A Stolen Tongue (29 page)

“Ser Niccolo, this is all my fault. If only I had known!” I am on the verge of very real nervous tears. Perhaps my distress communicates itself to him.

“It's not your fault, Friar. It is just unbelievably stupid.” The translator lets out a slow breath, looks around him as if noticing his surroundings for the first time. “So this is how I finally see the famous Sepulchre?”

“If only the stone would be rolled away once more, to let you out! I am so sorry, Ser Niccolo.”

“There is nothing to be done,” he says tightly. “A caravan leaves next week. I've gotten so used to rushing, I forget there's no longer any need.”

I relax a little. My urgency on his behalf was much greater than his own—but, after all, what
was
the rush with Arsinoë buried on the shore of Joppa? Then I remember.

“Peter,” I say.

“Peter.” Niccolo had forgotten. I feel his swift panic. The bones are with Peter.

What was I thinking? I've locked Niccolo inside but left her body in the hands of an erratic apostate. I can only pray he will protect them.

“Will he steal your things?” I can barely hear my voice through the throbbing in my head.

Niccolo is silent for a moment. “He knows I'll always find him.”

I'm not sure if that's meant as a reassurance, but I try to take it as one. After all, Peter has had the opportunity to steal them ever since they disappeared from Arsinoë's cabin on Saint John's Eve.

To take our minds off the Mameluke, I suggest we walk through the Holy Church. I want to resuscitate the reverence I felt last night, but all I see are despoiled mosaics, the Virgin Mary's tiled limbs pried
up for souvenirs, her Son's face acned with graffiti. Most pilgrims don't even bother with the procession tonight. They lounge around in knots of six and seven, gossiping over rice puddings and bottles of contraband Cretan wine.

“... Agincourt, when I was only thirteen . . .”

“My mother used to make it—just take day-old rice, a handful of raisins, sugar....”

“Back home there are no fleas in the churches. Back home the fleas stay on the dogs. . . . I wish we were home....”

The hoots of laughter, the audacious snores. I see a cluster of nobles kneeling and snickering together by the Stone of Christ's Anointing. When I look closer, I notice one is chipping his initials into the rock. Unheeded by them, a battle is brewing over whose turn it is to say mass on that spot. Pilgrim priests swear at one another and tear at the surplice, pulling it in five directions at once, slapping each other like girls. I blush to see them carry on so, each determined to say mass at Christ's tomb so he may boast of it back home.

Yet, how am I any better, inviting a murderer and a thief into His temple? Mary of Egypt, even in her days of debauched prostitution, still trembled and went limp before the doors of this holy place. A depraved whore showed more reverence than I, one who has consecrated his life to God.

“You look ill, Friar. Would you like to rest?”

“If you don't mind, I'll leave you for a while and make the round of holy sites. I feel I should repent the sin of presumption that made a fool of me and stranded you here.”

“I understand,” Niccolo says. “I'll take a look around myself.”

I make my circuit, praying halfheartedly at each shrine. All I want is to sit in the dark, but I can't bear returning to Saint Helena's Chapel, where this disgraceful plan was hatched. No matter where I pray, John the Archdeacon kneels pointedly in my line of vision, obviously waiting for me to explain myself. I know he is furious, but having him upbraid me is equally unbearable right now. Instead, I walk to Calvary, where the Crucifixion stone juts up like a
shrugged shoulder, drop to my knees, and bury my arms and head in the empty socket as far as they will go.

It is dark in here. And sweet. I smell the myrrh from where Christ's True Cross once filled this hole, even as my own breath bounces off the rock, hot and melony. If I never emerge, I could start a whole new order of Reverse Stylites—monks who burrow in the postholes of pillars rather that perching atop them. Men who direct their asses toward Heaven while they bury their brains.

A little lamplight filters in through my armpits. Inside, the socket is a flickering topographical map of shields and crosses, names and dates. I run my fingers over the trenches.
Here, Christ died for me: Johann Niebur, Frisia, 1413. Here, Christ died for me: Guy de Lorraine, 1101. Here, Christ died for me: Julia Maximilla. My
name lives now where Christ died, so that all may know He died, not for humanity, but for
me,
and
me,
and
me
. As I'm backing out, I notice, in hasty red chalk, Christ also died for Ursus Tucher, Swabia, 1483.

Lord Tucher's confession must have stirred his conscience, for he, unlike most, is sunk in prayer, bent low against the Edicule. Ursus, I don't immediately see, until I notice another red autograph on the Center of the World. He's talking to Ser Niccolo.

“Friar!” Ursus shouts when he sees me. “Tell Ser Niccolo what you told us when we were locked in last night. About all the other places where there's no shadow at noon.”

Ser Niccolo's face is absolutely unreadable. Involuntarily, I begin to tremble, brothers.

“Our friar is the smartest monk alive, Ser Niccolo,” says Ursus. “He knows all about Germany and Italy, Jerusalem and Egypt. He wants to cross the desert, but Father won't let him.”

“Is that so, Friar Felix?”

“Is what so? That I want to cross the desert, or that I'm the smartest monk alive?”

“Obviously you're not the latter. Why do you want so badly to cross the desert?”

“To save Saint Katherine.” I feel my chin tremble. I am not afraid.

“She needs saving?” The translator's eyes are pinpricks.

“Ursus, will you excuse Ser Niccolo and myself? We need to have a grown-up talk.”

He looks between us, confused. “What did I do?”

“And give me the chalk.” I hold out my hand. Reluctantly, he deposits it and sidles away.

“Now suppose you tell me why you trapped me here?” Ser Niccolo says through clenched teeth.

We step into the Prison Where Christ Was Confined Before the Crucifixion, a darksome cell, having no windows and only one small altar. Four thin new candles have been stuck in the sand, wedged in between hundreds of melted stubs.

“I won't let you kidnap her.”

“Who?”

“Don't pretend. I know everything: the kidnapping, the lies, the murders. I didn't believe it at first, but now I know.”

“What do you think you know, Friar?” He towers over me, and my left leg shakes uncontrollably. I put my weight on it, but the shiver leaps to my voice.

“That you are a liar. You said they were cow bones, but they are not! You are holding Saint Katherine hostage.”

He shoves me into the candles, and I slide to the floor.

“Goddamn it!” Niccolo slams his fist hard against the hewn wall, pounds it like a mortal foe. I tense my knees, ready to kick when he turns that rage on me. A female pilgrim sticks her head into the chapel, sees one man sprawled on the floor, another in tears, and abruptly leaves. My shoulder aches from the fall. Oblivious, Niccolo turns.

“I don't know why you'd believe that of me, Friar. Have I shown myself to be a fanatic in any way? Have I seen visions, heard voices? I am a scholar, Friar. I'm no bone merchant.”

I see the resemblance between brother and sister now that he stands accused. Arsinoë's wide flashing eyes, her shallow breath, her strong, dewy forehead.

He regrets his eruption. “Did I hurt you?”

I shake my head.

He takes up the narrow yellow taper that fell at my feet and replaces it in its tray. I watch it sag and melt into the other stubs.

“I lied to you, Friar,” Niccolo says. “I don't know what those bones are. The men and women who brought them believed they were real; they certainly paid enough for them. My sister believed they were real. As for myself, I just don't know. How many believers does it take?”

This chapel is so small, I feel like I'm sitting in an upended coffin. The guards used to give prisoners who waited here for execution a special cup of wine. It was unmixed, to get them drunk so they wouldn't mind Death so much when it came.

“It doesn't work that way, Ser Niccolo,” I say at last. “A body is either a saint's or it is not.”

“You forget, I rescue saints' lives, Friar.” He shakes his head. “I translate their stories where I find them. How many times have I read of holy greed: two towns claiming possession of the same saint's body? They scream, they argue, they write false histories; one says the saint was born in his town; the other claims he died in
his
. They are ready to tear the coveted body to shreds when lo! the saint, not to disappoint either town, provides a second body! Which is then real? Does Saint Nobody now have two right hands and twenty toes? Or did some clever monk sneak into the local graveyard, unearth his uncle who died of the pox, and put him in the saint's coffin? Does it matter? Does God not work miracles around
both
bodies? Are both towns not happy?”

“This is not about happiness, Ser Niccolo,” I cry. “This is about Truth. If, as you say, a common man might falsely become a saint, does it follow by the same reasoning that my bride, one of the most powerful saints in Christendom, will become a cow? Relics are not abstractions to be played with by sophists. They are the living splinters of Heaven. They have shape and heft and presence in the physical world. They are true
or
false; not true because we say so, or false because we deny them.”

“Who found Saint Katherine's body, Friar?” Ser Niccolo asks me.

“What are you talking about?”

“Who found it and how?”

“You know as well as I do,” I chide. “A desert hermit had a dream that led him to climb Mount Sinai. There he found the body of a young woman floating in a pool of oil, and God said to him, ‘Behold. The first Katherine.' And God revealed to him the story of her martyrdom.”

“And he was one man?”

“Yes,” I snap.

“And his proof of her identity was his dream?”

“What are you getting at?” I ask.

“Only that it is possible for a single clever man to take up an alphabet of bones and translate Heaven. This lone hermit, while other monks were busy supplicating the known crowd, climbed a mountain, found a skeleton, and put a skin on it.
His
dream alone gave us Katherine's wheel, her milk, her Defeat of the Fifty Philosophers. Once he provided her history, his job was done; he walked back into the desert from which he came, secure that no matter how her body was broken up, each limb would be called Katherine, the name
he
gave her, knowing that should each limb be smashed to dust, every particle would still have once been strapped to
his
wheel, beheaded by
his
sword, and translated to
his
mountain.”

Ser Niccolo's eyes glow in the candlelight.

“There must be nothing in the world so exciting as finding a blank saint.” He sighs.

“Your sister told me you were jealous,” I counter. “That you couldn't bear not having Heaven speak directly to you.”

“What did Heaven gain my sister?” the translator asks. “The only power she ever had in this life lay in giving herself away. Nobody wanted Arsinoë. They only wanted the saint that spoke through her.”

“Yourself included?”

Ser Niccolo studies his hands. “I lived in a house with a body part. It was hard to love the tongue as much as I loved the words that fell from it.”

Constantine clung to Arsinoë to keep from drowning; John pursued her to assuage his guilt. I try to see Arsinoë as that little girl in a big house, measuring herself against her saint, but the Katherine she presses herself against is a rosy German fräulein, a Katherine for me.

“Don't feel sorry for her, Felix.” Niccolo stands and paces the small room. “My sister understood what true saints understand: that a person cannot live in Heaven until the self is annihilated on earth. It's the law of translation: One language must die to be reborn in the next.”

“She wanted to die,” I say.

“You are only fortunate she died before she could put her mad plan into effect,” Niccolo says. “Had she escaped with those bones, all the priests and scholars and young girls of the world would have found themselves without a patroness.”

“Arsinoë told me she believed Katherine wanted to return to her monastery at Sinai,” I say.

“Oh, Friar, how like a monk you think!” Niccolo laughs. “My sister believed Saint Katherine wanted to go
home
. Not back to a comfortable crypt to be venerated by pilgrims. She wanted to return to oblivion, hidden in the desert, lost forever, as my sister believed God wanted her.”

“She wants to make Saint Katherine disappear?” I ask, suddenly more nauseated than I have ever been in my life. Oh, God, what have I turned loose on the world?

“Why do you think I went to all this trouble to get her back? If Arsinoë had reached Mount Sinai, Saint Katherine's body would have vanished as abruptly as it first appeared.”

“Felix!”

I look up. John is panting in the doorway.

“What's wrong?”

“You have to come with me.”

“I can't right now, John.”

“Felix. It's serious.”

Niccolo extinguishes the dying candles on Christ's altar with sand.

“I'll be right back,” I tell him.

After the chapel's midnight, I am blinded by the wheel of candles hanging from the Anastasis. An angry crowd has gathered around the Edicule. Father Guardian is furious.

“It is a crime against God and your fellow pilgrims, and not one of you can plead ignorance because the rules have been read to you now three times.”