Well In Time Part 5

"As night fell and the sea still had not parted, a great disgruntlement befell the a.s.sembly. Many of the children, weary as they were from the long and arduous trek, left the company never to return. Many thousands, however, stayed on to return to the sh.o.r.e the next day. And the next. And the next.

"It was into this atmosphere of patient faith and growing dissatisfaction that news of a miracle came, and the troops who remained revived. It seems that two good Christian men of Ma.r.s.eilles, wealthy merchants named Hugh Ferreus and William Porcus, had taken pity on these faithful children and announced that they were willing to supply pa.s.sage for the entire army across the Mediterranean Sea to Palestine!

"In their sympathy for the children and their interest in the defiled Sepulchre, they intended to ask no money of the pa.s.sengers. This deed was, they said, causa Dei, absque pretio, for the cause of G.o.d, and without price.

"As you can imagine, the rejoicing among the ranks was great and Stephen and his lieutenant prophets went about in triumph, proclaiming that this was the miracle that was intended all along and that G.o.d had indeed opened a way through the sea for them.

"Being the stubborn stock that we are, Blanche and G.o.dfrey were among this remaining throng, still holding out for the miracle. So within days they were put aboard a s.h.i.+p in preparation for embarkation.

"Accounts from the time say that there were about seven hundred souls per s.h.i.+p and that ten s.h.i.+ps in all set out for the Holy Land. There was great waving of banners and voices were raised so loudly in singing that they could be heard even after the s.h.i.+ps had disappeared over the horizon.

"This is, I suppose, an exaggeration. But there can be no doubt-the two children and their fellows were on their way across the open sea, embarked on an adventure even greater than the one they imagined.

"The first thing that befell them was a terrible storm on the second day out, which drove two of the s.h.i.+ps onto the rocks of a small island off the coast of Sardinia. Over a thousand children were spilled into the stormy surf and perished before the horrified eyes of children aboard the vessel, which managed to slip by the obstacle unscathed.

"I know this because it is written in a first-person account by Blanche herself, which is still in my possession. In fact, it lies in my safe at this moment. She wrote this statement when she finally returned to France, and she swore an oath before G.o.d as to its veracity when she presented it as testimony to the archbishop in St. Denys in 1215.

"I have here a copy of it in modern French, and I would like to read you a fragment of it, so that you can hear for yourself the earnest voice of this young woman. It will move you greatly, I think, if you remember that at the time she experienced these things, she was only eleven years old. And when she wrote of them, she was but fourteen."

The Count stopped his long narrative for a moment and emerged from the shadows of his chair to rummage for his gla.s.ses on the table beside him. Then he picked up a small volume bound in maroon leather and opening to a spot where an embossed leather marker was inserted, commenced to read.

3.

The Story of Blanche de Muret

We had been two days at sea when a terrible storm came from the north. The waves became like mountains and the s.h.i.+p began to dip and pitch most perilously. Many, myself included, became ill and the s.h.i.+p soon stank of vomit.

All were frightened beyond consolation. Our tears were mixed with our prayers to the Virgin, but Our Lady seemed deaf to our pleas. Night fell and the storm worsened. Lucky were they who, tossed violently in the hold, struck their heads and lay insensible, for they were the only ones to pa.s.s that night unconscious.

As for me, I clung to my brother G.o.dfrey and would not have released him even had the s.h.i.+p overturned and deposited us in the deep sea. I made it my one goal to survive that night with my brother still in my arms and by the Grace of G.o.d, I accomplished it.

Morning came, if such a dark day could be so called, and our situation was not improved. Still, the storm raged and now but two of our nine sister s.h.i.+ps were visible through the ragged mists and flying spray. What became of the other seven I shall never know. G.o.d grant that the souls therein found happier ports than those of the three beating through that morning's storm!

About midday, we sighted land very close off the leeward bow. The storm had only worsened during the morning, and the wind howled so loudly that we could not hear our own prayers as they issued from our lips. G.o.dfrey and I were on deck, as I could no longer bear the stench below and preferred death by drowning to another moment in that infernal region.

I was, therefore, in plain view of our two sister s.h.i.+ps and could see that their situation was perilous. The wind was becoming ever more powerful, and despite the desperate scurrying of their crews about the decks and riggings, I could see that they were set on a collision course with the rocky sh.o.r.es of a small island.

With what terrible fascination did I watch the fates of our comrades played out! What toys in the hands of G.o.d are we all! If ever the vanity of Man claims for itself Supremacy, let this story be read as testimony to the contrary.

All that happened was inevitable, and yet, it happened without hurry, as if all of Time had slowed to show this terrible scene in all its vividness. Slowly but steadily, the two s.h.i.+ps yielded to the thundering winds and gripping tides. At last, with a final hesitation on the very brink of disaster, first one and then the other of the s.h.i.+ps reared on the waves, hovered over the rocks as if suspended on strings, and then crashed down.

Their hulls were broken like eggs against the side of a bowl. Like yolks, out flooded the h.o.a.rded treasure from within, the fourteen hundred souls who, until that moment, had been our comrades in this great adventure.

I watched, helpless and stupefied with horror, as the hulls again and again were dashed upon the rocks, until they broke up completely and sank. For many minutes, the water was filled with the flailing bodies of my friends. And then, as if these two s.h.i.+ps and their pa.s.sengers had never been, the sea became once more a faceless cauldron of boiling waters and all trace of the wrecks was washed away.

I have but one prayer of thanks to offer regarding this incident-that my little brother G.o.dfrey saw nothing of it. He pa.s.sed the entire time with his face buried in my lap, or I doubt not that his little brain of only nine years experience also would have broken like an egg, and he should have been from that time forward a lunatic from having witnessed so great a grief.

It was not until nightfall that the storm began at last to abate. So desperately ill, bruised, hungry, and exhausted were we all that we were beyond thought of giving prayers of thanksgiving for our deliverance from that fearful day. We simply lay down where we were, and as we no longer had to hold onto something in order not to be thrown about, went instantly and soundly asleep, I with G.o.dfrey still wrapped firmly in my arms.

It took several days to recover from the storm. The s.h.i.+p's crew was busy all the day, making necessary repairs to the rigging. Below in the hold, the situation continued desperate. Many of the children had terrible injuries from having been dashed about during the storm. I saw one poor girl with the bone of her forearm sticking through her skin. Some remained sick despite the calming of the seas, and a few, G.o.d rest their souls, had given up their lives during that terrible cataclysm, whether from fear or injury I know not. These we sewed into simple shrouds. The men of G.o.d who accompanied us prayed over them, and they then were committed to the deeps.

Because of these confusions and complications, I do not now remember for how many days we sailed following the storm. It was with surprise then, as much as relief, when I went one day to the deck and spied land ahead. Perhaps I had come to believe that we would journey on that h.e.l.lish vessel for all eternity!

News of landfall spread among our ranks. Then what great rejoicing there was that we had survived our terrible sea voyage and come at last to our sacred goal, the land of the Holy Sepulcher of Our Lord!

How cruelly shortlived was our joy! For no sooner had we docked in this foreign port, which we soon discovered was not in Palestine but in Egypt, than we were herded together like so many sheep and removed from the docks as prisoners!

Many among us were hopeful, a.s.suming the officials had made a mistake that would soon be rectified. But one of the men of G.o.d who accompanied us confided to me that he feared something much worse had befallen us, and in short time he was proven correct.

What our captors now revealed to us was so cruel that it seemed it must break our hearts and kill us all, there in the streets of that strange land. For they could no longer contain their boastful secret but rather jeered at us, making a mockery of our faith. For what do you imagine could be more dispiriting than to learn that our good mentors, Porcus and Ferreus, who had so kindly supplied us with s.h.i.+ps for our pa.s.sage to the Holy Land, had actually sold us into slavery!

Their intentions all along had been to divide the fleet, sending some to Constantinople, some to Alexandria, and some to Morocco. The captains, too, had conspired in this. I was stunned with the coldness and callousness of this plan and of the hearts of these so-called Christian men. May G.o.d have mercy on their souls.

Now our poor band that had suffered so greatly and with such courage had still mightier sufferings to bear. So exhausted were we and so shocked by our fate, that we no longer could weep for ourselves but stood huddled together like miserable sheep awaiting slaughter.

We were not even allowed water to drink much less to bathe in but were hurried straight from the docks through the streets of a stinking city, which I did not learn until later was the ancient port of Alexandria. You might imagine that merely to be on terra firma again would be cause for rejoicing after so terrible a voyage, but this was not so. The enormity of our plight was just beginning to dawn on us, and our hearts were nearly stopped with fear and grief.

So in this sadly degenerate and filthy state, we arrived by winding ways at a square in the heart of the city. All about us were buildings of antique manufacture, such as one sees at home in the south of France where the Romans have been. At one end of the square, a high platform of stone was raised. It, too, was of ancient construction and the priests among us recognized this place all too soon. We had been brought to the ancient slave market, there to be auctioned off like cattle!

Only then did my true terror begin. I had thought that the sea voyage could never be surpa.s.sed but I was mistaken. For now I realized the greatest horror of all: that in all likelihood, I would be parted from my brother, never to see him again. This was a cruelty too heavy to bear. I collapsed in the street insensible.

How long I lay thus, I do not know. When I returned unto myself, however, I knew I had been carried to a different place, for now the high auction platform was to my left, not straight ahead. And what did my miserable eyes fall upon the moment they blinked open upon this cruel world again but my brother, my precious G.o.dfrey, standing upon that block, stripped naked as the day he was born, his head hanging down in misery, humiliation and terror!

I shrieked a sound such as h.e.l.l Itself must make. I lost complete sense of myself as a highborn lady and became in that instant a clawing animal. I had but one thought and that was to reach his side. But all my efforts were in vain, for while I lay in stupor, manacles had been placed about my ankles and I was chained to a long line of my miserable fellows.

That the mind does not simply break at such a moment is truly a testament to the human spirit, its strength, and will to live. As for me, my spirit did not break but it bent almost to cracking there in the slave market of Alexandria.

I watched in shock too deep for thought as my brother, my precious friend and my holy charge, was carried off into slavery by an Arab in a flowing white gown. A more vigilant person than I would have attempted to remember every detail of that scene, in hopes of later gaining information of his whereabouts. But I, a hopeless girl of tormented spirit, saw only my sweet brother's face, filled with terror and longing. He looked straight at me, reaching out his little arms, as he was picked up and carried away into the crowd.

How long I awaited my turn on the auction block I cannot say. It may have been only minutes or it may have been hours. I had become utterly insensible to my own person. Horror had blocked every part of my mind. I only know that I came out of a dull stupor to find myself being led, free at last of manacles, onto the stone porch.

I was one of ten girls who were sold as a lot. The bidding did not last long and I a.s.sume we went for a low price. And small wonder! I cannot conceive that a more unpromising lot of young women existed in all of Christendom! We had not bathed since long before embarking from Ma.r.s.eilles. We had been ill, rolled about in our own vomit, battered and blown until every hair was knotted like fine lace, and our fair skin was chapped and besmeared. Perhaps one can forgive the Infidel for treating us like animals, for that certainly is how we must have looked!

We again were chained together, this time by our wrists, and herded through the streets of that most foul and unwelcoming city. The stench of rotting garbage and feces in the streets might have overpowered us had we not, by this time, become indifferent to such horrors.

At the bottom of a particularly foul street, we came to the quays. There we were thrust rudely into a small boat, which set sail immediately up river, the wind and tide being right at that evening hour.

I do not remember a single moment of that voyage up the great River Nile to Cairo. We remained collapsed in a heap in the bottom of the boat, too exhausted and too dispirited to move. How we pa.s.sed the night, whether moored or moving with the wind, I know not. Nor how many days we pa.s.sed in the journey upriver. I remember nothing of this time but the terrible ache of my heart, as if I had been mortally wounded there, and the picture, repeated many times an hour in my fevered brain, of my brother's face as he was torn away from me forever.

At last, we came to the great city of Cairo and were loaded without ceremony into a two-wheeled cart drawn by two st.u.r.dy donkeys. Again, we were paraded through the streets of the city. Even in my disarray, I could not help but notice that this was a very different city from Alexandria.

Here were prosperous shops and the great bustle that comes with a city involved in successful commerce. The people on the streets in their long Musulman garb were clean and handsomely groomed. As we advanced further into the city, I became aware that the buildings were becoming ever grander and more beautiful. Yet I was beyond wondering whence I was being delivered.

At last we were dumped unceremoniously before great gates set in a high wall. Our jailor paid the carter and turned to speak with the gatekeeper. Then we were led along the wall to a small side door and there admitted.

Imagine my surprise, for I had expected to be thrust into a dingy cell, there to rot away captive as so many stories of captured Crusaders had told. When the door opened, however, and we were herded through it, I found myself in an earthly Paradise!

Not since the heavenly beauty of my native Languedoc had I seen such lush and fruitful gardens. In very fact, these gardens were more beautiful than the most perfect garden of France. Here were green gra.s.s, flowering shrubs and vines, and palm trees casting deep s.h.a.ggy shade upon promenades tiled in brightest blue and yellow. Fountains splashed invitingly at every turn. Beds of flowers were mathematically laid out to form geometric designs in brilliant colors. Birds, both in cages and free in the trees, made a merry din amidst the lush foliage.

For all that I was tired beyond measure and hungry beyond caring, I could not keep my amazement captive. Despite myself, I smiled with delight.

I speculated that we might have been sold into the household of the great Sultan of Egypt himself, Caliph Malek Kamel. This, I reasoned, would be a great blessing as he was rumored in France, even among his enemies, to be a man of learning. It was even said that he had studied during many years of his youth in the University of Paris, but I do not know if this is so.

We were brought through this paradisiacal garden to a beautiful building of white stone, graced by a long arcade of low, pointed arches. We pa.s.sed through doors carved with delicate designs, down corridors paved in cut stones in many precious colors. At the end, we were presented to a guard who stood before polished doors and there, having removed our iron cuffs, our jailor left us.

The guard removed a large key from the folds of his garment and this he inserted into a huge antique lock that turned effortlessly and silently. Slowly the big doors swung open to reveal an antechamber of great sumptuousness. Here stood another man as guard. We were pa.s.sed into his keeping and the doors were shut and locked behind us.

The second guard herded us forward through heavy curtains wrought in curious, barbaric designs, and behind which was revealed a large room filled with low divans and fat cus.h.i.+ons, placed directly on a floor covered in layer upon layer of wondrous carpets. Upon these furnis.h.i.+ngs reclined or sat many women, all of them dark of eye and hair and all wondrously plump. They languished there in various states of undress and I wondered that the approach of the guard caused no stir among them whatsoever.

The nature of this second guard was very curious and it was not for many days that I learned the reason for this. We had been delivered, it became apparent, not into the dank confines of an Infidel prison but into the soft and feminine boudoir of the women of the house. We were in very fact now the denizens of a seraglio!

We sadly bedraggled ten were immediately engulfed in a welcoming way by the women of the harem, and the guard disappeared behind the curtains again. We were obviously a wonder to these women, dirty, ill-kempt, and probably stinking as we were. They plucked at our matted hair and pinched our poor bruised arms, chattering the while in a barbaric tongue that sounded like the purest babel.

While there was much laughter at our expense-and well we must have deserved it-still I felt a certain maternal regard from these foreign women, for they were not rough or rude with us. My eyes fell upon a plate of food lying upon a low table beside one of the divans. My look must have been most predatory, for one of the women, following my glance, gave me a look of great understanding and immediately offered the dish to me and my fellows.

I fear we devoured every morsel on that plate and searched the room with our eyes for more. We had not eaten more than a handful of dried dates since coming to that sh.o.r.e, and we were faint with hunger. The women proffered us food and water until it was clear, by their distressed looks and pattings of the belly, that they feared we would be taken ill if we ate more.

Our strength somewhat restored to us, the ladies now ushered us, en ma.s.se, through a series of twisting corridors and brought us at last to a bath house. Here, they helped us from our clothing, if such those poor matted and torn tatters could still be called. Each rag was consigned, by agency of fingertips, and with noses wrinkled in disgust, to a large basket which, when the procedure was complete, was borne from the room by a servant, presumably to be burned.

Now began a ritual that, though administered by the hands of the Infidel, remains still in my memory as one of the sweetest moments of my existence. The women cooed and clucked over our poor thin, pale bodies, still innocent of women's hair, as they slowly lowered us into tubs of steaming water and scrubbed us from our topmost head hair to the soles of our feet. Our nails were pared and cut. Our hair washed and combed. Even our teeth were scrubbed with brushes.

When we were clean as the day our mothers birthed us, still another treat awaited us, for they now, once again in a giggling, jolly mob, escorted us into the neighboring room where steam rose in soft white billows through pierced marble grates in the floor. Here we, as a body, reclined upon thick white towels, turning ourselves like meat on a spit until our bodies were pink as the summer roses of Muret.

I was becoming very relaxed and would have drifted soon into slumber, right there on the floor, but that we now must move again into still another room. Here were low tables and the ladies aided us in positioning ourselves on them with our faces down on soft mats. They then began to ma.s.sage us, two or three women working over each girl. One rubbed my back and neck, while another stroked and kneaded my arms and hands, and still a third rolled and pummeled my legs and feet.

I must have swooned, for the next thing I remember, I was being carried through the corridors on the bosom of a stout servant, with a gaggle of my new friends chattering along behind. I was placed in a small but beautifully appointed room on a low mattress covered in embroidered fabric. One of the ladies bent kindly over me, stroking my forehead maternally, and that is all I remember.

Later, two ladies who could speak a limping sort of French told me that I had slept for three full days and that they had feared I would never awaken but might simply slip away from my slumbering body, not to return. These two ladies of the harem who were able to speak with me were called Farah and Fatima, and they had an interesting story to relate regarding their ability to speak our language.

It seems that during the last Crusade, the wife of one of our French sergeants was captured. Rather than put her instantly to death, however, as is the Musalman custom, she was delivered to that household because of her great beauty.

She became a favorite of the master of the house, and so lived out her life in great comfort until she died of a fever but months before my unfortunate arrival. While she was incapable of learning the barbaric tongue of the Musalman ladies, she yet persisted in teaching them our language. I am most grateful to this unknown woman whom they called Irene, for it was through her efforts that I was able to converse and to learn so much.

We spent several weeks languis.h.i.+ng in the harem. The sole delight of these ladies seemed to be to fatten us like Toulouse geese. Day and night they plied us with the richest and most delicious foods, until even the thinnest among us began to look sleek.

During these days, I questioned my French-speaking friends closely, endeavoring to learn all that I could of my situation. It was as well a method I used to quell my grieving after my lost G.o.dfrey, for while I thus conversed, my mind could not dwell on his sufferings.

I learned that I was not, as I originally had supposed, in the house of the Caliph of Egypt. It was, in fact, cause for great hilarity when I suggested this notion. My new master was but a high-ranking official in the office of the Caliph's vizier.

Since the wealth surrounding me was unimaginable, I asked them how much greater must be the palace of the Caliph. These ladies seemed quite well informed despite their sheltered life, and I soon learned that they had spies everywhere, so that they had news of all the latest happenings in the instant. Thus, they were well able to describe for me the opulent surroundings of their king.

First, they told me, I must imagine materials of only the finest sort, for his palace was built of precious stones and woods. There are pillars inlaid with colored stones and jewels and in the throne room, pillars carved to resemble trees with golden leaves upon them. The fountains have basins of a red stone veined in rich pink, in gardens and courtyards that are too many and vast to comprehend. The tall rooms are walled in panels of marble pierced in wondrous designs, and the floors are covered in rich and brilliantly colored carpets.

The Caliph himself, they said, sits upon a golden throne, but behind a curtain, to give audience. Never does he speak directly to those who come to do him homage but speaks only through his advisors, who then convey his will to the supplicant.

He is arrayed the while in the finest linen or cotton fabric, all woven and embroidered with designs of such cunning that they are works of years and years of labor by skilled weavers and craftsmen. And about it all, everywhere one moves, there is the sound of splas.h.i.+ng fountains, songs from birds in golden cages and the scent of flowers perfuming the air.

It is, withal, a most pleasurable description. I s.h.i.+ver with wonder to think on it still, for I am sure that in all of France not one such compound exists to compare with its richness.

One day when we had been perhaps two months in our new captivity, an astonis.h.i.+ng thing occurred which was to change my life forever. We were sitting on our cus.h.i.+ons as usual. Some of the women were playing at dice. Some were waxing their legs by rolling b.a.l.l.s of beeswax over them very rapidly. The wax caught and pulled out their hair; and thus, their skin was smooth as gla.s.s. I was sitting, as was our custom, with my new friends and they were regaling me with tales of their city.

Of a sudden, the curtains parted and the eunuch stepped in-for such my friends had now told me he was. He clapped his hands sharply and called out an announcement that I could not understand. My friends, however, rose quickly to their feet, pulling me with them, whispering that we were to be visited by the master, whose name I now knew was Ali Abu'l-Hasan.

I had wondered many times about the nature of this man whom I had never seen. My friends had told me he was young but this I now would plainly see had been sheerest flattery. For soon there entered a man of perhaps fifty, with black hair, gray about the face, and a visage thin and shrewd. His eyes were so deep-set as to be more like caves of shadow, his forehead was high and finely lined, and his nose was thin and cruelly hooked, like the beak of my father's falcon.

The eunuch again gave an order, clapping his hands officiously, and the ladies of the harem turned upon us ten girls, pinching our cheeks to make them pink, brus.h.i.+ng our hair back with their hands, and otherwise quickly surveying us. Then we were pushed into a ragged line before Ali Abu'l-Hasan.

There was much twittering from the ladies at our backs, as if a flock of sparrows had landed there, but one swift glance from their master silenced them. Placing his hands behind his back, this man commenced a slow stroll back and forth before us, eyeing each of us as I have seen bidders do with horses, before the auction at the spring fair. He even pulled back the lips of my friend Jeanne to examine her teeth! When his eyes fell upon me, I felt my face go white and I thought I should faint, so cold and pitiless was his stare.

At last, he turned to the eunuch and whispered something to him. As quickly as he had come he departed, the long white skirts of his garment swis.h.i.+ng heavily across the marble steps. Immediately, pandemonium broke out among the ladies. They fairly mobbed the eunuch, clearly questioning him about their master's wishes. The eunuch demanded silence with frantic waving of his pudgy hands. When the a.s.sembly had settled, he made a brief announcement that, of course, we girls could not understand.

There was among our poor betrayed party one girl named Agnes, who had come from Amiens to join our sad Crusade. She was consigned by nature to be a stout person. Even our extreme hards.h.i.+ps on the road to Ma.r.s.eilles and on the s.h.i.+p across the sea had not completely diminished her. Now, with the fine foods that were insisted upon us day and night, she had again blossomed to her full buxomness. She was fair and full, for all that she was but thirteen years old.

Suddenly, all eyes were upon Agnes. Now it was her turn to be mobbed by the ladies. They shrieked and petted her and made such a fuss that the poor girl was quite bewildered.

Farah finally told me the cause of all this commotion. Arab men, it seems, dislike thin women but must have their ladies plump and round. Because of her stout figure, Agnes had just been chosen first among us to spend the night with Ali Abu'l-Hasan!

Never have I been more grateful that merciful G.o.d created me small and thin! I felt the greatest pity for poor Agnes, although I did not yet understand the enormity of what had befallen her. Agnes, however, being a simple-minded girl, was delighted with her newfound glory. All day as the ladies worked over her, bathing and combing and ma.s.saging her with perfumed oils and manicuring her nails, Agnes was beaming like the sun, full well pleased with herself.