The Codex Lacrimae (14 page)

“
Hmph
.
Armies come and go. This book should be the most important thing in your life. It completes the five years you've spent working on it.” The old man shook his head in obvious disappointment. “Well, what's the state of affairs? Should I tell the scribes to lock down?”

“No, no, not yet,” Ríg said with a shake of his head. “I
do
have to meet with Arcadian and Perdieu, though, so I may have a different directive from them when I get back. Now, besides telling me again that I'm not studying enough, you said you needed something?”

“Oh, that.
Oui
,
oui
.
We're running low on blues and greens,” Jeremiah said with some exasperation. “Everything's dried from that hodgepodge Pellion made of the powders with that dreadful spill last week. What a mess. I wish you'd have at least let me brain him a couple of times with a stick. Guard duty at the front gate's the worst place for him. You know he's an eye for the girls and putting him with all the pilgrim traffic is certain to tempt him beyond reason.”

“If so, then he wasn't meant for the priesthood,” Ríg commented. “Besides, Brother Perdieu agreed to lessen the punishment time if Pellion pulled the extra shifts.”

“I don't care about any of that — have him sent back!” The old man snapped. “Have Pellion sharpen quills or work on pinpricking page layouts for the final chapters here. He's the only one who knows how to draw Caliburn!”

“Caliburn...you mean, King Arthur's sword?” Jacob asked.

“Who else's?” Jeremiah snorted. He then waved a disgusted hand at one of the younger novitiates. “I tell you this, Boy,” he said ominously to Ríg, “these striplings you've left me with here might as well just take
daggers
to the vellum pages, for all the slashes and mistakes I'm finding! None of them could trace a margin to save their lives!”

Ríg smiled, ignoring the barbs. “I can't help you, Master Jeremiah. If you recall,
you
were the one chasing Pellion through the scriptorium with a broom and throwing quills at him! I had to get him out of range before you took an eye out.” He shrugged. “It's not my fault that Brother Perdieu happened to be walking down the hall outside at that moment.”

Jeremiah kept glaring at Ríg and then snapped his head away, changing the subject: “Yes,
well
,
I think that we've got enough ground azurite for the blues, but the dried buckthorn berries were completely ruined when Pellion — ” he took a deep breath and smacked his lips together, “I mean, when the
accident
happened.”

Ríg clasped a reassuring hand on the old man's shoulder. “Master Khaldun just returned and he might have some of those supplies with him.” The knight straightened. “Meanwhile, can't you just keep sketching artwork between the spaces you've made for framing the written columns?”

Jeremiah grimaced. “Not my preference, but of course I'll make do, I'll make do.” He chuckled. “You're patient with an old man's fits of madness, Boy. I appreciate that. Thankfully, you question everything, Ríg, which is why you keep learning. One couldn't ask for more from a knight, eh? Not even from Lancelot or Palomides, though even they could have done with asking a few more questions in their quest for the Grail…”

Jeremiah began to rise from the stool and almost tripped over his own feet. The misstep irritated him. “Confound it all!
That's
what I get for throwing out a compliment, a broken neck!”

He shakily grabbed the table for support, and then snapped at his protégé, all his earlier irritation returning in a flash. “Well, come on, give me a hand here, Ríg, for God's sake! Do you want me to have an accident, too? Then, you'd be out both Pellion and me!” Jeremiah sat down wearily on the stool, briefly appraising Jacob, before again completely changing his line of thought. “You, Boy! Do you know the Greek term,
homooúsios
?”

“Me?” Jacob was startled, but replied immediately, glad for the chance to show this cranky monk that he, too, had a scholarly side. “Yes, I do, it's Greek….”

“I know that, Whelp! Do you know the answer or not? Quit stalling and —”

“It means that, no matter what the appearance, something's of ‘the same substance' as something else,” Jacob interrupted, speaking in a rush and talking over the old man. The boy was a quick study of people, and beyond the judgmental severity in Jeremiah's eyes, he sensed the old man was as much a teacher as any rabbi Jacob had ever met. “Kind of like when the wizard, Merlin, disguised Uther Pendragon so he could steal into Tintagel castle, seduce Lady Igraine, and sire King Arthur?”

“
Hmph
.
A more Christian response would've focused on the same Essence of the Father and Son being one and the same, but we'll let that pass,” Jeremiah grumbled as he looked away, but his eyes twinkled through bushy eyebrows. Jacob had, indeed, taken the right tack. “But,
oui
,
let's use Arthurian history, although a better example would be the shifting nature of the Holy Grail.” He chuckled, as if remembering a private joke. “
Oui
,
oui
.
Fools…fools like me, eh…well,” Jeremiah paused, an unidentifiable emotion overtaking him. Finally, he gathered himself, and continued in a voice filled with urgency, his eyes shifting to Ríg. “Fools like you and me, Lad – sometimes they forget the essentially supernatural aspects of our faith. They forget that our minds can comprehend both the universal essence of a form and the — what's the word? —
oui
,
comprehend both essence and the
particularity
of its physical reality. Things are not always what they seem, Ríg.” Then, Jeremiah inhaled deeply, and his cutting tone returned. “Do you see what I'm getting at? Eh? Let me tell you, Boys – to return to our point: if the Round Table knights who pursued the Holy Grail had recalled that (like so many magical talismans) the
Sangréal
could take many shapes other than a mere cup, they'd have saved themselves
years
of fruitless questing and —”

Ríg held up a hand, “I'm sorry, Jeremiah, we have to stop now. Perhaps we'll discuss this later.” He smiled ruefully. “If it weren't for a couple of armies outside, we could spend the rest of the afternoon talking about the
substantiae
of God, or more Arthurian lore, but we've got to go.”

“Years of searching,” Jeremiah repeated, tears coming into his eyes at the thought of something. He cleared his throat, then: “What were we talking about? Oh, right,” the old man's voice was confused, and then his voice returned to normal, the momentary madness receding. ““Yes. Quite right. No rush, Ríg. We can talk later. The world moves on, no matter how old fools like me would try to stop the Wheel of Fortune from turning. I can't get angry at you, son, not if you're asking the right questions. Can you promise me that you'll keep asking?”

Ríg frowned slightly, apparently misunderstanding the direction of the old man's ramblings, but he nodded and said he would keep asking whenever he could.

The monk had taken quill in hand again, moving it with an astonishingly steady hand to the inkwell nearby, devoting his entire attention to the parchment page. Jacob tried to say farewell, but the old man seemed to have forgotten that he and Ríg existed.

“Come, let's let him get back to work,” Ríg said in a quiet tone. He retrieved the lantern from the stone bench where he'd lain it. “We'll go through the other part of the library.”

The lamplight cast fluttering shadows on the walls as Ríg began telling the boy about varying aspects of the collection.

“Master Khaldun called you his apprentice,” Jacob prompted at one point, trying to get to the bottom of his confusion about the seemingly dual nature of monk-knight beside him.

“Yes, I am, and I'll probably be so for many years to come,” Ríg agreed. “I came to the Krak when I was about your age, and he was a somewhat severe taskmaster for the first few years. I wanted to do nothing but pray and read when I got here, but I've also had to serve as squire for Brother Perdieu — you know, to become a knight.”

“Can you do both, though?” Jacob asked.

“Both what?”

“Be a monk
and
a knight?”

Ríg smiled. “I don't know. The Templars and Hospitallers
can
be something of both. I'm squired to Brother Perdieu, but still mean to be ordained as a priest at the end of my training.”

He looked down at the boy. “I do have to go now, Jacob. You'll take the stairwell at the end of this hall, make two rights and a left, and you'll be at the infirmary.”

“Two rights and a left. Got it.” Jacob looked back at him. “Where will you be?”

“The opposite way,” Ríg replied, “the end of this hall and making two lefts and a right to Arcadian's chambers.” He paused, wanting to ask about Jacob's mother again. He'd asked about the boy's family in one of the other chambers and received only short answers, and finally silence in response.

“So, your mother has no husband now, and her family in Jerusalem rejected her for marrying a Christian?”

When the boy nodded mutely, Ríg continued, “And now her parents are dead, too?” Another nod.

Ríg tried to get Jacob's attention, but the boy turned away from him so the older youth just said what was on his mind.

“Look, Jacob. I know it's probably not my place to say this, but your mother needs you all the more since her parents and husband have died. You've got to understand that the deaths of your grandparents would still make her sad, even if things weren't going well between them.”

“She's sad, but she was just as sad when my father's parents were alive! They were mean to her, and she was all alone when
Aba
died.” Jacob's anger was hot, and he felt tears filling his eyes.

This talk was making him think of his father. He didn't want to answer questions about his family from a Christian. The
nazaros
had taken his father, his Aba, from him at the Battle of Mecina. Whatever anyone thought of that massacre, Jacob's father had perished for the sake of Servius Aurelius Santini's own vanity and fanatical religious beliefs.

Why couldn't such man have been as reasonable as Ríg — if all Crusaders were like this, wouldn't Mecina have ended differently? Should he rethink his perceptions and allow that his father might still be alive?

“I've been taking care of her, Ríg,” Jacob said, controlling his anger and focusing on his mother, “but then we got kicked out of the Italian Quarter when a lousy Genoese tried to have his way with her…”

“Ah, I see. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” The knight reached forward and tousled the boy's dark hair. “Go. I'll come to the infirmary after the knights' council and you can introduce me to your mother.” He gave Jacob a searching look. “Does that sound all right with you?”

“Yes, Ríg — thank you. I —”

Two French-speaking monks came hastening down the corridor from the stairwell, hailing Ríg. One said something, but couldn't be heard yet because of the length of the hallway.

Ríg said, “I've got to go with these men. One last thing: there's a member of the eastern mission who's my best friend. He's about my age, but kind of silly. Please tell him I said that, and use the exact words: ‘You're funny.' His name's Marcus —

“Master Khaldun's son?”

“Oh. You know that, too, do you?” Ríg said. “You're a very fast learner, Jacob. Yes, he's that, too, but the main thing is,
if
he's awake, introduce yourself and tell him that Ríg said he must've been fighting like a little girl to get hurt so badly by only a couple dozen marauders.”

Ríg chuckled and prepared to join his brethren, when two other soldiers rushed into the corridor, obviously looking for him. After a brief conversation, Ríg turned and beckoned Jacob to follow.

“Let's go, Jacob! I'll tell Marcus myself — there's an emergency in the hospital!”

Chapter 9

The Flyting at Caesarea

A few days before Ríg and Jacob dashed to the hospital ward, sixty leagues southwest at the coastal city of Caesarea, Clarinda Trevisan was well into a mid-afternoon supper in the tower keep of the Templar Grand Master, Evremar of Choques.

A month had passed since the departure from Constantinople, and she now sat at dinner with Pasquale, Alexander, Genevieve, and a roomful of strangers.

The young Venetian woman looked at the bay's waters through the portico where she and her fellow diners sat, momentarily bored with the conversation. The topic had unfortunately drifted to local and political matters.

Such talk threatened to drive Clarinda insane with impatience — she didn't want to talk about taxation or watch the Grand Master use fancy words to spar with the ousted King Guy and Queen of Jerusalem, she wanted to find her father! She needed
action
,
to return to the sea, to do everything possible to find her father — whether he was somewhere within the ruins of the Roman amphitheater or in the hundreds of houses in the city itself — to do anything
active
that would get her moving again and perhaps closer to finding her
Padre
.