Chapter 2

On the tenth day, Thomas managed to climb into his armor. Still weak and staggering, he mounted with the help of the wonderer. The restive destrier neighed, tried to take a majestic pace. The wonderer seized the rein hastily, the horse stopped dead. His hand on the rein was as wide as an oar, his arm, bony and gnarled, with some flesh added to it, seemed to be carved of old oak. He became even broader in shoulders, his face livened up a bit, but his eyes were still full of anguish.

“Thank God,” Thomas said. “Do your gods allow to accept a reward?”

“Sir Thomas, I need very little. If no grass, I eat bark. I sleep on the bare ground or stones. Goodbye! Good luck to you.”

The knight tried to raise his lance in a salute but failed. He gave a guilty smile instead, his destrier took a steady pace, doing his best not to shake the knight. The wonderer picked up his cloak and staff, which he called a crutch, and strolled along the same road slowly, lost in his brooding.

The path winded among trees, the open space seen ahead. A squirrel ran along the branch over the walk, saw the strolling man and paused in curiosity, its little teeth made a clank. A big bird flew heavily past him, tried to perch on a branch, but her legs were stiff from long sitting in the nest, so the bird rocked and flapped its wings until its talons regained confidence.

Oleg stepped softly, trying not to disturb the bird, a broody hen. Her belly looked pink and pitiful, with bare skin where feathers had been plucked away to warm the nest. The bird was emaciated. She seldom leaves her nest, eats almost nothing, busy with warming and guarding her brood.

A doe passed in twenty steps without fear, followed by a young thin-legged deer. She was alerted, her ears moving. The doe gave Oleg only a guarded look: he did not seem to pose any danger. She nuzzled into the branches, plucked some fresh leaves and chewed them, her eyes half-closed with languish. The young deer gaped at dragonflies while being fed by his mother.

The trees parted. Oleg plunged into the hot air. The sun pounced upon him, frying him in his cloak. Oleg threw the hood back, exposing his head to the hot rays.

An ordinary hermit perfects himself in solitude, far from the vanity of the world: in a cave, desert, woods, or mountains. Such hermits number in thousands. In agonizing reflection, they obtain the Truth and bring it to the world. Gautama obtained his Truth in wild woods, Zarathustra secluded himself in mountains, Christ fasted in a desert for forty days, and Mahomet heard Allah speaking to him while he brooded on the peak of a lone mountain.

But there is a more difficult sort of reclusion: being among people, dressing, eating, and doing as they do, but living this life with your flesh only, while your soul remains as clean and sublime as it was on the mountain peak. Many tried Great Reclusion, but few succeeded in it!

The road meandered in hills. Twice Oleg saw odd ugly olives with swollen trunks, which grew only in that land, until the hills parted and the road went out in the open.

Far ahead, there was a lofty fortified castle – a gloomy building of four floors, with a tall watchtower. The castle was ramparted at the moment. It looked swarmed with ants, but those were lots of people: dragging huge stones, tying them round to lift on the wall. Oleg saw men’s bare backs bustling everywhere, the wet glister of trunks being barked while dragged.

The road forked: one branch turned eagerly to the castle, another went by. The wonderer passed by the castle without interest: he had seen lots of its sort. Since the Saracens were defeated and Jerusalem with its lands captured, the Frank crusaders were fortifying hastily, enclosing with walls. Kings vied with each other in bestowing the lands not controlled by them on their knights, and each knight rushed to build a castle to shelter behind its solid walls.

The castle keep is a tall square tower: wide and massive, formed by huge granite blocks. It is surrounded with smaller buildings, their roofs barely visible over the high rampart. The castle stands in the bend of a river – a common way to ensure better protection. On the other side, there is a deep moat dug from the river and filled with its water. The massive gate is deep in the wall, under the arched cornice, with two small towers sideways for guards to hide in.

The wonderer had left the castle far behind and on the left when he heard a fast clatter of hooves behind. Without looking back, he stepped off the road, past the roadside. He knew the habit of wicked men to whip pedestrians while riding.

Hooves clattered past him. He saw three men on light slim-legged horses. The last rider looked back at him, shouted and stopped. Others reined up reluctantly. The three of them wear motley rags but have sabers and daggers, one also has a bow on his back and a quiver full with feathered arrows by saddle. Their faces are hungry and evil.

“Hey you,” cried the back rider harshly. “Whose man?”

“A pilgrim, good people,” Oleg replied meekly. “Going home from the Holy Land.”

“Where’s your home?” the rider demanded. His friends kept their horses that were longing to gallop on.

“Rus’.”

The riders exchanged glances. “Never heard of it,” the back one said angrily. “Some made-up place, isn’t it?”

“Or a tiny kingdom!” a different rider cried.

“Tiny as my nail!”

“Very good,” the back rider resolved. “He’s no one’s man.” He dismounted, prodded Oleg’s chest with a whip handle. Oleg did not stir when the man felt the muscle on his arms and chest efficiently. Then he had Oleg open his mouth and counted his teeth.

The first rider cried impatiently, “You’re ready to grab all sorts of carrion, Ternak! Look! He’s a bag of bones!”

“He’s from Europe,” the second rider added. “Our blood.”

Ternak laughed. “God said He knew neither Hellene nor Jew but man. So everyone is equal to Baron’s stone quarry, ha ha! Take him to Murad.”

They surrounded the pilgrim: two with bare sabers, the third with an arrow on the bow string. Oleg looked in their faces of skillful slavers, experts in this gods-awful trade.

“Stretch your hands!” Ternak commanded. “Not ahead! Behind you!”

Oleg crossed his arms behind him submissively. Ternak put a rope on them deftly, tied his hands together. Another rider helped him to lift Oleg on the horseback. Ternak shook his hands off. “So heavy a bag of bones!” he said with surprise. “Abdullah! Take him to Murad and join us.”

Abdullah swore, mounted hastily and galloped to the castle, whooping and holding the bound pilgrim.

They had barely entered the courtyard when a huge creature covered with black hair came out to meet them. He seemed to Oleg half a man, half a beast, with his low forehead, close small eyes, huge massive jaw and absent neck: his boulder-like head was seated on his muscular shoulders directly. His bare chest resembled a beer cask, his legs looked as though he spent his whole life seated on that cask, but his arms were as big and thick as trunks of trees covered with thick black hair instead of bark.

The enormous man wiped his hooked fingers, which looked fire-tempered, on a hem of his blood-stained leather apron. He looked the wonderer over with revulsion. “That one a croak on his first day! Kadji damn you, Ternak…”

Oleg was brought to a low stone barn. The door was set ajar, the smells of sewage and stiff air drifted from inside. With force, Oleg was pushed into the dark. His foot found no floor, so he rolled down the stairs, came back to himself on the stone floor covered with wisps of rotten straw.

He heard the door shut and barred upwards. A strong hand touched Oleg’s shoulder, a mocking voice said in his ear, “Hail to the builder of new world!”

Eyes got accustomed to the semi-dark quickly. He discerned about twenty half-naked men along the walls. Each one had a tarnished metal collar round his neck, three were fettered. “Which world?” Oleg asked.

“The new one,” the man jeered. “The fair one! The Christian one! The castle of Baron Otset among the barbarity. The outpost of Christian host in the land of Saracen…” He was half-naked, his back in awful swollen wales. His face was crossed by a lacerated crimson wale, his left eye swollen.

Oleg sat up, rubbed his numb hands. “I heard… a stone quarry?”

The man grinned, baring sharp stubs of front teeth. His gums were bleeding. “Ever worked stone?”

Oleg nodded, still looking around. If the man wants to see the novice frightened, he will be disappointed. Pilgrims see much in their wandering.

“A pilgrim?” Oleg nodded again at that. The stranger went on. “Half pilgrims here. Baron gives us opportunity to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. For him, definitely. The castle’s done, now the wall raised… My name’s Yarlat.”

“I’m Oleg. From Rus’.”

“Is it somewhere in Hyperborean[5]?”

In the next morning Oleg was brought to the forge. Two strong warriors put an iron ring on his neck. The forger was skillful and fast to join the metal ends and rivet them together. The skin on Oleg’s throat got burnt a bit.

The guard made a strong slap on his back. “I love pilgrims! Humble, accepting. Other pigheaded. Yesterday two o’ them fed to dogs alive.”

The collar was burning hot, slow to cool. The guards led Oleg through the main gate outside. In half a mile from the castle, there was a pit large enough to contain two or three such castles. Fine sharp dust was rising from it. Oleg heard heavy blows of iron on stone.

The guard led Oleg up to the brink, pointed at a wooden ladder. “Get down! No pick for you, drag stone out. The foreman show you in.”

Down in the pit, half-naked men pounded on rocks with their heavy picks, made holes in stone, drove wooden stakes into the holes and watered. The wet swollen wood would break stone. The broken boulders were tied round with ropes and lifted up.

The foreman frowned at his new slave. “You drag broken stone. To that wall. On top only those don’t try to escape. We don’t know if you will.”

Silently, Oleg gripped a sparkling colored edge of the cut-off boulder. The black-bearded man who took another side told him through gritted teeth, “Don’t be idle, but don’t work fingers to bone. Or you won’t live till evening!”

All the forenoon they rolled or dragged stones to the wall. Rope ends were thrown down from above, Oleg and the black-bearded man called Shaggy tied the stones round, dawdling with knots to extend the moments of rest. Then the boulders were lifted with a poignant slowness, their sharp edges scratching the stone wall, the crumbs of granite falling down.

After a brief lunchtime, when each slave was given a dried fish and a slice of bread, Oleg was told to drive the wooden wedges. Others were watering. The slab of stone below him was crackling and groaning when Oleg felt a strange strain in it. Next to him, two moaning slaves were rolling a broken-off boulder with long poles.

“Step aside,” Oleg warned them. “You may be injured.”

The slaves looked bewildered. The foreman gave him a sharp look, then suddenly barked at them, “Get away!” The slaves flew up, like birds flushed. The huge slab gave a crack. A boulder shot up as if hurled by a catapult, ploughed the dry rocky ground two steps long. Oleg stood on the very edge of the larger slab. The foreman kept his eyes on the novice, his mouth twisted. “You know stone? Good… Two fools owe to you.”

The slab was broken like an overripe watermelon: its inside gleaming red with black grains, lined with straight grooves from top to bottom, with water-swollen wedges stuck in them.

Oleg picked up his excessively heavy hammer. Slaves were moving around like half-dead men, their eyes lackluster. His heart wrung with guilt: he still had not found the Truth to rescue them.

There’s nothing truly great about the one who lifted himself from slavery to the emperor’s throne, as many did. Oleg had known Upravda, a blue-eyed shepherd who left sheep herding in Carpathian Mountains for the throne in Constantinople. He translated his Slavic name, which meant rule, governance and law, into Latin as Justinian to mean the same[6]. The word justice was derived of it and spread, in Latin first. He had done much, that fair-haired shepherd, though the throne was prepared and given to him by his uncle Justin, once also a shepherd in Carpathians. But even the most powerful emperor can’t find a way for happiness… for salvation, as the young Christian faith put it.

By evening, he was hardly able to drag his feet along. The hammer was falling out of his hands, twice he escaped falling boulders only by miracle. Covered with stone crumbs, dripping with sweat, he barely heard, through buzzing in ears, the foreman shouting for everyone to finish work and get out.

The exhausted workers rushed to the rope ladders, which were dropped from above, where the sword of guards rang and glittered with bare steel. Oleg lingered. His breath was bursting out in rattles, his legs quivered.

The foreman whipped him. “Move it!” he bellowed. “You have to be in before dark!”

Someone helped Oleg up to his feet. Above, guards were struggling to keep their mad dogs who pawed the ground, reaching for the slaves, with clanking of scary sharp teeth.

The foreman shoved Oleg into the barn, both collapsed on the dirty floor. Once the gate was slammed behind them, its folds started to shake. Oleg heard scratches, creepy howls. A thick paw, as large as a bear’s, tried to squeeze through under the gate.

Oleg turned on his back. The foreman shook his head. “You endure. No wail… A stoic?”

Oleg shook his head slowly. “It’s only puny body suffering. I am free.”

The foreman pulled a mocking face. “But you’re set in that puny body, aren’t you? And can’t leave it. It’s yours, if I get it!”

“My soul is desolated. How can I put body first? Mark Aurelius was right, though an Emperor. He said a man has nothing but his soul.”

“What if body dies? Of this work?”

“I’m fed better than I was… in the cave. I get less tired than I used to be in the work to master my body with spirit.”

The foreman nodded, with no interest in the novice anymore. For the last three years, he had met different people in the stone quarry – pious men, pilgrims, and stoics, men of many countries and religions. He had taught ascetics and hermits, who would only wear hefty chains and mutter prayers, to break stone. His main concern was to reveal a man eager to riot or escape. That one was neither: he, a foreman for three years, could sense it from a mile away.

* * *

It was the second week of Oleg’s breaking stone and dragging heavy boulders. He gained some muscle though still looked gaunt and bony as against to others. He was a welcome workmate: never shirking, ready to take the worst part of it, eager to help.

Once as he returned to the barn, he heard a man swearing and a lash whistling. A big man was crucified on an oaken cross, his clothes torn off and scattered about the yard. A Saracen in a huge green turban, naked to his waist, with sugar-white teeth bared maliciously, was lashing the poor man with delight: spinning the lash over his head, hurling it down with a whistle, each slash meant to break the skin as deep as possible. The poor man’s back was lined with crimson wales. Bitter buzzy flies were dropping on it to lick his blood and ichor before a new lash.

The foreman nudged Oleg as he walked. “A nobleman,” he said with a frown, “They’d have nailed the likes of us, and he’s just bound! He’s held for ransom.”

“Who is he?” Oleg asked aloofly.

“A knight errant. Or maybe just a returnee from the Holy Land. Not every knight as lucky as our Baron! Many got their mouth watered, and that’s all. Glad if they get home alive now, but scatter their bones on the way…”

They were the last to enter the barn. Guards prodded them with thick ends of spears and barred the door. Thomas Malton, Oleg recalled. An arrogant knight, a boy in the appearance of a man grown. His body in its prime, but his soul still a bud.

* * *

In his third week in the stone pit, Oleg saw a violently bashed man nearby: half-naked, his neck in the iron collar, his legs chained. It took Oleg some time to recognize him as Thomas and just a moment to forget it. He worked hard, but his thought was free was to shrink deep into soul, so he was searching the Real World desperately for answers to the questions that tormented him, while in the other world his mortal body, along with other two-legged animals, would drive wedges, raise a heavy hammer, drag boulders.

Suddenly he heard a hoarse voice nearby. “Wonderer? Er… Sir Oleg?”

He saw Thomas’s face: dripping with sweat, thinned, his southern tan gone. In the clatter of picks around, no one was looking in their side. “Yes, Sir Thomas, that’s me,” Oleg replied slowly. He was still in another world.

“I didn’t recognize you at once. This work is good for you! You got stronger, put some muscle on… Are you going to stay?”

“I can speak to gods anywhere,” Oleg said indifferently.

They heard a foreman’s warning shout. Cursing, Thomas brought his pick down on the rock, the stone fragments flew high. In the cloud of dust raised, everyone looked alike. In the commotion, Oleg lost the sight of Thomas, but in the evening the knight found him again. “I’ve changed with the man you worked with,” he whispered.

“We’re all men,” said Oleg indifferently. “All humans.”

For a while, Thomas crowbarred a granite boulder, thinking over an answer, then gave a guarded look around and whispered, “No men here but slaves! Does it befit you, a freeborn…”

“Slaves are men,” Oleg interrupted.

“Not men like us.”

“No slave made by God. Only by people.”

Thomas shook his head angrily, his blue eyes blazed with fury. “Sir wonderer! You are too humble. I want to get out of here. I need help. A little help!”

Oleg nodded at the other men’s backs, glistening with sweat.

Thomas waved away angrily. “They’ve died out. But not you! I feel a glimmer in you…”

Oleg looked indifferent. He was driving his crowbar in a narrow slit, crushing the stone. Thomas breathed heavily. His muscular arms raised the pick over his head frequently, his blows cracked rocks like rip nuts. The chain on his ankles clanked miserably.

“You’ll burn out,” Oleg said.

“What?” Thomas wondered.

“Overstrain. Run out of your strength soon.”

“I shan’t linger! If no way out, I… swear on the Heaven and Holy Communion, I’ll smash my head!”

His breath was rattling, as he had swallowed much stone dust. His neck was squeezed by the collar, his burnt blisters rubbed till they bled. The glitter in his eyes could belong to a small animal at bay, his fingers trembled. Oleg realized clearly that the handsome knight was not long for this world. At least, for the part of the world where Baron Otset’s castle stood.

“How will you get out?” Oleg asked without interest.

“I don’t know,” Thomas said desperately. “But here I shan’t live till Sunday. I know it. And no one to trust in! The slaves… They’re slaves after all! It’s only you I know. You cured me, and I once saved you from dogs!”

The wonderer was raising his arms evenly and strongly, bringing the sharp end of the heavy crowbar down into the crack between boulders. Thomas could almost see other boulders that moved unhurriedly in Oleg’s head and cast a dim glimmer into his impenetrable green eyes.

“But,” the wonderer spoke gently, “people should not be forced, even to their good. If they can’t forget their flesh here, if they’re unhappy because it is suffering… they should be released.”

Thomas jerked his shoulder impatiently. “Damn your wise words! Who’s to release them?”

“We,” replied the wonderer in the same humble voice.

In the evening Thomas was brought to the common slave barn. None of the exhausted, work-disemboweled men paid any attention to the novice. Thomas made his way to the corner where Oleg was sitting. “You’ve travelled a lot,” he whispered with excitement. “Might have seen more of such pits than I have. Do you see a way to escape?”

“There’s always a way,” Oleg replied softly. “But the collars will give us away… and our rags! We’ll be stopped in the nearest village and handed back. No one is to quarrel with Baron.”

Thomas nodded. “I think so. And I can’t leave without… some things. I hate to part with my warhorse, my armor and sword, but let the damned Baron have them! But in my saddle bag, there is an old copper cup…” He stopped, gave Oleg a searching look.

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” the pilgrim said quietly. “When you had a wound, I was searching for a dressing… Why is it so important?”

“It’s holy,” Thomas whispered. “A sacred thing.”

“Ah,” Oleg said, “ritual. I get it. Every sorcerer had a cup on his belt. Back in the times of Targitai, the golden plow, yoke, and cup fell from the sky…”

Thomas hissed angrily. “Don’t you liken the holy Christian relics to some Pagan things!”

“Well, well. When getting out, we’ll need the armory first. You put your iron pot on, we take horses and gallop away/”

“I have to smash Baron’s head before!”

“Speed is the rescue. Or we’ll be seized.”

“But the cup must be in his bedroom! He’s not a fool to keep it elsewhere. I’ll sooner die than leave it!”

The wonderer watched him with a strange expression, then sighed, tossed and thrashed heavily at the stone corner. “Man is reckless… Isn’t it a simple Truth?”

“Ho-ly won-de-rer!” Thomas spoke in measured tones. He choked with fury, veins in his neck bulged, the metal collar was strangling like Baron’s iron fingers. “Will you help me?”

The wonderer had big, mild, all-forgiving eyes, which could belong to an icon, a just man close to Christ, one of his twelve paladins. “Off chance I shan’t abandon my search of Truth despite… In the Great Reclusion, do as others do.”

“Will you help?” Thomas moaned.

“A little,” Oleg replied in a quiet voice. “Don’t expect much.”

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 739