The Blessing Stone

by Barbara Wood

  Over the next few days, more bodies of the crew washed ashore, and as the stranded pair gave them Christian burials, Adriano withdrew into deeper silence, and Katharina’s grief and despair grew. Finally, one morning she came across the pale corpse of one of the boys who had played pipes and drum on the ship, and she knew she could not go on. Believing that her survival had been an accident, that she belonged in the watery deep with Dr. Mahmoud, she waded out into the surf, intent upon drowning herself in the waves.

  But Adriano ran after her and, following a brief struggle in the water, managed to bring her back and deposit her on the sand. There he took her by the shoulders and said with passion, “We do not know God’s purpose. We cannot begin to guess at His design. We must only do His bidding. He spared us, señorita, for what reason I do not know. But to give in to despair is to defy God’s will. For His sake, you must stay alive.” They were the most words he had spoken in days, and the mere speaking of them seemed to revive his strength.

  Katharina cried for a long time afterward, and although she still felt she should have died with Dr. Mahmoud, she made no more attempts to drown herself. She ate little and drank a little, and wandered the small shore with her eyes set to the far horizon, deciding that she and Adriano were probably as good as dead anyway.

  They slept together for warmth and finally the morning came when Katharina awoke to feel the knight’s arms around her, his solid body against hers, the firm beat of his heart beneath her head as it lay upon his chest. Lifting herself up, she studied his face in the pale dawn, noticing how sand and salt crystals clung to his thick brown eyelashes and brows and closely cropped beard. What troubled dreams, she wondered, made his eyes roll beneath their lids? What passions drove him to stay alive, and drove him to keep her alive as well, because she knew that without Adriano she would surely have killed herself. Then she remembered waking during the night screaming, and Adriano there to hold her and comfort her. What had made her scream? Dreams of drowning.

  For the first time in days, dawn brought sunlight, for the clouds were dispersing and the ocean even sparkled in places. While Adriano managed to spear some fish in nearby shallows, Katharina scavenged the shore and found yet another cask of ship’s water. She wondered how long they could survive on an island where not even a single tree grew. They had seafood but nothing else. No birds came here to roost. No vegetation struggled among the rocky fissures. And then it crossed her mind to wonder if it was proper for a man and woman to live together and not be married. Did the church take shipwrecked people into consideration when it catalogued sins?

  When another sunset seemed to mock them in their stranded state, for it was apparent the storm had knocked their ship far off course and out of the sight of other passing vessels, Adriano found voice and words. “Why do you go to Jerusalem?” he asked as he stoked the fire.

  As Katharina braided her long hair that, to her surprise, was still brown as the dye had not been washed out by the sea water, she told him her story, ending with: “So I go to search for my father.”

  “A man who abandoned you?”

  “I am sure he did not intend to. He meant to come back for me.”

  “But this young man you mentioned, Hans Roth. You could have married him, lived very comfortably. You would risk losing all that?”

  She looked at him with steady eyes. “My father might be hurt, or in the hands of cruel men. It is my duty to find him.”

  This gave him something to think about. If truth be told, Don Adriano felt bitterly toward women. He had only ever loved one woman in his life and when she had betrayed him with another man, he had sworn he would never love another as he had loved her, nor would he ever again trust a woman. Once he had entered the Brotherhood of Mary and taken a vow of celibacy, he had put women from his mind.

  Katharina pointed to the blue cross embroidered on the breast of his white doublet and said, “Are you a priest?”

  He gave her a startled look, and then his face softened into a smile. “No, señorita, I am not. Just a servant of the Lord.” He fell silent and stared morosely into the flames. Presently he said, “I killed a man who was not my enemy, and I ruined a woman’s life. For a day and a night I lay prone before an altar, asking the Blessed Mother for a sign. She came to me in a vision and spoke of a brotherhood dedicated to restoring her throne in the Holy Land. I sought them out and joined their membership. That was twenty years ago, and I serve both the brotherhood and the Blessed Mother still.”

  He brought his soulful gaze back to Katharina. “Who is the old man you call Mahmoud?”

  “When I was orphaned he became my guardian.”

  “A heathen?”

  “He believes in God, and he prays. Even more frequently than we do. Dr. Mahmoud is a good man.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Was,” she corrected softly.

  Don Adriano had his own opinions of good men and godless men, but he kept them to himself. What an innocent this child was, to be out in the world on her own with no protection other than a frail old heathen. Don Adriano felt a rare emotion stir his heart, one he had not felt in a long time, not since a woman named Maria had destroyed his life and made him vow never to love again.

  And then he quickly remembered himself, and turned away. Thoughts of women had no place in the mind of a man on a religious crusade.

  As Katharina watched sparks rise up to the indifferent stars, memories drifted up in her mind: her mother telling her the stories of Rapunzel and Little Red Cap. The two of them going for walks in the snow. The night Isabella had hurried home from delivering embroidery to a patron, bearing strudel still warm from the oven, and the delicious feast they had shared that night. Sleeping together on cold nights, Katharina watching the snow fall beyond the window, and feeling safe and loved. She poked the embers and said quietly, “My mother could have taken the gold coins and left me at the inn and maybe found a rich husband with those gold coins. But she didn’t. She kept me and raised me and loved me. She went hungry while we had gold coins hidden in our room. She sacrificed and went without and kept them safe for me, but now I have lost them, in that ocean. I have let her down.”

  Adriano nodded gravely. “Mother is the first to love us, and the first whom we love. Father always comes later.” His set his eyes to the horizon. “I serve God, but it is the Blessed Mother whom I love, and to whom I have dedicated my life and my soul.” He brought his eyes back to Katharina. “I feel as you do, that I have let my mother down. But we shall leave this island, señorita. We shall not be left here to die.”

  Katharina looked at the barren rocks behind them, craggy and dark and forbidding, and she thought, Nothing grows here, nothing survives here, how can we? Then she looked at Adriano and marveled at this man who had the faith of apostles.

  Adriano kept watch while the girl slept, his eyes fixed to the black sea, watching for the dangers that he knew lurked out there. He did not tell her that although they had survived the shipwreck, there was more for them to fear, for the threat of being found by Barbary corsairs or an Ottoman naval vessel were all too real. And the likely fates for either of them—a helpless girl and a Christian knight—were grim. Nonetheless he prayed and drew hope from thoughts of God that a Venetian ship would be the first to come along.

  Their rescuers turned out to be neither pirates nor Turks but scavengers aboard a Greek caravel, one of the many independent opportunistic mercenary ships that scoured the Mediterranean for anything that could be traded for a profit. In this case the captain was a man who sold slaves to the sultan’s court. He saw value in keeping the girl a virgin and so threatened to kill any of his crew who touched her, and likewise in keeping the knight in sound condition, for he knew that the Turks reserved a special torture-death for Christian knights.

  And so instead of continuing eastward toward Jerusalem and the blue crystal of St. Amelia, Katharina found her course suddenly changed as the caravel pointed north and sailed for Constantinople, center of the Ottoman Empire.

  Where are you
taking us? Please, I have to go to Jerusalem. If it is money you want, my father—”

  Katharina’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Shackled and ignored, she sat huddled in dark bewilderment and misery, praying that Adriano was safe, and that this nightmare would soon end.

  The Greek caravel had stopped at the nameless island in hopes of finding freshwater. Now, chained in the hold and facing an unknown fate, Katharina didn’t know whether to thank God for their good fortune or curse their bad luck. After all, they were no longer stranded, but now they were on a slave ship. If the Greek caravel had never happened by, she and Adriano might never have been found and would have lived on that barren outcropping until they died.

  By the time the caravel docked at Constantinople, its hold was filled with human goods ranging from children to elderly people, of all nationalities and tongues, for it had stopped along the way to raid, kidnap, steal, and buy slaves for the sultan. During the voyage, Katharina had been kept below like the others, crammed into a lightless, foul-smelling space with little water and food, no communication with the outside world, violently seasick, and certain she was about to die. She did not see Adriano until they were dragged out into the sunlight of the busy harbor. With the light stabbing her eyes, she saw him shackled to a row of wretched looking men, Adriano standing out because of his height and bearing. He was half-naked and looked abused, but still he held his head high, and she saw him bend to help a fellow captive who had stumbled. Katharina tried to signal to him, but whips drove them in separate directions until Katharina saw him disappear into a noisy, colorful throng.

  The sunlight and fresh air did little to revive her. Her dyed hair matted and crawling with vermin, her galabeya stained with vomit, she stumbled barefoot over searing cobblestones along with her weeping and wailing companions. The trek was not far to the imperial gate, an imposing white marble arch open to all and standing three hundred feet from the hippodrome and the basilica of Hagia Sophia, which had been converted into a mosque. Strung across the front of the gate were the rotting heads of criminals as a warning to the population. Through this massive entrance streamed people of all kinds, from high-ranking dignitaries to the lowest of classes—Muslims and Christians, citizens and foreigners—all watched over by fierce guards armed with scimitars, spears, and arrows.

  Driven by overseers with whips, the weeping girls and women were crowded into a smaller courtyard guarded by large black men with pikestaffs, and there the captives were stripped and left to shiver naked beneath the sky. Katharina wanted to cry out in protest. They had taken Friar Pastorius’s leather pouch that contained the miniature of St. Amelia and the oval ceramic of Badendorf. It had been her little piece of Germany, a bit of pottery made from German soil, fashioned by German hands, and painted with German love. Wherever her body might be, that was where her heart was. But now it had been taken from her, along with the painting that would identify her to her father. How was she to get them back?

  A formidable looking woman appeared, tottering on very high platform shoes and wearing a conical headdress that made her look even taller. She stopped before each captive female and said, “Believer or nonbeliever?” To the muttered replies she then performed a cursory visual examination and sorted the poor woman or girl out with a single word: “kitchens,” “laundry,” “barracks,” or “slave market.” By the time the woman reached her, Katharina had deduced that those who claimed to be believers were given jobs in the palace whereas nonbelievers were sent to the slave market or, possibly worse, to the nearby guards barracks to serve as pleasure-girls.

  Before the woman could even pose her question, Katharina blurted, “La illaha illa Allah!”, which meant, “There is no God but God,” the essential Muslim prayer she had learned from Dr. Mahmoud.

  The woman’s eyebrows rose. “You are Muslim?”

  Katharina bit her lip. Dr. Mahmoud had taught her enough of Islam and the Koran that she knew she could pass for one of this woman’s faith. But then she thought of Adriano and his devotion to the Virgin and his vow to assist Christian travelers, and knowing that he would be tortured for his faith, that he would never pretend to be other than a follower of Christ, she bent her head and murmured, “No, Lady, I am a Christian. But I can read and write,” she added quickly, hoping this would spare her from the fates of the other women, for she suspected that life in the palace kitchens and laundry was hard and short.

  The woman took a moment longer with Katharina than she had with the others, inspecting her hands and teeth, and inquiring about her bloodline, to which Katharina replied that she was of noble lineage. Finally the woman signaled to an assistant who led Katharina away through a doorway that, to Katharina’s surprise, opened onto steaming baths where women and girls were socializing in various forms of undress. Here she was scrubbed and checked for lice, the attendant grumbling that it was well known that Christians did not wash with great frequency. And then to her further shock was forced to suffer complete removal of all her body hair, which she later learned was required of all Muslim men and women, according to Koranic injunction.

  She was given fresh clothes—a curious costume of long robes, trousers, and a veil to cover her face—and after brief questioning and a demonstration of her skill with a needle, Katharina was assigned to the entourage of the Mistress of the Costume. She soon discovered that this position, lowly and menial though it was, allowed her to travel all over the women’s side of the palace with a group of seamstresses, each of whom had a specialized job. Katharina was told that if she did well, she might someday be elevated to the position of Keeper of the Thread, whose sole job was to organize and keep track of embroidery thread, with herself having assistants. Although this piece of information was clearly meant to be good news and to help cheer her up, to Katharina it was a prison sentence, for it meant she was going to spend the rest of her life in this place.

  Thus did she begin her new life in the great sultan’s palace in Constantinople. No one cared that she was a German citizen searching for her father, that she was a freeborn woman with rights, that she might even be of noble blood. In fact, no one cared anything about her at all, not even her name, for the sultan’s palace was populated with thousands of slaves and servants who had all come as captives at one time or another. They lived out their lives within these high walls with an air of resignation, and many even turned the situation to their advantage, rising high in their own ranks, gaining wealth and political status.

  A complex of pavilions set in green surroundings and encircled by high walls, the seraglio stood on a hill overlooking the forum of Theodosius and the sultan’s fabulous stables that housed four thousand horses. Within this isolated, exotic world Katharina tasted rice for the first time and learned to drink coffee morning, noon, and night. She also learned to fall to her knees five times a day for the call to prayer, and each time her heart wept with the memory of Dr. Mahmoud who had prayed this same way in their garden in Badendorf, during their journey along the Amber Route, and on the deck of the ill-fated Portuguese ship. In her prayers she also remembered Adriano, whom she desperately hoped was still alive and somewhere nearby, and her father, renewing her determination to go to Jerusalem and find him.

  The women who lived in the imperial harem were divided into two classes: the concubines and those who served them. The concubines were women who, having met strict criteria of beauty, poise, and charm, had been set aside as sexual partners for the sultan. The servants, who ranged from hard laborers to those with skill and education, saw to the myriad needs of the concubines. Katharina was put to work adding flourishes and embellishments to fabrics and textiles that were already rich and sumptuous beyond imagining. But at least she was not put to work in the kitchens, or under the baths where they kept the water hot (in other societies, this work would be done by men, but no men were allowed within the walls of the seraglio).

  Katharina knew that another world—the real world of commerce, science, and men—existed in another part of the palace. There was a
secret room at the top of the Imperial Gate for the sultan’s ladies to watch parades unseen, and from there Katharina saw the endless processions of foreign dignitaries, visitors, ambassadors, heads of state, scientists, and artists. This was an age of exploration and discovery, and as the sultan considered himself to be an enlightened ruler, he welcomed the world to his doorstep. Beneath the marble arch strode conquering Spaniards with their Indians from the New World, making gifts of Aztecs and Incas to the sultan. Emissaries from the court of Henry VIII brought books on astronomy and musical works composed by the king himself. And from Italy came artists with new ideas for painting and sculpture. When she saw these Europeans on their horses below, Katharina wanted to shout to them, “Here I am! Please take me away!” But though that real world lay beyond only a few high walls, it might as well exist among the stars for as accessible as it was to the women in the Imperial Harem.

  Although at times Katharina thought she would go insane in this gilded cage, and although she often wept into her pillow late at night, she kept her silence and blended into the routine of this world of unreality, following the seamstresses, doing her fine sewing, watching and listening as she counted the days and waited for an opportunity to escape. She discreetly enquired about a man who had been taken prisoner with her and brought to Constantinople by the same slave traders. A Christian Spaniard knight, she said. She asked, too, about possessions that were taken from captives, for there was something special that had belonged to her that she desperately needed to get back. But her questions were met by indifference and blank stares.

  So she would have to find them on her own: Adriano, and the miniature of St. Amelia.