The Jerusalem Parchment

by Tuvia Fogel

  A little later, a dozen knights of all four orders, but mostly Templars, disembarked from the galleys, led by none other than Robert of Bois-Guilbert. They made their way to the market square, where the English knight, clearly heading the expedition, loudly announced, “Cardinal Pelagius has dispatched me to Cyprus and Acre to recruit nobles, knights, archers, surgeons, blacksmiths, and anyone else who will be useful in the coming final assault on Damietta! You know who you are; you have two weeks to get ready for war!”

  The Templar surveyed the onlookers, open contempt in his eyes as he removed his leather cap, exposing a bald head. “The cardinal told me, ‘Accept no excuses from pusillanimous Christians who decline to take the cross while living the good life just two days’ sailing from the war! My papal mandate will see to it that their appeals will be rejected!’”

  Then the knights made their way to the regent’s palace. Bois-Guilbert, relishing this role, spoke down to the man on Cyprus’s throne as to a trusted vassal. “Tomorrow morning, my dear Philip, in this splendid hall, I wish to see all the island’s nobles whom you don’t hold absolutely necessary to the defense of the island. I expect you, in accordance with the wishes of the papal legate, to deny any appeal that the men I round up may make to continue sustaining their families. There is a war, and Cyprus, as you know, has made more money from it than it has contributed.”

  Philip was outraged by the Templar’s gall but kept silent. An excommunication from Pelagius was all he needed right now. There would be no escaping this “contribution” to the campaign in Egypt. He comforted himself with the thought that if the Latins took al-Kahira, the commercial consequences would turn Cyprus into the new Polis.

  It didn’t take long for Bois-Guilbert’s minions to hear of the presence of a famous Jewish medicus. Robert only thought it was a good catch, but when he heard Yehezkel’s name his heart skipped a beat. Domingo told him about this Jew, Arifat’s friend, and warned him twice, ‘If you meet him, don’t underestimate him!’

  Yehezkel’s first thought was to ask Limassol’s Jews to hide him. Then he understood that being drafted into the forces fighting the Sultan was Divine Providence providing a way to reach Fustat and find the letter. Only then did he realize what caused the impulse to hide: going to Fustat meant separation from the nun. He scolded himself, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  Galatea turned up after he’d decided to let himself be recruited by the Templar. She heard him out and then, for the first time since Father Makarios mentioned the missive, asked him, “Have you figured out how you’ll cross the lines of this war to look for the letter that speaks of the Parchment?”

  “How I will cross the lines? You mean you are about to abandon, to quote your words in the swamp in Torcello, ‘a destiny that should have been ours?’”

  She smiled, flattered that he should remember her exact words. “Come now, Rabbi, you didn’t really expect me to accompany you in Saracen lands, did you? I’m a nun; it would be like asking for martyrdom! This is a mission for a resourceful man on his own, visiting what is, after all, his birthplace. The rest of us would travel on to Jerusalem, and when you had the letter, we would meet up again in the Holy City. At least, that’s what I thought.”

  She didn’t ask whether the rabbi meant to take the boy with him to a war or allow him to sail to Acre with the women. Before they could discuss it, a page appeared and summoned Yehezkel to the palace. Galatea went along, and soon they were standing before the knights from Damietta.

  Bois-Guilbert smiled knowingly at the strange couple. He couldn’t hide a smirk of delight at the sight of the beautiful nun in the company of a dangerous enemy. It was the kind of challenge he adored. “Then the noble English knight rescued the pretty Italian nun from the wiles of the Jewish wizard.” His father’s heart, charmed by a Jewish witch, burst in his chest. What revenge for that humiliation could possibly be sweeter than wrenching this beauty from a Jew?

  In Bois-Guilbert’s eyes, Yehezkel saw only the usual Templars arrogance, but Galatea felt the English knight’s lust wash over her and gathered her wits to defend herself. Sitting not far, Frutolf was also struck by the abbess, but in a way that shared nothing with Robert’s designs to repay destiny in kind. Instead, the sight of a long curl of Galatea’s hair escaping the shawl over her head transfixed the German knight with the power of a mystical vision.

  Frutolf of Steinfeld, like most Saxons, was brought up to believe that no sin was worse than lust, and that only life as a warrior could save a man from the wiles of women. Father Eberwin explained that all evil, suffering, and impurity in the world originates with woman. “I should know, I heard enough confessions. There’s nothing in their heads but sin and filth. Many pass for honest and God-fearing, but every one of them, believe me, is a drooling bitch!”

  Later, attending tournaments as a squire aspiring to knighthood, he met German troubadours, called minnesingers. From them, he learned the language of courtly love. “Honored, sweet sister, in me it’s not the flesh that desires, but the spirit that yearns,” and so on—a bizarre sentimental education whose result was, at least in matters of the heart, an overfed adolescent unmoored from reality who talked to himself in the courtly code while actually ignoring his own true feelings about most people. Despite seeing his own actions as chivalrous, Frutolf had in fact behaved brutally to every woman he ever met, except his mother.

  Now, setting eyes on Galatea, he saw for the first time the purity of the lover as he’d always dreamed of her. No doubt, were she to know him, the nun would feel for him the same childlike tenderness, so different from the harshness of the whores he had grown used to frequenting. He shot a glance at Bois-Guilbert, his hatred for the English knight never more intense.

  Bois-Guilbert addressed Yehezkel first, anticipating Domingo’s pleasure at hearing of how he’d neutralized the crafty rabbi by sending Yehezkel off to a siege in the middle of the Egyptian desert, unable to either look for the Parchment of Circles or interfere with his own search for it.

  “Aren’t we lucky to have stumbled onto such a noted medicus!” he began. “You’ll become even more famous if you save the lives of the kings and cardinals in the camp,” he began, as if to convince Yehezkel that by dispatching him to a battlefield he was doing him a favor. “Oh, and make sure you procure all the herbs and ointments you’ll need here, because they’ll be hard to find over there. You’ll be glad to hear you have two weeks, not because your services wouldn’t be needed right away, but because no ships sail to Damietta before then.” He turned to Galatea with an unctuous smile.

  “As for you, dear countess,” he said suavely, “if, as Saint Aldhelm wrote, nuns are bees who turn the pollen from the flowers of wisdom into honey for the soul, then you, noble Mother, are a queen bee!”

  Galatea found his flattery smooth and hollow but smiled as if impressed by his eloquence.

  Robert went on, “I’ve decided not to draft your two armigers, madam, so that you may safely complete your pilgrimage to Jerusalem.” Galatea nodded in thanks. “But I must warn you,” he continued. “They won’t be allowed to carry weapons into the Holy City. In Jerusalem they will be unarmed pilgrims, like all Christians there since the infidels retook the city.”

  Over the next few days, Galatea struggled to find a role for Francesco of Assisi in the blue tapestry that fate was weaving. Makarios knew of Gioacchino’s prophecy about the woman and the Jew, but why no mention of an itinerant saint? Everything would be simpler if Francesco were headed to Jerusalem. He might keep her at a distance, but she could still see him pray at the Holy Sepulchre. But the friar wanted to join the Christian armies in Damietta! She had to find out why.

  Sobered by Francesco’s contempt for luxury, Galatea looked more like an abbess than a countess again. A week went by before they crossed paths again, and his condition worried her. “Brother Francesco piccolo,” she said, “you must take more care of yourself! I know you’d never let a nun look after you, but at least spare your body a little of the puni
shment you’re unjustly meting out to it. By the way, do you really plan to travel to Damietta, as you said last time we saw you?”

  “Yes, Madonna,” answered Francesco, looking at the ground. “I heard that one of the Templar galleys that came from there is sailing back soon, so I plan to ask for passage for my brothers and myself.”

  “Forgive my brashness, Brother Francesco piccolo, but what will you do there, preach to Christian knights whose lives are already forfeit for the sake of Jesus Christ?”

  Francesco smiled his impish smile. “No, Madonna, we’re headed through the Christian camp and the front lines, to convert the sultan!”

  Galatea’s hands shot to her mouth as the company, including Yehezkel, gasped in shock. Francesco’s friars, at the mention of their imminent martyrdom, suddenly stood a little straighter in their pitiful frocks. Yehezkel started explaining that crossing the lines of that bloody war was no simple matter, and that with no guarantee of reaching the tent of al-Malik al-Kamil, the attempt was little more than a complicated suicide.

  But Francesco smiled as if he’d already talked it all out with the good Lord. “I know what war looks like, Master Ezekiel. My preoccupation is not how to reach the sultan’s tent unharmed, but how to find someone to translate my Latin so my words may reach his heart!”

  The strange couple’s first thought was the same, though it took different forms in their minds.

  “No one in all Egypt could do that better than I!” thought Yehezkel, “and if that weren’t enough, I need to find a way through those lines to get to Fustat. My, my . . . as Rav Eleazar would say, look how hard those angels are working, up there. . . .”

  “That settles it!” she thought instead. “Francesco of Assisi is going to convert the Saracen sultan, and Master Ezekiel will be his interpreter—and I should sail to Acre with the women? And miss the chance to be in frescoes and paintings of that scene in every church in Christendom? Sorry, Gioacchino: no pilgrimage, no Jerusalem enigma can stop me. I’m sailing to Egypt!”

  CHAPTER 17

  VAYITEN OTAM

  And He Positioned Them

  LIMASSOL, 13TH JULY 1219

  One day, as Yehezkel approached the inn where they usually met to eat in the morning, he saw Galatea running toward him, holding up the hem of her white habit.

  “Rabbi, Rabbi, I had a spectacular . . . no, a celestial dream! I must tell you about it before it fades!”

  Coming from that nun, Yehezkel took the news quite seriously. “Good morning, madame. Let’s go into the inn and fetch wax and stylus so I can put down what you still remember. Why did you not take notes as soon as you woke up?” he scolded.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Rabbi, I thought of nothing else since opening my eyes. I went through every detail of the dream a hundred times since dawn. I remember it as if I were there now!”

  “Excellent!” said the kabbalist, adding with a smile, “It’s always more rewarding to work with mystics who’ve learned to . . . ‘handle’ their visions.”

  “Well, this time I wonder how you will handle my vision. I was a bird flying over Jerusalem!”

  Yehezkel’s eyes opened wide at the mention of the city that was his numerological namesake. “How did you know it was the Holy City you were flying over?” he asked as they entered the inn.

  “Oh, I just knew it. But even if I hadn’t, I would have guessed it, what with desert hills all around, the Temple with the viaduct and the ceremony taking place . . . ”

  “Lord of the Universe, you dreamed the Temple! You mean it wasn’t . . . it wasn’t Jerusalem today you were flying over, it was Jerusalem when the Temple still stood on the Mount?”

  “Yes, Rabbi,” said Galatea, taking her usual seat on the divan in a corner of the room. “Not that I could tell you what was going on, or when it was all happening, but maybe you will understand that.”

  “I hope so!” said Yehezkel, starting to pace back and forth in front of the divan. “Let’s proceed in an orderly fashion. We’ll come to the Temple in a moment; first let’s try to determine the epoch. Tell me, how big a city was there around the Temple esplanade, madame? And what was the biggest construction, besides the Temple?”

  “Mmh, let me see . . . the city was quite large, but only behind the Temple. In front of it was a deep gulley and beyond that a hill, which I presume must have been the Mount of Olives.” She clapped her hands and brought them to her lips. “Madre Santissima! I was flying over the Mount of Olives, do you realize? The largest building? Mmh . . . it was a rectangular fortress by the edge of the Temple esplanade, with crenellated walls and square towers on its corners.”

  “Fortress Antonia!” cried Yehezkel. “Madame, you saw Jerusalem under Roman occupation!”

  “That means at the time of Jesus, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes! The Temple you saw was Herod’s, not Solomon’s.” He stroked his beard.

  “The Talmud devotes many pages to Herod’s Temple; our sages were concerned that when the third one is built, nothing will be missing or forgotten.”

  “Before the ceremony,” said Galatea, “the Temple courtyards were very crowded. Hundreds of people came and went, dressed in ancient-looking garb of a style I’d never seen before, even on statues. Priests in white robes were busy around an altar in front of the Temple’s entrance, and the smoke from it went up in a straight, thin column. The facade of the Temple was covered in gold, so bright I couldn’t look at it.”

  “So you were a bird, but not an eagle,” murmured Yehezkel, smiling.

  Galatea giggled. “Don’t make fun of this dream, Rabbi; there was something truly solemn about it.”

  “What happened when the ceremony took place?”

  “It was later. As I glided over the Mount, a figure clad in white and gold walked along the viaduct to the Temple, bearing a gold tray heaped with what looked like ash. Behind him, at the starting point of the viaduct, was a massive altar. The crowds left the courts and stood on the esplanade, lining his path. I had a strong feeling of the importance for the world of what I was witnessing . . . ”

  “The red heifer,” whispered Yehezkel reverently. “What you saw was the high priest carrying out one of the most mysterious and crucial tenets of Judaism. A ritual to purify the whole world, exactly as you say.” Yehezkel looked awestruck and not a little tense.

  “But what is this red heifer? What was the ritual?”

  “It is a mystery related to the sin of the Israelites who made the golden calf in the desert. Basically, the ashes of a flawless red heifer have the power to remove all impurity, even from contact with the dead.”

  Galatea looked puzzled. “But in Crete you told me Judaism is blue, so why is the cow whose ashes vanquish the impurity of death red, the color of paganism?”

  Yehezkel was impressed. “It would take too long to explain, madame, but again, it has to do with the golden calf. The copper the Israelites used to harden the gold gave the calf a reddish hue, and after Moses broke the first tablets, the Torah says he ‘took the calf which they had made, burnt it in the fire, ground it to powder, strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.’ As I said, it is a mystery.”

  Galatea nodded slowly and went on describing the majestic scene she’d witnessed. “The gates in front of the advancing high priest were perfectly aligned and all wide open, from the double gate on the edge of the esplanade to the gates between the courtyards, all the way to the entrance to the Temple itself.”

  Yehezkel said, “And though you couldn’t see it, inside the Temple the curtain at the entrance to the Holy of Holies was drawn, too. Something that didn’t happen often.”

  “Yes, indeed, it felt like a rare, special occasion. When the high priest stepped onto the esplanade flutes, trumpets, tambourines, lyres, and harps started playing, and a male choir, standing on a semicircular stairway leading from one courtyard to another, began to sing the first verse of Genesis to Hildegard’s music, just like in my dream!” She smiled, embarrassed. “Well, Rabbi
, you know how dreams are . . .”

  “Those were Levites,” he said. “And they did, indeed, sing the creation verses at certain ceremonies. And a semicircular staircase climbed from the Court of Women to the Court of Israel. The music may not have been Hildegard’s, madame, but aside from that your dream is strikingly accurate.”

  “Don’t mistake this for pride, Rabbi, but I’m used to that. Tell me, the double gate is on the eastern side, isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s the gate Jesus came in from, riding on an ass.”

  “Yes, at the time it was called the Gate of Mercy and was in fact two gates, as you saw,” said the rabbi. “Now it is called the Golden Gate.” Yehezkel paused, caressing his beard, and then said, “As for the deeper meaning of the dream, the red heifer ritual, in my opinion, is not the point. The Temple and the viaduct are the point. You see, your dream is connected to the Parchment, of that I have no doubt. Don Sancio said it was a map, remember? Think of the clues placed on our path so far: first the hermit’s prophecy about an enigma, and then your dream of Bereshit, and then the page of Ezekiel that Hanina hid in Jerusalem, and now this dream, showing you where things were or weren’t on the Mount. Do you see? When we find the map, it will all suddenly make sense!”

  “I do see . . . but you just put your finger on something that is starting to trouble me.”

  The abbess looked around the inn and lowered her voice, “In Torcello I dreamed the first verse of the Bible in Hebrew; now I dream the Jewish Temple in the time of Christ. All right, the prophecy speaks of a woman and a Jew, but why are the shreds of revelation the woman glimpses so strictly Jewish? Why don’t you ever dream a choir singing the first verse of a Gospel, or have a vision of Jesus Christ establishing the Eucharist? Something here is uncomfortably one-sided. . . .”

  Yehezkel had concluded that, his own prophetic talents being sadly inadequate, Divine Providence placed a prophetess beside him as a conduit for the heavenly forces supporting his mission. But by now he knew how the proud nun would react to that explanation of the Jewish contents of her visions, so he said, “The only answer I have is what Rav Shlomo said in Crete: mysteries are only accessed through the sacred language of Scripture. If your part in the quest is rife with Jewish words and symbols, it must be because the Parchment of Circles is itself in Hebrew, and if you’re destined to solve its mystery, you must first—how can I put it—adapt your gift to that language.”