CHAPTER 62
As the fogbank on the Tarentine coast thinned under the morning sun, a small skiff emerged, drawing on silent oars. Only when the Tancred and her escort were out of sight did Sofia dare speak. ‘What now?’
‘Now we run,’ said Ezra. He set the jib opposite the mainsail and goosewinged it, to put some distance between them and the watchful shores of Etruria. The streamlined little boat’s cutwater sank like a dagger into the waves and released an arterial spray that misted them. After a few hours, they cleared the strait and felt the welcome chill of the northern tradewind that would carry them south.
The course Ezra plotted would take them by Crete, then they would hug the Anatolian coast until they reached Cyprus and then finally to Akka. The first crossing was the longest, but they were lucky: Ezra didn’t share the traditional sailor’s dread of the open sea. It was imperative they escape the sea-lanes where all the traffic was Ariminumese. The Bora had brought them swiftly down the Adriatic; now the hardworking Greagale was hauling them across the Ionican. ‘Once we get beyond Tessolonika, we’ll be in the Meltrimi’s delicate hands. I hope she’s in a good mood this time of month.’
‘’course she’ll be,’ said Levi, ‘winter’s passed.’
‘Spring brings forth more than turtle-doves, lambs and blossoms. The dark gods wake from slumber; war banners and pestilence stalk the land. The eastern Tyrrhenian can be cruel this time of year.’ He glanced at Sofia. ‘But we’ve been lucky so far.’
Sofia felt the wind against her skin and an instant later heard a fierce crack as the sail caught it. ‘That’s the style of it!’ said Ezra.
Levi had proved a surprisingly adept fisherman, so Sofia, feeling useless, asked Ezra to teach her how to trim the sails. It was harder than it looked, but she got the knack eventually. Now she felt the tension and the creaking strain of the running rigging striving against the wind. In flag-fighting, one created these snaps – the Doc insisted they were the mark of a real bandieratoro. Now she felt the canvas, billowing slow and regal, pulling the ship with it.
‘You’ve become a serviceable sailor, and just in time,’ said Ezra, ‘for tomorrow comes the bride at the end of week. Time to rest, and ponder and dream …’
The city had been elevated above all other things in the land, and its pride had drawn the wind’s wrath. What hands had carved and gilded and mortised and encased, the winds worked ceaselessly to undo, rounding away all memory of Men’s busy fingers, and now the heavy stones lay everywhere, a sea of caved-in houses, characterless pebbles on a forgotten beach, so featureless that the returning families – if ever the prophets’ promises of resurrection came true – would never be able to pick out the homes they had once lived in. The sand moved of its own violation, pouring with tireless curiosity into doorways that led nowhere now and creeping up walls, only to tumble back on itself again and again and again. It moved on and settled and moved on. The cobblestones of old paths appeared for a moment before the grains rushed between them and buried them again. The winds charged through the city’s forgotten quarters and drove each other to new peaks of outrage.
On the southern hill that faced the city the wind shredded hollowed olive trees into chips. Gravestones trembled like leaves; the carved names were blasted illegible. Sometimes, in the shifting dirt, Sofia glimpsed white smooth things: elongated, thinning shells of some extinct creature. The winds harried them into fragile meshes connected by calcium bridges and the desert’s jagged teeth did the rest until the last trace of Man was swallowed. The tombstones were finally ripped up and thrown with gay carelessness into the maelstrom, exploding against each other. Their owners, who had thought to be first, would find themselves nameless and forgotten come Judgement. And, if this was Judgement, the wind was a pitiless judge.
And everywhere, in the midst of the dull, incessant rage, floated pages crammed with dense scribbles. Even if she could translate the language the prayers were written in, they disappeared faster than her eye could read them. The lower quarters on the city’s periphery suffered least; whole hours would go by before the sands would barge through the streets and make them impassable again. But at the city’s heart, the howl of the storm was constant and overwhelming. A defiant section of a great wall circled the mount, the source of the prayers, which bled out between the wounded stones. On the plateau, lightning cracked between burly clouds. Storms condensed into tumbling balls of yellow air against a rumble like great stones being hauled up. The storm was made of grains of sand and scraps of paper. Most of the prayers begged for life, for love, for money, for power, but only prayers begging for annihilation had been answered.
Sofia opened her eyes and quickly closed them. Ezra was already up. Through half-closed lids she studied him. It was odd that she had never seen him sleep. This morning his eyes were not on the sails but buried in the old volume he carried always. He read it aloud with a melancholy melody, half song, half speech, and as if on command, a strong wind sent the skiff skipping over the water.
Without looking up, he said, ‘The joy of the Sabbath to you, Contessa. It’s bad luck to wake a sleeper, but I was tempted. You had a bad dream, I think?’
‘I slept fine.’ Sofia yawned to cover her embarrassment at being caught spying. ‘Shouldn’t you be checking our course?’
‘The wind will look after us. It knows I must read.’
‘You must know it by heart now.’
‘Even God must continuously study. Study alone keeps back the Darkness.’ He slapped the wood in front of him and the ship creaked in complaint. ‘It is a difficult art, requiring nerve and skill. You must wait for the letters to form words and the words to gestate without prematurely imposing meaning. If you can do that, truth springs upon you.’
‘Sure, sure: be detached, go with the flow, nothing’s real,’ Sofia said. ‘I’ve heard it before.’
Ezra sat up. ‘Oh no! You must be attached to the world. Constant awareness is necessary. God is in everyone, everything, every letter. Every word in this book spells His name.’
‘Sure,’ Sofia said.
He held up two pages then a third against the morning sun and shifted them until the first letters on each page lined up. ‘What’s it say?’
Sofia said, ‘I don’t read squiggle.’
‘We must rectify that. What about you, Levi?’
Levi had obviously been pretending to sleep too but he sat up and yawned ostentatiously before reading where Ezra pointed, ‘J–A–H’
‘You see! His Name is all around, if only we look for it.’
‘Since when do you read Ebionite?’ Sofia asked.
‘Condottieri pick up more than exotic rashes in their travels,’ Levi said defensively. ‘What’s that supposed to prove, old man? With enough letters you can spell anything.’
‘Each letter is connected to every other. On Sinai for a golden moment Moses saw all connections. When diligent readers relink the letters, the words rejoice. They dance and ecstatically couple and new meaning is born.’
‘Immediately, or nine months later? Come on, old man,’ Levi said, ‘no race can beat the Eebees at fooling themselves. Torah’s out of date. You think the scribes who wrote it knew anything about Natural Philosophy?’
‘The Concordians say there are atoms and the void and nothing else – a useful philosophy for burrowing rodents. It’s true that the scribes were ignorant as we of tomorrow. What of it? I do not care about tomorrow or yesterday. I study to understand today. To one who understands this moment, all vistas – past, present and future – are open. He is free, free even to disagree with God.’
Sofia had only been half-listening, but here her heart skipped. ‘God can be overruled?’
‘I told you even God must study. Torah belongs to all. No one has the final word. Scholars argue to become wise, and when two sincere students differ in their interpretations, their dispute is a journey to truth.’
The wind was turning against them, so Levi lowered the sail and secured it against the lifting yard. He yawned, and lay down. ‘Madonna, it’s too early for philosophising. Wake me up when the sun’s over the yard-arm.’
‘You want a bedtime story too?’ said Sofia.
‘Sure, why not? How about it, old man? Any good stories in there?’