Piro emerged from the cleft first, and he smiled and waved at the sight of the clustered monks. “Ho, Piro,” Cotsa called down to him, and Brother Leo frowned at his lay brother’s casual disregard for the order’s traditional greeting. Some of the others shouted down to the pair as well, asking questions that could not be readily answered before the two men arrived at the hermitage.
The stranger paused as he emerged from the rocky passage, taking a moment to stare up at the monks. A large hat, floppy from age and the heat, covered his head, and his tunic and pants were equally simple and unadorned. His boots were worn but solid—well-formed to his feet and legs. The man carried a sword on a baldric, and he stood with the practiced ease of a man used to the presence of a scabbard against his hip. His skin was darker than Brother Leo’s, and his face was adorned with a neatly trimmed beard. Brother Leo estimated he had not seen more than two dozen winters, but there was a cant to his carriage that suggested he carried both wisdom and pain beyond his years.
“May the Lord give you peace,” Brother Leo called out to the stranger in Latin. He glared at the Fratricelli next to him, silently admonishing them for their failed courtesy.
The stranger looked up, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. “And may peace be upon you as well,” he replied.
Brother Leo scratched the side of his neck. The man had replied quickly and surely—his Latin graceful, yet touched with an accent Brother Leo could not place. He spoke as if the greeting of the Ordo Fratrum Minorum was familiar, but his response was not quite in keeping with tradition.
Piro reached the plateau and dumped his satchel on the dusty ground. “Ho, holy men,” the young goat herder called out. “I bring one of your brothers.”
“One of us?” Brother Mante asked. He was the tallest of the group, and oftentimes his height made him the spokesperson. “How can that be, Piro? None of us carry a sword.”
“He has—” Piro offered a steadying hand to his companion who was struggling with the last few steps up the steep path, “—what do you call it?”
The young man seized the offered hand and hauled himself up. “An Ordo,” he explained. He fumbled with his satchel for a moment as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands. “I am Raphael of Acre. Forgive my unexpected arrival. Piro here said he would show me the way, and it would appear that he did so. Quite successfully.” The young man was slightly out of breath, but he hid it well.
“Which order might you be a member of?” Brother Cotsa inquired, still brusque with an indelicacy born of excitement.
“Perhaps we might wait to interrogate our visitor until after he has rested from his climb,” Brother Leo pointed out, mortified by the lack of decorum on the part of his fellow Fratricelli.
“No, no. It’s fine,” the young man said. “You are the Ordo Fratrum Minorum, are you not? Followers of Francis of Assisi?” When several of the monks nodded in response, he continued, “I belong to the Ordo Milites Vindicis Intactae.”
“See?” Piro said, proud of his command of Latin. “Ordo.”
“No, Piro,” Raphael said, laying a hand on his guide’s shoulder. “It’s not the same thing.” He looked apologetically at the monks. “I am sorry for the confusion. Piro has been very helpful, and I fear I may have inadvertently taken advantage of his enthusiasm.”
“Milites,” Brother Leo explained to Piro. “It means fighting men—soldiers.” He translated the name. “Knights of the Virgin Defender,” he said, pointing at the blade hanging off Raphael’s hip. “We are not Crusaders. We have no use for a sharp tool such as that.”
Piro scratched his head. “Crusader?” he asked, jerking a thumb at Raphael.
“The Fifth?” Brother Mante blurted out.
“Aye,” Raphael said. “That is the one.”
The last Crusade, the Fifth, had ended a scant few years earlier. Already the word from Rome was that it had been a failure and that another would be called soon. Rome had no appetite for the continued presence of Muslim infidels in the Levant. Raphael’s acknowledgment released a flood of questions from the monks, and even Brother Leo found himself leaning forward to hear the young man’s answers. The Fifth Crusade! Could he have been in Egypt at the same time as...?
Taken aback by the Fraticelli’s enthusiasm, Raphael held up his hands to quell the torrent of voices. “Yes,” he said, ducking his head in mild embarrassment at the mix of confusion and fascination offered by the group of monks. “Yes, I was at Damietta,” he admitted. “I was there when Francis came on his mission to convert the Sultan, Al-Kamil.”
Damietta, 1218
“Pull!”
The crier was a haggard Frisian named Edzard, a bald man with a tangled beard and a voice that reminded Raphael of surf battering against a cliff. He limped, and sitting on a horse pained him, but aboard a ship, he moved with a supple grace. He stalked up and down the line of the massive raft, howling at the men.
“Don’t stop, you miserable sons of tavern wenches,” Edzard shouted at them. “This river hates you. The infidels hate you. God even hates you for being weak. Pull!”