectly normal summer fog,” as the Christian prophetess recognized at once.

  While he’d been playing with his loadstone, terror descended on everyone except him. Nightmares are personal things in which events of people’s waking lives entwine with the deepest contents of their souls. The fear that gripped them was not the same for everyone, rather whatever had most frightened each person in their lives approached them again. André and young Zaharias, for instance, were seeing different things, but the effect was the same: both fell to their knees, hands over faces, whimpering. Thick spires of fog swirled around the tareta as everyone fell victim to their own, private horror.

  “There, look! Over there! There’s a face laughing in the fog!” cried a sailor.

  When he saw Aillil push his head into Galatea’s lap, moaning as the nun shook like a leaf, Yehezkel understood there were evil spirits in that fog. He thought of the angels facing off in the world above and shuddered. All thoughts of the course they should set vanished, and the rabbi began to pray. He started breathing the folded breath and gestured to Galatea to do the same by placing a hand on his plexus.

  He looked aft. The men were having visions, some screaming, others curled up on the deck, their faces twisted by terror. André de Rosson wept shamelessly as before the Cretan rocks. Spiridione stood rigid at the helm, laughing and crying at once as the spirits of his victims danced around him in the swirling fog. The wind now raged through the shrouds like a sudden storm. Looking around the tareta, the rabbi came to the inevitable conclusion: only the Birchat Cohanim*38 could dispel such darkness. He must get them under his tallit and recite Aharon’s blessing.

  Nobody on board was compos mentis except Yehezkel and, to a lesser extent, the abbess. He grabbed her wrists, noticing despite the
circumstances, that they felt even thinner than they looked. “We must confront a very powerful spirit, madame!” Yehezkel realized his voice was trembling. “This angel fell from very high, and probably commands more demons than a maskil could summon in a lifetime! In fact . . . this could be Sama’el himself. . . . We must gather the company under the prow, now!”

  A few moments later, as he watched Galatea pulling at Garietto, who clung desperately to the mast, a strand of fog fell from above, hiding her for a moment. Yehezkel froze in a sudden, horrible premonition, sure that after the wisps of vapor dissolved, the nun would no longer be there.

  He charged toward the mast, screaming “Galatea!” He’d never called her by name before. Her head snapped up, she looked at him, afraid. Arriving at the foot of the mast, he almost knocked her over. “Thank you, Lord of the Universe!” he mumbled into his beard.

  When all seven pilgrims were standing under the prow, the rabbi asked himself, “But who will give the ritual answers? There is no Jewish soul to say Ken Yehi Ratzon after each verse!”

  Fog shrouded the boat from bow to stern; her deck was strewn with people writhing in terror, disappearing, and reappearing with the gusts. Yehezkel thought, “Mmh . . . how many times must I be shown that Divine Providence trusts this nun more than I do?”

  He explained to Galatea what he needed her to do, but she hesitated at the idea of praying to another God and not to Christ.

  “It is not another God we are praying to!” he shouted. “It is God the Father of your Holy Trinity!” He whispered in her ear the words she would have to pronounce. The abbess haltingly repeated them.

  In her heart, as she mouthed the Hebrew words for “May It Be Your Will,” Galatea appealed to the Virgin, looking straight into the rabbi’s eyes, which she had never seen so unashamedly frightened.

  Suddenly the wind fell. The tareta, becalmed, swung gently, still wrapped by vapors. In the stern, the crew yelped like a pack of dogs under the whip, while in the bow, a forlorn group of Christian souls, led by a Jew, attempted to pit their forces against the Angel of Death.

  Yehezkel’s arms tried to cover the company with his black and white shawl, three males on one side and three females on the other, like Moses had done. They looked like the miniature of a biblical miracle in a triptych on the altar of a church. He told them not to look outside the shawl and stretched his arms in front of him, the fingers of both hands split in pairs in the ritual position. Then, in the voice that Galatea had been praying to hear again, he began the exorcism.

  Creatures of the Heavens, pay attention! Hear, creatures of the earth! I, the maskil, proclaim His Glory to dispel all spirits of the angels of destruction: all the male spirits of Sama’el and all the female spirits of Lilith, howling spirits and the spirits of bastards. . . . May they all be dispelled before the blessing of Aharon the high priest!

  There was a brief silence, Aillil’s sniffling the only sound from under the shawl.

  “Yevaréchecha Adonai, Ve-Yishmerécha!”

  (May the Lord bless you and safeguard you!)

  Out of either habit or inspiration, Galatea, instead of Ken Yehi Ratzon, instinctively pronounced, “Kyrie Eleison!”

  Yehezkel hesitated, startled, and then went on, “Ya’er Adonai Panav Elecha, Ve-Yichunéka!”

  (May the Lord Shine His Countenance on You, and Grant You His Grace!)

  “Kyrie Eleeison!” Galatea’s voice rose for the second time, more assured and with a mild attempt at song. The sailors’ moans still reached to the prow, but the fog started to thin out into long strands.

  “Yisah Adonai Panav Elecha, Ve-Yasem Lechà Shalòm!”

  (May the Lord Turn His Countenance Toward You, and Establish Peace for You!)

  “Kyriee Eleeeeisoon!” This time Galatea sang the two words with passion, her voice pure crystal.

  Within seconds, the sun was shining brightly, and Cyprus took up half the southern horizon, its green hills sparkling against a perfect sapphire sky. For the third time, Yehezkel thought, “If I don’t stop underestimating this woman, I’ll get into real trouble yet.”

  Limassol harbor was full of short, fat cogs, looking for all the world like giant walnut half shells. Launches of all sizes went back and forth between the ships at anchor and the quay so heavily loaded with bags, crates, and horses that the gunwales risked being submerged. The wind carried all the way to the quay the ‘Diavolo!’s and ‘Porco Giuda!’s of the mostly Venetian and Genoese sailors.

  By the time it disembarked, the company was well acquainted with creaking timbers, salty breezes, and merciless sun. In Venice their skins, except Yehezkel’s, were white, but after two months at sea and on Crete, their wizened, reddish faces were so sunbaked they almost resembled infidels. Only Aillil was still pale, but his freckles were darker.

  In the harbor the company—a first time for all except the Egyptian rabbi—set eyes on some camels. Gudrun burst out laughing at the sight of the animals. They delighted Galatea, too. Taller than a man and longer than a horse, they had huge, droopy lips and expressions that were at times monstrous, at times endearingly serene. Their fleshy lips, long eyelashes, and swinging gait gave them a lascivious air, like . . . like desert trollops! thought Galatea. She bit her lip and smiled. “In Torcello, I would have run into church to light a candle after such a thought.”

  A priest of Limassol’s Latin diocese stood behind the official in the room where Spiridione reported the arrival of his tareta and gave an account of its passengers and crew. The cleric noticed the eccentric small group waiting outside: six Christians, two of them nuns, in the company of a Jew. “Nay, of a rabbi,” he said to himself, noticing Yehezkel’s black sarbel. Exiting the room where Spridione haughtily answered the official’s questions, the cleric gestured to Galatea and took her to one side to discover the reason for, to use the words of Innocent’s bull of four years earlier, tam damnata commixtione.*39

  Yehezkel feigned indifference but then walked around the small building and, standing behind a corner not three paces from the two, caught a few words of Galatea’s answer.

  “It’s the truth, Father. He swore to me that in Jerusalem he will embrace the True Faith! Do you think I would have abandoned the flock of nuns entrusted to my care if God had not presented me with the opportunity to convert a rabbi of the Jews?”

  Yehezkel walked off, at first wallowing in indignation. But then a grin of pride for her sangfroid and imagination spread on his face. When the priest walked away—not before wishing the abbess success in her holy enterprise—he approached, pretending resentment. “Considering I’m the one teaching you the mysteries of Kabbalah, not you teaching me those of the Trinity, I find the story of my imminent conversion nothing less than a calumny!”

  Galatea saw the rabbi couldn’t quite keep a smirk off his face and laughed heartily. “Don’t be cross with me! I had to tell that priest what he wanted to hear because his mind isn’t strong or curious enough to accept the truth of things as they really are.”

  Yehezkel nodded. “You’re too right, madame; the excessive zeal of certain clerics, of all faiths, can become wearisome at times, despite their good intentions.” He hesitated. “This thought I can only confess to you, my friend, but sometimes I think that the Children of Israel’s angry reactions to the self-righteous insistence of our prophets is not all that hard to understand.”

  Galatea laughed and then excused herself and walked toward Gudrun, secretly glad for that “my friend.”

  As they disembarked, the High Court of the Kingdom of Cyprus was in assembly in Limassol Castle, presided by the regent, Philip of Ibelin. Under innumerable arches, the walls of the huge hall were black with soot and covered with shields. The Cypriot lion above Philip’s throne was a scrawny, dragon-like beast, clearly a closer relation of the English lion than of the pompous, portly Venetian one.

  The regent, who ruled in place of the two-year-old king, was an aging man, overweight and bothered. More precious stones studded his robe than were in the
treasury of many counts in the empire, and his expression was that of a man suffering from aggressive gout who would gladly exchange the power for which he had fought all his life for a hot footbath. In that last week of June he had a serious problem, which, if mishandled, could easily cause trouble with the papacy. For the last twenty-five years, Latin bishops sent to the island to try to convert the Greeks to the Roman creed had achieved pathetic results, and now this inopportune incident. The Cypriot nobles were anxious to settle differences without wronging anyone. But first the friar had to come to. . . .

  A famous Italian friar, already spoken of as a saint, collapsed while preaching at the end of his tether in the market square. “Preaching” was too flattering a word for prancing about and pulling faces like a jester. Were it not for his reputation as a “Savior of the Church,” he would have been given a dose of lashes his emaciated body wouldn’t have survived. Now he lay senseless in the chamberlain’s apartment.

  Philip was listening intently to news of the recent arrival in Limassol of a famous medicus, astronomer, and wizard of the Jews—a disciple, it was being said, of the great Moses of Egypt.

  “Well, bring him here at once!” roared the regent. “That’s what Jews are for: to solve what all others have declared insoluble! And if he can’t make the friar come to, it will mean that our island was meant to host his remains forever!”

  Since Coeur de Lion conquered it thirty years earlier, Cyprus had ceased to be a schismatic island and had been faithful not to the patriarch in the Polis but to the pope. After the bloody Templar interlude, it became a kingdom ruled by the Lusignan family, loyal subjects of Emperor Frederick II.

  Cypriots, like all other islanders, were a proud people who spat on invaders—Saracens, Greeks, Coeur de Lion, Templars, all of them. When, in the first decade after the fall of Jerusalem, the nobles chased from Syria by Salah ad-Din arrived, they’d been treated like all the others. The islanders’ luck started when Constantinople fell to Dandolo’s Venetians. Most nobles and knights ran off there, in the hope of securing more than a Cypriot village and a vineyard, and due to the disorderly nature of the lives of knights, none of them had ever been back. For the first time, the island’s wealth ceased to be transferred to Damascus or Constantinople and instead remained in Cyprus. In fifteen years, trade made it so rich that Latin nobles stopping in the island gawked at the big hunts on the mountains—with hawks, leopards, and hundreds of men.