Angeline (15 page)

“I pitched through the opening, Angeline, holding Habib and shielding my eyes with one hand against the blinding light of day. I turned to thank the man but, even as I turned, the door clanged shut. I heard the bar fall back into place. At that moment Habib stirred in my arms.”

“What did you then?” Angeline asked. They were the first words she had been able to utter.

“I took Habib back to the Emir and recounted to him what had happened. Habib only remembered falling through the hole and wakening to find that I had rescued him. When I described the place, the Emir knew immediately where we had been. We had fallen into the old catacombs, he told us. The burial place of ancient peoples long since gone. The entrance to them had been lost, he said, and no one went near them now. But of a man who lived downthere, he knew nothing. That was impossible, he said.”

Stephen stopped his pacing and threw himself down beside Angeline again.

“Truly, Angeline, I know not what happened to me in that place. The Emir says there could not have been a man there, but I saw him. He guided me through the tombs as if we were walking through hell itself. I could never have found my way out without his help. Only once did I glimpse his face, Angeline. It was a momentary glance, in the shadows of his torch, but in that instant I felt as if I had seen him before. A long time ago. On a hill where I tended my sheep.”

“How could that be?” Angeline asked in a whisper.

“I know not,” Stephen replied. “And the more I think on it, the more dimly do I remember what he looked like. But for a moment …” He stopped. There was a long silence. Then he shook himself and jumped to his feet again as if possessed with an energy that would not let him be still. He went on.

“’Thrice now you have saved my son’s life,’ the Emir said to me. ‘I owe you much,’ he said. ‘It is a debt that is difficult to pay. How do you reward someone for a child’s life?’ I had no answer.

“ ‘I will repay you in the only way that I knowhow,’ he said. ‘I give you your freedom. You are free to go. To return to your home.’

“My mind reeled. I could not take in his words. ‘There is a Christian merchant ship in the harbour,’ he said. ‘You are free to go to it. To return to your home.’”

“But you did not?”

“I went down to the harbour. I made my way to the ruins of the great lighthouse that overlooks it. Do you remember seeing it when we arrived here, Angeline?”

She nodded.

“I stood there and I gazed out across the sea. To our own land. To our home. Then I turned my eyes to the harbour and I saw the ships moored there. The Christian ship must have been one of them. A thousand thoughts passed through my mind. Memories of my father, of my brother. How would they welcome me if I returned?

“But you, Angeline. Could I really leave you? After all we have been through together? I knew I could not. I turned my back on the harbour and returned here with the Emir.”

“And then you saw me,” Angeline said bitterly. “You saw what had befallen me. Perhaps it is not too late for you to change your mind.”

“I do not wish to change my mind, Angeline,” Stephen said. “I wish to stay here with you.”

“But you are free. I am still a slave and will be for years to come. I bear a child that is not yours.” She gestured toward the stick leaning against the cushions. “And I am crippled,” she said.

“None of which changes anything. I want nothing more than to be with you, Angeline. I will wait as long as I must and when you are free, if you will have me, I shall wed you and love your child as if it were my own.”

“Is it out of pity that you do this?” Angeline burst out. She struggled to her feet and would have fallen had not Stephen sprung to support her. “If so, I will not have it!”

“Was it pity that caused you to stay by me when the waters did not part in Marseilles?” he asked.

“No, of course not!” she protested.

“Then believe me, it is not pity that brought me back to you. I could not bear to be parted from you now. I want nothing more than to be with you for the rest of our lives.”

He put his arms around her then and drew her to him.

“I have spoken with Ibrahim since I returned,” he said. “He and his family are sorely distressed for you. They want only that you should come to them again as soon as you can. And more! Yousef says there would be a place forme as an apprentice with him. He could use a Franj who has a knowledge of Arabic as well.”

Angeline started to speak, but Stephen laid a finger across her lips.

“Only tell me that you feel for me what I feel for you, Angeline, and I will wait for you,” he said. “We will marry when we can. We can make a good life for ourselves here. I know not what happened to me in that place of death, but I do know that somehow I have found peace. I have regained my faith. I can pray again, Angeline! But it will last only if I can share it with you. Do you, Angeline, do you care for me as I care for you?”

He looked at her and she could see the pleading in his eyes. She knew then that he spoke truly.

“I do,” she whispered. “I always have.”

She dropped her head against his chest and let his warmth enfold her. She felt as if she had finally come home.

Angeline returned to Zahra. At first she could not speak, and then the words tumbled out without stopping.

“But it will be so long before I can earn my freedom,” she finished.

“Perhaps not,” Zahra said.

Angeline looked at her.

“When a slave bears her master’s child, the child is born free—I have told you that already,” Zahra said. “But what I did not mention, because I did not know then that it might be a possibility for you, was that sometimes, if the slave wishes it, the master will allow her to marry and will give her
her
freedom as well.”

Angeline stared at Zahra, unwilling to allow the hope she felt rising within her to surface.

“The Emir …?” she asked. “Would he do that for me?”

“He is fond of you,” Zahra answered. “You can but ask him.”

“I? I would have to ask him?”

“Yes, binty. You would.”

“But I do not know if I could face him again,” Angeline said. “I have not the courage!”

“You have the courage of a lion, binty. You can do it if you want to badly enough. Do you?”

“Oh, I do!” Angeline burst out.

“Then I will arrange it.”

The next afternoon Zahra told her that the Emir would see her. Angeline made her way to his rooms. At the door, she fought down the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. She paused and drew a deep breath. Then she handed her stick to the servant who waited there. She would walk in to face Abd’al Haseeb on her own.

He was seated at his table when she came in.

“So,” he said, “it is good to see you, my little Franj. How fare you now?”

“I am well, Maulaya,” Angeline answered. She willed herself to look him full in the eye although her spirit quailed within her. Memories of the night she had spent with him rose unbidden to her mind. She could not block them out. Her face crimsoned. She saw him look at her belly and the fire that flamed in her face suffused her whole body. It took every bit of strength she could muster not to drop her eyes.

“I am sorry for what those girls did to you,” he said.

“It was an accident.”

“You bear my child. How feel you about that?”

Angeline was startled. She had not expected this question.

“I welcome it, Maulaya,” she said defiantly. “I will love my babe. I love it already.”

The Emir smiled. “And you wish to marry?” he asked.

“Na’am, Maulaya.”
Yes, Master.

“Stephen. He who saved my son and whom I have freed?”

“Yes, Master.”

“You have suffered much in my house,” the Emir said. He stood and came over to her. He cupped her chin in his hand.

“I would see you happy again,” he said. “But if I give you your freedom and allow you to marry, will you work for me still? Zahra will leave us soon, now. Your work is good. I would not lose you, too.”

“I would be honoured to work for you, Maulaya,” Angeline said. A great lightness began to pour through her. She could hardly force the words out past it. She waited for what seemed a lifetime for the Emir’s next words.

“Then so be it,” he said. “I am sorry matters turned out this way but, perhaps, for you it is for the best. You know that in any case I will provide for the child. Go now. Make your plans. You are a free woman and you may wed when you wish.”

He raised his hand in blessing.

“Assalama alaikum wa rahmatallah,” he said.
Peace be on you and God’s mercy.

When Angeline returned Zahra was not in the room. She walked to the window and sank down on a pillow beside it. The sun was setting and the pigeons were flying home to roost. She could not believe what had happened. She was free. She would wed Stephen.

The first notes of the muezzin’s call to prayerrang out. She let them sink into her soul. Vespers would be ringing out over her own land. The land she would never see again. Were other crusades being planned there now? Would men once more go to battle over the Holy Land? She could not hope that to be true. People lived together in peace here—Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Could they not do the same in Jerusalem?

She placed a hand on her belly and felt the life stirring within, strong and urgent. There would be other babes as well. She could only pray that they would never know war. Would never know the horrors that she and Stephen had lived through.

Tomorrow she would tell Stephen what the Emir had granted them. Tomorrow they could make plans for the rest of their lives.

But for now, there was something she must do. She pulled her table over to her and took up her quill. She began to draw. Four pictures. One for each of the girls who had caused her so much misery. Heba, Anka, Nabeela, and Raful. The girls she had not been able to forgive but who, ultimately, had given her life back to her. She drew them dancing. Full of movement and grace. She drew them as beautifully and honestly as she could.

I would like to thank:

My editors, Lynne Missen and Kathryn Cole, for their expertise and inspiration

My agents, David and Lynn Bennett and Marie Campbell, for their support and guidance

Jan Andrews and Rachna Gilmore for their infinite patience in reading draft after draft

Rukhsana Khan for her help with matters concerning Islam

and the Canada Council for the grant that enabled me to do the necessary research for this book in Egypt

Shukran

After they set sail from Marseilles, nothing further was heard of Stephen and his followers for eighteen years. Then, in 1230, one of the young priests who had accompanied Stephen arrived back in France. He told of the storm that wrecked two of the ships, and of the children being sold into slavery at Bougie, on the Algerian coast, and Alexandria, in Egypt. Some young people had also been taken to Baghdad. There, the priest had heard, eighteen of them were killed for refusing to abandon their faith and accept Islam.

The priests and children who were sold in Egypt, and who could read and write, were more fortunate. There was a great interest at the time amongst the princes of Egypt in learning Western languages, so these literate members of Stephen’s ill-fated crusade found themselves being used as interpreters, teachers, and secretaries, and no attempt to convert them was made.

Slaves were treated well in the Muslim society of Egypt; most of the children sold there eventually made good lives for themselves. Of Stephen’s fate, however, nothing is known. I have taken the liberty of imagining the end to his story.

KARLEEN BRADFORD
2004

THE SCARLET CROSS

Turn the page for an excerpt

The next morning Stephen rose as the church bell announced Prime, the early morning prayers. Carefully, he stepped over Gil’s snoring body. He snatched up another crust of barley bread and a round of cheese that was only slightly moldy, then he opened the door and stepped out. It was early April and the day was still fresh and heavy with dew. He followed the clucking of a hen and pulled back the branches of a bush to find a newly laid egg. A treasure! He cradled it, still warm, in his hand, then carefullyput it in the pouch that dangled from the rope at his waist. He would make a fire when he reached the field and cook it. A feast, it would be, with the bread and cheese.

He opened the pen and hustled the sheep out. They were stupid with sleep and he had to throw clods of mud at them to get them moving. A dog. That was what he should have. A dog would be a great help. But his father had cuffed him even harder when he had suggested getting one.

“A dog!” he had cried. “Do you think us so rich that we could afford to feed such a beast? No, you wastrel. Tending the sheep is your job. Do not try to squirm out of it.”

Stephen had known better than to argue. But still, a dog would have helped. He would gladly have shared his own food with it. Perhaps he would not daydream so much if he had a dog to keep him company, to talk to during the long hours of the day.

He shrugged. It was not to be.

Several boys his own age passed by him, hoes and scythes over their shoulders. They would be on their way to the fields to work but he knew better than to call out a greeting to them, nor did they acknowledge him. Such was his father’s reputation for meanness, and his brother’s for bullying and thieving, that Stephen had never had any friends in the village. The tallest of theboys turned back. He was a lout named Yves who had delighted in harassing Stephen ever since childhood.

“A chicken was missing from our henhouse this morning,” he spat out. “And Pierre here saw your filthy brother hanging around our cottage after he left the tavern last night. You wouldn’t be likely to be having chicken in your pot this evening, now would you?”

Stephen flushed but, before he could answer, the boy turned away. Stephen bit his lip until he tasted blood. The worst of it was that the accusation might be true. Not that he would have even a sniff of the bird if it were. Gil and his father would finish it off long before he returned and his father would never question where it came from, either. It had happened before.

He threw another clod of mud at the sheep, a little too hard. It hit the lead sheep, the bell-weather, on her flanks. She looked back over her shoulder and gave him a black look.

“My apologies, my maid,” Stephen called out, then looked quickly after his tormentors. All he needed was for them to hear him apologizing to a sheep, but by great good fortune they were too far ahead by now.

He decided to take the sheep up to the high field this day. It was farther, and a steep climb, and the pasture was not as good, but this field inevitably drew him. Stories were told of a great battle that had taken place there between their own King Philip and the beast of England, King Richard, whom they called Lionheart. Once they had fought on the same side, those two great men, on one of the crusades that had failed to reclaim the holy city of Jerusalem for Christianity, but then, only a few years before Stephen had been born, they had fallen out and fought against each other in this very place. The grass was littered with helms that were battered beyond use, bent and twisted pieces of swords, broken lances, bits of rusted chain mail. And bones, too. Bones of horses. Bones of men. Stephen could almost imagine the scarlet flowers that bloomed in and around them to be drops of blood. He had often felt the presence of ghosts around him in that field.

As he climbed, the sun warmed him. The sheep followed the bell-weather on the narrow trail with hardly any urging on Stephen’s part. The bell on the ewe’s neck rang out with each step the animal took. The air here was so clear that the sound was sharp and clean. Stephen’s spirits began to lift. It was always so when he climbed to these heights. He turned to look back. The village below seemed so small. Smoke curled from chimneys, here and there a tiny figure moved—to the stream to fetch water, to the church to hear Mass. From this distance it looked peaceful and safe.

He turned away and drew a deep breath. The sky was bright blue with the hint of summer in it. Only a few clouds scudded by. Beneath his feet some herb released a sharp, pungent smell.

His mother would have known the name for that herb, he thought. On the rare occasions when Mattieu spoke of her, he nearly always told how knowledgeable she had been about herbs.

“The village women came to her for their remedies,” he said. “There wasn’t an illness she could not cure.”

From his father’s words and how he spoke Stephen could almost believe that his father had not had such a temper before his mother’s death. Certainly it seemed as if the women of the village had no fear of him then. And Gil, of course, would have been just a babe. It was hard for Stephen to think of his loutish brother as a small child hanging onto his mother’s skirts. Perhaps he had even been shy. Would the family have been a happy one if he had not taken his mother’s life when he was born? The thought laid guilt heavy upon him.

His father’s temper had driven the village women away, however, and their daughters avoided Gil and looked at him with contempt. There was no place for Stephen’s family in the village now. There was no place for him.

He shrugged again. Such thoughts only led to sadness. He pushed them away and took another deep breath. Then he stooped to pick a sprig of the herb and tuck it in the rope around his waist.

When he reached the field the sun was high. The sheep scattered and began grazing. Something caught his eye. He bent to pick up a fragment of a sword. Who had carried this, he wondered? What had been his fate?

Only last Sunday Father Martin had railed at the men in the congregation, accusing them of deserting God. Of forgetting about His holy city.

“The crusades must begin again!” he had cried. “Jerusalem is still lost to us!”

Stephen had sat, letting the priest’s words sink into him, fill him. He would not have forgotten. He would not have deserted God. Fighting for God must be the greatest act of faith a man could do!

Now he closed his eyes and again, in his mind, the noise of battle rose around him.

And then a voice cut through his imaginings.

“Come here, Stephen,” it said.