The Crusade

Everything was ablaze as the sunset turned the hills and the orchards red. Elisio could see this from a distance. You could say he was distant from it, but that is not for sure. Elisio had fair curly hair. He was young and sad. Like the sunset...
Evening in the lining of the clouds. „ It foretells night” he thought, with his back to the huge cross on the wall, his face still basking in the light autumn wind.
A veil was slowly drifting from the heavens and it smothered the sunset gently, as in a prayer.
The city of Salamanca lay grey under Elisio’s eyes. Grey, but by no means quiet. It was thought in those times that each city has a soul lingering inside its walls. That each town had a voice, that could speak. But it could have been the wind. Elisio wondered...
Then the smells started rising as the earth cooled under the night air.Elisio could feel it rising up from the alleys and the market-places, the smell. It meant he was alive. The smells and the sadness kept him alive.
Dust in little whirlwinds gently touching the passers-by too busy to notice. „There is poetry in this,” he thought.
Winter was near, ready to pounce and the University of Salamanca seemed cold already. A mute being with entrails of stone- Elisio put that on paper once, but ate it in fear it might be discovered on him. The place was a killer of immagination, the breedingpool of theological knowledge and fanaticism. Elisio’s belly ached for two days upon ingurgitation of that thought.
The gardens were wilting, he could see it happening as every day went by. Only the orchards kept their pastel reds and auburns, oranges, but the trees were jaundiced and their time was close.
Elisio could also see the grand square and the cathedral stabbing at the sky, towering over the city and its walls, over the people and the whole earth. The cross at the top.
Then there was the smoke, again the smell. But not the smell of frankincense or myrrh, but of charred wood. The screaming Elisio heard as if close-by, and he saw without seeing- the crosses on the robes of the damned.
It would snow after the fires in the square. It would snow with ash that the wind brought up only to spill back upon the city. „ It will snow with souls tonight...”
Fernando had told him that he had heard an old Jew say the winter was to come with a scream.

...

Fernando had long legs and dark eyes and Elisio had fallen in love with him. Yet it was not peculiar for a young man to fall in love with another then or in any other time. It had to do with nature. If women had been barred from the religious, men fell in love with their brothers onto faith. It was not as if they didn’t already dedicate their life to the One man and his Son. Also the only other woman in their life was a mother.
So the novices but also some teachers at the University loved amongst their own sex. And this was a known secret, yet no one ever divulged it. While the bishop caressed young male thighs, heretics burned for having read from the wrong book. That justice should have such a funny sense of jest...
But Elisio’s fancy for Fernando had nothing to do with the body. As any who put pen to paper, Elisio had to have something to love. If knowledege was forbidden, imagination banned and free-thought destined for the executioner, Elisio decided to love Fernando. Just because... More peculiar things have been heard of.
So between swallowing each piece of paper on which he wrote his own creations, Elisio had an unrequieted love towards Fernando. But that night, Elisio decided to speak his mind. Perhaps also to find an ally with whom to escape. For Elisio had done the unthinkable and stolen a book from the library.
Come midnight, while working under the candlelight, there came a knock on the door- Fernando. They were akward, the two young men- the pauper with dreams of writing and the second born sent to the convent in order to keep the family fortune under one hand and one hand alone. Both fatherless children in life or in faith.
As much as Elisio’s eyes were sad, Fernando’s were mischievous. All saw it. The institutor and the abbot, but their mouths were filled with Fernando’s gold. Or his favours. As all writers to be, Elisio had fallen for the wrong things. A fate of all men. Fernando came striding in with a smile. The candle blew out. Darkness.
„ I wish to tell thee something...”
„ Do you want me, Elisio?”
„ Yes and no.”
„ It is not hard. Like the dogs do it. I will show you.” Fernando’s breath, the smell of sweat...
„ No! I am no sodomite.”
„ Neither am I, but who cares? The devil has my soul.”
„ Rubbish Fernando!” but Fernando’s eyes gliterred and Elisio was afraid. Yet he still caressed the hand holding his.
„ You are strange, my brother.”
„ All things are strange.” He jerked Fernando’s hand away and lit the candle. The cross was staring at them.
„ It is snowing...” Fernando said with a malicious smile.
„ Tonight I leave this place”, Elisio said. Silence. „ Want to know why?”
„ Perhaps, perhaps not!”
„ I am not playing games Fernando. This is serious. I wish to go to France. People have their own wills there.”
„ You’ll come back. You have not the stomach for such things. Nor the tongue.”
„ You could help.”
„ Why?! It is pleasant here. One soon turns deaf to the screams, blind to the truth. I am almost numb and you wish to drag me back out into the world?”
„ I have stolen a manuscript!” Elisio was trembling. A tear let fall, the others smothered.
„ Fool!” Fernando got up and paced towards the door. On the other side, someone gasped and broke into a run. He was only supposed to watch, yet he had heard something not supposed to be heard. Fernando bolted through the open door after the spy. Their breaths and their rapid steps echoed on the stone floor of the corridors. Then a thump as the bodies embraced and fell toghether on the floor. A shriek and then a scream. The sound of fists upon flesh and then a candle holder came from on high only to fall upon the skull. The bone cracking. Again a scream. Then the bells in the cathedral. Snow, real snow began to fall outside. Elisio saw Fernando smeared in the blood of a teacher, a great admirer of Fernando’s „virtues”.
They left like shadows, in full night upon a dark steed and passed through the gate before the guards could close the protcullis. Fugitives.
„ Where to brother?”, asked Fernando.
„ To France. Our only escape is joining in the Crusade. They’ll never find us there.” Fernando shudderred but Elisio’s eyes seemed to glitter, in their sad way.


A Time for Confession

The two Castillian twins... They never told them their names as if they were one. And so they behaved. They never talked, only listened, gestured, whispered among themselves. What where they? Fernando could care less. Elisio was intrigued but nothing more. Other problems were haunting his mind. But his mind was free at last. He had paid his toll in silence while Fernando had done it in blood. Each man has his price.
What where they, the two Castilians? Bundled up in the horse blanket, Fernando and Elisio stood back to back, their feet to the fire and talked quietly. What where they? Brigands or perhaps mercenaries. Pilgrims? Yet they had swords and three horses also a little mute gipsy with them. Their squire. The white shield with the red cross. They were a trinity of silence, but Fernando decided that it could not be the worse if they accompanied them. When they asked where to, they showed north, past Aragon, to the fields of France. Fernando decided he would accompany them.
„ What you do is your own choice Elisio.”
„ Tell me, did you know the teacher was spying on us?” His voice trembled. Elisio felt another blow coming, could feel Fernando was smiling, his back to him. He said nothing. The fire was crackling and the wind hissed amongst the trees. A new moon showed over the mountains casting shadows of giants on the hills. Fernando said nothing. Elisio was sad.
It was gaining on them, the winter. The mountains showed it already, but they were old, knew nothing of pretence, just accepted- a virtue that comes with old age. They stayed off the beaten track. The Castilians consented. Did they suspect anything? Who knew. They were in the hands of whoever had guided them thus far.
A last stop in Aragon before passing into France. An inn called „ The Scourge of God”. Elisio thought it appropiate. For the first time in many months, he kept the papers he wrote on. The twins were gentle in their mute way, even funny. They talked, meaning Fernando or Elisio would say something and the twins would react in some way, a gesture, a nod, a glint of a smile. As for the gipsy, nothing more than a possesion. He lived as the horses lived. Elisio thought a voice would have only encumbered his ragged existence. What was he feeling for the mute? A new feeling – contempt. His old world was dying.
The new world he entered was dim lit and smelled of food. Music and laughter resounded in the inn. The innkeeper had hairy hands and spoke Spanish with a bad accent. Probably some foreigner. There were no signs of the bishop’s guards, none were looking for them. Fernando thought they were. It was only a matter of time, he said.
A woman.
She passed by, under the candlelight. The twins blushed. They weren’t much older than Elisio or Fernando. All of about the same age of twenty. Only Fernando looked back at the woman’s lusty smile. Her red cheeks shone in the darkness, an invitation. But Elisio was not thrilled. She had nothing of the things he had read about women in books. She was young still, but somehow worn out, like an old saddle, ridden too many times. Fernando understood what he was thinking. There was a link between them.
„ They are all the same”, he said „ when the candle is out!” Fernando smiled.
„ I do not understand.”
„ You will, someday.”
The wine started flowing. One goblet after another. The twins started laughing. Then Fernando followed the red cheeked woman into the darkness. Elisio could only hear in a blurr, a feeling of warmth, he was slipping slowly into slumber. The dream... The dream came again. He could see the sea, some distant land. Someone, a woman was passing her fingers through his hair. Long, beautiful fingers that smelled of jasmine. A curtain oppened and he could see a great light. He trembled as he stepped into another room. Like a cage, but more beautiful, more vast than any cage. Laughter and then shadows, some sort of beings, he thought. Winged beings, like angels. The same dream, every month on the same day, since the day he could remember he dreamed. He saw it now, as if in reality - the nest of angels...
...


„ He is touched by God, I’m telling you!” the voice was soft, that of a woman.
„ Nonsene, the boy is a witch. You saw him frothing at the mouth. The authorities must take care of this. The boy is certainly touched, but by nothing divine.”
Elisio lay on the table and he opened his eyes, faces were staring down upon him, ugly hateful faces. Fearsome. It had happened, the episode after the dream. His only secret was out.
Fernando looked on in despair. The Castilians looked as if not caring. The whole inn waited for the authorities to settle the matter. As Elisio too undestood this, he knew danger was lurking close-by. The door of the inn slammed open but Elisio fainted even before the large guards entered the room.
„ What will they do?”
„ The physician said his brain is under too much strain. He will drill a hole to let the air out of his skull.”
„ Drill a hole in his head?!”
„ I know... These doctors... Look, he’s coming to!”
Elisio woke with a groan. His stomach was upside-down. Again laid on a table. Two large men were standing over him, the emblem of Aragon on their chain-mail shirts. No sign of the Castilians, nor of Fernando. Elisio started feeling very alone, and afraid. The door of the room creaked gently and Elisio heard footsteps pacing up and down the stone floor. He could see a bearded man of large constitution with beady eyes staring at him, grining as he paced. He did not introduce himself but he seemed to be a nobleman, as his clothes indicated. The room trembled as he spoke:
„ One month ago, a teacher at the University of Salamanca was found slain, two students missing. The bishop’s men are still searching for them. Do you know anything of this?” Elisio could not speak.
„ Of course” the bearded man continued „ you are but a poor man who suffers from fits. My physician will have to drill a hole in your head. Quite painful. Of course, there is an alternative.”
Elisio: Yes?
Bearded man: Your companions said something of you going to the crusades.
(Elisio lights up with hope.)
Bearded man: Yes, they have not forsaken you. I am not that cruel a man. I have no interest in religious problems. My interest is politics and money. You can read and write? Don’t answer that. I have your writings in my room. Quite interesting. I ask a favour.
Elisio: You mean a request.
Bearded man: Perhaps...( he grins) There is a French knight in my service. He speaks our tongue and serves the same order of knights as those two twins you are with. Templars I believe. He will lead you. You will serve under him. He carries something of great value to where you are going. This is important to me. That is all. If you accept, you are free to go. If the bishop’s men were to come here looking for you, I will not remember...
Elisio nodded. And so they were free to go.
The French knight took command, but he did not tell any of them what they were to do once in the Holy Land. As the winter became harsher, they wandered near the coasts of France. The Middle Sea was wrestless and cold sending harsh winds in their face. The snow tasted like salt and the earth was hard under the horses’ hoofs. The gypsy died of the cold, outside the city of Arles.

...

There were at least three of them, as the smoke cleared. The burnt bodies on the stake. The sky was the colour of lead and a faint silhouette of the sun was slipping into the sea.
The riders stopped a moment and the horses trembled under them, beating the earth as the wind carried the smell. In one swift gesture, the entire column crossed themselves and the knight dressed in his grey tunic took a kerchief out and placed it over his nose, spitting from time to time as they drew closer.
” Who would do such a thing? someone uttered. A man further down the ranks began to vomit quietly, tarnishing his white tunic with the red cross upon it.
” Men”, whispered the knight as he watched the charred corpses. ” Elisio!” he cried and the young sad boy with golden curls came astride to his master. The knight eyed him then and his sharp features became sharper as he pointed towards the execution – ” This my boy is the reason for which the pen is mightier than the sword.”
Elisio looked baffled but also sick at the sight and the smells were none the more pleasant.
”You see my young gossling”, said the knight, „these three would still be alive if they had read the right book, instead of another. We are in a time when the written word kills Elisio. Understand. Much easier for the soldier to run a blade through the flesh. Yet he will only kill one. As for the pen...”
Elisio felt faint and could not look at the cursed hearth anymore, but he nodded that he undestood. He had seen it before. The snow that followed...
” I undertstand you try wielding the pen rather than the blade. Be careful of such things. They are deadly.”
” True, Signor Michel, yet I must confess, I am not much of a writer...”


Holy Water-just Land

The nightmares were soon upon them. Fernando trembled as night came over the hills. Elisio burned all his papers and could not sleep. The Castilians slept in turns. The French knight Michel asked them why. And one Castilian responded: „ To keep the nightmares away!” They were the only words that ever came out of one of the twins. The knight laughed and his voice resounded in the cold.
The landscape was riddled with executed heretics as if hell had spilled over into the world. It was the canvas of a zealot. All plagues were upon the world. The four young men were very afraid, yet the knight didn’t even move as they passed the endless scenes of execution or battle. To Elisio it seemed as though the world was falling in upon itself. Madness...
They reached the port of Messina as winter was dying under the sunlit landscape of Sicily. The sea was facing them head-on smiling between the waves, waiting...
„ Tell me Fernando, have you ever seen something like this?” asked the French knight.
„ I must confess, I have never seen anything like it!”
„ It’s waiting for us. Waiting for an offering. She will take it when we least expect it.” The Templar knight grinned.
„ Cruel...” Elisio murmured. Yet the sight of the sea made him fill up with warmth, the urge to put pen back to paper again.
„ No, my young ones. This is truly holy water. It takes and never gives back. A true sign of divinity.” and the French knight boarded the ship and so they set off for the Holy Land.
Signor Galante, the captain, was a very handsome Italian with Tuscan features, signalling his ancient Roman heritage. Yet he was a brute of a man with no manners and a way of being quite opposite to what his name might suggest. But by no means was he of a bad sort. Galante proved to be a really hearty companion, a welcome change from the gloomy voice of the French knight Michel. The young men took to him, whenever the sea-sickness did not claim its price.
Galante told the young men about the Holy Land and the Muslims. That they were not as described by the clergy. Not one-eyed monsters that the devil had spawned. Just men of smaller stature and darker countenance.
„ You see” Galante said „ I admire them. They do not have graveyards for their dead. They bury them where they see fit. A better way of remebering them. Our land is one of forgetfulness, whilst theirs is one of remeberance. The crusades are battles of wills, but ours is not as powerful as that of the easterner’s.” Every sunset, Galante hid away at the back of the ship, faced east, kneeled on a mat and bowed until his forehead reached the ground. Elisio saw him once, but could not decide what it meant.
Galante was a most mysterious man for all his rough nature.
The Templar looked east also, at every twilight, holding a rough leather bag in his arms- the secret thing he was carrying.
„ What is in it?” Elisio asked.
„ A book and a wooden cup” the Frenchman replied.
„ Are they of great importance?”
„ For me they are.”
„ Why?”
„ Someday perhaps, you will understand.”
One morning, a sailor in the crow’s nest started yelling at the top of his voice.
„ The Holy Land!” someone whispered with a smile.
„ No. Just land!” someone else said.

Nest of angels

The sun schorched them from the onset. And the sand was cutting deep grooves into their skin. They had come to a harsh place. The Frenchman still led them on.
The views were different, the sun had another colour. It seemed somehow clearer, more despotic than in any other place on earth. All European races had gathered on that land. As they passed the fishing villages and the small towns, they stopped to make camp outside the city walls.
Jerusalem... The city that split the world, right down the middle.
The city of departure. The city in which one arrives only to leave.
Towards one’s final destination
The Castilian twins were first to leave. They were recruited by a group of Templars that claimed they were going on a pilgrimage towards Antioch. But the Frenchman Michel could see their tenseness, the way they clenched the hilts of the swords. They were going to rob and pillage. In the name of Christianity.
Soon afterwards, Fernando left in the companionship of a Turkish tradesman who had offered silk and some gold in exchange for knowledege, upon hearing that Fernando was a student. But Elisio knew the real reasons. He said nothing. He never saw Fernando again.
At the foot of the Temple of Solomon, Elisio and the knight Michel crossed paths for the last time. Elisio had been of no use. Then why the whole sharade? What had been taught to him? How had he helped? Had the bearded duke really helped him? Elisio had lost everything. Every companion. Marooned on a distant land, in the holy city. But he realized he had no desire to be there. Michel left without saying a word. Elisio was lost.
A whole day, he walked the path of the Lord, toghether with other pilgrims, then he reached Golgotha. He felt nothing, but tears started pouring from his eyes. Was he repenting? But for what? The world seemed even more stranger to him now. He finally undestood that he understood nothing. The sun was scorching his skull. He fell...
Another fit.
...

For some time there were rumours in Jerusalem of a madman-prophet of very young age of Spanish descent who wandered the streets proclaiming the existence of some nest of angels. They said he was young and sad and he had curly fair hair. He carried with him a large pouch in which he kept his writings. One day he was seen leaving for the desert.
A year later the Khalif of Juppa, lord over a great city and guardian of the trade routes to Petra and Medina proclaimed his daughter’s marriage to a poet turned from infidel into believer. His daughter was called the Lady of Jasmine because from birth her body smelled of nothing but that flower. The husband was said to have fair curly hair and a sad look upon his face.
One day, after some great battle between Christians and Muslims, as the carrion birds circled over the battleground, the Khalif and his son-in-law were hunting for lions in the rocky canions, not far from the Dead Sea. The son-in-law always carried with him a great pouch filled with papers as well as pen and ink. They crossed the dunes following the circling vultures and came upon the battleground.
„ It’s as if Allah has spit upon the sand” the Khalif said. His young and sad companion crossed himself. A golden cross and a flag with verses from the Coran towered over the endless landscape of corpses.
„ This is madness!” the Khalif said. They turned to go as the young man heard movement near-by. A badly cloven knight crawled from under his horse. The young man recognised him- it was the French knight Michel. The knight also recognised the young man. They were silent.
„ I see you have found it” the knight said „ the place dear to you!” and he pointed toward the pouch filled with papers.
„ Yes I have” said the young, sad man.
„ What is it called?” the knight asked.
„ The nest of angels!” the young man replied.
„ I have never heard of such a place!”
„ You have been reading the wrong books perhaps!”
„ Perhaps...”