The Blessing Stone

by Barbara Wood

  They hurried on to the harbor where they were met by more astonishing sights. Through a forest of forecastles and masts, sails and rigging, Katharina saw the water afloat with caravels, carracks, galleons, square-riggers, lateens, merchant ships, vessels of war, canoes, dinghies, launches, rafts, and even a pair of weather-beaten red-sailed Chinese junks. The quays were choked with mobs of pilgrims, both Christian and Muslim, embarking for and disembarking from their holy places. There were sailors of all navies, merchants, scholars, officers, lowly crewmen in rags, and longshoremen hauling bales, barrels, animals, and goods on board. The air was filled with the Babel of a hundred foreign tongues and the miasma of a thousand strange smells. Katharina even saw something called a bookstore. While she had seen printed books before—the church in Badendorf was proud that its Bible had been produced on a printing press—she had never seen as many books as this shop boasted: over four hundred in stock!

  Katharina had never dreamed of travel and adventure and now they had been thrust upon her. Her spirit was a curious dichotomy of sadness and joy, for she both grieved for the loss of her mother and Badendorf and Hans, and at the same time she was thrilled at the thought of meeting her real blood family. She had not believed a person could look backward and forward at the same time, and yet she was doing just that.

  They went to shipping offices, where Dr. Mahmoud’s Arabic and rusty Spanish were of little use but Katharina’s German and smattering of Latin stood them in good stead. Unfortunately, everywhere they inquired, they received a variety of responses, from captains refusing to take a Muslim, captains refusing to take a female, captains refusing passengers altogether. Superstition ran second to fear in a sailor’s life: if a heathen didn’t sink the ship, then a woman would.

  The day was starting to wane, and so was their hope. Dr. Mahmoud suggested they find lodgings for the night and try anew in the morning.

  That was when Katharina saw the stranger. He caught her attention because he was different from the others on the dock, although she could not pinpoint exactly why. There was the look of the nobleman about him in his white, padded doublet, blue, padded breeches and blue stockings. He wore a strange mantle, which was old-fashioned, since men didn’t wear cloaks these days. It was all white with an eight-pointed blue cross embroidered on the back, as if he belonged to a religious order. Closely cropped brown hair and closely cropped beard above a white ruffed collar. Tall, fit. Elegant sword slung from a belt on his left hip. Clearly a man of wealth. But there was something about the way he looked out to sea; an air of mystery about him, or perhaps it was longing, that held Katharina’s interest. He turned suddenly to speak to one of the porters, and Katharina caught a shadow of sadness in his eyes. Tragedy haunts this man, she thought, and was surprised at herself. Strangers to Badendorf had rarely caught her attention, let alone her imagination. Yet this man had done just that and she had no idea why.

  As she turned to Dr. Mahmoud to ask where they were to go next, ruffians suddenly appeared from nowhere and knocked them aside to run off with their parcels. Katharina cried out and caught her elderly companion as he fell.

  The stranger in the cloak, seeing what had happened, immediately took chase. “Right there, you maggoty bastards!” he shouted, catching up with them and dragging the two back by their collars. As soon as the thieves dropped their booty, they bolted, vanishing in the throng.

  “Are you hurt?” the stranger said to Katharina, addressing her in Latin, the universal tongue of Christian travelers.

  “We are all right, thank you, sir,” Katharina said, breathless more from the stranger’s proximity than from the assault by the ruffians.

  “I am Don Adriano of Aragon, a knight of the Brotherhood of Mary. Is he a Turk?” He jerked his head toward Dr. Mahmoud.

  Katharina filled her eyes with the stranger. Close up he was even more striking. Not so much handsome as possessing interesting features. And the shadows of longing and loneliness were even more evident. “Dr. Mahmoud is from Spain, sir, like yourself.”

  This seemed not to interest him. “Where are you bound?”

  “For Haifa and then to Jerusalem.”

  He studied her again. A girl, with hair like spun gold and the naiveté of a newborn babe. What was she doing in the company of an old Arab, and heading to Jerusalem? It would be none of his concern except that she was a Christian bound for the Holy Land and he had taken a vow to aid pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem.

  “I can take you to Haifa,” he said, and quickly added, “But only you. Not the old man.”

  “But I cannot leave Dr. Mahmoud!”

  Don Adriano was surprised to hear the passion in her voice and see it in her clear green eyes. There could be no blood relation between the girl and the old man, so what was their bond? He gave it further thought. Don Adriano’s family had fought to push the Moors out of Spain. His father had died fighting the Muslims. And the brotherhood he belonged to, housed in a fortress on the island of Crete, was dedicated to wresting the Holy Land back from the barbaric Muslims and restoring it to Christendom.

  But finally, deciding that his duty was to a Christian pilgrim, he nodded curtly. Let the old man tag along. He would not be Don Adriano’s responsibility.

  “Wait here,” he said and he strode off, his white mantle with its blue cross billowing in the breeze. Katharina watched him engage a ship’s captain in what looked like an angry debate for the captain kept shaking his head. But Don Adriano, being tall and of impressive bearing—and there was no mistaking his rank and status—finally won and the captain reluctantly nodded assent.

  When the Spaniard returned he said, “I convinced the captain that taking a Muslim on board could be good insurance should we encounter Barbary pirates, for they will let one of their holy men go unscathed, as well as anyone in his company. The fact that your friend is also a doctor helped. But the captain says his crew won’t have a female on board. Sailors are a superstitious breed. Any trouble and they’ll blame you, señorita. He says there’s only one way he’ll take you. That you disguise yourself.”

  “Disguise myself! How?”

  “You will travel as the old man’s grandson.”

  Don Adriano took them to a small tavern and left them there, giving the proprietor a florin to keep an eye on them. When he returned a short time later, he took Katharina and Dr. Mahmoud out into the alley where, after making sure they were alone and unseen, he handed her a bottle of foul-smelling black paste. “It will turn your hair brown,” he said, and then left her to do the work.

  While Katharina massaged the dye into her scalp and long hair, Dr. Mahmoud dug into his traveling bag and brought out a spare galabeya, a long straight Egyptian robe that hung loosely and without shape on the body. From Katharina’s shawl he was able to fashion a decent turban to cover her newly dyed hair, which she coiled on top of her head, tucking stray ends up. When she was dressed she emerged from behind the privacy of a stack of barrels. It was with a physician’s eye that Mahmoud studied the finished product. He saw a problem with the feminine breasts, so he brought out a roll of bandages from his medicine kit, handed it to her and told her to bind her chest as flatly as she could. He discreetly turned his back while Katharina completed the disguise.

  When they returned to the dock they saw Don Adriano striding toward them, and when his eyes fell upon Katharina, his mouth opened in mild surprise. She was so slim and tall and well disguised that one would mistake her for a boy.

  He had purchased bottles of water, loaves of bread, wedges of cheese, some fruit, and strips of dried beef, for passengers were to provide for themselves. By the time they climbed the gangway, the elderly Muslim, his grandson, and the Christian knight, the sun was slipping to the horizon and the sailors were in the rigging.

  She was a Portuguese ship that had recently brought elephant ivory from Africa and was now headed for India with a hold full of copper ingots bound for the coppersmiths of Bombay. There was a brief delay as the captain ordered some of the cargo rem
oved and reloaded, for a cargo that shifted under sail could cause a shipwreck. Once he was satisfied that the copper was stowed low enough to stabilize his ship, he gave the order to set sail. He led his crew in prayer, and Katharina heard earnestness in their paternosters, for although ocean travel was the fastest way to travel, it was also the most dangerous. And then two boys played a flute and a drum while the seamen got busy with the ropes and winches, the rhythm of the tune helping them to work together. Finally they were sailing out of the lagoon and into the open sea. Katharina stood in the bow, her face into the wind as she thought, not of the people and village she had left behind, but of the family that awaited her in some unknown land.

  They slept as the sailors did, in hammocks strung between bales of cargo in the ship’s hold. Space was so cramped that meals were taken on a small table wedged between two cannons. But most of the time, weather permitting, the three passengers spent their time on the deck in the fresh air.

  Katharina wondered about their rescuer, for although Don Adriano stayed with her and Dr. Mahmoud at all times, and advertised by his imposing presence that he was their protector, he otherwise had nothing to do with them. She noticed that he touched neither meat nor wine, and wondered if it had to do with the vows of his brotherhood, and when she watched him pray—down on one knee, holding his sword in both hands before him, the hilt resembling a crucifix—she suspected he was a deeply religious man.

  But a troubled one.

  There were lines in his face that she thought at first had been created by wisdom and experience. But then she thought, no, they were etched by pain. And there was the look of longing as he stared out to sea for hours on end. What was he seeing? What was he searching for? Adriano watched the sunset, watched the sky darken and the stars come out one by one, his face uplifted as if expecting to see some message written up there. He carried silence around himself like the knight’s cloak he wore. He was wrapped in it, that silence. Was it to keep things out, or to keep things in? Maybe both. Katharina had never been curious about a person before. She had never wondered what Hans was thinking, never desired to plumb his depths. What she saw on the surface she accepted as the whole person. It had never occurred to her that secrets and passions could run beneath. But now she could not stop wondering about this enigmatic stranger who seemed, day by day, to be not of this world but to dwell instead in the interior landscape of his soul.

  Her thoughts startled her. It struck her that they were the wise and lofty thoughts of an adult. She considered the hundreds of miles she had traveled, and all the towns and people she had seen, and now she was on a vast ocean, and it made her feel suddenly mature. She had celebrated her eighteenth birthday on the Amber Route and now she felt no longer like a girl but a woman. She liked the feeling and she believed that she now understood everything about life. She had been through so much in such a short time, losing her mother and learning the truth about her birth and identity, and now halfway into the Adriatic Katharina was convinced she had seen most of the world. And when she thought of Jerusalem and the dramatic reunion with her father and family there, she imagined herself going back to Badendorf, being received as a special person because she had traveled so far and now she was a wise woman. She already knew how she would describe Jerusalem to everyone, with its magnificent churches standing in rows, the people all pious and religious, everyone speaking Latin and conferring benedictions as a matter of course. And because she would be the most worldly person in Badendorf, people would come to her for advice, even Father Benedict whose sole claim to fame rested on a single trip to Rome. But he had never been to Jerusalem, where Jesus himself had walked.

  As the days passed and the horizon stretched before them, Katharina became terribly seasick but Dr. Mahmoud eased her discomfort with a remedy made of ginger. She also felt uncomfortable beneath the stares of the crew, who kept looking at her with unreadable expressions. And when the ship had gone for a long time without a sighting of land, she felt a special panic in her heart. For solace she frequently drew the miniature painting from the leather pouch Friar Pastorius had given her, and which she wore beneath her Egyptian robe. Sitting on the deck, knees drawn up, cradling the miniature in her hands, she would rivet her eyes to the blue crystal and wonder what was there about it that had made her father leave his baby daughter to go in search of it. Had he found it, and was the power of the crystal such that it had wiped his mind clean of all memory, making him forget his obligation back in Germany?

  She wished she could also hold the stein Hans had given her because in these unfamiliar and frightening surroundings she would draw comfort from such a familiar object, and from the feel of the clay of Badendorf beneath her fingers. But the stein had been packed with her bundle of clothes, protected deep in the folds of skirts and bodices, shawls and scarves, to ensure that it didn’t break. She wouldn’t see the stein till she reached her lodgings in Jerusalem. Her father’s house? They would share a drink from the stein, and her father, being a German nobleman and so long away from home, would weep at the sight of so exquisite a beer stein.

  A week out from Venice, the storm hit.

  Half the sailors wanted to hoist the mainsail, the others said this was not the time as the wind was increasing. A dispute broke out; they decided to hoist the sail but then it was too late, the canvas tore in two. All fires were doused: the cook’s stove and the lanterns. The seas rose. Dr. Mahmoud and Katharina held on to each other. Thunder was suddenly upon them, lightning, and heavy rain pouring down. The wind increased until the main mast gave way with a mighty cracking sound and crashed to the deck. The sailors fell to their knees and began praying loudly. Gigantic waves rose up and swept over the sides, sending the decks awash. Barrels and bales, breaking loose, were swept this way and that and finally overboard. The ship was actually swallowed and went under the water, but in the next instant rose up again as if on a spout. Up and down it went, through the tempest, with her frail human crew and cargo screaming and praying and holding on for dear life.

  Katharina woke to find herself on a sandy shore, her clothes soaked, her long hair tangled with seaweed. The sky was gray but no rain fell, and the ocean roiled like angry fluid metal with foamy points. Wooden planks and scraps of sail floated on the waves. She looked up and down the deserted shore and saw the remnants of ship and cargo strewn among the dunes. But she saw no people.

  She struggled to her feet and looked around in bewilderment. Where was the ship? Where was the crew? “Dr. Mahmoud!” she called. Her only response was the mocking howl of the wind. Staggering along the beach, her galabeya tattered and trailing in the wet sand, she presently came upon a body. It was the captain, and crabs were already making a feast of him. Farther along she found remnants of a wooden chest, but few of its contents remained. Sticking out of the sand she saw a shard of white ceramic. She pulled it out and brushed it off. It was part of the beer stein Hans had given her. She searched for the rest of it but found no other pieces. Still numb with shock, Katharina cradled the small oval in her hand—the miniature painting of Badendorf nestled in the mountains.

  Then she saw a figure ahead, stumbling along the sand, his cloak billowing and swirling about him. Don Adriano! Katharina broke into a run, waving her arms and calling out, tripping on the hem of her torn galabeya.

  “Praise God!” he cried when they reached one another. She fell into his arms, sobbing. He enveloped her in his damp cloak, and they cried and shivered together until he finally drew her down to her knees and they offered prayers of thanks for their survival.

  “Where are we?” she said, her lips cracked and crusted with salt.

  He squinted out at the dismal ocean and invisible horizon. “I have no idea, señorita.”

  “Have you seen Dr. Mahmoud?”

  His eyes were filled with sadness as he said, “I saw him go under. I reached into the water but he had gone down. I am sorry.”

  She cried anew, sitting in the sand and drawing her knees to her chest. Don Adriano drape
d his knight’s cloak about her and went in search of dry wood for a fire.

  It was some time before she remembered her small painting of St. Amelia. She cried out with joy when she found it still around her neck in its waterproof pouch, and when she brought it out into the light of the flames from Don Adriano’s struggling fire, she drew hope from the comforting image of Amelia and the blue crystal.

  Adriano explored their environment and learned they were on an island that was little more than a rocky outcropping in the sea with no greenery or wildlife. But he found casks of water washed ashore from the ship and enough dry driftwood to keep the fire going. Together he and Katharina dug for crabs and other shellfish, which they steamed between hot rocks and wet seaweed.

  The sky darkened so they knew the sun had gone down, but clouds blocked the stars, and a mist crept in from the ocean. Don Adriano banked the fire and got it blazing. Katharina stared into the flames like one in a trance. She kept picturing Dr. Mahmoud as she had last seen him: being swept over the side of the ship, his turban flying off, a look of terror on his face. She thought of their weeks traveling together, his gentle patience, and the things he had taught her. She had hoped, back then, that she could persuade him to stay in Jerusalem with her instead of going on to Cairo, for the Arab doctor had been the closest to a blood relative she had ever known. She was also overwhelmed with grief for the death of her mother, and it surprised her for she had thought she was over it. But new death, it seemed, renewed old grief, so that Katharina, weeping into her hands, was mourning not only for Dr. Mahmoud, but for her mother, her birth-mother, the crew, and the captain of the Portuguese ship.