The Blessing Stone (47 page)

But a troubled one.

There were lines in his face that she thought at first had been created by wisdom and experience. But then she thought,
no, they were etched by pain.
And there was the look of longing as he stared out to sea for hours on end. What was he seeing? What was he searching for? Adriano watched the sunset, watched the sky darken and the stars come out one by one, his face uplifted as if expecting to see some message written up there. He carried silence around himself like the knight’s cloak he wore. He was wrapped in it, that silence. Was it to keep things out, or to keep things in? Maybe both. Katharina had never been curious about a person before. She had never wondered what Hans was thinking, never desired to plumb his depths. What she saw on the surface she accepted as the whole person. It had never occurred to her that secrets and passions could run beneath. But now she could not stop wondering about this enigmatic stranger who seemed, day by day, to be not of this world but to dwell instead in the interior landscape of his soul.

Her thoughts startled her. It struck her that they were the wise and lofty thoughts of an adult. She considered the hundreds of miles she had traveled, and all the towns and people she had seen, and now she was on a vast ocean, and it made her feel suddenly mature. She had celebrated her eighteenth birthday on the Amber Route and now she felt no longer like a girl but a woman. She liked the feeling and she believed that she now understood everything about life. She had been through so much in such a short time, losing her mother and learning the truth about her birth and identity, and now halfway into the Adriatic Katharina was convinced she had seen most of the world. And when she thought of Jerusalem and the dramatic reunion with her father and family there, she imagined herself going back to Badendorf, being received as a special person because she had traveled so far and now she was a wise woman. She already knew how she would describe Jerusalem to everyone, with its magnificent churches standing in rows, the people all pious and religious, everyone speaking Latin and conferring benedictions as a matter of course. And because she would be the most worldly person in Badendorf, people would come to her for advice, even Father Benedict whose sole claim to fame rested on a single trip to Rome. But he had never been to Jerusalem, where Jesus himself had walked.

As the days passed and the horizon stretched before them, Katharina became terribly seasick but Dr. Mahmoud eased her discomfort with a remedy made of ginger. She also felt uncomfortable beneath the stares of the crew, who kept looking at her with unreadable expressions. And when the ship had gone for a long time without a sighting of land, she felt a special panic in her heart. For solace she frequently drew the miniature painting from the leather pouch Friar Pastorius had given her, and which she wore beneath her Egyptian robe. Sitting on the deck, knees drawn up, cradling the miniature in her hands, she would rivet her eyes to the blue crystal and wonder what was there about it that had made her father leave his baby daughter to go in search of it. Had he found it, and was the power of the crystal such that it had wiped his mind clean of all memory, making him forget his obligation back in Germany?

She wished she could also hold the stein Hans had given her because in these unfamiliar and frightening surroundings she would draw comfort from such a familiar object, and from the feel of the clay of Badendorf beneath her fingers. But the stein had been packed with her bundle of clothes, protected deep in the folds of skirts and bodices, shawls and scarves, to ensure that it didn’t break. She wouldn’t see the stein till she reached her lodgings in Jerusalem. Her father’s house? They would share a drink from the stein, and her father, being a German nobleman and so long away from home, would weep at the sight of so exquisite a beer stein.

A week out from Venice, the storm hit.

Half the sailors wanted to hoist the mainsail, the others said this was not the time as the wind was increasing. A dispute broke out; they decided to hoist the sail but then it was too late, the canvas tore in two. All fires were doused: the cook’s stove and the lanterns. The seas rose. Dr. Mahmoud and Katharina held on to each other. Thunder was suddenly upon them, lightning, and heavy rain pouring down. The wind increased until the main mast gave way with a mighty cracking sound and crashed to the deck. The sailors fell to their knees and began praying loudly. Gigantic waves rose up and swept over the sides, sending the decks awash. Barrels and bales, breaking loose, were swept this way and that and finally overboard. The ship was actually swallowed and went under the water, but in the next instant rose up again as if on a spout. Up and down it went, through the tempest, with her frail human crew and cargo screaming and praying and holding on for dear life.

Katharina woke to find herself on a sandy shore, her clothes soaked, her long hair tangled with seaweed. The sky was gray but no rain fell, and the ocean roiled like angry fluid metal with foamy points. Wooden planks and scraps of sail floated on the waves. She looked up and down the deserted shore and saw the remnants of ship and cargo strewn among the dunes. But she saw no people.

She struggled to her feet and looked around in bewilderment. Where was the ship? Where was the crew? “Dr. Mahmoud!” she called. Her only response was the mocking howl of the wind. Staggering along the beach, her galabeya tattered and trailing in the wet sand, she presently came upon a body. It was the captain, and crabs were already making a feast of him. Farther along she found remnants of a wooden chest, but few of its contents remained. Sticking out of the sand she saw a shard of white ceramic. She pulled it out and brushed it off. It was part of the beer stein Hans had given her. She searched for the rest of it but found no other pieces. Still numb with shock, Katharina cradled the small oval in her hand—the miniature painting of Badendorf nestled in the mountains.

Then she saw a figure ahead, stumbling along the sand, his cloak billowing and swirling about him. Don Adriano! Katharina broke into a run, waving her arms and calling out, tripping on the hem of her torn galabeya.

“Praise God!” he cried when they reached one another. She fell into his arms, sobbing. He enveloped her in his damp cloak, and they cried and shivered together until he finally drew her down to her knees and they offered prayers of thanks for their survival.

“Where are we?” she said, her lips cracked and crusted with salt.

He squinted out at the dismal ocean and invisible horizon. “I have no idea, señorita.”

“Have you seen Dr. Mahmoud?”

His eyes were filled with sadness as he said, “I saw him go under. I reached into the water but he had gone down. I am sorry.”

She cried anew, sitting in the sand and drawing her knees to her chest. Don Adriano draped his knight’s cloak about her and went in search of dry wood for a fire.

It was some time before she remembered her small painting of St. Amelia. She cried out with joy when she found it still around her neck in its waterproof pouch, and when she brought it out into the light of the flames from Don Adriano’s struggling fire, she drew hope from the comforting image of Amelia and the blue crystal.

Adriano explored their environment and learned they were on an island that was little more than a rocky outcropping in the sea with no greenery or wildlife. But he found casks of water washed ashore from the ship and enough dry driftwood to keep the fire going. Together he and Katharina dug for crabs and other shellfish, which they steamed between hot rocks and wet seaweed.

The sky darkened so they knew the sun had gone down, but clouds blocked the stars, and a mist crept in from the ocean. Don Adriano banked the fire and got it blazing. Katharina stared into the flames like one in a trance. She kept picturing Dr. Mahmoud as she had last seen him: being swept over the side of the ship, his turban flying off, a look of terror on his face. She thought of their weeks traveling together, his gentle patience, and the things he had taught her. She had hoped, back then, that she could persuade him to stay in Jerusalem with her instead of going on to Cairo, for the Arab doctor had been the closest to a blood relative she had ever known. She was also overwhelmed with grief for the death of her mother, and it surprised her for she had thought she was over it. But new death, it seemed, renewed old grief, so that Katharina, weeping into her hands, was mourning not only for Dr. Mahmoud, but for her mother, her birth-mother, the crew, and the captain of the Portuguese ship.

Over the next few days, more bodies of the crew washed ashore, and as the stranded pair gave them Christian burials, Adriano withdrew into deeper silence, and Katharina’s grief and despair grew. Finally, one morning she came across the pale corpse of one of the boys who had played pipes and drum on the ship, and she knew she could not go on. Believing that her survival had been an accident, that she belonged in the watery deep with Dr. Mahmoud, she waded out into the surf, intent upon drowning herself in the waves.

But Adriano ran after her and, following a brief struggle in the water, managed to bring her back and deposit her on the sand. There he took her by the shoulders and said with passion, “We do not know God’s purpose. We cannot begin to guess at His design. We must only do His bidding. He spared us, señorita, for what reason I do not know. But to give in to despair is to defy God’s will. For His sake, you must stay alive.” They were the most words he had spoken in days, and the mere speaking of them seemed to revive his strength.

Katharina cried for a long time afterward, and although she still felt she should have died with Dr. Mahmoud, she made no more attempts to drown herself. She ate little and drank a little, and wandered the small shore with her eyes set to the far horizon, deciding that she and Adriano were probably as good as dead anyway.

They slept together for warmth and finally the morning came when Katharina awoke to feel the knight’s arms around her, his solid body against hers, the firm beat of his heart beneath her head as it lay upon his chest. Lifting herself up, she studied his face in the pale dawn, noticing how sand and salt crystals clung to his thick brown eyelashes and brows and closely cropped beard. What troubled dreams, she wondered, made his eyes roll beneath their lids? What passions drove him to stay alive, and drove him to keep
her
alive as well, because she knew that without Adriano she would surely have killed herself. Then she remembered waking during the night screaming, and Adriano there to hold her and comfort her. What had made her scream? Dreams of drowning.

For the first time in days, dawn brought sunlight, for the clouds were dispersing and the ocean even sparkled in places. While Adriano managed to spear some fish in nearby shallows, Katharina scavenged the shore and found yet another cask of ship’s water. She wondered how long they could survive on an island where not even a single tree grew. They had seafood but nothing else. No birds came here to roost. No vegetation struggled among the rocky fissures. And then it crossed her mind to wonder if it was proper for a man and woman to live together and not be married. Did the church take shipwrecked people into consideration when it catalogued sins?

When another sunset seemed to mock them in their stranded state, for it was apparent the storm had knocked their ship far off course and out of the sight of other passing vessels, Adriano found voice and words. “Why do you go to Jerusalem?” he asked as he stoked the fire.

As Katharina braided her long hair that, to her surprise, was still brown as the dye had not been washed out by the sea water, she told him her story, ending with: “So I go to search for my father.”

“A man who abandoned you?”

“I am sure he did not intend to. He meant to come back for me.”

“But this young man you mentioned, Hans Roth. You could have married him, lived very comfortably. You would risk losing all that?”

She looked at him with steady eyes. “My father might be hurt, or in the hands of cruel men. It is my duty to find him.”

This gave him something to think about. If truth be told, Don Adriano felt bitterly toward women. He had only ever loved one woman in his life and when she had betrayed him with another man, he had sworn he would never love another as he had loved her, nor would he ever again trust a woman. Once he had entered the Brotherhood of Mary and taken a vow of celibacy, he had put women from his mind.

Katharina pointed to the blue cross embroidered on the breast of his white doublet and said, “Are you a priest?”

He gave her a startled look, and then his face softened into a smile. “No, señorita, I am not. Just a servant of the Lord.” He fell silent and stared morosely into the flames. Presently he said, “I killed a man who was not my enemy, and I ruined a woman’s life. For a day and a night I lay prone before an altar, asking the Blessed Mother for a sign. She came to me in a vision and spoke of a brotherhood dedicated to restoring her throne in the Holy Land. I sought them out and joined their membership. That was twenty years ago, and I serve both the brotherhood and the Blessed Mother still.”

He brought his soulful gaze back to Katharina. “Who is the old man you call Mahmoud?”

“When I was orphaned he became my guardian.”

“A heathen?”

“He believes in God, and he prays. Even more frequently than we do. Dr. Mahmoud is a good man.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Was,” she corrected softly.

Don Adriano had his own opinions of good men and godless men, but he kept them to himself. What an innocent this child was, to be out in the world on her own with no protection other than a frail old heathen. Don Adriano felt a rare emotion stir his heart, one he had not felt in a long time, not since a woman named Maria had destroyed his life and made him vow never to love again.

And then he quickly remembered himself, and turned away. Thoughts of women had no place in the mind of a man on a religious crusade.

As Katharina watched sparks rise up to the indifferent stars, memories drifted up in her mind: her mother telling her the stories of Rapunzel and Little Red Cap. The two of them going for walks in the snow. The night Isabella had hurried home from delivering embroidery to a patron, bearing strudel still warm from the oven, and the delicious feast they had shared that night. Sleeping together on cold nights, Katharina watching the snow fall beyond the window, and feeling safe and loved. She poked the embers and said quietly, “My mother could have taken the gold coins and left me at the inn and maybe found a rich husband with those gold coins. But she didn’t. She kept me and raised me and loved me. She went hungry while we had gold coins hidden in our room. She sacrificed and went without and kept them safe for me, but now I have lost them, in that ocean. I have let her down.”