It took San-Ragoz a long moment to see that the monk’s eyes were white. Moving very slowly, he went around the corner and remained still until the old monk went past him, murmuring prayers in Greek. Once the corridor was empty again, San-Ragoz waited in stillness until he was certain he could once again move without detection.
When he was several streets away from the monastery, he stopped near a stable where he took his stolen dalmatica and tied it in knots, then rubbed the garment into the dusty stones paving the stable entrance. He continued to abuse the dalmatica for some little while, then removed his Persian kandys and subjected it to the same treatment as he had just given his penitent’s habit. He began to fear he was risking too much time in his attempts to throw his pursuers off the track; he gave the habit one more energetic scrub on the stones, then stood up and untied the knots, then tugged it over his head, concealing the black silk dalmatica beneath. That done, he tugged one of the sleeves of the kandys loose and then pulled the eclipse-pattern embroidery off the neck before tossing the ruined garment near the stable midden. Satisfied that he had done as much as he could to make it appear he had met with foul play, he hurried toward the Eastern Gate, making sure to wipe his hands and face with soot as he went. By the time he was within sight of the gate he was grimy and smelly, just as he intended he should be.
“Halt,” ordered the Moorish guard as San-Ragoz approached.
San-Ragoz did as he was told, remaining still while the guard came up to him.
“Are you leaving this city?” The guard wrinkled his nose in distaste.
“I am,” said San-Ragoz in an attitude of resignation.
“Where are you bound?” asked the guard.
“I have been ordered to make a pilgrimage to Toloz, for a penance,” San-Ragoz replied, adding, “I began at Gadez.” Just speaking the name of Rogerian’s city renewed his missing of his man-servant and valued companion; he hoped that Rogerian had not abandoned his search for him, in spite of the passage of more than thirty years.
“Why should you do penance?” the guard wanted to know. “If you wish to pass, you will answer me.”
“I profaned the Church, and must atone for apostasy.” As a good Moslem, San-Ragoz guessed the guard would be sympathetic to such an exercise, although he might deplore San-Ragoz’s appalling condition: Christians, the guard was aware, equated filth with saintliness.
“So.” The guard inspected San-Ragoz as well as he could in the darkness. “Let me see your shoulders,” he ordered.
Although he knew the man was looking for a slave-brand, he asked, “Why?” in a truculent manner.
“That is not for you to know, dog.” The last was an afterthought, a reminder that the Moors now held sway in Corduba.
“If you will tell me the reason you ask this of me, you will not offend me—unless that is your desire.” San-Ragoz kept his voice even and his demeanor respectful, which made the guard consider his response.
“A dangerous slave has escaped and we are ordered to return him to Numair ibn Isffah ibn Musa for punishment,” said the guard, reveling in this moment of self-importance. “No one may leave without baring his shoulders.”
“To see if there is a burn-scar identifying him as a slave. I understand. Very well,” said San-Ragoz, tugging at the neck of his two dalmaticas so that his left shoulder was exposed. “As you see, no brand.” In all the years since his death, no injury had left a mark on his skin; the slave-brand had faded as soon as his skin healed.
“And the right one,” the guard said.
San-Ragoz did as the guard required. “No brand there, either.”
“True enough. You are not the man we seek.” He stood back and was about to open the night-gate when something occurred to him. “Why do you travel at this hour?”
“It is required of me, and I must be obedient to my charge. I was given orders to begin my travels at the beginning of the Second Vigil, so that I would have to go in the dark, with only the stars and the Spirit of God to guide me,” he said, providing the answer he had already prepared.
This time the guard made a gesture of approval. “Your superior is worthy of the Book. Profit by the lessons you are set.”
San-Ragoz made the Sign of the Cross and bowed his head. “Holy is God,” he said.
The guard lifted the brace on the gate and stood aside for San-Ragoz to pass. “May you learn wisdom, Penitent Christian dog.”
With a gesture of humility, San-Ragoz went out of Corduba, into the cool, windy night, along the old Roman road that led eastward across the plateau and eventually, after many thousands of paces, into the mountains. He walked rapidly and steadily, seeking to put as much distance between him and the city as he could before daylight compelled him to seek out a shelter where he would not be discovered either by searchers or by mischance; he had no doubts that the soldiers of the Emir’s son would soon follow him, for his ruse with the guard would not remain successful for very long: the morning inspection would list him among those departing, and that would put the soldiers on the scent. This certainty spurred him on. His efforts were exhausting, but he could not yet husband his strength, so he drove himself to keep on, to put as much distance between him and the soldiers of Numair ibn Isffah ibn Musa, the Emir’s son
Shortly before sunrise he found a cleft in the rocks beside a small lake, and there he took refuge for the day, doing all he could to restore himself without blood or his native earth to nourish him; he sank into a deep, trance-like sleep that shut out most of the world around him. Once during the day he was vaguely aware that a flock of goats had come down to the edge of the lake to drink; their goatherd played an ill-tuned bagpipe to pass away the hours. The melody was still ringing in San-Ragoz’s head when the sun dropped below the western horizon, and he once again continued his trek eastward.
By the third night he was famished; every step he took needed greater effort than the last, and as he trudged onward, he had to fight off the numbness of despair as he passed three razed villages, and anticipated worse ahead. He had seen the scars of battle across the countryside, and knew it would be increasingly devastated the closer he came to the actual areas of fighting; he had seen more than enough of war to seek it out now, but he was uncertain he would be able to avoid it entirely, for he had learned from Numair ibn Isffah ibn Musa the Moors were extending their invasion north and eastward. The thought of carnage sickened him.
Shortly before sunrise he managed to catch a large, white bird and take some of its blood, but this provided very little sustenance. He avoided places where people lived, especially if there were any signs of soldiers about: it had been nearly eleven years since the Berbers under Tariq had defeated the western Goths and the Berbers and Moors were still consolidating their territories even as they expanded their dominion; the destroyed villages gave testament to the continuing instability of the country, and the Moorish determination to hold what they had captured: soldiers could only mean trouble.
Finally, more by luck than cleverness, toward the morning of the next day San-Ragoz came upon a ruined villa left over from the days of the Romans. Most of the buildings were in disrepair, with vines and flowers running riot amid the broken marble. At the far end of what had once been the gardens, the large tepidarium of the old bath stood, rank with floating weeds and open to the sky; San-Ragoz was keenly aware of a beating human heart amid the wreckage of that vanished time; so keen was his need that the heartbeat seemed loud and compelling as a drum. He did not want to surrender to his craving, for he despised himself for his subjugation to it. Alone and enervated, for a moment he missed Roma keenly, and his Villa Ragoczy—it, too, was dilapidated, but just at present it was more inviting than any palace—then he put such things from his mind and did his utmost to determine who was living in the ruin, and why.
Moving silently, San-Ragoz made his way around the tepidarium toward the smaller, more intact frigidarium, for it seemed to him the heartbeat came from there. As he neared the frigidarium—thick-walled and dark to keep the water cold—he saw that a heavy, make-shift door had been constructed where the old door had been, and this one was marked with a cross. Someone had improvised a hermit’s cell where the Romans had gone to bathe in cold water; the realization provided him brief, ironic amusement before he gave his attention to trying to work out some means of visiting the sleeper as a dream. He was so worn out that he began to doze before he hit upon any solution to alleviating his privation without exposing himself to worse than starvation, as well as bring horror and fury to the immured monk; so he was startled when, just before dawn, a young woman in a novice’s habit came to the door of the tepidarium and called out to the inhabitant.
“Frerer Procopios, I have brought your morning bread.”
“Deo gratias,” came the answer in a muffled bass. “Why did she send you?”
“I asked for the opportunity,” she said. “Are you well, Frerer?” she added, concern in her voice.
“I am as God wills me to be,” Frerer Procopios replied.
“You do not sound wholly well,” the novice persisted.
“That is God’s business,” said Frerer Procopios. “Whatever He send me, I will accept with humility for my failure in His cause.”
“But if He should send you healing through—?” the novice said.
“He will do so,” said Frerer Procopios. “His Angels will provide it.” There was a long silence that was interrupted by birdcalls.
“And if the invaders come back? What will you do?” She sounded frightened.
“Die for the honor of Our Lord, as I should have done before,” he said with the first enthusiasm he had shown. “I would win a Martyr’s Crown with such a death. I should never have hesitated.” His tone changed again, becoming flat. “So that splendid fate has passed me by. I lost that chance six years since.” He was silent for a moment. “Go away. I must pray.”
“And you must eat as well. My Sorrars have labored to make bread and cheese, and they do it for charity. Surely you—God sends us food to sustain us; you must not spurn it.” She sounded plaintive. “For Mercy, you are my half-brother; you are the only one left alive.” Now she was pleading, perilously near tears. “Procopios. Please. One mother bore us both. I cannot forget that.”
“You must. I am not that man any longer.” The words were abrupt.
There was a longer silence this time; finally the novice said, “I will bring you your evening meal.”
“Deo gratias,” said Frerer Procopios.
“Deo gratias,” the novice echoed.
San-Ragoz listened intently as the novice left the make-shift cell. He could hear the man inside reciting prayers in a rasping tone. The sky was beginning to shine with the coming of day, and San-Ragoz knew he had to find shelter until nightfall, so he slipped away through the ruins to the old holocaust and settled into the maw of the ancient furnace, confident that he would remain undisturbed in such a secure hiding place. He set a slab of paving stone across the opening and let himself lapse into the torpor that passed for sleep among those who had come to his life. His last thought was that by the next time the sun rose, his appetite would be satisfied.
It was the novice’s voice that wakened him once again, at sundown. San-Ragoz sat up, all vestiges of sleep gone from him; he listened as the novice greeted Frerer Procopios, her voice quivering a little as she spoke, as if her despondency of the morning was still fresh. “Are you all right?”
“I am as God wills me to be,” he said. “That is all I ask, and all you should ask, Fountes.”
“I am worried about you,” she said.
“That is unworthy of you,” said Frerer Procopios harshly. “You should pray for the conversion of the Moors and the Jews, not worry about me.”
Listening to the two, San-Ragoz felt himself drawn to the melancholy novice, Fountes. He understood her sorrow with the solace of empathy; he listened more closely and moved a little nearer.
“I can’t help it,” said Fountes. When Frerer Procopios said nothing more, she added plaintively. “You are all the family left to me.”
“I am not your family,” he said. “You are one with the women of your community. I am one with my vocation. If you cannot achieve this understanding, you should leave your community.”
The novice said nothing for a while, then coughed gently. “I will ask another novice to tend to your needs.”
“If God wills it and your Superiora approves,” said Frerer Procopios with deliberate indifference.
“Of course. If she approves. Deo gratias.” Fountes began to move away from the old frigidarium, moving slowly along the ill-defined path that led out of the ruined villa to the rutted track that served as a road for this region.
San-Ragoz emerged from his hiding place and followed after the novice, all his concentration on her. He could sense her misery and loneliness as she tried to pray; as intense as his esurience was, his compassion for her in her dejection was greater.
Some two thousand paces from the old villa, the novice reached a long building that had been the stable for a long-fled Gardingio; it was now a small community of perhaps a dozen religious women, the box-stalls converted to cells, the central aisle to a chapel. Fountes went toward the nearest door surmounted by a cross, and spoke briefly to someone inside, then went along the building to a door that stood half-open.
In the shadows, San-Ragoz kept pace with Fountes, sensing her growing distress. He took refuge behind an overgrown berry hedge filled with blossoms and thorns; here he waited while the community finished chores and closed in for the night. When only the Vigil Lamp was shining, and the measured breathing of sleep sounded in the night, he moved out into the open, crossing the distance to Fountes’ cell. He tested the door with care, determining whether or not it was barred from within. Satisfied that it was not, he eased it open, then entered the cell, pulling the door closed behind him.
The cell still had the look of a stall: the manger now served as a shelf for Fountes’ few belongings, the palla that was her outer habit, and a single oil-lamp, now extinguished; the crucifix on the door hung from a halter-hook. The earthen floor had been carefully swept, and the cot that served as a bed stood along one wall; all three inner walls had been extended to the ceiling, closing off the cells as the stalls had never been. San-Ragoz stood for a long moment to assess his situation before he turned all his attention on Fountes, lying supine and asleep under a single worn blanket, to contemplate her before he spoke, his voice deep and soft. “You are dreaming, Fountes. You are pleased to dream. You welcome your dream. You are entering a wonderful vision, where you find comfort and solace. Everything you long for is yours, and all pain and loneliness have gone.”