24.

STRANGE TONGUES.

When Rob asked Charbonneau where he had learned to throw a knife, the old Frenchman said he had been taught by the pirates of his youth. "It was a handy skill to have while fighting the d.a.m.ned Danish and seizing their ships." He hesitated. "And while fighting the d.a.m.ned English and seizing their ships," he said slyly. By that time they weren't bothered by the old national rivalries and neither had any doubts left about his companion's worthiness. They grinned at one another.

"Will you show me?"

"If you'll teach me to juggle," Charbonneau said, and Rob agreed eagerly. The bargain was one-sided, for it was too late in life for Charbonneau to master a new and difficult dexterity, and in the little time they had left together he learned only to pop two b.a.l.l.s, although he derived much pleasure from tossing and catching them.

Rob had the advantage of youth, and years of juggling had given him strong and wiry wrists, as well as a sharp eye and balance and timing.

"It takes a special knife. Your dagger has a fine blade which would soon be snapped if you started throwing it, or the hilt would be ruined, for the hilt is the center of an ordinary dagger's weight and balance. A throwing knife is weighted in the blade, so that a quick snap of the wrist sends it easily on its way point first."

Rob quickly learned how to throw Charbonneau's knife so it presented its sharp blade first. It was harder to become skilled at hitting targets where he aimed, but he was accustomed to the discipline of practice and threw the knife at a mark on a broad tree whenever he had a chance.

They kept to the Roman roads, which were crowded with a polyglot mixture of people. A French cardinal's party once forced them off the road. The prelate rode past surrounded by two hundred mounted troops and a hundred and fifty servants, and wearing scarlet shoes and hat and a gray cope over a once-white chasuble made darker than the cope by the dust of the road. Pilgrims moved in the general direction of Jerusalem singly or in small or large groups; sometimes they were led or lectured by palmers, religious votaries who signaled that they had accomplished sacred travel by wearing two crossed palm leaves picked in the Holy Land. Bands of armored knights galloped by with shouts and war cries, often drunk, usually pugnacious and always hungry for glory, loot, and deviltry. Some of the religious zealots wore hair shirts and crawled toward Palestine on b.l.o.o.d.y hands and knees to fulfill vows made to G.o.d or a saint. Exhausted and defenseless, they were easy prey. Criminals abounded on the highways, and law enforcement by officials was perfunctory at best; when a thief or highwayman was caught in the act he was executed on the spot by the travelers themselves, without trial.

Rob kept his weapons loose and ready, half expecting the man with the missing ear to lead a pack of riders down on them for vengeance. His size, the broken nose, and the striped facial wounds combined to make him appear formidable, but he realized with amus.e.m.e.nt that his best protection was the frail-looking old man he had hired because of his knowledge of English.

They bought provision in Augsburg, a bustling trade center founded by the Roman emperor Augustus in 12 B.C. Augsburg was a center of transactions between Germany and Italy, crowded with people and busy with its preoccupation, which was commerce. Charbonneau pointed out Italian merchants, conspicuous in shoes of expensive fabric which rose to curling points at the toes. For some time Rob had seen Jews in increasing number, but in Augsburg's markets he noticed more of them than ever, instantly identifiable in their black caftans and narrow-brim, bell-shaped leather hats.

Rob put on an entertainment in Augsburg but didn't sell as much Specific as he had previously, perhaps because Charbonneau translated with less zest when forced to use the guttural language of the Franks.

It didn't matter, for his purse was fat; at any rate, ten days later when they reached Salzburg, Charbonneau told him that the entertainment in that town would be their final one together.

"In three days' time we come to the Danube River, and there I leave you and turn back to France."

Rob nodded.

"I'm of no further use to you. Beyond the Danube is Bohemia, where the people speak a language strange to me."

"You're welcome to come with me, whether or not you translate."

But Charbonneau smiled and shook his head. "Time for me to go home, this time to stay."

At an inn that night they bought a farewell feast of the food of the land: smoked meat stewed with lard, pickled cabbage, and flour. They didn't like it and got mildly drunk on heavy red wine. He paid off the old man handsomely.

Charbonneau had a last, sobering piece of advice. "A dangerous countryside lies ahead of you. It's said that in Bohemia one can't tell the difference between wild bandits and the hirelings of the local lords. In order to pa.s.s through such a land unharmed, you must have the company of others."

Rob promised he would seek to join a strong group.

When they saw the Danube it was a more muscular river than he had expected, fast-flowing and with the menacing oily surface that he knew denoted deep and dangerous water. Charbonneau stayed a day longer than promised, insisting on riding downstream with him to the wild and halfsettled village of Linz, where a large log-raft ferry took pa.s.sengers and freight across a quiet stretch of the wide waterway.

"Well," the Frenchman said.

"Perhaps one day we'll see each other again."

"I don't think so," Charbonneau said.

They embraced.

"Live forever, Rob J. Cole."

"Live forever, Louis Charbonneau."

He got down from the wagon and went to arrange his pa.s.sage as the old man rode away, leading the bony brown horse. The ferryman was a sullen hulk with a bad cold who kept removing the snot from his upper lip with his tongue. The matter of the fare was difficult because Rob didn't have the Bohemian language, and in the end he felt he had been overcharged. When he returned to the wagon after hard sign-language bargaining, Charbonneau had already ridden out of sight.

On his third day of moving into Bohemia he met up with five fat and ruddy Germans and tried to convey the idea that he wanted to travel with them. His manner was polite; he offered gold and indicated he'd be willing to cook and do other camp ch.o.r.es, but there wasn't a smile from any of them, only hands on the hilts of five swords.

"f.u.c.ks," he said finally, and turned away. But he couldn't blame them, for their party already had some strength and he was unknown, a danger.

Horse drew him from the mountains into a great saucer-shaped plateau ringed by green hills. There were cultivated fields of gray earth in which men and women toiled over wheat, barley, rye, and beets, but most of it was mixed forest. In the night, not far away, he heard the howling of wolves. He kept a fire burning although it wasn't cold, and Mistress Buffington mewed at the wild animal sounds, sleeping with the spiny ridge of her back hard against him.

He had depended on Charbonneau for many things, but he found that not the least of these had been companionship. Now he drove down the Roman road and knew the meaning of the word alone, for he couldn't speak to any of the people he met.

A week after he and Charbonneau had parted, one morning he came upon the stripped and mutilated body of a man hanging from a tree by the side of the road. The hanged man was slight and ferret-faced and was missing his left ear.

Rob regretted that he wasn't able to inform Charbonneau that others had caught up with their third highwayman.

25.

THE JOINING.

Rob crossed the wide plateau and reentered mountains. They weren't as high as those he had already crossed but they were rugged enough to slow his progress. Twice more he approached groups of travelers on the road and attempted to join with them, but each time he was refused permission to do so. One morning a group of hors.e.m.e.n dressed in rags rode past him and shouted something at him in their strange language, but he nodded a greeting and looked away, for he could see they were wild and desperate. He felt if he were to travel with them he would soon be dead.

Arriving at a large town, he went into the tavern and was overjoyed to find that the publican knew a few words of English. From this man he learned that the town was called Brunn. The people through whose territory he traveled were mostly members of a tribe called the Czechs. He could learn little else, not even where the man had gotten his tiny store of English words, for the simple exchange had overtaxed the publican's linguistic ability. When Rob left the tavern he found a man in the back of his wagon, going through his belongings.

"Get out," he said softly. He pulled his sword but the fellow had leaped from the cart and was off before he could stop him. Rob's money purse was still nailed safely beneath the floor of the wagon, and the only thing missing was a cloth bag full of the paraphernalia used in tricks of magic. It gave him no small comfort to think of the thief's face when he opened the bag.

After that he polished his weapons daily, keeping a thin coat of grease on his blades so they slipped from the scabbards at the slightest pull. At night he slept lightly or not at all, listening for any sound that would indicate someone creeping up on him. He knew he would have little hope if he were attacked by a pack such as the hors.e.m.e.n in rags. He remained alone and vulnerable for nine more long days, until one morning the road emerged from the woods and, to his wonder and delight and burgeoning hope, he saw before him a tiny town that had been engulfed by a large caravan.

The sixteen houses of the village were surrounded by several hundred animals. Rob saw horses and mules of every size and description, saddled or harnessed to wagons, carts, and vans of wide variety. He tethered Horse to a tree. People were everywhere, and as he pushed among them his ears were a.s.saulted by a babble of incomprehensible tongues.

"Please," he said to a man engaged in the arduous task of changing a wheel. "Where is the caravan master?" He helped lift the wheel to the hub but won only a grateful smile and a blank headshake.

"The caravan master?" he asked the next traveler, who was in the process of feeding two span of great oxen with wooden b.a.l.l.s fixed to the points of their long horns.

"Ah, der Meister? Kerl Fritta," the man said, and gestured down the line.

After that it was easy, for the name Kerl Fritta seemed to be known by all. Whenever Rob uttered it he received a nod and a pointing finger, until finally he came to a place where a table had been set in a field next to a large wagon hitched to six of the largest matched chestnut draft horses he had ever seen. On the table was a naked sword and behind it sat a personage who wore his long brown hair in two thick plaits and was engrossed in conversation with the first of a long line of travelers waiting to speak with him.

Rob stood at the end of the line. "That is Kerl Fritta?" he asked.

"Yes, that is he," answered one of the men.

They stared at one another in delight.

"You're English!"

"Scotch," said the man, with only slight disappointment. "Well met! Well met!" he murmured, grasping both of Rob's hands. He was tall and spare, with long gray hair, and clean-shaven in the Britons' style. He wore a traveling suit of rough black stuff but it was good cloth, and well cut.

"James Geikie Cullen," he said. "Sheep breeder and wool factor, journeying to Anatolia with my daughter in search of better varieties of rams and ewes."

"Rob J. Cole, barber-surgeon. Bound for Persia to buy precious medicinals."

Cullen gazed at him almost fondly. The line moved, but they had enough time to exchange information, and English words never had sounded more euphonious.

Cullen was accompanied by a man dressed in stained brown trousers and a ragged gray kirtle; he said this was Seredy, whom he had hired as servant and interpreter.

To Rob's surprise, he learned that he was no longer in Bohemia but unknowingly had crossed into the country of Hungary two days before. The village they had so transformed was called Vac. Though bread and cheese were available from the inhabitants, provision and other supplies were dear.

The caravan had originated in the town of Ulm, in the duchy of Schwaben.

"Fritta is a German," Cullen confided. "He doesn't appear to go out of his way to be pleasant but it's advisable to get along with him, for there are reliable reports that Magyar bandits are preying on lone travelers and small parties, and there's not another large caravan in this vicinity."

News of the bandits appeared to be general knowledge, and as they moved toward the table other applicants joined the line. Directly behind Rob, to his interest, there were three Jews.

"In such a caravan one must travel with both gentlefolk and vermin," Cullen said loudly. Rob was watching the three men in their dark caftans and leather hats. They were conversing with one another in still another strange language, but it seemed that the eyes of the man closest to him flickered when Cullen spoke, as if he understood what had been said. Rob looked away.

When they reached Fritta's table Cullen took care of his own business and then was kind enough to offer Seredy as Rob's translator.

The caravan master, experienced and quick in conducting such interviews, efficiently learned his name, business, and destination.

"He wants you to understand that the caravan doesn't go to Persia," Seredy said. "Beyond Constantinople you must make another arrangement."

Rob nodded, then the German spoke at length.

"The fee you must pay to Master Fritta is the equal of twenty-two English silver pennies, but he wishes no more of these, for it is in English pennies that my Master Cullen will pay and Master Fritta says he can't easily dispose of too many. Are you able to pay in deniers, he asks."

"I am."

"He'll take twenty-seven deniers," Seredy said too smoothly.

Rob hesitated. He had deniers because he had sold the Specific in France and Germany, but he was ignorant of the fair rate of exchange.

"Twenty-three," a voice said directly behind him, so low he thought he had imagined it.

"Twenty-three deniers," he said firmly.

The caravan master accepted the offer icily, looking straight into his eyes.

"You must provide your own provision and supply. Should you lag or be forced to drop out you'll be left behind," the translator said. "He says the caravan will leave here composed of some ninety separate parties totaling more than one hundred and twenty men. He demands one sentry for each ten parties, so every twelve days you will have to stand guard all night."

"Agreed."

"Newcomers must take a place at the end of the line of march, where the dust is worst and the traveler is most vulnerable. You'll follow Master Cullen and his daughter. Each time somebody ahead of you drops out, you may move up a single place. Each party to join the caravan hereafter will travel behind you."

"Agreed."

"And should you practice your profession of barber-surgeon to the members of the caravan, you must share all earnings equally with Master Fritta."

"No," he said at once, for it was unjust that he should have to give one-half of his earnings to this German.

Cullen cleared his throat. Glancing at the Scot, Rob saw apprehension in his face and remembered what he had said about the Magyar bandits.

"Offer ten, take thirty," the low voice behind him said.

"I'll agree to give up ten percent of my earnings," Rob said.

Fritta uttered a single laconic word which Rob took to be the Teutonic equivalent of "goose s.h.i.t"; then he made another short sound.

"Forty, he says."

"Tell him twenty."

They agreed on thirty percent. As he thanked Cullen for the use of the interpreter and walked away, Rob glanced quickly at the three Jews. They were men of medium height, with faces tanned to swarthiness. The man who had stood directly behind him had a fleshy nose and large lips over a full brown beard shot with gray. He didn't look at Rob but stepped toward the table with the total concentration of someone who has already tested an adversary.

The newcomers were ordered to take their positions in the line of march during the afternoon and make camp in place that night, for the caravan would set off right after dawn. Rob found his location between Cullen and the Jews, unhitched Horse, and led him to gra.s.s a few rods away. The inhabitants of Vac were taking their last opportunity to profit from the windfall by selling provision, and a farmer came by and held up eggs and yellow cheese for which he wanted four deniers, a shocking price. Instead of paying, Rob bartered away three bottles of the Universal Specific and gained his supper.

While he ate he watched his neighbors watching him. In the camp in front of his, Seredy fetched the water but Cullen's daughter did the cooking. She was very tall and had red hair. There were five men in the campsite behind his. When he had finished cleaning up after the meal, he walked to where the Jews were brushing their animals. They had good horses as well as two pack mules, one of which presumably carried the tent they had raised. They watched silently as Rob walked to the man who had stood behind him during his dealing with Fritta.

"I am Rob J. Cole. I wish to thank you."

"For nothing, for nothing." He lifted the brush from the horse's back. "I am Meir ben Asher." He introduced his companions. Two had been with him when Rob had first seen them in the line: Gershom ben Shemuel, who had a wen on his nose and was short and looked as tough as a chunk of wood, and Judah haCohen, sharp-nosed and small-mouthed, with a bear's glossy black hair and the same sort of beard. The other two were younger. Simon ben ha-Levi was thin and serious, almost a man, a beanpole with a wispy beard. And Tuveh ben Meir was a boy of twelve, large for his age as Rob had been.

"My son," Meir said.

No one else talked. They watched him very carefully.

"You are merchants?"

Meir nodded. "Once our family lived in the town of Hameln in Germany. Ten years ago we all moved to Angora, in the Byzantine, from which we travel both east and west, buying and selling."

"What do you buy and sell?"

Meir shrugged. "A little of this, a bit of that."