I thought about Yeshua ben Yosef, too. I wished I knew more about him. I'd never read the books of his life, the Brit Khadasha. But I'd heard Eleazar ben Enokh speak of him. I didn't think that the Yeshua he worshipped, a god of forgiveness and compassion, wished to carve out a kingdom with steel and blood. Still, after a lifetime of study, even Eleazar could not say for certain what this passage or that passage had meant.
That was the problem, Urist had said, with trusting to the written word. There was a truth to his claim; but I wasn't sure trusting to the spoken word and the chain of memory, as the Cruithne did, was any more reliable. When it came to the Maghuin Dhonn, the truth was Drustan had told me was not the truth the harpist Ferghus had sung for us. We were human, mortal and fallible. We forgot, we made errors, argued ambiguities, and twisted meanings to suit our own ends.
And in so doing, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves.
Now that was a thought made me shudder to the bone. I wondered if it were true, and if it were, what would happen when some deity bent out of true by mortal ambition returned to set the record straight.
I wished there was someone with whom I could discuss such matters—who knows, mayhap Jergens would have taken a surprising interest—but my Rus was too poor for such heady conversation. So I sat with my thoughts in silence, huddling in my thick woolen coat when the wind blew, gnawing on salt beef, stale biscuits, and dried figs, taking a turn at the oars when we were becalmed, until we reached Kargad.
It was a pleasant little village, situated on the bank of the Ulsk. Men in fishing boats trawling for eel or trout glanced curiously at us as we headed for the narrow wharf. Habiru faces, for the most part. This was a settlement, not a trading post.
My arrival was unceremonious. Jergens didn't even bother to secure the ship, merely drew abreast of the dock, hovering long enough that I could toss my pack ashore and leap across the gap. He gave me a brief wave of farewell, and that was that. For the fur-traders it was out oars and back to the river, eager to set their traps before the snow fell. When all was said and done, I supposed I was lucky to be travelling with such an incurious crew.
I shouldered my bags and set about finding Berlik's pilgrims.
It was, in truth, a good deal easier than I'd feared. Thanks to Adelmar of the Frisii, I knew I was looking for the families of Ethan of Ommsmeer and his wife. There were several women haggling with fishermen over buckets of eels along the wharf. I took the simplest approach, and asked one of them, speaking in Habiru. I picked the prettiest of the lot, a young woman who'd been stealing glances at me since I arrived, a small toddler clinging to her skirts.
"Your pardon, my lady," I said politely. "Do you know the house of Ethan of Ommsmeer?”
She blushed. "I do.”
I stooped, balancing my pack, and picked up her bucket. "Will you show me?" I asked. "I'll carry your …" I didn't know the Habiru word for "eels." "…your long fish.”
Her blush deepened. "I will.”
Elua knows what she thought of me. I'd not given much consideration to Tadeuz Vral's words; that my face, my heritage as a scion of Elua and Kushiel, would lend credence to the mythos of Yeshua. In Terre d'Ange, as in other civilized nations, our presence is taken for granted. I imagined most Yeshuite pilgrims would know this, coming as they did from other lands. We are, as Eamonn always teased me, a pretty folk. But by the way my guide looked at me, uncertain and daring, I guessed she was unsure of my origins.
She couldn't have been any older than Ravi. I wondered if she'd been born in Vralia. She led me through a narrow maze of streets, carrying the toddler.
"Here," she said outside a wooden stoop. "Ethan's home.”
"My thanks." I inclined my head and hoisted the bucket. "And yours …?”
"No, no!" She shifted her child, snatching the bucket. "It is not needed.”
Well, and so. I watched her hurry away down the streets of Kargad, carrying her child and her bucket, then raised my fist and knocked on the wooden door.
The woman who answered my knock didn't look surprised to see me. A Habiru woman, although by virtue of her rounded cheeks and the stray locks of reddish-blonde hair escaping her kerchief, I daresay there was some Flatlander blood there, too. She stood silently in the doorway, regarding me.
"I'm looking for Berlik of Alba," I said humbly. "I bear a message for him.”
"Ja." She studied me for a moment without saying anything further, then opened the door wider. "We have been expecting you. Come in.”
It wasn't a response I'd been anticipating, but I kept my mouth shut on that fact and entered. The house was a tiny one-room affair, divided by a hearth in the center that was the sole source of heat and, at the moment, light. There were beds built into niches in the walls. A young boy sat on the upper bunk, swinging his legs and staring at me with wide, dark eyes.
"Go fetch your father, my heart," his mother said gently to him. "You know where he is? Working on the cow-byre with Uncle Nisi?" The boy nodded vigorously and scrambled down the ladder on short, sturdy legs, leaving the door ajar in his haste. His mother smiled after him, closing the door in his wake.
"A good-looking boy," I ventured.
"He takes after his father," she said. "But it was Berlik saved his life.”
"Oh?" I kept my tone neutral.
"Ja." She pointed to the area beyond the hearth, where a table and chairs stood. "Please, sit. Ethan will be here soon. There is pottage if you are hungry, or I can make griddle-cakes.”
The thought of hot food made my mouth water. "No thank you, my lady." I set down my pack and took a seat. "How did Berlik come to save your son's life?”
"You should eat. You have come a long way." She withdrew a bowl from a neat little cupboard and ladled a serving of pottage into it, setting it before me. "We were crossing a bridge over the Voorwijk when the harness broke. The cart tipped. A great deal happened at once, and we did not see that Adam had fallen into the river." She placed a tin spoon beside the bowl. "Berlik was travelling the road behind us. He saw. He plunged into the river and rescued him.”
I took a bite of pottage. "That must have been terrifying.”
"It was." She sat opposite me and offered nothing further. I ate in silence. The sound of my spoon scraping the bowl seemed loud.
"Thank you, my lady," I said, finishing. "How shall I call you?”
"Galia," she said briefly.
"Galia." I nodded. "I am Imriel.”
"Im-ri-el." She said it slowly. "The eloquence of God.”
There was a noise at the door; her husband entered, stooping low to cross the threshold, his son on his shoulders. A whiff of cow-dung entered with them. He swung the boy down and set him on his feet. I rose in acknowledgment. "So you have come," Ethan of Ommsmeer said gravely. "As Berlik said you would.”
"What did he say?" I asked.
He didn't answer right away. "Will you sit and drink a cup of beer?”
I shrugged. "If it would please you.”
He didn't answer that, either, but went to wash his hands at the basin. I wondered if he was stalling for time. Galia fetched a pair of porcelain cups, filling them from a small keg in the corner, then took the boy and went into the front portion of the house, sitting beside the hearth and sewing quietly. Ethan took the seat opposite me at the table, and I sat again.
"Berlik is a good man, I think," he said at length. "A good man who has done a bad thing.”
"Did he tell you that?" I asked.
"In time." Ethan sipped his beer. "At first he did not speak our tongue, although he learned it swiftly. But I knew. I could see the shadow of guilt that haunted his eyes, strongest of all when he gazed at Adam.”
"And yet you trusted him with your son," I said.
Ethan met my eyes. His were dark, like his son's; quiet and soulful, set in a worn, gentle face. "He saved Adam's life," he said. "He traded his robe to buy us goods we could scarce afford. Adam thought him wondrous. I persuaded him to stay, to travel with us, for the boy's sake. Yes. I trusted him.”
"And in time, you spoke," I said.
"Yes." He looked down, turning the cup in his hands. Strong hands, laborer's hands, engrained with dirt that a single scrubbing wouldn't remove. "He told me he had done a thing too terrible to speak of. That he must flee as far as he might, carrying its curse on his shoulders, carrying it far, far from his people." He glanced up at me. "And as he learned our tongue, I spoke to him of Yeshua ben Yosef, who lived and died in the flesh that he might take the sins of all mankind on his shoulders and bear them for eternity. All men, even such a man as Berlik.”
"All of this before Maarten's Crossing?" I asked wryly.
"No." Ethan smiled a little. "No, he learned fast, but not so fast. But I could see that his heart was good. I persuaded him to take the pilgrim's cap and spoke on his behalf.”
I nodded. "I see.”
"But through Skaldia, we spoke." Ethan tilted his head, gazing into the past. "When we crossed into Vralia, I could feel it was different. I could feel it in the soil, I could feel it singing in the marrow of my bones. A change. A kingdom built in Yeshua's name, a kingdom on earth. That night, I prayed for Berlik, and I persuaded him to kneel and pray with me. I told him that whatever he had done, if he was willing to surrender his heart and his guilt into Yeshua's keeping, he would find forgiveness here. Berlik wept.”
I swirled my beer. "And is it all you hoped, Ethan? Yeshua's kingdom?”
"All?" he said thoughtfully. "Not all, no. There is much that is different and strange. The first time I saw the soldiers of Tadeuz Vral, wearing the cross upon which Yeshua died as a badge of war, I felt strange to myself. But there is hope, too. For me, for my family. Perhaps for Berlik, too.”
Another silence fell between us. I had thought to lie to this man and his family. Now that I was here, I couldn't. They knew too much. The cross pendant weighed heavy around my neck, tugging at my conscience. Heavy as the croonie-stone, straining against my own desires. I sighed and removed it, laying it on the table. The fire in the hearth crackled. The cheap gilding on the cross glinted dully, its colors muted. I felt lighter without it.
"Where is he?" I asked simply.
"Berlik said you would come." Ethan gazed at the cross. "The avenging angel." The muscles in his lean throat worked as he swallowed. "I know you're not, not really. We're Flatlanders, we know D'Angelines. And yet, a thing may be true and not true. Have you not found it to be so?”
"Yes," I said. "I have.”
His eyes were bright with tears. "There is a place…we learned of it along the pilgrims' route. It lies east, toward the Narodin Mountains. Miroslas. A yeshiva of sorts, a quiet place, where men go to think and be silent. It is said that the Rebbe there is a very holy man. He contemplates ways in which the Children of Yisra-el and Vralia may serve Yeshua's purpose alike. That is where Berlik went when he parted ways with us, to think and be silent.
"Miroslas," I said quietly. "My thanks.”
Ethan shook his head. "He told us, he told me, that I was to tell you where he went. You, and you alone. I promised. I wish I had not.”
"I'm sorry," I said. The fire crackled. On the far side of the hearth, I could make out the figure of Galia, still and listening, her sewing unattended in her hands. Adam sat quiet in his bunk, occupied with some child's toy. "Why do you think he did it?”
"I think there is a part of him that wishes to die," he said.
It crossed my mind that I would gladly have obliged him in Alba, but I kept my mouth shut on that thought, too. "Can I reach Miroslas by river?”
"No." Ethan rubbed his eyes. "Over land.”
"The tanner's wife said you had horses." I felt at my purse. "Will you sell me one?”
He gave a short laugh. "We sold them to buy this house, and they have already been sold again. No one in Kargad has a horse to spare. If you want to buy a horse, go to Tarkov. There is a road leading east. It is only three days' walk. I would offer you our hospitality, but…" He glanced at Galia and his voice faded. "I am sorry.”
"Three days." I nodded and stood. "All right.”
"Will you kill him?" Ethan asked in a low tone.
I hoisted my pack and shouldered it. "Berlik never told you what he did, did he?" Ethan shook his head again. I gazed past the hearth, watching Galia with her head bent over her sewing, the boy Adam playing in his bunk. "No, I didn't think so. If he had, you wouldn't ask me that question.”
"Killing him won't change anything," he said.
"It will for me," I said.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Alone and on foot, I made my way to Tarkov.For the first day, the road Ethan had mentioned—which wasn't more than a faint path, really—followed the Ulsk River. There, at least, I had the solace of seeing other people. But the second day, it veered eastward, into dense pine forest.
I went the whole of the second day without seeing another living soul, walking and walking. My boots, my old pair rescued from the shipwreck, chafed my feet. My scars ached with the strain of carrying my saddlebags. I shifted them from shoulder to shoulder and kept walking. The air was cold, cold enough to see one's breath. At least the effort of walking kept me warm.
I made camp that night alone under the pine canopy. Wrapped in a blanket, I sat beside the brisk little fire I'd built. I ate salt beef and drank sparingly from my waterskin. Beyond the campfire, I could see a pair of bright eyes reflecting light. Badger? Fox? Lynx? I fumbled for a branch to throw at them. The eyes vanished.