Angeline (4 page)

What if she were sold to someone far less kind? Many of the other concubines in the harem were quick to slap or find fault with the other slave girls there; Angeline could not suppose they would treat a slave of their own any better. She was caged in with these women as surely as if she had been bound and thrown into a prison.

Underlying all these worries was one thought that kept pushing itself into her mind, no matterhow hard she tried to stave it off. What if she were never to see Stephen again? She would not be able to bear that. He had been her constant companion for months. She had come to depend on him for everything, but he had been so despairing—had Father Martin been able to comfort him?

He was all she had left—she could not lose him!

Zahra woke with the mid-afternoon call to prayer and made ready to work. To distract Aza and keep her amused, she handed the child a quill and some scraps of spoiled parchment. Aza immediately began to fill the pages with scribbles, dribbling as much ink over herself as onto the parchment. Zahra laughed and held the ink bottle out to Angeline. Angeline hastened to take it and help guide Aza’s hand more accurately.

To Angeline’s amazement, she discovered that the pages were not parchment made from the skins of animals, but something much finer. Seeing her curiosity, Zarah gave her a quill as well. Angeline took it hesitantly, unsure as to whether Zahra really meant for her to draw, too. She had sometimes drawn pictures for her mother on old discarded skins with charcoal from the fire, however, and she knew she had a talent for it. It had given her and her mother both much merriment. At Zahra’s nod of encouragement, she drew a cat for Aza. It was much easier to work on this fine paper than on the rough skins. The child looked at the cat and crowed with delight. She pushed the paper back to Angeline, saying a word over and over. Angeline could not understand her, but it was obvious what she meant.

“More. More.”

Angeline drew the white birds that she had seen swooping along the riverbanks. Then she drew a donkey and some sheep. She drew a camel, but could not properly remember what those beasts looked like and Aza laughed at it. Then she drew the awesome beast that had slithered into the water after their boat. She drew only its eyes above the water and a swirl where the tail was. She made it as fierce as she could and Aza screamed in mock terror. Without realizing it, Angeline began to enjoy the play.

When Aza tired of this, Angeline sat her down and made her understand with hand gestures that she wanted her to sit still. This Aza managed to do,but only for a moment. Angeline swiftly sketched the child’s face. She had never before attempted to capture anyone’s features and she watched her work develop with astonishment as, with what seemed almost like a will of their own, her fingers flew over the paper. There were Aza’s eyes looking out at her, Aza’s mouth smiling at her.

Aza could not wait to see what Angeline had drawn. Before the drawing was finished, she tore the page from Angeline’s hands and pranced over to Zahra with it. Zahra gave the drawing a glance, then looked at it more sharply. She looked back up at Angeline. She gave a quick nod and said something that sounded like praise. In spite of herself, Angeline felt a small surge of pride.

For just a few moments Angeline had forgotten where she was, even forgotten Stephen and Father Martin, but when Aza settled down to playing with a few beads and trinkets in a box that Zahra gave her, everything flooded back.

She watched Zahra working. The woman wrote with a fierce concentration, brow furrowed and the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. How could Angeline make her understand that she had to find out what had happened to Stephen? She had to see him!

“My God has betrayed me,” he had said. How could he possibly utter such words? Hewho had had such faith. Such blinding belief. She remembered the nights they had sat together by their fire after he had preached to his followers. On those nights they had talked long into the darkness, and on one of them he had told her about his vision—although he did not believe it to be a vision.

“It was not a man who came to me in that field,” he had said. “It was the Christ Himself.”

“How did you know?” Angeline had asked him, hardly daring to whisper the question.

“I knew,” Stephen had answered. “I looked into His face and I knew.”

He had not wavered in his purpose, not even when King Philip had refused to help him. She closed her eyes and could see him right now, hear his words as clearly as if he spoke them in this room at this very moment.

“I made a vow to God,” Stephen had said. “I left my sheep. I left my father. I left my brother. I left everything I had ever known to follow God’s will.”

But had it really been God’s will that hundreds—thousands—of children and young people should die along the way?

“They are with God,” Father Martin and the other priests had said. “It is not for us to question the will of God.”

But Angeline did question. She wrapped herarms around herself and shivered with the remembrance of the days and nights of cold and hunger. The avarice and predation of most of the adults who had joined them. Joined them not to liberate Jerusalem, but to prey on the children. To use them and abuse them, to sell them, even, to the villagers in the towns they passed through. She herself had narrowly escaped injury. She shuddered at that memory.

It had happened one day when she had nearly swooned with hunger. She had stumbled over to a rock and sunk down upon it. Stephen had been ahead of her; he had not noticed that she had fallen back. She had stared after him, about to call out, but she was too weak even to do that. She would rest a while, she had thought, then catch them up. They disappeared around a bend in the road. It had made her anxious to see them go, but she could not summon the strength to follow. She closed her eyes. Then she heard laughter.

A group of men and women had been coming down the road toward her. The woman were loud and slovenly. They were laughing at jokes the men were making. Angeline heard and cringed at the coarseness of their talk. She had closed her eyes again and gathered into herself, waiting for them to pass, but they did not pass. The voices, the laughter, surrounded her and did not go away.

She winced now at the memory of the rough hand on her shoulder. Before she could shake it off she had been pushed to the ground and a heavy, panting man threw himself down upon her.

“Now we shall have some sport!” he had cried.

She felt stones crushing into her spine. She beat at him with her fists, but he only laughed all the more. Desperately, she had looked to the faces surrounding her. The women, surely they would help her! She had cried out, but they laughed even louder than the men. Their faces swam in her vision, they melted into each other. She heard a roaring in her ears, a black mist rose behind her eyes. She felt the man’s hands upon her, tearing at her shift.

And then a voice. A voice thundering with rage. The man who had her pinned to the ground cried out as a stick struck his back.

“Be off with you! Swine! Worse than swine! Be off with you, I say!”

Father Martin, a towering figure of rage, was striking out at first one and then another of the men.

Black crow indeed, she had thought, irrationally, as the darkness closed in upon her.

When she had come to her senses, Father Martin was bathing her forehead with water. A circle of frightened children’s faces stared downat her. Stephen knelt beside her, his face stricken and white. He looked older than Father Martin.

“I thought you to be dead!” he had cried.

That night Stephen himself had made up a thin soup for her. It was no more than water with a few roots and herbs thrown in, but it had revived her somewhat. He had stayed with her until all the others were asleep.

“Are you certain you are all right?” he had asked, over and over. “You are not hurt?”

“I am well,” Angeline had answered.

But she had not been well. She was sick to her soul. Dominic was dead. Yves and Marc were dead. All who had started out with them were gone. And more. So many, many more.

Stephen had seemed to know what she was thinking. She remembered now how he had dropped his head into his hands. How his shoulders shook.

“It was not supposed to be like this,” he had whispered. “It was not supposed to be like this.”

She did not wonder that Stephen despaired. Only, she wanted to go to him now. To help him.

She opened her eyes and looked again at Zahra. Somehow she must make her understand. Slowly, she got to her feet and walked over to the woman. She stood beside her, unsure of what to do next. Zahra, suddenly aware ofher, looked up. She frowned, obviously annoyed at being interrupted.

“Stephen,” Angeline said. “My friend …”

Zahra stopped her with a short, quick word. She pointed back to Aza and, with a wave of her hand, indicated that Angeline should go back to the child.

“But I must see him …” Angeline persisted, knowing even as she spoke that it was useless.

Zahra snapped out another word, now clearly angry at the interruption. Angeline clamped her mouth shut and returned to Aza. She would be silent for now; she had no choice. But she would try again. And again. Until somehow she could make her need to see Stephen known. She had to.

The child clambered onto Angeline’s knee, put her finger in her mouth, and nestled her head into Angeline’s neck. She cuddled Aza close to her and buried her face in the child’s hair. Just so had she held poor, small Dominic on the night before he died. The youngest of all the children he had been, and one of the first to join the crusade.

Samah returned to fetch Aza before the evening prayer. Then it was time for Angeline to go for Zahra’s meal. She set the tray on the low table and looked at Zahra warily, but Zahra seemed to have recovered from her annoyance. She looked up and said a word that by now seemed familiar to Angeline.

“Shukran.”

Perhaps it meant “thank you.”

Zahra beckoned Angeline over to her work table. Angeline would have dearly loved to disobey, but she knew she could not. Stifling her bitterness, she moved to stand beside Zahra. What order would she give now? But, to Angeline’s surprise, Zahra did not want anything. Instead, she wrote some symbols down on another scrap of paper, then handed the quill to Angeline and indicated that she should copy them.

Suspicious, but curious as well, Angeline set the quill to the paper and copied the symbols as best she could. Zahra seemed pleased. She pointed to the characters Angeline had copied and repeated the word. “Shukran.” Angeline realized that must be what she had written. She stared at it. She had written a word!

After the meal, Zahra returned to her work. She gave Angeline no further orders. At a loss for something to do, Angeline picked up her quill again and began to draw the faces of the four slave girls. She warmed to her task—it was one way of letting out the frustration and anger thatfilled her to such an extent that she felt she must explode with it. She gave the girls such sour expressions that they looked like the ugliest of old crones. Serves them right, she thought. She made Anka especially ugly.

But all the time she kept sneaking looks at the word she had written. She had written a
word.
She could read it. She wanted to do more.

The next day, after Zahra had broken her fast, Angeline resolved to find out where Stephen was and how he fared. She
had
to or she would go mad. She could not just go about her day-to-day duties without knowing where he was or how he was being treated. Somehow, she would have to make Zahra understand. She was just about to speak when Samah appeared in the doorway. Before Angeline could say anything, Zahra motioned to her to follow the servant woman. Angeline hesitated, but Samah snatched at her arm, and with a vicious pinch, hurried her out the door. There was nothing for it but to follow.

Samah led Angeline down the passageway to a different part of the house. They went through an opening covered with a hanging tapestry and Angeline found herself walking along a balconythat ran around the upper floor. It surrounded an inner courtyard that was open to the sky. Angeline was instantly alert. This was the first time she had been in any part of the house other than the women’s quarters.

The courtyard was filled with flowers and lush bushes. A vine starred with white flowers climbed up to the balcony and encircled around it. The blossoms gave off a heady, heavy sweet perfume. A fountain stood in the centre; water cascaded down from it into a pool. Cobbled walks spread out from the fountain to each corner where fringe-leaved trees gave shade to benches set beneath them. Small, brilliantly coloured birds flashed in and out of the trees like living jewels. A cat lay draped on one of the benches, watching them idly and soaking up the sun. An old man dug in a flower bed; a boy worked beside him. Angeline glanced at them, then drew in her breath with a gasp. Surely that boy … Yes! It … was!

“Stephen!” she cried.

Stephen looked up, startled. Samah hissed in anger. She grabbed Angeline and wrenched her away from the balcony railing. At the same time she gave Angeline a slap that sent her head reeling. Before Angeline could recover her senses, she had been pulled through another doorway that led off the balcony and down yet anotherstaircase. At the bottom of this, Angeline saw the door through which they had been brought into the house. A slave sprang to open it. Samah pulled her through and Angeline found herself back in the street. She had time for no more than one anguished backward glance before Samah tugged her on.

But she had seen him. That old man must have been the gardener Zeid had said Stephen was to work with. She had seen Stephen! And she would again, she vowed. In her mind she retraced the path they had taken from the women’s quarters to that balcony. One way or another, she would find the means to get back there.

When the door shut behind them they were immediately plunged back into the noisy chaos of the city. Angeline ducked as a cart rumbled past. She had no idea where they were going. She picked her way carefully through the filth as Samah led her along narrow streets paved with stones. However resentful she was at being forced into slavery, she had grown fond of her bright red slippers and did not want to soil them.

There was no thought of escape here. Where would she go? She was already so confused that she would not even have been able to find her way back to the Emir’s house. Dwellings crowded on either side of the street, many with balconies that overhung the roadway. Shedodged donkeys pulling carts and bell-laden camels carrying water up from the river. Samah forged ahead, oblivious to the people she elbowed out of her way. She made a turn and they were in a market. The streets were wider here, lined on both sides with stalls. Vendors shouted out their wares; customers shouted back. At the far end Angeline could see the minarets of another mosque rising up to the sky.