The Road to Damietta (19 page)

Aunt Sofia relaxed the rules and allowed us to talk during meals. She had a grand dinner with lentils and roasted ducks and served cups of a wine she had been saving for a happy occasion. Nicola's return was especially welcome to me, burdened as I was.

But in a few short months, Venice suffered a sudden and horrendous rout. The Fifth Crusade against the infidels, which had been talked about for a long time and which had already begun with a small foray against the Egyptian city of Damietta, burst upon us.

Crusaders came from hamlets, towns, cities, and provinces in Europe—princes and princesses, knights and priests, the strong and the feeble, villains and cutthroats. They pitched tents in San Marco Square, along the esplanade on the Grand Canal, and on the islands of the bay. They slept in alleys, in the holds of derelict ships. Gregorio made room in our warehouse for an English earl and his ten pikemen. Mother Sofia took in a French princess and her five ladies-in-waiting, shoving Nicola and me off to a dank hole in the far reaches of the monastery.

"Only for a week, my dear," she said when I told her that I couldn't work among bats, mice, and salamanders. "I can't refuse the handsome gift Princess Marianne has tendered us. The fleet has gathered. It will sail, I am told, within the month. Then you can return to your work."

But the fleet didn't sail in a month. Word came that Jean de Brienne of Champagne, son of Count Erard, who had assembled a fleet in Genoa and was supposed to be a leader in the crusade, had been replaced at the last moment by a cardinal from Rome. This caused confusion among the leaders in Venice, which was increased by the doge, who had made a bargain with the crusaders to put them safely ashore in the Holy Land.

When they insisted upon sailing to Egypt instead, to confront the sultan in his lair, the doge broke the bargain. Malik-al-Kamil, sultan of Egypt, was a business friend who favored Venetian ships above all others. The doge's ships carried silk and glassware to Egypt and returned with ivory, gold, and precious gems, making him and the merchants of Venice fabulously rich. Because of the risk to his friendship with Malik-al-Kamil, the doge demanded an additional sum, and after days of haggling the crusaders finally agreed to pay it.

Adding to the confusion, knights and priests and leading nobles were warring among themselves, seeking favors from the doge. Set into the walls of his palace were a dozen and more marble masks shaped in the form of lions' heads, each of the beasts having a wide slit for a mouth. If you wished to accuse someone—a relative, a rival in love, a beater of wives and children, usurers, givers of false promises, neighbors, a thief, a scoundrel—you wrote out a note of denunciation and slipped it into the appropriate mouth, unsigned.

On the other side of the slits, within the palace, sat an army of the commune's spies, ready and anxious to punish the accused. It was not a difficult task, since to escape punishment the accused must give proof of his innocence.

Whenever I passed this row of forbidding masks, their mouths worn thin by many notes through countless years, I was always impressed by the number at the scene. But now that the nobles and knights were quarreling among themselves for preference, the place was far busier than before. A long line of complainants reached from the palace to San Marco Square.

Hundreds grew discouraged at the delay, packed their belongings, and went home, including Princess Marianne. The day she left, Nicola and I moved back to our rooms and resumed work on the
Guide for the Perplexed,
burning candles well into the night, rising at dawn to make up for the hours lost.

It was shortly before nones, six days after we moved out of the doghole, when I was called to the door. My brother Rinaldo stood on the steps, blinking in the sun. He was dressed in the garb of a crusader, a red cross on the breast of his travel-stained tunic, armed with dagger and sword. Behind him stood three young men similarly garbed.

"We are here asking for help," he said with a courtly bow, as if I were some precious damsel and not his sister. "The streets overflow. We'll be swept into the sea with the next tide unless we find shelter."

I beckoned Aunt Sofia, who let them in but quartered them in the dank doghole in the far end of the monastery.

That evening, however, she had a special table prepared in the courtyard and asked them to partake of supper. She was keenly interested in the crusade. Indeed, during the past weeks as the hordes gathered in Venice, she had invited a chosen few to supper, notably Prince Rupert of Moravia and the Marquis de Tocqueville, who brought with him a brace of fat pigs and a goat as well as a retinue of ten.

Rinaldo and his noblemen friends appeared in the best of spirits, freshly bathed, with hair curled in ringlets. It was Friday, and usually on that day we ate cabbage and crusts, but on this occasion Aunt Sofia served eel, sea fish, and caramel custard. Hungry after the long journey, the men finished the food on their plates without speaking, but after the custard one of the noblemen said, "In Assisi there is a spate of rumors, concocted and passed along embellished."

"We've had a spring of rumors," Aunt Sofia said. "But word came Monday last that can be believed. It came from a fleet of pearlers fishing off the island of Crete. According to the captain, King Jean de Brienne, Leopoldo, duke of Austria, and William of Holland have sailed from the port of Acre with two hundred ships."

"Bound whither?" Rinaldo asked.

"To Damietta."

"Damietta?"

"A city at the mouth of the Nile River," Mother Sofia explained. She taught algebra and geography to the young nuns and to those of the older nuns who were ignorant. "Three of our sisters have made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, traveling through Damietta. If you wish to know more about this city, they will be most happy to inform you."

Rinaldo nodded, uninterested, and turned to me with the welcome news that the family was well. Not until we were alone after supper did he divulge the real news.

"Tomorrow, at last, you will be on your way home. Our caravan leaves the warehouse at noon. There'll be an escort, of course, and comforts. The weather is fine. You will be greeted warmly at home. Everyone has missed you. I trust that you missed them as much. Also, that you have learned a lesson or two."

I had learned nothing. Nothing except that I couldn't live without Francis Bernardone. I waited now for news of him, as I had waited many times before.

"There'll be an array of knights to greet you," Rinaldo said. "Since you're no longer a gawky child, your madness has come to an end." He paused. "And Bernardone the barefooted mendicant will not be there to tempt you further."

Where was he? Where? Could something have happened? Was he dead? My throat tightened. Moments passed. I framed a
lie and calmly said, "I have heard that Francis Bernardone is in the Holy Land. Mother Sofia spoke of this only yesterday."

"Little good he'll do in the Holy Land. Imagine, if you can, a weaponless crusader, facing the infidels with a begging bowl. But enough of the clown. I remind you, be at the warehouse no later than noon."

As he started away, suspicion caught my breath. Francis Bernardone was not in the Holy Land. He was here in the city of Venice. He was waiting, like thousands of others, for the fleet to sail. For what other reason would I be summoned home on a moment's notice? Why else would Rinaldo insist upon my being at the warehouse promptly at noon?

"It's not possible to leave tomorrow," I called after him. "There's a book to take to the bindery. And other things I need to do."

He returned to where I stood. "At noon tomorrow," he said, "you'll be at the warehouse, as your father wishes."

While we were making ready for bed that night, having
said my prayers, I asked Nicola if she had thought of joining the new crusade. The nightgown she was half into fell to the floor and she stared at me with startled eyes.

"No," she cried, "not again!" She picked up her gown, slipped it over her head, and kept staring. "You're not, are you? Yes, you are, I can tell by your face, by your voice, by everything..."

"Who said I was going?"

"No one."

"Then don't worry."

She crawled into bed and disappeared under the blanket. After a long silence she mumbled, "I shouldn't tell you."

I pulled back the covers. "Tell me what?"

"One of the sisters, Sister Angela, saw him in San Marco today. Inside the church, on his knees, praying,"

"Saw whom?"

"Francis Bernardone. But don't you dare follow him to Egypt. You'll be sick and die out there in the desert." She sat up in bed and began to shiver. "Promise you won't go."

"I promise," I said, to calm her.

Dreading tearful farewells, I left the monastery before dawn, as the bells rang for lauds, and quietly made my way to the warehouse. Arriving there well before noon, I was greeted warmly by Rinaldo, who was still in crusader's garb although he had come to Venice only to take me home. At midafternoon we were on our way in the wake of gondolas stacked with merchandise, and by nightfall we had reached the salt meadow, where the goods were unloaded and made ready to reload in the morning.

After supper I went to my tent—the same one I had used on the journey to Venice. It was pitched among the other tents, next to Rinaldo's. I got into bed and waited. Instead of hiding in the city and taking the chance of being caught, I deemed it best to go through this charade and thus put him off my track.

Near midnight, as the fog began to settle, I walked quietly out of the camp, through the meadow, and to the canal. I had to wait until dawn for a gondola. The problem then was where to hide in Venice.

"If you wished to go someplace where no one could find you, where would it be?" I asked the gondolier, an old man bent double by years of wielding an oar.

The man thought as he pushed the long black oar against the current.

We went under the Rialto bridge, then through the heart of the doge's fleet, stretched along the Grand Canal. The gondola was covered with a canopy and little could be seen of the men who crowded the ships, but I saw enough to tell me that the fleet was making ready to sail.

"I know a place, but don't expect too much," he said, turning into a narrow canal bordered on both sides by abandoned shacks.

The canal ended shortly on a mud flat. A derelict hulk lay keeled over at an angle, half sunk in mud. A seagull was sitting on the stump of a mast.

"When the tide is low," he warned me, "you can't go ashore because of the mud. This happens only twice each day, however. When the tide's high, you can tie a flag to the mast, a petticoat—anything will do—and I'll come and gather you up."

Not bothering to go aboard, I paid a week's rent and, wrapped in my heavy traveling cloak, was rowed to the San Marco landing. San Marco's main door was blocked by a shouting mob, so I used the small door beyond it. The church was bursting with crusaders, kneeling on the stones, weapons at their sides, in the white tunics marked by red crosses.

I was certain that Francis was among them. He had to be. I searched their ranks for a modest robe. At last I found it before the altar, in the midst of resplendent figures clothed in churchly gold and lace.

The painted angels fluttered down from the vault and surrounded me. My head went round and round in giddy circles. I
would have fallen had I not been held up by a solid wall of crusaders.

A sermon was given, which I didn't listen to. Then after another sermon, a long one, Francis came to the altar and raised his hands in a benediction. Speaking quietly but with passion, his eyes glowing, he said:

"My dear sons, so that you may fulfill the commandments of God, look to the health of your souls and see that there is peace and concord among you. Flee from envy, the beginning of the road to destruction. Be patient in tribulation, humble in success, and thus always in the battles that come be the victor. Be imitators of Christ in obedience and chastity. May God guard you always in the trying days ahead."

As the service ended I was swept away, out into the square, by a stampeding mob. I caught my breath and went back into the church and down the aisle. At the altar I called his name. He didn't recognize my voice. Shielding his eyes from the altar lamps, he glanced down at me.

"Ricca," I said.

He seemed puzzled, as though he had never heard the name before.

"Ricca di Montanaro," I cried.

I waited for an answer. None came. He turned away and for a time I lost sight of him. Then he was coming toward me, walking with the same lithesome step I remembered. Then he was beside me. Wordlessly, I fell to my knees at his feet.

"Ricca di Montanaro, of course, of course," he said. "You're not here for the pope's crusade?" His voice sounded reproving.

I jumped up. It was always this way. One minute I was fainting at his feet, the next moment I was angry with him.

"Why not?" I demanded.

"Judging from your letters, you are not much given to Christian thought," he said, so gently it angered me the more.

"In the old days," I reminded him, "you yourself were not much given to Christian thought. I recall those days and nights very well."

"You shouldn't," he said with a smile.

"Why? Because you are now a saint? Because people speak of you, I hear, as Saint Francis of Assisi? I also hear that The-ophanes, the most famous painter in Venice, traveled all the way to Assisi to paint your picture."

His smile faded. He looked at me in a way that wrung my heart, like a child who has been wrongfully accused. I wanted to clasp him in my arms. And I would have done so had it not been for a pig that came down the aisle, chased by a gang of red-faced crusaders, then circled the walls and fled squealing from the church and into San Marco Square.

"Return to Assisi; you are needed there," Francis said. "Your dear friend Clare has done wonders but she needs help."

My dear friend Clare di Scifi. Dear, indeed!

"Dozens of girls and women, many you know, have joined her. Yet she's in need of workers. The task is great."