by Barbara Wood
But these strange new emotions startled her, for she had not experienced such passion for Hans Roth. It seemed incomprehensible to her now, as she caught on fire with Adriano’s every glance and sound of his voice, that she had once thought romantic love a myth. Her desire for Adriano was greater than any hunger or thirst she had ever known; it was a yearning of the spirit that occupied her mind night and day. Therefore did Katharina’s love need an outlet, and she found it in the making of a new cloak for him. Having secretly bartered in the marketplace of Ankara for a new white mantle and some silk thread and needles, she worked on her labor of love at each day’s rest, when Adriano went out with the men to hunt or gather wood for the fires. She knew he bore a pain deep within him, deeper than the scars on his poor tortured body, a pain she had first glimpsed in the deep lines that etched his face, and had heard in his voice when, on that deserted island, he had spoken of a woman he had once loved. While Katharina knew she could never hope to be balm to that deep pain, it was her prayer that the new cloak would help restore some measure of his dignity.
Adriano also occupied her thoughts because of something that puzzled her, a puzzle that deepened with each passing day. He had told her that he had taken vows of celibacy and austerity when he had joined the brotherhood, and that these vows had been taken as penance for having killed a man. But now that they were spending nights and days in close company, sharing food and shelter, pretending to be father and mother to the delightful little Bulbul, Katharina was becoming aware of the true breadth and depth of those vows. Days and nights on a Portuguese ship, and a few days stranded on an island had not been enough for her to truly observe the man. But out here on the boundless desert beneath a sky that stretched into eternity, Katharina watched Adriano with a clarity that was as clear as glass. And it seemed to her that his vow of abstinence and austerity went beyond reasonable bounds, for he not only denied himself meat and wine, but food in adequate supply. He seemed almost to starve himself and to need to punish his body, pushing himself beyond daily endurance, continuing to work and hunt and chop wood long after the other men had retired to their campfires. The crime he had committed (and she was not certain it was a crime, for was not fighting for a woman he loved fighting for his rights?) had taken place over twenty years ago. Had he not paid penance enough? Or—and this suspicion grew with each mile that fell behind them as the caravan pushed eastward—was there more to his story than he had revealed?
She realized that her obsession with him was overshadowing the central purpose of her life: to find her father. And so she had to rely more and more upon the portrait of St. Amelia to remind her of that purpose. Like a suppliant in church with a genuine desire to offer prayers but whose wayward mind was straying beyond the stained-glass windows to the fields of daisies beyond, Katharina needed more and more to draw upon will power to keep her heart to its course. Night after night, in what had become a ritual, she brought the little painting to light and gazed at the blue crystal as she silently recited the litany, This is where my destiny lies.
As soon as Bulbul was restored to his mother’s people, Katharina was going to turn around and head back to Jerusalem, to search for the blue crystal, to find her father.
And Adriano must follow wherever his stars led.
The caravan was a dynamic and ever-changing creature, with people leaving and joining, whole clans or lone riders, causing the train to shrink and expand snakelike as it slithered through desert, grassland, hill country. Feeling safe now in their false personas, and being so far east from Constantinople and the danger of being found out, Katharina and Adriano made friends with newcomers, sharing their fire and their food, and then bade farewell to them along the way and welcomed the company of new acquaintances.
The matter of language started to become a problem as they moved eastward, for they encountered new dialects and mutations of tongues they had thought they were familiar with. Arabic became increasingly difficult for Katharina, and Adriano’s Greek became less and less helpful. Although Latin had been carried east for over a thousand years, Katharina and Adriano found it harder and harder to understand as the ancient language had mutated and adapted to local regions. But they understood each other; their private communication began less to rely upon words as upon gestures, facial expressions, and silences filled with meaningful looks. It was, they were beginning to realize as they spent day and night in each other’s company, all they needed.
In northern Persia, the caravan stopped in a small valley between two rugged ranges, and here they found a most remarkable stream: no vegetation grew along its banks, all around was rocky and barren, but the water ran warm, and to everyone’s amazement, it ran bright green. This was a result of mineral deposits at its source, the caravan leader explained. These gave the water its remarkable emerald tint. But it was drinkable and even, some claimed, healthful. And so they camped beside the emerald spring, a thousand tents and a hundred campfires in the moonlight.
Katherina welcomed the opportunity to give her hair a good washing at last. Although she had, over the weeks, occasionally washed it, the water had been in short supply. To keep her hair clean she had used a trick learned from local Bedouins whose women rubbed a mixture of ash and soda into their hair and then spent hours combing it through. In this way had the dark dye, applied back in Venice to make her look like an Arab youth, begun to fade to a dun brown, with her newly grown roots giving her a blond “cap.” But now she used proper soap and lathered and scrubbed and massaged and rinsed, and did it all over again. And when she was done, and drying her hair in the breeze so that it billowed like a golden mane, the effect was such that nearly everyone in the encampment was brought to a halt to stare.
Adriano most of all.
That night, beneath an effulgent moon, Katharina gave Adriano the new cloak she had embroidered and he was moved beyond words. He had his emblem back, the dark blue, eight-pointed cross of his brotherhood that gave meaning to his life. Once again he would wear his dignity as if it were a garment, and proclaim to the world his dedication to the Blessed Virgin.
And finally here, beneath the stars, Adriano told Katharina his whole story.
She already knew that over twenty years ago, back in Aragon, he had been passionately in love with a girl named Maria, that he had assumed they would marry, and that she had then confessed she was in love with another. Adriano had flown into a rage and challenged the other man. They fought. Adriano slew him and Maria withdrew in grief into a cloistered convent where he supposed she still lived to this day. That was what Katharina knew of his story. But this night, with the moon large and fat and majestic in the night sky, and the emerald stream gurgling softly in its stony bed, Adriano confessed the pain that filled him every day of his life.
“I knew,” he said softly, gathering his knight’s cloak about him, “I knew in my heart of hearts that Maria did not love me. It was pride and arrogance that blinded me to this fact. I believed I could make her love me in time. But the other man…if it had been any other man, I might have let it go. I might have turned a blind eye and waited for Maria to come to me. But the other man was my brother, and this I could not bear.”
He turned anguished eyes to Katharina. “Yes, the man I killed was my brother. I slew him out of blind jealousy. He was innocent of any crime or wrongdoing against me. I have no right to happiness, Katharina. I have no right to love you or to be loved by you.”
He broke down in bitter sobbing and she put her arms around him. He buried his face in her clean, golden hair and felt her warm young body against his, her lips on his cheeks and neck, her tears mingling with his, until finally his mouth found hers, and they both lay beneath the knight’s cloak with its blue cross, and found solace in love at last.
Later, when they woke, Adriano rose and took Katharina by the hand to the bank of the emerald stream. Here he thrust his sword into the ground, the handsome gold-hilted weapon Asmahan had given to him for the protection of her son. There he and Katharina knelt, as
if kneeling before a cross, and taking her hand in his, said, “Though we are far from priests and churches, we are visible to God, the Blessed Mother, and all the saints. It is before these exhaled witnesses, my beloved Katharina, that I declare you to be my wife, and I your husband, and I pledge my soul and body to you, my love and my devotion, for the rest of my life, and after we are dead and united in Heaven.”
Katharina pledged the same oath, and knew that no matter what lay in their future, she and Adriano would be bound together always.
They spent a week of love, as husband and wife, both wondering what they had done to deserve such happiness, each promising to God to do good works and favors in payment for this joy, until one dawn, they crept from their tent to go to the river to bathe. Adriano wrapped his knight’s cloak about himself, Katharina joined the other women and children at another part of the river, playing with Bulbul in the water and telling him, as she did everyday, that he was soon going to be with his grandfather and all his cousins. When he asked, as he always did, if his mama was going to be there, Katharina answered, “I do not know, perhaps,” which at least was somewhat truthful, adding, “But she wants you to be with your grandfather, who will teach you to ride a horse.” For the first time, however, she regretted having to give the boy to his family, for in the weeks since leaving Constantinople she had grown to love him.
She was wrapping him in a towel when she heard the first scream. Turning, she saw men on horseback, wielding massive swords, galloping through the encampment.
Katharina picked up the child and ran. She reached the part of the river where the men of the caravan had been bathing and she saw that they had already been taken by surprise. In the confusion she saw Adriano, distinguished by his cloak of knighthood, blazing white in the morning sun, and she called to him just as a sword was thrust into his back, directly in the center of the blue eight-pointed cross. She looked in horror as he flung his arms wide and then dropped to his knees, and then fell onto his face, a ribbon of blood flowing from his back. She saw the sword raised high and come down on his neck. She turned and shielded Bulbul’s eyes as she heard the sickening sound of a head being severed from its body.
Katharina turned and ran, but she was caught by raiders. The boy was snatched from her arms. She watched in horror as little Bulbul flew up into the air as if he were a weightless bird, and then land headfirst on a boulder, his child’s skull splitting open like a melon.
And then a sharp pain filled her own head, and blackness enfolded her like a sudden night.
When Katharina regained consciousness, she found herself in a compound with other females, some of them weeping, some angry, a few dejected and desolate. She didn’t remember anything. Her head hurt and she was nauseated.
Where was she? She rubbed her eyes and looked around. From what she could see, she and the others were in a makeshift pen with walls made of goat hides. There was no shelter beneath the punishing sun, except for a leafless tree that spread dry, brittle branches. Beyond the goatskin walls there appeared to be crude tents, and the smoke of campfires. She could hear shouts and arguments and the galloping of horses.
When her head began to clear and the nausea subsided, but all of her memory not yet returned, she saw men come into the compound and begin roughly to inspect the girls, stripping them and examining them. As they appeared to have no interest in using the women sexually, it occurred to Katharina that they must be slavers.
The Greek caravel! The sultan’s palace! Not again.
Katharina backed away until she stumbled and fell against the trunk of the old dead tree. Putting her hand to her chest, she felt something beneath her dress. She pulled it out and was surprised to find a small leather pouch on a thong. It was vaguely familiar and she suspected it must be important, so she hastily removed it from her neck and tucked the pouch into a knothole in the tree trunk, making sure she had not been seen.
By then the men had reached her, and began remarking excitedly about her hair. Although she could not understand their language, some gestures were universal, and she knew she had some value to them. They stripped her and looked her over, and finally, when they were done with all the captive women, gathered up all garments and possessions and distributed rough robes of cheap wool. When the captives were left alone, and the sun began to set, and the other women sat in groups to wail or weep, Katharina crept back to the tree and secretly removed the hidden pouch, restoring it to its safe place around her neck.
It was during the night that it all came back to her, for she dreamed of Adriano and Bulbul, and she woke screaming, and when full realization of what had happened, and her new situation, hit her with brutal force, she began to weep so bitterly and inconsolably that the others left her alone.
Katharina lived in a daze after that, ignoring the advances of the other women, unresponsive to questions, drinking water only when it was put to her lips, but refusing food as she sat and stared at the distant horizon.
Adriano, lying dead with a sword between his shoulder blades.
Bulbul, his brains splattered on a boulder.
Yet she was alive, and once again a slave.
When one of the tribal women came to wash Katharina’s hair, she neither questioned it nor protested. The woman’s job was vigorous and thorough, and when it was dry she combed the golden tresses through and brought others into the pen to look upon and remark at the beautiful sun-colored curls.
The next day the woman returned with soap and a sharp knife, and this time she carefully shaved Katharina’s head, collecting the hair in a basket. Once again Katharina did not protest, but stared out at the desert that stretched away into infinity.
But a week later Katharina saw a woman, who, judging by the many coins she wore, was the chief’s head wife, proudly modeling a crudely made blond wig. In her numb state, Katharina vaguely wondered why these women would bother with wigs when they kept their heads covered. And then that night she heard moans of sexual ecstasy coming from the chief’s tent, and she remembered with a pain how Adriano had loved to run his hands through her hair.
The next morning a man strode into the pen, furious. He grabbed Katharina’s head and examined it as if it were a melon. Then he began shouting at the woman who had shaved her. Not understanding their language, Katharina could not guess what the argument was about, but the word “Zhandu” kept coming up, and the man gestured angrily over and over toward the east.
She learned from her fellow captives that these people were the Kosh, famous slave traders of the region, a proud, arrogant people who believed they were the first to be created by the gods and that all other races were afterthoughts and therefore created to serve the Kosh. A warrior-nomad society that didn’t mingle with other races because they were believed to be inferior, the Kosh had round flat faces and slanting eyes, and the reddest hair Katharina had ever seen. They rode fierce horses that had woolly hides and shaggy manes.
When the camp broke up and they began an eastward trek, Katharina once again did not protest nor question her fate. But as they covered many miles, stopping briefly at settlements to sell their human goods, with herself always being kept apart, she began to realize the Kosh were keeping her while her hair grew out, and that they were taking her to a place called Zhandu.
As she walked alongside their horses and double-humped camels, Katharina was oblivious to the burning sands beneath her bare feet, to the weariness in her bones, the hunger in her stomach. She thought only of Adriano: where was his soul? Had it flown back to Spain and was now in his beloved Aragon? Or had it gone to Jerusalem and was now one of the shadows in a small church dedicated to the Blessed Mother? Or did it hover over the heads of his comrades in the brotherhood on Crete, silently urging them on in their fight against the infidels? At times, late at night when the wind blew mournfully and Katharina looked up at the stars, she almost felt Adriano at her side, a consoling phantom longing to take her into corporeal arms.
And then one night a man came to look her over and h
e haggled in a most animated fashion with the woman who had become her caretaker. Katharina had heard enough Kosh to grasp some rudimentary words, and realized that the woman was asking an exorbitantly high price for her. When the man demanded to know why, the woman poked Katharina’s rounded belly and said, “There is a child there.”
And Katharina was instantly brought out of her numb state.
She looked down in wonder and realized that what the woman had said was true, for in her trance she had not realized that her monthly trouble had not visited her, nor had she noticed that though she ate little, her stomach grew.
Adriano’s child.
At last she was able to bring Friar Pastorius’s leather pouch from beneath her grimy robe and look at its contents, and when she saw the little cameo of Badendorf and the miniature of St. Amelia with the blue crystal, she wept anew. But mixed in with her grief was the spark of new hope—a part of Adriano still lived.
Eastward moved the massive caravan of the Kosh, pausing only long enough to sell slaves and pick up supplies, continuing deeper into unknown regions and farther from the world Katharina knew. Although her captors fed her, it was only barely enough to keep her alive, and now Katharina wanted very much to live. So she took to fighting for extra scraps of food, and stealing from others, in order to feed the new life that was growing within her. Katharina thought the Kosh a godless, savage race, brutal beyond comprehension. When a criminal was decapitated, the tribe played polo with his head. Weddings were primitive: the prospective bride jumped on a horse and galloped away with suitors in pursuit. The man who caught her and wrestled her to the ground became her husband. The Kosh worked their slaves to death and left the bodies behind, unburied. Yet they laughed and danced and sang a lot, drinking a brew so potent that just being near the fumes made Katharina dizzy.