“Speak,” I encouraged him. “I do not think that we need hide anything further from each other.”
He smiled and nudged my shoulder with his, then grew serious and said, “Mine is a life of journeys, while hers is a sedentary one, at home. She has a strong and lively soul, and the obligation to keep quiet and do nothing arouses in her an anger that is unbecoming of a Christian woman. But I love that anger. It sharpens her tongue, which is keen as it is, and though I have known more than a few women besides her, I always return to her bed like a sailor thrown to shore, and she knows it.”
I was quiet, but not because I had nothing to say. I tried to organize my thoughts into words in a way that he could understand. More than anything, at that moment, I felt a kind of solidarity with the Lady Alice, stuck there in the Middle Ages instead of conquering the world. Jean interpreted my silence as discontent.
“I apologize, my lady,” he said quietly. “It is not right to let you into our business. You make me feel that I can say anything to you, like a confessor, but of course, that is not the case.”
“Do not apologize, Jean,” I said, courageously calling him by his first name for the first time, with noseigneuror any other formal address. “You do not cause me any discontent. Just gratitude for the fact that you trust me and reveal what is in your heart.”
He looked at me, trying to understand if I was sincere or just saying things to please him. Evidently, my expression persuaded him that I was speaking honestly, because he pulled me to him and hugged me. “To hell with everyone,” he whispered, demonstratively ignoring any gawking wemight draw from the people on board. I hugged him back and closed my eyes.
De Périgord’s little ship had a designated spot at the anchorage of the Pilgrim Castle. We disembarked to the platform via wooden stairs that were brought for us, and de Périgord took leave of us while hurling orders in every direction. Jean led me into the yard of the fortress and immediately went to look for a horse that would take us to the spring.
“We can go on foot,” I told him. We had been just two or three hours at sea, but my legs longed for solid ground. Jean looked up at the sky. By the angle of the sun, we had another two to three hours of light.
“It would be better if we took a horse,” he said curtly. I nodded. He left me to wait with Brunette in the bustling castle yard and went to the stables.
I began to scratch my eye. Something was really irritating it. No matter how much I blinked and teared up, the itching did not stop. I rubbed and rubbed, and suddenly I felt my contact lens fall out. “Shit,” I said aloud to Brunette. She looked at me with concern. I looked around with one eye closed. Nobody was paying any particular attention to me, but the yard was full of people. I did not dare try to put a new contact lens in and instead narrowed my good eye in the direction of the stables. Jean was nowhere to be seen. At least the itching stopped.
“Lady Édith of Cilicia,” said an oily voice, and I looked up and met the moist gaze of Gautier de Brienne. Brunette let out a low growl.
“Seigneur de Brienne,” I said and stood, patting Brunette on the head. He gave a little bow, and I returned the gesture. I opened the other eye, too, so as not to appear crazy, and it was strange to see the world half blurry and half in focus.
“Still in our environs, my lady? And where is that mannerless cousin of yours?” asked de Brienne, emitting that sour-milk smell of his in my direction. He must not have bathed in weeks.
“Not for long, sir,” I answered respectfully. “Seigneur Jean is looking for a horse for me so I might continue on my way.”
“Well, it seems that there is no better time for you to pray to Saint Euphemia for a successful journey,” said de Brienne in his slippery way as he clasped my hand.What’s his deal with this saint?
I released my hand vigorously and wondered for a moment what was preferable, to answer sharply that my prayers were my own private affair or to respond humbly that I was awaiting my cousin’s direction. The timely appearance of Jean, holding the reins of two horses trotting after him obediently, solved my dilemma.
“De Brienne,” Jean sighed.
“Young Ibelin,” de Brienne replied. “Was the king’s mission crowned with success?” It was evident to me that he was bitter that he had not been asked to join.
Jean gave him a stern look. “The business and journeys of the king are his concern, and I will not speak of them in his absence.” He did not break eye contact with de Brienne, who eventually shifted his gaze over to the great church. Its stone dome was glowing pink in the dimming light.
“How can it be that your cousin appears again and again at the Pilgrim Castle without paying her respects to our martyred saint?” de Brienne resumed his pestering. “Is she a pilgrim or an apostate in disguise?” Jean looked at me, rolled his eyes and shook his head slowly, then said, as if reconciling himself to his fate, “My cousin asked me to escort her into the Pilgrim Church myself. She is a delicate creature and fearful of strangers and large crowds.” De Brienne removed his crimson velvet beret with its peacock feather and cleared the way with an exaggerated gesture. Jean led me into the church and tied the horses to rings installed in the outer wall. Brunette accepted her task of waiting for us there and lay down beside the horses.
“Another delay,” I muttered reluctantly, but I still relished, even if I was not proud of it, his calling me a “delicate creature.”
The church was large, gloomy, and awe-inspiring. The sunlight that penetrated through the enormous round framed stained glass burned thedark stone floor with panes of color. Many worshippers were bowed in the prayer seats, and others were walking around. Although the big iron doors of the church were open wide, it somehow felt both suffocating and cold inside. I tried to keep both eyes open and saw everything half blurry and half focused, and something inside my head began spinning.
Jean led me inside the length of the corridor until we stood at the edge of a group of people, awaiting their turn to pray before the remains of Euphemia. I did not know what to expect—a desiccated leg? An urn of ashes? A cloth bag supposedly containing her bones?
“Who is this Euphemia anyway?” I whispered to Jean under the auspices of muttering prayers. Jean couldn’t help but smile.
“Euphemia was a young virgin in the earliest days of Christianity, the daughter of a senator at Chalcedon,” Jean began, and again I envisioned him telling stories to one of his children. This time, I could really visualize the big wood stove in the solarium of the house of Rohard in Acre, and Jean sitting with little Balian. “What is Chalcedon?” I whispered. “By Byzantium,” Jean replied and moved up in the line. “Euphemia devoted herself to Christianity and was unwilling to make a sacrifice to Ares, the god of war.” I nodded knowingly. Jean smiled a small smile. “The Roman authorities put her through unthinkable torture, but she did not give up her faith. Finally, they threw her into the arena of beasts of prey. A wild bear attacked her and mortally wounded her. When the lions approached her body lying on the ground, the crowd roared, expecting the lions to tear her to pieces, but they did not. They approached her and began to gently lick her wounds, until she almost appeared a girl who had fallen asleep on a spring day, in a meadow.” The line continued to progress. From behind the backs of several of those waiting, I saw a woman kneeling and sobbing in front of what appeared to be a rather disturbing statue of a wide-eyed woman with a mane of brown hair.
“The saint’s remains were painstakingly preserved for hundreds of years in her church in Chalcedon,” Jean resumed telling. “But a fewdecades ago, in a most strange and unusual coincidence, her head disappeared from among her remains. A priest who opened her coffin in order to replace the fragrant herbs discovered this and was horrified.” The sobbing lady crossed herself and vacated her spot.
“When His Holiness the Bishop of Acre, Jacques de Vitry, helped establish the Pilgrim Castle some twenty years ago, he prayed one day beside the spring in Le Destroit,” Jean went on. I perked up. “Suddenly, before his eyes, out of the water appeared the head of a woman with wild, vivid hair, and eyes deeper than the sea. His Holiness held the cross over his heart, thinking that it was some kind of demon, but the head began to speak to him. The head told him that it had wandered the length of the sea from Byzantium to the Pilgrim Castle in the Holy Kingdom in order to unite East and West, between the Greek and the Latin Church, and to put an end to the age-old rivalry within the Christian world. When the church of the Pilgrim Castle was built, a magnificent sculpture was constructed in honor of the saint, in which they buried the head from the spring and thus preserved her remains to this day.”
“Pshhh,” I responded with admiration. This was a good story.That devil of a fellow de Vitry, I thought to myself.Interesting if Simone knows this story.Our turn came. Jean knelt down, and I hurried to do as he did. He murmured a prayer, and I murmured Latin-sounding gibberish, both of us with our eyes closed. When he finished praying, he pushed me gently with his elbow. I opened my eyes and looked up at the sculpture as he did. In the stands, a choir of monks sang Gregorian chants. I did not understand what I was seeing and blinked each eye alternately, no longer sure. Before me stood a painted wooden statue of a woman. She looked disturbingly real: a brown-skinned woman, her thick brown hair tucked under a gold-embroidered cap, her gown of royal crimson, sleeves of blinding white. The bright colors were in inverse proportion to the general gloom inside the church. Her hands were folded modestly yet her stance radiated a resolute strength. Her piercing eyes seemed tofollow you, slicing through your soul to its core. I preferred not to imagine what relics were kept inside that unsettling statue, and assumed the opening must be in the back. Jean stood before the statue and crossed himself again; I mimicked him, my eyes locked on the statue’s.
The eyes seemed to meet mine with a vivid gaze, and I grasped Jean’s hand impulsively. They stared at me, wise and wild and strong and knowing everything about me. What I recalled in that moment was Halimi’s mushroom dream of the ancient stone circle and the priestess dancing at its center. I felt like I was on the verge of a stroke.
“Do not remain any longer,” I heard a voice say. The lips of the statue did not move, but its eyes spoke to me. As the Gregorian chanting grew muffled in my ears, a disturbing sound hummed inside my head, and I collapsed into Jean’s arms.
