A short distance from this scrag of a grove stood a squalid little farm, the crabbed fields of which yielded more stones than corn. A few parched stalks drooped in the oven-hot air, their withered leaves crackling on each fitful breath of wind. That hard labor should be lavished on such hopeless soil would have been pitiable if it were not everywhere the same in that broken desert land.
For, from all that I could see, the Holy Land was but a great hot barren dust heap which everyone continually quarreled over as if it were a paradise flowing with milk and honey instead of grit and gravel, a wondrous realm of gold and jewels instead of rocks and thorns. That anyone should greatly care who ruled this desert wasteland astounded me; but that anyone should fight and die over the right to do so, gave me to despair. Behold, I thought grimly, the triumph of avarice over sense, of greed over sanity.
While taking our ease, we discussed the plan for reaching our ultimate destination, Anazarbus in Armenia. “It is a very great distance,” Roupen assured us. “The wilderness is very rough and barren; there are few roads, and those that exist are not good at all. We will certainly need help to get there, and good horses.”
I asked which direction Armenia lay, and how best to get there. Roupen explained that it was in the low Taurus mountains to the north, and that there were several routes. “The best way, however, is through Mamistra,” he said. “We can get there by boat from Famagusta.”
“Mamistra is a sea port?” asked Padraig.
“No, it is inland—on a river. But the water is deep enough for boats and small ships. It serves as the nearest sea port to Anazarbus.”
When the strength of the sun began to wane somewhat, we pushed on again, walking until dusk deepened around us. I remained wary of any pursuit, but saw no one until coming upon a group of Venetian merchants camped beside the road for the night. The merchants, seven in all, had been exploring trading opportunities in Antioch, and were on their way to Ascalon in the south. They greeted us pleasantly and invited us to share their evening meal, and asked how we found life in the Holy Land. Padraig would have talked to them all day long, but I thought it best not to encourage their interest too far, so after wishing them well, I begged to be excused, explaining that we had walked all day and were very tired.
I scraped out a place among the rocks and thorns, lay down, and dozed contentedly until Padraig nudged me awake at daybreak. “Someone is coming,” he whispered. “I was just praying and heard horses on the road.”
“Bohemond’s men?”
“Maybe. They are still too far away to tell.”
“Then we still have a chance.”
We woke Roupen and crept quietly away from the camp, hiding in a dry ditch of a ravine a few hundred paces from the camp. Shortly, there appeared three riders. They reined up when they came upon the sleeping Venetians. Although we could not hear what was said, I could guess readily enough. The riders roused the merchants with demands and questions; the Venetians looked around, and shrugged as if to say, “We do not know if they are the men you are looking for. They were here with us last night, but they are gone now. We cannot tell you more.”
The riders did not linger, but rode on quickly—no doubt in the hope of catching us a little farther up the road. After they were gone, we waited in the ravine until the merchants departed as well, and then continued on, keeping a sharp watch on the road ahead for the returning soldiers.
We walked until midday, and then stopped for another rest, thinking to move on at dusk and walk through the night so that we could reach the harbor with a good chance of getting a ship before any sailed the next day.
This we did, spending a quiet night out on the road beneath the stars, so that we arrived at the little port town of Saint Symeon just after sunrise. We saw no sign of the soldiers, but two of the roundships were still in the bay, dwarfing the smaller fishing vessels riding peacefully at anchor offshore. We hurried down through the single narrow street to the harbor, where Roupen made a good account of himself by undertaking negotiations with a local fisherman for the hire of his boat to take us across to Famagusta. The sailor knew the place well, and was pleased to have ready payment in silver for his services. He called his son and one of his idle friends to help with the boat and, after providing ourselves with a few loaves of bread, a little wine, and some boiled eggs and hard lumps of goat cheese, we cast off.
As the boat slid out into the bay, I scanned the road and hills for the last time for any sign of our pursuers. There was nothing. I decided that Bohemond had made but a halfhearted attempt at apprehending us; if he had been in deadly earnest, his men would have caught us long since. Thus, I concluded that he had directed his main efforts elsewhere, and relaxed my vigilance. The race, I decided, would not be to outrun pursuers, but to reach Anazarbus first. Toward this end, I dedicated myself.
All that can be said of the voyage is that it was short and blessedly uneventful. We reached the deep-water harbor on the eastern edge of Cyprus on the evening of the second day, and set to work seeking out the fellow named Yordanus. There was little harm in doing so, I thought. If, for some reason, we disliked the man, or determined that making his acquaintance would be of little value to us, we would simply move on and make our way to Anazarbus by ourselves.
That evening, as the moon rose over the quiet harbor, nothing could have been more simple and straightforward. But, as I was learning, nothing was ever simple and straightforward in Outremer. Our search quickly ran aground on the fact that, as night closed in, no one would speak to strangers in the street. In the end, we were forced to take a room from a local wool merchant who put out part of his large house to visitors for a small fee, for which he also provided an excellent meal. We ate heartily, and slept well in soft beds piled deep with fleeces, and rose early next morning to renew our search for Yordanus—with an ever-increasing sense of urgency. For, every day we spent dallying along the trail, Bohemond was that much closer to launching his attack on Anazarbus.
Before leaving the wool merchant’s house, we asked if he knew where we might find this Yordanus Hippolytus. Our good-natured host had heard of the fellow. “Oh, yes,” he assured us. “He lives in the upper town—the old town. He is a goldsmith—fine man, a very saint, and given to many good works—if he is the man I am thinking of.”
“The man you are thinking of,” said the wool merchant’s wife, “does not live in the old town. He lives in the big house at the end of the road behind the hill.”
The sunny merchant’s face clouded. “How do you know who I am thinking of?” he demanded. “Be quiet, woman, you will confuse these good men.”
“No more than you have confused them already,” she replied tartly. “Take my advice and ask someone to show you the way to the house behind the hill.”
“The old town,” the wool man assured us. “Pay no attention to my wife. She is obviously thinking of someone else.”
Armed with this conflicting information, we began our search in the old town as the merchant suggested. For the price of a seed cake, we hired a young boy at the harbor to show us the way to the old town. He led us to the central market square where many of the artisans and traders had stalls from which they sold their wares. They spoke Greek in Famagusta and, since Padraig’s Greek was better than mine, he undertook to find out if anyone knew the man we sought.
“Oh, yes,” said a maker of brass bowls, “he is well known. He owns many ships. If you wish to find him, you must look down by the harbor, for he is always there tending his fleet.”
“I thank you,” said Padraig, “but we were given to understand that he was a goldsmith who owned a house in the old town.”
Seeing that strangers had come into the market, several of the more idle traders gathered around to see if we might require anything they could supply.
“Oh, no,” said the man, “I fear you were told a lie. He owns no house, but sleeps aboard his ship. Look for the biggest ship in the harbor. That is Yordanus’ ship.”
“What are you telling these men, Ado
nis? The man you are talking about died last winter.”
“Impossible!” cried the brass merchant. “I saw him only two days ago down at the harbor.”
“You saw a ghost perhaps,” said a second man, a potter with large, bare hairy arms covered in dried clay. “The ships are for sale. Do you wish to buy a ship?” he asked hopefully.
“Not just now,” Padraig said. “Later, perhaps.”
“Yordanus Hippolytus did you say?” inquired another man, pushing in. His hands were red from the dye he used to stain the leather from which he made sandals and belts. “I know this man. But he was never a ship owner. He came from Damascus where he grew figs.”
“A fig grower from Damascus?” said the first man. “There is no such person in all of Famagusta!”
“There is,” replied the sandal maker with admirable confidence. “He has a daughter who buys in the market. I sold her a pair of sandals once and she said they were the best she had ever seen—better even than Damascus. Perhaps when you are finished here,” he offered helpfully, “you would like to buy some sandals. Or a belt, maybe.”
“By the beard of Saint Peter!” sighed the potter. “These men are looking for their friend. They do not want your sandals.”
“I make very good sandals,” insisted the craftsman. “And belts as well. You should come and see them.”
“Look here, my friend,” said another, “there is no goldsmith by the name of Yordanus—or a ship owner, either. I have been selling for twenty-three years in this market and I know everyone. There is no one by that name.”
The market traders fell to arguing with one another over the particularities of the man’s identity. Turning to us, Padraig said, “I am thinking the wool merchant’s wife was right. Perhaps we should try to find the house behind the hill.”
Again, what should have been a simple task took on unimagined difficulties. No one we asked could tell us where this house might be. As one of our cheerful guides told us, “The problem is not so much the house, as the hill. There are a great many hills in Cyprus, and most have houses.”
Roupen lost heart and was for returning to the harbor, hiring a boat, and leaving Famagusta behind forever. But, having come this far, and with the day already speeding from us, I was growing more determined than ever to find this Yordanus Hippolytus. Padraig agreed with me. “If we do not find him today,” I promised Roupen, “we will be on our way again tomorrow.” So, we tramped around the hills above the port, trying first one house and then another, and came at last to a fine old Roman villa surrounded by a crumbling wall.
In the road ahead I saw a woman carrying a jar in her arms. She turned aside and entered through a low door in the wall. It was hot and we were tired. Thinking merely to ask her for a drink—or at least for directions to a nearby well, I quickened my step and followed her through the doorway and immediately found myself standing in the shaded courtyard of a once-handsome villa. There were large, leafy plants in great earthenware pots around the perimeter of the yard, and a small, finely-formed fig tree growing in the center beside a rock-rimmed pool. Instantly, the blazing heat of the day vanished, and I felt as if I had entered a haven of peace and calm.
Padraig and Roupen appeared in the doorway behind me, and stepped cautiously into the yard.
“So!” came a voice from the shadows, “I was right. You were following me.”
I turned to see the woman watching us from behind one of the plants, the jar still in her arms.
“Your pardon, good lady,” I said quickly, hoping to reassure her. “It was never my intention to alarm you.”
“It would take more than the sight of a ragged traveler to alarm me,” she replied, stepping boldly into the courtyard. Tall and willowy, with long dark hair, her simple blue mantle hung in fresh folds, except where she cradled the jar against the fullness of her breasts and the long curve of her hip. “What do you want here?” she demanded. She spoke Latin, not Greek, but curiously accented, each word taking on a flattened quality.
“Please, we do not mean to intrude—”
“And yet you do intrude.” Her gaze was direct and unsettling.
“Again, I beg your pardon,” I replied, somewhat abashed. I had hardly spoken a dozen words and already I had apologized twice. I returned her gaze, almost daring her to interrupt again before I finished. “We are looking for the house of a man called Yordanus.”
“Why?”
“We have business with him.”
“Liar!” she said. “He does not know you.”
“My lady?”
“Be gone with you at once—before I call the servants to send you away.”
Remembering what the sandal maker had said about Yordanus having a daughter, I glanced at her feet and saw sandals the same shade of red as that which stained the merchant’s hands. “Then this is his house,” I concluded.
“Yes. But do not think you will see him. He sees no one.”
“We have come a very great distance,” I told her. “All the way from Antioch. Commander Renaud de Bracineaux sent us.”
A cloud of suspicion passed over her face. She stared at me for a moment. “And who is this Commander de Bracineaux?” she asked at last.
“I had been told he was a friend of Yordanus Hippolytus.”
“He is your friend?”
It was a simple question, but I hesitated. Glancing at Padraig, who merely gazed placidly ahead, I said, “We know Commander de Bracineaux and respect him—but we are not close friends, no.”
This admission seemed to appease her. “You can come in,” she said, quickly adding: “Just one of you. I will ask if my father will receive you.”
“You go, Duncan,” Padraig said. As he and Roupen sat down in the shade, the woman led me across the yard and around the pool to a wide stone-paved walk leading to the entrance to the great house. She did not pause but pushed open the large wooden door, and stepped quickly in, motioning for me to follow.
We entered the cool darkness of a vestibule dressed in marble and tiles. The only light came from a small round window high above the door; it cast a circle of illumination on the blue-tinted tile of the far wall, against which stood a row of statues—some entire human forms, others head-and-shoulders only, and all of them carved in the most wonderful pale, milk-white stone. Although I know nothing of such things, they did appear to me to be very lifelike, which I took to indicate a distinct skill on the part of their maker. That a house should own one such carving was to me a sign of taste and refinement; that this house should boast statues by the rank meant its owner possessed the wealth of a kingdom.
“Wait in there,” instructed Yordanus’ daughter, pointing to the chamber beyond, “and I will see if my father is well enough to receive guests.”
She hurried away and I wandered into the next room—a vast chamber easily more than three times larger than Murdo’s great hall back home, and crammed with an assortment of tables, chairs, rugs, cushions, and other costly chattel; ornate jars, ewers, bowls, and platters were stacked carelessly on the tables and floor, and numerous ceremonial spears and halberds with braided tassels and silk bindings stood against the walls.
What I had first taken for tiles on the floor, on closer inspection turned out to be squares of fine polished wood cunningly arranged to form intricate patterns of alternating colors. The two walls at either end of the hall were painted with figures on horseback riding to the hunt of two tusked beasts, accompanied by a pack of enormous hounds. The men in the painting carried spears and small round shields, their clothing loosely flowing and brightly colored in the manner still favored by the potentates of the East. The expansive ceiling was tinted the color of the midday sky.
As I say, the greater portion of the room was given to an accumulation of objects of various kinds: rugs piled in a heap, and others rolled up and tied in bundles resembling cut timber logs; great jars and bowls of bronze and copper; ceremonial weapons—swords, spears, shields, and the like; and baskets of smaller objects—cups and ch
alices by the score, of horn and onyx and brass. I counted seven enormous banqueting tables, each large enough to seat twenty guests with comfort, and a dozen or more smaller boards; some of these were of gilded wood, and carved with precision. There were chairs, too, some as big as thrones; I saw one or two which the Jarl of Orkneyjar would have boasted to own.
So enthralled was I with the inspection of my surroundings, I failed to discern that I was being watched.
“Take anything,” said a dry, husky voice in formal, precise Latin. “Take as much as you can carry, just leave us in peace.”
I turned on my heel to see a gaunt, bald-headed man standing in the doorway behind me. He was tall and slope-shouldered; limp hands hung loosely at his sides. Sharp-featured, with a large, beaklike nose and narrow chin, he put me in mind of a fish-eagle. His dark, sad eyes, and the severe downward bend of his damp mouth, however, gave him the unfortunate appearance of an extremely aggrieved fish-eagle.
At first I imagined his doleful aspect resulted from the misapprehension that he had entered his home to confront a thief in the act of robbery—an error I hastened to correct. “Pax vobiscum,” I told him. “Pray have no fear, I am not a thief. Your daughter was good enough to admit me, and I merely await her return.”
He sniffed loudly—as if this explanation, so obviously untrue, was far beneath his lofty regard—and continued to watch me with his sad eyes. He was a taller man than he appeared; he carried himself low and hunched over as if bent inward by weight on his neck.
“In truth,” I said, trying to make him understand, “I have been instructed to wait here.” He made no reply, but continued staring at me. “You are Yordanus?” I ventured.
“I was,” he answered gravely. He straightened and lifted his head. “Yordanus Hippolytus is no more.” The flesh of his neck was loose and hung in shapeless wattles, much, I noticed, like the wrinkled skin of his upper arms. “Who might you be?”
I gave him my name, and told him that my friends and I had come to Cyprus from Antioch, and that we had been told by the commander of the Templars to seek him out and ask his aid. I hoped this would help him feel easier about my presence. I was mistaken.
The Black Rood Page 21