The Book of the Lion

by Michael Cadnum

  What an odd sound laughter is! To make it we bare our teeth, and howl like hounds. We sat near a fire of apple wood and balsam, a sweet scented heat that dried our clothes. Hubert danced with a woman of great size. His feet were. nimble, to no particular pattern of the lyre tune. The monkey was released from his cage, and climbed up Hubert’s head and shoulders, as a man might shinny up a pier in rising water. I joined in the great general laughter.

  Later, as we were once again carried out into the darkness, and hurled into a dank mossy corner, my mouth was still paralyzed in a puzzled smile. Not for the first time, I doubted the amusement of the evening, and tried to call out to Hubert.

  Hands searched me, for what little silver I had left, found it, took it away. I called for Hubert again, and heard him sigh, and sigh again, as a leather clad foot kicked him, rhythmically and with continuing intensity. Our attackers were laughing.

  As I clambered to my feet, I puzzled over what word Hubert had spoken, what proverb he had recited, that gave particular amusement to these violent men.

  The other assailants wearied, but a stout man with a black, plush cloak did not abate his fierce attack on Hubert, except, after a while, to alter feet, and kick all the harder with his left foot. Come away, the cloaked man’s companions called in their own bird-lively tongue.

  Or words that carried the same meaning. I could not blame them for regarding us as figures of entertainment, and for finding that the sport was pretty well beaten out of us.

  And at last only the man in the sweeping black cloak remained, and he was slowing in his attack, laughing breathlessly.

  I half fell down two algae-greased steps, and plunged my head in to the water. Then, feeling strangely clear-headed, I bore down on the man in the black cape just as he collapsed to his knees from effort, breathing hard.

  No doubt the great amount of wine I had swallowed encouraged me to fight. I half stumbled into Hubert’s attacker. He looked up at me with a sweaty, carefree countenance, a quip on his lips. I pulled him to his feet. I clapped a hand on his shoulders and beamed into his face, like a long lost brother about to plant a kiss on his face.

  He sought to run, and I would not let him go. He struggled, shrugged, squirmed, and I kept my grip, face to face with him.

  It was a strange, delicious feeling to see fear light a man’s eyes, and all because of the strength of my hands. I lifted the man from the ground by the fabric of his cape, a small man, under all his clothes, and a weak man, now that he was tired.

  I could not suppress a troubling thought: how easy it would be to take his life.

  chapter SEVENTEEN

  Birds sleep as we do, waking at night to cluck or purr, seeking reassurance. Then they puff their feathers, tuck back within their slumber, trusting that all is well. I watched the sleeping pigeons, wearing the cloak Hubert’s attacker had left behind.

  It was still night. I sat for a long time while Hubert vomited, held his head in his hands, and moaned. I kept watch along the street and the canal lest the reveling attackers rise up against us again.

  Swallows stirred in the eaves, and I took comfort in the consultations the little fowl made, each to each.

  “Great misery,” said Hubert.

  “If you can’t stand,” I said, “I can carry you.”

  “Carry me!” he said, as though the thought gave him shame.

  Hubert felt along the wall as he walked, stopped to cough and to feel his ribs through his blouse. Each step he was like a man crossing fragile ice. I kept glancing back, expecting to see shadows slipping from arch to corridor, but a night watchman’s voice lifted somewhere on another courtyard, and I wondered if some dark, blessed hour had arrived, when no man should stir beyond house or ship.

  Hubert paused before a window, the wooden frame open like a door, and took a half step back, and bent low, peering.

  “Glass!” he said at last. “Like my father’s house in England.”

  The window frame was spanned with clear glass, and in the dim moonlight we could see our reflected forms, stooping and peering like dim-witted fools. The pane was lightly stippled, marred with a hint of bubbles, like beer.

  No one stirred within, and the silence of the town was nearly perfect, except for our footsteps. When I spied a winesack full beside a sleeping man I lifted the wine and drank it all, every last swallow.

  We scurried down an alley between casks and bales, and when a watchman challenged us, I responded, “Sant’ Agnese,” pronouncing the ship’s name, and the name of our guardian saint, as I had heard the sailors pronounce the words.

  The watchman held out a pike, in a cross-body stance, blocking our path. He wore leather armor with exaggerated, high shoulders, and a close-fitting iron helmet. The cross on his chest hung from a chain of gold and some lesser metal, gleaming with pretty menace in the starlight.

  Beyond was a forest of ships and galleys tied to the wharf in the darkness. A heavy curtain swept my ankles behind me as I turned—the black, heavy cloak Hubert’s attacker had left behind at his flight.

  I felt within the cloak, and I slipped out a soft leather purse, lambskin, with a doe-hide drawstring. I pinched a coin in my finger, some foreign silver I did not recognize, but which I knew from its size and weight to be a quarter year’s wage for even a Venetian pikeman.

  “And a good night to you,” I said.

  With a swirl of the cape and a disjointed sensation of both triumph and stealth I strode up and down the wharf, and when another sentry challenged me I challenged him right back, with the name of our ship.

  “In Jerusalem was my lover slain,” I sang. In Jerusalem watz my lemman slayn.

  A happy song, despite the mournful lyrics. I was sleepy, and the ship’s deck slippery under my feet.

  Strong hands gripped me from behind—stronger than those quick, light-footed Venetians. My own hands were held behind me, chains were brought, and yet again I was carried. I was beginning to enjoy the sensation, lifted along like a battering ram.

  When I woke again I could not move, and did not want to.

  Hubert was chained beside me, a pale face in the dark. “I hear animals,” he said.

  Footsteps echoed on the deck above.

  “Animals of every sort!” Hubert said.

  I would die soon, I knew from the throbbing of my brain. To turn my eyeballs caused darts of green lightning. I rolled to one side. If I called for help no one would hear me, except to stick a spear into me and end my suffering.

  “Edmund,” Hubert whispered. “Are you all right?”

  I pretended I did not hear him, not out of unkindness, but because my tongue was a dry flake, a fragile thing that would break if I sought to use it.

  “I can hear you breathing,” said Hubert, hopefully.

  Each bone in my skull was a fragment. “I breathe,” I intoned.

  Hubert was right: we were chained in the ark of Noah, a vessel laden with duck and sheep, horse and hen, each creature with a voice, and using it.

  Sudden daylight stabbed the dark. I closed my eyes tight. Venetian voices laughed, commented, cautioned, each sailor unnaturally lively. The fine, dry sound of grass rustled somewhere in the hold, and the fragrance of hay. Hooves continued to knock and shuffle overhead. The ship settled, taking on its new weight. Loops of cordage rustled on the decking, and the ship gave a dignified start, moving unmistakably through the water.

  And then the ship jerked to a halt, distant voices jabbering, calling. Voices lifted, the churn of the tiller and splash of the sweeps echoing in our confinement.

  Captain Sebastiano shouted, cajoled, swore by Saint John and the Sacred Blood. He had a laugh that meant damn you to hell, and another that meant my soul lightens at the sight of you. Bare feet pattered, a horse somewhere raised a scream of disbelief. A rooster celebrated what must be day, out there in the world of the living. Other creatures made guttural, expressive noises. Bears, I thought—or pigs.

  When Wenstan brought us each a dish of smoky, oily ham, he spoke
in a low voice. “I have never seen Sir Nigel so displeased,” he stammered.

  “Will we stay chained here forever?” asked Hubert, with no self-pity but with an urgent, personal curiosity.

  “Forever?” asked Wenstan. He considered—or perhaps he paused because of his stammer. “Nothing lasts so long.”

  “What happened to my cape?” I heard myself croak.

  “That rag you were wearing?” said Wenstan airily. “It has been returned to its rightful owner, along with the money.” Wenstan had trouble with the last word. “The money,” he repeated. “The coins you stole.”

  “I stole nothing,” I said, in my most knightly voice, but inwardly I crumbled.

  “The night watchman,” said Wenstan. “He recognized the purse.”

  chapter NINETEEN

  I found the water barrel and drank deeply, scoop after scoop, until Hubert stepped in to lead me away.

  Nigel affected not to see, standing with his hands on his hips by the tiller, a man challenging the weather to attack. Rannulf did not spare us a glance, working with Miles on his weapon kit, polishing his short sword and oiling the seams of his chain mail. The sailors would not meet my eyes, and I felt like Jonah, a man who brought such bad luck to his shipmates that he was fed to a giant fish.

  Venice had vanished. A black range of cloud jutted from the north. The ship wallowed. The sea puckered and dimpled, but no waves lifted and the wind was dead. The air was warm, and scented with the smell of decay, almost sweet, although the nearest land was a bare hint far to the west.

  We carried a cargo of pigs and horses, and enough other beasts to populate a farm. The unfamiliar steeds rolled their eyes and screamed through their noses, hysterical and dangerous to anyone who mis-timed his approach. The pigs were more phlegmatic but equally vocal, questioning, protesting. Their odor was bitter and very strong.

  We had a few new passengers, too, among them a canon priest from Padua named Father Urbino, who sat with a leather bucket beside him. He emptied the contents of his stomach with the regularity with which a clerk dips a quill in ink. A, big, blond man, he had three rings on his fingers, one a pink coral carved into a sacred image, the other two pink gold.

  Christendom was attended by ordinary priests, who lived under one roof, and traveling priests, who were free to walk the land. Such traveling priests were often scholars and the sons of gentlemen, and so I appreciated the kind smile Father Urbino gave me. A few Frankish knights had joined us as passengers, too, along with their squires. The deck was a jumble of ration bags and lances.

  The duty was punishment, but I was happy to be around the animals. Hubert and I bucketed salt water over the feces and urine of these bleating, squalling creatures. Our own horses, including Shadow and Winter Star, heard the newer animals snorting and joined the chorus.

  The sailors swung mauls, large wooden hammers, pegging down hatches. Scoops and pails, rope and awl, any tool or tether that was not lashed or stowed was spirited away into the hold, which was already filled with sacks of wheat flour, oats, and cubits of hay.

  Partly out of anxiety about what I saw in the sky, and partly to discover Nigel’s humor, I said, “Hard weather is descending,” in what I thought was a seaman-like turn of phrase.

  Sir Nigel did not look my way, leaning against the side of the ship, paring his thumbnail with a small and shiny blade. “What a foul smell swine have,” he said over his shoulder to Rannulf.

  Rannulf made no comment, at work on his shield strap, kneading it with oil. Miles sat with him, soothing a whetstone across the blade of a knife with an ivory handle. I envied Miles at that moment, garbed in the same dark cloth Rannulf was wearing.

  “I owe you and all aboard this ship my humblest apologies, and I beg, unworthy though I am, your mercy.” This was my speech, and I had prepared it with care. I knelt on the deck.

  “The cape and purse belonged to a nephew of the Doge,” said Nigel. “The duke, the lord of Venice—you took his nephew’s silver.”

  The lord duke has a bitch’s whelp for a nephew, I wanted to say “I mistook him for another sort of man entirely,” I said.

  Nigel stopped paring his thumbnail and gave me a look of keenest interest, as though an ox had uttered a proverb. “You judged a duke’s son and found him wanting?”

  I cautioned myself to be the perfect squire—in speech, if not in deed.

  “They would have kept you in chains,” said Nigel, “but Captain Sebastiano and I convinced them to forgive an errant Crusader.”

  Father Urbino wished me a good evening in heavily accented English. “She goes well,” he said.

  The ship, I assumed he meant. He spoke as a man greets his social inferior, politely but with simplicity. “Yes, Father,” I agreed, “she goes very well.”

  Father Urbino glanced around, like a man accustomed to a servant. I took the slop bucket from his hand and emptied its contents over the side.

  Actually, the ship was not going very well at all. The air was sultry, and the ship lolled and lurched slowly in the dull sea.

  “We will arrive in time to kill many,” said Father Urbino. He made a stabbing twisting gesture with an imaginary sword. “Many heathen.”

  I had often wondered what it was like to have a vision of Heaven. Did the beings in the presence of God have bodies like ours, or were they made of light and color? A nobleman could have asked a priest like Father Urbino, and the good Father would have spent hours explaining the celestial host.

  I scrubbed and washed the deck, mopped and dried the planks, and then scattered dry straw. I was sweating like a man stunned with fever, like my poor father and mother, in their last illnesses. I did not like to draw a deep breath, the air sick-sweet, like burning sulfur.

  The sea slackened completely, like canvas stretched across a floor, irregular as wrinkles passed through it.

  Winter Star whinnied, and I called to silence him. The horses stirred and settled behind their wooden enclosure, and a pig set up a low-voiced conversation, swine speech that was nearly human, curious and apprehensive.

  It struck just after sundown.

  One moment we chewed duck bones and bread, and drank a sweet green wine, the ship still and quiet in the water. And then a single rope on the mast began to stir. It fell from its knot and swung, twitching.

  It was only rope, I thought, and soon a sailor would lash it back into place. But the blind rope end searched and probed, a restless serpent. Surely, I thought, someone will see it. Surely it means nothing, this single restless thing on a stagnant sea.

  The rope was swinging, idle but unceasing. and the next instant the vessel yawed, plunging. She rolled to her side. The rigging shrieked.

  The rope whipped through the dark. It caught a sailor in the skull, and the man went down spinning across the wet deck. I seized the wild rope and held it. I called for help. As a wave burst over the ship, my grip on the rope was all that saved me.

  Two sailors joined me, clinging to the knot, and then Miles, skittering and falling, slid across the deck, into the foaming scuppers. And over, into the sea.

  A dozen men cried out. The ship’s stern swung wide, and the Sant’ Agnese staggered, broadside to the force of the storm. Sheep and pigs fell hard against their enclosures, horses struggling.

  Sailors struggled to their posts, figures hunched and featureless in the dark. I wrapped my arms around the mast and hung on. Someone climbed toward me along a man-rope across the deck. It was Nigel, and he put his lips to my ear and yelled, “Help with the oar!” Holp with the loof.

  “Miles is gone!” I cried.

  I could hear Nigel call something, his hot breath on my ear, but I could not make it out.

  “Miles is in the water!” I cried.

  Nigel’s features streamed, rain and brine.

  Men wrestled with a great oar, more massive than the normal tiller, struggling to work the implement through the tiller-lock, and into the sea. The Genoan, for all his size, could not manage it, and the other sailors, strai
ned and pulled, no more capable than monkeys.

  I took a grip on the large tiller-oar, and we all strained to steer the ship stern to the wind, as seething water tumbled, threatening to roll her over.

  As I turned my head, with effort, I saw Miles, waving, vanishing and waving, closer than before, his mouth a gash.

  Later I told myself this wasn’t possible. The night was too dark, my eyes burning with salt. Surely this was another apparition, yet another shadow in our wake.

  Besides, what spar or wine cask could I throw him? The deck was stripped of everything not tied down, and as I called for Miles, another figure tumbled into the sea, a sailor. I was certain a sailing man would be able to swim, and I called out encouragement, my voice a shriek.

  A hand lifted from the stewing water like a farmer, bidding on a prize ewe.

  At that last moment, I thought: I know that face, that shoulder, those fingers reaching upward.

  And then he, too, was lost.

  chapter NINETEEN

  We took turns at the storm-tiller, Nigel and Rannulf joining me, each of them stouter than most of the sailors. Following seas climbed over her, and the Sant’ Agnese trembled and staggered under the weight.

  Hubert took his turn at the tiller with the rest, but he was not stout enough to make much difference. At one point in the long night one of the animal pens shattered, cut down by a heavy wave. Boards and corner-shafts flew, and starbursts vanished into the wind—hens and ducks. Sheep scattered, legs out, rolling, bleating, failing to find any purchase on the slick, heaving deck.

  I shivered, gripping hard when it was my turn at the tiller again, and at last, as dawn was breaking, the sky begin to lift. Tatters of dark cloud hung down, the storm dissolving, sunlight lancing.

  But the seas remained heavy, and at last Rannulf and I were together, clinging to the tiller. I hung on with a stony stubbornness, but Rannulf leaned into the oar as though he took pleasure in the strain.