The Road to Damietta

  I followed Rosanna through a tortuous passageway, past a large salon cut up into cubicles furnished with red drapes and couches, down a plunging stair into the ship's deep hold.

  Rosanna's cabin was not much larger than a broom closet, with three narrow bunks, one above the other, and no window. It smelled of stale perfume and seawater that had been standing too long in the bowels of the ship. A flame in a pink bowl was smoking.

  In the light she was a little older than I had taken her for, yet her voice was young and she was quite pretty. I shed my cloak, washed my forehead, and used some of her powder.

  "Don't hurry," she said. "The captain's been drinking. When he drinks he forgets. He may even forget that he hired you."

  She seemed less sullen now. I had the feeling that she was lonely and wanted someone to talk to.

  "It would be a good thing if he does forget you're on the ship," she said. "In the morning we sail for Damietta. At least that's what I hear. Tonight will be hell. Having eaten their large suppers and swilled goblets of wine, the crusaders will descend upon us. This night until dawn, when the Mermaid sets to sea, the Devil himself will be loose on the ship."

  She got up and emptied the bowl of water I had used into a hole in the floor.

  "You're just starting out, I gather from your innocent looks," she said gaily. "You're far too young for tonight's frolic. Stay in the cabin. Should the captain ask, I'll tell him you're ill. Bar the door and don't open it to anyone except me. Do you understand?"

  Before I could answer, again her mood changed and a cold light glinted in her eyes.

  "Unless, of course, you wish to meet the Devil himself. Many of the women enjoy his company. Do you? Your innocent ways and demure looks may be deceiving. It would surprise me not at all to find you're a hellcat. We have a few of them on the ship. They're the most demure of the lot. A snowflake wouldn't melt on their lips. It's possible..."

  I raised my hand to stop her, but she went on in this vein until breath failed her. I said, "Listen for a second. Say nothing and listen. All afternoon I spent searching for a ship. I didn't know that this one is a brothel. All I wanted was a ship."

  Rosanna gasped. She hid her face and sobbed, then dried her eyes on her sleeve.

  "I've been here hardly a week," she said. "I came from Lucca, near where you live."

  "I know the town."

  "I came because I had a vision in the night. There was lightning in the sky. The whole sky was lit up as when dawn is breaking. I saw Christ standing there. The tomb was behind Him and He was stretching out His arms, beckoning me to the Hill of the Sepulcher. My family was terribly angry. They did everything they possibly could to make me change my mind, but I ran off in the middle of the night and came here. Passage to the Holy Land costs more than my father made in a whole year. And I was without a soldo. That's why I'm here on this ship of harlots."

  Her eyes blazed, daring me to condemn her. "I can tell what you're thinking."

  "No," I said, "I am not condemning you. I am thinking about someone else, a girl who was born in Egypt, in Damietta where we're going. Her name was Mary and she had a vision like the one you had. She was poor also and the only way she could get to the Holy Land was by giving herself to the sailors on a ship bound for Jerusalem."

  Rosanna was beside me on the bunk. She grasped my arm. "Did the people condemn her?"

  "She was stoned."

  "But did Christ condemn her?"

  "No, He forgave her."

  "Truly?"

  "Truly. Christ told her to go and sin no more and she didn't. In time she became a saint, Saint Mary of Egypt."

  The candle in the pink bowl was guttering. Rosanna reached over and trimmed the wick and we sat for a while in silence.

  "You haven't told me where you are going," she said.

  "To Damietta, in Egypt."

  "Not to the Holy Land?"

  "No."

  "You seem determined to get to Damietta."

  "I am."

  "You have a purse. But tell me, if you were poor, like me, and the only way you could ever reach Damietta was by being a..." She searched for a word.

  "I would do the same thing that you're doing," I said.

  "Because you believe that Christ would forgive you, as He forgave Saint Mary of Egypt?"

  "No—because I have to go."

  "You would go, anyway?"

  "Yes. Anyway!"

  The ship rocked with the tide. The flame in the pink bowl swayed back and forth with the ship, yet the flame itself did not move. It remained upright and burned steadily.

  28

  The night was a hell of shrieks and drunkenness as God turned His face while the Devil frolicked.

  Well before the night began, Rosanna hid me away in a hole next to our cabin, a storage place stuffed with coils of frayed rope and tattered sails, lit by a slit of a window. She supplied me with a jug of water and a parcel of food she had stolen, and went off to tell the captain that I had fled the ship. For that reason, neither he nor the tattooed giant came looking.

  I slept little, awakening fitfully to bedlam sounds. By dawn we were already in midstream, moving slowly seaward under oars and small sail. A body hurtled past my window, then a second body, then a third. They were crusaders, Rosanna told me later, thrown overboard by the giant, who was rounding up all those who had refused to leave the ship.

  I was seasick for three days and during this time went undiscovered. Then, in a storm off the coast of Cyprus, sailors ran down to get sails, found me lying in the cubbyhole, and reported me to the captain, who threatened to have me tossed overboard but relented when I emptied my purse on the table and begged him to take all my money. Instead, he generously took only half, felt less angry, and left me alone.

  The storm at Cyprus scattered the fleet. Eleven ships of the hundreds bound for Damietta were sunk in heavy seas or driven ashore. The Mermaid lost her rudder, but the captain managed to sail her safely to shore. We were on the island for more than a month while the ship was being repaired. There was a church nearby and twice each day I went there and prayed to the Virgin of the Sea.

  She heard my prayers, for the first thing I saw when we sailed into Damietta, among all the dozens of ships, was Francis's black-hulled ship lying safely at anchor.

  It was a sweltering noon. A coppery haze blown by a hot wind moved across the sea and the wide mouth of the Nile. We anchored close to the bank among other ships in a cove protected from the current.

  None of the women went ashore except Rosanna and me. After I had helped her find a ship that was sailing to the Holy Land and given her money for her passage—Captain Vitale had cheated her out of what she had made—I trotted off toward the tents that stretched along the river between the cove and the city.

  As I hurried along the path through the fields of towering grass and stunted palm trees, the sun beating down, wherever I looked—at the Nile shimmering like golden glass, so wide its farthest bank was hidden, at the colored pavilions and the white tents billowing in the wind—there was nothing that I knew.

  Beyond the crusaders' encampment rose the high gray walls and the lofty minarets of Damietta. Not a sound came from the besieged city, though the war was now in its second year. Crescent flags flew from the parapets but I saw no signs of fighting.

  Bewildered, I stopped at the first tent I came to. Smoke and the smell of food came through the flaps. Inside, tending an enormous iron pot, I found by chance a woman whose husband, Alberto, baked bread and sold it from house to house in Assisi.

  "You are acquainted with Francis Bernardone, of course," I said to her. "Do you know where he is?"

  "He comes once a day," she said. "In the morning or at night for supper."

  "Where is he between times? Where might I find him?"

  "He wanders about, preaching, tending the sick. You never know. He's sort of a clown, but most of the men like him and the women love him. Myself, I think he's crazy, but not so crazy as my husband. Did you ever eat any of
the bread he bakes? Yes? Well, the loaves with seeds in them, the caraway seeds—when he ran out of caraway he put mouse droppings in the dough. And he did other crazy things, too."

  I remembered that her last name was Ubaldo and that everyone thought both the Ubaldos were strange. "You must be happy; you're in Africa now, far away from Alberto."

  "Not far enough," she said. "We're having stewed lamb for supper. One of the young nobles—he's from Nimes in France—he and his men captured a flock of sheep this morning on the other side of the river. They're Moslem sheep so I don't know how they'll taste."

  She reached into the iron pot and forked out a steaming morsel. "Try it and tell me what you think."

  The morsel was scalding hot, but having eaten little for days, I swallowed it.

  "Can you taste Moslem?" she asked me.

  "It's delicious, signora."

  "Good. I tasted it myself and wasn't so sure."

  She stepped back to get a better view of me. "How long have you been here?"

  "Since noon today, and I'd like work."

  "Have you tended table? By the look of your hands I should say you've never done much of anything. I have three helpers, but I can use another."

  There were more than thirty thousand crusaders ranged before the walls of Damietta, she told me, all of them cooking for themselves.

  "I only cook for the nobles," she explained. "Knights and priests and such. But there are near two hundred of them, counting our friend Bernardone, who shouldn't be counted because he eats like a sparrow.

  "You never know what he'll eat. Usually something we haven't got. Last night he wanted an egg. Nothing else. Just an egg cooked for a long time. What kind of egg? Chicken, duck, crocodile—it didn't matter. We gave him what we had, a seagull egg. Don't let him bother you. Serve him the lamb stew and tell him he's lucky that it isn't horse, which I understand is highly prized among the Moslems. But don't wait upon him if you'd rather not."

  She put me to work peeling a sackful of withered turnips. When I was through there was another sackful to peel. The long tables were filled, as I finished, with hungry men—marquises, dukes, counts, bishops, princes, Templars, and Hospitallers—so she gave me a great iron bowl of soup.

  Dizzy from the heat, I stopped at the first table I came to and ladled it out. Moving along from place to place, I glanced about for Francis Bernardone. 1 searched everywhere in the tent, taking my time. He was not in sight, but at the head of the table I was serving 1 caught a glimpse of a man whose face was familiar.

  I served two more crusaders and glanced again. He now was talking to a companion, his domed head turned in profile, his hawkish nose thrust out. I could be mistaken. Then I remembered Raul had told me that Pelagius was no longer a bishop but a cardinal-legate, that he had been sent to Damietta to speak for the pope himself.

  Pelagius in Damietta, at my table, gave me a start. I did not wish to talk to him, to listen to the lecture I would receive, for he would surely know why I was here. I started for the kitchen, hoping to find someone to take my place.

  I took one hurried step. My name sounded above all the clamoring voices. I thought of fleeing, pretending that I hadn't heard, but my name sounded again and a serving woman grasped my arm and pointed at the head of the table where Pelagius sat, waving his big eating spoon at me.

  I walked slowly, and when I reached him he let me stand for a moment or two while he finished saying something to his companions. When at last he decided to speak to me, it was in a hearty tone, but in his eyes, which sometimes looked gray and sometimes green but always cold, lurked a glint of anger.

  "How pleasing it is to have you with us in Damietta," he said, "heeding the pope's call for help against the infidel dogs. How courageous of you! How proud your father, my dear friend Davino di Montanaro, must feel!"

  He knew that I had not come at the pope's call; he knew it well. His companion, a handsome youth in a steel cuirass, which was fast roasting him to death, rose to offer me his seat.

  "Thanks be," I said, "but there are hungry warriors waiting for food."

  "How thoughtful," Cardinal Pelagius remarked, fixing his gaze upon my shaking hands. "How noble of you!"

  I made a small curtsy and was backing away as a man in full armor brushed me aside and spoke to the cardinal.

  "Commander," he said, near speechless from excitement, "the infidels are preparing a machine to launch against us. A towering geremite. They are working at it now."

  The cardinal, munching on a piece of Signora Ubaldo's tough bread, put it back on the table.

  "What is your pleasure?" the messenger asked. "Shall we attack or wait until the machine is launched? Kindly give me orders, Captain Pelagius. My men are waiting on the river. On both sides of the Nile."

  Captain Pelagius! My knees shook at the name. Cardinal Pelagius, Pope Innocents legate, was now a captain, the high commander ot the Fifth Crusade, giving orders to an army of thirty thousand men and women.

  "How near finished is the geremite?" Pelagius asked.

  "They could launch her in a week," the messenger said.

  "Then we'll wait. Let the dogs put everything they have into the machine. Stack it high as the city walls. We'll attack the moment she's launched. Keep watch."

  The messenger sped off with the orders.

  "What do you have there?" Pelagius asked, eyeing the bowl I held in my arms.

  "Soup," I said.

  "Looks watery."

  "It is watery."

  "At your mother's table, thick soup was served, as I recall. Vegetables freshly gathered, larded with pork. What do you have in the kitchen?"

  "Lamb."

  "Stringy, this Egyptian lamb, and ill-flavored, but I'll try some of it, well roasted."

  In the kitchen I repeated his orders and comments to Signora Ubaldo.

  She shrugged. "I can't be blamed. I can only cook what I'm given to cook. If it's stringy Moslem lamb, then that's what he eats."

  She carved off a double portion of the meat and set it on a platter. "The captain eats for two," she explained. "Sometimes four, it seems."

  I was still shaking. My impulse was to flee. But where to? Cardinal-Legate Pelagius, friend of Pope Innocent, captain of the crusade, had the power to place me under lock and key, to send me back to Assisi.

  Fearfully I picked up the food and, trying to smile, went in to serve him. He didn't look up as I set the plate before him, but he cut a piece of the lamb, tasted it, and nodded to show his approval.

  "What do you intend to do while you're here in Egypt?" he asked. "Some of the women are in the army, half a thousand or more, dressed in full armor and carrying weapons. From what I have seen of them in a skirmish or two, they equal the men in bravery, if not in the skills of warfare. But you come unequipped."

  "I can work as a translator," I answered. "As you know, Arabic is familiar to me. I've spoken it since I was seven and written it since I was ten. I could help when you talk to the Moslems."

  "I never talk to the Moslems, but if I do talk it will be in Latin. If they don't understand Latin, then all the worse for them."

  As if I weren't there, he placed his bowl to one side and set his knife and spoon and his companion's knife and spoon behind and in front of the bowl. I gathered from what he said to the young man that the bowl represented the city of Damietta and the rows of utensils the Christian army.

  I curtsied and left, but as I made my way to the kitchen I felt his eyes fixed upon me.

  29

  That night I slept in the tent, as far from the kitchen fires as possible, for the night had not cooled much after the terrible heat of the day. I would have slept outside under the stars, save for the stream of carousing men that poured past the tent until the eastern sky was aglow.

  Up early, I started the fires to show the signora that I was not helpless, chiefly to be ready when Francis arrived. What would he ask for? An egg? A small piece of fish? A morsel of the leftover lamb? Whatever it was, I would prepare it myself
and stand over him to see that he ate it.

  He didn't come to breakfast. No one came to breakfast.

  At dawn, as the first light crossed the river, watchmen saw that moving down the Nile from Damietta were four great geremites, floats piled high with wood, straw, and brushwood mixed with tar. When they approached our ships, which were moored side by side from one bank of the Nile to the other, forming a solid wall between the city and the sea, the floats were set afire.

  Watchmen had given the alarm with a call of trumpets. At once, Cardinal Pelagius had ordered everyone to make ready for an attack. A guard came for me and the rest of the women in the tent. All the women who were not in armor and prepared to fight were rounded up and hustled off to a quarry, where they were set to work gathering stones for the catapults.

  Smoke trailed through the quarry all that day, hiding the river. There were no sounds of fighting and we saw no fires until night came and the sky was lit with a sickly glow. I heard nothing of Francis Bernardone.

  The battle ended that night with five of our ships having been burned to the water. The infidel Moslems were repelled, but angered by the loss, Pelagius had a full two dozen prisoners decapitated at dawn and the severed heads flung over the walls by catapult into the streets of Damietta.

  But that night, late, three infidel spies were captured while attempting to ford the river. Jugs of the mysterious Greek fire and homing pigeons with secret papers tied to their legs, ready to fly, were found in their possessions. Enraged, the cardinal had the spies' arms and noses cut off, as well as their ears and lips. One of each spy's eyes was also gouged out. These bloody ghosts were then put on display near the Moslem walls so all their infidel friends might see them and take heed.

  Breakfast was a sullen affair of threats and anger. I had given up all hope of seeing Francis that day when he appeared, delivered a short prayer thanking God that none of our crusaders had been killed in the foray, and sat down to eat.