The Mongoliad: Book Two Page 4

  He was doubly thankful for the meeting the previous day with Sir John and Calpurnius, otherwise he would not have been prepared for the unexpected summons to the legate’s tent. He had had time to prepare for the audacity of what might be asked of him so as to better pretend to not understand the legate’s request. As Sir John had warned him, the man from Rome wanted what he could not ask for directly, not without tainting the very thing he sought.

  It sickened him—this subterfuge, this willful effort to manipulate the Crusaders—and at the same time, he knew it was his own innocence that prompted such revulsion. And he loathed that he was so weak and foolish.

  The legate meant to sigh, but it came out more like a growl. Eptor started at the noise, drawing the legate’s attention away from Raphael. The legate put his hand underneath Eptor’s chin and raised the young man’s head.

  Eptor had had another visitation last night, and his sleep had been disturbed—as had Raphael’s. As a result, he was more addled than usual. He stared at the legate, eyes big and round like those of a dumb ox, and he seemed content to simply match the legate’s stare.

  “He is a fool,” the legate said. “There is nothing left in this man’s head.” He looked over at Raphael. “Your master is equally a fool for keeping him.”

  “Would you have me slaughter him like a pig, Your Grace?” Calpurnius spoke from the back of the room. Raphael heard the rasp of steel as a knife was drawn from its sheath. “Shall I do it now? Does God require an immediate demonstration of my devotion?”

  “Stay your hand,” the legate snapped. He let go of Eptor’s chin roughly, and Raphael was the only one who saw the ghost of a reaction flicker across the young man’s face. “You Shield-Brethren are nothing more than brutish heathens,” he growled, glaring at Raphael. “I should have you lead every charge.”

  “And we would do so gladly,” Raphael heard himself whisper, “for it is nothing more than our eternal duty.” The words sprang from his mouth before he could stop them, but as soon as they were out, his heart sang at having said them.

  The legate recoiled as if a serpent had just crawled out of Raphael’s mouth, and to hide his shock, he stormed back to his chair and hurled himself into it, the petulant response of an angry child. “We will attack the day after tomorrow,” he announced rudely, reasserting himself to those present. “It is the Feast of the Beheading of St. John. A fitting day for our glorious victory over the infidels within the city.”

  “It is too soon,” Sir John said, his calm voice carrying across the tent. “We lost more than a hundred men in our last assault. As well as all four of the ships so recently arrived from Venice and Pisa. We cannot continue to hurl ourselves so egregiously at the walls.”

  “Those walls are weak,” the legate scoffed. “They cannot—they will not—keep us out.”

  “We should wait,” Sir John continued, undeterred. “We have captured deserters who have managed to climb over those walls. The people of Damietta are starving. Why should we waste Christian lives when the city will open its gates for us in a few weeks?”

  “Why should we wait?” Pelagius snapped, his face reddening. “If the infidels are so enfeebled, then why are we not strong enough to conquer them? Is our faith lacking?”

  Eptor stirred at Raphael’s side. “She is waiting for us,” the young man whispered. His voice was so soft Raphael almost thought he had imagined hearing it. “She is waiting for the faithful.”

  “You are condemning Christians to a meaningless death,” Sir John said.

  “I am achieving God’s plan,” the legate shouted. Realizing he had lost his temper, he composed himself, smoothing the front of his frock. “We will attack in two days,” he said when he had mastered his ire. His voice was hard and flat, the voice of papal authority. He leaned forward, staring at Raphael. “Give me a prophecy,” he said sternly. “Give the men a reason. They will fight harder. Lives will be spared.”

  Raphael shook his head. “There is no prophecy,” he said, committing himself. “Eptor is a fool. He speaks nonsense, now and forevermore.” Out of the corner of his eye, he spied Eptor staring at him, a bright light in the young man’s eyes.

  Raphael closed his eyes to blot out the sight of his brother’s boundless devotion.

  Verna, 1224

  “Have we met?” Brother Francis asked as he led Raphael to his private retreat at the peak of the mountain. He was shorter than Raphael remembered, bent like a piece of warped wood, and his robes were too big for him. His head protruded from the top of the voluminous cloth like a tiny mushroom straining for moonlight. The change in his eyes was the most startling difference, though. Naught five years ago, the priest’s eyes had been clear, glittering with both intelligence and resolution. Now they were crusted over with a layer of mucus and dried tears—crystalline formations that clung to his face like rough gemstones. Through narrow gaps in the crystals, Raphael could see the milky movement of the priest’s eyes.

  “We have, Father—Brother Francis,” Raphael said, stumbling over his words. His face was still warm from the recent flood of his shame, and glancing once again at the monk’s distorted eyes, he wiped his hands across his own face, as if to wipe free the crusted starts of a similar buildup on his own cheeks. “Several years ago...” he continued, “when you came to Egypt.”

  Brother Francis came to a halt, and he swiveled his entire body around to better position his face toward Raphael. Raphael stood awkwardly as the monk peered up at him. “You are taller than I remember,” the monk said when he finished his examination. “And sadder.”

  “I’ve grown,” was Raphael’s response.

  Brother Francis chuckled. “And your friend? The quiet one touched by God?”

  “Eptor,” Raphael said. “He is no longer with us.”

  Brother Francis lowered his head. “May his soul find comfort with God,” he said with heartfelt compassion.

  Raphael nodded curtly, not wishing to speak otherwise, but in his heart he wondered if Eptor had not found solace in the arms of another.

  “A terrible tragedy, Damietta,” Brother Francis said, continuing his slow shuffle toward the shack. “So many lost.”

  “It got worse,” Raphael said. “After your mission.”

  “So I heard,” Brother Francis said. His upper body twitched as if he were adjusting the immense load borne by his bowed shoulders. “Pelagius refused to open his heart to God, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Damietta wasn’t enough. After your departure from Egypt, the legate began to talk of marching on Cairo. Sir John and a number of the other lords abandoned the cause, but the legate kept many with him—held them captive with promises of God’s eternal reward. And then he discovered the prophecy. A lost book of the Bible, supposedly written by a man named Clement. It spoke of a great Crusader victory in Egypt. He held it up as proof that their mission was God’s plan. But it was a lie, a heinous fabrication, and the march on Cairo was an utter disaster. Al-Kamil took pity on the Christians after they floundered for several days in the Nile valley. Many thought he would slay them all. Pelagius too; I think he hoped for martyrdom.”

  Brother Francis snorted. He rubbed one hand over the other, and Raphael noticed black streaks across the backs of both of the monk’s hands. Shadows of char that did not smear under Brother Francis’s ministrations. “The fool knows nothing of martyrdom,” he muttered. “He knows nothing at all.”

  Realizing he had spoken aloud, he visibly brightened and changed the subject. “Here we are,” he announced, indicating the end of the path. “The closest you can get to God and still have your feet upon the ground.”

  Brother Leo had warned Raphael that Brother Francis’s tiny cell was precariously constructed, but in Raphael’s opinion, Brother Leo had failed in his estimation of the true danger. The structure was not much more than a lean-to built from scraps of wood. Open at two sides, it sat on the very edge of an immense drop-off. One step too many, and a man would plunge a very long way to a rather unpleasant death.
Fluffy clouds drifted close by, not more than a hand’s width or two above the peak of the shack, which was oriented in such a way that it never received direct sunlight.

  His eyes, Raphael realized. The light pains him. How hard must it be for him to pray here, so close to Heaven, when the darkness of a cave would be so much more comfortable?

  Brother Francis ducked into the misshapen shack, folding his legs beneath him. He knocked his walking stick about, rattling it off the walls and off the sides of a squat chest shoved in one corner. Once he was comfortable, he patted the bare ground next to him. “Don’t stand,” he said to Raphael. “It makes me nervous. God would not bring you so far and then have you stumble.”

  Raphael didn’t need further prompting, and he stripped off his baldric in a smooth motion, holding his scabbarded sword in his hand as he tucked himself under the overhang. He arranged himself on the ground, his sword an impediment that he was tempted to throw over the cliff’s edge.

  “There,” Brother Francis said once they were both settled. “Peaceful, isn’t it?” He cocked his head as if he were listening.

  Raphael did the same, and heard nothing but the gentle sigh of the wind as it caressed the clouds drifting overhead. “It is very peaceful,” he said.

  “I have been working on a new draft of my Rule,” Brother Francis said. He rubbed the backs of his hands again. “I feel my time is running out, and there is so much I want to say yet. So much I wanted to accomplish.” He turned his head toward Raphael. “Does the idea of an untimely death frighten you?”

  “Of course,” Raphael replied.

  “You have fought on the field of battle. More than once.”

  “I have.”

  “Do you not feel death close at hand every time you draw your sword?”

  Raphael shifted awkwardly. “It is...my training that gives me the necessary courage,” he said.

  “What about God? Does He not give you courage too?”

  Raphael did not answer.

  “Hmm,” Brother Francis said, returning his gaze to the cloud-strewn sky. “I carried a sword once,” he said. “I wanted to be a chevalier, a French knight. Did you know that?”

  “Brother Leo mentioned something to that effect,” Raphael admitted.

  “Did he tell you about Perugia? The Battle of Collestrada?” Brother Francis grunted when Raphael nodded. “He is an old gossip, Leo. It is a good thing he is also the kindest man I have ever met. Otherwise he would be insufferable.”

  “He is kind,” Raphael agreed. “I...when I arrived, I was a rather undignified guest...”

  Brother Francis offered him a smile. “We all are, at one time or another, here in God’s house.” His hands began to rub one another, his fingers working the dark smears on his skin. “How many of your brothers-in-arms were lost in Egypt?” he asked.

  “All but three of us,” Raphael said.

  “I am truly sorry.”

  “I could have saved them all,” Raphael admitted. “If I had just given the legate what he asked for. I could have saved them.”

  Brother Francis was silent for a moment, his gaze drifting idly across the open sky. “The prophecy,” he said finally, having found the memory he was looking for. “He wanted you and Eptor to give him a prophecy. I remember it now. When I returned from my stay with the Sultan, he was insisting that Eptor’s gift was nothing more than heretical possession, the touch of the Devil among his camp.”

  “I refused to give him what he wanted,” Raphael said. “He wanted a witness, someone who would have given credence to a lie of his devising. If it hadn’t been for your intercession, we would have been branded as heretics and tossed out of the camp.”

  A hard lump of laughter worked its way out of Raphael’s chest. “As it was, he simply waited six months and tried again. This time, you weren’t around to intercede. Nor was Sir John. The legate kept insisting; when I refused, he had me flogged. He took Eptor and tried to make my friend tell him what he wanted to hear. It didn’t work, of course. That was not Eptor’s...gift. All Pelagius succeeded in doing was distressing Eptor to a point that he retreated further into his illusion. And somewhere in that fog in his mind, he saw something he did not like. Something that frightened him. Something he could not look away from.”

  Raphael’s voice grew hoarse. “He screamed all night. I could do nothing to calm him. It was awful to listen to, but I couldn’t leave him. Nor could I bring myself to end his misery. I sat with him; I was the only friend he ever had. I sat with him until his fear burst his heart.”

  Brother Francis stopped rubbing his hands, resting them calmly in his lap. “You cannot carry that blame,” he said. “I would have done the same in your stead.” Raphael opened his mouth to protest otherwise, but the monk stopped him with a sidelong glance. “You should consider that possibility, my son,” the monk said. “Consider that I might be more at fault than you. In some convoluted fashion that only God could truly apprehend, am I not to blame?”

  “What?” Raphael asked. “How?”

  “Did I not abandon you and Eptor to the legate? Did I not fail to convert Al-Kamil to Christianity, to find a peaceful resolution to the enmity between the Church and the Sultan? Have I not spent my entire life preaching nonviolence, calling out each and every day for each of us to fill our hearts with nothing but peace? And has my personal crusade lessened the violence that surrounds us?”

  Raphael could not bring himself to vocalize agreement—the idea seemed so enormously reprehensible in its cruelty—but he could not verbalize any cogent argument to the contrary. His throat was too tight for any words to escape.

  Brother Francis offered him a kind smile. “I have been here for many weeks,” he said. “Every day I ask God this question: what have I really accomplished? What have I done that has made any difference?”

  Raphael nodded, hearing an echo of those questions in his own heart. “Has He offered you an answer?” he asked.

  Brother Francis idly rubbed the back of his hand again, and Raphael noticed that, even in the gloom of the shack, the shadows on the backs of the monk’s hands remained. “He has,” Brother Francis said. “Rather, He will. Soon.” He smiled again, and this time his smile was free of any sorrow. “I have faith.”

  Raphael wanted to touch the other man’s face, to trace his fingers along the curve of that smile in a vain effort to understand how it was formed. After everything he had seen, how could he still cling to his faith?

  After everything I have done, how can I be worthy of such faith?

  Brother Francis twisted around and grabbed the edge of the chest. He pulled it closer to him and fumbled with the lid. He took out a ragged scrap of parchment, and rooting around inside the box, he located several shards of charcoal. “Do you know much about the Muslim faith?” he asked as he smoothed the piece of parchment flat. “Their holy book is called the Qur’an, and it contains a list of the names of God. Ninety-nine of them, in fact. The Sultan, Al-Kamil, told me about this when he and I met in Egypt. He is an incredible man, and to this day, I wish the mean and petty differences of our cultures did not prevent us from being better friends.” He sighed.

  “I was born in Acre,” Raphael said. “As was my mother and her mother.”

  Brother Francis eyed him. “And yet you are a Christian man?”

  Raphael struggled with his answer. “The only vows I have ever sworn—the only ones I will ever keep—are those I swore to Athena Promachos.”

  “‘She who fights in the front line,’” Brother Francis said. “Those are hard vows to keep.” He laughed. Not from a place of pity or arrogance, but from simple clarity. “You may be a stronger man than I, Raphael of Acre,” he admitted.

  He showed Raphael the sheet. It was covered with a number of skewed lines of Latin, and Raphael read a few: “You are Good, all Good, supreme Good...”

  “It is but a pittance,” Brother Francis explained. “A distraction, perhaps, from what I am meant to be doing, but for some time, it has been somethin
g I have been yearning to write. In fact, it is only now, meeting you again, that I understand the source of this desire.” He turned the page over and, peering at Raphael’s face for reference, quickly sketched a figure at the base of the page. The man seemed to be lying on his back, looking up at the lines of text over his head. He squinted at Raphael’s hat and shook his head, drawing instead a peaked cap reminiscent of the style worn by Muslims. With a practiced twist of his hand, he inscribed a letter rising from the figure’s mouth.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked Raphael, pointing at the letter.

  “The tau,” Raphael said.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “I have heard it is used to represent the Cross upon which Jesus died.”

  “The Cross upon which he was resurrected,” Brother Francis corrected him. “Our lives are not spent waiting for death, but waiting for life.”

  Raphael acceded this interpretation could be equally valid, though the subtle distinction was one that he would have to consider more fully. “I have brought death to many,” he said quietly.

  “And have you not given others life?” Brother Francis asked.

  Raphael shrugged. “How can one ever atone for the other?”

  “Only God can answer that question for you, Raphael of Acre,” Brother Francis said. “But you have to let Him. You have to have faith that He will.”

  Raphael nodded, hearing the monk’s words. His mind struggled to accept them, to let them sink into his heart where they might take root.

  “Give this to Brother Leo,” Brother Francis said, offering the page to Raphael. “Tell him it is more important than any other legacy of mine.” His face tightened, a brief spasm of pain that seemed to rise from nowhere and flee just as quickly.

  “I will,” Raphael said, accepting the page. He glanced at the words written on the back page, the text that floated on the page over the prostrate figure. “‘May God smile upon you and be merciful to you,’” he read aloud. “‘May God turn his regard to you and give you peace.’”