Crossing To Paradise (6 page)

Armed
men, buffoons, cornmongers, dung-men, eagle-eyed stallholders, friars, fortune-tellers, fish merchants, guards, hook-nosed Romans, ironmongers, Jewish moneylenders: a whole alphabet of people swarmed round Gatty and the other pilgrims as they picked their way out of London.

At dawn, Gatty had thought the city was too empty, too quiet, but now it seemed too crowded and noisy. She was glad to cross London Bridge, and to feel the wind fingering her scalp, pawing her left cheek. She was glad to leave seething, thieving London.

On the far side of the bridge, a group of children, twenty at least, were sitting on the ground, and a man with a tricorn hat was talking to them. The boys cheered, the girls jeered and then they all began to prod and push one another. The other pilgrims ignored them, but Gatty reined in.

“Not only that,” the man called out. “Your tummies often rumble! You often fart!”

Again the boys cheered and the girls jeered.

“And as soon as you've been washed,” the man went on, “you make yourselves ab-so-lute-ly filthy!”

More cheers, more jeers. But before Gatty could find out why the man should choose to talk to children, and deliberately make them laugh, something she'd never once come across before, Everard rode up.

“Are you trying to get lost again?” he demanded in his squeaky voice.

“Sshh!” said Gatty. “He's telling jokes.”

“Lady Gwyneth says you're to come at once.”

For some while after that, Gatty, Lady Gwyneth and Nest rode three abreast: Lady Gwyneth silently mouthing words as she told her rosary, Nest sometimes sighing and rearranging at her gown, Gatty still wondering about the man and the group of children, and rather indignant she had no chance to find out what was going on.

“My lady,” said Gatty after a while, “I don't know how to say it exactly, but is our pilgrimage a kind of story?”

Lady Gwyneth reached up and played with a strand of her fair hair that had escaped her wimple. “Yes,” she said hesitantly. “In a way it is. An unfinished story.”

“And inside it,” said Gatty, “there are parts of other stories, aren't there. I mean, how did the stablemaster train Solomon? Any why was that woman throwing the cabbage at that man? All those children on London Bridge? What were they laughing at?”

“I don't know,” said Lady Gwyneth.

“That's it,” said Gatty. “We stepped into their story, and out of it again. We never will.”

Lady Gwyneth nodded. “That's how the story of a pilgrimage is,” she said. “Because we have to move on each day. But all the stories we step into become part of our own story. Our pilgrimage.”

“The parts we know do,” said Gatty.

Once again, Gatty and Syndod began to drift, to fall back, until they were at least a stone's throw behind the other pilgrims. Then two young men mounted on rather mangy ponies trotted up and fell into step with her.

“I'm John,” said one of them. “He's Geoff. Going to Canterbury, are we?”

Thinking about him later, all Gatty could remember distinctly were his sharp, dark eyes. That, and the way his tunic was open at the neck. The blades of his shoulders.

“Where?” said Gatty.

“Canterbury.”

“What's Canterbury?”

John grinned. “You having us on or something?”

“Either that,” said Geoff, “or…” He tapped his temple with his right forefinger.

“I'm not,” said Gatty loudly. “I'm with Lady Gwyneth. I'm her chamber-servant.”

“What about Becket?” John asked her. “Heard of Becket?”

Gatty shook her head.

“You've got a scarlet cross on your shoulder and a staff in your hand,” said Geoff, “and you're on the highway to Canterbury, but you've never heard of Canterbury or Becket. It doesn't add up.”

“She's just a pretty face,” said John.

Then the two young men told Gatty how Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, had been hacked down by four knights in his own cathedral on a dark day in December only thirty-two years before; and how, after touching his tomb, a dumb boy was able to speak for the first time in his life, and an old cripple threw away her crutches and skipped like a lamb.

“Since then,” said Geoff, “there's been a miracle each week.”

“What you going to Canterbury for?” Gatty asked.

Then John and Geoff told Gatty they were pilgrims, hired by rich people too old or too sick to travel themselves, or hired by the dead.

“How can the dead hire you?” Gatty asked.

“In their wills,” said John. “To pray for their souls at the Shrine of Saint Thomas or Our Lady of Walsingham. To pave their way to heaven with prayers. We're doing double duty—praying for a salty old sea captain who died last week, and a poor old stick whose legs have given way. She must be eighty years if she's a day.”

“You don't know much, do you,” said Geoff.

Gatty lowered her head and squeezed Syndod's mane. “Nobody told me,” she said reproachfully.

“Here! Have a look at this,” said John. He tugged at the thong around his neck, and pulled out of his tunic a little lead flask. He took it off, and passed it to Gatty, making sure he brushed her fingers with his own as he did so.

Gatty shook it. “What's in it, then?”

“Blood,” said John. “Blood and water from the Well of Saint Thomas. Tell you what! You keep it.”

“Me?”

“She can, can't she, Geoff?”

“It's yours,” said Geoff. “One kiss each and it's yours.”

“Never!” exclaimed Gatty. Her face and neck began to burn.

The two young men laughed.

When Gatty raised her eyes again, she saw Nest trotting back towards her.

“Who's this?” asked Geoff, cheerfully.

“One girl each!” said John.

Waving their arms, the two of them sang out together:

“
My sunlight, I desire you.
My moonlight, shall I sleep with you?
My starlight, I am in your bed already!
”

Then Geoff and John threw back their heads and brayed like donkeys, and Gatty couldn't help herself: She laughed as well.

Nest pulled up in front of the three of them. “Lady Gwyneth says…” she began.

“This is Nest,” said Gatty. “Me and her are Lady Gwyneth's chamber-servants.”

“…she says you're to come at once,” said Nest.

“What a beauty!” said John. “Eh, Geoff?”

“She certainly is!” Geoff agreed.

“Come on!” said Nest.

Gatty grinned. Nest, she just kissed her fingertips twice, and then she dug in her heels and cantered back to Lady Gwyneth, with Gatty alongside her.

“Twice in one afternoon!” Lady Gwyneth said very sharply. “I'm warning you, Gatty. I require you to be obedient, not to harum-scarum off whenever the fancy takes you. Do you understand?”

“They was telling me about Becket,” said Gatty, wide-eyed, and then she burst out laughing.

Lady Gwyneth gave Gatty a long, cool look. “That poor man! Murdered. And you, shameless.”

“I saw what you did,” Nest said in a low voice.

“We must pray for his protection.” Lady Gwyneth said. She looked over the shoulder and called out, “Austin, we must pray to Saint Thomas, mustn't we?”

“Why is that, my lady?” Austin replied.

“To throw his cloak around us.”

Austin rode up. “The saints who travel with us,” he said, “are Saint David, who was a pilgrim to Jerusalem, and the blessed Christopher who carried the whole world…”

“I know that story,” said Gatty eagerly. “Oliver told it to us. He carries a small boy on his back across a river, and the boy gets heavier and heavier, and the boy is Jesus, and Jesus is the whole world.”

“Exactly,” said Austin. “The blessed Christopher, and Saint David, and also Michael the Archangel.”

“I know that story too,” Gatty said.

“All right, Gatty,” said Lady Gwyneth. “You're to ride beside me, and pray silently to those saints. That's your penance, and you're not to speak one word until I say you can.”

Gatty did ride close to Lady Gwyneth, but she didn't pray to Saint Christopher or Michael the Archangel or anyone else. She thought about Geoff telling her she didn't know much, and how she was beginning to know how much she did not know. Inside her head she kept singing-and-saying:

“
I didn't know I didn't know.
Nobody told me so.
All I know is Hopeless lowing,
Scythe and rake, spade and plow.
I didn't know I didn't know.
I never been beyond Ludlow.
Nobody told me so.
What and when and where and how?
I didn't know I didn't know.
Nobody told me so.
”

Gatty's reverie was interrupted by Nakin. “Look!” he called out. “Hares boxing!”

Just ahead, two hares were standing up on their back legs, and pummeling each other. Then they broke off, hared away, stood up and began to box again.

“Strange beasts!” said Everard. “Boxers, little buskers. No rhyme or reason.”

“There is!” said Gatty. “They box before they mate.”

“Gatty!” Lady Gwyneth exclaimed. “Who said you could speak?”

“Oh!”

“I'll box your ears if you don't listen to what I say.”

“I'll keep quiet,” said Gatty. “I will.”

“My lady,” said Lady Gwyneth.

“There are tiles in the cathedral with hares on them,” Everard said. “I don't know why.”

That night, Everard gave Gatty another singing lesson in the back room of a hostel.

First, he took his little maple psaltery out of its bag, and riffled the strings.

“It's what angels play,” Everard said.

“Really?” exclaimed Gatty. She reached out her little finger, blunt and rough, and carefully stroked the frame.

“When did you start to sing?” the choirmaster asked her.

“When my father died. He never liked me to sing, he didn't. He said it just reminded him of my mother.”

“And what do you sing?”

“Everything,” said Gatty. “Prayers and field-songs and carols. Some I just make up.”

“Now I want you to learn to breathe properly,” Everard said. He reached over for the candle on the table, and set it right in front of Gatty.

“Put your mouth quite close to the flame,” he told her. “Now take a deep breath, and sing
uuuuu-t
. Sing it slowly, so steadily that the tip of the flame never flickers.”

“I will,” said Gatty, wide-eyed.

“I will,” the clerk repeated, in the same low pitch Gatty had just said it. “That's the note for you to begin on. Your normal pitch. Then go up one note and sing
re
for as long as you can. Then
mi, fa, sol, la
…And always so steadily the flame never flickers.”

On they went, the pilgrims, along the king's highway, between bristling hedges, over kindly hills, through scruffy, huddled villages, under bending naves of trees, on they went through pale sunlight and gusts of wind, rainstorms and sleet, arriving before daylight failed at noisy, jostling hostels.

On the fourth morning they drew near to Canterbury, and the road was seething with travelers. But then the way divided. To the right was a broad track leading to Canterbury, and to the left a track no less broad leading to Sandwich, and the sea.

The pilgrims reached Sandwich in the blue hour. And standing, without knowing it, where Arthur had first stood eighteen months before, Gatty tasted the salt-sharp air. Nest dismounted and came and huddled close to her. So did Snout. Then all the others. Except for Nakin, not one of them had ever seen the sea before. Wave-dance; water-music. The whole world of it!

Gatty threw up her arms, and reached out, and hurrahed. Followed by the others, she ran down across the beach to the many-tongued sea.

Gatty
couldn't find her footing. She couldn't even stand still. She lurched; she took one step forward and had to take several more to regain her balance; she tripped over her own feet.

The air—it was seething and so bright. Piercing saltspray! The wind bellowing and neighing! Gatty couldn't bring herself to climb down the ladder into the dark hold, where most of the pilgrims and other passengers were sheltering.

The boat bucked and bucketed and Gatty half-ran, half-slid right across the deck. To save herself from smacking into the port railing and, who knows, being catapulted into the boiling sea, she grabbed hold of the keel of the little skiff lying on its side, lashed to the deck. Then she saw two people were sitting on the other side of it, completely protected from the wind and the spray, and when Gatty pressed her ear against the boards, she could hear them talking.

“…Gatty.”

“I know!”

“Gatty! That's what she is. Cattish!”

“I know!”

“So sly. And spiteful.”

Gatty squeezed the keel. She tried to crush it between her fingers. Why, she thought. What have I done? I'm not spiteful.

“She's always complaining.” That was Nakin. Gatty was sure it was. “How many times have you told her?”

“I know!” wailed the other voice for the third time, and Gatty knew it was Lady Gwyneth's.

“I told you! You shouldn't have brought her. Listen! I've a plan…” Nakin lowered his voice, and, although Gatty flattened one ear against the wooden boards, she couldn't make out what he was saying.

Gatty thought her fingertips were going to burst. She thought her heart was going to burst. She sat down and pulled herself backwards across the weeping deck, away from the skiff, away from the hateful words.

Spiteful…How can they say that? What plan? Gatty gnawed her lower lip until it bled. I don't belong with the likes of Lady Gwyneth and Nakin, she thought. I never will.

Gatty lurched round and round the deck, and then flopped down by a coil of thick rope. But as soon as she did so, she realized she had sat in a pool of pitch. The balls of both her hands stuck to it; the heels of her sandals stuck to it; the seat of her gown was glued to it.

Miserably, Gatty levered herself onto her feet and bunched up her cloak and screwed round to look at it.

At this moment, arm in arm to stop themselves from slipping and sliding, Nest and Austin staggered towards her.

“What are you doing?” Nest called out. “Admiring yourself?”

Gatty dropped her gown and splayed her hands like a cat. They were black and shining.

“Yuch!” yelled Nest.

Austin smiled grimly, and the little dark pupils of his eyes were keen as skewers. “Half-pink, half-black,” he observed. “You're a devil-in-the-making.”

“As black as Mansel's dog!” added Nest.

Gatty stared at her hands; then she inspected her sandals. “I known worse,” she said.

“Look at your gown!” said Nest. “It won't wash out, you know.”

“You must cut the pitch out,” Austin told her. “Like a heretic's tongue.”

Hearing this, the sea opened its mouth and vomited over the deck. Austin and Nest were swept back beyond the wheelhouse; Gatty was thrown into the pool of pitch again.

But then it was as if God had looked down on poor Gatty, and crept into her heart. There she lay, curled up like a baby, her head pillowed by the coarse coil of rope.

After Gatty had prised herself apart from the pitch for the second time, she went below deck. She rubbed her chapped hands against the rough timbers; she lay on her back like a cat and wriggled until she'd rubbed off the worst of the pitch; then she took off her cloak and sandals, and scrubbed them against the ship's timbers too.

During the afternoon, the wind eased, and Nakin rounded everyone up, and told them Lady Gwyneth wanted to talk to them.

“Where's Gatty?” asked Lady Gwyneth.

No one answered.

“Has no one seen her?”

“I did,” said Nest.

“Where?”

“Sobbing. And slobbering.”

“Where?”

“Down with her horse.”

“Go and get her, Nest,” Lady Gwyneth said sharply. “She's keeping us waiting.”

Gatty looked piteous. Her hair and her hands and her gown and her sandals were still sticky with pitch; her eyelids were rosy and puffy.

“God's kneecaps!” exclaimed Lady Gwyneth. Then she lowered her eyes, and sighed deeply.

“Can you all hear me?”

“No,” said Austin.

“Then draw closer, man,” Lady Gwyneth ordered him. “Now, I want you to listen.”

Gatty didn't want to hear what Lady Gwyneth was going to say.

“I've told you before that we must all think for each other and find Christ in each other. Unless we do that, our pilgrimage will be…”

“Wrecked,” said Nakin.

“Yes,” said Lady Gwyneth. “Wrecked! Winds and waves beat at our boat, there are dangers all around us. We may be many, but unless we are one…”

“We'll all be drowned,” said Nakin.

Lady Gwyneth waved away the merchant's words. “Gatty!” she cried. “You chased those boys without my permission. What if we'd been unable to find you? And the next day you were disobedient. Twice. Have you no regard for me, or our pilgrimage?”

Gatty said nothing. Two large tears slipped down her cheeks.

“And you keep on answering back,” Lady Gwyneth added.

“I'm glad I'm not like that,” said Nest.

Lady Gwyneth gave Nest a disdainful look. “Keep your spiteful words to yourself,” she snapped. “
Wyt di'n deall?
Do you understand? Think for each other and act for each other. I will not put up with disobedience, and I will not tolerate so much arguing and complaining. Did our Lord complain when He suffered for us?”

Tilda moaned. A desolate moan that seemed as if it would never end.

Nest clamped her hands over her ears and rounded on Emrys. “Stop her!” she cried. “Can't you?”

“Let me make myself clear,” Lady Gwyneth said in a steely voice. “Now we've left England, things can only get more difficult. If you fear you'll fail yourself, any of you, turn back here and now. You can go back on this boat, and I'll pay your passage.”

Lady Gwyneth paused and looked each pilgrim in the eye.

“If any of you lets yourself down,” she warned them, “you let us all down, and I will not hesitate to leave you behind when we reach Venice. You will never reach Jerusalem.”

After Lady Gwyneth had dismissed the pilgrims, Gatty plowed around the sopping deck on her own. She had set out on this great pilgrimage with such pride. Such high hopes. But now she knew her lady didn't think her worthy, and she bitterly regretted being so disobedient.

She felt so alone. So helpless.

Then Gatty saw Snout leaning over the gunwale, and she saw he was sobbing. Quietly, she walked up behind him. Without saying a word, she simply slipped her hands round his waist.

For a while, Snout went on gulping and swallowing.

Gatty locked her sticky fingers together, as if they were the clasp to Snout's belt, and gently laid her head against Snout's back.

“I dropped it!”

Gatty waited.

“I dropped it,” Snout said again. His whole body jolted.

Gatty had no idea what he had dropped. “Oh Snout!” she said sweetly.

The sound of Gatty's sympathy unlocked Snout's word-tide.

“Hew gave it me,” he said. “His stone. He found it and there was a flower in it, and he said, he said…” Snout's heavy body shook with another great sob. “…he said it would keep me safe from demons and he gave it to me and I dropped it. I dropped it!”

“Oh Snout!” said Gatty again. “You and your Hew. You're such a father. Not at all like mine.” With her head still lying against the cook's back, Gatty began very slightly to rock, as if she were singing a silent song.

When, before long, the boat docked, Gatty was first ashore. She ran down the gangway and the French earth rose up to meet her. It swayed and lurched beneath her, and for a while, amazed, Gatty was unable to stand upright and foursquare on her pink-and-black feet.